Soon after 9/11 — back when “everything changed,” before everything went back to normal — the filmmakers about to release The Bourne Identity were worried that their tale of a rogue black-ops CIA agent had the wrong tone. It was supposed to be *bad* that the CIA was running the secret Treadstone assassination program, but political debate around that time had swung quite forcefully in the other direction, with many people believing that the sort of thing that has gotten the CIA in so much trouble in the past was exactly what we needed in this “new era” of global terrorism.

And so the filmmakers shot an alternative ending, one that paints the movie as a flashback, a dream of an unconscious Jason Bourne, and when he awakes (post-9/11) he is offered his job back on a contract basis, with the explanation that “everything is different now” and that Treadstone was conceived by a “madman” who needed to be stopped, but “now is a time for madmen.” It is an interesting idea, and probably not a bad precaution on the filmmakers part, but by the time the movie was released in June 2002, things were already slowly merging back into normal, our long national nightmare was scabbing over, and the film was better off without the new sequence. It’s on the DVD as an extra, if you’re interested.

When Disney redesigned Tomorrowland back in 1995, they looked for inspiration at future past with overblown Jetsons imagery and chrome, big neon and old-fashioned Buck Rogers rockets:

The future is growing old all over Disney’s magic kingdom. From the film lot to the Epcot theme park to the real-life town that the company calls Celebration, Disney has largely given up on imagining a new future. […] The shift is profound for a company whose founder was one of postwar America’s great popularizers of technology. And it is a reflection of the ennui that many Americans, at century’s end, feel about the chips and bits in which they are immersed.

Journalism is not a profession. That is one of the first things they taught me in Brandeis’s journalism program. Professions are closed shops patrolled by gatekeepers and licensing boards. Professions demand esoteric knowledge and specialized education. All journalism requires is command of the written language.

So “real” journalists, those who take their jobs seriously, believe strongly that journalism is an essential public good, a vital component of a democracy, and its very democratic nature, free of gatekeepers, is one of its greatest assets. Because of that, serious journalism involves complex ethics, frequent moral judgments, and large amounts of discretion. There are plenty of pundits and commentators and hacks who are not real journalists, but the real guys believe these things.

So along comes the web, along comes a new breed of citizen journalist. Its easier for people, especially those with some computer skills, to mine data and find connections and reveal secrets that in previous times would have been left safely buried. But these new citizen journalists are often inexperienced, often looking for the quick break, often have not taken the time to ponder the ethics and the morals and the discretion. A little while back tech blog Engadget published a huge “scoop” about delays in Apple’s product offerings. Stock markets moved on the news. Chaos was caused. It was a hoax. The tiniest bit of vetting, the smallest phone call or email follow-up would have revealed the hoax and stopped the virtual presses, but Engadget was more excited about their scoop than they were worried about printing the truth.

This is going to happen a lot in the next few years. There are going to be a lot of mistakes.

And so on the one hand I’m excited to say I’ve had a hand in an interesting new website that is a somewhat unique tool for the aspiring citizen journalist. But at the same time, of course, I’m worried about those who might abuse the data we’re publishing, data gleaned from the “DC Madam” and her phone records. Some of the calls were business, some were private. Some are to restaurants, and to travel agents, and to her mother. And some are to big-name capital hill staffers. And some are to small-time businessmen and random Joes.

Continue reading “The DC Madam’s phone list and what it means to be a journalist”

I have every episode of This American Life ever broadcast save about 20, all nicely organized as MP3 files. Something like 17 of those that I don’t have are available on the website for purchase at 95 cents each. What a great way to support a show I love, I thought! Then the links opened in iTunes, and the vendor was Audible.com, which means crap quality and annoying DRM. Well so much for trying to do the right thing.

On the west coast the leader in outing equipment is Recreational Equipment Inc., or REI. On the east coast there is also a strong competitor in the form of Eastern Mountain Sports, or EMS. I figured EMS was a lesser supplier what with their smaller stores, and this impression was cemented when some marketing genius decided to dump the ubiquitous EMS name and mountain logo and replace it with the utterly ridiculous, vowel-free brand “ESTRN MNTN SPRTS.” If they had at least had the guts to drop the leading “E” I might have at least chuckled, as it is the god-awful new name makes me an EMS hater.

So when I found myself wandering into the new Harvard Square location and then being assisted by a knowledgeable salesperson and then purchasing a new pair of Keen sandals, my irrational hatred began to fade. The next day I realized that the spring clip on the right shoe was defective and not holding the laces tight. Today I wandered back into EMS with no receipt and the sandals on my feet and sought assistance. I was directed back to footwear, where the dude told me that they could get a replacement lace assembly from Keen or possibly swap out the shoes, but a better bet might be getting a sturdier spring clip. Where might I find one? Well, it seems that behind the front desk there is a kit chock full of buckles, fasteners, clips, and various other accouterments. We found the perfect clip for my shoes, I purchased two of them at 35 cents each, and the helpful salesman took my shoes apart right there at the counter and fitted them with the new clips. My new sandals with their sturdy new clips are awesome and I’m wearing them all the time.

