Saturday, May 24, 2003

So if you believe in democracy and are a US citizen, perhaps the most important thing you can do over the next week is to vent to your representatives on the deal that has been cut between media industry and the FCC (which has become an amazingly corrupt institution under Powell and Bush). It is sad and amusing that the Republicans are pushing so hard for centralization. I guess it turns out that given when ideology and money are in contention, money always wins in this administration. Of course some people have pointed out that this is a mechanism by which the big business branch of the Republican party can deal with the social conservatives by having a concentrated media go after some of their issues. After all - the average of the media is not Texas and Florida (except for Fox, which would probably be happy without the Bill of Rights). Bill Moyers has quite a bit of information on his website. Another rich source of information is The Center for Public Integrity. 9:23:24 AM     OK - this is just neat - crested auklets smell of tangerine. I had no idea some birds communicate by odor. ___ And speaking of things that smell ... a 2.7 meter tall flower has opened in Bonn. 12:05:41 AM     One beef of mine is that people rarely build things, let alone design them, these days. Very cheap and powerful IC and board level components have rendered simple projects uninteresting to many people. On the other hand there are folks who still worry about simple designs and the web is a great place to find them. Check out this little three penny radio for a simple project with a novel solution to the problem of mounting components for people who can't make their own printed circuit boards... 12:05:13 AM     There has been quite a bit of interest in TypePad - to first order it looks like hosted Movable Type with a really nice interface. I wonder if this will move me away from Radio -- I have to pony up my renewal money in about 5 weeks. ___ also in the potentially interesting tool department ... Bloki looks very interesting - a combination of a blog and a wiki as a new collaboration tool. Unfortunately it doesn't really work with my preferred browsers and the interface is -- well -- pretty awful. The idea is probably good though and this bears some watching. 12:04:58 AM

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