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Sunday, June 8, 2003
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 Sunday, June 8, 2003
started 6/8/2003; 12:09:51 AM - last post 6/9/2003; 11:39:33 AM
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Doc Searls - Sunday, June 8, 2003 
6/8/2003; 4:09:51 AM (reads: 6141, responses: 5)
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Blogslingers 
| | In Editor falls to bloggers' rapid poison, Sarah Baxter in Times Online (and, I believe, the Sunday Times of London) recounts the role of Mickey Kaus, Andrew Sullivan and others in the taketown of Howell Raines at the New York Times. Fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go so far as to recognize that there are several hundred thousand bloggers, and that a relative few have been obsessing on Raines. The operative paragraphs: |
| | A proliferating band of independent writers known as ³bloggers² (short for web loggers) is pumping out personal takes on the news, and one of the most persistent themes of their websites has been that Howell Raines, executive editor of The New York Times, would have to resign or be sacked. |
| | The bloggers got their man last week and have been exulting in their power. After a rollercoaster two years in the job, Raines resigned from The New York Times last Thursday along with Gerald Boyd, the managing editor. |
| | If this were all you read about blogs, you'd think all bloggers were the journalistic equivalents of gunslingers. |
| | The problem is that Sarah Baxter doesn't know blogging. While mainstream journalists are, on the whole, getting a better grip on the subject, it's still a bowling ball with no holes. So they roll a lot of gutterballs. This was one of them. |
| | Along these same lines (groups not getting what other groups are really doing), Bill Kosloski talks about Tech Agoraphobia in the medical market. |
On the packets
| | I'm going to be a guest on On Computers Live at 1pm today, EDST. That's in 5 minutes, as I write this. |
Sad
| | They also just sent me my second spam. I know it's spam, because nearly everything not from a human being sent to the "ringleaders" address at cluetrain.com is a spam. It also says You are receiving this email because you opted-in to receive special offers from Exclusive-Deals through one of our online affiliates. (evatyrnqref^pyhrgenva(pbz). |
| | I wonder if they know they're spamming. Probably not. I'm sure they jobbed out promotion to somebody who knew somebody, etc. |
The ratio race
| | From his notes yesterday: |
| | Good points, and I like the AND logic: you gotta do more... |
| | So hey: Are blogs ways of doing or just talking? Sometimes they can be both. As can politics. There's a natural affinity. Mark Twain said a politician is somebody who works for "the universal brotherhood of man"— with his mouth. |
| | I remember something somebody once told me about Bill Clinton's biggest, worst-kept and most important political "secret": He shook more hands than any other human being in human history. Considering the man's legendary shortcomings, that says a lot. |
| | Let's face it: Blogs today are still unnecessary and insufficient for electing a damn soul. At best they'll become necessary but still insufficient. |
| | Winning in elections, like winning in markets, requires something more than conversation, more than buzz. It requires involvement. Relationship. Connecting and reconnecting. Performing, and not just in the box office sense of that word. |
| | Sitting here in a hotel overlooking the city most emblematic of a nascent democracy, I find myself wanting blogs work as levers on action. And, by 2004, levers in polling booths. |
| | As usual, the warbloggers, now morphing into polibloggers, have an edge. They have, as Dave says about the Mets, a philosophy. So does the Left. We just don't see much of it — so little of it, in fact, that there's more said about liberals by conservatives than by liberals. Go refigure. |
| | Maybe we'll start to see a real Liberal Philoslphy emerge from somewhere other than the usual caucuses and consultants. Blogs will help. They'll fertilize the grass roots. But to succeed, we'll need a higher action/word ratio. |
At least he didn't used to suck
| | Any swinging dead cat is odds-on gonna hit a public figure who sucks and always has. |
| | Three more paragraphs of good funny writing, and we arrive here: |
| | But here's what triggered the post: If you've been thinking about Dennis Miller at all lately, this might be what you (in the voice of his own bad 1988 self) were thinking. |
| | Read the link. Very funny shit. |
| | Unrelated: Miller was at the next table in a local restaurant a few months back. We were having a great time at our table. He was suffering his in silence. I think he envied us. Hope so. |
No-Fi
| | The trip from Logan to the hotel here in Boston is mostly underground. Or seems that way. But the last eight blocks or so are on city streets lined with apartments and high-rises. |
| | I wardrove the whole way with a laptop in the back of the taxi, fishing for wi-fi signals. I wanted to compare Boston to New York and Santa Barbara. In midtown and lower Manhattan I couldn't go ten blocks without picking up 50 signals. Or many more. Going from my house in Santa Barbara to downtown and back — about a 4-mile round trip — I picked up ... let's see, I've got the text file here somewhere... okay, 85 separate wi-fi signals. In Manhattan I picked up about 1500 signals (there are many more on the spreadsheet, but I don't have time to check for duplicates, so that's my guess). |
| | Here in Boston? Zero. Nada. |
| | From Britt Blaser's apartment window in Manhattan I got 12 signals. From here on the 15th floor of the hotel, with high buildings nearby all around... Nothing. |
| | Not sure what gives. Must be around here somewhere. It looks like a civilized place. |
| | Of course, I'm writing this from the bed, before crashing. using my own little portable wi-fi access point, which is hanging off the hotel's broadband. |
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Dean Landsman - Re: Sunday, June 8, 2003
6/8/2003; 4:54:56 PM (reads: 490, responses: 1)
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When Dave wrote that the Mets were a philosophy, there is no doubt he meant what he said. Of course, in those days, Dave was living in California, and the Mets were more of a memory and an enduring passion, I would guess, than an entity to which he was paying close attention.
