"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Internet Ramblin'

Starting off with nerding out...

The first social network I joined was Friendster. I think I posted a spring street personal a long time ago, and once some of us guys at the meek posted the Schwinn City Sinners as a profile on makeoutclub (which is the sort of vice/hipster place) as a gag, but friendster was the first one I actually used.

Just now I got an invite to Where Are You Now which seems to want to cater to English-speaking world-travelers. This struck me as shockingly specific, and I wasn't sure if it was a legit social network or an attempt to get detailed marketing data on a valuable demographic.

But if then I realized it's not that strange (or specific) at all, just look at what else is out there:

Rotten Eggs, A Social Network for Pranksters, which sort of caters to the proto-hacker/goofball/Anarchist cookbook crowd. But some people on it are clearly young, like high-school. It's kind of a voyeuristic thrill to read. Here's an example; here's something a little more lowbrow.

On the opposite side of the high school, and a little more, uhh, advanced in it's social nature, is the "#1 Site For The 18-30 Crowd" Face The Jury, which combined the genius of a general social network with the added bonus of hot or not. Instant skin-deep evaluations. Rankings. Kings. Damsels. The whole nine yards. Feels very Miami. Ugh.

There are probably hundreds of other networks out there this, serving much the same function as old-skool BBSs did, creating communities of maybe a few hundred people. The difference now is that you have the ability for everyone to be online at the same time, and the potential population is huge. These little enclaves exist somewhere underneath bigtime utility players like myspace, friendster and the moneymaking dating services (who are starting to realize that adding social networking boosts their popularity). What someone aught to do is start putting all these tools together with identity services -- ways to let you prove you are who you say you are online -- allow them to start intermingling, becoming authoritative webs of trust and sources of virtual persona. That would be dope.

Imagine if you could carry your identity with you as you wanted on the net. This starts off as something as simple as automatically adding a little avatar and a link back to your own neck of the internet on any comments you left anywhere. But then imagine if people could then see who you were, tell you were a real person with your own community and connections, and you could keep track of replies to your comments. Think of the social discourse that could evolve!

And why not? This is the human thing to do. I haven't had a romantic relationship that didn't include an email component, and in fact I think it played an integral role in most. I use email with my friends and my family. I use IM and IRC to facilitate my work. I post to this blog so people can check up on me and hear what I have to say. This is normal behavior, to use a communications network to, well, communicate. That means to say your piece and stay in touch, but also to find out more about the world around you, to make more connections, to engage in conversation.

When you think 10 or 20 years down the line, John Dewey's optimistic vision of America as a multitude of "communities of inquiry" seems almost possible. I think we're in a watershed era here in terms of how we organize ourselves socially. Things are going to change, but there's no guarantee they're going to change for the better. If we're not careful here, we could also end up with some kind of kind of ugly 1984 situation; propaganda, surveillance, oppression.

Slipping into politix...

While I can point to small (and even some medium-sized) ways in which we're currently drifting in those negative directions, I think the opposite momentum -- the rise of a resiliently and positively American ethic, driven by a shift in the way our society obtains and evaluates information -- is coming up faster and stronger. Bush won another term, yes, but he doesn't have an iron grip on power in this country, nor is he really a horrific villain of epic proportions. He's a very bad president, but I don't believe he is evil. And I think he and his kind are on their way out.

I watched the little press conference today. He's not doing good, the President. He performed pretty well on the personalty scale. I expect he'll pick up a few points in the polls for being nice-sounding and seemingly earnest, but he didn't give many substantive answers to the questions people are asking. That means he either doesn't have any substantive answers, or his actual answers are unpopular. In either case, his general momentum is going to continue.

Compounding that, Bush's uber-GOP coalition (62,000,000 votes can't all be fake) is beginning to splinter. One reporter asked whether he (the Prez) agreed or disagreed with the statement that Democrats were filibustering some truly reactionary judges because they were "against people of faith." Bush was forced to disagree, making some pretty weak noises about how "faith is a personal matter." The statement was made by the #1 Republican in the Senate (and a man with Presidential ambitions of his own, ho ho ho) Bill Frist, just last weekend on a live multi-network Christian telecast called "Justice Sunday."

