RNC PowerPoint redux: Hey, at least somebody over at the RNC knows how to use "the Google"! (2)
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caraf (3)
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first efforts (3)
1 day, 13 hours
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If, like our household, you were wondering last night what the heck this building was behind John McCain, have no fear. TPM is on the case. No, it's not one of his seven houses. The story's even better than that. [Afternoon Update: more on Backdropgate]
Contest: Cory Doctorow's Cipher Wheel Rings (7)
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schneier (251)
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Schneier on Security (287)
1 day, 16 hours
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Cory Doctorow wanted a secret decoder wedding ring, and he asked me to help design it. I wanted something more than the standard secret decoder ring, so this is what I asked for: "I want each wheel to be the alphabet, with each letter having either a dot above, a dot below, or no dot at all. The first wheel should have alternating above, none, below. The second wheel should be the repeating sequence of ...
Mythbusters host: credit-card companies DIDN'T kill segment on RFID vulnerabiliies (9)
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Cory Doctorow (2244)
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Boing Boing (4578)
1 day, 23 hours
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Mythbusters' Adam Savage now says that credit-card companies and Texas Instruments didn't lean on him to kill a story about vulnerabilities in RFID cards: "There's been a lot of talk about this RFID thing, and I have to admit that I got some of my facts wrong, as I wasn't on that story, and as I said on the video, I wasn't actually in on the call," Savage said in the statement. "Texas Instruments' account ...
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Jeff Schmidt said:
Posted the original story - here's the correction
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J. James B said:
Alternate title: "Mythbuster Adam Savage Builds Working Backpeddler"
Palin's Rifle Shot on Foreign Policy (1)
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Jeff Stein (2)
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SpyTalk (2)
2 days, 12 hours
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For a Vice Presidential candidate who didn't own a passport until last year, Sarah Palin's brief passages on national security Thursday night were perfectly tailored to her lack of expertise or experience in foreign affairs.But it hit the spot -- the oil spot, to be precise -- in a rollicking acceptance speech spent mostly ridiculing the Democratic ticket and extolling the expertise hockey moms bring to high office.The Alaska governor's office floats in a sea ...
if:book: MacLuhan analyzes the presidential debates of 1976 (4)
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2 days, 15 hours
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One of our terrific summer interns, Rick Williamson, just sent a link to this 1976 TV interview of Marshall McLuhan in which he skewers the presidential debates for being completely the wrong form for the medium of television. It's interesting to note that it's hard to imagine an interview like on the Today show of 2008. It goes on for ten uninterrupted minutes; there are no cut-aways to video footage or text crawls at the ...
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J. James B said:
If they ever find McLuhan's crystal ball, let me know.
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Casey said:
Thanks JJB. I love me some McLuhan.
Exploring Voices in the Static: a new... something (2)
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2 days, 16 hours
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Voices in the Static appeared first in my email box, with this message:from: echo@voicesinthestatic.comdimensionsThat's it. So I opened a new tab, tried out the domain name from the email address, @voicesinthestatic.com. I found this site. It has a long audio track built in (mp3 here), and this animated .gif repeating across the screen: Nothing else at all in the source code. Title bar reads "stare into us".Poking around, I found little. Nothing on Technorati or ...
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J. James B said:
Ooooohhh...a EVP-themed ARG? I love horror ARGs.
Douglas Rushkoff on the RNC (40)
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Mark Frauenfelder (1220)
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Boing Boing (4578)
2 days, 18 hours
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Our pal Douglas Rushkoff posted an insightful essay about the RNC speeches. I felt a bit nauseous watching the Republican convention last night. I’m very much a give-the-benefit-of-the-doubt kind of guy, so I try to listen to the arguments people make even when they’re made in over-the-top or patronizing ways. Sometimes it’s good to distinguish between the rhetorical devices and the underlying substance. Even people who use manipulative language sometimes have an important point beneath ...
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Sam said:
I agree with Douglas. It was very hard to watch the RNC on Wednesday, I got very angry.
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Casey said:
THX, JB.
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Jason Matthews said:
"having a parent figure on whom to transfer authority allows people to regress to a more childlike state. This not only allows them to feel safe; if gives them the freedom to express their rage. Make no mistake - that's what we're witnessing.""In the black and white world of those committed to war as an international relations strategy, voting "present" makes no sense - especially when the Illinois legislative process is willfully misrepresented. (Voting present is a way to preserve the bill without passing it in its current state. Far from an easy out, it is the hard path - requiring further negotiation to remove earmarks and other problems.) They would prefer the simple relief of a "yes or no" world, where the evil are punished and the good rewarded. For in such a world, we get to know who the enemy is and just hate them."
Possibly Fake Georgia Pics Fueled Propaganda Effort [w/ PIC] (5)
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David Axe (12)
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Danger Room (61)
2 days, 20 hours
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Did major international media, including wire services Reuters and The Associated Press, clumsily help spread pro-Georgian propaganda during the recent war with Russia? Perhaps so, based on possibly staged photos by Reuters photogs David Mdzinarishvili and Gleb Garanich, and George Abdaladze, an Reuters AP shooter. Several blogs, most notably Byzantine Blog, have highlighted some, ahem, curious details in a series of photos claiming to portray civilian casualties of Russian attacks on the town of Gori. ...
