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Goateewake up! |
A few years ago when I was working on my zine Lone Ranger Diaries: The Central Square Edition I spoke to Sarah Boyer from the Cambridge Historical Commission. I'm now reading the result of her work: Crossroads: Stories of Central Square. It's fascinating and gives me a spooky thrill to read of the people and places that preceded all that I know: to look at the old photographs and realize that while some things never change, nothing is ever the same.
From Frontline's Bigger Than Enron I realized that not only is corporate America antithetical to progressives such as myself, it's a danger to capitalists such as myself. Enron was only one of many failures (e.g., Sunbeam, and Waste Management) in which executives commit fraud by using accounting tricks to hype the stock of an ailing company in order to defraud hundreds of millions of dollars out of investors. For years, many folks with integrity have called for auditor independence (the auditor should be independent from pressure by consultants and underwriters in the same firm hyping the companies being audited), opposed the new limitations on the liability of white collar criminals (duplicity titled "tort reform"), and demanded that stock options be included in companies' expense reporting. When it all blew, the very same Congressmen who are in the corporate pocket and caused the problems asked, "how did this happen?" And of course, they've done nothing about it. In fact, Moyers is reporting this week that, "Despite all the evidence that small investors have been the victims of a con game, some of the big Wall Street firms are moving legislation through Congress that would prevent states from prosecuting them if they violate security laws."
[Update 2002.06.26: Worldcom reports $3 billion fraud — need I say more?]
One of the hazards of running a
site with lots of images, particularly one Google likes (e.g., google:punk),
are idiot boards. (I honestly don't know what the phenomenon is officially
called, but that's what I call them.) Folks start a silly thread, find images
and try to make funny comments. When I check my logs I'll note a smash of
hits to an image and a surge in my utilized bandwidth. For example, today I
noted that on this
French board someone posted a goofy image of me on a PDA discussion with
text that Babelfish translates
as, "I am the best DJ Professionnel for the clubbers exigeants. Mon set is
worked so that the POWER of my FURIOUS SEXYGROOVE makes vibrate the EROTIC
DANCEFLOOR 70'S with too-pure a staïle and thunder Sub-bass like an insane
chicken." I don't think it's even on topic!
Once an image gets popular, they repost it on every thread they can think of. A "goth" image from my site got to be so popular on these boards I eventually installed a rule that redirected any link coming from somewhere other than Google or my own site to a small "the bandwidth smackdown" image. Some of the comments on these boards are negative, some are positive, but they are uniformly inane.
And it gets worse. Teenage boys are fond of taking the very large anime images I use for desktop wallpaper as the background of their horrid home pages! Instead of downloading it for their own use, the images are fetched from my site by every person that views their page! One nuisance used an image that was 640x480 in size, about 40K total, and crammed it into a 30x50 box that acted as the icon associated with his persona on a message board. Every comment on every page he had ever posted to was now a pull on my site. He should've copied the photo, scaled it to a 2K thumbnail, and hosted it on his own site.
If they're lucky, they'll get the smack down. If they're being mean, I'll find an image of them, deface it in a way I find amusing, and serve it in its place. And there's nothing they can do once they've posted the link to the board!
"And since the best stories are about conflicts, the case journalists often make is is for the conflict itself. A good story therefore works as a brief against the absence of conflict." - Doc Searls.
Given my experience in, or very near, some hot seats at the W3C I've noted that the majority of the press is capable of telling 3 sorts of stories: someone is a god (e.g., Tim Berners-Lee), someone is a demon (e.g., Bill Gates, PICS), or there's a huge battle going on between two opponents -- even when there isn't! Sometimes the press might do little riffs on the motifs, like "PICS Savior or Devil" but don't let that confuse you. Aside from Salon, and some exceptional reporters you can expect as much nuance from the general press as a brass knuckle to the face.
I always thought of chickens as rather ugly and stupid creatures, but I was wrong. The chickens on Kauai, and particularly the roosters, are surprisingly beautiful. These are not the fat white poulty of Frank Purdue; these are proud and irridiscent descendents of dinosaurs. And they are everywhere. I heard multiple stories, none of which I'm able to confirm. Some say they spread when cock fighting was outlawed and their owners let them free. Others blame hurricane Iniki which blew them from their coops in '92.
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