My good old friend Robinson is one of those guys who can put pen to paper in an afternoon and make something like what you see here. Imagine having this on a shirt for 10 bucks…. You really can’t beat that.

He just started an etsy shop @ mrescobarshirts.etsy.com where you can grab one of these for your bod. Take a gander. I got this one:

He’s also a contributor at ‘The New Orders‘

via: digiactive (nytimes photo)

Sakura and The Quests – Stupid Cupid

Connie Francis – Stupid Cupid

(via Skreemr)

Personally, I don’t feel I make much use of my daily travels around the city. Within the ‘look at your feet’ social ambiance to and from work, I see beautiful things: the Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty, parts of Chinatown, ritzy SOHO, and a few blocks of Park Slope, Brooklyn. But do I really see it? Could I remember 3 things I saw on my way from my office to the Subway? Probably not. When I’m going somewhere on the weekends or evenings, I’m more focused on the destination than the incredible history of the city I’m passing right by. In short, the long summer weekends in this Northern latitude demand we make the most of our time out of the cold:

The essentials are this: As the inaugural of an organization that will sponsor exploration-oriented walks, with no guides and no agenda, at locations in the city selected by chance, I’m getting a group of people together to walk from Brooklyn to Staten Island. This is no small feat, as the only way to get there on foot is a 40-mile, two-state walk via Manhattan, to the George Washington Bridge, through 20 miles of Jersey, to the Bayonne bridge. To up the ante, it will be a five-borough walk. And it’ll be taking place on the longest day of the year, just so we can get the most out of it. It’s totally not-for-profit, free, and aimed at simply getting people to slow down their lives for one day and take a serious look at their cit(ies) — and as a side effect raising awareness of flashwalk as organizer of such strangeness.

Here’s the details:

Questions? See ya there.

FB event

Freshly launched, Cassandra Jenkins DOT com

An overload of art…

…we will never forget this event. People will not give up. They are being crushed into silence, but they won’t be silent forever. They have new ways to connect to one another. They, the regime, can block Facebook today but they can’t do it forever. Something has changed in this country, people have been cheated but they have seized more freedom. Now we are like caged lions, so taking anything from us will be harder in future.

I will never lose my hope and as long as I live in Iran, I will do my best for it. America must try to negotiate with Iran. President Obama has offered Iran a chance. This election is a setback, but he must not give up. It is just a moment in time, the blink of an eye. Time will expose the liars’ lies and history will be its witness.” (via The Independent)

Iran - protest image via

Update: 2:56p ET... Ahmadinejad's site appears to be down
due to the digi-attack.
Update: 6:56p ET People are reportedly being shot in the street.
It has escalated tremendously. 

Disrupting propaganda on the realtime web…

Here’s a list of resources for learning more about this unprecedented collaborative effort to take down propaganda sites in Iran. It’s a literal battle out there to make sure information is accurate. Very interesting to watch this develop:

• The site ‘Page Reboot‘ is being used to rapidly refresh (and overload) Khamenei’s and Ahmadinejad’s sites…
• List of Twitterers in Iran
• #iranelection + recent uploads to youtube
• People are offering SSH tunnels to Iranians to bypass the filtering. Proxy servers are also easy to find.
• Good read on how the election was stolen at Informed Comment
• Huffpo is liveblogging what they call “the uprising”
• Article on the DOS attacks + the best reasons why you should not participate in these attacks

This is all very fascinating to watch: a collaborative effort to disrupt disinformation that spreads as fast a tweet can travel (the below link has been clicked around 3,000 times!)

In my opinion, the best thing to do is to discredit, not destroy propaganda sites. Create content that challenges the propaganda if you can; I do not condone DOS attacks, but perhaps if you CANNOT WRITE you should simply help others find trustworthy sources.

I started whatsonyourthing.com for a number of reasons

• I find it disturbing when people unwittingly carve out a huge chunk of their day to interact on a small screen, whether it be for text messaging, web browsing, or for playing games. This is a lo-fi behavior in a hi-fi world. We can do better than this.
• We often communicate with people geographically close to us at great volumes through small devices, though we can more genuinely, accurately, and more humanely communicate face to face.
• Cellphones, especially those with the internet enabled, drown out what should be a natural process of questioning one’s surroundings. When a Google search can answer most questions, what’s the point of being mindfully engaged with the world around you?
• We must consider our ability to be mindful, attentive, and engaged in an age of ubiquitous technology.
• I believe these questions can be asked most powerfully through images and photography. There will, however, be infrequent pull quotes from relevant articles such as this:

