2006 – Page 5 – Wetmachine

Congratulations Senator-Elect Webb! Congratulations Senator-Elect Tester

John November 8, 2006 - 9:53 am February 24, 2013"A Republic, if you can keep it", My Thoughts Exactly

Congratulations to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid! Great day in the Morning! Hallelujah!

Congrats of course to winners everywhere (most especially to those in the mainstream, majoritarian party, the Democratic Party). A Democratic-led House of Representatives! Speaker Nancy Pelosi! A Democratic majority in the Senate! Hoo-boy. Some hope, at last, that we may pull back from the brink.

In Virginia the Republican candidate for the Senate is the racist thug brownshirt liar George Felix Allen, and in Montana the Republican candidate for Senate is the corrupt firefighter-hating Abramoff flunky Conrad Burns. They’re backed by the full force of the Repubiican Bush/Cheney/Rove crime family, er, national party who rightly fear marginalization if not impeachment, trial and conviction if two more Democratic senators are seated, so don’t expect them to go down without a fight — a nasty, dirty, dishonest fight. But Tester and Webb and Reid are no patsies, and a fair count will prevail.

It will be easier to concentrate on my day job today. Somehow the dread is much, much less oppressive this morning.

Vote today, please

John November 7, 2006 - 1:54 pm February 24, 2013General, My Thoughts Exactly

At the end of a five-week long, and quite exhausting, business/family matters trip, I found myself watching TV in my hotel room in San Mateo, California, last Wednesday evening. Now then, sports is about the only thing I watch on TV, but during a commercial break in a really boring college football game, I stumbled upon Anderson Cooper interviewing Michael J. Fox on CNN. And I was transfixed. What struck me about Fox, apart from his obvious intelligence, passion, and wit (and of course the dyskinesia–he was swaying all over the place), was the absence of anger and vituperation. This was, you may recall, only about a week after Fox had been ridiculed by Rush Limbaugh for having Parkinson’s Disease, and interrogated by Katie Couric as to whether he was “overdoing it” for political effect. Cooper tried and failed to get a rise out of Fox; the man was clearly too focused on getting his message out to waste any time on animosity or indignation. Everything he said was positive and forward looking, even as he refuted bogus arguments of his opponents and detractors. I can’t remember Fox’s exact words, but I do remember him talking about the significance of “our franchise”, that is, our right to vote. A more stirring evocation of what we’re supposed to be all about you could hardly find. As he spoke about what our nation could and should be, I sat there thinking, “This is what a courageous patriot looks like.” I’ll tell you, I had tears coming down my face, I did. And I resolved to see if I could learn a thing or two from him about turning down the vitueration. (Which is why you have not seen me post anything yet on Ted Haggard. . .I’m thinking. . .)

Now, on the other side of the world one of my favorite writers has come back online — heartening to her fans, who feared the worst. I speak of Riverbend, of the blog Baghdad Burning. Now, when Riverbend writes, there is no check on her vituperation, nor should there be. Anyway, here’s her latest entry. Read to the last paragraph, and then, if you’re elegible to vote & have not yet done so, please go exercise that franchise. That’s what I’m going to do. Hope to see you at the polls.

Death of a Citizen Journalist

Harold November 2, 2006 - 7:01 pm February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

This article in the Houston Chronicle discusses the death of Indymedia reporter Brad Will. You can find the official statement from Indymedia NY here.
The Chronicle article also gives a good summary of the Indy media movement and what draws people to it. Some reflections on the differences between “indy media,” “citizen journalism,” “mainstream media” and what it means to be a citizen and a journalist below.

UPDATE 11/6 — There is a Petition drive to the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico demanding that the United States request that the Mexican Government investigate the killing of Brad Will and give this incident the same wight and concern as the killing of an American journalist working for a mainstream media outlet. You can read the letter and sign here.

LPFM Documentary THIS SUNDAY on the Hallmark Channel

Harold November 2, 2006 - 6:23 pm February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

On Sunday, November 5, at 7 a.m. ET/PT, the Hallmark Channel is rerunning a documentary on the Low Power FM service. If you have an interest in citizen activism against mainstream corporate radio, including the potential of citizen power against the super lobbying power of the National Association of Broadcasters (shamefully assisted by National Public Radio), then I highly recommend this film.