Meanwhile, the Democrats are behaving like a party out of power should: sticking together. Congress passed a budget 214-211. NO Democrats voted for it; 6 Republicans broke party lines and voted against. The bill cuts Medicare by $10B, but contains $106B in tax cuts, mostly for the already wealthy. Hooyeah.

Under pressure, Bush talks about bipartisanship, but if he wants to be taken seriously he'll have to distance himself from Frist, Delay, the Fundamentalists, and the Party Hatchet Men like Grover Norquest, who famously proclaimed that "Bi-Partisanship is like Date Rape."

These pig-eyed Goldwater geeks and grown-up Reagan Youth are the backbone of the Bush machine. They're king-hell organizers, they've been in and out of power for 30 years, but they've never really been in control before. It's been a rampage ever since they squeaked through the door in an unquestionably fucked-with election, and then got the greatest political gift imaginable with 9/11. They looted the economy, launched an ill-advised and poorly-planned war, and formed the uber-GOP coalition with the good ol' boys, the corporate wing, and a community of post-dispensationalist evangelical Christians which continues to increase its right-wing political clout. All that is coming to an end, because when the chips are down their ideas are bullshit, the electorate is turning against them, and their coalition is spending its precious time in control bickering amongst itself.

I'm a partisan for Utopia, so I'm glad to see the breakup. I think it's going to contine, and I think it's going to set up a better situation for everyone. In the future, it's going to be increasingly difficult to lie to people. Leaders in business, politics and society are going to find it's easier (read: more profitable) to be transparent and good than to be two-faced and clandestine.

Anyway, I'm turning in to get some rest. I get my stitches out tomorrow, and my leg and arm improve by the day.

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Internet Ramblin'

Starting off with nerding out...

The first social network I joined was Friendster. I think I posted a spring street personal a long time ago, and once some of us guys at the meek posted the Schwinn City Sinners as a profile on makeoutclub (which is the sort of vice/hipster place) as a gag, but friendster was the first one I actually used.

Just now I got an invite to Where Are You Now which seems to want to cater to English-speaking world-travelers. This struck me as shockingly specific, and I wasn't sure if it was a legit social network or an attempt to get detailed marketing data on a valuable demographic.

But if then I realized it's not that strange (or specific) at all, just look at what else is out there:

Rotten Eggs, A Social Network for Pranksters, which sort of caters to the proto-hacker/goofball/Anarchist cookbook crowd. But some people on it are clearly young, like high-school. It's kind of a voyeuristic thrill to read. Here's an example; here's something a little more lowbrow.

On the opposite side of the high school, and a little more, uhh, advanced in it's social nature, is the "#1 Site For The 18-30 Crowd" Face The Jury, which combined the genius of a general social network with the added bonus of hot or not. Instant skin-deep evaluations. Rankings. Kings. Damsels. The whole nine yards. Feels very Miami. Ugh.

There are probably hundreds of other networks out there this, serving much the same function as old-skool BBSs did, creating communities of maybe a few hundred people. The difference now is that you have the ability for everyone to be online at the same time, and the potential population is huge. These little enclaves exist somewhere underneath bigtime utility players like myspace, friendster and the moneymaking dating services (who are starting to realize that adding social networking boosts their popularity). What someone aught to do is start putting all these tools together with identity services -- ways to let you prove you are who you say you are online -- allow them to start intermingling, becoming authoritative webs of trust and sources of virtual persona. That would be dope.

Imagine if you could carry your identity with you as you wanted on the net. This starts off as something as simple as automatically adding a little avatar and a link back to your own neck of the internet on any comments you left anywhere. But then imagine if people could then see who you were, tell you were a real person with your own community and connections, and you could keep track of replies to your comments. Think of the social discourse that could evolve!

