2006-01-29 at 9:55am
York Dispatch has a profile of primary plaintiff, Tammy Kitzmiller. (Via Pat Hayes)
Steve Rubel thinks it is unethical to ping Technorati with a weblog that isn’t yours. I don’t think so.
Anke Schuster has an interesting paper on multiculturalism and liberalism, arguing that it is “neither a necessary nor a convincing extension of liberalism”. For me, it all comes down to group rights. Either you favour group rights over individual rights, or you don’t. I don’t. The fruit of multiculturalism, as a doctrine, are things like the incitement to religious hatred law, government’s pussyfooting around harmful practices like female (and male) genital mutilation, giving these supposedly ‘cultural’ practices exemptions from the laws on grievous/actual bodily harm. With regards to circumcision, the question isn’t “should we criminalise it?”, it’s “should we continue to turn a blind eye and let people break the various sections of the Offences Against the Person Act because some wonky books say that it’s a sacred covenant with God?”. It isn’t a matter of being offensive to Jews and Muslims. It’s simply an unnecesary medical procedure done without the consent of the child, and should be treated like any other child abuse.
It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)
And I ain’t talking about Java classes, baby.
I’m talking Web 2.0 and the beautiful voice of Ella Fitzgerald.
When the words “Web 2.0” come out of somebody’s mouth, it’s usually followed by a torrent of utter bullshit that impresses nobody except VC’s.
Flickr is not cool because it integrates folksonomies and gives the power back to the citizen media. It’s cool because it makes sharing your photos with others easier and quicker than before, and far more pleasant than the competiton.
Gmail is not cool because it uses AJAX. It’s cool because it’s got a great interface, non-intrusive adverts and a gobsmackingly huge amount of space.
Blogging is cool because it lets me post what I want, wherever I want, without an editor.
RSS is cool because it lets me read real news on the train without having to buy a newspaper. And it makes telling others about things far easier (with blogs, reading lists and OPML).
Podcasting is cool because it replaces radio, which sucks. And it’s automatic. The number of times I hear “it’s just an MP3!” is making my ears bleed. Yes, it’s an MP3 in the way that a letter is just a piece of paper. The cool bit is that you don’t have to go looking - you just plug your iPod in every day, and the cool stuff is sititng there.
And Web 2.0, with the bullshit removed, is cool too. It’s beginning to make decent applications available online.
It would be even cooler if we could, first off, stop all this beta horseshit. It’s either ready or it’s not. If it’s not, you wait a week then make it publicly available. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. Everything on the web can continue to evolve, and you don’t need to tell us that with either under construction signs or beta labels.
Next, get rid of invite mania. How are you decentralising power on the web and creating “peer-to-peer ecologies” or whatever if you turn it in to the electronic equivalent of the Cool Kids Club. If we wanted to be all cool and networky, we’d have played sports and watched Friends. We didn’t. We played with computers, played D&D, hacked networks, drank Jolt and surfed the web. We’re introverts, not grinning idiots. So cut the Cool Kids Club hierarchy right out.
And remember eToys.com. Remember boo.com. Remember the BLINK tag. Ask yourself: do you want to be looking back in five years time or looking forward.
We don’t want user-driven, longtail, mashed-up, folksonomised experiences of the Web 2.0 hype machine. We want applications that do things better, faster and more efficiently than the previous apps did. If that means the broad set of technologies which have been encompassed under the label Web 2.0, that’s great. But we can lose the doublespeak and just have the great technology.
All that fancy talk don’t mean a thing, Web 2.0’ers, unless you’ve got the swing. Ella had it. And if you stop talking nonsense, you can too.
MetaFilter is discussing ‘nontheist spirituality’. I still don’t get the whole spirituality thing. Either there’s something out there, or we’re just playing poetics. And the poetics of Keats and Shakespeare are far better than thhee politics of superstitious aging hippies.
Guess us heathens can answer the difficult questions. Just not in the way that the questioners want.
Gore Vidal is talking about Jonah, President Bush and lots more.
TADSpot has a guide to video podcasts. Now, if iTunes supported Reading (Watching?) Lists, this would be very easy… “;->”
BBS Ads, Sigs and so on. ASCIIlicious. (Via Boing Boing)
