Wow, drop out for a week and the whole world goes topsy-turvy. I just got the whole rundown from Paul the other night, and I have to say that on the one hand I'm incredibly shocked at some folks' vindictive behavior, and on the other hand, it's just like the Internet. While I don't discount the technical hassle of dealing with trolls (people out to start problems on a website or forum), I do wonder about the appropriate ways to deal with this. Of course, I'm not writing this to criticize anything, simply to engage the issue...

Andy Cline wrote this great essay that used to be available on his website ( ). Unfortunately, it looks like he's left that school and the document is unavailable.

I'll summarize based on an essay I wrote discussing his approach. He endorsed the Platonic (read: Socratic) approach to dealing with flames and inappropriate posts on class-based discussion groups. I think the same principles can work here. If (e:s) is a site based on building community and social interaction, then the Socratic method of questioning the offending poster could be of some use. The idea is that the group self-censures based on group desire. Rather than deleting or ignoring an inflammatory post, the poster is questioned by members of the group until they either give a legitimate explanation of their view (hard to do in cases of pure trolling) or else they will eventually recant in the face of group pressure.

I'm not saying that this approach can satisfy all situations. And there is the possibility that a more technically savvy attack could be executed against (e:s) in response to topics posted here, and then the Socratic method isn't going to be of much help. But I think it's useful to contemplate all forms of dealing with issues; not just technical restrictions, but group behaviors we could work to develop, too...

my $.02...

They're coming up -- woot! OK, Paul wanted me to post a link to Pleix (http://www.pleix.net), but then it was down when I checked it. Usually it's up, and these folks make super rad videos... Paul should check out the Futureshock video, which is a video for a song by Atmosphere. Has anyone else checked out Seven's Travels? It's good stuff...

"Ground control to Major Tom: We found a hole in your theory and we named it Shawn."

Must learn Unix better... But that's another story. I'm thinking about rebuilding a box into a media server using the ClarkConnect Linux ISO (http://www.clarkconnect.org). Anyone got any experience with this?

Man, what kind of moron could vote Sean Penn over Bill Murray?!? I think Lost in Translation was an amazing film, incredibly well-done on all parts, and Bill Murray deserved it. Did you see the look on his face just after they called Penn's name? He was crushed. You could see it from the longshots... The man did good.

I love that my affections this year were split between the cheapest film in the Awards and the most expensive. I'm very glad Peter Jackson got his due recognition, although I'm also sad that Coppola didn't get Director - sure, it's a dynasty, but how can you argue with Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation? The woman is doing good things. I guess we haven't seen the last of either of these two.

OK, back to being pissed about Bush...

happier and calmer means ignorant and repressed
honest and truthful means naive and mute

when people say that the world used to be less violent, they really mean that the world used to not view violence as a bad thing.

Tradition ain't nothing but a great song in a musical. That's it. I want little to no part in tradition. Tradition is selling your daughter for a few cows. Tradition is putting in overtime at work. Tradition is punishment over rehabilitation, gaming the system, and believing in the good old days. There were no good old days. There are no eternal truths. Tradition is violence. Tradition is war as an institution. Tradition is hazing and initiation and bitter sexual encounters. Tradition is static.

AND

Non-Participation == DEATH

If you are not participating, then just don't bother. If you don't intend to help us oust Bush in 2004 by compromising on a candidate who would at least reverse the most damaging moves of the current regime, then don't bother protesting, complaining, moaning, or whimpering.

If we do not remove Bush from office, we cannot get on with the discussion of improvements to our system that could create more desire for participation. Like proportional representation in the congress to facilitate more involvement and voice for alternative party participants. Wouldn't that be a better ammendment to make?

OK, I'm writing raw here, but I just had to get this out. Of course I saw the great dictator on TV this morning, and I was outraged from the start: Gay marriage, or any other kind of marriage, is neither a threat to our safety, our own marriages, or our world in any shape or form. In fact, legalizing same-sex marriages would further equalize our system of governance and further increase the benefits of freedom, equality, and respect to all of our citizens under our social union.

And then there's the Constitution itself: You can't just amend the Constitution directly against the Constitution. I just can't believe that we'd let someone do that, no matter who their daddy is.

Let's face it: GW hates gays, lesbians, transgendered, bisexuals, thinkers, critics, reporters, women, and people who think to much.