And why not? This is the human thing to do. I haven't had a romantic relationship that didn't include an email component, and in fact I think it played an integral role in most. I use email with my friends and my family. I use IM and IRC to facilitate my work. I post to this blog so people can check up on me and hear what I have to say. This is normal behavior, to use a communications network to, well, communicate. That means to say your piece and stay in touch, but also to find out more about the world around you, to make more connections, to engage in conversation.

When you think 10 or 20 years down the line, John Dewey's optimistic vision of America as a multitude of "communities of inquiry" seems almost possible. I think we're in a watershed era here in terms of how we organize ourselves socially. Things are going to change, but there's no guarantee they're going to change for the better. If we're not careful here, we could also end up with some kind of kind of ugly 1984 situation; propaganda, surveillance, oppression.

Slipping into politix...

While I can point to small (and even some medium-sized) ways in which we're currently drifting in those negative directions, I think the opposite momentum -- the rise of a resiliently and positively American ethic, driven by a shift in the way our society obtains and evaluates information -- is coming up faster and stronger. Bush won another term, yes, but he doesn't have an iron grip on power in this country, nor is he really a horrific villain of epic proportions. He's a very bad president, but I don't believe he is evil. And I think he and his kind are on their way out.

I watched the little press conference today. He's not doing good, the President. He performed pretty well on the personalty scale. I expect he'll pick up a few points in the polls for being nice-sounding and seemingly earnest, but he didn't give many substantive answers to the questions people are asking. That means he either doesn't have any substantive answers, or his actual answers are unpopular. In either case, his general momentum is going to continue.

Compounding that, Bush's uber-GOP coalition (62,000,000 votes can't all be fake) is beginning to splinter. One reporter asked whether he (the Prez) agreed or disagreed with the statement that Democrats were filibustering some truly reactionary judges because they were "against people of faith." Bush was forced to disagree, making some pretty weak noises about how "faith is a personal matter." The statement was made by the #1 Republican in the Senate (and a man with Presidential ambitions of his own, ho ho ho) Bill Frist, just last weekend on a live multi-network Christian telecast called "Justice Sunday."

Meanwhile, the Democrats are behaving like a party out of power should: sticking together. Congress passed a budget 214-211. NO Democrats voted for it; 6 Republicans broke party lines and voted against. The bill cuts Medicare by $10B, but contains $106B in tax cuts, mostly for the already wealthy. Hooyeah.

Under pressure, Bush talks about bipartisanship, but if he wants to be taken seriously he'll have to distance himself from Frist, Delay, the Fundamentalists, and the Party Hatchet Men like Grover Norquest, who famously proclaimed that "Bi-Partisanship is like Date Rape."

These pig-eyed Goldwater geeks and grown-up Reagan Youth are the backbone of the Bush machine. They're king-hell organizers, they've been in and out of power for 30 years, but they've never really been in control before. It's been a rampage ever since they squeaked through the door in an unquestionably fucked-with election, and then got the greatest political gift imaginable with 9/11. They looted the economy, launched an ill-advised and poorly-planned war, and formed the uber-GOP coalition with the good ol' boys, the corporate wing, and a community of post-dispensationalist evangelical Christians which continues to increase its right-wing political clout. All that is coming to an end, because when the chips are down their ideas are bullshit, the electorate is turning against them, and their coalition is spending its precious time in control bickering amongst itself.

I'm a partisan for Utopia, so I'm glad to see the breakup. I think it's going to contine, and I think it's going to set up a better situation for everyone. In the future, it's going to be increasingly difficult to lie to people. Leaders in business, politics and society are going to find it's easier (read: more profitable) to be transparent and good than to be two-faced and clandestine.

Anyway, I'm turning in to get some rest. I get my stitches out tomorrow, and my leg and arm improve by the day.

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Internet Ramblin'

Starting off with nerding out...

The first social network I joined was Friendster. I think I posted a spring street personal a long time ago, and once some of us guys at the meek posted the Schwinn City Sinners as a profile on makeoutclub (which is the sort of vice/hipster place) as a gag, but friendster was the first one I actually used.

