Impeach the Bastards

February 10, 2003 / / 1 Comment

I asked a couple of days ago, in high dudgeon :
“How much more of this are Americans willing to take? How many more clear signals can there be that the principles for which their nation is claimed to stand are being dismantled and subverted by their almost-elected officials? What will it take to get them to wake the f–k up and throw these weasels out?”
and this was one of the answers left in the comments…

Vote to Impeach

“Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General during the Johnson Administration has drafted articles of impeachment setting forth high crimes and misdemeanors by President Bush and other civil officers of his administration. Click here to read the Articles of Impeachment.
Mr. Clark has also prepared historical notes on the power of impeachment, for consideration in the impeachment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Ashcroft. Click here to view these notes.
Votes cast in this campaign will be hand delivered to the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and to the ranking Democrat on the Committee.”

Thanks, Sarah. If I were American, I’d be a little scared of being branded an Enemy of the State for adding my name to the list, and being imprisoned without that old-fashioned habeus corpus to get in the way. But if I were American, you can damn well bet I would sign, anyway. At least someone’s trying to do something.

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

February 9, 2003 / / 6 Comments

This somewhat academic and very interesting piece from Clay Shirky [via Phil] on (in part) the eternal A-list debate is heavy with meaty bits just begging for a good gnawing.
Some bones I plan to worry at a little more, when I’m in a gnawing mood :

  • Like Phil, I’m not so sure about “As beloved as [some well-known bloggers] are, they would disappear if they stopped writing, or even cut back significantly. Blogs are not a good place to rest on your laurels.” My recent experience of taking more than a month away from the site seemed to indicate otherwise, at least going by the crudest of measurements, hit counts.
  • “Finally, there is no real A-list, because there is no discontinuity.” I’m not sure this entirely makes sense to me, either, even understanding as I do the math underlying his point. I tend to think there is an A-list – a secret document, signed in blood, locked deep in the vaults under Stately Kottke Manor – mostly because folks deny existence of it! No, I’m not serious; I’ve always taken it as an in-joke of sorts that escaped into the wild and took on a life of its own, because it had a kernel of truth to it. Regardless, I would have thought that the Power Law distribution that Clay discusses, including the constellation of ‘stars’, would argue that there is an A-list of sorts, but not one that is entirely self-selected. Although in many cases those who sit at the extreme left of the graph (amongst the ‘stars’) may show no greater objective merit than some who do not, the other factors he mentions (early adoption, agreement-reinforcement, ‘solidarity’ and so on) combine to keep many who are there there, once they reach that level of recognition.
  • “Are there people who are as talented or deserving as the current stars, but who are not getting anything like the traffic? Doubtless. Will this problem get worse in the future? Yes.” The first answer is most assuredly correct, but I’m not so certain of the second. Although the network model that Clay uses is, I’m sure, unassailable, I’d like to think that the problem of talent going unrecognized will not get worse. Do I have any evidence to back myself up? Naw. Based on my traffic and recognition factor and all of that, I think I’m probably creeping up into the grey area between Conversation and Broadcast with this site (see below), but the truth is that I’ve been at it for almost two years, and although I’ve never actively sought out blog stardom, I do rock, and I’d’ve figured by now that I’d be, like, Master of Time, Space and Dimension or something.
    This, though, was the part that really interested me :

    At the head will be webloggers who join the mainstream media (a phrase which seems to mean “media we’ve gotten used to.”) The transformation here is simple – as a blogger’s audience grows large, more people read her work than she can possibly read, she can’t link to everyone who wants her attention, and she can’t answer all her incoming mail or follow up to the comments on her site. The result of these pressures is that she becomes a broadcast outlet, distributing material without participating in conversations about it.
    Meanwhile, the long tail of weblogs with few readers will become conversational. In a world where most bloggers get below average traffic, audience size can’t be the only metric for success. LiveJournal had this figured out years ago, by assuming that people would be writing for their friends, rather than some impersonal audience. Publishing an essay and having 3 random people read it is a recipe for disappointment, but publishing an account of your Saturday night and having your 3 closest friends read it feels like a conversation, especially if they follow up with their own accounts. LiveJournal has an edge on most other blogging platforms because it can keep far better track of friend and group relationships, but the rise of general blog tools like Trackback may enable this conversational mode for most blogs.
    In between blogs-as-mainstream-media and blogs-as-dinner-conversation will be Blogging Classic, blogs published by one or a few people, for a moderately-sized audience, with whom the authors have a relatively engaged relationship. Because of the continuing growth of the weblog world, more blogs in the future will follow this pattern than today. However, these blogs will be in the minority for both traffic (dwarfed by the mainstream media blogs) and overall number of blogs (outnumbered by the conversational blogs.)

