 |
 |
 |
| |
|
Hurricane Katrina :: Slidell, Louisiana
Slidell lies just north of Lake Pontchartrain. As I drove through the area I babbled into my Olympus digitial voice recorder. Here's a small clip of those notes, cleaned up a bit.
Driving into Slidell, Lake Ponchatrain runs right into the land. Where the docks were there are now just pilings. I just talked to Ju (ed -- my mom, a Louisiana native) and asked her what Slidell looked like before. She said that it sort of was like Jackson where Aunt Joyce and Uncle Walt lived, a nice developed area. Her cousin's widow lived in Slidell and was evacuated. 80 years old and the water was up to the ceiling.
Drove by a house along the highway -- spray-painted along the side just says "Alive." Passed a piece of plywood nailed to a post, Highway 11, "Still No Water." Seems like a boating community, the sense of Pawleys Island (ed. -- in South Carolina). Immense piles of trash everywhere. And you get the sense that the lake is what did this to them... This is just what happened when the lake came over. And the wind came over...My thought here was "my god, I hope you had flood insurance." Or that you can say that this was hurricane damage and not flood damage...If they didn't have flood insurance...will this push them into poverty, bankruptcy at least? People that were doing all right.
All of the supermarkets are closed. All of the stores are closed...Where people are eating, shopping, getting what they need for their kids? A Shell station says "We're open. We have gas. Cash only." One thing you could hope is that you had cash on hand. Behind a Bank of Louisiana building there is just a sea of clothing -- thousands of pieces, piled up. One of the craziest things I've seen.
A Private Note re: Ze Frank
Folks, this one is just for Janie. Janie, if you haven't checked out Ze Frank's The Show yet, you should. You will either (a) like it very much or (b) hate him your special way where you get really angry and offended at his very existence. And then I'll know just a little bit more about you.
The Sound of Silence
I work with headphones on, listening to music so as to drown out the inane chatter of my officemates. I kid only because I love. But I hate having to always manuever my mouse over and check/uncheck the tiny mute box down in the task bar volume controls when I actually want to interact with them. So I searched for and found Global Audio Contol, a freeware shortcut app for all my system volume controls. The set-up interface is ugly as sin, but now that it's up and running I can hit control+Q without even really stopping my typing and jump right in to the conversation.
UPDATE: Wendy Boswell over at Lifehacker has similarly struggled with volume control. But she went the mouse route. Volumouse lets you customize the scrollwheel to control noise just the way you want to.
Ota Benga, Religion, and Darwinism
I'm really in no way anti-religion, but it still seems to me that hints at some sort of fundamental truth about the nature of religion in the U.S. Over at Savage Minds, the premiere anthropology blog, Kerim Friedman comments upon the case of Ota Benga, the "pygmy" kept in a cage at the Bronx Zoo's Monkey House in 1906 (and the subject of a fascinating recent New York Times piece). Ota Benga spent Saturday afternoons frolicking in a cage with an orangutan named Dohong. And writes Kerim: The exhibit quickly sparked protests from the Colored Baptist Ministers' Conference who objected not only to the racism of the exhibit, but also to its Darwinism. Priceless.
Software is Life
I wanted to add a response to this
post on the best software apps ever made, but commenting rights on Lifehacker are Gmail-style invite-only. Can you imagine such a thing? I want to express myself, and the owner of the forum in which I wish to do so is asserting her right to limit my speech! Arrg, downright un-American. Anyway, just means that I'll have to post it on my own site and that's fine by me. So, as software goes, I'll try almost anything once. But these are the ones
that I download/bookmark first on a new machine. Not neccessarily the best, but the one's that make up my work toolbox. For the amount of time I spend tethered to the computer, I realized as I wrote it that it's an amazingly small list:
It Insists Upon Itself
A colleague said that my "eh" reaction to Office Space reminded him of this Family Guy moment where Peter Griffin uses the last minutes of life to let his family know that he didn't care for The Godfather. Very funny stuff.
Adjusting the Backstay
Union Hall Cheese Balls
For all you cheese-loving Brooklynites, the fried Saga blue cheese balls coated in crushed apple cinnamon Cheerios and served with chestnut/pear brandy puree at the new Union Hall are to die for.
FYI, CDT and DOPA
Among the not-fans of the Deleting Online Predators Act recently passed by
the House is the Center for Democracy and Technology. DOPA, again, requires
that public libraries ban kids from accessing "social networking"
sites. I like CDT a lot -- they're a great, thoughoutful go-to group on information
policy. They've considered DOPA, and they seem
a bit in shock over how egregiously it limits access to information. (Alas,
that link goes to a pdf. The reason for why to release only pdf, I do not know.)
What they found:
DOPA would block minors' minor's access (and burden adults' access)
to a category of speech – mere conversation, including social, political,
medical, and an unlimited range of topics – that no court has ever allowed
the government to censor or regulate.
...
[T]he vast bulk of the speech blocked by DOPA – teens chatting with
their friends, posting photos and linking to their favorite music –
is perfectly healthy (or at least harmless), and is completely legal.