Just now I got an invite to Where Are You Now which seems to want to cater to English-speaking world-travelers. This struck me as shockingly specific, and I wasn't sure if it was a legit social network or an attempt to get detailed marketing data on a valuable demographic.

But if then I realized it's not that strange (or specific) at all, just look at what else is out there:

Rotten Eggs, A Social Network for Pranksters, which sort of caters to the proto-hacker/goofball/Anarchist cookbook crowd. But some people on it are clearly young, like high-school. It's kind of a voyeuristic thrill to read. Here's an example; here's something a little more lowbrow.

On the opposite side of the high school, and a little more, uhh, advanced in it's social nature, is the "#1 Site For The 18-30 Crowd" Face The Jury, which combined the genius of a general social network with the added bonus of hot or not. Instant skin-deep evaluations. Rankings. Kings. Damsels. The whole nine yards. Feels very Miami. Ugh.

There are probably hundreds of other networks out there this, serving much the same function as old-skool BBSs did, creating communities of maybe a few hundred people. The difference now is that you have the ability for everyone to be online at the same time, and the potential population is huge. These little enclaves exist somewhere underneath bigtime utility players like myspace, friendster and the moneymaking dating services (who are starting to realize that adding social networking boosts their popularity). What someone aught to do is start putting all these tools together with identity services -- ways to let you prove you are who you say you are online -- allow them to start intermingling, becoming authoritative webs of trust and sources of virtual persona. That would be dope.

Imagine if you could carry your identity with you as you wanted on the net. This starts off as something as simple as automatically adding a little avatar and a link back to your own neck of the internet on any comments you left anywhere. But then imagine if people could then see who you were, tell you were a real person with your own community and connections, and you could keep track of replies to your comments. Think of the social discourse that could evolve!

And why not? This is the human thing to do. I haven't had a romantic relationship that didn't include an email component, and in fact I think it played an integral role in most. I use email with my friends and my family. I use IM and IRC to facilitate my work. I post to this blog so people can check up on me and hear what I have to say. This is normal behavior, to use a communications network to, well, communicate. That means to say your piece and stay in touch, but also to find out more about the world around you, to make more connections, to engage in conversation.

When you think 10 or 20 years down the line, John Dewey's optimistic vision of America as a multitude of "communities of inquiry" seems almost possible. I think we're in a watershed era here in terms of how we organize ourselves socially. Things are going to change, but there's no guarantee they're going to change for the better. If we're not careful here, we could also end up with some kind of kind of ugly 1984 situation; propaganda, surveillance, oppression.

Slipping into politix...

While I can point to small (and even some medium-sized) ways in which we're currently drifting in those negative directions, I think the opposite momentum -- the rise of a resiliently and positively American ethic, driven by a shift in the way our society obtains and evaluates information -- is coming up faster and stronger. Bush won another term, yes, but he doesn't have an iron grip on power in this country, nor is he really a horrific villain of epic proportions. He's a very bad president, but I don't believe he is evil. And I think he and his kind are on their way out.

I watched the little press conference today. He's not doing good, the President. He performed pretty well on the personalty scale. I expect he'll pick up a few points in the polls for being nice-sounding and seemingly earnest, but he didn't give many substantive answers to the questions people are asking. That means he either doesn't have any substantive answers, or his actual answers are unpopular. In either case, his general momentum is going to continue.

Compounding that, Bush's uber-GOP coalition (62,000,000 votes can't all be fake) is beginning to splinter. One reporter asked whether he (the Prez) agreed or disagreed with the statement that Democrats were filibustering some truly reactionary judges because they were "against people of faith." Bush was forced to disagree, making some pretty weak noises about how "faith is a personal matter." The statement was made by the #1 Republican in the Senate (and a man with Presidential ambitions of his own, ho ho ho) Bill Frist, just last weekend on a live multi-network Christian telecast called "Justice Sunday."

