Entries classified under politics

Bill Moyers lashes out against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to a large audience at the National Conference on Media Reform:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

Holy crap, there's audio too.

The blogosphere is truly weird and amazing. I found out that there's a book I have to read that goes into the peak oil situation, expanding on this article. What's interesting is to follow the chain of events that will lead me to purchasing this book:

1. I wrote about the potential for a Ruby on Railsish stack for Python.

2. People link to this entry quite a bit placing it first in Google's results for the query python+"ruby on rails".

3. Alec was looking for info on Python and Rails earlier today and finds my ramblings.

4. Alec sees a totally unrelated link on my site to The Long Emergency, an article on peak oil that I read and bookmarked a couple of days ago.

5. Alec had been interested in peak oil for a while and jots down his thoughts on The Long Emergency article.

6. My technorati watch list notifies me that Alec linked to me.

7. I read Alec's piece and decide I need to purchase the book version of the article.

8. I purchase book.

Who could have predicted that web programming and the energy problem could possibly be related? The only real link between these two topics is interest on the part of a few individuals.

IMO, it's these types of serendipitous connections that make blogging a really interesting and unprecedented communications medium.

Dan Gillmor points to an excellent example of distributed journalism in action over at Daily Kos. I was completely blown away by what I saw when I got there. I'm still trying to soak in all the background around the Plame Leak / Jeff Gannon thing but, to be honest, the specifics of this event are not as important to me as the general phenomenon occurring there. This seems an obvious glimpse into a future where involvement by the general population in issues of import to the general population is increased substantially. Herewith some rant and analysis of our present toolset and humble suggestion for improvement...