The Postmodern Anarchist

The One Mic online talk radio show mixes hip hop, progressive politics and comedy with a variety of interesting looking guests, hosted by Adisa Banjoko.

Did you know the U.S. is being watched by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency?

The virtual world Second Life continues to fascinate me and, if I ever get a new computer, I'll be there one day. New World Notes is a blog about everyday life in Second Life and focuses on special events and projects like the Virtual Hallucinations building.

They're, like, little ponies that the borgs got hold of! You've probably seen this item elsewhere. Apparently the pony borgifier got so much traffic she had to move the images to another site.

In related, already well known, news of the cute, the shirt to save Mary-Kate is told to cut it out.

Kryptonite locks easily picked.

Recently I've encountered a variety of interesting and, yes, groovy things that I wish to share with you.

For example, notes from somewhere bizarre is a blog connecting pop culture, high theory and visual flavor in a just plain enjoyable mix. Most recently, blogger Ashley Benigno turned me on to the paintings of Yvan Brun and the essays of FeministStripper.

Wired News has added a column on sex and technology called Sex Drive With Gina Lynn. I love seeing some of my favorite topics combined!

Much of the unedited footage from the documentary Outfoxed is being made available for free download online with the encouragement to create remixed versions of the film.

Have you tried listening to your Ipod through antique radio?

Once again I missed the Ars Electronica Festival. But one day I'll go see all that stuff!!

AltWeeklies.com has reemerged as a collective newspaper site for over a hundred alternative newsweeklies. This project is long overdue and should be more exciting than it looks at first glance. I periodically check out such newsweeklies and there's great reporting and photography happening all over the country.

Global warming causes increased natural disasters. And that's bad, especially when combined with increasing numbers of urban migrants populating unsafe locations.

{homemadejam} is a groovy, bloggy, arty kind of thing. And I mean that in a good way!

George Lucas's THX 1138 is being rereleased with restored footage. I was thoroughly impressed when I saw it many years ago and I'm excited about seeing a director's cut.

Nokia researchers are exploring file sharing on mobile phones. I'm less excited about downloading music on my cell than in the possibilities for mobile P2P networks in relationship to efforts such as The Free Network Project or Freenet.

The Smoking Gun has posted documents related to Dick Cheney's early DWI arrests with links to Dubya DWI docs.

I'm nowhere near as obsessive about this blog as I need to be to do a good job. Yet I refuse to quit until the Postmodern Anarchist Guild threatens to kick me out!

A new issue of First Monday, an Internet focused research journal that's also open access, is now available. It saddens me that I'm just too busy to read much of it because it is an especially interesting issue in relationship to my concerns.

I was able to read the Open Directory Project section of Andrea Ciffollili's article The economics of open source hijacking and the declining quality of digital information resources: A case for copyleft. That section of the article gets into issues that are really important for netweed. As the author notes, the quality of online directories is declining and falling way behind search engines. That process, which has been evident for quite some time, was part of the inspiration behind the creation of netweed's Web Directory and News section.

Some sections of netweed include projects, like NC Hip Hop Online, that attempt to be the definitive resource on a topic or to, at the very least, give you a good sense of the parameters. Those projects include listings of sites that are fairly low quality or even somewhat objectionable, due to the goal of the particular project. However, the Directory aspect of netweed focuses on high quality sites that are individually selected and annotated. Links are checked periodically (that could improve) and new sites are added when someone (mostly Clyde) gets the time.

Ciffollili points to the increasing mix of paid and unpaid listings in search engines. However, I do think Google has done a good job of clearly marking and separating the ads from the search results. But I think it's also important to point out the limits of noncommercial, unfunded search and directory projects. Many high quality niche directories and link pages have declined in quality or gone offline because they are being produced by obsessed individuals who eventually have to put all that time into other things, like making enough money to keep one's Internet connection.

The goal at netweed is to gradually build a web directory (plus other great stuff) that can support itself while providing quality information resources. Rather than constantly attempting to raise funds, get donations and do all the other stuff that takes up the time of nonprofits and grassroots organizations, netweed is intended to be self supporting through ads, commissions on Amazon purchases and the like, as well as the eventual addition of netweed related products.

I think this approach is sound and is already succeeding in an extremely modest manner. Many anarchists I know wouldn't understand but others will, especially those that have recognized that one can't dumpster dive forever and that late teen/twenty something energy won't sustain one in the long run. Besides, netweed's resources are provided freely and the sponsors are right there for you to see. And if Clyde didn't see the possibility for netweed actually employing people one day, he'd be doing other things at this point.

Me, I just get to rattle on and avoid most of the hard work.

I've got a bunch of cool arts related links that I'll post soon but I just wanted to let people know about this article regarding terror alerts. I didn't catch this before but, apparently, Ridge has issued only two alerts during the U.S. Presidential campaign coinciding with the choice of John Edwards as running mate and with the end of the Democratic campaign. But, with terrorist drama in Russian during the RNC, no alerts were issued to mar Bush's progress towards a second term.

I've generally been against drug testing, particularly because safety is the only reason I would accept such testing, yet much of what is tested reveals that you've done a drug in the recent past, not that you're currently under the influence. I'm particularly annoyed at cities that require all city employees to be drug tested. As someone who's considered being a librarian, I'm crossing off all cities that would require me to test negative for marijuana in order to look up the name of the 5th President.

However, given that drug testing is not going away and efforts to control it seem fairly weak, why don't we expand drug testing with a focus on elected officials? I say we should start with the President and every other elected or appointed official who claims to be focused on the safety of the U.S. In fact, we should be receiving regular health updates and complete medical histories on these people, since they regularly inform us that their activities are what's keeping us from being enslaved by [fill in the blank].

Yes, drug testing the President of the United States is an idea whose time has come!

[All uses of the word "fuck" and "fuckhead" have been replaced by such terms as "President" and "official" in order to facilitate the acceptance of this message by the general public.]

I guess I'm really back. Clyde, our great netweed leader, in his infinite wisdom, suggested that returning to my blog would be better than achieving permanent archive status. Power flows everywhere, baby, but I think he was just kidding. You know, in an inspirational sort of way.

Speaking of inspiration, the RNC has been clogging up the airwaves, making my stay at my folk's house less enjoyable because one of my great pleasures while visiting is to catch up on tv. As usual, such events bring out all sorts of interesting protestors.

One of the protests I was happiest to hear about was the Radical Reference librarians' protest of a Laura Bush luncheon. Although the panty-based protest also sounded like fun.

In other news, the School of Missing Studies is planning a 2 year program of research and education related to change in urban environments. As the draft version of their program states:

"School of Missing Studies [SMS] will provide a flexible educational platform for international study and exchange on cultural issues related to the urban environment in cities marked by or currently undergoing political, social, and cultural transition. SMS will provide productive research and project opportunities for young professionals in architecture and art who are struggling with what is “missing” in their studies with regard to processes of local urban change."

And since I appear to be back, I guess they won't have to study me!

More information is now available.