Electronic Grassroots

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Much has been made over the past few months of how political campaigns are more and more turning to electronic means of communication and organization to connect and interact with voters, usually pointing to the Howard Dean campaign as the leader and trendsetter for this new approach to politicking. But how did Dean’s online juggernaut get kicked into high gear? It all boils down to three essential people and two websites: Jerome Armstrong and Mathew Gross, of MyDD.com, and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos.

How did it start? Well, with inadequate political coverage and two political junkies who wrote like sportswriters.

[…]

Armstrong and Kos were both deeply interested in ‘the conventional wisdon’, and how it was formed. What Armstrong liked about Dean was that Dean was a fighter, very early on. As he wrote, “This brings up another point, Dean is the only Democrat who is calling Bush to the mat on his budget-busting tax-cuts.” Armstrong and Kos believed that a candidate needed to stand for something, but, as self-confessed amateurs, held back from making claims about being able to do politics better than the party itself.

The 2002 midterms changed the rules. Because of the intense sports race tenor of the race – and Kos’s proclivity to muse and post on nearly every race – Kos regularly got upwards of 80 comments on each post. The Iraq war later kicked up Kos’s traffic to yet another level, but the midterms were the first hints that a special community was forming. Shortly after the electoral losses, the community started discussing a new slogan for the Democratic Party. The anger at the party that would spark Dean’s rise was evident. Kos mused dejectedly after the losses: “None of us are Democratic Party consultants (as far as I know), but ideas have to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any. God knows whatever focus-group testing the Dems have conducted haven’t given us squat.”

It’s an excellent retrospective of just how all of the current blog-centric political campaigns got their start. Not with pundits sitting in back rooms scheming and grasping at straws, trying to come up with any desperate plan to get their candidate on the news and a household name — but with people who felt strongly that this country was in trouble, could do better, and needed a change, and decided that they had the ability and drive to do something about it.

It’s a wonderful thing we’ve gotten started here.

iTunes: “Kiss, The” by Cure, The from the album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987, 6:14).

Changing my habits

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NetNewsWire grouped

As sloppy as my apartment can get (and believe me, it can get quite sloppy — though it’s usually just “extremely cluttered” as opposed to “disgustingly messy”, a small but important difference), I tend to be extremely organized in many other areas of my life. My occasional rants about metadata and .mp3 tags have probably clued a few people in to this aspect of my personality. I also tend to keep my movies, books, and music alphabetized, files on my computers all in their appropriate places, and so on. Heck, part of my drive to ensure that my web pages validate as clean, standards-compliant code stems from this innate desire for simple categorization and the ability to find things quickly.

To that end, since I started using NetNewsWire to keep up with the various weblogs and news sites that I like to read, I’ve used its grouping function to assign each RSS feed to a specific category — technology, macintosh, personal, and so on.

About a month ago, Rand was asking about RSS reading habits, and after a bit of thought prompted by his post, I’ve been wondering for a bit if this categorization is really the best approach for me to take. As my list of subscribed feeds grows (currently hovering right around 100 or so, give or take a few I’m reading on a trial basis — nowhere near Scoble’s 600+, but still fairly respectable), I’m finding it harder and harder to get through all my feeds on a regular basis. I’ve been doing very well at keeping up with sites that were in the groups at the top of the list (usually Personal and Macintosh), but not so well with groups towards the bottom (usually Links and Political). If I get bored, hungry, or distracted during my reading, the ones at the bottom get fairly regularly neglected.

NetNewsWire ungrouped

So, starting tonight, I’m going to try to vary my reading habits a bit to see what that does. I’ve deleted all the groups I was using before, and instead have all the feeds listed in more-or-less alphabetical order, top to bottom in a single group, ordered by date posted. While the amount of information doesn’t really change, the presentation is different enough that it might make a difference in what I find on any given day. I know I’ve missed a few breaking stories over the past few weeks, especially in the political arena, simply because I wasn’t getting far enough through my reading to see them until they’d already been blogged to death by everyone else on the ‘net.

