6/30/2003 11:57:00 PM

the first annual impromptu dogme film festival went off with a wimper last week. since it was organized and executed in 20 minutes that is saying a lot. we watched dogme #2 and #12. actually, as a group we watched only #12 (after my rousing, intentionally-buleresque monotone intro to dogme) and i watched #2 the next day. what can be said? don't understand? read this.

6/30/2003 11:50:00 PM

For Theirs Is The Kingdom

it still blows my mind that 70% of Alabama is corporate owned...

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's $1.2 billion tax reform plan aims to restore his state's fiscal responsibility, while also turning the nation's most regressive tax structure into something more fair. Riley, a conservative Republican, has framed this effort in religious terms -- saying that justice for the poor is not just prudent policy, but also in keeping with God's will, correcting the grievous sin of Alabama's oppressive system (see here).

This hasn't escaped the notice of Alabama's powers and principalities -- such as the timber industry and other corporate interests who own more than 70 percent of the state's land but pay only 2 percent of its property taxes.

6/30/2003 11:44:00 PM

there is this guy in New York selling shirts with words on them for big money.
it was hilarious to see a mod-White Cross shirt...

6/30/2003 11:35:00 PM

Study: People seek themselves in potential mates

People like people like themselves. That's the conclusion of a study by Cornell University researchers...

Other theories of mate selection have been based on the idea that opposites attract or that people look for someone who ranks high in child-rearing qualities, the team noted.

But they concluded that a bigger factor in marriage quality and stability is similarity in personality traits.

"From the public perspective, our results suggest that individuals seeking stable, long-term relationships should not seek the highest quality partner available but should simply look for partners who are similar to themselves"...

(unless of course you are an artist, author or manic-genius in which case you need a care taker.
or maybe just cigarettes.)

6/30/2003 06:25:00 PM

for some of us there are really no good radio stations. nevertheless, we don't go start one as a result. usually we just bitch cynically every-so-often and make up for the lack with more CDs, concerts and file sharing (and now the infinity of choice that is IP-mediated "radio").

for some of us there are no good spiritual retreats. nevertheless, we don't go start one as a result. usually we just bitch cynically every-so-often and make up for the lack with more conversations, wider experiences and meme sharing (and now the infinity of choice that is IP-mediated "community").

yet... if no one takes on Clear Channel how will anything ever change?

6/29/2003 10:55:00 PM

Why the U.S. must invade Canada--now

It didn't support the war, it's soft on pot and gays, its economy is rolling and U.S. troops are bored. Anyway, reasons to invade countries are no longer needed!

6/28/2003 10:08:00 PM

smell

6/28/2003 09:54:00 PM

i woke up this morning singing. while not unusual--i like to sing--it was what i was singing that threw me off.

i did not know what the song was at first. i was humming a melody and then singing "blah, blah, blah" for an hour before the lyrics came to me with such force that i was shaken and left wondering what was happening.

this is a confession on my part. something that i am embarrassed by at some level. "worship" as we have come to characterize it in this moment of the America i inhabit has often rung empty to me. this is the case partly because of my aversion to the clichéd cadence of the worship leader (who needs to be lead in this endeavor in the first place? "the first rule of leading worship is: you do not talk about leading worship") and partly because of the poor practice of theology and the arts that is characteristic of much that i have witnessed.

and so it is, in the context of this embarrassing self-exposure, that i share with you the simplicity that became weeping encounter for me this morning:

You are the Lord
The famous one, famous one
Great is Your name in all the earth
The heavens declare
You're glorious, glorious
Great is Your fame beyond the earth

For all You've done and yet to do
With every breath I'm praising You
Desire of the nations and every heart
You alone are God
You alone are God

The morning star is shining through
And every eye is watching You
Revealed by nature and miracles
You are beautiful
You are beautiful

in all that we get wrong--for the fuck ups that we are--there is something ambiguously reassuring about the beauty of the divine that we craft with our words and ways in a world that is as harsh as it is glorious; that is as violently grand as it is imperceptably gracious.

these paths we walk together speak to something that can never be brought straightway into language, but is known in the joy and pain of all that rips us apart--the anger of betrayal and fascination of luck; love's blinding seduction; the silent endorphin high of birth and tearing resignation to the enfolding into death. in these, and everything between, the inevitability of what it is to be thrashes out and demands a response... slaps us across the face and says, "LIVE goddammit! LIVE!"

this contingent place is prepared for you.
in all the pain of being alone
and silence of togetherness
i am ripped from the stories you live
and forever plastered into the noosphere of existence;
into the memetic evolution of the isms that your
ancestor worship, theisms and atheisms speak forth.

so speak on!
(and more, live on.)

amazing love;
that rain falls on the just and the unjust.

that we are without request or recourse.

amazing love.
you're glorious, glorious

you are beautiful.
...the famous one, famous one
great is your name in all the earth...

6/27/2003 06:09:00 PM

6/27/2003 05:49:00 PM

Daniel posted this on the Greenbelt blog. he references some comments by the insightful, and multi-talented, information architect Adam Greenfield. i posted the response below in this comments thread.

