Lingual Tremors

Writer's Strike at Daily Kos: Losing My Election--Divisive Democratic Politics

Just a few months ago, the blogosphere was atwitter with the fact that the election belonged to the Democratic party.   No contest.  While Republicans lamented the poor slate of candidates from which to choose, the Democrats boasted one of the healthiest and most interesting group of candidates in years. 

And now?  The great Obama/Clinton divide emerges.  And smart Democrats everywhere are beginning to fear the "Losing My Election" anthem.  John McCain is probably doing a happy dance everyday in his merry Republican bus.  What more could he ask for?

Here's one small snippet of how nasty things have gotten.  Alegre, formerly of the Daily Kos, is on strike from the famously centric site for all things leftist in the blogosphere.  Alegre asserts that the Daily Kos, in its support of Obama, has become a negative and abusive site to Clinton bloggers.  From Alegre:

I've been posting at DailyKos for nearly 4 years now and started writing diaries in support of Hillary Clinton back in June of last year.  Over the past few months I've noticed that things have become progressively more abusive toward my candidate and her supporters.

I've put up with the abuse and anger because I've always believed in what our on-line community has tried to accomplish in this world.  No more.  DailyKos is not the site it once was thanks to the abusive nature of certain members of our community. 

I've decided to go on "strike" and will refrain from posting here as long as the administrators allow the more disruptive members of our community to trash Hillary Clinton and distort her record without any fear of consequence or retribution.  I will not be posting at DailyKos effective immediately.  I will not help drive up traffic or page-hits as long as my candidate - a good and fine DEMOCRAT - is attacked in such a horrid and sexist manner not only by other diarists, but by several of those posting to the front page.

                          

Read the full story here.  Update here.  More commentary on The Moderate Voice,  Tom Watson,  Marc Ambinder.  Even if you're not so interested in all things blogospheric, this is yet another indication of bad things to come.  Both Clinton & Obama need to work on their campaigns.  The more they foster negativity against one another, the more the animosity festers among their supporters.  Talk about going viral.  TGW is running a poll right now that shows her pro-Clinton readers are disinclined to vote for Obama if he gets the nod.  Others in the Obama camp are making similar arguments about Clinton.  So, if Democratic voters stay home in November because they are angry, the Republicans win.  Howard Dean needs to step in and get the party together.  Yet again, the Democrats are poised to shoot themselves in the foot.

Are you sure you want to fly with that sexy new laptop?

Big Brother wants to play with you in the airport. 

Marketing executive Maria Udy learned the hard way.  Maybe you should leave that laptop at home.

And your cell phone.

And anything else you don't want seized on ambiguous grounds.

[Silly travelers--that's why the Internet was born (thanks to Big Brother, too...)]

Big Brother thanks you for his newly acquired electronics.  Have a nice flight.

Who is behind Facebook?

Tom Hodgkinson at the Guardian has done a really, really interesting piece on the neo-con values underpinning Facebook.  Hodgkinson says that "the real face behind Facebook is the 40-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist and futurist philosopher Peter Thiel."  Hodgkinson says that Thiel is a member of a neoconservative group called TheVanguard.org.  So, who is Peter Thiel?  Here's a quote about Vanguard that really disturbed me:

"TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us." Their aim is to promote policies that will "reshape America and the globe". TheVanguard describes its politics as "Reaganite/Thatcherite". The chairman's message says: "Today we'll teach MoveOn [the liberal website], Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined."

I have to admit that on-line, I'm much more interested in a "faceless" kind of presence, so I have avoided being "out there" on something like Facebook.  Oh, yeah, and their ads don't work on me.  I hated high school and am currently not in touch with high school people for a reason, you know?  I don't have a real desire to "connect to people I know".  I'm connected, thanks very much.  I don't need a MySpace, Facebook, or Xanga account to do that....

However, given the social networking applications of Web 2.0, I think this article is very insightful about some of the philosophy that guides social networking.  It's very contrary to someone like Siva Vaidhyanatha who theorizes the web as anarchistic.

Go read the article here. 

Quid: It's Quite Pretty...

Heh.  Heh.  According to January 2008's Wired Jargon Watch:

Quid: "Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination, the first currency designed for extra-terrestrial commerce.  Fabricated from a polymer that won't puncture space suits, the QUID trades through Travelex for just under $13 (yes, it's real)." (68)

More on Quid
From Crave
From the BBC

Cool New Blog

From a little red hen, I discovered My Mom's Blog by Thoroughly Modern Millie.  Millie, 82, is one of the oldest bloggers.  Check out her great blog!

Bit of a New Obsession...