Meanwhile, the Democrats are behaving like a party out of power should: sticking together. Congress passed a budget 214-211. NO Democrats voted for it; 6 Republicans broke party lines and voted against. The bill cuts Medicare by $10B, but contains $106B in tax cuts, mostly for the already wealthy. Hooyeah.

Under pressure, Bush talks about bipartisanship, but if he wants to be taken seriously he'll have to distance himself from Frist, Delay, the Fundamentalists, and the Party Hatchet Men like Grover Norquest, who famously proclaimed that "Bi-Partisanship is like Date Rape."

These pig-eyed Goldwater geeks and grown-up Reagan Youth are the backbone of the Bush machine. They're king-hell organizers, they've been in and out of power for 30 years, but they've never really been in control before. It's been a rampage ever since they squeaked through the door in an unquestionably fucked-with election, and then got the greatest political gift imaginable with 9/11. They looted the economy, launched an ill-advised and poorly-planned war, and formed the uber-GOP coalition with the good ol' boys, the corporate wing, and a community of post-dispensationalist evangelical Christians which continues to increase its right-wing political clout. All that is coming to an end, because when the chips are down their ideas are bullshit, the electorate is turning against them, and their coalition is spending its precious time in control bickering amongst itself.

I'm a partisan for Utopia, so I'm glad to see the breakup. I think it's going to contine, and I think it's going to set up a better situation for everyone. In the future, it's going to be increasingly difficult to lie to people. Leaders in business, politics and society are going to find it's easier (read: more profitable) to be transparent and good than to be two-faced and clandestine.

Anyway, I'm turning in to get some rest. I get my stitches out tomorrow, and my leg and arm improve by the day.

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Up and About

Made it down to the old internet cafe today. Tomorrow my stitches come out. I still limp and have some real stiffness in the leg and arm, but I'm mobile and self-sufficient again, less than a week after discovering that my own body weight + concrete at 20mph is a seriouly ugly cocktail.

Hurrah for vitamins and ibuprophen and arnica (thanks mom). I'm on the road to wellsville. I fully expect to be back up on two wheels -- with a helmet -- in another weeks time.

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Regulating the Internet

Mr. Markos has been having a little back and forth with Russ Feingold, Senator from Wisconsen and prominent crusader against big money politics, over the way in which the FEC should regulate political speech on the internet.

It's a pretty important debate to keep track of, because anything which might have a chilling effect on citizen-participation -- the kind of stuff we just began to tap into in 2004 -- would be a major downer.

Feingold seems to have the best of intentions, and his willingness to engage in a public debate on the subject is admirable, but he seems to be working within the confines of the old media paradigm. Kos lays out a position I wholeheartedly endorse here:

Can a bunch of concerned citizens launch a wave of pro-social security television ads? Of course not. Can a wave of concerned citizens launch sites supporting social security? Of course, and we have dozens of them to prove the point. And in fact, citizen activism has, by and large, proven far more successful than anything sponsored by big money.

The Internet is a medium that allows anyone to be a journalist or an activist. We can fight Big Money on this medium and win, and we have been doing so.

What's going to happen, if the FEC attempts to regulate the medium, is that people who are openly and legitimately engaging in online activism can be shut down by frivolous complaints, while the truly nefarious forces will be doing what I describe above -- working in the shadows and using the web's inherent anonymity to ply their dirty wares with impunity.

This is exactly right. Even the current regulations for offline participation favor large-scale players who can hire lawyers to decypher the rules and insure compliance. They also favor large-scale players who can hire lawyers to bring complaints (frivilous or not) against upstart competitors. Extending this balance of power to the net would effectively kill the ability of online communities to go against the will of the established political powers, which is, let's be clear, fundimentally undemocratic and unamerican.

Part of the dynamic that needs to be understood here is the scale and scope of human involvement. When you're talking about broadcast media, you're dealing with a fantastically small number of people on the production/participation end hitting potentially millions on the message-recieving end. When you're talking about the internet, you're really talking about a lot more participants on the production end, even in a coordinated campaign. The metrics are a lot closer to canvassing than to running some media spots.

