left blank: March 2004

"The Doe Network"
International Center for Unidentified & Missing Persons

From Ritual to Romance

the roots of the legend of the Holy Grail

Introducing Parecon (Participatory Economics)

Bush Urges Iraqis To Pass Amendment Banning
Gay Marriage

9/11 Whistleblower Violates Ashcroft Gag Order
Reveals Cover-up of Pre-attack Intelligence

Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps!

AlphaWolf

"interact with other wolves in a computer-simulated pack,
exploring the social behavior of the animals
and getting a glimpse of the potential
for autonomous virtual creatures"

OnlineHomeBase

"The curiously different, curiously effective
Free-Form Information Manager"

Chomsky's blog

14 Reasons Why Artists Keep Visual Journals

Online Volunteering for the United Nations

Setting up a fast, stable and tweaked PC

a network map of political books
based on purchase patterns

How all human communication fails,
except by accident

manybooks.net
Free eBooks for your PDA

Plucker is an offline Web and e-book viewer for Palm

Centuries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The 39 Steps: A Primer on Story Writing

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

mix of the week

Primer: Getting into RDF & Semantic Web
using N3

Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing

(from the merciful and exalted Incoming Signals)

Play Zork directly in IM!

"With WebAIM from Silicon Monkey,
you can log onto AOL Instant Messenger
from any web broswer.
You will stay logged on
even if you close the browser window
so you can read and send
instant messages from anywhere."

2004 Hummingbird Migration Maps

Guide to Everything

Well now, that's a purty fancy sidebar there, cowboy!

Worldwide demonstrations mark year of conflict

Maggie Taylor
an "evolving series of images
made using a flatbed scanner
in place of a traditional camera"

On the US election
Noam Chomsky in The Guardian

TRAPPED BY UNDEAD, NEED HELP:
blogging by some guys surrounded by zombies.

"This is not a joke. We are alone and constantly battling for our lives."

Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop of Boston
will close in May

(ditto the Grolier Poetry Book Shop
in Harvard Square)

viz:

Twelve reasons for the death
of small and independent book stores

Ever thankful to those who made the effort before us,
with heartfelt apologies to those who are still in the fight
and the few who support them--
offered upon the closing
of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston.

1. Corporate law (and the politicians, lawyers,
businessmen and accountants
who created it for their own benefit)--
a legal fiction with more rights
than the individual citizen,
which allows the likes of
Barnes & Noble and Walmart
to write off the losses
of a store in Massachusetts
against the profit of another in California,
while paying taxes in Delaware--
for making "competition" a joke
and turning the free market
down the dark road toward state capitalism.

2. Publishers--marketing their product
like so much soap or breakfast cereal,
aiming at demographics instead of people,
looking for the biggest immediate return
instead of considering the future of their industry,
ignoring the art of typography,
the craft of binding,
and needs of editing,
all to make a cheapened product
of glue and glitz--
for being careless
of a 500 year heritage
with devastating result.

3. Book buyers--those who want
the "convenience" and "cost savings"
of shopping in malls,
over the quaint,
the dusty,
or the unique;
who buy books
according to price instead of content,
and prefer what is popular
over what is good--
for creating a mass market
of the cheap,
the loud,
and the shiny.

4. Writers--who sell their souls to be published,
write what is already being written
or choose the new for its own sake,
opt to feed the demands of editors
rather than do their own best work,
place style over substance,
and bear no standards
--for boring their readers unto television.

5. Booksellers--who supply the artificial demand created
by marketing departments for the short term gain,
accept second class treatment from publishers,
push what is "hot"
instead of developing
the long term interest of the reader--
for failing to promote quality of content
and excellence in book making.

6. Government (local, state and federal)--
which taxes commercial property to the maximum,
driving out the smaller and marginal businesses
which are both the seed of future enterprise
and the tradition of the past,
while giving tax breaks to chain stores,
thus killing the personality of a city--
for producing the burden of tax codes
only accountants can love.

7. Librarians--once the guardians,
who now watch over their budgets instead--
for destroying books which would last centuries
to find room for disks and tapes
which disintegrate in a few years
and require costly maintenance
or replacement by equipment soon to be obsolete.