...
DOPA would flatly prohibit a library or school from ever allowing a minor
to participate in, for example, an online conversation among teens discussing
the latest movies (or any other topic deemed not to be "educational").
For libraries, the flat prohibition would be true even if a child's parent
gave permission for such access.
...
Critically, for many users, the sites blocked by DOPA provide the users'
only source and outlet for political information. Indeed, a range of political
candidates have created campaign sites on the social networking services. Blocking
access to, and the ability to express, this type of speech strikes at the core
of the First Amendment.
Wes Clark, for example, has a
MySpace page up ("Male, 61 years old, LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas")
so that he can talk to the young people where they congregate. Indeed, the General's
got 317 friends so far. Under DOPA, a 17 year-old student would be banned from
walking into her local public library and pulling up Clark's profile. Of course,
she could still do it at home, if she's lucky enough to have a computer at home. CDT's
concerned about this too:
Raising both constitutional and important policy concerns, DOPA would
also be a major step backwards in our nation's effort to close the gaping digital
divide that exists between affluent families able to bring broadband into their
home and those families whose children can only access the Internet at a school
or library.
DOPA was an end run around the legislative process. It was never vetted by a
congressional committee. It passed through the House under suspension of the
rules. What that that all means is that there was no real debate, even though
it will limit the ability of poorer kids to access a great deal of information,
connect with their friends, expand their worlds. Course, it did pass one crucial
test -- Congress's pedophilia rule. Even the crappiest bit of legislation that
mentions the molestation of kids gets as free pass. This one had clear sailing
the minute that they put "predators" in the title. Again, almost every
single member of Congress gave a thumbs up to the bill -- the
vote was 410-15.
Snakes on a Plane? I Don't See What the Big Deal Is
Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's just always what I think of when I hear the name of that movie.
Your United States Congress at Work, Freedom Fries Edition
As part of their ongoing commitment to taking care of business, the House has gone back to selling "French fries." For me, the worst part of it might be that -- in the Longworth Cafeteria at least -- they were actually called "Boardwalk Fries®" until Bob Ney got to them...
Your United States Congress at Work, the DOPA Edition
Last week the House passed DOPA, the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006. ("Deleting," get it? That's something you do with a computer.) What DOPA does is to require that libraries that receive a certain kind of federal funding ban kids from social networking sites. The idea is to protect kids from the menace of MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook. But how does the bill define social networking sites? That's anything that:
(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;
(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;
(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and
(v) enables communication among users.
If you're thinking, "hey, that sounds like my personal pages on Amazon! Or the profile I have on a group blog! Is Congress blocking those sorts of things?" As I find myself often saying when talking about the United States Congress, you're thinking too much.
The point isn't to actually do any sort of constructive good, it's to pander. Pander pander pander. Pander your pants off and see if you can get reelected. This bill came out of polling done by the Republican party on how they can appeal to suburban voters. That's it. If you think that it matters to them at all whether one kid is protected by the "menace" of MySpace from this bill, again, thinking too much. If you think that they actually considered that this bill is going to disproportionately affect poor kids who can't afford their own home computers -- again, thinking too much.
Some folks are saying that DOPA was completely rewritten the day before it passed the House, and never was vetted by a House committee. Which would be shocking if we actually thought that anyone up there cared about the legislative process.
Think about this. At BlogHer this weekend, social networking researcher danah boyd mentioned somewhat off-handedly that teenaged kids are moving off of MySpace and onto smaller social networking sites. Seems that MySpace has lost some of its cool. This was confirmed for me by a smart young guy that I work with who is focusing on social networking and youth voters. He says that some young people are moving to things to Xanga and other sites that are more targeted. But social networking sites aren't like file-sharing, where you can hope to block them out by blocking specific ports. There's no technical calling card of social networking sites that the computer or network can pickup on and filter. So it's going to be someone's job to keep a up-to-date list of what's the new MySpace or Facebook these days. Yup, that's what I want my federal government and our nation's librarians doing with our time.
I know that this is a bit heated (for me), but this just burns me up. I've heard that there's not much prospect for this in the Senate. (Another saying I rely upon when talking about Congress -- thank God for the United States Senate. It certainly has its troubles, but when you compare it to Romper Room that is the House...) I've heard that Sen. Santorum isn't interested in having this go anywhere, though I can't seem to find any confirmation of that online.
Lest you think that this is a purely Republican problem, the roll call vote on this was 410-15. (Though voting against it were all Dems -- John Conyers, Raul Grijalva, Maurice Hinchey, Mike Honda, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Zoe Lofgren, Donald Payne, Jan Schakowsky, Bobby Scott, Jose Serrano, Pete Stark, Diane Watson, and Lynn Woolsey.) This isn't a partisan problem. The problem is that we elect people either (a) without a brain or (b) afraid to use it. Enough.
|
| «
July 2006 | Main
| September 2006
» |
|
|
|