An acquaintance of mine has a teenage daughter. Like most teens in this century she spends her day texting her friends, abbreviating her life into 140 character hints, flinging these haikus out to an invisible clan of mutual texters. It’s an always-on job, this endless encapsulation of the moment. During dinner, while walking, on the toilet, lounging in bed, or in any state of wakefulness, to chat is to live. Like all teens, my friend’s daughter tested the limits of her parents’ restrictions. For some infraction or another, they grounded her. And to reinforce the seriousness of her misconduct, they took away her mobile phone. Immediately the girl became physically sick. Faint, nauseous, and so ill she couldn’t get out of bed. It was if her parents had amputated a limb. And in a way they had. Our creations are now inseparable from us. Our identity with technology runs deep, to our core. via Kevin Kelly @ technium

To get the latest from whatsonyourthing, follow it on Tumblr, or subscribe to the feed. Thanks!

At 4:30am I left my smoky room and snapped a couple pictures (that came out pretty red)

The burned out window is the 7th from the left. Also note that we have the only tree on the block!

Today was the day that Army bases were ordered to stop blocking social media sites. No Youtube, yes Vimeo. No Myspace, yes Facebook. Seems arbitrary, but those are the sites I prefer anyway, so I would be happy were I in the mil.

It’s interesting what remains banned… The list includes:

(a) YouTube, http://www.youtube.com

(b) 1.FM, http://www.1.fm

(c) Pandora, http://www.pandora.com

(d) Photobucket, http://www.photobucket.com

(e) MySpace, http://www.myspace.com

(f) Live365, http://www.live365.com

(g) hi5, http://www.hi5.com

(h) Metacafe, http://www.metacafe.com

(i) MTV, http://www.mtv.com

(j) BlackPlanet, http://www.blackplanet.com

(k) StupidVideos, http://www.stupidvideos.com

(l) Filecabi,http://www. filecabi.net.

Check out the official order below…

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

COPY ____ OF ____ COPIES d HQS, 93 SIGNAL BRIGADE FORT EUSTIS, VA 23604

18 1500 May 09

OPORD 09-14, WEB FILTERING STANDARD

References:

a. Signal Command Theater, OPORD 09-01, 100 Day Plan b. FRAGO 2 TO SECTION 6.2 TO TAB C TO APPENDIX 2 TO ANNEX C TO ARMY NETOPS OPORD 05-01(U) c. JTF-GNO ODM 059-07, IAP ACL/Security Filter Update for 15MAY2007.

Task Organization. N/A.

1. SITUATION: The Army has recently made access to several social media websites available from the Army home page within the .mil domain.

Access to these sites or a subset of these sites is available from some installations across CONUS and restricted at others. Similarly, web-based email is available from some installations and restricted at others. IAW 7 th Signal Command Theater 100 Day Plan, and in an effort to establish a web filtering standard for DOIMs across CONUS, the 93d Signal Brigade Commander directs all DOIMs to allow access to specific social media sites and access to web-based email from their respective campus area networks.

2. MISSION: Permit access to specific social media websites and all web-based email from the installation campus area NIPR network NLT 22 May 09.

3. EXECUTION:

a. Concept of Operations: IOT support the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to “tell the Army story” and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information, the social media sites available from the Army homepage http://www.army.mil, will be made accessible from all campus area networks. Additionally, all web-based email will be made accessible from all campus area NIPR networks in the 93d AOR.

b. Task to subordinate Units.

(1) All DOIMs will modify their web filtering systems to allow access to

the following web sites NLT 22 MAY 09 :

(a) Facebook, http://www.facebook.com

(b) Delicious, http://www.delicious.com

(c) Flickr, http://www.flickr.com

(d) Twitter, http://www.twitter.com

(e) Vimeo, http://www.vimeo.com

OPORD 09-14, WEB FILTERING STANDARD 15 1700 May 09

(2) IAW JTF-GNO ODM 059-07, IAP ACL/Security Filter Update for 15MAY2007, The document can be found at:

https://www.jtfgno.mil/operations/odm/2007/ODM_059_07/ODM_059_07.doc

All DOIMs will block access to the following sites:

(a) YouTube, http://www.youtube.com

(b) 1.FM, http://www.1.fm

(c) Pandora, http://www.pandora.com

(d) Photobucket, http://www.photobucket.com

(e) MySpace, http://www.myspace.com

(f) Live365, http://www.live365.com

(g) hi5, http://www.hi5.com

(h) Metacafe, http://www.metacafe.com

(i) MTV, http://www.mtv.com

(j) BlackPlanet, http://www.blackplanet.com

(k) StupidVideos, http://www.stupidvideos.com

(l) Filecabi,http://www. filecabi.net.