8. Book collectors--who have metamorphosed
from book worms to moths
attracted only to the bright;
once the sentinels of a favorite author's work,
now mere speculators
on the ephemeral product of celebrity--
for putting books on the same level with beanie babies.

9. Teachers--assigning books because of topical appeal,
or because of their own lazy familiarity,
instead of choosing what is best;
thus a tale about the teenage angst
of a World War Two era prep school boy
is pushed at students
who do not know when World War Two took place--
for failing to pass the torch of civilization
to the next generation.

10. Editors--who have forgotten the editorial craft--
for servicing the marketing department,
pursuing fast results and name recognition
over quality of content
and offering authors
the Faustian bargain of fame and fortune,
while pleading their best intentions like goats.

11. Reviewers--for promoting what is being advertised,
puffing the famous to gain attention,
being petty and personal,
and praising the obscure with priestly authority--
all the while being paid by the word.

12. The Public--those who do not read books,
or can not find the time;
who live by the flickering light of the television,
and will be the first to fear the darkening of civilization--
for not caring about consequences.

Thus, we come to the twilight of the age of books;
to the closing of the mind;
to the pitiful end of the quest for knowledge--
and stare into the cold abyss of night.

John Usher

From THE HOUND by John Usher,
copyright 2004.
Permission to reproduce is granted to
all upon request with proper attribution

March 20 GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION:
The World Still Says No to War

"Our strategy should be
not only to confront empire,
but to lay siege to it.
To deprive it of oxygen.
To shame it.
To mock it.
With our art,
our music,
our literature,
our stubbornness,
our joy,
our brilliance,
our sheer relentlessness
- & our ability to tell our own stories.
Stories that are different
from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe."

Arundhati Roy

The Apparat
George W. Bush's back-door political machine

"It's anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional,
and is working to create a one-party America"

i used to believe...

Luntzspeak 101

(at least there's no verb-tenses to memorize!)

Virtual Keyboard is within reach!

The Hobohemians
On the rails with the new freedom riders

Countdown to Election Day:
525 Reasons to Dump Bush

Questions & answers on everyday scientific phenomena

Citizens Form Massive Special Disinterest Group

"Politicians are completely out of touch with those Americans
who are completely out of touch with politics."

Is WiMax a promising new wireless technology,
or just a load of hot air?

comic version of Queneau's Exercises in Style

get it?

The Haitian Coup and the Tragedy of the Left

"By now, however, the capitalist Right's playbook is all too familiar.

Step one: Make the economy scream.

Step two: Send lawyers, guns, and money.

Step three: Accuse the Left of repression when they resist. "

FRONTLINE: watch online!

Yobotica!

YO! What Happened To Peace?
An exhibition of contemporary pro-peace ,
anti-war & anti-occupation posters

"Bush Knew - An American Requiem"
Take Back The Media! Flash Animation

Roundabout harnesses the energy
generated by kids playing merry-go-round

IF...

Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time

really!

The Emily Project
"The 1932 diary of a young girl
which was found in a flea market in Vermont."

freshly plepped

Ten Critical Challenges Facing Humanity

(hmm...they forgot gay marriage!)

A radioactive nightmare in Concord, Massachusetts

...and the time is right
for writing in the streets

They Know Not What They Do:
The Passion as Roman Sacrifice

SELECT ALL

Can you have too many choices?

NASA Schedules News Briefing
About Unusual Solar Object

"The discovery of a mysterious object in our solar system
is the topic of a listen-and-log-on news briefing
on Monday, March 15, at 1 p.m. EST."

The Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right not to read.

2. The right to skip pages.

3. The right to not finish.

4. The right to reread.

5. The right to read anything.

6.The right to escapism.

7.The right to read anywhere.

8. The right to browse.

9. The right to read out loud.

10. The right to not defend your tastes.

World Wide Wunderkammer

A metaphor for mapping social spaces

"We are Confuse A Cat
We have been in the business of feline bewilderment
for over 30 years and we are exceptionally good at it.
Never once have we failed
to confuse a cat which we set out to confuse."

