By Sheila
Lennon
Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
November 19, 2004, 5:54 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
BloggerCorps: "Matching
bloggers with activists and non-profit groups who want to blog and need help
getting started." A good idea. Here's the manifesto:
Bloggercorps is a blog.
No office. No admin. No fund-raising. No funds. No staff. No meetings.
It will evolve organically based on the needs of the people who wind up using
it.
For starters, here's the plan:
- The authors (a wide-ranging group comprised mainly of bloggers, activists,
and tech organizations who work with non-profits) will post announcements on
behalf of organizations who need help starting blogs or building blogging communities.
- The posts will be categorized according to the organization's geographical
location, and in some cases its main focus issue.
- Bloggers interested in helping that particular organization can express
their interest in the comments section attached to that post.
- The organization will then decide which of the volunteers it wants to follow
up with.
- All arrangements will be made directly between organizations and bloggers.
Bloggercorps will not mediate.
- We are not raising money to put people on planes so in most cases the idea
is to match organizations located in a particular place with bloggers living
in the same place.
- If situations arise in which organizations cannot find volunteers living
in their area, we may be able to point them to foundations or philanthropic
organizations who might be in a position to help fund travel for blogger-volunteers.
But we won't do your fundraising work for you.
- Bloggercorps is non-partisan.
First request: Help Onevoice,
"a project that aims to help foster Mideast peace by promoting citizen diplomacy
between Israelis and Palestinians."
via Wood
s lot, who also bring you:Reverend
Billy & the Church of Stop Shopping
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Quick
Sketches: random notes on the art of the state: Projo.com graphic
designer Kathy DeVault, aka Kathy
Hodge, painter, has just
launched a new art blog on the projo.com site. She intends a blogroll full
of Rhode Island artists' sites eventually.
No permalinks yet, but they'll come.
If you're wondering what to do with plucked turkey feathers, Kathy has a painterly
answer: Think quills.
Link
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N.C.
to probe Gaston county election: The Charlotte Observer reports
on the mess where the number of votes don 't match the number of voters.
(Not to be confused with Carteret County, where "a machine lost 4,500
votes."):
State Board of Elections staff will travel to Gaston County on Monday to investigate
how Gaston officials counted and reported votes after the election.
Gary Bartlett, the board's executive director, said the state wants to know
if the county properly audited its results, among other things, by checking
whether the number of people recorded as voting equaled the number of ballots
cast.
The Observer reported Thursday that the numbers did not balance in more than
half the precincts in Gaston County. Gaston elections officials said they had
been unaware of the problem....
And there was also a little help from the man from Diebold:
In Gaston, the state also will investigate whether a technician employed by
a private company did work on Election Day that should have been done by elections
officials.
The Gaston Board of Elections paid for the presence of a technician from Diebold
Election Systems, which manufactures the county's voting machines.
Gaston Elections Director Sandra Page has told the Observer that the employee
loaded the county's early votes onto a computer and otherwise assisted in the
vote-counting process, a job reserved for elections officials.
"We don't want that technician to do anything that is the responsibility
of an election official," Bartlett said. "If you have some technician
doing that, there better be some election official right beside them."
But Page has told the Observer that she did not watch the entire process.
She says the county Board of Elections watched, but Richard Jordan, one of
three board members, said he did not remember watching....
Link
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When Your Co-Worker is Away: Silly
fantasies of "enhancing" a co-workers cubicle.
I do like the living keyboard.
Come to think of it, planting an old keyboard with catnip now would produce
a fine crop by Christmas.
My furry little guys love to dance on keyboards. This might lure them away
from mine.
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Citizen reporting: Well-connected D.C. blogger Josh Marshall (Talking
Points Memo) has his readers contacting their Republican Congresspersons to ask how
they voted on the "DeLay rule" -- "the new rule allowing Tom DeLay (R-TX) and
future indictees to continue in their House leadership roles after being indicted."
The reports are rolling in. You might start
here and scroll down.
