As noted here recently, Steven Johnson has suggested that political blogs may be “a journalistic flotation device.” Well, last night’s This American Life asked the (im)pertinent question: what happened to the Intelligence reports which concluded that Iraq would only be a threat if we went to war against them and backed Saddam Hussein into a [...]
Through the Wire
"Hey, I'm just happy to be here…"
December 19th, 2002
Time’s Arrow
This page chronicles 26 years in the life of an Argentinian family: one photo per person per year. Cool. Since I used “Time’s Arrow” as the title of this post, I ought to mention a conversation from last night. We had dinner with Dennis and Julie and got to talking about last week’s gimmicky E.R. [...]
December 17th, 2002
A Blogger™ Conspiracy?
It seems like every potentially interesting site that is run by the Blogger™ system doesn’t have an RSS feed for syndication. Since I start with Net News Wire and only visit websites for specific postings which catch my interest, I’m not sure how I’ll keep up with these. Well, Pure Content uses Bloglet for email [...]
December 17th, 2002
Mix Tapeology
From Media Diet: Pure Content’s Sean O’Brien mentions a June 2002 Mojo magazine article about some research done on the nature and effect of mix tapes. Two researchers from Hamburg University’s Ethnological Institute studied almost 150 mix tapes compiled by about 100 people, including an 80-year-old man. The study found that compilation tapes can be [...]
December 16th, 2002
Straight Outta Hobbiton
Did you re-read the Lord of the Rings annually? These guys did. “Quickbeam and Bombadil are the Lords of the Rhymes — Straight Outta Hobbiton” The music (MP3) isn’t that great (although it’s not terrible) but the rhymes are clever. If your only exposure to the Lord of the Rings is the movies, you may [...]
December 16th, 2002
License, Please?
Today marks the “1.0 release” of the Creative Commons Licensing Project. The licensing project aims to make it very easy for people to clearly state the terms under which their creative work can be used. Answer three simple questions on the web form and the system returns to you everything you need: a snip of [...]
December 12th, 2002
Piracy is Progressive Taxation
Publisher Tim O’Reilly has authored a provocative look at issues in digital distribution. My favorite is “Lesson 5: File sharing networks don’t threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.” Here’s an excerpt: Share and Enjoy:
December 11th, 2002
Metaphor of the Day
Steven Johnson suggests that political blogs may be “a journalistic flotation device.” Another blogger asks for the evidence of blogs impacting media. Johnson points back to the Washington Post article which motivated his original post, but unfortunately, the story he cites is reporting on media, not on the underlying issues. I’d say we’re still looking [...]
December 11th, 2002
Technical Difficulties
Joe in politricks
A clever flash movie, but an even more clever domain name at http://dubyadubyadubya.com/ Share and Enjoy:
December 8th, 2002
Holiday Spirit
Like many people my age, I would look forward each Christmas to catching a glimpse of Heat Miser and Snow Miser; it seemed like their special was the hardest to catch on TV — I was never even quite sure of its name. Well, wonderful thing that is the internet, this year I was able [...]