Wednesday, June 30, 2004
On Fairenheit 9/11, Micheal Moore, Documentaries and Opinions:I've been watching all of the coverage of it that I TiVo'd last week. Conan. CBS This Morning. Today Show. The Daily Show. Michael Moore has handled himself really well given all of the attention.
One thing that he was stressing in ALL of his interviews is that the movie is a politically slanted documentary. In fact in one interview he mentioned that the movie was no "fair" to the bush administration, backing it up by saying that the movie is documentary in effect, but it's really important to understand that the movie doesn't represent anything more than his opinion.
That said, there is nothing in the movie that has not been discussed and unveiled in detail by the WSJ, New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and open hearings in committee. Rather, the movie has consolidated those ideas and presented them in the framework of an overall message: namely, down with Bush, our government is not for sale, and our soldiers are not for hire.
Friday, June 18, 2004
Economist.com | The Buttonwood column:"What would happen to the American economy were property prices to tank, at the same time that oil prices soared and the fiscal stimulus ran out. It wouldn't look pretty, that's for sure."
Thursday, June 17, 2004
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Art Unfolds in a Search for KeywordsSNIP
An Internet search can resemble the psychological process of free association. Just as an online search for the word robin may yield results that range from chirping birds to merry men, a mind that's wandering through a storehouse of memories might stumble across thoughts of Batman's sidekick or that cute third-grade classmate.
This parallel is explored in a new high-tech artwork in Chicago, "Imagination Environment," which was created by David Ayman Shamma, a doctoral candidate in computer science at Northwestern University, and Kristian J. Hammond, director of Northwestern's Intelligent Information Laboratory.
"Imagination Environment" starts with a live television news broadcast that is displayed at the center of a wall-mounted array of nine computer monitors. A software program scans the broadcast's closed-caption stream and selects keywords that prompt Internet searches for images. Seconds after the live audio is heard, the news broadcast is surrounded by pertinent photographs and illustrations on adjacent screens, as well as some images completely unrelated.
SNIP
On free content, BBC rules.
One of my favorite reads is the Canarie list broadcasts sent about 10 times a month. Today's broadcast was old news, but it got me thinking. And, naturally, thinking leads to other bad ideas.
Today's editorial from the Canarie list is about the plan the BBC has to release all of its archived content digitally on the web. For free. The argument goes as follows:
1. The BBC and other channels in Britain are paid for by the people.
2. All content created by or for those channels is therefore public property.
3. Ergo the public should have free access to this material where possible.
Prior to the age of the internet this task would have been much less feasible. Not impossible. Libraries have been stocked with videos for ages. But converting atoms to bits and back into atoms is an expensive process. Not that archiving rich media on a content network is not expensive. But anyway, it's not about the money.
What's it about, then?
I think it's about the great copyright bargain and a long tradition in British Copyright that insists the public not only protect copyrights for those who produce content privately but to make all content available to the public via libraries. The fact that the BBC went after this goal without much opposition (none visible to my eyes anyway) is proof perhaps that socialism has a certain creative approach more laudable than capitalism. Capitalism has always prided itself on ingenuity. With capital incentives, creativity goes un-rewarded. But with a more social system, the reward can be both monetary and social. Isn't it better to have your show seen than to wallow privately in hoarded earnings? Ask James Cameron if he'd rather have a long-lasting break-even series or a short money-making series.
Left to its own devices, is capitalism actually be less rewarding to the creative endeavor?
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Common Cause - "Democracy On Drugs"The problem with political analysis is the mud. In order to show how dirty “dirty politics” can get, one invariably gets muddy. Such is the life of the muck-raker watchdogs from Common Cause. In this report they outline in not-too-heady terms how the Bush administration along with both houses of Congress hid from the public just how the Medicare/Prescription Drug Bill was raked into law.
The story behind the report is more than a little disconcerting. How easily proponents of the bill were able to corrupt the system (how does one censor C-SPAN, exactly?) perhaps points to a kind of "reciprocity effect" for old and very large democracies like ours.
The Reciprocity Effect in photography is a phenomenon whereby images exposed for a very long time begin to react more and more slowly to the exposure the longer they stay exposed. So while in the first few seconds of exposure film is highly reactive, after that film becomes less reactive. Which is to say, the more you expose film, the less effect that exposure will have.
The political metaphor of course is something like persistent and willing civic neglect. The more we Americans become exposed to the wrong-doings of our government, the less we are willing to react to it.
There are a number of reasons that I worry about the political course of my country. And they all seem to have roots in how misinformed Americans are and consequently how reluctant they are to acknowledge failures of this magnitude. The government is too big. As individuals one's effect on its policies is too small. What's more, the individuals who have the most to gain from law-makers and the policies they architect do so at the greatest expense: a dollar-gain for Big Pharma and elected officials, a liberty-loss for you and me.
Democracy on Drugs shows us how we can trade our laudable capitol abstractions like Democracy, Checks and Balances, Due Process, Equity and Public Health for the capitally myopic greasing of the wheels of greed. The net loss is this simple: we’ve traded quality of life for quantities of cash.
Friday, June 11, 2004
AccuArt Digital Pre-Press Products - Silkscreen supplies and whatnot.Didn't want to forget this link.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
75 days until I eradicate TV from my daily life.
