Thursday, October 06, 2005

I'll be on WFDD, 88.5 FM, talking about Greensboro's blogging scene, tomorrow at 5:30 and 8:30 AM, and again 4:30 PM; the interview with Jennifer Curry will then be posted at www.wfdd.org under "news features." 10:52:41 PM   permalink   comment []

Lots of big news in the blog world...Jason Calacanis sells Weblogs Inc. to AOL for a reported $25 million...media and tech players on both coasts meet at power confabs... ...what we're doing here tomorrow and especially on Saturday is a little different -- more grassroots, more of the people and by the people and for the people. Not better. Not worse. Just different. 5:12:11 PM   permalink   comment []

Chris Nolan has moved into her new online digs...part of a fancy complex. I look forward to seeing Chris in GSO this weekend. 5:05:53 PM   permalink   comment []

John Dickerson on the GOP split over Miers. "In this battle, the White House has clearly sided with the churchgoing masses against the Republican Party's own whiny Beltway intellectuals." 12:36:08 PM   permalink   comment []

Blogging and scoops and public information and such. 12:30:36 PM   permalink   comment []

Dave Winer embarks on his journey from California to Greensboro: "I doubt if we'll see a bubble, no business models, scams, pundits, carpetbaggers. We will talk about what users want from technology." 10:18:21 AM   permalink   comment []

Hossein Derakhshan, a k a Hoder, is a genuine freedom fighter on the web. We are honored by his presence in Greensboro this weekend. Probably worth an interview or two with the local media. You might want to talk to this guy, too. 10:05:48 AM   permalink   comment []

Also in GoTriad: an interview with Ben Hwang about ConvergeSouth, and his big vision for Greensboro. 10:01:38 AM   permalink   comment []

I've been meaning to write about The Scene on South Elm, a cool-looking place that opened down the block from my office...but GoTriad went ahead and did it for me, calling it "a small, intimate movie theater and performance space that offers boundless potential for the city's emerging downtown, unveiling yet another new spot for cultural expression." 9:59:21 AM   permalink   comment []

DarkTimes: Herbert jumps all over Bill Bennett, and uses Bennett's comments as a springboard to bash Republicans: "The G.O.P. has happily replaced the Democratic Party as a safe haven for bigotry, racially divisive tactics and strategies and outright anti-black policies." He's not quite fair to Bennett -- in context, the remarks were marginally less awful than the sentences he quotes -- but he lays down a litany that is hard to ignore, starting with a quote from the late GOP strategist and former national party chair Lee Atwater explaining "the evolution of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy." Atwater: "You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -  that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. "'And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'" On through Reagan's speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi and current voter registration laws in Georgia, and back to Bennett. Brooks follows his column on growing economic and social stratification with more detail, including the high college-incompletion rate for lower income students who can do the work and find the money, but don't feel comfortable in the environment: "The new inequality is different from the old inequality. Today, the rich don't exploit the poor, they just outcompete them. Their crucial advantage is not that they possess financial capital, it's that they possess more cultural capital." He points to efforts by universities to bridge the gap. Kicker: "The forces driving cultural inequality are powerful, and maybe insurmountable. But each generation of Americans seems to be challenged in its own way to provide its children with an open field and a fair chance. This is our challenge." 9:29:07 AM   permalink   comment []

NYT: "Defying the White House, the Senate overwhelmingly agreed Wednesday to regulate the detention, interrogation and treatment of prisoners held by the American military." Glenn Reynolds says the Bush administration is wrong to resist. 9:10:59 AM   permalink   comment []

David Gelernter in the Wall Street Journal (subs req): "I hate our computers. Our core software tools are old; not only are they old but they're obsolete' and not only are they obsolete but they were never all that great to begin with." [snip] "Moreover, virtually all major information technologies of the last 100 years were transformed, soon after they were invented, from new technologies to new media. (At first, film was a new technology. Before long it became a new medium.) Engineers no longer run the show; artists and content producers take over. But that transition hasn't happened in computing. When it does, the field will be transformed." That's kind of what we're talking about on Saturday. Dave Winer's session is even looking at the tech part. More on this weekend from the N&R edit page. 8:09:00 AM   permalink   comment []

Sandy Carmany scoops the world on the announcement o Greensboro's new City Manager, Mitch Johnson. Actually, she seems to have scooped herself by six minutes with a comment here... Update: Carmany says she didn't scoop News 2 -- she deliberately waited til after they ran the news. Why? "(L)et's just say I owed them one (along with the N&R) and leave it at that." Is this policy? Will the blogging Councilwoman always defer to the professional media? If so, why? Meanwhile, JR wonders what a scoop really means these days. 7:05:47 AM   permalink   comment []

Nelson and Joyce Johnson get a big grant from the Ford Foundation for their work with the Beloved Community Center and the Truth and Reconciliation project; Margaret Banks writes a nice article about the award; Nelson says he no longer thinks Mike Schlosser lost the murder case against Klan and Nazi killers on purpose. 6:56:59 AM   permalink   comment []