Heroes

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Except in the life of a hero, the whole world is meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what’s possible. That’s the nature of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.

— John Gardner, Grendel

The greatest American is…

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In preparation for a show airing next week entitled ‘What the World Thinks of America,’ the BBC took nominations for the ten greatest Americans of all time. Nominations have closed, and now it’s time to vote!

So, out of a completely open playing field, what ten people were nominated as the ten greatest Americans ever?

Bill Clinton, Bob Dylan, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Homer Simpson, Mr. T, and George Washington.

Homer Simpson? Mr. T?

And, while this is kind of amusing, it’s also kind of disturbing — the current standings, after 28,548 votes:

  • Bill Clinton (3.53%)
  • Franklin D Roosevelt (3.78%)
  • Benjamin Franklin (4.07%)
  • George Washington (4.62%)
  • Bob Dylan (5.12%)
  • Thomas Jefferson (5.72%)
  • Mr. T (8.17%)
  • Martin Luther King Jr. (9.08%)
  • Abraham Lincoln (9.60%)
  • Homer Simpson (46.33%)

For the record, I voted for Martin Luther King, Jr.

(via Prairie)

Update: The website for the show (linked above) looks very interesting too. It includes a short 10-question quiz about America — that I got a whopping 60% on. Ouch. Maybe I need to watch the show, too…

Habits

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So D’s asking about odd or wierd habits today. I know I’ve got more than my fair share…

  • I’ve got something of an unusual vocabulary — choice phrases that I really do say, both online and in the real world, include “rock on,” “ooers,” “woohoo,” and others that I’m blanking on at the moment because I’m actively trying to come up with them.
  • I’m a fidgeter. Always have been, always will be. Must have something to do with my hands, whether it’s playing with something, tapping my fingers to music, talking with my hands while describing something, or anything else.
  • I will, on occasion, completely randomly start hopping or skipping, or generally bouncing around. This usually happens when other people aren’t around to witness it, but I’ve been caught on more than one occasion.
  • Four years after cutting my long hair off, I still tend to try to run my hand through my hair when thinking or stressed.
  • Certain events must be described as “fuckin’ awesome.”
  • I quote movies constantly — but rarely entirely accurately. Close enough to make my point, but I’m often corrected by my friends after spouting off.
  • It’s just been pointed out to me that I tend to start humming whatever random song is floating through my head at any given point.
  • After my years of DJ’ing, I’m incredibly catty when I’m at a club and the DJ isn’t up to my personal standards. And they rarely are.
  • I’m as likely to watch a Disney film as I am a horror flick or bizarre surrealistic art film.
  • If there’s a way to make a lowbrow, crude, gutter-level joke about something, I’ll probably go there.
  • I’m not a big fan of cheese, and my preferred form is the Kraft Singles (fondly referred to as “plastic cheese” by my mom).

I think that’s enough for now. I’m sure there’s more…

But what about the kittens?

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Royce sent me a link to this page about kittens today, saying that it reminded him of us.

What follows is a dramatization. It is based on a very, very true story of two modern maniacs discussing the implications of God killing kittens, and deciding, logically, how to protect themselves in the event of a kitten apocalypse. Logic, of course, can be skewed terribly when your premise is a theory based on the Lord being a female kitten…

Y’know, I think he’s right!

Speakeasy needs a laxative!

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I noticed an ad on Speakeasy’s website today advertising a limited time offer for a good price on a faster connection than the one I currently have. Always interested in a good deal, I gave them a call to see if I could upgrade my ‘net connection.

As it turns out, I can — so sometime next week, my pipe to the ‘net will be upgraded to a 1.5/768 connection — the same speed into my apartment, but approximately six times as fast leaving the apartment. This should mean slightly better response time for this website, and it might allow me to play with things like streaming audio, something I’ve wanted to explore but haven’t had the bandwidth for.

The best part about all this, though, was the service representative I spoke with. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch his name, but he was great. At one point, since I don’t have any great concept of how easy or difficult it might be on Speakeasy’s end to upgrade my service, I wondered if it might be as simple as “throwing a switch deep within the bowels of Speakeasy.” Apparently he’d not heard a customer choose that particular phrase in the midst of a service call, because things got a little sidetracked for a bit after that.

End result? Here’s my service request, as seen from my account status page on Speakeasy’s site:

we are awaiting the new upgrade switch to be thrown deep within the bowels of speakeasy. once this bowel movement is finished please credit the customer a month of service. they have agreed to recontract if we do this favor for them. it’s like a new order, only it’s an old order with a funny hat on.

Yup — my Internet upgrade is just awaiting a bowel movement. Anyone have any Ex-Lax?

Fundamentalism

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Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.