It's actually true:  "my mother made me do it."  The Quixotic Tremor is working with second life in her classroom this coming year and she has convinced me to get an avatar and run around to see what all of the fuss is about.  8 hours later on Sunday, I decided that I might have a bit of a new obsession.  So today, she sends me this...

Trying to get to BlogHer 07!!!

Hey there.  Time for my annual entry to BlogHer 07.  I'm trying to win a free trip to BlogHer (it's all very Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio...) where all the cool feminist bloggers are (how they are never as broke as I am in July is beyond me.  So, please have a little pity on a starving writer and click on my Scrapblog often over the next few weeks!  The contest is on until July 16th.  The more hits, the better my chances.  And, once you're over there, be sure to click "play slideshow" to see all of the slides & hear the funky roadtrip music!  Thanks!

~LX

***I'm leaving this post at the top for a while to encourage you to click, click, click away!  However, I will be posting new items daily--see below for new posts. 

Civility, Community, Identity Politics & the Blogosphere: Chris Clarke

I've had a very busy spring and I have not been posting as regularly as I'd like, but I'm sure readers have noticed a more regular posting schedule now that summer is upon us and in the coming weeks, I want to catch up on some "old" blogosphere issues that are on my mind, even if they are already passe for others.

This spring has seen a number of blogosphere dust ups of both small and epic proportions.  These have ranged from the Amanda Marcotte/Melissa McEwan dust up at the Edwards campaign (read my original take on the issue here), the utter lack of civility over Jessica Valenti's new book Full Frontal Feminism (gasp!  not all feminists agree? not all feminists liked the book?), the Kathy Sierra saga, the Brittney Gilbert episode, the on-going racism that exists within the feminist community (although Nubian did not quit because of this racism, her blog is sorely missed;  she was a fierce voice in the blogosphere, and a rich contributor), and many, many, many other things I don't have the time or space to list. 

All of which has me thinking about what we mean by a "blogging" community.  Based on my writings, I suppose I "belong" to the feminist, lgbtq, environmental, writing, and generally "left" communities.  But one of the things that keeps surprising me is the assumption that if you hold a particular set of beliefs, that you are going to agree with everyone else.  A few weeks ago, I read this wonderful post by Chris Clarke who "resigned" from the progressive blogosphere.  In his "resignation," he notes that the progressive blogosphere isn't radical enough for him AND that he thinks too much conformity is a bad thing.  I think what Chris was trying to address was an actual lack of discussion in the blogosphere.  A topic comes up and everyone nails it in their own voice, but essentially, communities of like-minded writers expect that we will all say essentially the same thing.  This, of course, has been part of the blogosphere's attempt to address an increasingly monopoly over the media.  But, what if we don't all agree?  Chris is actually going to continue blogging, but his larger point in his refusal to be a "part" of the progressive blogosphere I read as a reaction to feeling like he was obligated to agree with ideas that didn't represent his politics.  In short, why should the progressive blogosphere be a blogosphere of mediocre compromise (ahem, can you say "the democratic party?")?  I think Chris makes a lot of good points worth thinking about, particularly for political bloggers. 

Within the blogosphere, Lingual Tremors exists as a very small blip on the radar.  It's a lightly trafficked blog which does a combination of politics and personal writing;  depending on what you're looking for and what I'm in the mood to write, you may or may not get the actual "flavor" of this blog unless you're a regular reader.  And, being a regular reader means putting up with moments when the screen goes blank because I'm off on some adventure or other and whilst I love blogging, sometimes, I am more drawn to my other interests, or I am compelled by my career and social justice activities, to put blogging aside during "crisis management" times.  For those readers who know me in my "real" life, my blogging habits mirror my inability to return phone calls, balance a check book, and grocery shop.  I can stay consistent for a while and then, well, life just gets in the way.  What this means is, I don't get looked at regularly, or critiqued, or trolled, in the way other, bigger blogs do.  So I often watch blogging flame wars erupt without ever really feeling the effects of them.  And, on the infrequent occasions when I get comments from trolls or readers whose opinions I feel cross a line, I rigorously follow Bitch Ph.D.'s policy:  "Comments are great; obnoxious comments get deleted.  Deal."  But because I don't "matter" as much as the big blogs, that means I don't get called to account for not agreeing with everyone else.  This gives me much more freedom to ignore the crowd and go in my own direction. 

I think Chris' post is really interesting and raises some interesting questions, particularly for those of us who are on the wilderness of the blogosphere.  What are the identity politics of the blogosphere?  Why do you blog?  Who do you identify with?  On what basis?  What does that mean?  More later...