Howard Stern's schwing voters

"The raunchy jockey is mobilizing his army of listeners
against Bush -- and they could make a difference in November"

"I was not surprised to learn last Sunday
that the castaway husk of Spalding Gray
had surfaced in the East River.
We had been told by the NYPD
that those who sink in New York Harbor
during wintertime will rise again come spring.
While I felt certain that Spalding
had gone for his last swim on January 10,
some others regarded my efforts to eulogize him
as cruelly premature and tasteless.
Their remonstrances, posted here
and in personal messages to me,
were often pretty cruel themselves.
It's been hard.
But it was also true that,
in the absence of undeniable evidence,
his widow Kathie couldn't guarantee his young sons
Theo and Forrest that their dad would never,
ever come moping back up the driveway.
Indeed, given the dogged nature of hope,
she couldn't utterly extinguish that vision
from her own heart.
As long as it flickered there,
we had to await the opportunity
to gather in our grief and celebrate him.
Now we can.
Of course, you've already begun that process virtually.
Since Sunday, there has been an extraordinary stream
of memorial comments posted to this blog.
I have received as many more e-mails
filled with the spreading contagion of his honesty
and raconteur's genius for investing ordinary details
with more universal magic.
Having him watched him
button-hole strangers for years,
I'm not quite surprised
by how many of you have turned up
with vividly personal memories of Spalding.
That he was able to weave
his quirky voice and viewpoint
so discernibly into your own
during those encounters seems proof
that the soul is not so easily contained
by its original bottle of flesh.
Though widely distributed, it almost feels
as if there's more of Spalding in the world now
than there was when he was still walking around
muttering to himself.
But funerals need bodies,
the living as much as the dead.
It's important to embrace those who share our loss
with actual arms, to shed real tears on real shoulders,
to praise the departed with audible voices.
To that end, there will be

a memorial celebration for Spalding
at Lincoln Center on April 15.

It will be open to the public
and will feature performances
and reminiscences by many of his friends,
including Philip Glass and Lou Reed.
I'll let you know more about this event as plans develop.
Meanwhile, I am still collecting your postings and e-mails
into a book I will give his family.
It already provides beautiful evidence
that Spalding was himself
the source of many Perfect Moments
and that, however grim the end of his life,
he leaves a legacy of joyous truth to his sons.
In one of the comments to my original post
regarding his disappearance,
one of you quoted some lines
from the Dylan Thomas poem,
"And Death Shall Have No Dominion".
It felt so uncannily appropriate
that I want to post it here in its entirety.
Death doesn't have Spalding Gray.
We do.

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion... "

(from John Perry Barlow's blog
which is hard to read right now
on so many levels)

Thing

Metaphor for Blogging

"...I began, primer-style,
to describe the basic rudiments
of the Quaker belief system:
a commitment to community service,
a shared sense of pacifism and religious tolerance,
and a culture that supports what I, personally,
have always felt to be
a quintessentially democratic form of worship.

As I began to describe Meeting for Worship
—where one sits in silence for some period of time,
in a large room with any number of other congregants,
and where one stands to speak, on virtually any topic,
when moved to do so
— I realized
that this presented a compelling metaphor for blogging."

Capitalism gone wild - Iraq

(where's Brooke in a burka?)

(again with the wood and the s lot)

Bush/Cheney '04 Bumperstickers #2

Bush/Cheney '04: Be afraid. Be very afraid. Thank you.

Bush/Cheney '04: It'll hurt less if you stop struggling

Bush/Cheney '04: The last vote you'll ever have to cast

Bush/Cheney '04: Why settle for the Lesser Evil?

Bush/Cheney '04: Don't switch horsemen mid-apocalypse

Bush/Cheney '04: We're not through with you yet

Junk politics:
a voter's guide to the post-literate election

1. Junk politics personalizes and moralizes issues
and interests rather than clarifying them.
It's impatient with articulated conflict,
enthusiastic about Americans' optimism and moral character,
and heavily dependent on feel-your-pain language and gesture.

2. Junk politics takes changelessness as a major cause
--changelessness meaning zero interruption
in the processes and practices
that strengthen existing, interlocking systems
of socioeconomic advantage.

3. Junk politics introduces new qualifications
for high political office,
and in the process redefines traditional values.
It tilts courage toward braggadocio,
sympathy toward mawkishness,
humility toward self-disrespect,
identification with ordinary citizens toward distrust of brains.

4. Junk politics miniaturizes large, complex problems at home
while maximizing threats from abroad.
It's also given to abrupt unexplained reversals
of its own public stances,
often spectacularly bloating problems previously miniaturized.