It was put to a
voice vote Wednesday in the House Republican Conference. The link is to a
Bloomberg story that notes,
The rules change is designed to protect DeLay after three of his political
associates were indicted in Texas on charges related to fund-raising for state
political campaigns. DeLay, a Republican from Texas, denied any wrongdoing.
Marshall also wonders "whether the House GOP caucus had any rule in place
that would force Tom DeLay (R-TX) to step down post-conviction."
Link
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Google Scholar: Shirl
Kennedy and Gary Price at ResourceShelf explain,
The world of online "scholarly" research is changing today as Google
introduces Google Scholar. This specialized new interface -- which will NOT
be linked from Google's main search page -- will allow users to search a treasure
chest of "scholarly
material."
...Basically, users of Google Scholar can, via a single search location,
access content from "scholarly" materials found on the OPEN WEB that they've
found in the Google crawl of the web. Btw, it might also be time to take another
look at what has traditionally thought of as "scholarly" since some
of the material in Google Scholar is not "scholarly" using a traditional
definition.
Some basic facts:
+ In a nutshell, Google has built an algorithm that makes a calculated guess
at to *what it thinks* is a scholarly content mined from the OPEN WEB, and
then makes it accessible via the Google Scholar interface.
+ Precisely what makes something "scholarly" enough to be included
in Google Scholar, Google will not say. And this is not an insignificant omission.
Librarians, especially academic librarians, are *always* being asked to provide "scholarly" material,
even if customers aren't quite sure what this means. Their instructor told
them they needed articles from "scholarly journals," so this is precisely
what they ask for at the library. As librarians, we may try to educate them
about how "refereed publications" work, but let's face it. What
most of these folks really want is to quickly download an appropriate article
and
beat feet out of the library. And if they think they can get what they need
from Google, the odds are slim that they will bother with library resources
at all. College students AND professors might not know that library databases
exist, but they sure know Google.
Link via Liz Donovan
Link
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Catching up with Outrage Radio: Here's a note I just got from Michael Tulipan,
founder of this other liberal radio show online:
We've been quite busy, now that our show is live every Monday night on a
local radio station WGBB AM (also streamed through our
website). We' ve had
some great guests in the first 4 weeks and just lined up Bob Fitrakis of the
Columbus Free Press to talk about what's happening in Ohio this coming Monday.
The following week, we have a return appearance by Lt. Paul Rieckhoff of Operation
Truth talking about the Iraq quagmire.
He
also sends along a story from the Long Island Press about the effort, and we
get to see a photo of Tulipan, left, and James Linkin, the show's host:
Liberal
Back Talk: L.I. Radio Show Challenges Conservative Dominance:
The notion of media's liberal bias has been much overstated. Nowhere is this
clearer than in talk radio, famously dominated by such conservative voices
as Rush Limbaugh, Curtis Sliwa, Sean Hannity and Bob Grant. In recent years,
progressives have gotten more traction on the Internet than on the airwaves.
Lately, however, lefties have begun to challenge the right's rule of talk
radio, with efforts like Air America Radio (1190 AM), the nationwide network
featuring such liberal attack dogs as comedian Al Franken and actress Janeane
Garofalo.
Now LI is the locus of another, albeit smaller, assault on conservative control,
with an Internet import called OutrageRadio. Mike Tulipan, the man behind liberal
website OutrageNation.com, is bringing the weekly talk show segment of his
website to broadcast radio. On Oct. 25, OutrageRadio made its debut on LI's
oldest radio station, WGBB (1240 AM), which reaches Nassau, western Suffolk,
Queens, Brooklyn and even parts of New Jersey. ...
There's a small problem, though:
But the problem is financial backing. WGBB is owned by Chinese-American interests
and broadcasts in Chinese during the day; the station leases blocks of time.
Currently, Tulipan and Linkin are paying $225 for each week's broadcast. Slated
as a one-hour program for the first eight weeks, the show as yet has no sponsors.
After the initial run, Tulipan wants to sell the time in bulk to an agency
that purchases time for clients.
Not much lead-in from the Chinese shows, I'd imagine. They'll laugh about
this someday. Maybe.