Tim O'Reilly's Code of Conduct for Bloggers

Seriously cool gadget for your iPod: Geek Alert

Okay, I have no practical use for this since I'm not a doctor, but I love the idea of the new digital electraonic stethoscope.  Most of us probably can't use this, but it's still wickedly cool:  it can record heart sounds directly to your iPod for later use (in research/diagnosis/etc.):

From Thinklabs.

What Would Google Say?

Here's an interesting new project:  "What Would Google Say"?  A description of the project:

Took the first 200 images that appeared in a Google image search for the search term “global warming.” Uploaded all the images into Adobe Premier and then laid down a sweet track, which in this case is Rob Dougan’s “Clubbed to Death” from the Matrix soundtrack.

Visually interesting, particularly in terms of "visual rhetoric", how we emphasize what we are say.

HIGH-Larious!

Hilarious. Original Here at XKCD. Hat tip to My Private Casbah.

Updated Feminist/LGBTQ Blogroll--Look Left

Doing a smidge of updating on the ol' blogroll. Some good new blogs under feminism/lgbtq.

Melancholy Musings on Hubris and History

We had a quiet day today and tonight I ended up knitting and watching Titanic. I've seen the movie so many times; when it first came out, I was entrhalled with the extensive research and reproductions that Cameron built. It was amazing to see the Titanic "real" in its splendor. And it was amazing to watch it go under. Since I was a kid, after reading Walter Lord's canonical A Night to Remember, I have always been fascinated by the Titanic. Watching the movie (which is clearly interested in portraying the class differences), I was struck again by how much we often want to believe in our infalliability. There's an unwavering belief that we can always conquer everything through technology and science. And we are always so startled, over and over again, when science or technology fails, when our efforts fail. Where would we be without the advances of science and technology? Where would we be without pioneers? In my own research, I'm indebted to those who have made medical and scientific advances. But I am also consumed with the question, why can't we learn from our hubris? Why does every advance have to be unveiled as the be all and end all? Tonight, I was so struck, again, by watching the pride in the ship and its amazing construction and the shock on the faces of those proud men as the ship began to sink.

The RMS Titanic Site
Images of the Titanic at rest
National Geographic Photo Gallery

Edwards: Peace at the Okay Corral

So, as of 11:36 a.m. this morning, it seems Amanda and Melissa aren't fired.  Here's from the Edwards' campaign:

The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word. We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

But ya know, if John-boy wants to play in the blogosphere he's going to have to be faster than that.  It took him way tooooo loooooong to release a statement on a story that's already google worthy in the blogosphere.  Plus, he pissed off a whole lot of the "leftosphere."  Oh, yeah, and there's still that question about whether bloggers as paid political campaign bloggers works.  Does this mean no more Virgin Mary popping Plan B from the likes of Amanda in the blogosphere?  Because the loss of that voice would just be a damned shame.

More on this later...

Blogilante Justice: The Blogging Shoot-Out At the Edwards Campaign

So, I'm a little late on this, but for the record, John Edwards sucks.  Salon is reporting that John Edwards fired (and will ??? perhaps ??? rehire ??? how's that for ambiguity?) Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) and Melissa McEwan (Shakespeare's Sister) after right wing bloggers and conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin, Kathryn Lopez and Bill Donohue raised concerns about Marcotte's "Catholic Bashing," particularly in posts about reproductive rights.  Oh, also because they say "Fuck" when they write.  Right.  Pandagon, and Marcotte's writings, get attention specifically for her in-your-face rhetorical style.  And here is the heart of the matter:

Do blogging and political campaigns really mix?  It's not like Amanda's writing and political stance weren't highly public.  Controversial?  You bet.  Consensus seeking?  No way.  If you want news and commentary that don't raise your blood pressure, then tune into one of those morning news shows where the freakish weather reporters claim that 60 and 70 weather in January in New York City is "waking up to another great day" instead of acknowledging the serious problems with global climate shifts and news programming where the Iraq body count is offered with a "serious look" before they cut to some fluff piece about make-up that makes you look great for the office party.  These are the same people who have been bringing you "Mardi Gras in New Orleans:  A Great Travel Destination" when the ninth ward looks like a suburb of Baghdad, only without the American military presence. For many bloggers on the left, myself included, NPR is too conservative.  Forget CNN, The Today Show and the like.

Amanda and Melissa weren't duplicitous.  They didn't hide their politics and get "discovered" one day with an ugly skeleton in the closet.  Far from it.  The comments Amanda (which are the ones being most quoted) is being criticized for weren't published on the Edwards' blog in the name of Edwards.  They were published on a public blog by a private citizen.  And, they were published, for the blogosphere anyway, a long time ago, before Amanda became an Edwards' employee.  And while we're on it, why is Melissa being fired?  For association with Amanda? 

