Friday, December 12, 2003

Monkeytime is ranting about big media and its pet political candidates. "You want to know the scariest part about this mess? The scariest part is the thought that Ed 'A-blogging we will save the world' Cone might actually be right, and that weblogs - fucking weblogs - just might be the best tool we have against the coordinated corporate campaign to limit voter choice to those candidates who don't upset the intolerable status quo." 4:05:07 PM    comment []

Guilford County could use a site like OrangePolitics.org. Except, you know, it would be about Guilford County, not Orange County. I nominate Roch Smith Jr. to run it. 1:55:54 PM    comment []

A near accident on Lee Street, as heard from my office, often involves a long screech of brakes, then.....nothing, because it was just a near accident: Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....[silence]. An actual accident sounds like this: erCRUNCH. I just heard an erCRUNCH. The crunch was a loud one. A white car struck a black pickup. The pickup won, and the white car will not be leaving under its own power. Everybody seems to be OK. Meanwhile, just a few blocks up Elm Street, Joey Medaloni is getting ready to launch his latest venture. When they finish that new downtown park, they should put up statues of Medaloni and Milton Kern, downtown heroes. 1:47:01 PM    comment []

Doc Searls has posted a great piece on radio and its discontents: "AM and FM broadcasting suck down huge amounts of electricity. Their towers bristle from swamps and mountaintops. And their technologies were developed before the middle of the last century. They use old brute-force technology to deliver what can be done far more efficiently by more "cellular" means. The low number of channels, and high costs of occupying them, makes the industry available to a few grandfathered incumbents. Why shouldn't there be an unlimited number of stations, just like there are an unlimited number of Web sites, of blogs, or or any breed of source on the Net? No reason at all. Unlimited opportunity will truly let the market decide what it can support." 8:42:40 AM    comment []

The rest of the Dean campaign case study is up at the Baseline site. There's a (too) brief sidebar on other political activity on the Web, a list of technologies used by Dean, a project planner, a backgrounder on blogging software, etc. My favorite is a short piece of speculative history looking back at Election Day, 2004, co-written with the Mad Genius: "At this point, Bush should capture enough electoral votes to win outright. But Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi is ready to pull the trigger, as the East Coast prepares to go to the polls." The whole shebang is available as a PDF file (semi-annoying free registration required). 8:37:35 AM    comment []