Show me a case where e-mail or blogs or smart mobs really and unambiguously did bring down a tyrant. Show me a situation in which even one high-school bully was put in their place with the aid of this technology, let alone the pathetic tinhorn strongmen that still ru(i)n so much of this pretty sphere...


the benefits of technology-induced culture shifts are, very often, crassly overinflated in the short term and profoundly underestimated over the long term. the impact of this thing called the internet cannot be adequately assessed in one decade of use by the common person. just as the impact of the printing press over multiple generations (right up into our time--without which there would be no internet) was not something that could be assessed, charted or celebrated when Henne Gaensfleisch, commonly called Johann Gutenberg, in the 1400s was assiduously setting each letter of the Latin Bible for the first print run of a book in the history of humankind.

Adam Greenfield's June 26th v-2 post, while raising excellent questions, presumes too much in its assessments. we are unable to make any substantial claim to know the impact of the internet, the great-great-great-great grandchild of the moveable type press.

unable to speak definitively about such things from our vantage point we are tasked with choosing to live in ways that satisfy us in light of the questions that our technologies give us opportunity to pose.

6/27/2003 01:41:00 AM

these are the things you do when you can't sleep at 1AM:


You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

6/26/2003 10:20:00 PM

find out more at indieallies.meetup.com

6/26/2003 10:16:00 PM

i finally got around to listening to a tape of the genealogy thing i talked about at soularize last year. i was hesitant at first. you know how idiotic one thinks one sounds when forced to watch or listen to something that was recorded. i guess that i wasn't too disappointed as i am mentioning it here. anyway... i noticed that the tape had a website on it so i went to it and it seems they are selling these things. hmm.

what is more hilarious is that they are offering the, "In my hotel room last night I had a dream... of a limp dick..." message given by Martin Luther King's daughter, Bernice, last year. it is difficult to gracefully summarize that particular main session... she didn't use the currency of our attention to say anything.

soularize03 is around the corner.
who knows what's to happen this year...

6/26/2003 08:24:00 PM

todd hunter (whose archives are screwed up):

I do have a theory that I think makes sense and is open to all manner of creative implementation: "Do for our children what we are trying to do for our selves--journey inward, journey outward, journey into community--but do it in age specific ways".

6/26/2003 08:24:00 PM

we have to begin reacquiring a taste for the local.

the local was once the primary way we interacted with the world.

(
remember when you were a kid and you would go to someone's house to play or spend the night? there was always that moment where you recognized the differences between your family environments: the smell of the house, bed time, television shows, meal rituals and the like. in recognizing the differences you began to distinguish between what was local to your family. now, of course, there were areas that overlapped between your friend's home and yours, but there was always something meaningful about your home that was not present while away.
)

without the local there is a certain homelessness that precludes meaning--an exiling at the hands of our chosen lifestyle mobility. this mobility does not require physical travel. lifestyle mobility is to privilege the celebrity, the processed, the homogenized, the popular, the brand name, the nationally syndicated over the known, the organic, the fresh, the indigenous, your own name... lifestyle mobility is convenient to the point of convenience determining value. when demand is consistently invested in that which is labeled for individual sale the soul of human existence is erased by the commerce of lifestyle exchange.

we have to begin reacquiring a taste for the local.

local is synonymous with both new and old; fresh and classic. in the music scene the local is the pre-famous cool that drives people to clubs in sub-zero temperatures. local is the excitement over hearing a hometown comic at a Tuesday night open mic rival the multimillion dollar HBO production from the night before. local is the mid-wife running across a well-manicured lawn to coach the patent lawyer's first baby out of the womb. local is the old man whistling as he unpacks the crates of corn from his battered Chevy at the farmer's market next to the loft conversion. local is a billion other instantiations of human passion, creation, commerce and contentment that values the passion of human engagement over the anonymity of prepackaged convenience.

...

{not that the prepackaged is to be universally shunned.
i say not shunned--just engaged more thoughtfully....
we must begin to reacquire a taste for the local.}

6/26/2003 08:12:00 PM

i had a very long lunch today with Matthew Glock, Christian Spiller and David at the Mockingbird/75 Cafe Brazil. Matt and Christian are both in from France and Christian just returned from a three week jaunt into Mexico.

we had a great time sipping coffee, coke and iced tea for hours as the Cafe Brazil regulars scooted in and out. we're getting the kids together next week.

6/26/2003 12:08:00 PM

there is hope.

6/26/2003 11:33:00 AM

via the bisexual postmodern christian hottie blurty
aka indigo
do you really have mehndi hands?

6/25/2003 01:31:00 PM

life:
as
is

6/25/2003 07:32:00 AM

Vonage DigitalVoice .::. The BROADBAND Phone Company

so many uses for this... small companies overseas, oil workers, diplomats, expat families, missionaries, et al could connect one of these voice routers to their broadband in any country and choose a USA phone number that their friends, customers or constituents could inexpensively dial to connect with them. the coolest part is that you could plug it in anywhere in the world as you travel around and have your normal phone follow you. this isn't radical for those with GSM phones, but it is still pretty cool.

