Guaranteed to Make You Bawl

Children are our future. Okay, not all children. Just the children of PS22.

Obama Ices Fly On Camera

I'm sorry, I know this is not serious news, but pile this CNN video onto Obama's sunk 3 pointer while visiting the troops on the campaign trail, and an eerie, sent-from-another-planet pattern begins to emerge. I love anchor #2's face after the clip rolls, it just continues to fall when anchor #1 attempts some incoherent banter about being scared of horseflies.

Shoot 'Em 'Fore He Run Now

(apologies to Jr. Walker)
I'm not usually in the forecasting game, on account of I lose bets, card games, and trivial pursuits, but Wobblie informs us of the buzz about Bristolevi Johnstin Governor Palin's daughter tying the knot pre-election. Doubt me if you wish.

Here's the program:

Palin-Johnston Wedding
Monday, November 3, 2008
8 pm Eastern/4 pm Aleutian
Fox News

4 pm: Pledge of Allegiance by Henry Kissinger
4:30 pm: Abraham Lincoln's great- great- great- grandniece welcomes the crowd
5 pm: Ronald Reagan's frozen corpse gives a reading
5:15 pm: Sarah Palin arrives, hair in an updo, glasses glamorously absent
5:30 pm: Levi Johnston, who wrote his own vows, tells Bristol he "f***ing loves kids" and wants to "have like a million" so he can "f***ing teach them how to slap the s*** out of a puck! Aw hell yeah!"
6:00 pm: Shot of Todd Palin crying tears, presumably of joy
7 pm: Wasilla Assembly of God congregation puts aside their doubts about the politicization of marriage and engages in blessing of couple
7:30 pm: Punditry! I just hope I don't sleep in past votin' time.

Internet Priorities

I am sure that it was un-noticeable to most (but not all) readers of this blog that my hiatus over the past month has been especially long. Well, there is a good reason for that. As I both want to finish my dissertation and remain active in the world around me, only a certain amount of time can be devoted to my internet pursuits. A fair share of my self-alloted "internet time" over the past month and a half has been devoted to this project. While not completely finished, is largely done now.

For those who don't know why my name is "Mike3550", you'll be to find out why this is my screen name. For those who do know, I think that you might be interested in the site anyway.

Good News

It turns out that when I tried to transfer my university account e-mail to my GMail account last time, I did not anticipate that all of the 3000+ e-mails sitting in my inbox would come with it. Not realizing this until after my GMail account was flooded with hundreds of e-mails, I set up a filter to send all of the e-mails from my university e-mail account to the trash. Well, I had forgotten about this particular filter when I sent my e-mails over this time. The good news is that I found all of them in the trash and recovered all of my e-mails. The internet gods must be appeased.

In other good news, I found out this week that the paper I mentioned earlier this week got accepted! I am so excited, and my nightmares that I made some mistake in the analysis or used the wrong file for the output can finally come to an end (I've checked, double checked and triple checked and, absent one scare where I pulled up the wrong file but didn't realize it for a while, everything seems to be in order). Now I can actually put a line in my CV that says "Publications". Good news all around, particularly before the really good news of getting married to E. and having a week and a half to relax in Italy!

Wikipedia's Style Guide, Gender-Neutrality and the Future of The Internets

For those who might be interested in the topic, which I believe includes some readers of this blog, there is a rather heated debate on the gendered pronouns going on Wikipedia if anyone feels the desire (and has the time) to contribute.

I find the whole idea of Wikipedia interesting. If this had been a style guide published by a press, I am sure that this topic would (and has) certainly been debated, but it would have taken years on the turn-around time. One edition is published every two years, minor edits are made when people (probably in academia) object to the usage. Then, after edits are made others (again, probably in academia) would charge that standard usage shouldn't be changed so easily and the entire purpose of a guide is to use practice and, therefore, even if it might be gender-biased, we shouldn't revolutionize the world of style guides. The printed style-guides then might add that there are two acceptable ways to write with gendered pronouns.

Now, this entire debate has occurred in the process of six days going back and forth. And, while this is certainly more "democratic" than the discussions in publishing houses and academic journals, it now privileges people who can, if they desire, spend all day at the computer debating the ins and outs of usage or any of the other debatable topics on Wikipedia. If I miss a day or two in one of these discussions, or even more than a couple of hours, I might as well not participate.

It makes me think that there might be a whole new ethic of professionals that is going to develop who can do this for a living. I mean there are allegations that corporations manipulate Wiki entries and Wikipedia is often the first site someone goes to in an effort to get information on a topic on which they know nothing. We also already see professional bloggers, Markos Moulitsas, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Sullivan, etc. who have been able to give up their "day jobs" and convert blogging to those very jobs. But, if it requires constant attention to run a good blog and that blog can be converted to ad hits and the like, how long before we some kind of consolidation of the profession into large conglomerates?

I know that I am not the first to mention this, but it just seems interesting to me how the nature of Web 2.0 can change the dynamic to be both more and less democratic. It is also interesting to see if there are new rules to integrating empires including the role that blogs play in the dissemination of information. Will they continue to do a better job expressing opinions and analysis than the established print and television outlets, or will they evolve into news-gathering organizations with budgets to do the kind of investigative reporting that outlets like the New York Times, the major networks, CNN, Fox News, etc. are able to do (and, I might add, often do poorly)? Also, what will be the role of research in this world? Will academics begin to care more about Wiki entries in their topics and work on them? Will this require some kind of credit professionally (the same way one gets credit if one writes an entry for a subject encyclopedia or a textbook on a subject) and will this insertion of "experts" lead to fewer "non-experts" contributing to sites like Wikipedia? These questions bring up the democratic potentials potentials in the sense that participation is not locked to certain physical locations (e.g. newsrooms, universities, television stations). But, the ability to be able to participate in these discussions requires either a) an abundant amount of flexible time (usually associated with professional work) or b) that one gets paid enough to make a living to continuously contribute (and, therefore, creating a profession rather than a democratic "netroots" control).

I am sure that Squires and the folks at Orgtheory would have a much more elegant description of this process and its potentials, but I think that it represents a fascinating intersection of language, organizational theory and markets that still has many potential avenues along which to develop and, potentially, to influence that development. Who knows, it might even affect the progress of mankind humankind...

I'm glad I'm not a monster...

'Nuff said.

Blogging Labor

Realizing that Dave had a great suggestion of trying to compile a list of current union blogs, I was thinking of ways that might not be so time consuming to follow/find new links.

So, I introduce, to you, the "Latest Labor Blog Posts" feature on my sidebar. It is built off of a feed from Google's Blog Search and is not extremely fancy. I am hoping to try and mess around with the search string a little more to see what kinds of results I can get back. I imagine that this one is going to be dominated by the "institutional" blogs like AFL-CIO Weblog. I hope you enjoy!

P.S. It also shouldn't bring back results from the assholes at Union "Facts" either as to prevent the list being clogged by bullshit and to prevent embarrassing episodes.