Well, I am still working on this VR world for Josephine. My version of the cat monkey doesn't look like how she wants it probably but I fell in love with it now after 8 hours and its not going to change much.

These are pictures from the garden, paul style.

This is my boot. I love this boot, it has been all over the world. Basra loves to eat my boot.



He also like to eat flowers and started trying to walk on two legs in order to reach them today. It was a small step for a tortoise and a giant step for tortoisekind.




In celebration of his acheivment I made a little leg art, to show off his tough legs.

Holly - [inlink]holly,87[/inlink]
Ajay - [inlink]ajay,89[/inlink]

You all could not have read my whole journal because it never says that I want google to take stuff down or censor it. It states multiple times that I am against internet censorship. It was just mentioning that the issue brings up lots of questions about ethics and responsibility.

I did, however, say the people hosting the information on their server are a bit responsible for the information. It is on their computers after all. They are not just cataloging as google is! They are actively distributing this type of information.

If you are refering to this :
"Do you think America should declare war on Google(just before their Stock Market launch), as well as, on the country that is serving this document to google? "

I was simply being sarcastic and saying that it was in line with current government policies and last two wars that we fought. I don't even know how you could take it seriously as it mentions America starting a war with an American corporations. Sorry if you misunderstood what I was saying. The osama picture was part of the joke.

[size=m]What is this about?[/size]
Holly, what is this part supposed to mean, " . . on what Paul considers unsavory or even dangerous information on the internet." You make it sound like I have this weird fringe opinion that the Terroist Handbook is both dangerous and unsavory. Or are you trying to say you find the Terrorist Handbook both savory and harmless?

Promtoion, advertsing and the radio and money
[inlink]jessbob,40[/inlink]

I have thought about his issue a lot as I knew it would come up at some point. I am also really curious what everyone else has to say about this.

[size=m]What to do about promoters?[/size]
In my opinion, it really doesn't affect the site too much when people use journals to promote their band, etc. If people attempt to commercialize by having promo journals, they still need to maintain an interesting journal in order to have any real lasting effect or to get the hundreds of daily readers interested enough to go to events or examine and purchase products. If they don't provide that, they lose out. It's the way I intentionally designed the system to work. By not writing continuously, a journal drifts off into a space that puts it several clicks too far away for the casual reader to find the intended message.

In this particular case, I can't complain though, because we have been looking for local music for elmwood radio, in an effort to remove corporate music from our station. However, it has been really hard to find bands. Mostly, because I am not into very into non electronic (pronounced computerized) music and don't go to many concerts. In this case, both bands contacted me about getting airtime on elmwood radio and I suggested they start a journal. (e:hanabi) also put a link on his site to ours, which drew a little extra traffic to our site.

Perhaps, in the future I will make another route avaible for people who just want their music played. But like I said earlier, without the accompanying journal, people are not very likely to pay attention to the music.

[size=m]Business Chronicles[/size]
The same thing happend a while back with this artist who made fancy custom bicycles. He started a journal but then never followed through. It definately would have been a great way to promote his bike business. Especially, seeing as he was opening a business in the elmwood area. He could have chronicled what it was like to start a business, and really gotten people interested in his bikes. I often wonder why the poepole from Coffee & don't start a journal to promote their coffee shop. It would have been really neat to see the chronicles of owning a local coffee shop on elmwood. I am sure it would have drawn more people to the store as well.

[size=m]Advertisments[/size]
I guess I should probably just have accepted advertisements. I know I could have made a lot of money at this point but in reality I can't compromise on the ethics behind it. Say I offered a local business advertsiing space that they paid for in order to raise money for a new server, etc. Then, someone writes a journal slandering that business. I instantly have a conflict of interest and I don't want to deal with that.

[size=m]What I need[/size]
I have no idea how to manage the social and business side of things on the site, I am just a programmer! What I really need is a PR person. Someone who could deal with issues like this and interface with musicians for me. Someone that could go to events and hand out flyers and get new bands interested in playing on our site and writing journals.

I also need someone to make a promo video, design and distribute flyers, organize and host fundraiser events,as well as, find out what people like and don't like. I also need someone who can start doing more street videos and interviews, someone to contact local papers about writing a review of the site, and most important a grant writer to help me get grants so we can take this project to the next level.

First off I would use the grant money to hire the PR person, then for example, I would really like to see a place in town where the latest journal is projected onto some public space, thereby making the meaning of public journal even more public and in a way maki
ng the whole journal thing more
ta
ngible to the average citizen who is used to televsion. I would also like to see kiosks where people can update around town ( i would build these), but without any money or a grant nothing is going to change. Any ideas? Anyone intersted in helping out with the PR side of the site?

(e:lilho) and I went to go eat Vietnamese food at the ultra tasty vietnamese restaurant on elmwood between utica and hodge. Unfortunately, it was closed so we headed over to Ambrosia.

Along the way noticed the thrift shop at 469 elmwood had books on sale for 25 cents. Also, Pier One had 15% with student ID.

America is so sick and twisted. We had eugenics and racial marriage laws on the book until the 1960s.



Check out this and look at the marriage laws section. Actually look at the whole site, it really make you rethink some of American history.

I was reading a chinese newstory at xinhuanet about terrorists planning terrorist attacks in the United states, who were caught in Britain.

