I had seen a posting yesterday about someone goofing on McCain's MySpace page, but didn't realize then that he was asking for it by pulling in content from another site. Whoever was responsible for setting up that page needs to be smacked six ways to Sunday. There may not be a lot of rules on the web, but one of them is that you do not suck content living on someone else's server into your own page. It's rude, potentially expensive for the person hosting the content, and leaves you wide open for a serious punking.
The Robert Osborne Classic Film Festival is going on right now, and in addition to catching a bunch of fun movies, I was also the lucky winner of a TCM gift basket. Said basket only contains one movie ("Casablanca"), and a lot of TCM-branded stuff including a t-shirt, zippered sweatshirt, water bottle, iPod case, several notebooks, a poster book, backpack, messenger bag, and my favorite item-- a Bates Motel towel. Of course, none of these holds a candle to the roundtrip business-class tickets on AirTran someone took home last night, but who am I to complain?
Referencing the recent mashup of Hillary Clinton and the "1984" Apple Macintosh ad, Kevin Drum asks what effect the video had.
My own reaction was mixed. First, I was glad to see someone take a poke at the ridiculous "Let's have a conversation" garbage that the Clinton campaign has been peddling, which I've found annoying (and maybe condescending) from the start. However, that does not make her Big Brother. In addition, the notion that the Obama campaign is some kind of sledgehammer-wielding force for freedom is as ridiculous as the idea that Hillary's going to come visit us in our living room. Like it or not, Obama is as establishment as the next guy. So, no movement here on any front.
Finally, there was the mashup of the old rainbow Apple logo and the capital "O"...I can't put my finger on it exactly, but that image rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because it's yet another example of a political group trying to glom onto something "cool" and failing utterly-- leaving aside whether politicians should attempt to associate themselves with corporate entities, Apple hasn't used the rainbow logo in years.
Earlier this week Ted Rall scolded the Human Rights Campaign for their efforts to get Universal Press Syndicate to drop Ann Coulter's column. His argument is that censorship by anyone is wrong, whether the target is on the left or the right. As someone who has been the target of such efforts in the past, Ted has more right than others to do this, but I have mixed feelings about it. In principle, I agree with the sentiment expressed by Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." On the other hand, Ann Coulter is a vile little harpy who contributes little to political discourse beyond spittle and bile. It wouldn't sadden me in the slightest to see her megaphone turned down a few notches.
So, what to think about efforts to suppress Ms. Coulter? First, I think the term "censorship" is inappropriate in this context. According to the Apple (Oxford English?) definition, censorship is "the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts" (emphasis added). To my knowledge, no official entity has gotten involved in attempting to suppress either Ted Rall or Ann Coulter. Instead, what we have is an effort by individuals to do so. In my mind, this is something of a grey area, and I think an argument can be made that what we're seeing is the marketplace of ideas at work.
My own feeling is that cases like this come down to tactics. There is a big difference between writing your local newspaper or canceling your subscription and burning books or threatening violence against the person whose speech you disagree with. As long as the Human Rights Campaign doesn't devolve into thuggishness, I have no problem with their efforts.
Our phone is out. Not sure how long it's been like that since we don't use it very often, but we've apparently been cut off for at least 48 hours, maybe more. The weird thing is that the DSL has continued to work all along, which I don't understand since it all uses the same wires.
I blame Republicans.
First there was Richard Reid, which led to everyone having to take off their damn shoes at the airport.
Then there was that stupid binary-chemical-liquid-bomb thing, making shampoo, mascara, and Evian suddenly verboten, and cleavage suspect.
After Mr. Magnet-up-the-ass I can only assume that anal probes will be the next step. After all, you can't be too careful.
As if I had time to read all of this...sigh.
While politicians and the media freak out over the idea of trenchcoated sexual predators stalking children on the internet, it's interesting to note that the vast majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by parents.
Salon's Audiofile recently had a contest to replace their logo, and have announced a winner. The new logo is visible on the site, but other than the handful of entries they chose to display while the contest was running, it looks like they're not going to show the other entries they received. For what it's worth, here's my submission.