— anrwlias (found on the ‘net)

Who's who in the blogging world

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A simple guide to the A-list bloggers is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek introduction to the “big names” of weblogging. Choice quotes from the ones I read:

Dave Winer: “In the beginning was the Blog, and the Blog was with Dave, and the Blog was God. The same was in the beginning with Dave. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness (everyone but Dave) comprehended it not.”

Doc Searls: This new meme here, that new meme there. Here’s some pointage to back and forth between this person and that person on this issue. DIY Journalism. The powers of Big Media have been forever broken!! Power to the People. Linux rules! Linux makes a great hamburger topping. Blogs, there is no us and them. It?s all us. Weblogs are the highest form of audience content. Weblogs are the highest form of evolutionary development. Printwash, Searlsowash, but NOT Googlewash, no no. Google is God. If not on Google it doesn’t count.

Ben and Mena: We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. Blogs rule. Moveable Type rules. We are cute. We are cute.

Anil Dash: You can’t ignore wheat. Links. Weird Links. Cool Links. Links about Links. Links. More Links. Index of Links. Link Indexes of Link Indexes Indexed. Ben and Mena inside gossip. Moveable Type. Radio sucks! Dave Winer is a smushed toad. Winer is a Whiner. I work in Marketing. Moveable Type! Journalists are the Devil, they only ever rewrite Press Releases. Just who do they think they are anyways? Bah Humbug! Bloggers are the future.

Robert Scoble: I am nice, reasonable, normal smart type, not always given to the usual Blog Groupthink. I am not like all those other Bloggers. So why I am a Blogger? I am just gaming this meme. Link to friends. Link to more friends. Link to other friends. Link to these friends. Link to more friends. Link to my boss, he’s way way cool. Hey, didyah know, I used to work for Radio Userland. And I used to plan Tech Conferences, I know every Geek in the world! They all like me.

Cory Doctorow: Check out the guest blogger! We bagged Dvorak! Blogs have power! Guess old John C. knows old media is DOOMED. “Amazzzing Graccce, I onccce wasss blllinnnnddd butttt noooowww I seeeeeeeeee…” Whooooo! My first novel is out! I love me. I write weirdly chaotic makes-no-sense Sci-Fi stories about a not-to-distant future, or maybe the future is now. But since it is all Sci-Fi I get away with all this random un-defragged sheer-chaos. Look at me! I write Sci-Fi. I won all these awards! I won the John W. Campbell Award! Yeah yeah yeahhhh! I am special! I like Disney!

(via Robert Scoble and Dave Winer)

More impeachment talk

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It’s probably still unlikely to happen, but as more and more information surfaces about just how much ‘misinformation’ was presented as fact by Bush et al in order to justify our attack of Iraq, more and more people are talking seriously about the possibility of impeachment.

This is explosive stuff. And considering that the war’s number one cheerleader — Bill Kristol — is now admitting Bush made “misstatements”, it looks as though the whole WMD issue could very well be an albatross hung around Bush’s 2004 re-election effort.

It seems to me that impeachment isn’t unrealistic to at least consider, at this point. As has been quoted here before: Bush lied. People died.

Slipping through the cracks

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In a very interesting “mea culpa” article, ABC News’ political column The Note lists a huge amount of stories that should get more recognition, but for one reason or another, don’t get major coverage.

With all those reporters covering politics and government in Washington and around the country, you would think that the press would be watching the powerful on behalf of the people pretty persistently.

But you would be wrong.

On any given day, owing to tight budgets, the evasiveness of those we cover, and the generally (sorry ? ) lazy nature of some reporters, way too much of what gets covered in politics and government are the spoon-fed public events that the communications staffs want covered.

Even “enterprise” and investigative stories tend these days to come not from innovative shoe-leather work, but rather are generated (and often thoroughly researched by) interest groups, political actors, and other non-journalists who want to see a story come out.

…for every newsworthy evasive action we learn about (because the press gets tipped off or stumbles into something or finds something through hard work), there are literally thousands that never come to light.

With the president headed off to sell Medicare reform in Chicago (and, we bet, suck up to Mayor Daley big time), and the Senate poised to announce today a plan for dealing with what Democrats still see as a ticking time bomb for the president — the intelligence questions surrounding the missing weapons of mass destruction — the questions of hide-and-seek and American political journalism are front and center for us today.

So, we offer you several outstandingly illustrative examples.

~~The article doesn’t have a permalink yet — it will next week, but there’s no telling if I’ll remember to come back and re-link it.~~

[Update:]{.underline} Here’s the permalink. For future reference, though, the title is “W’s WMDs Aren’t the Only Things Missing”, published on June 11, 2003.

(via Lambert)