Pandagon is one of the most widely read liberal political blogs and Shakespeare's Sister isn't far behind.  For me, both Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister are daily must reads to keep up with all the news that counts.  I don't always agree with Amanda or Melissa, nor should I.  In fact, I almost never agree with Amanda about religion.  And you know what?  That's a good thing because the blogosphere is the last bastion of free speech and opinions and analysis that we don't get anywhere else on all sides of every issue.  I like to read Amanda's and Melissa's work because they always push me to think just a little more. 

For the Edwards' campaign, firing Marcotte and McEwan either means they are caving to the right or that they were incredibly stupid and didn't read the blogs to begin with.  In either case, Edwards' stance is inexcusable.  If he's just caving to the right, then I wouldn't vote for him anyway because he's not a candidate I can respect.  If he didn't take time to read Pandagon and Shakespeare's Sister, Edwards' decision is the milquetoast problem of the Democrats and I still wouldn't vote for him.  As Victoria at Vortex(t) says, "John Edwards’ borrowed edge of authenticity is now completely gone".

But Edwards' position is a lose-lose situation for a voter like me.  The Salon article indicates that Edwards' campaign ambiguously suggested that they might hire Marcotte and McEwan back.  Unfortunately, that's not going to win my respect either.  Edwards should have released a strong statement of support from the beginning.  Many, many people in comment threads on this issue (see links below) have offered better ways the Edwards' campaign could have responded to this.  So a fire/rehire scenario or a fire/fire scenario loses my respect either way.  Edwards has proven that he's all about the vote, not about a clearly defined platform of values.

The problem with Democratic politics in the United States is that nobody knows what they stand for.  You may have hated freak-of-the-week Rick Santorum, but at least you knew what he stood for.  But with more "centrist" candidates like Edwards, Clinton, Obama and the like, you never quite know what they stand for.  Instead, it's the "what can get me elected" and "how do I get these numbers up" philosophy of American Democratic politics.  And we're never quite sure how any promises they make on the campaign trail will play out once they are elected.

So, I'm not entirely surprised that the blogosphere and campaign politics have met at the Virtual Okay Corral.  When I heard that Amanda and Melissa were hired by the Edwards' campaign, I was intrigued.  I'm sorry that Amanda and Melissa got caught up in the shoot out, but in the end, I'm not entirely sure it's the right place for them to be.  I worry that in blogging for a political campaign they might have lost their political voices, silenced by the stultifying, mind numbing stupidity of winning a political campaign.  Outside of the campaign they can say any damned thing they want.  And we'll all be listening!

And by the way:  give me a break.  Bill Donohue has about as much legitimacy speaking for all Catholics on the topic of religious tolerance as that grilled cheese Virgin Mary auctioned on eBay.  Actually, grilled cheese Mary might have a lot more to say that's interesting about ecumenism.

Read more about it:

Review the whole dust up over at Culture Kitchen, where Liza is cataloging the responses from the best of the left blogosphere.

Pam Spaulding's good response--review and analysis of the right-wing critics

My always favorite, Pinko Feminist Hellcat

Victoria at Vortex(t) on Fuck John Edwards--a nice overall take on the influence of political bloggers

You can let the Edwards' campaign know what you think here.

And, if you're a fellow blogger, how about a little love for Amanda, Melissa, and that whole radical concept of free speech in the U.S.?  If it works for Bill O'Reilly, why not for us?

The Real Geek Love

Ahhhh...the real story of NextFest!  From sexbots to platform shoes, sex is going cyber in the best and worst ways!

Forget Ann Althouse.  This might begin to say it all:

Bright.  Pink.  Cyber.  Boobs.  This is the stuff of 1980s Weird Science, with young boys sweatily ostracized from their schoolmates, toiling away in the basement creating, well, the woman who wouldn't have them in real life.  This is what you might call the worst of cybersex:  the ballroom robot.  Observe:  here are the men at work on their cotton candyesque creation:

Oh yes, they are.  Working on the hole located directly below her pelvis.  She dances with you, remains immobile, and best of all (oh come on--you can guess this, no?)  her CIRCUITRY is IN HER CYBER-VAGINA.  Yes, it's the clit switch.  Talk about a turn on. 

Okay, but here's where NextFest and the whole techno-geek scene has radically changed over the past few years.  Yes, there was the pink-robed wet dream cybersexbot (well, okay, this one just dances with you.  There was--I kid you not, a geishabot.  I don't think she was sexually active however,  She just danced for you.)