In the article they mention that the one of them was carrying parts of the Terrorist's Handbook with them. I didn't believe such a thing existed, so I decided to check on google and sure enough it's right there (GOOGLE - "Terrorist's Handbook").

Headlines should read :
[size=m]Google Trains Terrorists[/size].

This needs to go from my blog to National news. Honestly though, I don't really want that either, cause like I said they would use this as an excuse to squish freedom of information on the net.

I really don't like the idea that this book exists. At the same time, I am very anti-internet-censorship. I wish it could just go away but now it is around and seeing as its #1 on google, it's probably been downloaded by millions of people who want to hurt people.



This brings up a lot of ethical questions about the responsibility of the search engine companies, such as google and the servers that host the pages. I believe the people that are running the servers are definately aiding terrorists. At the same time, I don't want laws to be made that target servers with materials the government defines as offensive. That could include anything, such as pictures from political protests, to demands for equal right for all people.

This discovery demonstartes the inevitable side-effects of using net technology to share information. All information can now be be shared at the click of a button and in a rhizomatic fashion, so that one posting of the information, leads to others in a continuous cycle.

I guess we can never guarantee there is only "good" stuff on the net because someone would have to define "good" and we all know that each of us feel different about what constiitutes "good" or" bad". Especially on a global scale.

But think about this. We went to war with Afganistan because they were aiding terroists and terrorist activity. At least that is the "offical reason" (oil, etc excluded.) I think that we went to war with Iraq for the same reason but right now I really don't rememeber why we went to war with Iraq - at leats officially.

Anyways, both times it was because they were helping out terrorists. So do you think America should declare war on Google(just before their Stock Market launch), as well as, on the country that is serving this document to google? Where does the chain of responsibility start ?!?

What would be thecase if it was a book that was published. Would the publisher and/or author be responsible if the book was used to city people and cripple a city?

This is crazy, I am usually so sceptical but this time I see it laying tangibly before me (GOOGLE - "Terrorist's Handbook").

I know that keeping people in a state of constant terror seems to really work when it comes to limiting personal freedoms and I recognize that the capture of these terrorists could be a government ploy to make us more afraid and give up more freedoms, but the existence of the Terrorist's Handbook is real and honestly, too real for me. I knew that something like it must have existed but never thought it was so easily reachable by all the people I don't want to have it.

Let's even exclude terroists. I don't want some mad scientist, backwood, whackjob to get a hold of it either.

On a side note the article mentions the use of toxic gas and radioactive waste to cause terror in NYC and New Jersey. I wonder if that would bring (e:hodown) home. I know I would never visit there again.

Here we have the most beautiful day of the year and I'm trying to deal with paperwork crap at UB. Each time I get somewhere, I'm told to go somewhere else. It's these little beaurocracy miracles that make me so glad I chose a large school.

Everyone else is at work today. I tried to contact about twn different people about going to tudor lounge for the show and everyone is working or has plans.

I guess for most people that is a typical summer tuesday on elmwood. It's really a shame because they are missing the only nice day I can remember this summer.
So ironically, as I look up right now from writing this I se a police guy giving my car a ticket for not having a parking pass. The annoying part is I do have a parking pass but it's just not up. So I show him and he sayd I need to drive to the furthest possible place on sampus (spaulding hall) and fill out paperwork to file an appeal.

They tell me the process should take anywhee from 3-5 weeks. I hate this place so thoroughly.

I am really sad about this. I mean we are #1 under elmwood strip on just about every search engine, and the entire site is bascially just a front for the data the describes an elmwood strip experience in 2003-2004. Moreover, it is a free place for Buffalonians to express themselves and their feeling about their community on the web, without the constraints of being able to code or having a server.

Here is the letter I received:

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:26pm, Blackmon, Jennifer wrote:
Hi Paul-

In reviewing your website; we felt that it was of a personal nature; which goes against the criteria that we try to maintain within the WNY Web Directory.

Thank you for your time; and have a good day!

Jennifer Blackmon
New Media Coordinator
Buffalo.com
jblackmon@buffalo.com

I wonder if we just focused on commerce instead of living in Buffalo, if they would have accepted us, even though I applied to be listed in the their community section.

Ironically, they have accepted much less "buffalo related" websites I have made, probably because they were all about selling stuff. Here is a to another website I found listed under their community directory. It is of course "NOT CONSIDERED PERSONAL" if it is there.

This is their logo:



I think they should have to chance it to this:

Did anyone end up going to the Spencer Tunick shoot at the Central terminal? I am so amazed at the lack of information about it. Nobody posted. There is no mention of it on the Channel 4 News Webpage and if you search for Tunick on their site, there isn't even information about the fact that he came was coming to Buffalo, only some references to his past work in New York City.

There is also nothing on Channel 2 news

Same with Channel 7 - NOTHING

I found this on 1010win.com

More than 2,000 people had registered to shed their clothes, pose and be photographed en masse Sunday, though not everyone who volunteered was expected to go through with it. About 450 people took part in the New York City project.

Maybe we will hear about it tomorrow. What happend to real-time news around the clock - Channel 2, 4, and 7? What happend to news on the internet? What happend to all the people that preached to me about how great this was gonna be and then never went or wrote about it? Maybe it was in fact so great that everyone is still in some sort of ecstatic state and can't write yet!