Related: Whatever happened to Eric Utne?
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MetaFilter opens
to new members. If you've wanted to join the crew over there
-- to post, or just to comment on another -- you finally can. But you'll have
to help out with the bandwidth crunch: The price of admission is a one-time
$5 PayPal charge.
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Hanse Colani
Rotor House: Compact four-rooms-in-one house. at MoCo
Loco, which is easy on the eyes.
Designer Luigi Colani has created a space-saving house with a six square
meter cylinder inside that contains a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. The
cylinder
rotates left or right bringing the room you want into view of the main
living room. There's a separate toilet and a small hallway, and everything
is controlled
with a remote. The house was designed for young professionals who need
minimal space while they focus on career...
I was with him till he tried to assign the dwelling to a demographic. How
about people sick to death of stuff?
It looks a bit like living in a radio.
That's the living room with the cylinder open to the bedroom. More pics on
the link.
Link
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Pushing back on hybrid cars: In response to auto engineer Bob Elton's critique
below, Todd McLeish of Burrillville emailed,
I don't know or care what the hype or the detractors say about hybrids.
What I know is that I bought a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid in September and
I'm getting on average four or five miles per gallon MORE than the EPA
estimates in my daily commute back and forth from Burrillville to URI every
day to work. This week I drove 500+ miles in that commute and got 54.1 MPG.
What do the detractors have to say about that?
I contacted the author of the piece, Bob Elton, and he plans a response on
Monday.
Link
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11:54 a.m.
Cleaned up a couple of bad links: Let
them eat cake, especially. Thanks to reader Karen Kolling for pointing
out the bad ones. Sean Polay sends along a link to hybridcars.com,
describing it as, "A little rah-rah for hybrid, but informative nonetheless."
November 18, 2004, 7:31 p.m.
Auto
engineer says hybrid cars aren't really that fuel-efficient: Automotive
engineer Bob
Elton calls out the hybrids (The
Truth About Hybrids) at The
Truth About Cars, a freestanding auto section on the Web.
Setting out to shake out the hype, he pops the bubble (for me):
Buyers pay a large premium for a hybrid Escape or a Prius, presuming that
the increased fuel mileage makes them a better environmental citizen. While
there’s no question that the Toyota, Honda and Ford hybrids are more
fuel efficient than their conventionally powered equivalents, the difference
is nowhere near as great as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) numbers
suggest.
Because of the low speeds involved, the city portion of the EPA’s test
is accomplished in battery-only mode. As the gasoline engine is off-line for
a significant part of the test, the eventual mileage figure is grossly inflated.
The test fails to consider the fuel needed to recharge the batteries later
on. What’s more, all energy-draining, electrically-powered accessories
(including AC) are switched off during both the urban and highway tests. These
variables contribute to the huge discrepancy between the EPA’s official
numbers and hybrid owners’ real world experience.
Few people realize that a hybrid’s power train adds roughly 10% to the
weight of a car. Even fewer realize that manufacturers try to offset the weight
penalty-- and add to the hybrid’s headline-grabbing mileage figures--
by the extensive use of non-hybrid gas-saving technology. Engine shut-off at
idle, electric power steering, harder and reduced rolling resistance tires
(at the expense of comfort and traction), reduced option content, reduced engine
performance, and, in the case of the Ford, a continuously variable transmission
(CVT) all help raise the cars’ overall efficiency.
Of course, if gas mileage is the ultimate goal, all of these strategies
could be applied to a “standard” car. A non-hybrid model with the equivalent
modifications would significantly narrow the mileage gap with its hybrid sibling.
In fact, in normal use, the margin between truly comparable hybrid and non-hybrid
cars could be less than 10%-- hardly enough to justify the extra purchase price.
And, lest we forget, the hybrid’s gas-saving advantage is not without
its own particular environmental costs…
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Flowers, they're throwing flowers at me! The
Providence Phoenix, our town's alt-weekly,
regularly nips at the heels of the Big Paper, but its editors just tossed a
bouquet at this blog: In their annual issue naming the "The Best!" of
Rhode Island, they've dubbed me Best Digerati (i.e. geek)
for "... steadily trying to get at the story behind the story in news
and politics." I do try.