But technology isn't just for boys.  I offer you the sex-positive best of cybersex:  Norene Leddy's Aphrodite Project.   For all of the lusty young boy geek dreams of cybersex and plastic robot boobs, I offer you the uber-cool platform shoe tech'd out for sex workers:  it's got a 911 emergency button, a gps locator, an alarm system, and a programmable video screen.  Oh.  And they're really cool platform shoes. 

About the Aphrodite Project:

The Aphrodite Project is a series of new media artworks inspired by the cult of Aphrodite. In temples across the ancient world, Aphrodite was worshiped by both men and women, due to her influence over nature and fertility as well as raw sexuality. Her priestesses performed sexual acts in homage to her as a sacrifice for the fecundity of the land and its people. This sacred prostitution was intrinsically tied to religion, ritual and public policy and was seen as a social service and legitimate commerce.

Platforms, the latest series of work in The Aphrodite Project, is a pair of sandals that are both a conceptual homage to Aphrodite and her prostitute-priestesses as well as a practical object for the contemporary sex worker. An integrated system of shoes and on-line services, Platforms uses the latest technology to bring sex workers on par with other public workers, whose lives are valued highly because they work in dangerous professions that serve the needs of the community.

So there it is kids.  21st century technology= better sex for all of us.

NextFest!

This weekend saw the Linguals at Wired's NextFest.  This groovy showcase of all things uber-modern was a postcard to the future;  what we hope will evolve in the coming years as part of the technology of our everyday lives.  The technology spanned the sublime (the uber-cool vein viewer that means you won't have to suffer through needle sticks at the hospital anymore;  and a 3-D visual computer/surgery interaction that will allow doctors to see the body better; and Virgin Galactic's Space plane!) to the ridiculous:  weird singing and lighted bunnies--Nabaztag-- *read CREEPY* who change color/song along with the stock market report.  I'll also give a quick shout-out here to the Videogame Language Trainer that trains future soldiers how to speak Arabic in 100 hours (!).  And, my favorite "fun" technology--brain ball, a "game" that worked on alpha-theta brain waves.  Whoever was the most relaxed won!

NextFest was a serious combination of cool and geek.  It showcased some of the most interesting thinking of our time.  What was particularly revealing, however, was the generation gap.  While I was LOVING NASA's display of all things intergalactic and being genuinely excited by the medical advances that will make our lives a little more comfortable, many of the younger kids who were there were patently unimpressed.  It's "not bad," I heard one kid say.  I watched another kid text message someone and say "it's not that great."  One of the things I think our point and click world and our mobile qwerty expectations have bred is an assumption of technology.  We regularly see cool technology on television and in movies;  we have come to expect it.  However, the gap between the visual presentation of that invented technology and actual technology remains wide.  So, while NextFest was showing some of the coolest products to come in the next few months and years, there was a serious disconnect between kids' understanding of how cutting edge this stuff was.  And, how long it took to invent and create.

That's it for now.  More on Robot Row later.  Heh heh.

May I Recommend?

Regular readers of ye old blog will have noticed my new attempt (left) to organize my blogroll.  This, of course, brings certain problems as several of the blogs I follow regularly could appear in several categories.  Nevertheless, given my obsessive compulsive desire for order, you have the newly organized blogroll.  And, among the newer blogs there, may I recommend:

Anglofille:  for starters, see "Why I Love My French Neighbors"
Medpundit
Global Bioethics:  see especially the 9/11 post, "Holding Patients Hostage for their Medical Bills"

20 Critical Errors: What's Up With Valid Code?

Yesterday, a colleague and I had a really fascinating discussion about "valid code."  I had never heard this term before (because I'm a wannabe technogeek, not actually a bonified technogeek), and now I'm hooked. 

If you haven't heard about valid code, it might be of interest to you.  Code problems mean that your web page might not display correctly or that spider search engines can't correctly index material on your site.  What's of greater interest to me is that if you have code errors, or "invalid code," there are accessibility problems for people using assistive technology.  For example, if you're working in Dreamweaver, you know that box that asks you for alternate text for an image (the box I ALWAYS ignore)?  That text is what displays on the screen reader for someone with vision difficulties.  As a poet, this makes me now want to provide exciting and evocative titles for all of my photographs!!!

A 2003 study by Dagfinn Parnas revealed that 99% of websites had code errors.

Visit The Validator
    ***for kicks, you can run this on any website.  It's kind of fun!