So EMS rocks. They’re pretty much on par with REI. They sell a lot of the same high-quality clothing and equipment, their service is top-notch, and the staff is knowledgeable and helpful. I feel fairly comfortable recommending either of them at this point for general gear. Without additional experience I’d still have to say REI if you’re looking for any advice on, say, the sorts of camping supplies you need to buy to avoid hypothermia, or whatever. The other things you don’t get with EMS are the huge in-store selection of REI and the membership program that results in a fun year-end rebate check. On the other side, with EMS there are far more locations (Harvard Square for me, whereas the closest REI is in Fenway) and perhaps slightly better prices, not to mention an atmosphere that isn’t quite so overwhelming.

As a prelude to the (no doubt awful) slew of decisions coming down from the Supreme Court today, Prof. Walter Dellinger offers a five minute crash-course on the constitution which ends with this simple — yet strangely elusive in government — explanation of the problems with “strict construction”:

Senators especially like it when a nominee says a judge’s role is just to be an “umpire.” But broad constitutional phrases are different from sports rules, so a judge would be like an umpire only if the game — instead of having a strike zone and a set number of balls, strikes, and outs — provided instead that “each batter shall have a fair chance to hit the ball” and “each team shall have a reasonably equal opportunity to score runs.” Key language of the Constitution is that broad, meaning that men and women appointed to the bench must necessarily exercise judgment. Which is, of course, why they are called judges, and not umpires.

Stories from the “Iraqi Blogodrome” on the most recent Global Voices Iraq round-up contain some interesting thoughts, including one post suggesting that the country would be better served by a military government, at least in the short term, to bring peace and stability with a firm hand. Another less political post is a bit more uplifting:

I once paid a fortune in an Italian restaurant to eat samples of few truffles brought all the way from Tuscany in Italy, and were served to me in such a fuss as if I was about to eat pieces of gold!

Oh my dear Iraq, if only they’ve tasted your muddy truffles that we used to buy in big sacs and spent ages to clean.

We the people of Iraq are exactly like our crops! Rough, tough, harsh and scarred, but once you open them up, you see the real flavour of kindness, generosity and genuineness.

I’m thinking of selling my Linux box and replacing it with a dedicated NAS. It’s a fairly decent machine for MythTV or similar usage, with 4x300GB SATA drives, two TV tuners, and various other specs that I’d have to go look up. Anyone interested?

Edit: Details inside

Continue reading “Computer for sale”

I’ll be lucky if a single reader gets this joke. If you do, post a comment, but don’t spoil me for _Life on Mars_: I’m still mid-season 1.

From a Television Without Pity message board discussing the most recent _Doctor Who_ episode which involves angel statues whose touch sends people back in time:

Caffeine Junkie: One sends you back to what we can assume is London in 1969, another to Hull in 1920. Who knows when and where the other 2 send people.

Nuallain: Manchester, 1973?

Fiene: My name is Sam Tyler, bladiblah. Am I mad, in a coma, or touched by a quantum locked angel?

This brief essay by Professor Lewis Hyde was published in this month’s edition of The Filter, the Berkman Center newsletter. I like it, especially the ending.

In his keynote to the IS2K7 conference, John Palfrey noted that in front of each Harvard library one now usually finds a sign saying “Harvard ID Holders Only.” What sort of signs, Palfrey was asking, should greet those who approach these libraries not in their physical manifestations but as they appear in cyberspace?

Continue reading “Thoreau in Cyberspace”

Recently I signed up with Boston Organics. I’m paying them $27 week, or about half of my traditional grocery shopping allotment, for fresh organic produce and vegetables. (Depending on usage I may drop to biweekly delivery.) My hope is that by being “forced” to make use of various fruits and vegetables that I might not otherwise have bought, I’ll improve my diet and try new things. Yesterday I got home to a green box full of stuff, and instead of some less healthy after-work snack, I chose a plum. For dinner I made a salad. And for breakfast I had an omelette. And today I packed a lunch for work for the first time in…well…a while.

So we’ll see how long this lasts.

Here’s what I got in my first box:

* 2 Abate pears
* 5 Bananas
* 2 Gala apples
* 1 Haitian mango
* 3 Red plums
* 1 Box strawberries
* 2 Valencia oranges
* 1 Avocado
* 1 Head broccoli
* 1 Head red leaf lettuce
* 3 Roma tomatoes
* 2 Ears yellow corn
* 2 Nectarines
* 2 Peaches
* 1 loaf 7 grain bread (with dates, an unwelcomed surprise)

It’s weird, I got back from the Internet & Society Conference today and put on an old episode of the _Daily Show_, and in the middle of Jon Stewart’s interview with Al Gore about the news media’s abdication of its civic duty, I went to pull up the question tool or the backchannel chat to put in a question to Mr. Gore about his thoughts on the Fairness Doctrine. It took me a second to realize that, in addition to being pre-recorded, the Daily Show is not, in fact, the least bit interactive or democratic. I felt momentarily angry that there was no way to inject my voice into the process. I guess that’s what a day of talking about participatory culture will do to you.