I’m hoping that this little adjustment will be enough to help me keep up with everything a little bit better. No way to know until I try, of course.

iTunes: “She Cries Your Name” by Orton, Beth from the album Who Will Be Big In ’98? (1997, 4:47).

Army War College blasts ‘War on Terror’

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Wow.

A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration’s handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an “unnecessary” war in Iraq and pursuing an “unrealistic” quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.

The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is “near the breaking point.”

It recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the “global war on terrorism” and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by the al Qaeda terrorist network.

“[T]he global war on terrorism as currently defined and waged is dangerously indiscriminate and ambitious, and accordingly . . . its parameters should be readjusted,” Record writes. Currently, he adds, the anti-terrorism campaign “is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security.”

The full 56-page report can be found on the Strategic Studies Institute website.

(via Al-Muhajabah)

iTunes: “Memories of the Future” by Edge of Motion from the album Essential Chillout (2000, 13:02).

Hey!

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Hey!

On its face, that expression is neither offensive nor disturbing. “Hey!” is an informal way to say hello. It indicates kindness, simple courtesy and an economy of words.

But a 13-year-old boy at Richland Middle School in Richland Hills was suspended for three days in December because he sent that simple message to every computer in the school using an archaic form of instant messaging. The software was created years ago in the old disk operating system used in earlier versions of personal computers.

This story has been making the rounds on the ‘net for the past few days (see MetaFilter, /.). It’s got all the hallmarks of something bound to catch the interest of a lot of geeks: a kid exploring and discovering how his computer actually works beyond simple point-and-clicking, an innocent mistake when demonstrating capabilities to friends, and an overbearing school administration. It might not have raised as much of a ruckus as it did, except that in the course of writing his article about the events, the columnist received an e-mail from one of the school administrators involved in the incident questioning the right of anyone not involved directly in the school system to criticize teaching and discipline techniques.

Too often, people who do not know the real world of public education feel that they are the ‘experts’ who have all the solutions and that their opinions are as valuable as those who live in this world daily.

…

I invite you, parents, our state representatives, and anyone else that thinks they know how a teacher or a district should react to ANY situation to come live with us for a while — be a substitute teacher for a few weeks and learn the real world of public education.

…more troubling is the notion that Sweeney does not believe that the rest of us have any right to question the decisions made by public educators.

Remember, we pay the salaries of the teachers and staff. We buy the computers. We pay for the buildings in which they are used. As long as public school is public, the Beverly Sweeneys of the world need to know that it is our right and duty to look over their shoulders and question what they do.

In this case, the punishment of Carl Grimmer was overkill, but the response of the school’s computer liaison shows that public education really does demand greater oversight from us outsiders, certainly not less.

Many of the discussions spurred by this event and the various responses from the people involved have been very interesting to read. It turns out that the kid and his parents have put up a page detailing their view of the events and the responses to them. It’s an entertaining read — everyone (except the school) seems to be handling everything quite reasonably.

iTunes: “Go” by Moby from the album Hackers 2 (1997, 3:59).

Kevin and Emily, sitting in a tree…

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…K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first come love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!

A few days ago, I got word that my brother and his fianceé had just discovered that they’re going to be having a baby, due to show up in early August. Yesterday parents let me know that the long-awaited wedding has been scheduled — for next month!

This has been an exciting week! Kev & Emily are getting married Feb 15, with the baby due early August.

The wedding will be at a botanical garden in Memphis, outdoors if the weather is good, or indoors if necessary.

That’s about all I know. They didn’t want any fuss, but Emily’s aunt convinced her today that a small family wedding would be ok, so they “booked a place” then came home and told Kevin!

We’ll be there, of course.

I’ll be there too — I fired off an e-mail to my manager last night, and got confirmation this morning that I’ll be able to get a few days off to head down there. Tennessee, here I come: my lil’ brother’s getting married!

