brad says so. mena says so.

I really appreciate their explanations. Although some thought otherwise, i do very much respect both companies and all people involved. It was also nice to see some of my issues addressed head on. I do believe that everyone has good intentions and really wants to see a merger be beneficial for everyone. Of course, i’m still concerned. I’m concerned because i think that the greatest effect will be on those who aren’t reading this or any of the other announcements. But only time will tell and i will definitely be watching with great interest.

On a lighter note, i’m *very* humored by Mena’s reference to her days of wearing black.

I watched six hours of tsunami news the first night, dousing myself in CNN reports. I was rubber necking, only i’m not sure if i was trying to see the tsunami wreck or the CNN wreck. I was in complete awe by the coverage, utterly angry in fact. Although there were loads of interviews with survivors, not a single survivor’s voice shown on CNN was brown. In other words, all we saw were the rich white American tourists. Reports babbled on about what would happen if America was hit with a tsunami, complete with little simulations. As the death toll rose, a special report was given from Alaska where the US last experienced a tsunami. Comparisons were made about the magnitude, the harm, the horror. Less than a dozen people were killed in that one. Reports were given about how to protect yourself from a tsunami if it were to hit New York. Dear fucking god we are a selfish nation.

So, our country was guilted into supplying more money for the relief and Bush gets on TV to defensively resist accusations that we are a stingy nation. Of course we are a stingy nation – we always have been. ::sigh::

Then i woke to the following email in a thread on a mailing list:

what i’m looking for is an organization who will take my volunteer efforts in SE asia. i’ll fly out there, no problem. i’ll perform hard labour for 2 weeks straight. but i can’t afford to get my own lodging and food. no one wants my help. anyone know of any organization that would?

First, this man’s intentions are really good – he really wants to help, but his help is constructed in a typically American way. He’s willing to give up time – one precious American commodity – but not money. But let’s think about this. He wants to go to a devastated region that is devoid of food, shelter and water. He wants to put in hard labor to help a starving, dehydrated, homeless population and he’s demanding these amenities!?!?!? You have got to be kidding me. Now, i am guessing that most of the villagers in these regions are putting in hard labor to repair their communities. And they’re doing it without food water or housing. What kind of selfish, clueless request is this? But of course, in America, we want to help with any commodity other than money. We don’t like giving money. That’s fucking ridiculous when almost every NGO and NPO needs money more than anything. They need to buy things in the local regions, help the people there. This is not just true for the tsunami relief situation, but in general.

Consider the clothing drives that are currently going on in the States. You want to ship off your $30 white branded T-Shirt. This was most likely created in an Asian country for maybe ? ten cents ?, sold to a manufacturer for maybe a quarter. You want to package this up, spend a bazillion dollars on shipping and send it back to Asia!?!? If you sent $10, at least 40 of your beloved T-Shirts could be bought. More importantly, the organizing NGOs could buy the most economical T-Shirts, support the local region’s economy and make certain that people got what they needed.

So when you think of donating blood or donating clothing, what are you really saying? You’re saying you’re too damn cheap to donate money. Money is what is needed, money is how these organizations can make certain to buy the maximum amount of needed materials and distribute them in the best way possible. Considering that time equals money, if you’ve read this far, you’ve probably spent $.50 assuming minimum wage only. Consider how much time you spend reading blogs or about the tsunami – donate that time multiplied by your hourly wage. Or, given that it’s New Year’s Eve, why not donate the amount of money that you spent today on champagne, food and party tickets.

We are a stingy nation.

The workshops at CHI this year are fantastic. The conference appears to be expanding its notion of what constitutions interactions between technology and people/society (away from the 1-1 computer/human paradigm that was often emphasized).

I’m debating between applying to:
– W1. Engaging The City: Public Interfaces As Civic Intermediary
– W18. Designing Technology for Community Appropriation

[It should be noted that there are lots of other workshops that might be applicable to various readers of this blog so do check it out if you’re so inclined. The deadline for workshop applications is January 3 which is a complete bitch.]

I went to court to support a friend. I’ve been to court before, but only for easy things like changing my name, dealing with parking tickets, etc. In this case, there were two sides with adamantly opposing views about the world. And i was on one side.

The entire event was high drama, but not in that made-for-TV style. It was far more painful than that. For starters, everyone mumbled, stumbled, etc. It wasn’t scripted. People didn’t know how to project their voices and the inane repetitive questions were clearly for a forgetting mind, not to drive the witnesses bonkers. While the federal lawyer signaled to the witness using baseball codes (1-2-3 on his chest), few other body motions were scripted and the sides played out their cultural training. As an ethnographer, it was brutally painful to watch the body performance of each side show their values more deeply than anything that came out of their mouths.

The judge gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling. He clearly sympathized with Barlow, but he was also dealing with conflicted feelings about the recent laws that have come down – his sarcastic tone signaled that he felt very burdened by what was happening, but his judicial manner also made it clear that he felt it was his responsibility to follow the letter of the law, even those to which he was opposed.

The attorneys were caricatures of themselves. The federal attorneys had a hard-edged, no-smile Yale/Harvard rigidity that was stunningly performed. Kafka would have been proud. Milgram at its best. Barlow’s attorney was most distinctly an ACLU type with long hair, funky glasses, curved shoulders and a revolutionary demeanor that signaled that he believed in the cause. The Cause. It was about The Cause. And The Cause was to be fought out in jargon in front of the press by two sides with opposing views. Was God on both their sides? But believing in The Cause was not enough… it was clearly a battle of performances.