Lots of TV shows are now releasing recorded commentary tracks as podcasts, but here’s the thing: they’re generally awful. The two best are Ron Moore’s _Battlestar Galactica_ commentaries and Colin Ferguson’s _Eureka_ podcasts. What makes a good commentary track? Going in with some things you want to talk about. Information about how stories took shape, fun stories from the set, the compromises necessary to produce a show, the last-minute changes required by time or weather or budget. What were you trying to accomplish in a scene? Did it work? What would you do differently? How do you hope people will interpret things? Why did you make one creative choice over another? If your role isn’t well understood (i.e. focus puller, second AD, propmaster, dialect coach, whatever), what is it you do? How did you get into that line of work? How is this show different from or similar to others, in terms of your experiences?

The worst possible podcasts are the ones where they grab three or four people who may be interesting (say a writer, a DP, and a cast regular and a guest star) but who don’t really know each other, don’t know what they’re going to talk about, and are seeing the show for the first time. Most of the time is going to be filled with silence, some “oohs” and “aahs” as they see things in finished form, a bit of chat about how great it is to work with everyone and how amazing it is to be on the show, and a few awkward questions from the one person who decides they’d better try to get everyone else talking so that the whole podcast isn’t a complete bust.

Its great that shows are giving us value-add in the form of behind the scenes videos, blog posts, message boards, Q&As, and podcast commentaries. It gives the dedicated fans a much-appreciated look at the realities of the television business and a much better understanding of what it takes to make good television. But sometimes it seems like someone up above says “we need to put up interactive content” without really getting any buy-in from down below, and the end result is pretty disappointing. I’m generally of the opinion that if you’re going to do something, you should do it the best you can (given, of course, the various constraints of life that so often get in our way). I can’t say that the _Doctor Who_ or _Scrubs_ podcasts in particular live up to these expectations.

!the show is officially cancelled. I know I wanted this — well, sorta — but it still hits harder than I thought it would. Damn, I’m gonna miss the characters, the stories, the mysteries, all of it. Sniffle. _VM_ was pretty darn amazing. Farewell, Veronica, farewell Neptune.

But then, as Duncan’s fortune cookie says, “true love stories never have endings.” I’m putting you on my shelf in the honored place next to _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. You earned it.

Several very vocal editors at Wikipedia seem to be swaying consensus on spoilers. Very soon now “spoiler warnings” may be banished from Wikipedia, meaning that it will be impossible to visit an article about, say, a recent movie or book, without being exposed to plot twists and ending details. As someone who frequently visits Wikipedia pages about movies and books I have not yet consumed, this makes me sad. Said one commentor:

I’m afraid it all boils down to my blank incomprehension of suggestions that we should put redundant warnings into our articles just to mollycoddle people who, knowing of their own personal wishes not to have foreknowledge of the details of fictional works, would stupidly or perversely choose to read articles about those works.

Well, err, I got some useful information about _The Departed_ out of the article without being spoiled, including a good write-up of the Boston setting, information about awards won, actors in the film, the soundtrack, box office gross, and its origins. And I was able to easily avoid plot details because of the clear spoiler tags. But apparently I’m just an idiot who doesn’t deserve to read Wikipedia?

(Warning: the discussion itself contains several spoilers for recent notable books and movies. Jerks.)

Two days ago two major stars of the awesome _Battlestar Galactica_ revealed that this upcoming fourth season of the show will be its last. And then yesterday Exec Prod David Eick denied it. Stop it David! The show needs to end. You’ve had a lot of stories to tell, and you’ve told many of them. And you’ve had tons of filler crap and self-contradictory canon just screwing it all up for fans. Television shows have a limited lifespan (well, except for _Doctor Who_). Much like _Veronica Mars_ needs to do, you need to have the guts to say we’re doing one more season and that’s it, and we’re going to tell all the stories we need to tell and exit gracefully with a bow at the end.

At work I have an awesome 23″ Apple Cinema Display with 1920×1200 resolution. When I’m doing the work I’ve been doing in the last few days, its just not enough space. I have way too many windows open, and I need to see them all!

What I really need, of course, is Spaces, but that’s not coming out until October. Or VirtueDesktops, but its completey unstable.

My God *have you seen Harper’s*? I have, and it is a thing of beauty — every article since the year 1850, a wonderful navigation scheme and site layout, a fabulous building on the (somewhat unrealized) experiment that was their last site redesign. Paul Ford did the work, and his essay on the site launch and what it means to him is something that echoes inside me. I’ve never done a project of that sort of scale, but I know all the feelings he describes.

He says that you do a thing, you pour your life into it, and then you flip a switch, a site goes live, the criticism and knee-jerk reactions come pouring in. Later comes the praise, but never enough to really justify it, then the bug reports and problems, and you have to fix them.

His final words chill me, I don’t know how else to describe it, because I know he speaks truth, and its a bit painful, but then again, its the only possible way it can be:

If you work for a startup you can fool yourself into believing that the reward will be eternal wealth, but I work for a nonprofit, and the reward is: I did a thing, and I doubt I’ll ever do anything like it again. One, two, three: I will never get enough praise; of course I failed; and what I did was not particularly important. The best thing to hope for is that in time and with much more effort the work will become transparent to its users, that it will be taken for granted. That’s life with websites.