6/24/2003 03:17:00 PM

note to self:

Carbs in Alcohol

Beer, regular (12 fl oz) 13g
Beer, light (12 fl oz) 4.5g
Wine, red (3.5 fl oz) 1.75g
Wine, rose (3.5 fl oz) 1.5
Wine, white (3.5 fl oz) 1g
Cider, dry (1 pint) 15g
Gin, Rum, Vodka, Whisky (any amount) 0g
Sherry (2 fl oz) 3g
Port (2 fl oz) 6g
Guinness (1/2 pint) 4g

nested note to self:
better to drink Guinness than regular beer
better to drink wine than any beer
better to drink liquor than any other alcohol
better to drink water than anything else

6/24/2003 12:09:00 PM

fuck convergence!
we need more creative dissonance.
{is the greased wheel of profitable expediency the primary measure of one's success?}
convergence is an organizational disease--a hysteria of concern with one's own institutional viability and voracious growth that cannibalizes what it cannot disenfranchise.

{size always matters.
bigger is not better.
networked is better.
federated is better.}

6/24/2003 01:17:00 AM

Xeni.net Phonecam Blog: At dinner in Beverly Hills, one of the guests places a mysterious art-flyer on the table. Not a "missing dog," but a "missing God." Reward if found: everlasting salvation. There were rose petals and candles all over the table, and at one point, the flyer sort of spontaneously caught fire while everyone was gnawing on carpaccio. We all figured it was some kind of omen. Maybe God doesn't want to be found by way of flyers on telephone poles. Or maybe LA's just 0wnz0red by Satan.

6/24/2003 12:11:00 AM

"...I think we know we're grownups when we stop resisting the urge to become a cliche."

6/23/2003 10:19:00 PM

  using System;



  class MyWorld

  {

    public static void Main()

       {

          MyWorld.Main();

             //do something

       }

  } 

recursion causes stack overflow in a limited resource
environment. in humans recursion provides the satis-
faction of self-justification; the elixir of foundation; a
closed-loop positivism of pleasure, reason or revelation.

nevertheless, there is a certain beyond-recursion that
is forever the apophatic ground of what is called my
world--the impossible that is presupposed in any system
of possibility that will eventually make itself known in the
stack overflow that happens in the dissonance that
causes reflection: the opening to the possibility that the
code of the class is not the definitive prism for under-
standing the system--not to mention the platform that
embodies the system and the hardware that encases
the platform and the network that brings communicated
identity to the hardware and on and on ad infinitum.

self-recursion is a bug.
it will inevitably crash the system;
binary on silicon or biochemistry on carbon.

6/23/2003 08:51:00 PM

the girls and i have this on our calendar: Whale Rider
(first 8 min of the film @ iFilm)

6/23/2003 05:06:00 PM

Pain really is 'all in the mind'

6/23/2003 10:32:00 AM

Incan Binary? via /.

...If Professor Urton is right, it means the Inca not only invented a form of binary code more than 500 years before the invention of the computer, but they used it as part of the only three-dimensional written language. "They could have used it to represent a lot of information," he says. "Each element could have been a name, an identity or an activity as part of telling a story or a myth. It had considerable flexibility. I think a skilled khipu-keeper would have recognised the language. They would have looked and felt and used their store of knowledge in much the way we do when reading words."

There is also some anecdotal evidence that khipu were more than mere knots on a string used for storing calculations. The Spanish recorded capturing one Inca native trying to conceal a khipu which, he said, recorded everything done in his homeland "both the good and the evil". Unfortunately, in this as in many other encounters, the Spanish burnt the khipu and punished the native for having it, a typical response that did not engender an understanding of how the Inca used their khipu.

6/23/2003 10:01:00 AM

current mp3:
boysetsfire::eviction.article

6/23/2003 12:38:00 AM

Reuters | Boy Breeds Eggs in His Body, Produces Beetles via boingboing

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A 13-year-old Indian boy has begun producing winged beetles in his urine after hatching the eggs in his body, a senior medical official said Monday.

6/22/2003 03:20:00 PM

Powerless Iraqis rail against ignorant, air-conditioned US occupation force

As temperatures reached a scorching 45C (113F) in Baghdad last week people in al-Thawra, a sprawling working-class slum, unearthed hidden rifles and threatened to kill the manager of the local electrical sub-station if he did not resume power supplies.

"Some had guns and others threw stones at us, but I told them this was just a sub- station and we aren't receiving any electricity," said Bassim Arman, the harassed-looking manager. "Now I have to close down anyway, because employees are too frightened to come to work."

Electricity is vital to life in the Iraqi capital where the temperature can soar as high as 60C (140F) at the height of summer. Without it there is no air-conditioning, no refrigerators to prevent food rotting and no light in a city terrified by looters. The failure to get the electrical system working has become a symbol for Iraqis in the capital of the general failure of the American occupation to provide living conditions even at the miserable level they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein.

Asked about Baghdad's lack of electricity at an air-conditioned press conference, Paul Bremer, the American head of the occupation authority, looking cool in a dark suit and quiet purple tie, simply asserted that, with a few exceptions, Baghdad was now receiving 20 hours of electricity a day. "It simply isn't true," said one Iraqi, shaking his head in disbelief after listening to Mr Bremer. "Everybody in Baghdad knows it."

Few Iraqis mourn the fall of Saddam but there is a growing, at times almost visceral, hatred of the occupation. "They can take our oil, but at least they should let us have electricity and water," said Tha'ar Abdul Qader, a worker at the Central Teaching Hospital for Children, the main door of which can only be entered by walking through a fast-flowing stream of raw sewage....