•     Amazon.com= 1014 errors
•     Moviefone.com=149 errors
•     Flickr.com=18 errors
•     Yahoo.com=300 errors
•     Google.com=47 errors

More importantly, for your own site, it tells you where the errors are, so that you can fix them.  Looks like I'll be doing some Lingual Tremor upkeep this weekend! 

See also:

Why Valid Code Matters

New Blog Research: It's All About Me

My own blog vacillates in the polipersoblogisphere, which is to say that it takes seriously the old feminist maxim that the personal is political (except, perhaps, for the explicitly narciposting and moments like the frog and the coconut...).  "Tech News" reports:

many bloggers are viewing their blogs as personal journals, not thinking what they did as journalism, according to the national blogger survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project released Wednesday.

It's interesting, because the report says that 46% of bloggers are women and:

The report also found that 37 percent of bloggers believed that 'my life and experiences' were the primary topics of their blog, followed by political and government with 11 percent, entertainment with 7 percent, sports at 6 percent, general news and current events at 5 percent, business at five percent, technology at 4 percent, religion, spirituality or faith at 2 percent, and lastly health or illness problem at 1 percent. Other topics of mention included opinions, volunteering, education, and organizations.

I wonder how carefully they asked the question.  That is to say, the feminist community clearly makes no distinction between the personal and the political and, in fact, much of the personal material of the web speaks specifically to women's material conditions.  What could be more political than that?

The reports serves to undercut the serious nature of political blogging and the emerging constructions of political identities.  It also, I think, plays down the importance of communities on the web and of the emerging activist rhetoric.

Merit Badge: Lingua Techna

To Dr. S:  A merit badge for the best new word ever:  technopeasant.

And then, a quick google search revealed:  not so new (but still cool!  And yes, Dr. S., you still get a merit badge.):

TechnoPeasant \-, tek-no-pez-ant\ n ; a person who tries to make use of make use of technology to improve his or her life, only to be stymied by idiotic user manuals, nonplussed technical support staff or poor design.

technopeasant

A term coined by book publisher Steve Osborne to refer to people who are unskilled at using computers and who prefer to remain unskilled.

           

technopeasant
	1. A term used to describe people with little or no computer or online knowlege. Originates from original wonks surfing the early web using University accounts, in reference to AOL and Compuserv users. 2. Anyone who is technologically ignorant or inexperienced.

Word Play

Hat tip to Mad Melancholic Feminista
Check out the link to Snap Shirts!

Web Anonymity: Hah

No comment.
Comic by Stuart Carlson.
Hat tip to:  Ann Bartow over at her new blog site

Web Anonymity

With all of the talk in the media this past month about government subpoenas for MSN and Yahoo and Google searches, and the "tap sans warrant" program of the government, Internet privacy is again on everyone's radar screen.

Check out kaos.theory's web project for anonymity
and Wired's piece on their project.

That was the guiding principle for the members of kaos.theory security research when they set out to put a secure crypto-heavy operating systems on a bootable CD: a disc that would offer the masses the same level of privacy available to security professionals, but with an easy user interface.

"If Granny's into trannies, and doesn't want her grandkids to know, she should be able to download without fear," says Taylor Banks, project leader.

Check out Tor
and The New York Times piece on Tor

A few reasons exist for the surge, which is hard to measure - it is nearly impossible to track how many people have made themselves invisible online. People who want to continue to swap music via the Internet but fear lawsuits brought by the recording industry want to hide their identity. Some people wish to describe personal experiences that could land them in jail. And some Web authors share their thoughts about repressive regimes and face government reprisal if they are caught.

Microcensorsoft II

Thanks to Jonathan for the heads up!  Tom Zeller of The New York Times published a follow up article on Microsoft today.  The article reports:

Microsoft was only the latest technology company to be criticized for cooperating with the Chinese government. Yahoo, Cisco and Google have all been accused of helping to maintain what the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a Congressional investigatory body, has called "the most sophisticated Internet control system in the world."

The article also cites futher examples of the kinds of corporate censorship that are "business as usual" practices for companies doing business with China:

Google and Yahoo both censor some results on Chinese versions of their products, and the MSN blog tool in China prevents phrases like "Dalai Lama" and "human rights" from being used in the title for an entry.

"While this is a complex and difficult issue," Ms. Richardson of MSN said, "we remain convinced it is better for Microsoft and other multinational companies to be in these markets with our services and communications tools, as opposed to not being there."

But technology companies "need to be better corporate citizens," said Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is vice chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

Read Jonathan's piece over at The Foley Factor!

Microcensorsoft

Buzz on the bloggosphere about Microsoft's decision to shut down Zhao Jing's blog at the Chinese government's insistence because Jing discussed the firing of The Beijing News' editor.  Of course, this isn't the first time Microsoft has been in the news for censorship.  The New York Times reports:

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like "democracy" and "human rights" from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must "comply with global and local laws."

