I’ve been doing a little surfing on the subject of newspapers today and I came across Revolution Systems News Cloud. Here’s the idea. Take The Washington Post and create layers of keywords that you peel like an onion. The most popular words are in the outer layer. But as you dive in, you can find more and more interesting words.
I’ve been getting a lot of email of late concerning the use of Diebold’s electronic voting machines in elections and the disparity between the pre-election polls and the tabulated results on issues 2, 3, 4 and 5. This morning over at MetaFilter poster Dinsdale brings together a number of links on the company including:
California: Secretary of State To Hold A No Hearing Hearing… On November 21, 2005, citizens may voice their concerns about what voting system will record their votes, but thanks to a decision by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, there”s no guarantee that anyone with the authority to certify voting systems in California will hear those voices…
Voting Machine Company Sued… Voting machine companies should have to abide by a new law requiring they turn over information on how their systems work, a Winston-Salem woman says in a court filing. Joyce McCloy, founder of the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting, wants a Wake County Superior Court judge to limit or remove an order that relieves companies from having to meet all the law’s disclosure requirements…
EFF Goes to Court to Force E-voting Company to Comply With Strict New North Carolina Law… The Electronic Frontier Foundation is going to court in North Carolina to prevent Diebold Election Systems, Inc. from evading North Carolina law…
Certification Test for the Diebold Election Systems, Inc…
Replaceable Media on Optical Scan…
Lying to the Cuyahoga County Board Of Elections…
Most of the comments are interesting reading as well.
My Soundtrack: Tales Of Endurance by Supergrass on WOXY.
Befitting of the coming holiday, Garrison Keillor runs down his list of things to be thankful for: his $1.59 rollerball pen, Lake Superior, the Supreme Court, the Greatest Show on Earth, the Four Tops and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine Ever Rolled by One Man, and, a topic that will warm Jill’s heart: newspapers. Yes, newspapers. Writes Keillor:
And let us all be thankful for the newspaper, a truly useful object. The press is the watchdog of a free society, and while TV reporters are styling their hair and practicing winsome facial expressions, newspaper reporters are on the phone, knocking on doors, doing the work, holding power accountable.
And you read their work and absorb something from it, or not, and then you spread the newspaper out on the floor and it absorbs paint drips, or you pack it in a box around fragile objects, or you roll it up and swat cockroaches, or stuff it into cracks to keep the wind out, or stuff it under the kindling and light the fire — one simple thing with six distinct uses. Or you can recycle it and it will transcend into cardboard. You can’t do that with images on a screen.
In the spirit of the season, I won’t comment.
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the universe’s source for cheap plastic crap. The Bentonville Behemoth is salivating over Friday, 25 November, but Adbusters has other plans. And poor Kirby has left the office but not the store. To catch up on all things Wal Mart visit The Writing On The Wal.
WAL MART TAKEDOWN ACTION CENTER… Adbusters’ Buy Nothing Day is this Friday. This year the organization has a number of fantastic ideas for targeting the Bentonville Behemoth… (keep reading)
AH KIRBY, WE BARELY KNEW YE… Joining the ranks of Charlie, Jimmy and, of course, Kilroy, Kirby has left the office but not the store. Reports are coming in that this holiday greeting card is becoming ubiquitous at Wally World… (keep reading)
THIS IS MY BROTHER DARYL… Bob Newhart made things confusing enough. You have to feel for Valerie at Spoken For: A Love Divine. After all, what can you do when you’re surrounded and the march of Bentonville Behemoths is encroaching like crabby apple trees circling Annette Funicello? Please, do not say any of the following things to me… (keep reading)
WHERE”S WAL MART…? Driving home last night from teaching I caught a news item about the AFL-CIO’s Job Tracker which: exposes 60,000 corporations on job exporting, health & safety violations and cases involving workers’ rights violations. So I typed in Wal-Mart and found the following… (keep reading)
NEW YORK CITY BODY SLAMS WALMONSTER… From Matt Lipsky, communications director for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance comes good on the creeping encroachment of the Bentonville Behemoth on the Big Apple. Traffic, as the Staten Island Advance writes, was the major focus. Says Lipsky… (keep reading)
IS WAL MART A PROBLEM…? John Stossel doesn’t seems to think so. In his usual contrarian manner, Stossel attempts to paint the Walton family as just good buisness people employing thousands of people and enabling millions of Americans to save money. He compares the Waltons to John D. Rockerfeller. I aggree. But not in the way Stossel’s paints it… (keep reading)
My Soundtrack: Bring It Back Again by The Earlies on WOXY.