"I told Bremer that Baghdad was a paralysed city," said Mr Othman. "He and his staff don't really know what it is like, because if they go out at all, it is in air-conditioned cars. But I've walked the streets, and I know what it is like. They are ill-informed and ill-advised."

Only 15 minutes' walk from Mr Bremer's office Shamsedin Mansour, a poor shopkeeper in an alleyway off al-Rashid street, gave a bleak picture of how he and his neighbours live. "We have had no electricity for six days," he said. "Many of our people are suffering from heart problems because of the heat. We live with as many as 42 people in a house and do not have the money to buy even a small generator. Without light at night it is easy for gangs of thieves with guns to take over the streets, and the shooting keeps us awake. If we try to protect ourselves with arms, the Americans arrest us."

6/22/2003 02:04:00 PM

Eustachy Kossakowski ~ happening panoramique de la mer

religious professionals become successful on their ability to assume and reiterate the model; the empty act of dressing up to direct the waves.

being real people, not symbolic characters with social functions, is the mandate for leaders with spiritual influence in our day.

the empty act of dressing up to direct the waves be damned.

dogme03

this ilk of leaders are at their best when their various metaphysics are shrouded in the beggar's cloak of social revolution; in the embodied reversals of a kingdom where the first shall be last; in a proclamation of a way that finds utterance in emptiness, finds abundance in sacrifice--the holy postures of justice, mercy and humility.

6/22/2003 01:15:00 PM

This country,
with its institutions,
belongs to the people
who inhabit it.
Whenever they shall grow weary
of the existing government,
they can exercise their
constitutional right
of amending it, or their
revolutionary right
to
dismember
or
overthrow it.

~ABRAHAM.lincoln~

i have discussed politics and violence with many of you. the two seem inextricably linked. this is why war is so often described as politics by other means. what is one to do? that always seems to be the question when it comes to the subjects of liberation, peace and conflict. i wrote this some time back. i still stand by the outline of it. nevertheless, there is a perpetual goading that will not leave me alone. the source of this goading is the bare fact that violent revolution is my freedom's heritage--and, seemingly, the heritage of any modicum of political freedom that the communities of our planet have known.

the thing that seems more and more evident to me regarding revolution, as it pertains to the empire we live under, is how totally irrelevant violence is in the face of the near total hegemony the United States is in the process of unleashing. just try to organize an armed resistance and see how far you get. the homeland security enforcers aside there is a more fundamental reason for the near total uselessness of violence in our moment: there is always someone to take the place of whatever is destroyed. take out a building. take out a person. take out a certain industrial capability. it does not matter. the anomaly is immediately absorbed by the system rerouting the function, location or capability to one of a hundred thousand similar options.

when We The People grow weary what shape does our constitutional right, our revolutionary right, now take?

our constitutional right may consist of a renewed political engagement in protest, in candidacy, perhaps even in an active refusal to fund what we deem to be the perverse excesses of leaders who will speak lies and unleash death in our name--fully willing to live with the consequences of our actions (the party of tea in Boston so many years ago seems both apropos and surprisingly overdone in our present context. what would these same patriots who acted out against the royal taxes on tea do in our day of new American monarchial swaggering?).

our revolutionary right may be one of big box consumer and major corporate media disengagement--an active shunning of the debt-slavery that many political and economic elites encourage the working poor and working rich alike to engage in, "for the health of the economy"; a certain stepping away from mainstream infotainment journalism to nurture a critical, multi-source engagement with the polyvalent voices of global media.

and yet, these do not seem enough.

they seem a hollow shell of what Lincoln speaks of.
to rekindle a local dialogue that catalyzes an awakened engagement
among the distracted and disappointed citizenry that we are all a part of--this seems only to begin...

6/22/2003 12:21:00 PM

in a sunrise of burning stop signs,
tomorrow's rising like a ghost from the graveyard of wishes.
its spirit bursting through prison fences,
flooding the street with a sea of ski masks marching from our ditches.
a new morning as bright as the smallest spark in the darkest dark.
warm as young lovers in mid kiss,
its wishes whisper between lovers lips.
...
she screams:
"LOVERS OF THE WORLD UNITE, THERE'S NO TOMORROW...ONLY TONIGHT"
...
its time for a new day to break,
from the dead dreams we awake.
like a mute speaking, seizing his say,
tomorrow come today

6/19/2003 05:11:00 PM

Senate Begins Process to Reverse New F.C.C. Rules on Media

6/18/2003 05:06:00 PM

Watch out for those Christian Terrorists

6/18/2003 01:08:00 PM

Forbes.com: What SCO Wants, SCO Gets

...like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree.

They should wake up. SCO may not be very good at making a profit by selling software. (Last year the company lost $24.9 million on sales of $64.2 million.) But it is very good at getting what it wants from other companies. And it has a tight circle of friends.

In 1996, SCO's predecessor company, Caldera, bought the rights to a decrepit version of the DOS operating system and used it to sue Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), eventually shaking a settlement out of the Redmond, Wash., software giant. In 1997, Darl McBride, now SCO's chief executive, sued his then employer, IKON Office Solutions (nyse: IKN - news - people ), and won a settlement that he says was worth multiple millions. (IKON acknowledges the settlement but disputes the amount.)