(3) All DOIMs, be prepared to make the necessary modifications to their Blackberry servers to allow mobile applications of these sites accessible and functional once STIG compliance is verified.

(4) Notify 93d Signal Brigade, Current Operations once completed via email at XXXXXX@us.army.mil

(5) Exemptions for other social media sites will be submitted in RFI format to 93d Signal Brigade Current Operations section at (757) XXX-XXXX, DSN XXX-XXXX, or XXXXX@conus.army.mil.

c. Coordinating Instructions: The POC for this tasking is Mr. XXXXXXX, 93d Signal Brigade, (757) XXX-XXXX, DSN XXX-XXXX, XXXXXX@us.army.mil 4. SERVICE AND SUPORT: N/A 5. COMMAND AND SIGNAL: CPT XXXXXX 93 d SIG BDE S3, DSN: 826-2664, Commercial: (757) XXX-XXXX Email: XXXX@us.army.mil

ACKNOWLEDGE:

GARRISON

COL

OFFICIAL:

Kuntz

S3

DISTRIBUTION: All

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Here’s a few photos from the Bushwick open studios last Sunday. I saw perhaps 20 of the 200 open studios/spaces, and snapped pics of just what stood out to me. Sometimes the physical art was less interesting than the studio space.
I got a chance to chat with a lot of amazing artists who were chillin in their studios waiting to talk to random strangers with cameras like me. I asked a lot of questions then snuck up on them with my camera! My path is plotted out roughly below. For the full map + list of artists, download this pdf.
Oliver Warden @ Robot bigfoot. Besides some awesome large scale drip oils, he created a set of screenshots from Counter Strike (as c-prints in very high res) that he said explored the Iraq war, its outcome, and their uncertainties.

Also met Fred Harper whose caricatures I had seen before…
He does awesome caricatures for ‘The Week’ like this:

via

Here is the general path I took..

For more info about the whole dealie: check out the pdf above, and Artsinbushwick

Upcoming lecture

An Iconography of the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn, Popular Medical Illustration and the Visual Rhetoric of Modernity
A presentation by Michael Sappol, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies
Friday June 19th
7:30 PM
Free
543 Union Street

This talk focuses on the publications of Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), a German-Jewish physician. Between 1920 and 1950, Kahn was a widely-read author of books and articles for the general public on medicine, health and science. His principal works, Das Leben des Menschen [The Life of Man] (5 vols.; Stuttgart, 1922-31) and Der Mensch: Gesund und Krank [Man: In Health and Sickness] (2 vols.; Zürich, 1939) feature thousands of illustrations. Influenced by Dada, neue Sachlichkeit, surrealism, futurism, Bauhaus, constructivism, Art Deco, neo-classicism, comic strips, photomontage, and advertising graphics, Kahn, and the artists working under his direction, visually explained how the human body works, based on the findings of modern biological science. At the same time, the images refer back to the chaos, violence, impasses, pleasures, dreams, and technological and sociocultural ambitions of early and mid-20th-century Germany. Kahn deployed a visual vocabulary of modernism to figure industrial modernity within the body and the body within industrial modernity. The result was a corpus of images and tropes which imagined a new body for the modern age. (via)

Get the full map of vendors/galleries here

Join a community of committed bibliophiles in their noble journey to complete David Foster Wallace’s masterpiece Infinite Jest this summer. David Foster Wallace was genius, and I’m glad he’s being honored in this way. For a taste of Wallace, here’s a few words from his May 21, 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio:

As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. (full text)

I wish he was still creating.

California is at the point of political exhaustion. A package of budget answers was defeated overwhelmingly on May 19, shredding a fragile compromise. Coming up with a new set of answers, while the economy worsens and interest groups clamor, has pushed the state near the breaking point.

June 15th is the deadline.

via California’s time is running out.

Also check out her senior thesis Flickr set:

Below are some photos I’ve taken of her work:

Unfortunately, danielmorgan.com is some sort of crazy ex-celeb. bummer…

hot day. hot mommas.

Jessica Grindstaff, Becky Yurek, Saraya Shah, Stephanie Draves, Ben Shattuck, Leilani Arita, and my friend Cassandra Jenkins will have an open studio next weekend in Brooklyn. Please make it a part of your life…

(recent work by Cassandra)

So what’s an example of an inspiring Wild Things-like piece o’ work? Jeanne Detallante’s work:

via Rubin Recommends

Read/view it….