Killer Commands for Ubiquity [Firefox] (34)
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Kevin Purdy (2214)
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Lifehacker (7878)
2 days, 23 hours
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The Tools for Thought blog runs down 15 useful commands you might not have known for Ubiquity, the experimental Firefox extension that acts on your typed requests (which Gina showed us around last week). Among the cooler uses are highlight, which leaves behind a semi-permanent yellow on selected text, and check Friday, which relays your Google Calendar appointments. Ubiquity testers, what commands are using to get things done? Offer up the code in the comments.
Project-Based Approaches to Cultural Studies (1)
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jentery (2)
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!jentery!: a blog by jentery sayers (2)
2 days, 23 hours
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For the technoculture studies course I’m teaching in the fall, I’ve been working through ways of prompting different trajectories for cultural work in the class, appealing to varying student interests and investments, and stressing how cultural studies can be enriched through diverse mobilizations. That said, I’m thinking of circulating three prompts for quarter-long inquiry. Drafts of those prompts—as rough as they are—appear below. Your comments are welcome, especially if you are a teacher person and/or ...
BOOKWORM (1)
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Nathan Black (4)
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Knuckle Tattoos (4)
2 days, 23 hours
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Kirsten from The Netherlands sends us these tattoos and the following story: I’m a total bookworm. I spend almost all my free time reading, or browsing for cool books. And this tattoo is to show I am proud of it, and proud to be myself!
Palin's Debut Electrifies the GOP, Galvanizes The Twitterati (10)
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Sarah Lai Stirland (49)
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Wired Top Stories (1404)
3 days, 3 hours
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"Palin ROCKED!" That succinct, two-word assessment that appeared on the micro-blogging service Twitter Wednesday night just about summarized many conservatives' relieved reactions after an inauspicious week for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Rage Against the Machine go a capella at RNC protest after cops shut down PA (34)
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Cory Doctorow (2244)
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Boing Boing (4578)
3 days, 6 hours
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When the police shut down the PA on Rage Against the Machine at an anti-RNC concert, the band took to the turf with a megaphone and performed a capella, delivering inspiring commentary between songs. This is must-see youtube -- some of the most heartening protest footage I've seen in years. Rage Against the Machine RNC - 09.02.08 (Performs Acapella in Crowd) (Thanks, Shahryarrakeen!) Update: Xopl adds, "Rage Against the Machine had a scheduled legal concert ...
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doransky said:
A baseball sapkás srácot kell elkalapálni Guitar Hero-ban... de persze nem ez a lényeg.
Just because? (1)
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Excellent News for Sarah Palin!!! (8)
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Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Why Community Resilience? (4)
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John Robb (25)
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Global Guerrillas (17)
3 days, 14 hours
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Here's the question: what's the connection between local food, local power, and other forms community resilience to fourth generation warfare? The answer is simple. A government's legitimacy is based on its ability to deliver basic services. The ability to deliver these services is the difference between a failed/hollow state (see this post on what a failed state is, although I would argue food/power is tied with security in first position) and a functional/strong one. States ...
A blog triumph (1)
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Bryan Alexander (12)
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Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education (8)
3 days, 16 hours
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Today I left the local public library, two fine works of spy fiction under my arm. Let me pause to reflect on just how good one blogging experience was.Last week I had a sudden hankering for good spy stories, after watching some episodes of the astonishing British spy series, Sandbaggers. But I didn't have a lot of luck checking Google and Amazon for the kinds of fiction I had in mind. Amazon lists didn't pan ...
Sarah Palin, would-be banner of books (42)
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Cory Doctorow (2244)
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Boing Boing (4578)
3 days, 16 hours
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Time Magazine says that when Sarah Palin took office as mayor, she approached the town librarian and asked how to go about banning books from the town library: [Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The ...
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Maurice said:
Wow. Just...wow.
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J. James B said:
Since we've established that we all read Boing Boing, is it really productive for us to keep "sharing" BB posts with one another? I'm just sayin'.
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Galtenbergs said:
[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.
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Lee said:
Now this is something to investigate. Reporters ask her this question, not silly questions about her children. Ask the hard questions.
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Jason Matthews said:
and this is all the evidence anyone should need. banning books is a cardinal sin in america. there's a reason it's first in line on the bill of rights. how can she swear to uphold the constitution if she actively sought to destroy it while she was in elected office?
Jerz's Literacy Weblog (2) permalink
Whenever ice cream sales rise, so do shark attacks (eating ice cream makes you tastier?) (Part of a great series by the BBC. Bookmarked for a future journalism class.)Shared by J. James B (41)Contribute commentTalking Points Memo (393) permalink
Washington Independent digs up example of Palin crowing about bagging a pricey earmark. This earmark, of course, was one John McCain singled out as egregious pork.Shared by aaron (124) AnthonyBaker (26) brokekid (134) Casey (16) charliereece (33) dj empirical (90) J. James B (41) Schnyder (8)