McBride joined Caldera as chief executive in June 2002. Two months later he changed the company's name to The SCO Group, based on the name of an ailing Unix product that Caldera had purchased in 2001 from its creator, The Santa Cruz Operation, of Santa Cruz, Calif. The Santa Cruz Operation now calls itself Tarantella (nasdaq: TTLDC - news - people ).

As with the 1996 DOS lawsuit against Microsoft, in the current lawsuit over Unix and Linux this company aims to take a nearly dead chunk of old code, bought for a song, and parlay it into a windfall. Not only is the strategy the same--so are some of the players.

i wondered aloud to Justin this morning if Torvalds's move from Transmeta to focus on the Linux kernal full-time was an attempt to ensure that there is a viable Linux codebase completely transitioned from SCO-actionable code.

6/17/2003 10:58:00 PM

Bullfighter
Stripping The Bull Out Of Business
|| A consulting jargon fighter from Deloitte Consulting ||

the people who helped create management consulting BS are now trying to make a name as the no-BS consulting company.

6/17/2003 09:49:00 AM

cheesebikini?: Smart Mobs Take Manhattan

...If you are approached by a salesperson, explain
that everyone present lives together, in a huge
converted warehouse in Long Island City, and that you
are there looking for a "[secret phrase]." Explain
that you make all purchases as a group...

this looks like crazy-genius fun.

6/17/2003 09:39:00 AM

Another day unfolds--gifted without request; spent without remainder.

6/16/2003 07:56:00 PM

i've been reading John Dvorak's columns for years--since i was a kid (yes, i was a bit geeky). he posted this to boingboing:

Soy and Bitch Tits

6/16/2003 04:35:00 PM

The Case For Hypocrisy

6/16/2003 11:21:00 AM

Remember The Children!

a side-by-side chronicle of each child who has violently died in the land called holy since September 2000.
thanks, linsay

6/16/2003 10:24:00 AM

the personal computing and networking advancements of last 20+ years have cleared the way for personal medical technology whose benefit for humanity will likely eclipse the vast majority of the hyped benefits of the PC and Internet revolutions. i am ready for wearable data devices that monitor, record and upload data to a personal store on a daily basis allowing me to trend body functions and map data against visual body scans and the like. of course beyond that i want generic nanoviruses at my disposal to deliver diagnostic, prescriptive and recreational payloads to targeted areas of my body... but i'll take what i can get for now.

BodyMedia is one company who is beginnig to produce personal monitoring devices. they completed series B financing last year and were just awarded a federal grant in the area of diabetes prevention and management. you can read more about their business in a Wall Street Journal interview with CEO Astro Teller on StartupJournal.
(some trivia: i sold the WSJ StartupJournal back in the late 90s)

6/15/2003 08:00:00 AM

what distinguishes modern flavors of nicea and the way of jesus?
the church today thinks it is in the content business.

6/15/2003 01:01:00 AM

'The Bug': The Postmodern Prometheus

...T-shirts trading puns around a conference table. Enter Roberta Walton, a Ph.D. in the ''linguistics of poetics'' from Yale and something of a refugee from academia, where all of her colleagues have ''gone postmodern'' and given up ''on the notion of meaning.'' Berta is hired by Telligentsia to do Q.A., or quality assurance -- testing the code for bugs. Contrary to her expectations she becomes enamored of the ''separate, artificial reality inside the machine,'' even as she puzzles over the philosophical implications of this strange world made of ''pointers to pointers, arrays of pointers, pointers to structures containing pointers to strings'' and the distancing effect it seems to have on the lives of the people who write code. ''I didn't know it at the time,'' Berta recalls with the mordant hindsight that distinguishes her voice, ''but I was quickly becoming what I hated most about programmers: impatient with anyone who couldn't code. So it was,'' she reports, ''that I missed the death of Foucault.''

6/15/2003 12:06:00 AM

via Mel-x: a photographer's angst

current mp3:
trust.company::the.fear

6/14/2003 11:59:00 PM

daniel responds to some of my off-the-cuff musings on working groups by rightly pointing out that breakthroughs are often the genius of a single person. he uses the Semantic Web RDF/RSS situation to emphasize his point.

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web he was an individual. Then the whole thing exploded and he helped create the W3C. Now he is trying to execute on the Semantic Web from within that institution, and it ain't gonna happen. It is only going to happen when a few of us lonely mavericks create applications that take the true idea, get through all the institutional diarrhea, and create something meaningful for real people.... Basically, bullshit is just bullshit as long as it's just laying around the pasture. It's when you take it and spread it over your crops that things get interesting.

my thoughts are pretty much in line with daniel's. i would add that breakthroughs (such as the WWW) are not paradigmatic, but catalyze a certain paradigm shifting. this was the effect of TBL's singular work on the W3. between shifts it is the work of committees, whether in the form of a W3C working group, the UN or the U.S. Senate, to guard, govern, extend and eventually burry the paradigm that authorizes it. the challenge is that this authorizing function of the world that the singular breakthrough opens can often never be burried and is defended by the authorized because of the identity and empowerment that their place in the world's unfolding provides. this is the cadence of the stereotypical behemoth beurocracy of design/creation/leadership-by-committee. often this state is only subverted through the whim of mass problem-solution adoption patterns (an example, in our present discussion, being RSS functionally dominating a space that a committee is trying to evolve and control). so, while i agree that the WWW was not originally invented by committee our experience of the web today rests not simply upon the work of the maverick, but upon the collective tensions of this work at the center of an economy of committees and world-wide adoption patterns--creating something much more than was originally envisioned in CERN not so many years ago.