Also see the ‘Big Picture‘ on the topic.

Today I received a fantastic bundle of postcards as a part of my sister’s (Katie’s) work with NAIL (Not Always in Location)–a curatorial collective at CCA where she is currently studying towards her master’s in Curatorial Practice. Explaining the contents of this secret package would violate the package itself, but I will here reference the hi-fi notice the lucky few recipients received:

The envelope and it’s contents are the fifth and most recent project I organized with my curatorial collective, NAIL (Not Always in Location) at California College of the Arts.  We collaborated as a class of 12 to explore themes of the “loneliness of the project,” as discussed by the writer Boris Groys.  We all worked independently, with outside artists, or other students at the school to put together this multiple.

For more information, please visit: http://nailv.blogspot.com/

A few of the postcards contained references to Katie’s other project “The Cabin Project” over at cabinproject.tumblr.com. Check it out…

…the office itself is a little creepy. I didn’t work there. I live in Colorado. But I’d visit 3-4X a year. Everybody whispers. It’s not exactly like being in a library; it’s more like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying. Like someone’s dying, and everybody feels a little guilty about it. There’s a weird tension to the place. If you raise your voice to normal level, heads pop up from cubicles. And from around the stacks of review copies that lie everywhere like a graveyard of writers’ aspirations. It always seemed strange. Making it to the New Yorker is an acheivement [sic]. It is vastly prestigious, of course. And the work is truly satisfying. Imagine putting out that magazine every week! Yet nobody at the office seems very happy. The atmosphere is vastly strained. (via)

In my experience, there’s a hushed way about the offices, but it had nothing to do with death…. it was just the expression of concern that a figure like John Updike (RIP) or a poet laureate would be aurally assaulted by outbursts.

Video embedding disabled. See on the tube here.

Just saw these kids at the Bellhouse. Solid…

Chairlift – Planet Health (album version)

• [watch in HD/quicktime]
• (CHAIRLIFT) [myspace]

Two plugins and one checkbox on Friendfeed:

1) Get Wp-sup. SUP is the protocol that updates Friendfeed, kindly developed by Friendfeed. It’s an instantaneous ping the moment a post goes up (one second) INFO: Check out this FAQ page, where you can also test the manual update of SUP. Also see the Google Code page.

2) Media RSS makes sure your images are in enclosure tags so Friendfeed can wrap its pretty head around them. If you have three mp3 files in your post, they will show up. First image is slapped in there too. For an example see this MONEYDICK mp3+image post translated to Friendfeed style.

3) Notify twitter when your blog is updated by checking the “Post my FriendFeed entries on Twitter by default” to the “Advanced Twitter Settings” page. Now the instantaneousness of Friendfeed hits twitter.Three seconds to twitter reference of your blog post. See below:

3.1) Extra sauce: Show Friendfeed comments on your blog with “Friendfeed Comments.”

Become an Enabler (of the realtime web)

RSS doesn’t need to change, it just needs some patching.

There’s crazy talk coming out of Mr. Gillmor about RSS dying, as though there’s something wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with it. It will continue to be the protocol for those who read blogs. Steve Gillmor’s sensationalist post (replete with Beatles photos) didn’t make much of a point against RSS except that he doesn’t like non-fulltext feeds (and he has a lot of “Friends” on Twitter). But his major complaint with RSS is that it’s not realtime:

…realtime has swept past the field as though the rest were sleep-walking. Realtime is the time for artists, for interpreting the stream and sending deeply nuanced signals with humor, music, respect for the dialogue but none for the chattering of the false debates of the cable networks. (via)

I defer to Dave Winer who developed RSS for a response:

…RSS is as dead as HTTP and SMTP, which is to say it’s alive and kicking. These protocols get widely implemented, are so deeply ingrained in the infrastructure they become part of the fabric of the Internet. They don’t die, they don’t rest in piece. They become the foundation for everything that follows. via:#

But RSS does have limitations. If you’re a content creator, you use an RSS or ATOM feed. Because users don’t know when you’ve posted content, you offer Email subscriptions, or you post your content on Twitter with Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed updates every 30 minutes… hardly the ‘realtime’ web.There’s really no faster way than to integrate with Friendfeed or a Wordpress Twitter plugin like “Tweetsuite.”

So what’s the fastest way… I’m talking 2 seconds… to get your content posted on Twitter/Friendfeed and in front of the eyeballs of whoever gives a damn?