… buys into the whole ignorance and supersition that has come out of the state’s school board. There are plenty of people in the state who have their feet firmly planted on the ground and who want to provide quality education that will get students somwhere in the 21st century. Folks like the faculty of Kansas University.
Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.
A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.
The KU faculty has had enough, said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.
Creationism is mythology, Mirecki said. Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.
Go Jayhawks!
My Soundtrack: Bucket Of Butterfiles by Modey Lemon on WOXY.
As I wrote yesterday, I couldn’t attend any of the meetings being touted by REAL NEO, but I encouraged those who could to do so. That, and $1.75, will get you an espresso it seems. Marybeth Matthews over at Street Smarts attended the meeting at the Jergens Manufacturing Company and was not pleased. She writes:
Why don’t Clevelanders come to these forums? Is because they don’t know about them, or do they feel their voices won’t be heard? Do they feel their opinions don’t really matter, and the meetings are just a formality? The disconnect between the school district and the community is a glaring issue, evidenced by lack of voter turn out and the failure of the past two levys. Addressing this problem should be a priority for the new CEO.
Or maybe they’re just tired of trying to walk around in size 8 shoes with size 9 feet.
…a male employee is engaging in pre- or extra-marital sex? You probably can’t. But a female employee? That’s easy. The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal discrimination complaint against a Queens Catholic school, charging that it unjustly fired an unmarried teacher for being pregnant. Gotcha!
The drivers are professionals but this is not on a closed track. At one point the speedometer flashes 260 kph (that’s 160 mph). This is what happens when the boundaries between fantasy and reality breakdown If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. Mario Andretti.
In September our Socrates Cafe discussed: is it wise for atheists to stay in the closet? A brave Penn Jillette is about to find out. I heard his address this morning on NPR. He begins: I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy — you can’t prove a negative, so there’s no work to do…
I got two interesting invitations from Norm Roulet this morning. I can’t attend but maybe you can. If you’re a bridge builder interested in a more literal exchange, REALNEO wants you. If you’re still in the metaphoric realm, then consider stopping by to talk about how Cleveland will select its next public schools’ CEO.
I’ve seen Julian Beever’s works before. I’ve always found the bravery of artists willing to commit their work to an impermanent medium amazing. My dad sent me a series of Beever’s works the other day and that prompted me to visit the website collecting his images. What makes this site particularly interesting is that it shows you a few of the wrong perspectives on the drawings so that you can see how Beever does what he does. They’re all beautiful.
My Soundtrack: Old To Begin by Pavement on WOXY.
What are the freakin’ odds? This is exactly the kind of thing that prompted me to start the irony contest for this month. Remember the contest ends at sundown, 1658 (4:58 p.m.), Wednesday, 30 November.
… my first, second or third drafts of blog entries? That’s a question that Stephen Baker asks. I think it is an interesting question. Like, I think, most writers, I have boxes and files full of drafts of things I’ve written, but no one but my executor will probably ever see those papers. How important do you think work-in-progress is?
Stephen Baker at Blogspotting makes an excellent point in commenting on Business Week’s obituary cover story on business guru Peter Drucker. For all of his insights and pearls of wisdom, few people seem to pay any attention to Drucker’s vision in the 21st century. Baker says it in his headline — Peter Drucker: Great Ideas, Ignored.
Jill hammered the ball back into my court on the whole worth-of-newspapers debate and now I’ve rebuted her rebut (three-buted? Should I copyright this?) I confess to giving into a certain silliness, but if you can’t have a little fun now and then, what’s the point? Your volley, Jill.