6/14/2003 11:59:00 PM

if you run XP on any of your machines MS just released a Media Player/Blogging plug-in that automagicly inserts what is currently playing into blog posts.

this is not an example of such automation:

current mp3:
trust.company::slipping.away

6/14/2003 10:58:00 PM

Atheist premier attacks lack of Christianity in EU constitution

Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski, denounced the "Godless" tone of the European constitution yesterday, calling it shameful to highlight the pet ideologies of the Left but omit any mention of Europe's Christian heritage in the opening words.

"I am an atheist and everybody knows it, but there are no excuses for making references to ancient Greece and Rome, and the Enlightenment, without making references to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe," he said....

"The most significant feature of every city and town in Europe is either a cathedral or a church."

6/14/2003 10:31:00 PM

Spike^TM Lee is claiming to have rights over the usage of the English word, "Spike," as it relates to the entertainment industry.

Mr. Lee and Mr. Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. are valiantly fighting off Buffy's 19th century English vamp lover and Tommy's dog who are also claiming rights to the name.

6/13/2003 04:44:00 PM

Doubting Danish priest suspended

Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town near the capital Copenhagen, said in a recent interview that "there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection".

Local bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel suspended the priest for a week after a meeting with him on Tuesday at which she demanded that he retract his comments.

The Raving Atheist writes:

Now, there are some things you apologize for and others you don’t. What, exactly, do they expect Rev. Grosboel to say? Do they want him to simply turn around the next day and say “I’m sorry -- there IS a heavenly God, there IS an eternal life, there IS a resurrection”?

Sincerity, I always thought, was an integral part of any apology. Perhaps something like this is going on right now in Copenhagen:

Rev. Grosbeol: I’m sorry.
Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel: No, say it like you mean it.
Rev. Grosbeol: I’m sorry.
Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel: No, say it like you mean it.
Rev. Grosbeol: I’m sorry.
Bishop Lise-Lotte Rebel: No, say it like you mean it . . .

[Repeat 10 billion times . . .]

Related: The Church in Denmark

I want to see the full text of this sermon before I comment. I can't find it on Google. If you see it send me an email.

6/13/2003 03:15:00 PM

In 1943, one research group interviewed 291 boys to find out what it was that gave them erections. The boys dutifully provided an exhaustive list. It included, among other highlights, sitting in class, sitting in church, sitting in warm sand, and setting a field on fire. The national anthem was also responsible for a few erections. So was finding money (understandable) and, for a few unfortunates, being asked to go to the front of the class.

kids and sex

6/13/2003 01:32:00 PM

This is a test post from the wireless Axim.
No, I am not on the toilet.

6/13/2003 12:45:00 PM

Students Roil Iranian Capital in 3rd Night of Protests

The protesters chanted "Death to Khamenei," a slogan that can bring a jail term in this country, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, goes unquestioned.

"I've been lashed, jailed for having a satellite dish," said a student, underscoring the simmering social frustrations behind the riots. "It's time to stand up for what we want."

fascinating... in '79 the revolution was about standing up for what they believed.
{not that wants and beliefs are really all that different...}

6/13/2003 12:24:00 PM

EU: Convention Agrees On Draft Constitution

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the chairman of The Convention on the Future of Europe, presented the draft EU constitution this morning.

"We are a convention constituted of different parts and multiple nationalities, cultures, and histories. We had to progressively search to find a consensus between the different requirements and sensibilities. This consensus is the one which is described in the document you have in front of you." - Valery Giscard

This is a fascinating moment in Europe's continued political unfolding.

As I was reading this my first thoughts were how these discussions, negotiations and agreements were not unlike the working groups that hammer out public tech specifications. There seems to be such a palpable difference between your average committee and your average working group. The former seems so often to imply oversight and enforcement while the later a collective process of creation; the former commissioned indefinitely and the later a bombastic birthing process with outcomes and end points.

6/13/2003 12:03:00 PM

Bézenville ::
Cocking a snook at urban pollution
via
boingboing

6/13/2003 11:50:00 AM

6/13/2003 10:52:00 AM

Boutique Multiculturalism, or Why Liberals Are Incapable of Thinking about Hate Speech

i walk away from reading this excerpt from Stanley Fish scratching my head and saying, "yes, now what?"

tolerance as a starting position is simply the political/ideological privileging of humility. this outworking of humility is a fundamental, "yes," to the dignity of the neighbor who is different that clears the space for the long work of negotiation that is the precursor to a layered set of agreements that form the relationships that allow for tolerance as a first principle--means and ends ineluctably intertwinded.

platitudes are the embodied phobias of a supposedly enlightened society.
tolerance is a multi-generational relationship.

6/13/2003 07:34:00 AM

wanna try that wireless card out at Starbucks?

300 free minutes in T-Mobile Hotspots without further commitment.