Of course, given that the wedding was announced after the baby was announced, and the ceremony is going to be in Tennessee…well, one has to wonder whether I’ll come back with wedding pictures featuring a shotgun-wielding father in the background…;)

Why I’ve missed IRC

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Pertinent parts of a #joiito conversation just after I walked in…

Tantek: Clinton did pay down the debt with budget surplus.
rojisan: of course he did. during the clinton administration, blowjobs were FREE
michaelh: sounds good to me
michaelh: get that boy back in office
Tantek: term limits
michaelh: details, Tantek — if he can debate the meaning of “is”, I’m sure he can debate “term limits” ;)
adamhill: or surplus or blow job ;)
michaelh: he’s a master debater, he is
adamhill: <rimshot/ >
adamhill: michaelh, he’ll be here all week, try the prime rib
michaelh: don’t forget to tip the waitresses
michaelh pushes a waitress over
rojisan: try the waitresses? tip the prime rib?
rojisan: sorry. clinton flashback

iTunes: “Get Down, Make Love” by Nine Inch Nails from the album Sin (1990, 4:19).

Bandwidth

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Confidential to T-Mobile: NASA is downloading 36 MB TIFFs from Mars and I only get 2 bars of signal on my cell phone inside my house. Please look into upgrading.

— stevenf, via BoingBoing (who also point out an incredible full-screen Quicktime VR of Mars from the Spirit rover)

iTunes: “Djvd” by Nitzer Ebb from the album Ebbhead (1991, 4:20).

Who’s the pervert? ;)

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Last August, one of Anil‘s “Daily Links” was to a story about the Olsen Twins somewhat risqué Rolling Stone photo shoot. When he linked to it, the tooltip he put on the link was, “298 days, you pervert”.

Today, he linked to a story about the Olsen Twins going to NYU. The tooltip he used this time was, “the answer is 152 days, you pervert”.

If it weren’t for Anil so kindly keeping track of things like this, I’d never know just when the twins were due to turn 18.

I’m not sayin’.

I’m just sayin’.

iTunes: “Happiness (Dub)” by Front 242 from the album Mut\@ge.Mix\@ge (1995, 6:10).

Apple gaining ground in enterprise markets

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It’s so nice to live in a time when every news article about Apple doesn’t involve some form of doom and gloom predictions. Not only have the “Apple is doomed” proclamations died down, things just keep getting better — even in markets historically far outside of Apple’s domain.

What’s stunning isn’t that Apple Computer Inc.’s engineers can, say, design a server with two 2-GHz G5 processors, 1GB of memory, storage capacity of 80 to 750GB and loads of other goodies all in a slim 1U package (a mere 1.75-in. thick). No, what’s stunning is that Apple’s marketers will price the Xserve system at \$3,999. That makes the long-reputed price-gouging Macintosh maker the price leader for dual-CPU servers by a couple of bucks. But when you add in Windows per-client pricing, the savings become huge. Apple sells its systemswith no per-client fees for Mac OS X. In contrast, a 25-user enterprise license for Windows adds \$2,495 to the price of a dual-processor PowerEdge 1750 server from Dell Inc.

(via MacSlash)

iTunes: “God Part II” by U2 from the album Rattle and Hum (1988, 3:15).

Apple Computers? Pshaw…try Potato Processing!

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This has got to be one of the most inventive (and stupid) ways I’ve heard of yet to try to score some free computer parts:

German police are investigating after an angry man returned a computer he had just bought saying it was packed with small potatoes instead of computer parts.

The store replaced the computer free of charge but became suspicious when he returned a short time later with another potato-filled computer casing, police in the western city of Kaiserslautern said on Monday.

“The second time he said he didn’t need a computer any more and asked for his money back in cash,” a police spokesman said.

Police are now investigating the man for fraud.

(via Neil Gaiman)

iTunes: “Voodoo People” by Prodigy, The from the album Hackers (1994, 4:08).