The practical effect of this is that it's going to be difficult to run large-scale internet political messaging campaigns that are out in the open but which obscure their source. The sheer number of people involved as well as the standard of transparency (as well as the practical transparency of most internet services) means that keeping soemthing really "anonymous" is going to be quite hard, and anything that takes pains to do so will be opening itself up for all kinds of suspicion, which isn't what a successful political campaign wants to generate.

To sum up, the only way to protect "the little guy" online, and more importantly to let the little guy knock the big guy's block off, is to keep regulations off their backs. Some guards against massive corporate financing might be good. Some recourse for "truth in advertising" might also be welcome. But any regulations which are imposed must be simple and clear; easy to comply with and not limiting on people's ability to speak their mind. They must not create a chilling effect, and the must not be a tool for established interests to harass political upstarts.

We'll see what we get.

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New Zealand Gets Civil

Once again, the Kiwis are ahead of the curve, allowing civil unions with the exact same legal benefits as a "marriage." This is pretty good news all around, in particular for some friends I have over there. Hopefully its the sort of thing that will catch on once people realize that it in fact has no negative social impacts whatsoever.

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Progress

I'm healing. Interestingly, yesterday afternoon I developed a belated shiner, which has persisted today. This is kind of odd, but it's not painful and I figure it's a part of the normal healing process.

shiner

Otherwise I'm getting better. My wrist has about a 75% range of motion, and I'm walking in the apartment well enough that I'm going to try go walk downstairs and around the corner a little later. I think it will be one of those psychological markers to cross, like the first time you go out after having a cold.

UPDATE: Made it around the corner. My deli people were very concerned to see me limping, but they knew about "the bumps" already. I'll probably do something to help pressure the DOT about them once I've recovered, so it's good to know the word is spreading.

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Meta

I'm starting to get a little cabin fever. As the evening set in I was able to I hobble around the apartment with relative ease, so tomorrow I think I'll try and go outside. My hand seems to be getting functional as well. Wrist and elbow are still severly limited, but I typing this now is easier than typing yesterday. Tomorrow I may try and do a little work. I have a lot of email to respond to, and maybe some changes to make to this site. I've been taking the feedback and gestating. Look for something new before my 26th b-day (5/10).

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Greusome Photos

As promised, here's photographic evidence:

my first stitches
He ain't pretty no more...

These are my first stitches, and while they look pretty ugly in truth they're not really the problem. I can't really photograph my groin, and even so there's no real evidence that anything's wrong there, but my left leg is missing half its functionality. Ditto my left elbow, forarm and hand. These injuries are muscular and have been slowly improving over the past 48 hours, but I still can't really walk in the conventional sense, and I can barely lift my water bottle with my left arm. Typing is ok for a few minutes, but quickly I have to go to hunting and pecking with my right as my left fatigues incredibly quickly.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is having a good monday.

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You Wreck Me

Coming down the W-burg bridge yesterday afternoon, the last of those pointless godforsaken bumps took me. There had been just a little rain and the pavement was a bit slick, the last bump put me off balance, there was a little fishtail, and then I went down, started donating blood to the asphalt. It was actually quite a bit worse than the last time I wrecked. Thus endeth the season of riding sans helmet.

Traffic cop at the foot of the bridge helped me up, called an Ambulence. EMTs were a good crew; high spirits. Dr. Miller at Beth Israel was great, giving me 8 or 10 stitches in my firehead, one in the bridge of my nose, and three or four staples in the back of my head. Pictures soon, of course.

Actually, the stitches are not that much of a pain. There were a few woozy moments in the ER, but the real damage is muscular. I righteously pulled out my groin and jammed by elbow, both on the left side. Heading in I could walk and move pretty well. Walking out of the hospital took me a full five minutes gimping along, coming close to out and out crying on the ramp leading to the street. It's a hell of a thing to be totally incapacitated.

Anyway I'm laid up at Wes and Jeremy's and they're being real great about getting me food from the deli. I'm still pretty gimpy, though improving. Will have updates. Thanks to everyone who's called with their well wishes.

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