The Future

When Twitter Search gets it’s makeover, perhaps the clunkiness of RSS, (when paired with Friendfeed) will truly create a functional real-time web. We don’t yet have the search figured out for ‘now’ but it’s happening slowly.

Friendfeeders–who are now getting used to the realtime nature of content, don’t always play nice with Twitterers. Users like Robert Scoble have forsaken Twitter for the dynamic true realtime conversational nature of Friendfeed: Imagine commenting on a twitter post as naturally as commenting on a blog post!  Content creators like scoble in the realtime web must help lead the charge for content creators to post their content on Twitter+Friendfeed as it happens. Only with SUP + RSS + Twitter + PersonRank-enabled Twitter search will we have an Internet where realtime happens.

An unsubstantiated rumor of Twitter’s power:

Jayaram told of being in the Twitter offices in San Francisco on March 30, when the Twitter engineers noticed that the word “earthquake” had suddenly started trending up. They didn’t know where the earthquake was. Several seconds later, their building started to shake. The earthquake had been in Morgan Hill, 60 miles south of San Francisco, and the tweets about the shaker reached the office faster than the seismic waves themselves. (via)

Note: this post will appear immediately after I post it for my twitter/friendfeed followers, but will be lost and forgotten, even if I schedule it for the Pacific Time lunch break.

Just a-tonal as is comfortable: Sufjan Stevens – You are the Blood

This is just a small part of the Moneydickcast

Asha Puthli

El Michels Affair – Shimmy Shimmy Ya

Marlena Shaw – California Soul

Asha Puthli – I dig Love

The Dells – Trains and Boats and Planes

(now that I have this fancy pants audio player, I’ll be posting more songs for yall)

Some teasers:

• France, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, UK and some Scandinavian countries are the most active countries in Europe in addressing the issues related to nanoregulation. The report also describes the various voluntary measures currently in progress or already completed.
• Nanoregulation must be regarded as a dynamic issue which must adapt to the evolution of the scientific knowledge, applications and public attitude. A continuous updating must be part of the governance of nanotechnology.
• Public acceptance and public engagement are core aspects of the debate. While in the USA and some other countries, public participation is seen, in the first place, as an instrument to ensure public acceptance (or to avoid negative risk perception), European vision seems more focused on fostering the broader concept of “public engagement” in the development and governance of nanotechnologies as a way of democratic legitimisation.
• As a general conclusion, most governments and regulatory authorities consider existing regulatory frameworks, such as REACH in Europe and TSCA in USA, appropriate in principle to deal with many of the nanomaterials currently in use. However, the many divergent positions regarding different stakeholder groups are also pointed out in the mapping study.

The bolded text speaks to a report (Religious beliefs and public attitudes toward nanotechnology in Europe and the United States) released in Dec of 08 regarding a survey of Nanotechnology’s “Moral Acceptability.” The study established a correlation between religiosity and moral acceptability of nanotechnology. The more religious respondants deemed nanotechnology more unacceptable. This is a feature of the American psyche that has affected how public institutions approach and frame Nano issues. To appear safe, new technologies must be more rigorously framed as morally ambivalent than in European (read: godless) nations. Observe the pretty graph:

So what do you make of this?

• Always a fan… the latest Edge newsletter is out. Check it here. I even linked the period because I enjoy it so much. As with all publishers, they have found themselves a reason to be on twitter.
• In the ’stuff to read’ vein, check out The Morning News. They do not disappoint those who seek the cynical Harper’s weekly-like news review.
• Check out the Cabin Project.
• And a celebration of triangles
• A friendfeed room with a bunch of feeds containing news about Vassar from twitter, blogs, the newspapers, radio station, etc.
• Below you’ll find a jubiliant still from the documentary “Which way home.” I caught the world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jump to it when it hits your town! (review here)
• See where Vassar’s PR dollars go (Founder’s day video)
• (and at the top you’ll see the greatest kitty I ever did see this weekend at Founder’s day)
• And don’t forget, you can always find me chugging along at @danielmorgan, and more VISUALLY at THEFATANIMALS.COM.

Still from "Which way home"... a must see documentary about migrant children who travel hundreds of miles to enter the U.S. via trains.

While I’m on a byclist rights binge, thought I post a couple videos:

In Denmark, Cops hug and provide helmets to bikers.

In NY, cops tackle you?

1. Do something
2. Make a fuss
3. Find the right people
4. Roll with the opportunities
5. Be tenacious
6. Sometimes just showing up is enough
7. There’s no such thing as too many good friends

via: http://www.westsidebikeside.com/ (where I read about all the terrible things that happen to bikers in my home city of LA)

This boy engages with history, preaches the gospel, and reminds us that we are all products of our surroundings. Who are you? And what did you preach when you were young?

