Sandhill Trek

Participation

Mulling the problems of participation, I found myself on a sign-up screen for Second Life.  World of Warcraft doesn't do a thing for me, but the Second Life approach provides a dynamic that could suck me in.

It isn't free.  The Linden Lab people aren't in it for their health.  Or mine.  And there is a huge health issue associated with online games.  If television is an energy drain that vacuums real life out of a room, then the interactivity of online gaming is a black hole.

Jeneane seems to be thinking about wading into Second Life and I've been following her everywhere for years.

Accelerating Change 2004 put the game on my radar, and in 2005 they showed incredible advances in networked interactivity.  Cory Ondrejka was giving the kids free tastes out behind the school...

Spring at last...

Updates...

I have updated two posts below.  Yesterday I was working on an elaborate post called "Shadows are falling."  While I was bouncing around in my Firefox tabs, finding new links and inserting them in the post, I ran into a problem that closed my browser for me and erased everything in the browser based TypePad "Compose a new post" form.  My fault really... the proper way to compose a post is offline and then cut and paste into the blog-tool form.  My excuse was that I had no idea it would be such a lengthy post.  It was quite impressive really.  Sad that it evaporated.  Anyway, I created a new post with that title and it took me an entirely different direction out of the starting blocks.  The common point of departure for these posts was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution as the official beginning of the American war in Viet Nam.

I've updated last night's post to include a link that was in the earlier post, a link to a 1994 column by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon that describes the climate of journalistic credulity that helped us slide into that war.  They end their column with a quote from Sydney Schanberg:  "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."

My second update is to the post relating to the deserved come-uppance of that scabrous barnacle on the vessel of American journalism, Ben Domenech.  This pissant's resignation from the Washington Post before the paper had to fire him because of his plagiarism was wonderfully reported by Tim Rutten in an online column for the LA Times.  Since Domenech is "a poster child" for the home school movement, and his ethics mirror those of the modern Republican party, I think it's important to spread the word of his rapid rise and fall.  An excellent blogger on home schooling, Daryl Cobranchi, criticized my post as an example of copyright infringement.  Since Sandhill Trek is not for profit and represents an effort to be transparent, and since I aim for proper attribution and "fair use," I would take issue with the accusation of infringement (especially since it comes from a third party).  Even so, my attribution was a little sloppy, and while I had linked to the source I hadn't included the author's name.  I've updated that post to credit Tim Rutten for his insightful work.

In general I think home schoolers and "libertarians" have abandoned their responsibilities to the community at large.  There may be a "selfish gene" (or "shellfish jeans" or whatever), but the "libertarian" meme certainly doesn't stand up to rigorous ethical scrutiny.  Creation of a safe and nurturing place for all of us and our children is certainly not possible if we withdraw from the community and isolate ourselves from community interests.  That said, I'm sure that public education, "the school system," has stagnated in many communities.  The challenge for those communities is for the citizens to find a way to address the issues rather than avoid them.

Shadows are falling...

In August 1967 three years had passed since Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin charade, the proximate cause for active US engagement in Vietnam, a morass that resulted in 58,184 US combat deaths. As the US entered the fourth year of war, an organized resistance emerged at home, a polarization in public life that informed American politics with the desire for peace and social justice for the next fifteen years.

The election of the senex, Ronald Reagan, put an effective end to those dreams and from that time forward the right wing has consolidated power in the US.   

Three years ago it was clear to many of us that the Bush regime had committed a terrible crime and led the US into a war that can't and won't be won, led us into a war for combat bases outside of Saudi Arabia to project force into an oil rich area to protect and expand the interests of the global energy corporations.   It was clear to us that shadows were falling...

Here's Doc Searls on my certitude three years ago...

Here's Frank Paynter on something I said the other day:

A week or so ago Doc Searls responded to this question:

...do you really believe the best thing for the World would be for the US to pull out now and leave one of the cruelest dictorships in modern times at the helm in Iraq, with all the cruel and innocent deaths that would follow in the wake of such a move.

"No," Doc said, "I don't. Now that we're in there, I want us to finish with minimal loss of life on all sides. I hope we take out Saddam Hussein's regime and return the country to its oppressed people. Then I hope we go home."

And while Doc's and Tom's are the reasonable hopes of peaceful men, I think things have gone too far.  These hopes are impossible. And to wish for the impossible is delusional.  Yet to cast a gimlet eye on the world stage and to accept that our own country is being held hostage to the interests of a high caste of modern industrialists whose goals are being masked by a chase after shadow figures, evil men who frighten the American electorate in large part because of the images Rupert Murdoch and his cronies convey of them day after day -- to accept this is enormously difficult. Because with this acceptance comes the knowledge that right action is required. And the right action that is required seems so hopeless, so alienated, so out of touch. But Dennis Kucinich and Tammy Baldwin and Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee and the thirty or so others who can be counted on in Congress to speak truth as they see it are not sufficient to our cause. And the strongest voices for peace in the Senate, the Paul Wellstones, the Mel Carnahan's... well, they've met the same fate as the Kennedy scion in light plane "accidents." I wonder what is the next great military challenge Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney have in mind for us. I wonder if they even know.          

Some strong yet subtle shit in there. Deep too. Especially in that last line. I often wish I could match the certitudes of certidudes like Frank and Andrew and Michael and Charles. But I can't. Deep down I'm a pacifist, but just as deeply I'm a libertarian too. Go figure.

I think one of our countries greatest losses since Vietnam has been the loss of an understanding of proper governance, the loss of a willingness to entrust public policy to good people who serve us as elected officals and civil servants. 