This trend seems reminiscent of companies' desires to move their production to third world and developing nations to get away from American labor laws.  If you can't exploit workers at home, then head abroad!  Now, it seems that companies like Microsoft are continuing this pattern by now supporting countries like China who are an integral part of the American economic infrastructure.  Civil rights, apparently, take a back seat to economic needs.  And, the more frightening message is that the rights that American workers and citizens have fought for are easily disregarded by American companies.  Civil rights, like free speech, it seems, need not apply to our global neighbors.

Want to read more?  First, read up on Rebecca MacKinnon's "Ethical Standards for Internet Companies."  This savvy piece outlines Reporters Without Borders attempts to hold American tech companies responsible for upholding rights to free speech.  Then, head on over to Washingtonrox and The Foley Factor for their discussions of Microsoft's decision to shut down a Chinese blogger's site   

Article at The New York Times

iShrine: A Contest I Can Get Behind...

Over the weekend, my dad and I were discussing our consumer-culture's obsession with replaceable material goods.  This was in reference to 1.  a drill that he wants my sister to find a new battery for (the $80.00 battery is more expensive than a new drill) and 2.  my parents' dismally dilapidated toaster oven which one opens with a knife.  While I take my father's larger philosophical point--my parents are in the midst of trying to get "off the grid" and to green their house--and while I celebrate my parents' green activism with everything from solar panels to wood burning stoves to composting, I have to admit to my "culture whore" moments.  Here's one I can't resist:  Gizmodo has been running an "iPod Shrine" contest, (coming soon to a wikipedia near you:  the ishrine!) which ended yesterday.  Check out the pics of  alters built to the amazingness of iPod.  My personal favorite is the Buddha-pod with the Legopodshrine, a close second...  then reread Fight Club for an extensive analysis of what consumerism can do to you...

Moblogging anyone?

I aim to misbehave...and I wanted to send that last weekend after I fell in love with Serenity/Firefly, but I did not have my phone/moblog configured correctly!  Heh heh...I do now.  Can anyone say subway moblogging?

Sigh. The IVAN TRIBBLE Question Again! Get Some Style!

The beloved and wickedly smart (and tenured full professor) Michael Bérubé on the latest casualty to academic blogging:  Daniel Drezner and Sean Carroll.  Among the challenges Berube offers to blog-critics (i.e. academic elitists) is Laura Kipnis' fabulous 1999 "Public Intellectuals Do It With Style":

What it means to be a “public intellectual,” then, is not only to be interdisciplinary rather than disciplinary and surprising rather than fetishistic, but also to seduce an audience that isn’t compelled by any particular compulsion (be it requirements of a major or “keeping up” with the profession), and that isn’t composed of enablers and co-dependents of the knowledge-fetish (who are non-academics, in other words), into donating its attention.  Thus, being a public intellectual demands modes of mediating one’s private fascinations and the driven aspects of one’s intellectual engagements in order to establish connections and rapport whose terms and publics are not dictated in advance.  I will designate these modes of mediation, style. . . .

 

It’s pretty obvious why the subject of “public intellectuals” arouses such antipathy in the academy: it poses a request, even a demand, to produce different and enlarged forms of mediation. . . .  Insofar as this demand represents an interruption of business as usual in our small corner of the world, insofar as it constitutes a critique of existing practices, it resonates with other critiques of entrenched privilege and power in the academy.  The demand for style—in the largest sense of the word—interrupts a largely unexamined academic privilege of largely unself-examining academics, that is, the privilege academics have long enjoyed to be boring with impunity.

The entire Laura Kipnis piece.

Be in the Know: Legal Guide for Bloggers

Legal Guide for Bloggers:  Check it Out!  Read it and Use it!

Fazal Bacchus: Idiot of the Week Award!

In this month's Wired (October 2005) Fazal Bacchus, vice-president of Spring Nextel (sigh, yes, my cell provider) suggested that in order to better our U.S. cell service, people should stop complaining about putting cell sites up in their neighborhoods.  He says, "One thing people can do to improve call reception is lobby to get laws changed to make it easier for carriers to build cell sites."  Yeah.  We have way too many trees and way too much nature.  Let's build MORE cell towers.

Random Blogtastic Fun

From Yes, Yello Cello

Rules:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post that sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

The 1922 Cable Act (ah, yes, another example of governmental intervention in the sanctity of marriage.

A New Look!