Scroll down this Best
Arts and Entertainment page , and you'll find me between Best minister
of
hip-hop and Best shaking-off of the winter blues.
No schwag accompanies the honor, but my street cred just shot up. Thanks,
guys.
Little
known fact: In 1978 I wrote for the very first issue of The NewPaper, ancestor
of the Phoenix. My contribution to the debut was a review of the wonderful
Jamaican Jimmy Cliff movie, The
Harder They Come, which was playing in town that week.
Founding publisher Ty Davis sold The NewPaper to The Phoenix of Boston in
1988.
Link
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New voting report: Wired has the only
story out on the
Berkeley study that
vacationing MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann
advanced on
his blog this
morning. I expect more reports overnight after print scribes have time to read
it. Here's how Wired starts it:
Electronic voting machines in Florida may have awarded George W. Bush up to
260,000 more votes than he should have received, according to statistical analysis
conducted by University of California, Berkeley graduate students and a professor,
who released a study on Thursday.
The researchers likened their report to a beeping smoke alarm and called on
Florida officials to examine the data and the voting systems in counties that
used touch-screen voting machines to provide an explanation for the anomalies.
The researchers examined the same numbers and variables in Ohio, but found
no discrepancies there.
Their aim in releasing the report, the researchers said, was not to attack
the results of the 2004 election in Florida, where Bush won by 350,000 votes,
but to prompt election officials and the public to examine the e-voting systems
and address the fact that there is no way to conduct a meaningful recount on
the paperless machines....
Without recounts, we'll never know, will we? And if Americans don't believe
their votes count, we won't bother to vote. Then what?
Link
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ROLLING STONE TOP FIVE
1. Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone
2. Rolling Stones - Satisfaction
3. John Lennon - Imagine
4. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
5. Aretha Franklin - Respect
U.S.
vows 30M newspaper pages to go on Net: (I love all these vows headline
writers say we make, all in the name of short words.) It's from AP (links
were transposed, fixed now):
WASHINGTON -- The government promises anyone with a computer will have access
within a few years to millions of pages from old newspapers, a slice of American
history to be viewed now only by visiting local libraries, newspaper offices
or the nation's capital.
The first of what's expected to be 30 million digitized pages from papers
published from 1836 through 1922 will be available in 2006....
The Library of Congress already has put together a small sample. It has digitized
issues of the U.S. military newspaper "Stars and Stripes" during
World War I, February 1918 to June 1919....
The National Endowment for the Humanities is working on the project with the
Library of Congress, which has embarked on a broader project to preserve records
of American newspapers dating from the late 1600s.
The span of the joint project is limited because type faces of printers used
before 1836 are too difficult for optical scanners to read, and copyright restrictions
are in force on papers published after 1923....
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TiVo to
add banner ads to service when fast forwarding: From PVR blog:
Coming soon to the standalone TiVo OS: when you hit fast forward to skip past
commercials, small banner ads will show up on your screen. You'll be able to
click them to get more info, see an informercial, or send your home address
details to get more info about a product mailed to you.
I think this is a dark day for TiVo, and this new feature is aimed at pleasing
TV Networks and advertisers. I doubt a single customer would ever ask for
this kind of feature, and that it happens while you skip commercials just
drives
the point home. TiVo is no longer TV your way, it's TV their way...
This is my cue to talk about the legacy technology that keeps smiles on my
family's faces in three households: The Panasonic Showstopper 3000 series,
an earlier ReplayTV,
presumable
abandoning
thousands in warehouses, since they're still going
strong on eBay (where we all bought ours).
The advantage: A lifetime subscription to the nightly channel update is built
into the cost of the Showstopper, so there's no monthly subscription fee, as
there is with TiVo. It doesn't track your recording or suggest shows it thinks
you'll like. It can be programmed to record shows in advance, you
can split your cable signal so you can watch one show and record another, and
you
can
run
your own
instant
replays
anytime you like -- the buffer is 7 hours, so if you haven't changed the channel,
you can go way back to catch something you missed the first time.