Videos of children on youtube–especially ridiculous ones like this one–make me wonder about the permanence of this format, and its frightening future indexability.

• If the child–10 years from now–were to search based on his voice (a capability in the works for media searching), would he receive this result?
• At what age will this child ‘discover’ this video of himself? When will/might he prefer it taken down?
• If this child becomes President some day, what role might this video play?

Interactive Museum from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

Here are two samples from the range of audio tools online. The first is simple, (tonematrix) and the second is far more complex (Audiotool). Please check them both out, but imagine for yourself what you would like to do someday online. Someday you WILL….

‘Tone Matrix’ is just that, an X – Y map of tones on which you can clickify to make tones….music reduced to dots in a row, all lovingly prepared in .flv form. Visit http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Above is a screenshot of SUPAR WEB AUDIO TECHNOLOGY with working dials and all @ http://www.hobnox.com/audiotool

When the Internet began to really grow in the late 90s, the public understood it as a useful parallel to the more tangible content delivery systems already in place. It was believed that magazines, newspapers, and television would exert their presence primarily in the realm of non-Internet space, but each would have a presence on the net to offer extras like an archive of their content or a place for last week’s crossword puzzle answers. Against the wishes of the big media, software, and information-delivery corporations, the online community began to make its own content, sell products, tell the world’s news, and entertain the masses. The net’s producers are not only making this global content more cheaply, but its quality and integrity far surpasses the more corporate producers. This shift in authorship has implications in every aspect of visible media and software.

When the people begin to be the creators of information, programs, and entertainment, life tends to get better. A more online-centric world leads us to the Open Source revolution, the latest buzz phrase to describe the increased communality of the net and information politics. Programs work better, and thousands of dedicated users work on free operating systems like Linux in a coordinated globally-connected setting. Along with this revolution, programs, information, and images now more frequently bear the stamp of Creative Commons, a designation for freely distributed content that can never be owned or sold but must be attributed to its original creator. Better programs and information is the fruition of a fluid digital commons running circles around companies still trying to sell their inferior goods.

A more ‘open’ web means much more than just changes in journalism and software. The invention of the Wiki, a web structure that allows any page under that wiki to be edited by anyone reading it, has revolutionized the way thousands of groups communicate. It has led to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that now boasts over half a million English articles and hundreds of thousands more in other languages. In the words of one Wired magazine reviewer, “In the metamathematics of encyclopedias, 500 Kvarans equals one Pliny the Elder.” To bring this closer to home, search for Vassar College and add to that entry. It seems to be lacking many important factoids.

The concept behind wikis is almost beautiful. They are self-healing, self-growing, and self-managing. Any defacement can be instantly reversed by someone who discovers it because page versions are stored. Pages organize themselves. All one needs to do is create a community that has a following. If you start it, they will build it—sometimes at a dizzying 700 article a day rate like the case of Wikipedia. This is only the text and picture based world we’re dealing with now. Moving images are a whole new ball game, with the same changing rules.

When choosing television programming, this more open Internet will soon be a more viable delivery vehicle. Already in Austria, a net-based TV station produced by the 8,000 residents of the town Engerwitzdorf has produced 60 news segments that can be downloaded on demand. The service also puts out regular news reports—all for free. There are very few obstacles for setting up these types of video programs—the United States just needs to catch up. Getting these huge files to their respective audiences is a major obstacle, but there’s a fairly young technology that makes it easy as pie.

Using Bit Torrent, a distributed file propagation system, it’s possible to spread a file the size of a DVD to thousands of people in one day. This marvel of programming has revolutionized the way multimedia can be distributed. Currently, Bit Torrent traffic makes up more than one-third of all Internet traffic. It is no longer economically unfeasible to produce full-length movies and distribute them digitally around the world. Bit Torrent provides the downloader with a system that takes pieces of the file you need from people who need pieces of the file you have. Though it can be generally explained in one sentence, this simplicity is what has ensured its success. This sharing mechanism means cheap and lightning-fast distribution of even the largest files. An independent film house only needs a broadband Internet connection to show their movie to the world.

