ScienceBlog's Soda Pop Saga

I've got a new piece on Scatter/Gather, Razorfish's content strategy blog, about the Scienceblogs debacle, knowing your audience and transparency.

Subway Poem 12

Red riding hood sits slumped on the F Train,
No longer little nor lithe
That hood definitely protection
Against whatever wickedness she's weathered
Via the wolves of the world
Her eyes shut against the elements
Us

06/19/10

Getting Out of the Box

I'm very proud to have a piece on Razorfish's brand spanking new diversity blog: "Getting Out of the Box" on razorfishpride.com.

Tourists Keep Left

I know some outsiders found Jeff Greenspan's New Yorker/Visitors sidewalk lanes obnoxious but try working in Times Square and navigating the sidewalk crowds at lunchtime, and you'll be wanting your own lane too!

Although Improv Everywhere eventually helped with a prominent 5th Avenue version, Greenspan was eventually revealed as the original creator.

Subway Poem 11

The one F train driver
Her tones a calm, smoky jazz
You all have a good week, a lovely day, she says
And for once we think, yes, we will
Thanks to her
Believing in us

05/26/10

The National - "Terrible Love"

Shepard Fairey Working on Mural in New York

I posted a story last night to CNN's iReport on Shepard Fairey's gigantic new wheat paste mural going up at the corner of Houston and Bowery in New York. Photo above by me. More on Flickr.

Suspense!

Reading this Malcolm Gladwell piece on alcoholism and I realize what he has in common with the writers of Lost: the ability to withhold the tasty morsels you really want right now in order to create and maintain suspense.

Social Camp

The New Yorker reports folks are actually debating whether this YouTube video, entitled "That's Why I Chose Yale," is earnest or high camp. Presumably, it's a knowing attempt at a viral video, performed in the vein of Glee Club. One hopes anyway.

Quote of the Day

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

- Albert Einstein

Constructive Action?

I was rather disappointed today to find that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees response to Sarah Palin's Tea Party speech was to ask people to sign a letter to Palin, which says the following, "We haven't forgotten that Republicans created this mess and we won't stand for your smears."

I learned this when the DCCC tweeted, "We just hit 20K signatures on our letter to Palin: 'We won't stand for your smears.' Help us hit 25K! http://bit.ly/9ZdPHw." To which I responded, "I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, @dccc, but does anyone really think signing a letter like this is going to help things? http://j.mp/cK4zI5." To me, the letter felt more like an exercise in futility than any sort of constructive response to Palin's agenda. (One of my friends on Twitter even responded, "If Palin won't read a newspaper, why do they think she'll read their letter?" Heh.)

To their credit, someone at the DCCC direct tweeted me the following earlier this evening: "Fair question. With our letter, we aim to send a clear message to the GOP that we will call them out for their false and outrageous attacks." I appreciated their answering me directly, but I still feel the brief, scabrous letter itself amounts to little more than returning a swipe from Palin with a swipe back. So I direct tweeted a message back to them, then posted the following only slightly reworded tweet: "Challenge to @dccc: Do something *constructive* with social media. Organize an answer to the Tea Partiers, demanding universal healthcare."

Then I visited their website and noticed a link to become a fan on Facebook. I did so and immediately posted the above challenge there, too. Again, to their credit, they quickly responded with the following, "We're always interested to hear our supporters' ideas. How would you organize an answer to the tea partiers?"

Given that Facebook allows for a more verbose response than Twitter, I shared a few thoughts to take them up on their question. Here's my response:

Thanks for your willingness to engage in dialogue. I understand that the DCCC is "the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House of Representatives," so I'm not sure how much you can do to organize a grassroots effort (and would it be a true grassroots effort if organized by the DCCC?), but I'm disappointed to see the DCCC organizing people to sign a letter to Sarah Palin, which does little more than call her out on her inflammatory rhetoric, when the Tea Partiers are organizing people to march on Washington, to spread all manner of disinformation about the President and universal healthcare, and meeting regularly in a continued effort to plan actual real world activity. Yet what has been the democratic response? I think many people who deeply believe in healthcare have grown despondent and disillusioned over the lack of progress on the issue.

I wouldn't necessarily know all the nuances of how to organize an in-the-streets movement on that scale, but you have almost 60,000 fans on Facebook and well over 11,000 followers on Twitter. That seems like a good start. There must be constructive things those people can do: to show up in public and challenge the Tea Partiers, show others that healthcare does represent the will of the people - and isn't just some "socialist" program Obama is trying to force on us.

Another constructive solution would be to create content that people could be encouraged to distribute on their blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc, that effectively - and diplomatically - refutes the misconceptions about healthcare (and other misinformation the Tea Partiers are spreading). Make it bulleted, easy to read, succinct. Encourage people to actively engage with the Tea Partiers on these issues - and to share that information with other Americans, too. Just yelling "you lie" to the Tea Partiers and to Palin may serve as an outlet for Progressive frustration, but it does nothing constructive.

