Uncle.

wordpress is nice, but for some reason they make embedding things like video a pain in the ass. also, i do like not having to pay for the privilege of altering my html and css when i want. as such, i’ve gone crawling back to blogger begging for forgiveness: http://egadman.blogspot.com/

my apologies for the runaround.

our purchasing power

a good sheet tracking the recent history of holiday spending.

2007′s estimated retail sales: $474.5 billion

current estimated economic bailout plan: $8 trillion

professor zekenstein

Zeke posted a note on facebook about the site’s potential uses, here’s an excerpt:

is using facebook as an organizing tool viable? What does it take to use this mechanism effectively?

I want people to talk to me about this. Its entirely possible that having a degree of seperation between organizers may be a good thing. God knows we’re at each other’s throats constantly at all of our communes, causes and marches.

So, what do you folks think? Things need to start happeping more quickly, and strongly. We need to use the tools we have.

What kind of things can we use facebook for? How can we use it? Thoughts? Comments? Please, we’re all on so much anyway, why not use it?

I stated my thoughts on the subject thusly:

clearly the internet can help people organize quickly and effectively. two examples being the recent presidential campaigns and flash mobs.

that said, there are a number of obstacles that need to be overcome before facebook can be a successful organizing tool. the first impediment is facebook’s established social culture, which [as noted in another response on facebook] is primarily a culture of inaction. historically the site seems to be about putting forth the least amount of effort possible to stay in touch with people. (you don’t even need to leave your chair to make friends!)

that base behavior of inaction follows itself into the groups and causes applications, which, based on my own experience and observation, tend to attract people on a superficial level. people will join a group or cause, but often, that will be the limit of their activity. at most members will invite others to the group or perhaps post a comment, but their main interest is being seen as part of the group or the joy of the novelty of joining a group with an esoteric jokey title .

there are some other underlying factors to this inaction other than it just being facebook SOP, including lack of time and energy, and your other of standard reason for non-involvement—lack of interest.

we can probably just sum this up with the word inertia.

the second obstacle is the degree of separation that facebook allows. zeke mentions this as a potential positive, and i think it could be, but not until after you get past two of its effects: (1) a lessened sense of obligation and (2) unaccountability. the less interaction between people the harder it is to enact and feel peer pressure, something we all know can be a great motivator. no one wants to let their friends down. additionally, the less significant the relationship is between people—the less history they have and the less trust they instill in one another—the smaller the ramifications are when there is a breach of trust. that is to say that i am generally emotionally and psychologically affected less by interactions with people i don’t know than by people i do know. facebook groups often consist largely of people who don’t know each other very well or don’t know each other at all and may never meet. the result is that incentive to contribute to the group is minimized, as the damage and hurt achieved through negligence or breach of trust is also minimal.

i think the way to get around this is to try and foster a sense of community and etiquette within the facebook group. i’m not sure exactly how to go about doing that though.

it should also be noted that these impediments are mitigated when the people in the group are passionate about the cause. just look at political blogs or the achenblog (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/achenblog). the achenblog comments page is an especially good example of a well nurtured forum with an established commenting community. and i’m sure that something could be learned from this.

of course, you can foster interest and good discussion all you want, but zeke’s point is to get some action happening. how do you propel commentators out of their chairs and into the streets?

battlespace

House search. Baghdad. Iraq 2007. by Luke Wolagiewicz

eugene kuo designed the companion website to gallery FCB’s amazing exhibit of photos of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. warning—some of it is very graphic:

http://www.battlespaceonline.org/index.shtml

genius?

Prop 8 the musical. Where was this six weeks ago?

modular cars

“My self-esteem is in the normal range, but if I could tinker with my existence it would be to make myself something other than a detestable, oozing, suppurating lesion on the body of civilization.”—Achenbach on the Achenblog.
Modular cars, something he poses later in the post, are not a terrible idea. Logistically it’d be kind of a nightmare though, attaching an unattaching many hundreds of pounds to the car. He skirts around a more plausible idea—an engine that will use only as many cylinders as necessary—a six cylinder car that only uses 1 or 2 cylinders when idling or when crawling through a traffic jam. Maybe this already exists… and ideally, of course, the car would also run on a less environmentally abusive fuel than petrol.

Mazda Taiki concept car

Mazda Taiki concept interior