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Mosh

I think I may have misunderestimated Eminem. The beautifully animated video to his song “Mosh” is an intense, five minute, dirge-like anthem — a call to arms, a call to vote, and maybe a wake-up call for the hip-hop masses, timed cannily for the elections.

Salon.com:

With his history of homophobia and his long-running beef with MoveOn supporter Moby, Eminem is an even less likely lefty hero than Howard Stern. But the just-released video for his new anti-Bush song “Mosh,” makes “Fahrenheit 9/11” look like a GOP campaign spot, and it will almost certainly reach an audience that wouldn’t think of shelling out for a documentary.

Music: Joe McPhee :: Nation Time
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Where’s the MT of the Wiki World?

Over at my O’Reilly blog: A few months ago, one of the instructors I work with asked me to attach a wiki to his class’ website. I’d been meaning to start testing various wiki systems for a while, and this was the perfect opportunity to dig in.

Short story: The wiki world desperately needs a product with the kind of vision, direction, and momentum of Movable Type. There are mezzo-mezzo wiki packages out there, but nothing I’ve seen yet that really nails the category the way MT does for blogs.

More…

Music: David Thomas & the Pedestrians :: Confuse Did
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Notes on Griffin PowerMate

Received a birthday gift from baald and Col a few nights ago — a Griffin PowerMate. I’ve lusted after this tech objet d’art et function ever since they came out, but had never gotten around to trying one out. In a nutshell, the PowerMate is a USB-connected dial for your Mac. An assist for controlling system or application volume, scrolling web pages, emails, documents, scrubbing video or audio, etc.
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Data-Boy on L.A. Punk

At TV Party, a collection of articles written for Data-Boy magazine in the early 80s, direct from the heart of the L.A. punk/new wave scene. Dug-up, restored to their original luster, many of them complete with images and album covers. Tracking the rise of bands like Wall of Voodoo, Minutemen, X, Stiff Little Fingers, XTC, etc. Even though the writing isn’t particularly scintillating, it’s interesting to be reminded of how these bands smelled to the underground 20-25 years ago, rather than how we remember them.

While Wall of Voodoo has obviously made great investments of time and resources to make their concerts as polished as possible, XTC has taken the road of least resistance. Weak, bare, sloppy arrangements and performances prevailed.

Thanks baald.

Music: Nino Rota :: La Strada
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Bush Supporters’ Knowledge Gap

Boston Globe: In a study conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, supporters of W show quite a bit more slippage between opinion and reality regarding Iraq-related issues than do Kerry supporters (in other words, Bush supporters statistically believe more things about Iraq that are not true).

Kull said it is common for voters to tailor their views on particular issues to those of the candidate they favor overall, but the extent to which Bush supporters are filtering out news from Iraq that might reflect poorly on the president is unprecedented.

Music: Björk :: Sun In My Mouth
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Brain in a Vat

A University of Florida scientist has cultured 25,000 living rat brain neurons in a petri dish and hooked the resulting soup up to a grid of sensors that controls a computer. The neurons of the synthetic “brain” are interacting with each other and with the computer, forming neural patterns, and can now fly — sort of — an F22 fighter jet simulator.

When DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”

and…

“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”

This has astounding implications for understanding human brain development, for the future of artificial intelligence, and for the lowly philosopher contemplating ye olde Brain in a Vat problem. I wonder, is rat neuron soup doing battle with the Cartesian Demon?

Music: Wilco :: Reservations
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MoveOn Needs Tech Support

MoveOn.org has thousands of volunteers using web-based tools to locate and chew out talk with undecided voters. Trouble is, a lot of volunteers out there doing the data-mining and pounding the pavement need basic computer support to get the job done — web questions, browser questions, etc. — simple stuff. So MoveOn is looking for tech-savvy peeps to support the non-tech-savvy volunteers over the next two weeks.

Got a bit of spare time and an innate ability to know when to tell people to trash their prefs or power-cycle their modems? Sign up to tech-support the Dem vote.

Music: Schoolhouse Rock :: A Victim Of Gravity
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They’re Your Eyeballs

For Wired News, J-School student Steven Bodzin writes Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark, on the invention of a small keychain device called TV-B-Gone, which sends out more than 200 infrared codes in quick succession to turn off virtually any television within range. The device is intended primarily for use in public spaces – bars and restaurants, stores, laundromats…

Rude? Totally. But isn’t it also rude to force others to watch or listen to TV when they don’t want to?

Responding to the accusation that it sounded like unaccountable power, Burke said, “You’ve heard about the battle for eyeballs. They’re your eyeballs [emphasis mine -sh]. You should not have your consciousness constantly invaded.

I’m actually less offended by television in public places than I am by noises that invade my home — car subwoofers, car alarms…

Altman said people who hear about TV-B-Gone start thinking about other nuisances. Friends have asked for ways to jam cell phones, shut down vehicle subwoofers and kill car alarms.

“What I really want,” Altman said, “Is Life-B-Here.”

Music: The Fiery Furnaces :: Spaniolated
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Palpitations

Big storm coming tonight, Amy and I decided to do some last-minute gutter repair in the sunset before the storm. I’m up on the roof testing a new endcap with a garden hose, Amy on the ground watching the effluvium. She ducks in the house to check on Miles, he’s busy working on a puzzle. She comes back out, we wrap up in three minutes. Toss the hose down, and I walk back over the roof, returning to the rear of the house where I had propped up the ladder.

As I crest the peak of the roof, what do I see illuminated in the purple and orange light of a stormy sunset… but 2-year-old Miles standing on the next-to-top rung of the ladder, high above the roofline, 10-12 feet above the ground. Just standing confidently on that almost-top rung, smiling at me.

My heart froze. Walked up to him slowly, plucked him from the ladder, and sat down on the roof, squeezing him to my chest.

It was the most terrifying moment we’ve had with Miles so far. How long had he been up there? How did he get out of the house? How did it happen so quickly? Since when can he open the sliding doors by himself? The possible outcomes seemed horrific.

He’s always been physical and fearless, but we were totally broadsided by this one. It’s hard to describe what it felt like to see him up there – beautiful and brave and illuminated so gorgeously, but everything about it at the same time so totally wrong.

Update: Turns out he didn’t open the sliding glass door after all, but slipped through the cat door – the same cat door in which he got stuck when he was just a babe.

Music: The Fiery Furnaces :: Turning Round
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Brilliant Plasma Birthday

plasma_gnomeI’m on the brink of turning forty. Forty trips around the sun, and still, against all reasonable expectation, I walk the earth. Tempted to post a long, rambling reflection on life thus far lived – where I’ve come from, where it all seems to be going, and the first glimmers of mid-life crises. Instead, I’ll post a long, rambling reflection on the amazing party my friends threw for me last night. And when I say amazing…

Teaser: Kazoos and voice boxes, dada rants, colored vinyl, recombinant DNA, and deliciously cheesy Casio keyboard beats are involved…
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