5. Junk politics seeks at every turn
to obliterate voters' consciousness
of socioeconomic and other differences in their midst.

(thanks again to wood s lot)

Save The Date!
August 29, 2004,
The World Says No to the Bush Agenda

snappy little color widget

Senator Kennedy's Blatantly Unreported Speech
(in front of a live microphone!)
at the “Re-imagining the Welfare State” Conference

(half-squelched highlights here)

Television Tropes, Idioms, and Devices

Danger Mouse Tells All
(the making of the remaking of the mix of the remix)

"I'm a firm believer in
feeding people their own words back to them,
when it's appropriate."
-Trent Lott

CREAX (via the singularly innovative *.*)
"An inspirational list of creativity and innovation resources"

Create your own Bush/Cheney 2004 poster
(FOUR MORE WARS!)

March 20 Protests
Slated for Cities around U.S. and Internationally
Actions to mark One-year Anniversary of Iraq War

She's everybody's dream girl
"It is a complex heritage
that we take from Audrey Hepburn:
glamour with a hint of sadness.
No wonder she still resonates strongly
with modern women "

Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election
(preview here)
"the story about the battle for the Presidency in Florida
and the undermining of democracy in America"

(never forget!)

neighborhoodscout.com

Register to Vote!!

The Anatomy of Melancholy
by Robert Burton

*sigh*

A better world- where do we begin?

DARPA's Wild Kingdom
(our deficit dollars at work!)

Flip-flops? Bring 'em on!!

How the WMD Scam Put Money in the Bush Family's Pockets

How news travels through blogs

mmmm...quasi-mysticalicious!

Spalding Gray's Body Pulled From East River

NATIONAL MEDICAL MALPRACTICE PLAINTIFF DATABASE
"THIS IS NOT A BLACKLIST.
MANY PATIENTS HAVE MERITORIOUS CASES"

The New Pearl Harbor:
Disturbing Questions about the
Bush Administration and 9/11

order now...while supplies exist!

Podengo puppies pleeeeease?

Spend some time with Polish Posters,
they're good for you...no joke!

Happy (anticipated) Birthday, Pink Panther!

follow the man in the maze
the amazing man in the maze

The Worldwide (!) Freecycle Network
"It's a grassroots movement of people
who are giving (& getting) stuff for free
in their own towns."

Iditarod XXXII Has Begun

RNC tells TV stations not to run anti-Bush ads

Chaos, Creation & Collage

Extreme zorbing

a secret garden
"make your way through this photographic maze"

Expostion Virtuelle - Le Ciel et la Terre

Space Imaging Gallery

everybody loves you, kaki king
tour dates

A Grown-Up's Guide to Instant Messaging

*ahem*...w00t!

"SounderCover gives you the ability to add
a background sound to any incoming or outgoing call,
giving the impression that you really are in the environment
where the background sound is normally heard."

The Natural History of Madagascar

"It's not quite as good as going there,
but this wonderful book provides a magnificent overview
of one of the strangest and most glorious chunks of the planet
- a place that is so much more than a load of old lemurs."

get your war on
PAGE 32!!

"MONDRIMAT is a simple system
which lets you experiment with space, color and visual rhythm
in accordance with the theories of Piet Mondrian.
For some reason pleasing, stimulating,
even exciting results seem to occur quite frequently."

Why Kerry would do well to pick Edwards
--sooner rather than later

Furor over Bush's 9/11 ad
from pinko wingnut hotbed NY Daily News

"Don't fall for Washington's spin on Haiti"
from the radical fringe at Financial Times

The 12 Principles of Collaboration

thou shalt only connect

Our future, which art within us,
Hallowed is our aim
Thy gateway come
Thy downloads done
As Earth be worthy of heavens.
Give us this day our daily bandwidth.
And protect our addresses,
as we forgive those
who spam against us.
Lead us not into frustration,
but deliver us from Microsoft:
For thine is the client,
The server and the protocol
forever and ever.

Amen

Moon's Helium-3 Could Power Earth

"The equivalent of a single space shuttle load
or roughly 25 tons
could supply the entire United States' energy needs
for a year..."

Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind

"The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan,
and for the third time, the White House killed it."