The judge was clearly rattled by the situation at hand. He walked in, talked about having received phone calls from CNN, got the papers about the case two hours prior and was like what the hell is going on in my courtroom today. He was clearly not prepared to be dealing with The Cause.

The federal folks were good, really really good. Their snotty-nosed attitude made the much more laid-back judge resent them, but they played the rules to perfection, fought it out like they had been taught on debate team. It was a hard thing to watch, but they were good really good. The defense attorney annoyed the judge – not through arrogance but though a clear lack of sculpted performance. The judge pitied the defense attorney, but he still grated on him.

One question comes to mind: are the master’s tools needed to tear down the master’s house? Or is the fantasy of a destroyed house purely impossible? Because clearly, the moral highground is not the appropriate approach. This is a battle that values performance, wit, speed and memory… and performance is more key than anything.

For my performance studies class, i wrote a paper on blogging that i have morphed into a submission for the Media Ecology Conference. It is a draft paper, but i figured it would be fruitful to put it up here for anyone who wishes to tear it apart.

Be warned that this is definitely an academic paper meant for an academic audience and may contain scary academic words. There’s a lot that i’m missing here, but i still think that this paper has some value and i would love feedback from anyone who wishes to spend the time reading it.

Last night, False Profit celebrated Hanukkah in hysterical form. Maer read us two sermons: one from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and one from Jews for Jesus. I highly recommend reading Brasco – The Liberty Bear Coloring Book. OMG.

The title of Lori Bradley’s blog – ADD – another dissertation distraction has me cracking up and i felt the need to share for all y’all enmeshed in finals, writing, attention deficit and procrastination vices of all sorts. It’s a fantastic complement to PhD – Piled Higher and Deeper.

Mindtangle has a brilliant way of battling his fingers’ efforts to procrastinate:

I just added the following to my HOSTS file:

# The “law school finals productivity pack”

127.0.0.1 www.ifilm.com
127.0.0.1 ifilm.com
127.0.0.1 www.boingboing.net
127.0.0.1 boingboing.net
127.0.0.1 news.google.com
127.0.0.1 www.slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 www.gamespot.com
127.0.0.1 gamespot.com
127.0.0.1 www.gizmodo.com
127.0.0.1 gizmodo.com

For those who don’t know what this does, it makes any attempt of my computer to connect to those domains to loop back to this computer so that no information is transferred.

I don’t often respond to comments even though i actually really appreciate them. I have to admit that i’m still overwhelmed that so many folks read this. How does my failure to respond affect whether or not you comment and what you do say when you comment?

When i first heard about “The Tipping Point” i have to admit that i was wary. I love pop-(social)science when it covers material that i’m not familiar with, but not when it’s work in my area, work that i know intimately. I didn’t connected Gladwell’s name with two of my favorite articles until much later. Still, i felt that i needed to read “The Tipping Point” in order to have conversations about my research with folks outside of the academy. So, i did. And i was really pleasantly surprised. Gladwell captured the essence of qualitative social networks, weaving together research and narrative to construct a truly compelling book. He unpacked research complexities with relative success and made social networks publicly accessible (although i’m not sure that i’m thrilled with this result, but still). It wasn’t a perfect book, but it was damn good and it let me engage with technologists, media and non-researchers in an entirely different way.

A few weeks ago, i started hearing about Gladwell’s upcoming book – “Blink.” I surfed to his site to find out that the book wont’ be released until January. Fine, i’ll wait. Two hours later, i received a lovely email from his press folks asking if i wanted to review “Blink” on my blog. ::bounce:: Of course! I wanted to reach out and hug my blog for giving me this opportunity. Yesterday, i received a review copy and i’m trying really hard not to read it until finals are over.

Now, for anyone who has heard me obsess over my books, review copies have particular significance. First, i *despise* hardcover books with a passion. I often don’t read really interesting books when they come out because i hate reading hardcovers. I genuinely hate hate hate hate hardcovers. I will happily pay hardcover price for a paperback of a really interesting book, but i just hate reading things that are so structurally rigid. Review copies, on the other hand, are like a treasure find. I often scour half.com looking for review copies that people (illegally) sell. Review copies are not only paperbacks from before the hardcover, *but* they have mistakes in them! Can i tell you how much i love errors in books??? It makes me feel like the book is real, like i’m seeing the process, that authors are imperfect. I admit – i’ve already scanned “Blink” – and i’m stoked to see things like “TK” which seems to indicate things that are to come later. It’s like me writing CITATION in my papers as markers for later insertion. Review copies make me think that one day, i’ll write a book and people will edit it. Review copies feel like they are part of the process, not some artificially and remotely constructed artifact of knowledge. Review copies are the antithesis of hardcover books… they make me drool.

Anyhow, i will review “Blink” properly shortly but in the meantime, i just wanted to share my utter joy in having a review copy in hand and my deep appreciation that blogging has let this happen without requiring me to scour half.com. And isn’t it damn cool that Gladwell’s press folks are reaching out to bloggers for reviews, not just mainstream media? Of course, i can’t help but wonder if i should take this opportunity to do a proper review that could be used elsewhere. Hmmm…