John Ettorre writes about a trip to Youngstown where he drives around and talks with an wizend politico named Don Hanni. I sense from John’s writing that Don is of the cloth as Sam Rayburn, Tipp O’Neil and Sam Ervin: giants among legislators. Don doesn’t think much of the present crop of Democrats. John writes:
Eventually the talk got around to present-day politics, as I knew it would, and Don began shaking his head about how weak, how seemingly scared of their own shadows the national Democrats were these days in the face of the Republican onslaught over the war in Iraq. Jesus, he said, these guys never served, and a guy who was a military hero, Kerry, couldn’t make the point that he’d be better on defense? If only he were 20 years younger, he seemed to be suggesting, he’d get up out of that chair and show those sissies how to play the old smash-mouth brand of politics.
John continues and bring the other John on everyones minds these past few days: Rep. John Murtha to the conversation…
I immediately thought of him when Congressman Jack Murtha uncorked his righteous protest about the war this week. His timing was exquisite: according to the polls, about two-thirds of the country now, finally, understands that the Bush-Cheney imperium has no clothes, and can’t be trusted any longer with protecting American lives.
Some adults in the Congress will have to step up and see to it that that’s taken care of. And who better than Murtha, a legendary strong-defense Dem of the sort that mostly no longer roams the halls of Congress. The jowly Pennsylvanian, a former Marine drill sergeant, knows he’ll get the full attention of the Republican wind machine, and he sounds ready for it.
As I watched him blow through the cuddly centrism of PBS’s Newshour and knock down the tired Rove-Cheney evasions like so many toy soldiers, for a moment, he almost reminded me of Sam Ervin, the crafty country lawyer who slowly worked his way through the layers of Nixonian smoke screens, educating his countrymen about democracy’s checks and balances as he went. God seems to place these characters from central casting in the middle of our democratic drama when they’re needed most.
I think John hit it right with the country-lawyer tag. I’m a late comer to urban living. While my youth was hardly spent diggin’ taters or such, I did grow up in a rural environment. Things are simpler, straighter; sometimes to a fault, but True more times than not.
One of my personal heroes is the country lawyer Clarence Darrow. I have Irving Stone’s biography of Darrow — Clarence Darrow For The Defense — on my bookshelf. In it he is reported to have once said:
I can say with perfect honesty that I have never knowingly catered to anyone’s ideas, and I have expressed what was within me, regardless of consequences. (p. 171)
How many are there in Congress, hell in Washington, that could say the same?
Grifters can do what they do because their marks believe that they are different, that they are immune. Reading the news coming out of Germany this weekend makes me think that maybe President George Bush hasn’t been lying about the reasons for taking our country to war in Iraq. Maybe, just maybe, he was played. Is that better?
From Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac:
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
From: Monet Refuses The Operation by Lisa Mueller
For what do you burn?
It is the master of close-up magic that I most admire. I remember once watching Harry Anderson perform with just a deck of cards and a few coins. I’ll take that over making the Statue of Liberty disappear any day. From Japan comes this bit of video — named The Glass Trick — that I’m sure will amaze you.
Until this afternoon when I read James Bamford’s The Man Who Sold The War in Rolling Stone, I’d never heard of John Rendon. But he and his Rendon Group have been influencing American politics, and particularly it’s war machine, for more than 15 yeas. He is the master of perception management. A marketer on steroids.
How detailed can Rendon get? Here’s an example:
When it comes to staging a war, few things are left to chance. After Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, it was Rendon’s responsibility to make the victory march look like the flag-waving liberation of France after World War II. Did you ever stop to wonder, he later remarked, how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American — and, for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries? After a pause, he added, Well, you now know the answer. That was one of my jobs then.
As chilling as Bamford’s story of Rendon is, his conclusion will make you wonder if you can believe anyone.
Rendon is already thinking ahead. Last year, he attended a conference on information operations in London, where he offered an assessment on the Pentagon’s efforts to manipulate the media. According to those present, Rendon applauded the practice of embedding journalists with American forces. He said the embedded idea was great, says an Air Force colonel who attended the talk. It worked as they had found in the test. It was the war version of reality television, and for the most part they did not lose control of the story. But Rendon also cautioned that individual news organizations were often able to take control of the story, shaping the news before the Pentagon asserted its spin on the day’s events.
We lost control of the context, Rendon warned. That has to be fixed for the next war.
So where is that next war? Rendon isn’t talking, of course. But he’ll be ready no matter where it is. Will we be as ready to question the headlines?
My Soundtrack: Throw Down Your Arms by Sinead O’Connor on WOXY.
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