The disadvantage: A slight disadvantage that you should work out with the
seller is that the phone number list has changed over the years, and you should
make
sure
the
seller upgrades the software
(or points you to the new numbers) so you can make the calls that download
the TV schedules.
For my purposes,
there are no downsides, but your mileage, as always, may vary.
Much more information is at Planet
Replay's Showstopper & ReplayTV
2000/3000 forum. Here's the Panasonic FAQ for Showstoppers.
Link
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November 17, 2004, 6:45 p.m. -- Last
week's weblog
Radical
reordering: Bookstore
to be organized by color:
For one amazing week in November, Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco has agreed
to allow its estimated 20,000 books to be reclassified by color. Shifting
from red to orange to yellow to green, the books will follow the spectrum
continuously, changing Adobe from a neighborhood bookshop into a magical
library—but only for one week.
Adobe Bookshop in San Francisco's Mission District, and all of its contents,
will be transformed. It will take a crew of 20 people pulling an all-nighter
fueled by caffeine and pizza and following a master organizational plan—but
come Saturday morning it will be like a place that would only exist in a
dream.
This temporary public installation will be assembled by the San Francisco
artist Chris Cobb and a staff of volunteers, who will reorder all the books
in one night and, when the week is over, return them to their original locations.
...
Link
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Vote
fraud investigators visit Volusia: From the Daytona (Fla.) Beach
News-Journal,
For those who thought the 2004 election was over: Surprise.
Representatives of a Seattle-based organization investigating possible election
fraud visited the Volusia County elections department Tuesday after being provided
reprints of voting machine records instead of originals.
The activist group, Black Box Voting, is conducting investigations of voting
records throughout the United States, said Bev Harris, its executive director.
Volusia County is its first Florida stop.
"We just look at it as an audit," she said Tuesday afternoon as
a British documentary crew filmed officials securing records for review today.
Harris said the group requested the receipt-like records, known as polling
place tapes, late last week, but on Monday, Supervisor of Elections Deanie
Lowe provided newly printed tapes. Depending on its inquiry, the group could
request hand recounts in selected precincts or try to contest the election,
Harris said.
County attorney Daniel Eckert said Lowe had reprinted records because she
believed poll workers' signatures on originals were protected under public
records law. He said the county is providing the records as requested.
Here's Bev Harris's report
on the same
incident (Scroll down):
...Black Box Voting began to compare the special printouts given in the FOIA
request with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold, some
were missing. By this time, Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson had
joined the group at Volusia County. Some polling place tapes didn't match.
In fact, in one location, precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes
were off by hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.
Hmm. Which was right? The polling tape Volusia gave to Black Box Voting, specially
printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or the ones with signatures, printed
on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?
Well, then it became even more interesting. A Volusia employee boxed up some
items from an office containing Lana Hires' desk, which appeared to contain
-- you guessed it -- polling place tapes. The employee took them to the back
of the building and disappeared.
Then, Ellen B., a voting integrity advocate from Broward County, Florida,
and Susan, from Volusia, decided now would be a good time to go through the
trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds of memos
and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections office.
So, Black Box Voting compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the "special'
ones from Nov. 15 given, unsigned, finding several of the MISSING poll
tapes. There they were: In the garbage.
So, Wynne went to the car and got the polling place tapes she had pulled from
the warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but a polling
place tape that was signed by six officials.
This was a bit disturbing, since the employees there had said that bag was
destined for the shredder.
By now, a county lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to
charge Black Box Voting extra for the time spent looking at the real stuff
Volusia had withheld earlier. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people had meetings,
Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door in the office holding
the GEMS server.
Black Box Voting investigator Andy Stephenson then went to get the Diebold "GEMS" central
server locked down. He also got the memory cards locked down and secured,
much to the dismay of Lana. They were scattered around unsecured in any way
before
that.