6/12/2003 08:46:00 PM

meaning is local.

human-mediation is at play in all meaning. meaning has a location, a smell, a taste, a certain passion that is plausible because of the confluence of shared history, vocabularies, biochemistry and lived events that well up together to form a common dwelling whose remainder speaks to something quite like meaning.

6/12/2003 08:36:00 PM

the other kingdom is always already local.

6/12/2003 08:22:00 PM

funny
frightening

via jordon and
jason respectively

6/12/2003 02:18:00 PM

6/12/2003 02:14:00 PM

i made it into miller's blogparody.

from this moment on i will be ensuring that each of the posts that make it onto TheyBlinked.com first go through the newest blogger tool: the vocabulary throttle.

i am setting the threshold property to 400 words and the dictionary web service to "Reader's Digest."

6/12/2003 01:50:00 PM

current mp3:
evanescence:my.immortal
...your voice it chased away
all the sanity in me

6/12/2003 10:51:00 AM

trey and i are having a little back
and forth over wifi and spiritual
gatherings in jordon's
comments.

...spiritual communities are always already dwelling with their technologies: the oil lamp, multi-story architecture, the codex, cuneiform, pneumonic device, etc. the question is not whether one can exist outside of human creation (technology), but rather does the community deem the technology under question appropriate--is there an **agreement** at some level that opens the space to coexist with a particular technology.

we dwell with and through our tools. we always have. there is no pristine origin that one can attempt a return to that is somehow "toolless," somehow outside of the influence of the human capability augmentation of technology....

anybody wanna jump in?
backstory

6/12/2003 09:39:00 AM

Israeli Forces Take Aim at Hamas in Third Strike in 24 Hours

"Bush, too, cannot compel Hamas to stop terror,'' Israeli commentator Sever Plotzker wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. "And the all-powerful Bush cannot compel Sharon to stop the assassinations (of Palestinian militants). The cause and effect, the effect and cause, it's all jumbled. Who remembers who started?''

6/10/2003 03:47:00 PM

America's Mullah

We often hear that Muslim leaders refuse to separate religion and politics. But just how different is the United States in this regard? Just ask Mullah Calvin. But who is Mullah Calvin?

The Calvinist legacy

Jean Calvin was the Reformation leader who gave the "Protestant Ethic" its edge — and not just in theology alone. He believed the laws of The City (meaning worldly politics) should conform to the laws of God. As a consequence, he turned Geneva into a religious republic.

Very early on, America too had its own Calvinist religious republic, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its preacher-rulers like Cotton Mather — “Very tremendous Things will be done to those Enemies of God, who go on still in their trespasses” — really put the sulfur into “fire and brimstone” sermons.

Think of these preachers as America's very own mullahs. And they are still with us, even now. In times of national crisis, moreover, Puritans still rule....

6/10/2003 01:31:00 PM

Who Really Helps the Poor?

Foreign Policy: Ranking the Rich

...The CDI results are critical for two reasons. First, helping impoverished people worldwide build better lives is the right thing to do, and this index can educate policymakers, provoke public discussion, stimulate research, and guide activists seeking that goal. The hard truth is that even the best-performing nations in the CDI have a long way to go to make their policies as helpful as possible for poor families in developing countries. The Netherlands, even though it ranks highest, averages merely 5.6 points on the 10-point scale. Second, what rich countries do to and for the rest of the world comes back to affect them—poverty and instability do not respect borders. Surely the United States would benefit if Mexico were as stable and prosperous as Canada. Surely West European nations would benefit from an economic resurgence in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Call it trickle-up economics: When the poor become better off, so do the rich.

...

The CDI measures rich countries’ barriers to developing-country exports, as well as the income that poor countries forgo due to internal production subsidies in rich nations. The World Bank estimates that trade barriers in developed economies cost poor nations more than $100 billion per year, roughly twice what rich countries give in aid. [See the chart on how trade trumps aid.] Among the most protected industries in high-income nations are agriculture, textiles, and apparel—not coincidentally the precise areas where poor countries are most competitive, and where they could create the most jobs absent such protectionism. Producers in rich nations benefit from a combination of government subsidies and tariffs and quotas on imported goods. Japan, for instance, imposes a 490 percent tariff on foreign rice, while the average cow in Switzerland earns the annual equivalent of more than $1,500 in subsidies....

::Commitment to Develoment Index of 21 Rich Nations::

1. Netherlands
2. Denmark
3. Portugal
4. New Zealand
5. Switzerland
6. Germany
7. Spain
8. Sweden
9. Austria
10. Norway
11. United Kingdom
12. Belgium
13. Greece
14. France
15. Italy
16. Ireland
17. Finland
18. Canada
19. Australia
20. United States
21. Japan

6/09/2003 11:49:00 PM

Revolution is the opiate of intellectuals.
-gu

via scratched surface

6/09/2003 11:33:00 PM

i owe many of you email.
i will dig out eventually.

6/09/2003 11:27:00 PM

i got the new metallica today.
the vocals are mixed oddly.
it's not commercial...
but neither is it classic Kill/Ride/Master.

the best comparison is Garage Days Re-revisited.
the rythmn guitar/base/drums are good.
there is no solo work per se.
there are no singles.

if you are not a metallica fan,
but must sample some pick up S&M
before you do St. Anger.

if you must have St. Anger
you can get it at Target for ~$9.
not bad for a CD/DVD release.