The President set a good example for all us recently when he reached out the Republicans and firmly called them out on some of their behavior - but also invited them to dialogue. I'd like to think his request was genuine. We've got to do the same thing as individuals if we're to make any real progress. We've got to challenge people to think, challenge them with the facts. But we won't get their attention unless we focus on ways to do it constructively. Not just matching outbursts with outburts.

I wish you much luck to that end.

I do feel like there's a lot more constructive activity that could be generated vis social media, of course. That was just a hurried post to Facebook. Maybe we can get to brainstorming and working on such strategies, instead of just encouraging tens of thousands of folks to engage in what amounts to little more than a quick swipe at Wasilla's finest?

5 Things a Corporation Can't Do

5 Things a Corporation Can't Do That a Human Being Can:

• Produce a birth certificate
• Enter into a same-sex marriage
• Vote for elected officials
• Fight to keep a mortgage and a roof over its family's head
• Leave fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene

I'm referring, of course, to the Supreme Court's January 21st decision to allow companies the right to contribute to election campaigns, under the justification that doing otherwise would restrict their rights. In other words, conferring the rights of a human American individual upon a multi-million dollar corporation.

Points of Interest: Amsterdam, Belgium and Paris

During our recent trip to Europe, I collected a slew of business cards from different places (restaurants, cafes, galleries, shops) we dropped into. Faced with filing these things away somewhere where I'd likely never see them again, I thought I'd enter them all here for other folks benefit, who may travel to The Netherlands, Belgium or France, too. So, it's by no means comprehensive, but here are some places worth checking out in the following countries and cities:

Antwerp, Belgium

• Hotel Postiljon - small, clean, comfortable rooms - and bathrooms with no doors on them! But exceptionally close to the Cathedral of Our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) - right behind it, in fact

Brugge, Belgium

• Gran Kaffee de Passage, Dweersstraat 26-28 - excellent eating: tasty ribs and beer at this convivial restaurant in the ground floor of a hostel, believe it or not.
• Hotel Cavalier, Kuiperstraat 25 - better looking on the outside or in the quaint cafe, than inside one of the rooms. Ours had a bed, which slanted downward to the head. Nonetheless, terrifically handy to everything in old Brugge.

Paris, France

• La Flèche d'Or, 102 bis rue de Bagnolet - we had to walk a few blocks from the metro to find this music venue in a renovated train station, but we caught a good show with a faux-Irish punk Celtic band. Or something like that.
• La Frégate, 1, rue du Bac angle 35 quai Voltaire - a typical French bistro in a sense, but with a stunning view of the Seine and the Louvre. Also: it's on on the site of the home of Marshal D’Artagnan, who inspired Dumas to write The Three Musketeeers.
• Hotel Champ du Mars, 7 rue du Champ de Mars - tiny rooms, but it was well kept and close to the Eiffel Tower and other great walks
• Lili's Brownie, 35 Rue Du Dragon - American-style brownies in, um, Paris
• Mandalas, Artisanat du Tibet - across from our hotel on Champ du Mars, lovely jewelry from Tibet, about a block away from the Rue Cler market street

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• De Aardige Pers, 2e Hugo de grootstraat 13 B - it's a bit of a haul to get to this Iranian restaurant, but really worth it
• Quinta - Nieuwe Leliestraat 4, across from Anne Frank House - tasteful wine and liquor shop where the proprietor provided an informative and impassioned homily on absinthe
• Reypenaer - nice, bright cheese shop with very helpful informative owners and employees
• Temploe Doeloe, Utrechtsestraat 75 - delicious Indonesian food

Survivors

I just got word that my roommate from my freshman year in college survived the earthquake in Haiti. A few details, which the school has apparently being circulating, really bring home the impact.

Maxime Pierre-Pierre (’92 grad, former employee, working in Petionville, southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti)

Thanks for your prayers. We thank God for keeping our whole family safe as well as our house. Telephone contact is difficult now. I was teaching at STEP seminary when the earthquake hit. The building was seriously affected, and several students were pulled out of the rubble. Our church building was not affected. We have been sleeping outside since Tuesday. We have little access to food, water or fuel and no electricity. Keep praying for us.

If you're reading this, Maxime, I was so relieved to hear you survived, and I'll be keeping you in my thoughts.

Top 5 Groups Pat Robertson Has It in For Next

Presenting, the top 5 groups Pat Robertson has it in for next:

1. Asexual ants - they dispensed with the male of species (Science News)
2. Alaskans - the least religious of Americans (Pew Research)
3. Teenagers - they bear all the signs of demon possession (New Scientist)
4. Pilots - if man were meant to fly ... (CNN)
5. Australians - topless sunbathers! (The Telegraph)