This last Fifth of November may have been the most historic Fifth of November since 1605, if not more historic. Or rather, de-historic might be more accurate. Google just announced that users would be able to easily access and manage the stored user data that Google has on file for each and every service tied to a user’s account, conveniently organized at Google Dashboard. If Google isn’t just storing the data elsewhere (or insufficiently anonymizing it, as I suspect the case may be), this is a HUGE leap forward for privacy. Here’s hoping the data can go out with a bang.
In case you don’t see the problem with tons of stored data on you, just think about what a vindictive prosecutor, vengeful rival, or even a vindictive friend might do if they had access to every single thing you’ve ever typed into Google’s search box.
Many disagree with my ardent love for Firefox, which is based almost entirely on its openness and freedom for user customization and development. Firefox really does allow you to take advantage of the fact that most users’ experience of the Internet is nothing more than the receipt of data, and because you control the device that receives the data, you should be able to control how it is displayed and arranged. Good examples include AdBlock, AutoPager, SkipScreen, Image Zoom, etc.
This fact is poignantly demonstrated through the new add-on that does what many people have been demanding for a while, but were never going to get from above: a “Dislike” button for Facebook. It works wonderfully. Enjoy, Firefox users.
Wow, China just banned WoW. Perhaps this move–likely to be met with massive civil unrest from China’s 13 million WoWers–will be the first chink in The Great Firewall of China? Oh, no racist pun intended, seriously. I can already tell this is going to haunt me.
Some truth about perception.
Doghouse Diaries: "What a Creep"
Yesterday was Election Day in the U.S.A., and if you watched CNN (or managed to find their website–not on the front page), you might believe that the voters came out in droves as part of a referendum on the Obama Administration in a shocking display of their dissatisfaction with the way this country is headed. Of course, this is an off-year election with a few governorships and referenda at stake, so nobody was coming out in droves. As Tip O’Neill would have said, “All politics is local,” but nowadays, all media is national, so of course it’s a referendum on Obama. The national media doesn’t have the tools to analyze a local election, so what else could they talk about to fill a 24-hour news cycle?
Lest I betray my bias as an Obama apologist–oops, too late–I should also argue that I cannot stand the the Saturday Night Live school of political science that claims that Obama “hasn’t gotten anything accomplished.” Simply put, if you actually look at what he has done, there are plenty of things to highlight (and these are just a few):
- Out of the gate, he was faced with softening the blow of the biggest financial morass since the Great Depression.
- He announced the closure and cessation of torture at Guantanamo Bay, and is figuring out where to relocate the prisoners.
- He reversed the gag rule.
- He lifted the ban on federal stem cell research.
- He made decisions to push Chrysler and GM into bankruptcy.
- He followed California’s lead and toughened gas emission standards.
- Perhaps most importantly, he changed the face of international diplomacy, which will have serious long-term ramifications for national security.
- He committed a serious enough number of troops to actually do something in Afghanistan, even though the situation is tough.
- He ended the war on medical marijuana.
If you disagree with the processes that went into these decisions or the results of these actions, that’s fine, but don’t say that he hasn’t done anything. The things that he has yet to do are largely a result of preparing people and institutions that are slow to change, but he’s still going to get there when the proper foundation is laid (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell being a prime example). People sit by the sidelines and think that everything can turn on a dime, but there are mammoth institutions to be negotiated.
Most of Obama’s actual “failures to get something done” (and there are several) are works in progress, people. He was only elected 366 days ago, and the resistance to change in this country is strong, with well-placed advocates attempting to stem the tide. He’s made good progress so far, but having a 15-second attention span is not going to help get any agenda accomplished.
This guy probably committed about 100 copyright “violations” in the making of this ultimate internet video mashup, but I don’t think anyone who views it could seriously believe that a single one of those instances of copying should actually be a violation. Well, maybe Jane Ginsburg, but the whole point is that this is so clearly a fair use that it almost belongs in a textbook or–more appropriately–case law.
To be slightly didactic, this video exemplifies what one ought to be free to do in the “Remix Generation” (as Larry Lessig would put it). It’s creating new art from existing building blocks, without appropriating the value inherent in those building blocks. We are always standing on the shoulders of giants (usually of art), but now the giants (of industry, not art) are trying to buck us off their shoulders. We need to fight for the birthright of the digital era.
What a great Venn Diagram:
Whether you’re a fan of zombies, vampires, or serial killers, the recent rise of monsters and horror in popular culture has come with more fully developed psyches, perspectives, and mythoi behind the monsters themselves, which should also help us more fully understand what these monsters mean in the context of our social psychology…if only people analyzed things on that supra-popcorn-munching level.
Where some inadvertent monsters, like Frankenstein’s monster for example, are meant to rouse our social pity and awareness of xenophobia, most monsters are quite intentionally conceived as literary sacrificial idols designed to personify our personal flaws and then undergo cathartic immolation to teach the audience a moral lesson. We are instructed to oppose these monsters on a moral level in order to better ourselves and oppose the personality traits these monsters stand for.
After Freud, monster stories were considered cathartic journeys into our unconscious—everybody contains a Mr. Hyde, and these stories give us a chance to “walk on the wild side.” But in the denouement of most stories, the monster is killed and the psyche restored to civilized order. We can have our fun with the “torture porn” of Leatherface and Freddy Krueger or the erotic vampires, but this “vacation” to where the wild things are ultimately helps us return to our lives of quiet repression.
Perhaps this is what makes the recent uptick in vampire love so obvious and yet so irritating to your average “monster aficionado.” As I had discussed in a previous post, vampires are a symbol of eroticism, and the ever-increasing amount of sexual liberation is spreading to younger and younger ages, which perfectly explains the legitimate allure of Twilight. The problem is that these vampires are no longer perceived to be symbolic monsters from which one can learn a moral lesson; instead, they have become impossible aspirations that undermine our own moral psychological development by instilling false expectations. It would be as if people suddenly began aspiring to become consumption-obsessed, brainless, anti-intellectual zombies…oh wait. Damn.
In the latest poignant example of unperceived costs, vegans driving a Hummer have a smaller carbon footprint than beef eaters driving a Prius, if you really care about those sorts of things. I suppose it is another point that justifies the full-tilt revolutionaries quite a bit more than the compromising yuppies who only adopt change as a form of showing “how much they care.” Of course, the funny thing about that sound bite is that not driving at all (or at least not commuting) results in a smaller carbon footprint than both drivers, even if you triple your beef consumption. So stick that in your hybrid windpipe and smoke it.
In other numbers news, here’s a sad chart showing the death of newspapers’ circulations. They’ll go out with the Boomers until they figure out how to behave like the Economist (not shown on the chart, fittingly enough, even though it would be somewhere near the middle-bottom). Maybe it’s because we spend 90% of our waking hours staring at glowing rectangles…not that the hippies from the paragraph above would be upset at how much paper we’re saving doing so.