Everyone agreed to convene tomorrow morning, to further audit, discuss the
hand count that Black Box Voting will require of Volusia County, and of course,
it is time to talk about contesting the election in Volusia.
Yikes.
Related: Orlando Weekly: Was
it hacked? Sums up the alt-story so far. (Remember,
inference is not evidence.)
Link
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104
Great Tech Tips for Windows XP: From PC Stats. If you use this
OS, worth a look. More than 300 "tips, toys and tweaks" in one place.
I love this stuff. I feel like the Sorceror's Apprentice when I customize
my system.
Link
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Heavy lifting: Blogging has been limited this week. Making our Thanksgiving
Food section is a lot of work -- but if you have to host the feast next
week, you should find what you need to know there. Frank, my right-hand man,
is out
sick. So I'm making the Theater section now, and the menu that goes with tomorrow's
restaurant review is next. Then the story "budgets" for the paper's
Live weekend section...
The title is section editor, but you can call me code monkey.
When I first conceived the theater section, the idea was just to put up some
production shots from plays currently running. We didn't have fresh stories
from the paper that often, so it was a little online-only enhancement.
To our amazement, theater companies started telling us that a photo on that
page had a large effect on the size of their audiences, and they begged and
chided if we were lax about updating it. Who knew?
Link
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:Netscape
resurrection: At Beta
News, Netscape
Revived With Firefox Backing:
Despite media reports and industry pundits over the years relegating Netscape
to Internet history books, AOL has restarted the browser's development. The
company plans to bring back a refreshed Netscape browser based on Firefox,
which will incorporate an enhanced user interface and several new features.
A prototype of the new Netscape will debut on November 30 to a limited number
of beta testers, AOL told BetaNews.
Netscape was last updated in August to version 7.2, which brought the browser
up to date with Mozilla 1.7. But for the most part, Netscape has received little
attention from AOL since the release of 7.0 in August 2002. The browser's market
share has dropped to single digits as Microsoft's Internet Explorer reigned supreme.
But Firefox's surging popularity has breathed new life into Netscape. Although
AOL could not yet comment on what to expect in the prototype, the revamped
browser will likely extend Firefox's feature set with Netscape-specific extensions
and retain Netscape's traditional green user interface. ...
Link
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Google Phonebook Name Removal: If you're in the phone book, it's likely that
Google displays your address to the world if someone searches for your name
using the city and state. Here's how to remove your address.
Link
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November 16, 2004, 8:14 p.m.
The
DNA of Literature: Paris Review putting 300+ writer interviews online:
Welcome to the DNA of literature—over 50 years of literary wisdom
rolled up in 300+ Writers-at-Work interviews, now available online—free.
Founder and former Editor George Plimpton dreamed of a day when anyone—a
struggling writer in Texas, an English teacher in Amsterdam, even a subscriber
in Central
Asia—could easily access this vast literary resource; with the establishment
of this online archive that day has finally come. Now, for the first time,
you can read, search and download any or all of over three hundred in-depth
interviews with poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, critics, musicians,
and more, whose work set the compass of twentieth-century writing, and continue
to do so into the twenty-first century....
Release dates for The DNA of Literature PDFs:
1950s: Online Now
1960s: January 10, 2005
1970s: February 14, 2005
1980s: April 4, 2005
1990s: May 16, 2005
2000s: July 1, 2005
Which means that now, on the site, you'll find interviews with Algren, Capote,
Cary, Dinesen, Eliot, Ellison, Faulkner, Forster, Green, Greene, Hemingway,
Mauriac, Moravia, O'Connor, Parker, Sagan, Shaw, Simenon, Styron, Thurber,
Warren, Wilder and Wilson. Wow.
Link
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Let
them eat cake: From the Guardian (link fixed),
They don't diet and they don't spend hours panting round the gym. So how can
French women put away as much ice-cream, rich pastries and steak frites as
they want and yet stay so slim? Mimi Spencer gets her teeth into the 'French
paradox', which has baffled the world's best scientific brains for a decade
They don't snack, they eat real food slowly, and they really don't think
much of English food. Some remarkably snarky quotes end the piece.