Thanks to Stuart Whitmore for the photograph of the tongue which is now on the Lingual Tremors banner.  If you haven't found Morguefile yet for all of your image needs, you need to discover it now!  Morguefile, "provides the public and creative community with free raw photo materials."

Thanks Stuart!  You can visit Stuart's homepage here. 

Against Other People's Words: My BlogHer Entry

Thanks to Technorati and BlogHer for the impetus for this prompt.  Why Blog?  WHY BLOG????

I have arrived, professionally, at a place in my life where I often feel like I spend my days speaking someone else's vocabulary and words are often no longer my own.  Every linguistic interaction becomes an act of compromise and translation.  Every written interaction becomes a document possibly destined for posterity.  The language of others:

assessment     remediation     basic skills     high stakes     rubrics     full intake     management     mediation     backstopping     control     budgets     leadership     cost/benefit analysis...you get the point.

In this milieu, I sometimes feel like I'm losing my voice.  Or rather, I felt like I had lost it.  From administrators to senior faculty to students to editors, it often feels like every interaction I have with other people revolves not around a shared vocabulary, but an acquired vocabulary necessary to survive.  I have learned to talk other people's talk.  I have learned to bend my words, both written and spoken, to other people's needs.

I was losing my belief in the efficacy of words, the power of language, the musicality and beauty of a single syllable.  I have always loved words that are mouthfuls, small fruits of language. 

plummet     pummel     scoon     ecstatic     architecture     burst     brittle     lingual     eclectic     labyr     superfluous     tremor    

And just as I was losing my language, I began to blog.  I began to blog about everything:  the small moments in my day, my political opinions, snapshots from a harried life, the moments I wanted to still in time. 

But even better than the public permanency of those thoughts was the dialogic possibilities it opened up.  I loved that people responded to my thoughts and my ideas.  I was learning to use language to connect with people again.

I'm not convinced that what I have to say is particularly original or particularly brilliant.  I am convinced, however, that the power to communicate--to put one's ideas out there and to receive responses to those words, is a powerful way to think about the way the world works and the way we find new ways to talk with one another.  The way words can change the world, one letter at a time.   

TechnoratiBlogHer

ER Gone Live! Virtual Doctors & Virtual Patients

Forget tuning into NBC for ER or ABC for Gray's Anatomy or Fox for House!  Now, you can tune into your own doctor, live, from any hospital bed!  Doctors can work on robotic patients!  Everything medical is virtual!

Last month, I showed Gattaca to my students, a movie that always creeps me out as I think about the ways in which we leave our DNA evidence everywhere, from subway cars (particularly the creepy people who cut their fingernails on the subway...) to public toilets to public garbage cans to restaurants.  Our bodies live everywhere we go.

And now, our bodies live even virtually.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that a London hospital has begun experimenting with a new form of technology, two "robots" who allow doctors to communicate with patients from off-site.
Dr. Ara Darzi, the head of surgery at London's Imperial College said:

This is a revolutionary concept which opens new avenues in telemedicine research and integrates technology with healthcare.

For some, this new experiment in telemedicine is frightening because it represents another distancing step between doctor and patient in an era of increasingly managed & depersonalized health care.  However, for anyone who has read books like Icebound, Jerri Nielsen's mesmerizing narrative about being diagnosed with breast cancer while on the South Pole, advances in telemedicine also mean extending lives in new and extraordinary ways.

Technological advances also have incredible advantages in training doctors.  In Jacksonville, Florida, doctors hone their craft on a simulated patient:

At 21 pounds and 28 inches in length, BabySIM has the physical characteristics of a three- to six-month old infant, but its fat little belly is stuffed full of computer parts.

The infant can pitch a fit, wet a diaper, has a strong pulse, heart functions, eyes that dilate and blink, sneeze, drool and react to medical treatment and drugs. It can be a girl or a boy. It can also die if the doctors, nurses and paramedics who train on the simulated infant make a serious mistake.

Virtual doctors, virtual medicine, virtual patients, virtual lives...virtual illness?

MANDATORY WRITING COURSES

Okay, seriously people:  we're a cell phone people, a talk in the hall people, a chat on the landline people.  I think there should be a law against people who want to use e-mail without ever studying the simple basics of language and communication.  Specifically, we lost the art of letter writing long ago, so people are very unfamiliar with the concept of TONE in e-mails.  People should learn that words carry connotations, and when put together, their tone might suggest things they don't intend.  Tone, people.  TONE.  Audience.  Appropriate work e-mails.  Not "sexykittenpanties" wants to chat with you so that you can "get going" on a project you've already done.  My tone right now?  DOWNRIGHT PISSY.  Just for the record.