It’s like Karaoke gone all wrong

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A few weeks ago while on my lunch break, I read a story about William Hung, the kid who has gained fame and notoriety for his (ahem) inimitable rendition of Ricky Martin‘s “She Bangs” on American Idol. Since I don’t bother with television, that was the first I’d heard about this little mini-phenomenon, but I thought it was a cute little story.

Imagine my surprise tonight when I discovered that the iTunes Music Store now has William’s rendition of “She Bangs” — along with three other gleefully cringe-inducing songs! I’m not bothering to download any of them — the thirty-second previews were more than enough for me — but it was more than enough to give me a good laugh.

And really…suddenly my fifteen minutes of fame doesn’t seem that bizarre in comparison.

iTunes: “Understood (Hot Tracks)” by Must from the album Roadkill! 2.15 (1995, 6:07).

You! Put your hands up and drop your skirt!

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Now here’s a good way to spend taxpayer’s money — the Georgia House just voted 166-0 to ban female genital piercing.

An amendment [to a bill banning female genital mutilation] adopted without objection added “piercing” to the list of things that may not be done to female genitals. Even adult women would not be allowed to get the procedure. The bill eventually passed 160-0, with no debate.

Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.

“What? I’ve never seen such a thing,” Heath said. “I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.”

The ban applies only to women, not men.

Well, of course it only applies to women. Nobody’s gonna tell us menfolk what we can and can’t do with our peckers (as long as we’re not doing them with other men, y’hear?)!

I do wonder just how they intend to enforce this law, though. Can I get on the task force to investigate possible infractions? ;)

(via Prairie)

iTunes: “Think (Addiction/Salvation)” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1995, 3:15).

Daschle’s kicking butt

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Senator Tom Daschle has issued two statements over the past two days that are well worth reading.

Yesterday’s was a call for answers regarding the Bush administration’s tactic of smearing anyone who speaks out against the administration’s aims:

I want to talk this morning about a disturbing pattern of conduct by the people around President Bush. They seem to be willing to do anything for political purposes, regardless of the facts and regardless of what’s right.

…The purpose of government isn’t to make the President look good. It isn’t to produce propaganda or misleading information. It is, instead, to do its best for the American people and to be accountable to the American people. The people around the President don’t seem to believe that. They have crossed a line–perhaps several lines–that no government ought to cross.

We shouldn’t fire or demean people for telling the truth. We shouldn’t reveal the names of law enforcement officials for political gain. And we shouldn’t try to destroy people who are out to make country safer.

I think the people around the President have crossed into dangerous territory. We are seeing abuses of power that cannot be tolerated.

The President needs to put a stop to it, right now. We need to get to the truth, and the President needs to help us do that.

And todays called for answers regarding the Bush administration’s approach to combatting terrorism, both before and after September 11:

The responsibility for getting answers to the questions surrounding the tragic events of September 11 rests with the 9/11 Commission. Therefore, the importance of cooperating with this commission cannot be overstated. Only with complete cooperation will the commission be able to produce a report that explains how these attacks occurred in the first place and what can be done to reduce the likelihood of future attacks. Only with complete cooperation can the commission produce the kind of report that our families, our troops, and the American people deserve.

While the former Clinton Administration officials have cooperated fully with the commission, the Bush Administration’s record on access to officials and documents is, in a word, unsatisfactory.

…If the Bush Administration is truly serious about allowing the commission to examine its actions against Al Qaeda before September 11, it must provide answers to the following questions:

Was defeating Al Qaeda the Bush Administration’s top national security priority before September 11?

…Did the Bush Administration have a strategy for defeating Al Qaeda prior to September 11?

…What did the Bush Administration do before September 11 to defeat Al Qaeda?

…Did the Bush Administration commit adequate resources necessary to defeat Al Qaeda prior to September 11?

…Finally, did the Bush Administration’s apparent focus on Saddam Hussein detract from efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and leave America less secure?