Here’s what should be expected: film and television producers will find a way to make their content available online in a protected streaming form. They will soon see they are dealing with a more connected audience that uses selfish devices like Tivos that cut out commercials and DVRs that play recorded TV shows. Once they get Internet users into their streaming solution with carefully researched profit models, the entire world of television will shift to the net. Cable television and cable Internet will be indistinguishable, and the big media companies will soon find a way to make both profitable. The trouble is, finding that illusive security algorithm that protects content from piracy is like finding a four-leaf clover in the Sahara. There’s always a way to get content on the free Internet.

This new open Internet is growing into whatever the world wants it to be. Lucky for us, we hold the reigns, not corporations, governments, or private interests.

Originally published in the Vassar Miscellany

A web-u-drama about the significant sandwiches in our lives…

Listen here: Randalph, Geoey, & Tommy

Written, Produced, and Performed by James Patrick Roehl [msg]

More James below:

Loved these guys live, now you can have a taste… Guess what… they’re on myspace.

• Phantogram – Mouthful of Diamonds.mp3

(posted with permission)

After reading an article on Wikileaks regarding the Balad Burn Pit, where toxic chemicals such as

“…acetaldehyde, Acrolien, Arsenic, Benzene, Carbon Monoxide, Ethylbenzene, Formaldehyde, Hydrogen Cyanide, Hydrogen Fluoride, Phosgene, Sulfur Dioxide, Sulfuric Acid, Toluene, Trichloroethane and Xylene…”

are burnt, I became very angry. I then searched for images of the pit itself and found an image of a servicewoman disposing of used fatigues, rubber boots (which produces Hydrogen Cyanide) and more. The images were posted on AF.mil and Defenselink.mil:

(I understand that many items burnt do not create toxic fumes. Bear with me)

The caption reads:

3/11/2008 – Senior Airman Frances Gavalis tosses unserviceable uniform items into a burn pit March 10 at Balad Air Base, Iraq. Military uniform items turned in must be burned to ensure they cannot be used by opposing forces. Airman Gavalis, a 332nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron equipment manager, is deployed from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Julianne Showalter) [link]

In MILspeak, the “long term risks” of the previously cited nasty chemicals “were estimated to be low.” In reality, those who suffer ill effects after exposure to Balad and other pits like it have nowhere to turn legally or medically. Sufferers have invented words like “Iraqi Crud” and “Black goop” to describe what comes out of their lungs. Six years into the Iraq war without a proper incinerator for hazardous materials is six years too long.

Kelley Kennedy, a reporter for Army Times writes “Though military officials say there are no known long-term effects from exposure to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 100 service members have come forward to Military Times and Disabled American Veterans with strikingly similar symptoms: chronic bronchitis, asthma, sleep apnea, chronic coughs and allergy-like symptoms. Several also have cited heart problems, lymphoma and leukemia.” [link]

Of course, civil suits have been filed, but with so many plaintiffs and interests involved, we can look forward to a new ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ suit that lasts decades. As should have been made clear in your education, chemical weapons have been linked to US mil-related afflictions. (See the Riegle Report). War is naturally a debris / body / waste generating enterprise, so it’s no surprise that suits related to burn pits bring up related issues:

KBR [the Private firm charged with managing some burn pits] dumped medical waste, including needles, bandages, and body parts in the open pit. On one occasion,” the suit states, the plaintiff “witnessed a wild dog running around base with a human arm in its mouth.

Say I’m concerned about my friend stationed near Balad… I search for some authority on the matter: The official report by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) on air quality around Balad seems like just the thing. Too bad: It’s not available online but you can buy it for $25 dollars.

At least we can read the Abstract, which informs us that burning toxic waste is A-OK for us and all of Iraq. “Acceptable Risk”:

Abstract: This report documents the results of ambient air sampling of multiple classes of pollutants expected to be emitted by municipal waste open burn pit operations conducted at Balad Air Base, Iraq. The results were used to develop a screening health risk assessment (HRA) of military personnel located at the site and likely exposed to these pollutants. Findings indicate that measured exposure levels from burn pit operations are not routinely above deployment military exposure guidelines (MEGs) for exposures up to 1 year, levels which are not likely to cause short-term, onset health effects. A human HRA was performed under guidance outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). These results indicate an “acceptable” health risk for both cancer and non-cancer long-term health effects. Recommendations are provided to reduce the generation of burn pit emissions, thereby reducing exposure to personnel. via

[ img via ]

Related

• Burn Pit at Balad raises Health Concerns (Army Times)
• Report: Army making toxic mess in war zones (Military Times)
• Congressmen want more info on ‘Burn Pit’ claims (CNN)

‘Web trends‘ put out by Information Architects (.jp) is always a treat. Their map of the movers and shakers of the web are laid out like the Tokyo subway with a surprising amount of dimension: rank, reliability, site type, and key figures…. The layout is currently in final beta stage, so head on over there to yell at them about placing Yahoo as a subsidiary of Google, and to kindly inform them that is IMDb not IMDB… Here’s some enlargements from the above graphic because not everyone has a 80inch monitor. (that’s not to say I do)

Unbelievably large version here.

