Month: March 2007

Hooray for Libby Conviction!

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Just a note to celebrate the conviction of Shooter Cheney’s loyal underling Lewis Libby, a lying weasle if ever there was one (not to mention a purveyor of kiddie porn –see is “novel”). As expected, the corporate media are working overtime to spread the meme that some kind of injustice was done to poor ol’ Scooter. Well, that’s a syndrome we know well here at Wetmachine. Nobody expected Moloch to whither away after one little conviction, nor Bush neither. Nevertheless we can take joy that one soldier of the Bush crime family has been at least temporarily sidelined.

For a great analysis of the right wing/Bushista/corporate infotainment spin, see this helpful post at premiere site Firedoglake. And if you have a few pennies to throw in the direction of that stellar group of citizen journalists, by all means do so. They’re fighting a brave battle on behalf of all of us.

P.S. This FDL post about the role played by NPR’s “All Things Considered” in shilling for the administration is also well worth your while.

Libby trial reflection: “My pencil is dull and my handwriting stinks”

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Isadore Barmash, who passed away last November at the age of 84, was a longtime reporter for the New York Times. Political junkies may be forgiven for not being familiar with his extensive body of work, for Barmash’s beat was retail business, not politics. He had a particular interest in the apparel industry (he had worked at Women’s Wear Daily before joining the Times). His articles were found most often not in the front section of the paper, but deep in the business pages. I myself don’t care about fashion, and when I read a newspaper I usually skip the business stories. So I’m not the kind of guy who would be expected to notice Barmash’s byline. But I used to follow Barmash’s work because for a period in from the late 60’s through 1975, when I was in high school and college, he had series of front-page-of-the-New-York-Times articles that I found absolutely compelling.

His subject was my father.

I thought of Barmash a few weeks ago when Tim Russert’s testimony at the Lewis Libby trial was reported. Under oath, Russert said that when he talked to senior government officials, everything was “off the record” unless the official explicitly agreed to go “on the record.” People who value the role of journalism in a democracy were appalled by Russert’s admission, but attentive students of contemporary American “journalism” were not surprised. Dan Froomkin rightly said, “That’s not reporting, that’s enabling.” Russert’s sworn testimony made patently clear that what he does for a living is not journalism properly understood, but rather a form of court stenography served up in a a faux-journalism format.

Below the fold, what Barmash, a real journalist, told my father about “on the record” and “off the record.”

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Internet radio in immanent danger?

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According to this story (via slashdot), some regulatory board that I’ve never heard of has handed down some ruling which, if it stands, could be the death knell of internet radio (or a t least of internet radio that originates in countries that adhere to this regime?).

As I type this I’m listening to the fantastic (OpenLaszlo application)Pandora — an internet radio station that astoundingly accounts for more than 1% of all internet traffic (??? can this be so???). I also listen to a lot of college radio stations streaming on the net.

Is this mavevlous technology about to be taken away from us by the RIAA goons? I don’t pretend to understand the legal, political, or technical issues. An opinion from Mr. Feld is clearly in order. What’s the word, Harold? Should I be panicking?

Distributed Systems Part 2: Off-Island Data

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The Core Croquet model describes a complete independent simulation, in which changing behavior is automatically synchronized between all participants. The model is best thought of as describing replicated objects with behavior over time, rather than as older models of program and data (or state). The collection of objects in a given replicated simulation is called an “island.”

However, one of the nice things about the Croquet model is that it can co-exist with other models. It is perfectly reasonable to use a “data” model for immutable objects (which do not change their behavior over time).

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