Wirearchy » 2005 » March

What I Did On Saturday …

admin — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 03:51:00 +0000

… was spend time being overwhelmed by the brilliance and depth of the animated films, sculptures, etchings and drawings of William Kentridge, a South African animator, set designer, director and political artist.

One of his main recurring figures is Soho Eckstein, here pondering why, what for, or whether he has bus fare or the price of a beer ?

More Or Less ?

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 22:33:00 +0000

Just thinking out loud, so to type (speak).

After posting the item below I got to thinking … I wonder if there’s more “news” today, as greater populations, more complex social and economic systems and the greater rapidity of flows of information (thanks to the Web) interact ?

And does more “news” mean less critical analysis and establishment of facts, with more opinion … and thus less real “news” ?

I wonder if pre-Web there was more time to dig around and get to the bottom of things, or whether there was just less information-based activity upon which to opine ? And did the “news” media see its role differently, or has it failed to adapt to the new conditions offered by software and the Web, preferring to see them merely as tools with which to make posting of the “news” more efficient ?

Just wondering. If anyone understands and knows, please share.

Time and Again … I Shake My Head

admin — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 21:31:00 +0000

… it’s become a futile exercise in frustration to watch and try to make sense of how mainstream information (let’s call it “justifications we run past the audiences to see if they’ll believe this one”) creates news and public awareness, which is then used to guide domestic and foreign policy.

Sure, there’s lots of personal opinion and invective and sloppy thinking and writing on blogs (including this one as a good example). There’s also lots of expertise, clear and hard-headed thinking and excellent analysis on blog.

This post by Somerby, found on the Atrios blog, sets out an interesting perspective. It reminds me of status and positional power relationships … much like the mainstream media assuming that because they’re there, they’re entitled to be higher-up on the organizational chart of the news industry.

Have you ever been in a position in an organization where you were smarter and/or more competent than your boss ?

So how about it? Is there something “exceptional about the blogs” when it comes to slander, misstatement and error? Is it true that newspapers “have done the same thing?” As the discussion progressed, Andrew Sullivan seemed to say that blogs do have a special problem in this area; Shafer kept insisting that they didn’t.

But at no point in the eleven-minute discussion did any panelist state the obvious—that we have seen, in our recent history, exceptional waves of group misstatement driven by the mainstream media! In particular, as everyone knows (and knows not to say), Campaign 2000 was a two-year orgy of spin and misstatement about Candidate Gore—a slander campaign that was endlessly driven by the Washington Post and the New York Times. Nothing even remotely like it has ever arisen from the web (Matt Drudge excluded).

But in an eleven-minute attempt to decide if the web has a special problem with slander, none of the panelists—nobody; no one—bothered to state this obvious fact about the coverage of Election 2000, an election which changed our political history.

Go ahead—watch or read this part of the discussion, and marvel at the way our recent history has been disappeared by mainstream and “liberal” pundits. Indeed, how thoroughly have our mainstream pundits managed to bury this part of our past?

$top Making Cent$e

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 23:31:00 +0000

… out for a walk this early sprinng afternoon in a bohemin-immigrant-where-artists-live neighbourhood in Montreal, and I noticed the following colourful sign in a slightly down-at-the-heels gallery window:

$top Painting …

Sex, Drugs and Violence are where the money is

Important To Read … New Information About Giuliana Sgrena

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 22:00:00 +0000

… in this very recent interview.

“And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that she — the bullet that injured her so badly and that killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren’t coming from the front or even from the side. They were coming from behind, i.e. they were driving away.

So, the idea that this was an act of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable. And that detail may explain why there’s some reticence to give up the vehicle for inspection.

Because if indeed the majority of the gunfire is coming from behind, then clearly, they were firing from — they were firing at a car that was driving away from them.”

Will Governments Regulate Blogging ?

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 20:39:00 +0000

… James Miller wonders about this in an article at Tech Central Station titled “The Coming War on Blogs”.

Crossing US Borders in the Age of Blogging

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:59:00 +0000

… maybe dangerous to your health, depending upon whether the strip searches include your various cavities.

Who knows what might be lurking inside ? Sad, but true, story.

Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends. Jeremy Wright of Winnipeg was not allowed to cross the Canada/USA border, either because there is no job called “blogger” or because everyone knows you can’t talk to people you’ve never met without using a telephone.

I’m still not 100% sure what happened at Customs at the airport. Really, totally unsure. However at the very least I was denied entry and flagged for followup any other time I try to enter. As far as I can tell, I am not “banned” from entering. I’m not sure why the border guard said I was, threatened to throw me and jail and seize my assets, etc.

I don’t know if any of what I experienced is even allowed by DHS (Department of Homeland Security). And I don’t even hold anything against DHS, Americans, etc. At the end of the day it’s this guy’s job to protect the border from, as he said, “ingrates and other seedy characters”.

There are quotes that stick out in my mind, like the “blogging ain’t a job” qoute that everyone’s bandying about. And there were threats. And there was lots of talk and many humiliating moments. There were also jaw-dropping ones like:

Him: Why would you visit someone in the states you’d never met (I mentioned I was planning to visit several people whilst down there)

Me: Well, I have met most of them, but I’ve talked to them dozens or hundreds of times online.

Him: Do you have any of their phone numbers?

Me: No, but I talk

Him: You can’t talk to someone without a phone number. Stop lying to me.

Me: No, really, I can talk from my computer to theirs

Him: Don’t be a smartass. If you don’t have their phone number, and you’ve never met them, how can you have ever talked to them.

Me: … (at this point I’ve learned that sarcasm doesn’t help, nor does answering questions he doesn’t want to hear the answer to)

Him: So, you’re trying to tell me that you’re going to visit someone who you’ve never met, never talked to and who knows nothing about you? And I’m supposed to believe this?

Me: … (This was two hours in, and minutes before I demanded to be released)

Anyways, I’m not going to New York. The company basically needed someone there this week, and the only way to get a Visa is through a fairly standard 2 week process. Which I understand, and I’m not mad about, it just means I’m not going.

Redefining Veracity and Authority - An Interesting Use of Links …

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 16:29:45 +0000

… Welcome to the Internet-based version of MacCarthyism ? More on David Howowitz’s crusade for fairness and diversity, via Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog:

The GoogleSmear as Political Tactic

The Google search has become so popular that prospective couples planning a date will google one another. Mark Levine, a historian at the University of California Irvine, tells the story of how a radio talk show host called him a liar because he referred to an incident that the host could not find on google. That is, if it isn’t in google, it didn’t happen. (Levine was able to retrieve the incident from Lexis Nexis, a restricted database).

It seems to me that David Horowitz and some far rightwing friends of his have hit upon a new way of discrediting a political opponent, which is the GoogleSmear. It is an easy maneuver for someone like Horowitz, who has extremely wealthy backers, to set up a web magazine that has a high profile and is indexed in google news. Then he just commissions persons to write up lies about people like me (leavened with innuendo and out-of-context quotes). Anyone googling me will likely come upon the smear profiles, and they can be passed around to journalists and politicians as though they were actual information.

Recently Steven Plaut, an Israeli defender, at the University of Haifa, of the terrorist groups around the late extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was commissioned by Horowitz (and probably others of that circle) to do yet another hatchet job on me, the second in just a few months. I replied to the earlier smear at my blog.

Plaut cited the earlier smears and rightwing bloggers as authorities. (One smear now becomes a “citation” for the next one!)

Monty Python Meets Information Overload …

admin — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 05:39:00 +0000

.. at the Institute for Backup Trauma.

Save Your Job

Save Your Sanity

Save Your Butt

… and whatever you do, don’t click on The Third Button !

Judging Books By Their Covers … ?

admin — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:24:37 +0000

… zipping around on the Web this morning, I took a quick look at CNN.com and saw “that” picture of Terri Schiavo.

I think that one of the great problems of our era is that many many people react at a very emotional and visceral level (which is likely where and how they take decisions) to pictures and images … without accessing and thinking critically about the supporting information underneath those pictures and images.

The television version of CNN is shamelessly showing - over and over again - a highly-edited videotape of Terri Schiavo that may make many people think that the woman is responding in very basic ways to stimuli from parents or her visitors. Unfortunately, this video does not show that up to 90% of her brain is pudding.