Animal Collective – My Girls from Rob Chesnutt.

Also check out some old people reviewing the song.

Check out Alastair Clark’s portfolio. The above images are from the ‘Skylight’ series, a sort of ‘found image’ series of weather sat images and meditation on cyclone destruction as seen from space.

via Data Mining

…When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

Strong words… Via edge

A DVD workprint of Wolverine: Origins, aka “Leg Shaving Wolverine” according to IMDB has reportedly appeared across the interwebs after an internal leak made a nono.

Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine is currently slated for a May 1, 2009 release date in the U.S., but unfortunately, it looks like a few people might be getting their hands on the film a bit earlier than intended. Reports are pouring in that a full-length, DVD-quality workprint of the film has been leaked onto the internet and is quietly making its way across various bittorrent sites and other unsavory online venues. According to Drew McWeeny at HitFix, who has evidently seen parts of the video file, the copy is “near-finished…marred only by a few unfinished FX shots.” In addition, “there’s no timecode, no watermark…nothing. It’s a clean, perfect copy.”

This is perhaps the biggest leak for a major tentpole release in recent memory. Leaving aside the well-known phenomenon of Oscar screener leaks, workprint leaks have certainly happened in the past. For example, Eli Roth’s Hostel 2 leaked onto the internet several weeks before its release (in that situation, Roth was furious and blamed the leak for the film’s weak box office performance). Other films such as Rob Zombie’s Halloween and Michael Moore’s Sicko also experienced similar issue. However, those films were all relatively small compared to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a film which 20th Century Fox was probably betting on to help revive its recent lackluster box office performance.

The film’s production has already been plagued by bad buzz, and with a fairly pristine copy of the film floating around for consumption by the very audience the film is targeted at, it will all probably combine to have a dramatic and negative impact on this film’s opening and overall box office performance.  via slashfilm

This is really historic people… this workprint, besides infuriating Hollywood and employing a lot of copyright lawyers, will teach millions of people about the sticks and strings and façades that turn $150 milion dollars into something watchable. This version will likely be the first $100 mill put to work, and everyone will see just what was made without the help of CGI/post production graphics work.

For more coverage, head on over to TorrentFreak

And read this inside scoop on the ‘porous’ nature of production houses.

Music by genre, not artist,
Tweet, then archive those in case.
Beta invite code! Missed call from mum,
After the status update from that friend who
Just got RSS working.

Tap keys and
Brush off the dust—
Reminds you of outside.

This poem is not hosted on S3.
But it’s probably redundant..

Here’s one of the first ‘tweets’ to celebrate.

Twitter wins because twitter is simple and open. Period.

I made the terrible mistake of trusting my blackberry storm. I installed Google sync—a beautiful concept—that got my gmail contacts onto my phone. When I added a contact on my phone, it would weasel its way into my gmail contacts. I had a nice backup of new phone numbers and email addresses I received.

As I was walking around the Armory show in NYC, my phone went on the fritz. None of the buttons did anything. The battery drained quickly and I figured it was just tired. It gets that way sometime. So I let it be.

Two days later, like a fool waking up from a coma, my phone started working again. It forgot all the settings I adjusted to forcibly make it suck less than it should… and it lost all my contacts I added since I got it. Google sync, in its infinite wisdom, saw this emptiness as a change that must be mirrored! Of course! Synchronize this failure of humanity! The social forays of the past 3 months were for naught.

I lost a lot. But it’s ok now. I’ve vowed to blind the half-baked fools who made the blackberry storm the greatest failure in cellphone history. (That is unless they were already blind) I mean what kind of phone places the mute button on the screen that one presses against one’s face?

“ma internet is faulty right now”

Snoop also recently posted this image to his stream. I think they’re meatballs:

How I felt: Overwhelmed and overloaded. Full flickr set here.

I’m your neighbor. I learned about homelessness from walking around in New York and from the amazing, interesting and colorful guests for the 15th St. Friends shelter. This blog is the documentation of my experience learning about my homeless neighbors as I work on a feature film about homelessness in New York City.

My friend Dan Lane has begun a blog dedicated to the topic of Homelessness in NYC. Take a peek!