Of course, one has to wonder how long it will be before Daschle becomes the subject of one of Rove’s smear campaigns…

(both via Atrios — yesterday and today)

Only Just Beginning

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I got notification this in my inbox not long ago…

‘Only Just Beginning’ CD Release

April 30 – Town Hall Seattle
1119 Eighth Ave (at Seneca St)
8 pm – \$9 – All Ages

Come celebrate the release of Jason’s 4th album. For this concert, Jason will be joined on-stage by all of the incredible Seattle musicians who recorded with him on the new release: Michael McQuilken, Jherek Bischoff, Seth Warren, Liz Sprout Guy, Taryn Webber, Brant Campbell, Fred Hawkinson and Gary Luke. This will be Jason’s first concert of 2004. Perhaps something special will happen.

Perhaps, indeed.

iTunes: “Oberkorn (It’s a Small Town)” by Depeche Mode from the album Meaning of Love, The (1982, 4:10).

Banned Music

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A new site today from the people behind Grey Tuesday: BannedMusic.org.

Bannedmusic.org is a peer-to-peer collaboration that makes it impossible for the major record labels to ban or censor musical works. When record labels send legal threats to musicians, record stores, or websites, we will post the music here for download and publicize the censorship attempt. There is a clear fair use right to distribute this music, and for the public to decide whether current copyright law is serving musicians and the public, they need to be able to hear what’s being suppressed.

iTunes: “Without Words” by Hamen from the album Techno-Trax Vol. 2 (1991, 4:11).

Adding to the TypeKey fray

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Okay, so while I wasn’t paying much attention, TypeKey became the most recent firestorm to sweep through the weblog world. By now, you probably already know at least the basics of TypeKey — and if not, then you’re not likely to be interested in the rest of this rambling (in brief, it’s an identity verification system for weblog commenting…think Microsoft Passport for weblogs).

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion of TypeKey since the first announcement. I haven’t been able to wade through all of it, but I’ve found Shelley Powers‘ three TypeKey-related posts (TypeKey: The Patriot Act of Weblogging, TypeKey Scavenger Hunt, TypeKey: Final Act), the related discussion in her comments, and the comments in response to Jeff Jarvis’ post Comment to be extremely worthwhile.

Looking over the TypeKey FAQ recently posted by SixApart, my first impression is that it sounds like a good system. Identity verification combined with comment moderation (to come in MovableType 3.0, and I’m assuming also in a future TypePad update) can go a long way to combatting both spam and unwanted comments. It likely won’t be a 100% solution — but then, chances are there just isn’t a 100% solution (there are always smarter mice to avoid the better mousetraps).

However, Shelley brings up two very important points (actually, she brings up a few more, but these two spoke more to me) — points that are prompting her to avoid TypeKey, neither implementing it on her weblog when it is released, nor signing into the service as an authenticated commenter. While I don’t feel as strongly about these as she does, they’re certainly worth considering.

The first is simply scalability and performance — if every comment on every weblog needs to go through some verification process before it appears on a post, how quickly will the system be able to respond as more and more people sign into the service?

We who went to Movable Type or other product that we host on our own servers did so specifically because we did NOT want to have any form of dependency on a centralized system. We did so, for the most part, because we have been burned on either performance or access because of the centralization and scaling problems.

…[Mark Pilgrim] lists several centralized systems that he believes do scale well and serve the community, and it’s true these have managed to scale and are useful, but each and every one has failed when I’ve tried to access it at least once a week.

Blogdex was inaccessible off and on this weekend, and Technorati was hard to access last night, and I couldn’t access Bloglines two or thee times last week, and I got some kind of odd error with Radio comments a couple of weeks ago, too, and, well, the list goes on. The problem with centralized systems is not that they fail completely and breakdown permanently; it’s that they behave oddly or inconsistently, or poorly under load.

…the thing with Technorati or Blogdex or Bloglines (I haven’t used Feedster) is that I’m not dependent on them to write to my weblog, or for my commenters to respond, or for my pages to be accessed. Only my own system resources, or the Internet in general between my server and each of us can impact on this. With TypeKey, though, that’s changed.

Unfortunately, at this point, there’s really no way of knowing how Six Apart plans on handling this. TypeKey’s announcement is only a few days old, and details of the underlying systems (both software and hardware) are still forthcoming. Until TypeKey moves out of the testing stage, goes live, and starts getting hammered by everyone who signs on, we won’t know the impact that the system might or might not have on our sites.

Historically speaking, as Shelley points out, things aren’t looking too rosy. I’d like to think that Six Apart realizes this, and will have done everything possible to ensure that these issues aren’t a major factor — but then, there’s a lot of things that I’d like to think that aren’t borne out by real-world evidence. At the moment, “wait and see” is the only real approach we can take.

