At last, a blog entry regarding an NPR story that does not wrap up with me foaming at the mouth. Morning Edition ran a story today on a Mennonite community in Chihuahua, Mexico famous for their cheese. It’s an interesting tale with a (tenuous) personal connection – a lot of Mennonite blood flows through my veins. The Chihuahuan community came from northern Germany via Russia and Manitoba; my connection is through my mom – German/Swiss via Ontario. Hey, Heidi the Hick – mom’s maiden name = Lehman, granma’s maiden name = Wideman, both born in Markham, Ont. – I’m betting some of those names ring bells for you… I’m also told that, coincidentally, on my dad’s side there’s a bunch of Indiana Mennonite heritage, but I know less about that.
Author Archives: dr.hypercube
Syd Barrett estate auction
Some interesting stuff from the late Syd Barrett’s estate is being auctioned off. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how this works, but it looks like you can place absentee bids via an eBay account. The auction itself is tomorrow at 7AM EST. I’m tempted by a couple of items… (via MeFi)
Happy Thanksgiving
A pre-schooler’s turkey story:
I know they walk. Well, well they walk on the street. Well, they walk to get to the other side. They are going to their homes. They live in the grass. They eat turkey or maybe yummy cheese or maybe something clean or maybe something yucky. To catch a turkey my Dad would use a net. He has really power hands. He throws the net and then he grabs the feet. He gets tired when he runs out of power. But some heroes don’t get tired. Moms gotta cut the feathers off the turkey. You do it with scissors. Mom doesn’t catch a turkey. She’s not very good at catching things. She cooks it in the oven for five minutes. All of us eat it.
Sousveillance, Kramer, Tasers and the Panopticon
A couple of recent incidents have me thinking about the surveillance society again. The incidents:
- November 14th a University of California Police Department officer tasered a student in UCLA’s Powell library.
- November 19th (I think – the news was racing around the web on the 20th) Michael Richards – Kramer of Seinfeld – melted down while doing a standup routine at a club in Hollywood.
The key factor that unites these disparate messes? They were caught on video by bystanders (a quick YouTube search should turn both up – I’ll leave that as an excercise for the student). Though it’s often useful to concentrate on one aspect of technological change – in this case the panopticon (and in his defense Charlie Stross’ Great Britain is leading the way in ubiquitous surveillance) there are almost always countervailing forces and unintended consequences that get in the way. Opportunistic sousveillance may be be one of those forces. As video recording hardware gets smaller and more ubiquitous – cell phones, lipstick cams, etc. – and video distribution gets easier no one will have a monopoly on showing the world images of folks behaving badly. Not only will Cletus show up on ‘Cops’ when his meth lab gets raided, but additionally YouTube will have footage of Officer Friendly overreacting during a traffic stop.
I’ll continue to mull – sousveillance is no panacea. The state still has access to databases, facial recognition software (which – as far as I can tell – still sucks), etc. I continue to think transparency will keep free societies free, but part of me wants to prep an escape route – be ready go nomad and drop into a mobile cash/barter society that I think is already out there…