Past catching up with you

 Politics  No Responses »
Aug 112004
 

We’ll see if this gets much play from the television media. If the Bush campaign is going to allow stuff like the swift boat ads, then we might as well pull up some old college rugby shots. What an asshole.

It may be somewhat petty and people do change, but if people are willing to disregard a lot of the good things that Clinton did because of the Lewinsky affair, I don’t see why we can’t disregard Bush because he punches people in the face during a rugby game.

EDIT: I left out the original LA Times article that dredged this up in the first place.

 Posted by on August 11, 2004 at 6:33 pm

Shrub speaks

 Politics  No Responses »
Aug 052004
 

Shrub on Thursday’s $417.5B Defense Appropriations Bill:

Third, this bill meets or commitment to America’s armed forces by preparing them to meet the threats of tomorrow. Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Norman Mailer on Shrub’s English:

But in my mind, Bush is the immediate obstacle. He is a collection of disasters for America. What he does to the English language is a species of catastrophe all by itself. Bush learned a long time ago that certain key words, “evil, patriotism, stand-firm, flag, our-fight-against-terrorism,” will get half the people in America stirred up. That’s all he works with. Kerry will be better in many ways, no question.

 Posted by on August 5, 2004 at 11:18 pm

More media musings

 Politics  No Responses »
Aug 042004
 

I found this story today from online comic strip artist, Scott Kurtz. He recounts his dealings with the comic syndicates responsible for the comics that you see every day in newspapers. I didn’t realize it was such a racket. I’ve seen cartoonists make jokes about the syndicates hovering over them and the criticism that Jim Davis gets for completely and utterly selling out with Garfield, but I didn’t realize what a racket they have going. It’s worse than musicians and record labels. It’ll be interesting to see if Scott’s ideas come to pass. Everybody’s aware of the battle between P2P and the record industry. Cory Doctorow is a big proponent of distribution of books over the Internet.

Some of the things that Kurtz says reminded me of some of what I said last month about large media conglomerates. Also, I thought I had linked Ted Turner’s article on the same topic, but I can’t seem to find it in the archives.

 Posted by on August 4, 2004 at 9:48 am

Me, Me, Me, Meme

 Geek  No Responses »
Aug 042004
 

This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate – the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The short GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e

(this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google for all results of this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post at Minding the Planet; Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and fill out the info below, substituting your own information in your posting, where appropriate.

(Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

  1. I found this experiment at URL: http://www.seanbonner.com/blog/archives/000712.php#000712
  2. I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing or Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Browsing or Searching the Web
  3. I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.thechunk.com
  4. I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03 August 2004
  5. I posted this at time (24 hour time): 10:23:58
  6. My posting location is (city, state, country): Austin, TX, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

  1. My blog is hosted by: me, myself and I
  2. My age is: 32
  3. My gender is: Male
  4. My occupation is: software developer
  5. I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Don’t use one
  6. I use the following software to post to my blog: PhpNuke
  7. I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 19-01-2002
  8. My web browser is: Firefox/Mozilla
  9. My operating system is: Windows XP
 Posted by on August 4, 2004 at 7:23 am
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