Link
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Kevin Sites: This is the blog of the NBC reporter embedded in Fallujah whose
footage of U.S. Marine killing a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner
in a mosque has created a firestorm of its own.
Words lost
in the idiot wind: Doc
Searls links back here to yesterday's item
about ONA conference. Small snip:
Funny thing about "content." I'll bet that AP didn't call their
stories, features and other goods "content" until the dot-commies
popularized the word in the late '90s. As John
Perry Barlow says, "We
didn't start hearing about 'content' until the container business felt threatened."
There are two big problems with the word "content." First, it
treats creative works as container cargo, which is demeaning as well as misleading.
Second, it denies the creative, transformative and essentially unfinished
quality
of all creative works. Plus their authority.
I found my own comments on last
year's blog from that conference (I was on the blogging
panel). Here's the zinger:
There's one thing I forgot to say anywhere, so I'll say it here: The most
important story facing us now is the integrity of electronic voting. We all
know how easily one file can be uploaded to replace another. With the stakes
so high, the campaigns and our votes could be a charade that plays out with
no relation to the election results reported. Don't let that happen.
And here we are, awaiting recounts paid for largely by the citizens who voted
and don't trust that the totals spat out by the computer match the intention
of the voters. (See Recounts below) Seems odd, doesn't it, to pay for transparent
vote-counting?
Link
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November 15, 2004, 4:57 p.m.
When
Segway collided with Roomba: At the Accelerating
Change conference
last weekend in Los Angeles, the two most famous commercial gadgets of our
time -- the Segway scooter and
the Roomba robot
vacum cleaner -- met in an unplanned way.
Cory
Ondrejka of the 3-D digital world Second
Life was there, and reports,
Since Segway was one of the sponsors, there were two Segways available to
the conference participants Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was pretty
amazing
to watch,
because when they worked perfectly, they were stunning. Spry old ladies leapt
aboard and were soon zipping about, completely confident in their driving,
only to be knocked to the floor when they dismounted while holding the turn
control. There were some spectacular collisions, but none topped the moment
that a fast moving Segway, slightly out of control, met Roomba, zipping across
the floor like a suicidal squirrel. Amazingly, neither seemed the worse for
the wear. The Segway popped up and over while Roomba emitted a few beeps from
button presses but both continued on their way. Impressive engineering on several
levels, actually. Roomba, for surviving the impact unharmed and Segway for
not tipping over.
After watching and riding the Segway, it points out that we digital world
developers have a long way to go on ease of use issues. It generally took
people less than 15 seconds to be moving comfortably, in control, on the
Segway. Yes,
some people had problems, but for the most part this fairly unnatural motion
on an inverted pendulum went smoothly....
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Who's sorry now? First there was Sorry
Everybody, where more than 4,250 Americans have so far
uploaded photos of themselves holding signs apologizing to the world for the
presidential election
results,
and the inevitable
pushback, We're Not
Sorry, from those who are pleased with the outcome. (This
is down, blank, whatever, even in the Google cache, but should it re-emerge,
the link is correct.)
Cooler still, the world -- ignoring those who aren't sorry, apparently --
is answering back with Apologies
Accepted -- with many trying to comfort the sorry.
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Does the message need the medium? The Online
News Association held
its annual
powwow in Hollywood this year, with Wonkette as
lunchtime keynote speaker. The organization's annual
awards were presented at
a banquet Saturday night.
Tom Curley, head of the Associated Press, opened the conference. Here's the
text of his speech, 'The franchise is the content'. Notable:
The franchise is not the newspaper; it's not the broadcast; it's not even
the Web site. The franchise is the content itself.
And in Web 2.0, discrete pieces of content -- stories, photos and video clips
-- all categorized and branded, will be dis-assembled from whatever presentation
you create and magically re-assembled on the PC desktop, the mobile device
or TV set-top box, for consumption on demand.
That's the fundamental behind personalization. The content comes to you;
you don't have to come to the content. So, get ready for everything to be "Googled," "deep-linked" or "Tivo-ed."...
