Category: Digital Culture

…to our Vice President, Dick Cheney. I don’t need to fully explain my contempt of this man. But when he says things like:

“The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us — biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Cheney said.

“That’s the ultimate threat. For us to have a strategy that’s capable of defeating that threat, you’ve got to get your mind around that concept,” Cheney said.

Well, Mr. Cheney, there are, contrary to your views, actually TWO methods of dealing with this situation. One is to get your mind around “defeating that threat” and the other is to get America back in a political position where half the world doesn’t hate us. That, sir, would be John Kerry’s plan. Better than any sort of defeating your enemies is not have those enemies at all. The fact that Bush and cronies have put this country in a position where we are hated for good reason by seemingly half the globe is proof enough for me that they are the biggest threat to this country, and need to go.

Vote Kerry.

John Stewart is my hero. Not only is he hilarious, but he seems brazenly unafraid of saying what he feels. His appearance on Crossfire is amazing, if only because of the platitudes one expects from any show on TV these days. To confront the hosts in the manner he did…well, it was brilliant. Best quote of the show:

CARLSON: I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion.
STEWART: You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

To see the clip, you can Bittorrent it, or stream it from iFilm.

Second best exchange:

STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.
BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.
STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it. . . hacks.

EDIT: Another stream here, and the CNN transcript here.

EDIT: On “The Daily Show” on Monday following this altercation, Jon closed his opening monologue with:

“They came back at me pretty good. They said that I wasn’t being funny. And I said to them…I know that. But tomorrow I’ll go back to being funny, and your show will still blow.”

I love the World Wide Web because I can subscribe to Eli’s blog via RSS, which gathers her updates and makes sure I don’t miss anything. Said update today linked me to a great article in Library Journal, which had a link within it to a great page of snarky librarian clothing. I especially want to point this one out for my christmas list. Oh, and this sticker, as well.

Today everyone’s favorite search engine, Google, released Google Desktop an indexing/searching tool for the individual PC. From the Google Desktop page:

Google Desktop Search is how our brains would work if we had photographic memories. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, chats, and the web pages you’ve viewed. By making your computer searchable, Google Desktop Search puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails, and bookmarks.

After downloading Google Desktop Search, you can search your personal items as easily as you search the Internet using Google. Unlike traditional computer search software that updates once a day, Google Desktop Search updates continually for most file types, so that when you receive a new email in Outlook, for example, you can search for it within seconds. The index of searchable information created by Desktop Search is stored on your own computer.

There are several things that immediately came to my mind when looking at the product. One is whether or not it is reporting back to Google homebase about content. The privacy policy assures us that it is not, but I’d love to see an independant examination of the code. They do list two specific instances when search terms used in a desktop search may be sent to Google proper, so that’s something to be aware of.

The indexing is done as you go, with the Desktop applet running in the background. The installation takes 500 Megabytes of hard drive space, which seems massive overkill for what is effectively a text index. Then again, there is the ability to cache webpages as you go (only with IE, of course) which would add considerably to the size. Currently, Google Desktop only indexes the following filetypes:

• Web pages you’ve previously seen in Internet Explorer
• Email you’ve sent or received via Outlook or Outlook Express
• IM chats you’ve had using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
• Files in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint as well as plain text

From CNN:

Actor Christopher Reeve, the star of the “Superman” movies whose near-fatal riding accident nine years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal cord research, died of heart failure. He was 52.

From the Guardian:

While I never quite agreed with his philosophy, and have trouble with his contribution to literary studies, it remains true that he was one of the towering figures of 20th century academia. Without him, we would have no literary criticism as we know it now, and Continental Philosophy would have been much less robust.

Derrida was known as the father of deconstructionism, a branch of critical thought or analysis developed in the late 1960s and applied to literature, linguistics, philosophy, law and architecture.

Derrida focused his work on language, showing that it has multiple layers and thus multiple meanings or interpretations, challenging the notion that speech is a direct form of communication or even that the author of a text is the author of its meaning.

Deconstructionists like Derrida explored the means of liberating the written word from the structures of language, opening limitless textual interpretations. Not limited to language, Derrida’s philosophy of deconstructionism was then applied to western values.

The deconstructionist approach has remained controversial, with detractors even proclaiming the movement dead. So divisive were Derrida’s ideas that Cambridge University’s plan to award him an honorary degree in 1992 was forced to a vote which he won.

As Derrida grew ill, death haunted him. In a Le Monde interview in August, Derrida said that learning to live means learning to die.

“Less and less, I have not learned to accept death,” he was quoted as saying. “I remain uneducable about the wisdom of learning to die.”

SpaceShipOne has successfully completed the requirements for the X-Prize, successfully launching an astronaut into space twice in a 2 week period.

Congrats to everyone involved. As I said last week, this is great, great stuff. Bring on the Space Tourism!

Presidential Debate Bingo! Print it out and play along at home!