6/09/2003 10:59:00 PM

i'm writing from a new server that i just brought up in the Hughes Data Center on the third floor.

overall today has been excellent. i had coffee with al-haqq and spent some quality time with david as he played on our bandwidth... talked to mem, senator and shananana and accomplished mucho techno stuff around the house: all of my machines are now on the network; i tweaked some wireless stuff; setup a new development box with VS.Net 2003 and organized/cleaned the physical space around it all. good feeling.

in the midst of it all i needed a couple of things--a 12 volt adapter, an RJ-45 cable and various and sundry other inconsequential items. the one problem: it was 9:30pm when i ventured out to get some nuts, bottled water and my needed tech items. i went to Fry's. no luck. they close at 9pm. poseurs. after checking off all of the other possibilities in my mind... Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. etc., i wrote off my tech needs and decided to go to Target to get my nuts on the way home.

allow me to now sing the praises of Super Target. they had every friggin' thing on my list.

next time i need anything late at night i'm walking to the 24-hour Super Target.

6/08/2003 09:10:00 PM

a little depression and disillusion combined with too many other meaningless responsibilities... i suck. thanks, btw. i'll get back with you soon, daniel. peace.

6/08/2003 08:59:00 PM

Salon.com Technology | "0wnz0red"

"The codebase! Haven't you figured it out yet? It's a startup! We go into business in some former-Soviet Stan in Asia or some African kleptocracy. We infect the locals with the Cure, then the interface, and then we sell 'em the software. It's viral marketing, gettit?"

"Leaving aside CIA assassins, if only for the moment, there's one gigantic flaw in your plan, dead-man."

"I'm all aflutter with anticipation."

"There's no fucking revenue opportunity. The platform spreads for free -- it's already out there, you've seeded it with your magic undead super-cock. The hardware is commodity hardware, no margin and no money. The controller can be built out of spare parts from Fry's -- next gen, we'll make it WiFi, so that we're using commodity wireless chipsets and you can control the device from a distance --"

"-- yeah, and that's why we're selling the software!" Liam hopped from foot to foot in a personal folk-dance celebrating his sublime cleverness.

6/08/2003 08:04:00 PM

the bits for BlogX are here.

more info on Chris' site.

6/08/2003 08:01:00 PM

Hackers and Painters

6/08/2003 07:52:00 PM

Thou shalt play.

6/08/2003 03:52:00 PM

if spiritual direction, pastoral work, religious engagement in a vocational way is to be deemed an art form the patrons of such a vocational calling must be willing to deal with the oddities of the creative cadence; the unregimented eccentricities of the artist's way in the world. or those engaged in said art must be willing to live outside of the structures of economic exchange that define what it is to fashion a life, a practice, that carries on ancient patterns of existence that are living reminders of what once was and yet can be.

{it's easier to run a corporation, be a celebrity and sell salvation.
this might explain why getting your MDiv and your MBA are such similar processes.}

6/08/2003 03:33:00 PM

Gollum's 'Best Digital Performance' acceptance speach

6/08/2003 02:29:00 AM

Standard Reference Material No. 2387

6/08/2003 02:25:00 AM

jordon mentioned Fellowship Church and their wifi setup last week. i commented about my negative experience of that particular jesus "cyber cafe"--leaving a bit of my perspective on the church wifi thing:

it's not as impressive as it seems. i've used it. terrible really. there is no throughput. they must be running that entire jesus disneyland on a DSL line.

i think that the real test is not so much bandwidth (sufficiency in that area should be assumed), but range. at fellowshipchurch.com the range is very, very narrow (which means they have stumbled on both fronts). the cafe is pretty much the extent of it.

a mini-revolution ensues when IP is open and abundant in spaces of teaching and worship. when this happens the competing monologue effect comes into play. all of a sudden the possessor of the bully pulpit is accountable to the dozen bloggers and curious fact checkers in the audience. Clies and IPaqs, laptops and cellphones at the ready these hyper-literate parishioners are verifying historical claims, sending comments across the room on IM and publicly rough blogging the sermon/lesson warts and all.

a capability like this would be a tangible sign within the church of something akin to Dan Gillmor's WeMedia (http://www.cjr.org/year/03/1/gillmor.asp). though a phenomenal way for leaders to learn and a metric for gauging response my guess is that the lack of control would be a show stopping issue in many churches.

pity.

6/08/2003 02:14:00 AM

i realized tonight--walking up my stairs and rounding the corner toward the kitchen--that somehow, unbenounced to me, i became Chas Tenenbaum; a single father of two living his frenetic life in a red Adidas tracksuit.

having rounded that corner i saw, as if for the first time, one large and two medium whiteboards in a row.

6/07/2003 08:16:00 PM

i want WANDA.

Texas Instruments' "Wireless Any Network Digital Assistant" is a concept design powered by TI’s OMAP processors. it is the first concept design to integrate 802.11b, Bluetooth and tri-band GSM/GPRS.

6/07/2003 05:03:00 PM

floppy + paperclip = wifi antenna

via boingboing
(good luck. this little french beauty has been /.ed)