Part of me wants to ditch this particular project. Part of me wants to push myself to write more. About slow gardening (get to know the dirt) and open newsrooms and (lately, again) games. But ... Tumblr. @embell said Tumblr is for people who don't like to write -- I'm ...
I've been working on a project called Nutshell, a sort of proof of concept. I could write up "occupywallstreet" but I don't think it rises to the occasion. I might write up something about Travellers, since they seem to be making the news here, but there's more parsing than background to it, because of course, the history of most Gypsies is one of eviction. Note: Travellers aren't Romani. Still: call them travelers and then tell them to hit the road. For now: Travellers facing eviction from Dale Farm gipsy camp have their own homes in Ireland - (Telegraph). I'm trying to decide how much and how often Nutshell makes sense.
I've told this story before and I'm sure I'll tell it again and it evolves a little every time I tell it, becomes a little more elaborate. When I write my memoirs I promise not to spin it into my own personal experience. But it goes like this, approximately. First, ...
I've been kicking around the right way to announce a thing I announced to my colleagues a week ago. That thing being that I'm leaving Gotham Gazette. The reasons are both simple and complex, but the simplest is that the publication really, really needs someone to evaluate web analytics tools not someone to tackle the big, fun, challenging question of why New Yorkers aren't more interested in public policy. Well, I think they do need the latter, but fundamental scarcity of resources means that the former is winning out. These are good questions, though. The civic engagement ones, I mean. Is it because we think policy is impenetrable and our legislators are all bought? Is it because we don't notice that land use decisions matter until developers are breaking ground on a sky rise across the street? That we think the game is won already? I'm not sure, but I think changing the way people think about local policy is a really interesting part of our project here.
Eventually: my promised report back on the Pirate Bay talk, which was great, and after which Mister Mux Tape explained that commercial software is, by its very nature, better than free and open source software and then asked me if I worked for the FSF when I called him on that bizarre and baseless assertion. I'm not even talking about Apache here. Or I am, but at the present moment, Open Office is better documented than the MS Office suite. And calc's financial functions are just plain better. I didn't point out that I don't think that the Free Software Foundation really has the staff resources to travel the Eastern seaboard heckling speakers at community arts talks. I also didn't point out that there are people in this world (no really, there are!) who hold opinions they aren't paid to hold and expertise on subjects they are not professional lobbyists on behalf of. Actually, I could kind of wrap that one up and repeat what we already know which is that the Bureau of Piracy is great, you should take a look at the links on the original post and (this is the part I hope you already know) that the real problem with the prosecution of the buccaneers is about free speech. Not about my right to swap music willy-nilly, copyright be damned (another thing I didn't say to Mux Man: there is, I think, a big difference between software and music) but about whether a file sharing platform should be held accountable for the files shared over it. Particularly in a world where some musicians do want to make large files (their own) available free of charge and politically significant data sets can be a difficult thing to host on your own little server. Fundamentally, neither the laws nor the recording industry have kept up with the modern world and it is worth asking why that is really the fault of the Pirate Bureau. That was rough. I might come back and try to make it sound a little coherent.
I was telling some lovely people, just this afternoon, about how my original purpose here was to keep track of just how many times scientists can possibly re-discover that red wine and chocolate are good for you in moderation. I was telling them this because I just read two articles ...
red wine can help prevent stroke damage: study (Reuters, Oct 15, 06)In which mice respond well to wine. Roughly, strokes hurt less. Red wine, in moderation, is good for you. Where ever have I heard this before?...
Reuters, Oct 13, 2006 Polyunsaturated fatty acids improve heart diseaseIn which some Italians find that patients who have had heart attacks benefit from a supplement that adds poly unsaturaed fatty acids into their diet....
(Reuters, Oct 12, 2006) : New York subway could be damaging to earsCould be? I cannot have a phone conversation (you'd think I would have stopped trying by now) on the Manhattan bridge because I can't hear a thing over ...
URL: Eating bread 'raises cancer risk' (Oct 20, 2006, BBC News) URL: High bread consumption tied to kidney cancer (Oct 20, 2006, Reuters) Observation 1: if you actually read the articles, it turns out that ...
View For the balanced diet files (and the balanced reporting files)
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