If you have an interest in supporting Low Power Radio, then support the Prometheus Radio Project. And, I can’t help but add, if you want to support the legal efforts to help LPFM fulfill its promise, support my employer Media Access Project.

If you don’t already know about LPFM, or why you should care, see below . . .

To the Thief Who Has Stolen My Sign

Stearns November 1, 2006 - 7:54 pm February 24, 2013General, Inventing the Future

[Next week’s election includes an amendment to the Wisconsin state consitiution. The amendment excludes homosexuals from whatever protection they might otherwise have, in that it prohibits the legislature from granting any civil union or other benefits except for couples defined on the basis of gender. Specifically, each couple is prescribed to be one man and one woman.

A friend asked me to put up a small sign that reads “A fair Wisconsin votes No …on the civil union ban.” Two days later, the sign had been stolen from my lawn on a non-through street.

I’ve replaced the sign, and attached the following letter.

I welcome comments and improvements, as I think I might share this letter with others, the local papers, etc.]

Big Win For Community Wireless At FCC

Harold November 1, 2006 - 6:56 pm February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

The FCC released its long awaited decision resolving Continental Airline’s complaint that Massport cannot order it to shut down its free wifi access for Continental customers.

While supremely important for its ultimate holding, the case contains many positive and useful determinations for unlicensed generally. It also contains two outstanding concurring statementsfrom the Democratic Commissioners. You can see Copps’ concurence here, and Adelstein’s here.

That’s also very good news. Almost a year ago, I worried that, with the departure of Michael Powell and Ed Thomas from the FCC, and the departure of Michael Gallagher from NTIA no one would champion the cause of unlicensed spectrum. But as Copps and Adelstein have shown, both in this decision and in their actions in last month’s item on the broadcast white spaces, Copps and Adelstein ‘get it’ on unlicensed spectrum and why it is so important.

Further analysis below . . .

FCC Meeting for November 3 . . . . It Just Keeps Getting Stranger

Harold October 31, 2006 - 7:00 pm February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

The FCC has issued the agenda for it’s November 3 meeting. Gone is the proposed Notice of Inquiry on Network Neutrality. And a number of non-merger related items have popped up instead. Meanwhile, the trade press report a hot and heavy debate around forcing AT&T to divest wireless spectrum to create a real competitor (you can read the comments I wrote for Media Access Project here).

My thoughts on all these doings below . . .

You've Got Mail!

Stearns October 28, 2006 - 8:42 pm February 24, 2013General, Inventing the Future

I’m sure getting a lot of junk mail lately. In the war between spammers and spam filters, the spammers are winning. I remember Paul Graham speaking five or six years ago at the AI lab about his ideas for Bayesian spam filters. I don’t think there was a single person in the room who didn’t think, “But why don’t the spammers just send their message in an image?” Well, pretty much all mail clients and many institutional filter’s have implemented Paul’s ideas anyway. It worked for a good while, but now of course the bad guys are sending pictures. I feel that I’m missing something important in not understanding why it has taken them so long.

How to Steal an Election

Gary October 27, 2006 - 11:43 am February 24, 2013"A Republic, if you can keep it", General Exception, My Thoughts Exactly

There’s been a lot of talk recently about electronic voting machines and the potential for fraud. To bring home just how serious this issue is, the always excellent Ars Technica has a chilling how-to guide on how to steal an election using electronic ballot machines. So simple, even a neocon could do it!

It amazes me how we’ve suddenly gone from a system that, while it may have its faults and has been abused in the past, at least is somewhat open. People would be able to stand at the polls and watch what was going on, and perhaps catch any fraud red-handed. In going to these electronic voting machines that do not leave any sort of audit trail, we have in effect, handed over the security of our democratic institutions to a private company. If we went to the average voter and said “hey, we’d like to hire this company that will collect and tabulate the all of the ballots in our election. You won’t be able to see what goes on within their company… you won’t be able to look at the ballots yourself… you’ll just have to accept whatever they say is the result of the election” I think most people would think it’s a lousy idea.

My ranting about the entire situation after the jump.

Fear Itself

Stearns October 27, 2006 - 9:47 am February 24, 2013Inventing the Future, metaphysics

I wanted to tell you a wonderful short story I had heard.

Listen to this woman – clearly from within a couple hundred miles of that region between Cologne and Katmandu. She’ll tell you a tale pulled from the darkest depths of her distant memory. You’ll learn something about how all of us perceive things.