Right now I wonder if Dave would call the Mets a philosophy. As an organization they are a disaster, as a playing unit they are even less solid. As things stand now, they are rapidly going down the drain, and leaving their fans to grasp at straws in the rubble. The occasional winning game, the good play, the good moment, is all Met fans can cling to at this point.
Of course when it comes to philosophy and baseball teams, Dave is now in the perfect spot. Boston offers fans loyal and true to the team that has yet to recover from the blunder of funding No No Nanette. The Curse of The Babe, as seen during the famous Bill Buckner play (against the Mets, no less!) continues to haunt this team.
Despite the talent and the drive of the players and organization, despite the ardor and passion of their fans, the Bosox are the ones that make their fans look for some meaning. A philosphy, yes.
The Mets leave their fans looking for what else is on TV, maybe ESPN or some other channel.
Boston is at least a joy to watch. There's hope, there's the very young GM with his somewhat unorthodox ideas. There's a chance, Curse notwithstanding.
Over at Shea, at least one can count the planes going by for some home field entertainment.
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Jonathan Peterson - Re: Sunday, June 8, 2003
6/8/2003; 6:37:01 PM (reads: 527, responses: 0)
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Andrew is re-writing the same old story 2 weeks later. Only this time he had the wisdom to hint at a google insider instead of quoting someone from slashdot. I didn't link to him then, and I ain't gonna do it now.
If he's a journalist, and not a blogger, he'll still have to do better than that. Journalists break stories, they don't spread unattributed rumors.
I still wonder where these terrible search results are that are so polluting Google. Is there a search engine that is better (I mean besides in the eye of Andrew). I'm happy supporting blogdom, but I live professionally by search engines, and the only other search tool I use is OpenCola.
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Tim Jarrett - NoFi: NoBroadband
6/8/2003; 9:09:31 PM (reads: 494, responses: 0)
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One reason you didn't find a lot of WiFi signals is that it's still next to impossible, thanks to competitive access being overturned and the mishmash that is Boston's cable and telephone infrastructure, to get any sort of broadband access in Boston. I lived in Cambridge for eight months--just the other side of the river--where I could get DSL or cable, and had freely available WiFi at Kendall Square (probably because I was already authenticated on the MIT network). Then we moved to Boston and spent the next year and a half sharing a dialup connection over my AirPort base station. Argh.
That said, check out the free WiFi in Newbury Street next to the pay WiFi at Starbucks.
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j. a. marrit - Re: Dennis Miller
6/9/2003; 11:53:23 AM (reads: 528, responses: 1)
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Yes, of course. Anyone who deviates from Hollywood orthodoxy must be ostracized. (Nobody really thinks we believe in freedom of thought or expression, do they? Fools!)
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Doc Searls - Re: Dennis Miller
6/9/2003; 3:39:33 PM (reads: 644, responses: 0)
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It's about humor, not orthodoxy. I loved Dennis' show on HBO, and thought he did a great job on it. Now all we have is that one concert running over and over again, in which he comes out all rah-rah for the president. I really don't care about the politics, just the humor. It wasn't as funny as his old stuff, which for me ended just last year.
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