    To a certain degree, although I’m inclined to want to push back against the tendency to put things into two or three simple slots – in Clay’s piece they’d be Broadcast Blogging, Conversational Blogging, and Blogging Classic – I think he’s nailed it to the door pretty well, here, as long as one acknowledges the continuities between the styles, and that some sites in each bucket will break the mold.
    I think that one thing Clay misses in his description of the hockey stick head, the mythical A-list, the region of stardom, and the long, somewhat unsuccessful tail of conversationalists and classic link-and-a-haircut blogs, is the assumption that possessing ‘merit’ or ‘quality’ (Zen and the Art of, anyone?) automatically push a blog into the stardom stratum, through the processes he accurately describes. Many of those who have an online presence have no desire for ‘upward mobility’, I think, and are perfectly happy to continue what they do online with no sense that it is less worthy than anything else. Moreover, for every seeker after fame, there will be at least one who has no interest in assuming the pressures that hundreds (or thousands) of daily readers can bring. Of course, as I’ve rambled on about before, there are those who desire nothing less than fame and recognition, and cultivate it carefully, and measure it in links and hits.

  • “There is no A-list that is qualitatively different from their nearest neighbors, so any line separating more and less trafficked blogs is arbitrary.” Comparing two groups of blogs (ie those who get an average of say 500 hits a day and those who get an average of 50) this is true, certainly. Is it also true, as a generalization, when we compare two individual blogs? Which makes we wonder, too, what we mean when we talk about ‘qualitatively different.’ Dangerous and emotionally charged territory, this, perhaps, in the sense that for many people their personal web sites are an avatar of themselves, and the person they perceive themselves to be and the ways they want the world at large to perceive them are deeply wrapped up in what they say and how they say it.
    This is, one assumes, why (like on this very page) many people (especially those new to the game, before they get jaded and throw up their hands in disgust and disavow ever looking at their traffic figures) add hit counters to their page – they are looking as much for feedback on their own sense of self-worth as anything else. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. It comes part and parcel with the self-regarding Dark Side of the whole personal publishing world.

    • Anyway, I ramble, as usual. Although it may seem as if I’m arguing against some of Clay’s points, that’s not really the case. There’s a lot to chew on there, and I found it both illuminating and instructive, and thought I’d try and note down some of my reactions before the coffee wears off.
    Me, I like me some conversation, but as moderate fame is thrust upon me, I find it not unpleasant. What do you reckon?

    Will the last person to leave please turn out the lights

    February 8, 2003 / / 10 Comments

    Via MeFi and OW™, something else to be really pissed about, you know, after you’re finished with all the other things on your list.

    This proposed law [..] “would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ‘suspicion,’ create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.”
    [more…]

    How much more of this are Americans willing to take? How many more clear signals can there be that the principles for which their nation is claimed to stand are being dismantled and subverted by their almost-elected officials? What will it take to get them to wake the f–k up and throw these weasels out?
    See, now I’m all grumpy again.

    Wanderings

    February 8, 2003 / / 2 Comments

    This guy‘s on a trip around the planet, and his travel diaries (full of the tales like this latest of difficult defecations, hiking hardships, and all manner of mad and unpleasant things one puts oneself through on a daily basis when backpacking around the world) make me feel like hitting the road again.
    Also : “lots of nice pictures too, including penis gourds and big stone penises at a fertility temple, the big jars of Laos, the big heads of Easter Island, dog eating and dried llama foetuses.”
    Domesticity is wearisome, some days. Particularly on those days you find yourself bickering with your spouse about everything and nothing. Oh, to be sh-tting in a trench latrine with snowflakes swirling around your tender bits on the side of a mountain somewhere…

    [this is funny]

    February 8, 2003 / / 2 Comments

    Representatives of The Irish Government’s Department of Education and The INTO (Irish Teachers Organization) have advised its qualified teachers to “exercise extreme caution” when accepting a teaching contract in South Korea. It goes on on to state that “due to the overwhelming number of complaints routinely received by various Irish government departments from Irish teachers in connection with their experiences in this country, we feel unable to recommend it to our citizens as a safe or viable career option and furthermore impossible to resist the conclusion that the current Hagwon system in South Korea is endemically corrupt”.
    Endemically corrupt, indeed. Nicely spotted.
    (‘hagwons’ are private schools (primarily for English), by the way, of which there are literally tens of thousands in the ROK)

    Why do they hate us so much?

    February 8, 2003 / / 2 Comments

    This article and its associated Metafilter thread make interesting reading, and are germane to the roots of my rant yesterday, perhaps. Really, though, I was just havin’ a bit of fun.