It's pitiful: GW gives fewer press conferences during his presidency than any other president in the 20th Century, and he hates homosexual/s/ity so bitterly that he must come out on television and tell us all about it. In fact, he has so much hate for same-sex marriage, and apparently it so hurts and endangers the president's own marriage, that he wants to make it a major issue for the next 9 months -- he wants America to finally elect him to office based on his hatred.

I feel neither hurt nor threatened by the issue of same-sex marriage. I feel extremely threatened by the chilling effect the Bush administration's rampant bullying, both at home and abroad.

Let's get together on a choice for 2004, because we'll all be hurting by 2008 if we don't get a regime change.

Old websites are grizzled old beasts that should be put out of their misery. I've been moving GF! (http://www.gamesfirst.com) over to a new server -- our old Idaho host just wasn't cutting it for us. We were really willing to deal as long as it was free, but it ain't no more. We're with 1and1.com now, which has been a good place so far. Dealing with two hosting services and Network Solutions is about enough to make you pull your hair out, though.

We seem to have made it through with minimal hassle. We serve about 250K readers per month, so we wanted it to be as smooth as possible. Now we begin the work of re-creating the monster in the image of a dynamic PHP and mySQL -based website. Whoo! Get on the PHP bandwagon!

With luck everything will be in place in time for our 10 year birthday. Wow. 10 years online...

w3rd, the UT2k4 demo is available and it pretty much roxor my world, y'know? It's just such a high-energy, adrenaline-fueled speed shooter. Now that they added loads of badass vehicles to cruise around in, it's like a whole new chaos to luxuriate in. It might be the exact opposite of Second Life... (until somebody programs a good enough UT2k3-like game to play in SL, which would be a fun project). But I know that I'm not the only one who enjoys both. Anyway, the demo rules and you should download it. Check the Downloads section on Unreal Tournament dot Com :

Paul's built so many cool things into (e:s) here that I haven't had time to take full advantage of all of them. However, I had a disturbing experience when I noticed I could click on my user image. I did so, launching an audio message telling the user that the journal owner had not posted an audio file. It was that completely characteristic Clearvoice TTS.

I'm the kind of guy who hates robotic voices on answering machines and tries to humanize my own messaging systems. So I decided the time had come to upload an audio file. I'm trying to generate new material for another DJ FnW feat. CM album, so here's a wee sneak peek at some experimentation I've got going on... The quality on the journal sound file is kind of cruddy in order to get it in under the filesize limit. But I've posted a full CD quality version on my personal webspace. Click the link to download the MP3:

So I got on this train via a link from BoingBoing to Neil Gaiman's weblog, and I thought it fitting for (e:Strip).

Looks like Bush's Dept of Education has created a new list of television shows that will be barred from being captioned for the hearing impaired (apparently there's not much going on in education these days). Here's a link to the list:

Needless to say, the approved and disapproved lists reflect the far-right, rabidly Puritan values of the current administration. What can I even say about it? It's ludicrous mistreatment and abuse of a service intended to aid people. But apparently BushCo doesn't think the hearing impaired are smart enough to protect their children from the evils of The Amazing Spiderman... Needless to say, the National Association of the Deaf are upset about the whole thing (http://www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/pr.html).

And not many folks are talking about this. The decisions went into effect last October. The effect is that groups applying for federal funds to caption television programming will not be eligible if they are captioning the disapproved shows. So no captions for "Gay Hollywood" or "Papparazzi Part 1: New York", which may or may not be so bad (many of the shows on both the approved and disapproved lists are probably better off not being watched by the general public, IMO), but it also means that poor little hearing impaired children won't be able to get their Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Samurai Jack fixes. It's classic class-oriented cultural eugenics. Cartoons and fantasy are bad for kids and might get them doing things like reading Harry Potter novels and sacrificing babies to Satan.

In the eyes of the right wing radicals, it's better to watch The Fountainhead (approved) or Amazing Animal Videos (also approved). But regardless of who is making the list, the whole endeavour is dumb. Why isn't everything captioned? Can't we pull that off? To cut any group out of the loop when it is so feasible to provide a modicum of accessibility is just treacherous. When making lists like this to fasttrack the meager distribution of a pathetic amount of funds is how the Department of Education spends its time, things must be really rough.