And Doc's a libertarian.  "Go figure."  No offense Doc, but we need a better answer than libertarianism.

 

Suck-dog plagiarist resigns...

Tim Rutten, writing in his "Regarding Media" column online in the LA Times, says:

"Ben Domenech is a co-founder of RedState, the web's leading Republican community blog. He began his career as a political journalist covering Capitol Hill, writing for numerous publications and working as a contributing editor to National Review Online. After 9/11, he abandoned the journalism field for a taxpayer-funded life and was sworn in as the youngest political appointee of President George W. Bush. Following a year as a speechwriter for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and two as the chief speechwriter for Texas Senator John Cornyn, Ben is now a book editor for Regnery Publishing, where he has edited multiple bestsellers and books by Michelle Malkin, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Hugh Hewitt."

In fact, Domenech is something of a poster child for contemporary social conservatism. He was home-schooled by his mother — that's the new right-wing school tie — in the impeccably red states of South Carolina and Virginia, and his father is the White House liaison to the Department of the Interior. The younger Domenech began writing for Human Events at 15. Under the pseudonym "Augustine" — no lack of chutzpah there — he contributes to a variety of rather nasty online discussions in the course of which he has compared the Supreme Court to the KKK because of its abortion rulings, called Coretta Scott King "a communist" and described Teresa Heinz Kerry as resembling an "oddly shaped egotistical ketchup-colored Muppet."

Definitely no manners class in that home school, and he must have had a cold the day mom touched on facts and logic.

By Thursday night, WashingtonPost.com had received more than 1,000 protests over the appointment. Brady told the Post's Howard Kurtz that "Domenech is 'controversial' and the fact that liberals object to his hiring 'shouldn't really be a shock to anybody.' "

What did turn out to be shocking is the fact that the conservative wunderkind is a serial plagiarist with a documented record — turned up by liberal bloggers — stretching back to his undergraduate days at the College of William & Mary. (One of the people he ripped off was P.J. O'Rourke and nobody at his school apparently noticed. Those kids should get out more.)

No ethics class at that home school, apparently.

In an announcement posted midday Friday, Brady said that Domenech had resigned after the Post had opened its own plagiarism inquiry.

Pointing and Contextualizing

Ethan Zuckerman blogs about the future of advocacy.  He demonstrates a shift from programmatic "representation" to the "pointing and contextualizing" of the blog world.  This amplifies an important lesson regarding "tolerance."  Just as it is embarassingly presumptuous to emphasize "tolerance" as a value (who am I to presume to tolerate you!?), so also is the tendency idealistically to adopt-a-cause and represent the less fortunate who come along with the ideal.

Ethan quotes Martin Kimani,

[A benefit show's organizers] will lay claim to the very last thing so many Africans own: our problems. And it will be terrible and evil beyond imagining for owning your problem is at the heart of what it is to be human. It is when we wrestle and suffer and triumph over our problems that we are most human, but this alas is not to be if the soul stealers on show succeed. I do not want anyone to suffer needlessly. I would prefer everyone to live in a democratic, prosperous community that knows no war or want. But these are conditions that must be battled and struggled for; they have never arrived as a gift from a stranger.

It's a far cry from representing others to representing ourselves, and the smug sanctimonious bullshit that can accompany our charitable impulses often dehumanizes, depersonalizes and neutralizes the best intentions.  How much better it is to support another's representation of herself by pointing to it and providing context.

(cross posted at NetSquared)

Technorati Tags: Global  Voices,freehaowu,ethan_zuckerman

Network Neutrality

Four freedoms, four freedoms, and an FCC order.

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet , consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
• To encourage broadband de ployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet , consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

What does Internet mean?

What is "Lawful Content?"

CALEA, Carnivore, and the needs of law enforcement.

Customer Premises Equipment...

Competition

Thanks to Cybertelecom for putting all this information and so very much more at our fingertips!

Russ Feingold

In 2001, when my Senator Russ Feingold did not stand in the way of the Ashcroft nomination for Attorney General, I exercised my right to be disenchanted with him, to criticize his naivete, to oppose him at every turn unless and until he found a way to redeem himself in my eyes.  I have contributed no money to him, I have responded openly and negatively to every questionnaire and survey his office has provided, and I have told his staff that he lost my vote when he voted for Ashcroft.

I am not the only one to have given him this kind of feedback.  We are looking for ethical leadership, a leader with principles.  I'll support Feingold for national office and I'll oppose any Democrat who doesn't support him and his censure motion.  The line is drawn in the sand.  There is no real hope for a Democratic Party resurgence because that party is so hopelessly corrupt and tied to the new American fascism, albeit in a different way from the Republicans.  But there is hope that the people can begin to turn this big ship of state before it is beached on the sands of economic ruin, or worse.  There is hope that we can return to clarity regarding government and community, that we can understand anew why we organize a government for public good, and who has the public good in mind.

Respect Russ Feingold.  And you might want to catch the clip of Feingold and Jon Stewart at One Good Move.

mobmobmobilephophonedogmobi

mobmobmobilephophonedogmobi
Originally uploaded by msdm.

Identity Dog, coming to an oyster bar near you. Bruce at The River is mulling identity today. Visit the FlickR original to glom onto the informed comment that comes with the Identity Dog graphic. (Identity Dog has no known relationship to Kaliya Hamlin).

CurmudgeonZ Rule!

Jeneane and Euan each speak to the distancing effects of syndication and blog subscriptions and reading each other in aggregators.  I'm with them on this.  Jeneane manages to suck a comment out of old InfoGlutz himself.  Shelley adds another dimension to the discussion.