    You know that feeling you get when a telemarketer interrupts your dinner? I get that feeling sometime when my Pentecostal/Charismatic friends are trying to persuade me into their camp. It’s not that I don’t know they are good, decent, law-abiding people who like me. I just want them to quit treating me as a target or a project and start treating me as a person who is free to be myself and different from them.

    Pray For Death! Pray!

    February 7, 2003 / / 6 Comments

    Thanks to the eternally irate Mr Golby for this little nugget.
    Yes! Bless us, lord! Let’s pray for our troops, pray for our politicians, pray that the bleeding hemorrhoids that have been plaguing us will disappear, let’s pray that those pesky raghead pagan f–ks die in their thousands, let’s pray that more war will stop war, let’s pray that killing will put a cap on killing, let’s pray that the sweet light crude manna will continue to pump through the fiscal veins of our great nation, let’s pray that our god has a bigger dick than theirs, let’s pray that the dazed halfwit apathetic scum that allowed us to take over the most powerful country in the world won’t wake up and cut our throats like the vermin we are, let’s pray goddamnit, let’s pray the great game will continue, let’s pray that jesus doesn’t f–king come back and rip us from crotch to sternum like trout, let’s pray, let’s pray, let’s get down on our knees and pray to something bigger, let’s pray, let’s pray our children don’t have to do the same evil things we did, it’s not our fault, god, please, it’s not our fault, we’re not bad people, we just did what we had to do, what we were told to do….

    bomb.jpg

    [Audio : Dead Kennedys – Kinky Sex Makes The World Go ‘Round]

    Hey

    February 5, 2003 / / 4 Comments

    Hey, while I’m at it, Exploding Dog is really good and stuff, too. But you probably already knew that.
    I could learn to like this linking without the commentary schtick… Emptybottle Lite! Now with even more sh-t that you don’t care about!

    Dynamics

    February 2, 2003 / / 11 Comments

    Like quonsar said, not necessarily Metafilter at it’s best, but certainly at it’s most interesting, in some ways. When the WTC was hit, when the bomb went off in Bali, and today, to offer some examples : all have been moments when it was fascinating to read the raw responses of people to tragedy, to watch how the community dealt with it, to see the both the maudlin sentimentality and the black humour, the heartfelt grief and the political opportunism, the whole sweep of emotion that folks feel when they are hammered by unexpected loss, all packaged up in one neat blue thread.

    Coin of the Realm

    February 2, 2003 / / 1 Comment

    In light of recent ruminations in some places about the politics and social implications of hyperlinking and blogrolling, I find this amusing, no less so because of my opinions about some of the names involved. What a sad and silly game it is, and how inconsequential.
    For my part, were I asked, I’d have to say that Jim Cappozzola, whoever he is, can take a flying f–k at a rolling doughnut, even if I do agree with him about the virulence and unpleasantness of the Little Green Cesspool. The proper response, I would say, to his threats (is it a threat if the consequences are so completely and laughably trivial?) to de-link people if they do not comply with his demands that they de-link Little Green Poosticks is : “So?”
    Fun to watch the fur and feathers fly, I suppose. But it’s something a little embarrassing for adult people to be so concerned about, even if it does touch on important issues that go well beyond blogdom, like censorship and freedom of expression, like tolerance and bigotry. My response to LGF and its ilk, though, is a little like the one I have to those fat, 40 year old men who dress up in Sailor Moon costumes : “Yay! for expressing your inner dipsh-t and striking a blow for repressed losers everywhere, Mr Man, but please take it out of my face, OK?”

    Pundits-r-Us

    February 1, 2003 / / 4 Comments

    It’d be fun to get some statistics on Blogspot bloggers, or blogs in general, I suppose, to get a handle what the blogly zeitgeist is like. How many would characterize themselves as political, how many consider themselves part of a community, how many try to use the word ‘f–k’ on a daily basis, how many insist on writing posts without the use of capital letters…
    And how many call themselves ‘pundit.’ A whole hell of a lot, would be the answer for that one, it seems.

    C students from Yale

    February 1, 2003 / / 5 Comments

    Say what you will about his recent fictional output (or his older fictional output, for that matter), I still have a soft spot for Kurt Vonnegut. At the age of 80, he’s still saying things worth listening to.
    And he’s not an asshole, which still counts for something, I hope.