We are shifting from an old "telegraph" model of pushing news
to our subscribers through proprietary pipelines to a database model, where
our customers can retrieve what they want, when they want it, over the network....
While this may be news to some in mainstream media, I immediately think of Cluetrain's Doc
Searls, who hates the term "content." This snip of
Doc at a Jabber conference (original link has vanished) (Doc
offers a new link.) explains it,
Hollywood sees the Net as a plumbing system for intellectual property and
other content,
Geeks see the Net as a place - a commons - where people can make culture
and do business.
Ask, "Who creates this "content"?" and you've bridged the divide. Ask, "Who
finances the creation of this 'content'?" and another problem emerges.
Steve Yelvington offers
an interesting exchange from the panel of political
bloggers that gets to that point, but doesn't offer real solution.:
(Arianna) Huffington: John Kerry, during the primary, used to go out talking
about the Benedict Arnolds of corporate America. After the primary that line
disappeared
because campaign managers were afraid it would offend deep-pocket donors.
If the Internet can generate enough money from individual donors who want
to hear about corporate Benedict Arnolds, they can take back this country.
(Joe) Trippi, Dean campaign, MSNBC: The biggest problem in politics
is money. Special interest money has flooded and owns the system. There's
only
one
medium that
...
if five
million Americans went to the net and contributed $100 to a candidate,
it'd be all over. That would be half a billion dollars, no corporate or special
interest money owning the guy at all.
(Dave) Winer: You're going to give the money to CNN and Fox News
for attack ads? This system is so broken ... you're talking about bandaids
and disinfectant.
(Dick)
Meyer, CBS: There is a significant financial problem supporting online
journalism. There is not sufficient money to support original work. Thoughts?
Trippi: Much of the blogosphere is self-supporting. There were groups that
raised money to send real reporters to Iraq. I think you're going to have
to experiment.
(Mickey) Kaus, Slate: The real problem is time. An investigative
reporter needs months; a popular blog needs to be updated three or four times
a day.
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Recounts: Proving Trippi's point, above, David Cobb and Michael Badnarik,
the 2004 presidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, respectively,
have raised $150,000 in four days to finance a recount of all Ohio counties.
They say it is the sum of more than 3,000 individual donations.
The actually fee for the recount is $113,600 -- $10 per county; the balance
will go to food, lodging, transportation, communications and staff costs.
A "bat' similar to the one used by the Howard Dean campaign -- actually a
thermometer whose red liquid rose in increments to indicate the level of donations
-- inched upward all weekend. When clicked, it led to a donation form.
Votecobb.org is the recount's
home page.
Nader: As reported
here last week, Ralph Nader followed his request for a
recount of selected New Hampshire precincts with a $2,000 filing fee and a
promise
to pay the cost of the process.
From
the Nashua Telegraph Saturday:
CONCORD - Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader set in motion the
hand-recounting of ballots in New Hampshire, wiring a mandatory, $2,000 deposit
an hour before a state-imposed deadline Friday.
Nader has initially asked state election officials to count ballots in eight
communities, including Litchfield and Pelham, but he has the right to a statewide
recount as long as he pays the entire cost, Secretary of State Bill Gardner
said.
Nader campaign manager Theresa Amato specified in a letter to Gardner what
precincts should be counted first.
“We are requesting that the state undertake this recount with these
wards first. We look forward to working with you and are available to discuss
the logistics at your earliest convenience to enable the recount to proceed
as quickly as possible,’’ Amato wrote.
Gardner said it’s entirely up to Nader how extensive this review of
the ballots will be once it has begun.
“There’s no such thing as a partial recount. The person making
the request can decide to halt the recount at any point they choose, but this
makes all ballots subject to a recount,’’ Gardner said.
The earliest this recount could begin is Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving
Day. That’s because the next two weeks are already packed with more
than a dozen recounts of legislative races.
The recount of votes in eight communities could take more than a day depending
on how many teams of volunteers are assembled to help, Gardner said....
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About that Dylan song: Wait till they get to With
God On Our Side.
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