The second issue that caught my interest was one of conversations, who we allow to participate in them, and what we allow them to say.

Odd thing, weblogs and comments. We say to each other, “Our weblogs are our homes and we should be able to control what’s said in them”. Yet, they aren’t our homes, are they? You don’t keep your door open for anyone to just walk in to your home, do you? Weblogs are published online supposedly because we want a broader audience for our thoughts and writing then just our friends and family.

They aren’t really our ‘homes’, and the analogy fails in so many ways, but they are our spaces, so we have a right to control them and hold people who comment accountable, don’t we?

But who holds us accountable? I’ve seen again and again, the weblogger write the most inflammatory material in an essay, and when you respond to the tone they set in their writing, or to their responses to your earlier comments, you’re told to be nice, or be gone.

We say, commenters should be held accountable for what they say. I say, but then, who holds the weblogger accountable?

So far, I’ve kept a very open comment policy on my weblog. Generally, outside of removing comment spam and deleting duplicate comments, I do very little editing of what people contribute to my site. That’s not to say that I’m not tempted at times — I have one particular post that has picked up some extremely disturbing racist comments — but to date, the only major comment deletion or editing I’ve done has been at the request of the person who left the comments (and that was under admittedly unusual circumstances).

Truth to tell, I’ve never entirely understood the impulse to delete comments that don’t agree with something I’ve posted. I’ve had some very interesting discussions with people who didn’t agree with something I’ve written — if part of why we bother to blog is to invite discussion, why would we want to limit that discussion to the proverbial “echo chamber” of nodding sycophants? Seems to me that that approach makes for some dreadfully boring “discussions”.

At other times, I’ve seen people get very aggravated about a comment that seemed to be overly rude, aggressive, impolite, or offensive in some way. Well, perhaps…but while it would be nice if all debate could be structured perfectly politely, is the occasional jibe, jab, or verbal tweak really worth deleting the comment (or even banning the commenter) and in the process removing the actual content of what was said? Myself, I certainly don’t think so — in fact, I often get a certain perverse pleasure out of responding to those posts. While I’ve never quite mastered the stereotypical British practice of being able to say the most brutally vicious things in an impeccably polite manner, I’m always willing to give it a shot. ;)

So, with all of that…will TypeKey work for me (if and when it is integrated into TypePad)? Well, at the moment, keeping an open comment system has been working fairly well — the comment spam hasn’t been hitting me hard enough to make it terribly difficult to deal with, and I do enjoy getting feedback when someone feels moved to comment. I’m also not a big fan of comment moderation — as it would require me to approve every comment before it appeared on the site, it could lead to some oddly dis-linear conversations as I’m not at my keyboard at all times, anxiously awaiting the next comment to land in my inbox.

At the moment, it looks like TypeKey-enabled weblogs will have a few options for how they handle comments.

  1. Only accept TypeKey-authenticated comments where the commenter sends an email address
  2. Only accept TypeKey-authenticated comments
  3. Accept TypeKey-authenticated and moderated comments
  4. Accept TypeKey-authenticated and regular comments
  5. Accept moderated comments
  6. Accept unmoderated comments
  7. Accept anonymous comments

My current plan is to go for option four. Those people who sign up for TypeKey will be able to use their TypeKey logon to verify their identity. Those people who don’t use TypeKey will still be able to participate normally. Ideally, I’d like to find a way to signify TypeKey validated commenters (possibly with a special icon by their name) — I’ll have to look into the viability of doing that once TypeKey is available to me.

Given that option four will perform essentially identically to my current open, unmoderated system, why bother? Well — first off, curiosity. I’d like to be able to play with the TypeKey system from both a commenting and administration standpoint, and this will allow me to do so. Secondly, it will allow those people who do use TypeKey to use that logon to comment on my site along with any other TypeKey-enabled sites they visit, without having to remember separate information for my specific weblog (sure, it’s easy enough to do, we probably all have a good number of username/password combinations rattling around in our heads…but why not make it that much easier to keep track of them all?). And lastly, should I get to the point where I feel the need to institute a more draconian comment policy (though I hope that doesn’t happen), having TypeKey already enabled will make it that much easier.

