onfocus

Two Giant Sequoias Fall in Yosemite



YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CA, 2-APR-2003: Park ranger Deb Schweizer discusses two fallen giant sequoia trees, Wednesday, March 5, 2003 in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park, Calif. For more than 1,000 years, the two giant sequoia trees thrived in the Mariposa Grove, eventually towering 30 stories into the sky. When they fell, a hole the size of a jetliner opened in the forest canopy.
[Photo by Gary Kazanjian, copyright 2003 by AP and ClariNet]

can't blog. busy.

but want to point to self evident by ani difranco anyway. she rocks.

Instead of the government spending hundreds of millions of dollars on creating an Arabic al-Jazeera competitor, they should just let News Corporation (Fox) buy them. Their programming would change dramatically. In fact, maybe Fox will be able to soon—the FCC is about to give even more ownership latitude to the big ten. It reminds me of the immortal words of Princess Leia, "The more you tighten your grip [Big 10], the more star systems will slip through your fingers." (Though I'm pretty sure News Corporation owns that quote.) [first link via rc3.org]

André Breton objects for sale. It's sad to see his life's private minutia and collected objects cataloged and auctioned off. But at the same time it's fascinating to go through. Maybe Breton wouldn't mind. As he once said (in translation), "The legs beneath the fruit-bearing cloud travel all along the greenhouse."

And I now know that Duchamp had hair well ahead of its time. And that's worth something.

I love this photo of a sunflower by Man Ray. And this painting by Marie Toyen. So much to see there.

What is the meaning of the phrase The Second Superpower? [via Scripting] An interesting look at language on the Web, and the heavy influence certain weblogs have on Google.

The phrase (in its early meaning) was altered slightly (The Other Superpower) and used on the cover of The Nation recently.

Keep an eye on googlewashed. (Sure to be googlewashed?)

The NewsHour on PBS continues to have the best television war coverage and analysis I've seen. To get a sense of the current rift between the military and politicians, check out this segment from last night's show. (or realaudio.)

Remember Usenet? clari.news.photos has quite a few AFP photographs of current events. They're bigger than the versions you find at Yahoo! news.

Matt has mophos. Here's how he does it with 3 servers, 7 clicks, a secret email account, a weblog CMS, and a script that checks the email account every 10 minutes. My setup for mophos is pretty much the same sort of rube-goldberg scriptery. Someday this will all be easier. (I'd like to see a "publish" option on my phone.)

It was bound to happen: GooFi.

Blogs Against War is aggregating anti-war news and analysis across weblogs. (Similar to PeaceTrack.org.) It's another site to add to your trackback list for peace-related categories.

Washington Post: For Broadcast Media, Patriotism Pays. Not too surprising, but big consulting firms are telling TV and radio stations not to cover anti-war positions.

"Get the following production pieces in the studio NOW:...Patriotic music that makes you cry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion," advised McVay Media, a Cleveland-based consultant, in a "War Manual" memo to its station clients. "...Air the National Anthem at a specified time each day as long as the USA is at war."

Sounds like they're advocating propaganda. The experts say coverage that makes people feel good about the war is the way to boost ratings. Ratings are important, but what about telling the whole story? What about being involved in the community and providing a space for discussion and debate? I hope local TV and radio stations ignore the "experts" and serve their audiences by providing the whole truth.

Thanks to the discussions I've had around the TopicExchange project I mentioned, I've set up a site called PeaceTrack.org. I think having this devoted space will allow the site to grow and have new features over time. From the site:

"Most peace events don't make the news, so the peace movement needs to make its own news outlets. Weblogs and personal sites do a great job of covering these events, but it's not easy to find peace-related posts or photo galleries when they're spread across so many sites. That's where PeaceTrack hopes to help: finding specific posts about peace-related activities."

If you're writing about peace-related events in your weblog, or know about coverage of these events that exists, this site is a way to let others know about it. It's fully TrackBack-aware, so if you're using Movable Type you can set the URL in your peace/activism category and forget about it.