    I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka ‘Christians,’ and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or ‘PPs.’
    …
    What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! f–k habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
    [more…]

    While we’re talking authors here, another writer whose work I’ve always enjoyed reading, Gunter Grass, is also speaking out against those murderous C students and psychopaths in Washington.
    Edit : This is as good a time as any to share some statistics about Korea with you. I ran across these numbers a few days ago, and they would seem to explain much on first glance. Whether that is actually the case or not is up for debate.
    There are a total of 450 public libraries in Korea. In the whole country.
    These facilities serve a population of approximately 47 million people : it works out to about 110,000 people for each library, the lowest in the OECD. The ratio is actually worse here in Seoul – which is home to the equivalent of about a third of the population of Canada, a fact that never ceases to boggle me a bit – there’s one library for every 330,000 people.
    The comparable figure in Europe is about 1:10,000 and in America it’s 1:20,000 or so.
    Some ad-hocratic systems have arisen to compensate, as is always the case here. There are privately run shops, even in the nasty little suburb where I live, that rent a few books (mostly home-grown manga for the schoolkids) alongside the standard racks of action movies. There’s a bookmobile that comes around the human beehives once a week, too, with a couple of hundred Korean novels onboard. Small compensation for the few who have the time or energy to read anything.
    As for me, even if any of these few libraries were near enough for me to visit, I’d be out of luck. None carry books in English, of course.
    If any webblogger should have an Amazon wishlist and wheedle and beg for books, it’s me, by crikey. Maybe I should get a webcam, start peddling my wonderchicken pulchritude, and demand payments (“Put it on! Put it all back on! Please!”) in literature….
    Nah.

    Redneck

    January 31, 2003 / / 2 Comments

    When you’re a secret redneck like me, an only-partially reformed small-town Norther BC boy, and you’ve got 10 or 11 beers in you, it becomes clear that “Can’t You See?” from the Marshall Tucker Band is one of the greatest songs ever written.
    Then again, the next random-shuffle Winamp playlist entry started just as I was hunt-and-pecking that out, and now I’m gonna have to vote for “I’m Right You’re Wrong” by Vancouver stalwarts DOA as the pinnacle of (punk) Rock And Roll Bliss. Songs of my youth…

    i’m right, you’re wrong – and we both know it.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – and it’s no secret.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – but you got the power.
    what do ya mean – when ya stare at me?
    you think we’re nothing – but things will change.
    we may be crazy – but we’re not insane.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – but you got the power.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – and we all know it.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – so let’s break it.
    you’re gonna fall – you set yourself up.
    you can’t stall – it’s crumbling down.
    out of the way – it’s been standing too long.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – but you got the power.
    i’m right you’re wrong – and we all know it.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – so we’ll have to break it.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – but you got the power.
    i’m right, you’re wrong and we all know it.
    i’m right, you’re wrong – so we’ll have to take it.

    Best Asian Weblog? Hooo-hah. f–k that noise.
    Heh.
    Edit : Another beer, and I changed my mind again. This! Is! The! Best!
    Tom Waits – Heart Of Saturday Night

    Well you gassed her up
    Behind the wheel
    With your arm around your sweet one
    In your Oldsmobile
    Barrelin’ down the boulevard
    You’re looking for the heart of Saturday night
    And you got paid on Friday
    And your pockets are jinglin’
    And you see the lights
    You get all tinglin’ cause you’re cruisin’ with a 6
    And you’re looking for the heart of Saturday night
    Then you comb your hair
    Shave your face
    Tryin’ to wipe out ev’ry trace
    All the other days
    In the week you know that this’ll be the Saturday
    You’re reachin’ your peak
    Stoppin’ on the red
    You’re goin’ on the green
    Cause tonight’ll be like nothin’
    You’ve ever seen
    And you’re barrelin’ down the boulevard
    Lookin’ for the heart of Saturday night
    Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
    Telephone’s ringin’; it’s your second cousin
    Is it the barmaid that’s smilin’ from the corner of her eye?
    Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
    Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
    Cause you’re dreamin’ of them Saturdays that came before
    And now you’re stumblin’
    You’re stumblin’ onto the heart of Saturday night
    Well you gassed her up
    And you’re behind the wheel
    With your arm around your sweet one
    In your Oldsmobile
    Barrellin’ down the boulevard,
    You’re lookin’ for the heart of Saturday night
    Is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
    Telephone’s ringin’; it’s your second cousin
    And the barmaid is smilin’ from the corner of her eye
    Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
    Makes it kind of special down in the core
    And you’re dreamin’ of them Saturdays that came before
    It’s found you stumblin’
    Stumblin’ onto the heart of Saturday night
    And you’re stumblin’
    Stumblin onto the heart of Saturday night

    A-list Ruminations

    January 29, 2003 / / No Comments

    Steve has some interesting thoughts, and beautifully-expressed, about some metabloggy issues that have been on my mind lately as well. Go, read.

    “I absolutely think that the blogosphere reproduces the mechanisms of reward and reprisal that we see in the offline world. Like rewards like, as I said. But not absolutely: I think there are more potential routes to ‘success’ as we define it in this unspace than there are in that other space; we may yet fall victim to offline patterns but we are also more able, I think, to reject them and work toward new patterns. I hope so, anyway.”
    [more…]