In the end, then, the questions and concerns that Shelley has raised are very worth keeping in mind, but they’re not enough to keep me away from TypeKey, as I think that there could be some very good benefits to the system. Here’s hoping that once TypeKey goes live it’s the benefits that play out under real-world conditions, and not the potential downsides.

iTunes: “On the Run (Hot Tracks)” by Bigod 20 from the album Roadkill 1.04 (1992, 6:21).

Gay Penguin Love

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This makes me grin for two reasons: one, because of all the people who claim that homosexuality “isn’t natural”, and two, because it’s penguins! ;)

Wendell and Cass, two penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, live in a soap opera world of seduction and intrigue. Among the 22 male and 10 female African black-footed penguins in the aquarium’s exhibit, tales of love, lust and betrayal are the norm. These birds mate for life. But given the disproportionate male-female ratio at the aquarium, some of the females flirt profusely and dump their partners for single males with better nests.

Wendell and Cass, however, take no part in these cunning schemes. They have been completely devoted to each other for the last eight years. In fact, neither one of them has ever been with anyone else, says their keeper, Stephanie Mitchell.

But the partnership of Wendell and Cass adds drama in another way. They’re both male. That is to say, they’re gay penguins.

Maybe there’s another reason Opus’ relationship with Quiche Lorraine never worked out? ;)

(via DeAnna)

iTunes: “Angel (Dusted)” by McLachlan, Sarah from the album Remixed (2003, 5:29).

Forecast: cloudy, 67% chance of God

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Hey, all you atheists out there — looks like you’ve only got about a 33% chance of being right. According to Dr. Stephen Unwin, there is a 67% chance that God exists.

Dr Stephen Unwin has used a 200-year-old formula to calculate the probability of the existence of an omnipotent being. Bayes’ Theory is usually used to work out the likelihood of events, such as nuclear power failure, by balancing the various factors that could affect a situation.

The Manchester University graduate, who now works as a risk assessor in Ohio, said the theory starts from the assumption that God has a 50/50 chance of existing, and then factors in the evidence both for and against the notion of a higher being.

(via Neil Gaiman)

‘Under God’ in the Supreme Court

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Following up on the “…under God…” controversy from 2002 and last year, tomorrow the case will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court — with Dr. Michael A. Newdow representing himself in the case.

Newdow convinced a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002 that the 50-year-old addition to the pledge amounts to government establishment of religion, which is prohibited by the First Amendment. But he will face overwhelming opposition at the Supreme Court.

After the appeals court ruling, the Senate voted 99-0 and the House of Representatives voted 416-3 to reaffirm their support for “under God.” Other high-power individuals and groups have lined up to oppose Newdow.

As I’ve said in the past, I think 9th Circuit Court was correct the first time, and that the constitutionally-mandated separation of Church and State should mandate the removal of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. However, as our current administration seems to consistently disregard that very separation of Church and State, to the point of claiming religious inspiration for Bush’s actions, somehow I’m not terribly optimistic about the likely outcome of this trial.

If we’re lucky, the Supreme Court will use the custody dispute between Dr. Newdow and the mother of his daughter to allow them to dismiss the case out of hand, and the constitutionality of the Pledge will stay in its current somewhat nebulous state. I’d rather have that as an end result than face a Supreme Court ruling affirming the religious language in the Pledge.

It’s alive! Alive!

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I’ve been quite amused recently at a couple of older posts that have apparently taken on something of a life of their own over the past few months.

Last August, I put up a post which was little more than a pointer to an article elsewhere on the ‘net that I thought was interesting. The post itself, titled “Why I hate George W. Bush” after the article I was linking to, sat more or less unnoticed until January, when all of a sudden it started gathering comments. Since then, it’s turned into a running political debate that doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon. Some of the comments I’ve agreed with more than others, but it’s certainly been interesting to watch the debate bounce back and forth.

Also last August, I ran across an interesting article talking about schools installing security cameras in classrooms, and put up a post titled simply “Cameras in classrooms“. Apparently, sometime within the past two weeks, one of the classes at Tequesta Trace Middle School in Florida has been assigned a report on this subject, and my post has suddenly become something of a graffiti-ridden ‘tag board’ for students who come across my page while doing research for their project. It’s been mildly entertaining to see the rather incoherent comments pop up on a daily basis.

Weird, the things that suddenly gain a life of their own.