The willingness to make scurrilous accusations ("open source might facilitate efforts to disrupt or sabotage electronic commerce, air-traffic control or even sensitive surveillance systems") is symptomatic of the disregard for the truth afflicting corporate America these days. The willingness to harness misinformation as a tool of corporate strategy springs from the same "me first at all costs" mentality that led us to the Enron debacle. Just as Enron thought it was appropriate business practice to manipulate the California energy markets to raise its profits, Microsoft seeks to influence public policy to raise the costs of software and prohibit government support for a low-cost alternative.

Like a coat of two colors, the Museum serves dual functions. On the one hand the Museum provides the academic community with a specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities. On the other hand the Museum serves the general public by providing the visitor a hands-on experience of "life in the Jurassic"....

Well, Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Rite Aid, Qwest, Adelphia, ImClone Systems, now WorldCom -- the Democrats have discovered a campaign issue, corporate abuse. The Senate majority leader says the issue will play in every state this November. Tom Daschle today charged that the Republicans -- quote -- "dismantled the regulatory environment we had and, in large measure, created the sense of laissez faire," end quote.

Even Al Gore wants to play, saying at a fund raiser here in Manhattan this week that the president's tax policies resemble the outbreak of accounting fraud.

I don't want to be a spoilsport here, but did either Mr. Gore or Senator Daschle notice that these multibillion dollar corporate restatements go back to 1997? That the telecommunications act was 1996?

And now, of course, President Bush wants to put them in jail and the treasury secretary wants to hang them high. George Bush and Paul O'Neill talking about corporate criminals, not the Democrats. The president is siccing the Justice Department on the bad guys and the SEC is investigating just about every major company in the country.

Again, I don't want to be a spoilsport here, but does the Bush administration forget that it's been supporting Senator Phil Gramm's efforts to stop accounting and corporate reform on Capitol Hill for months now?

"I think it is fair to say that there was nobody in the business community who is not implicated in this in some way," said Jeffrey Garten, dean of Yale University's School of Management. "Not the executives who were under the excruciating pressure of having to meet quarterly earnings targets, no matter what. Not the lawyers and the accountants and bankers who were forced to compete furiously to get and keep clients. Not the regulators who became so intimidated by all exuberance in the air. Certainly not the underwriters or the analysts or the credit ratings agencies or you in the press.

The markets took the WorldCom announcement every bit as badly as economists had feared. Trading screens became a sea of red as share prices collapsed. When the London market opened, for example, every share included in the FTSE 100 index was marked down. Perhaps even more significant was the reaction of the currency markets. The dollar promptly sank to new lows, rapidly approaching parity with the euro and causing alarm in Japan as the yen soared against the greenback.

In the mid-'50s, as Beat culture and Buckley's metamorphosis took hold simultaneously, he became as well known to a certain sector of the population for his abundant eccentricities as for his rhapsodic and transcendent storytelling. Jazz vocalist Jon Hendricks said of Buckley, "He was probably the hippest guy I ever met." But Dizzy Gillespie put his finger on the infectious musicality of Buckley's delivery. "What I liked about him was the way he could recite. He'd say, 'They get on magnabuttasitemin youmakcattabare wa! ...' He was doing rap and scat before anybody." And musician Buddy Jones nailed it this way: "Comedian is not the word to describe him. He didn't come out and use words and have these routines like other comedians at the time. He would play to the house and be able to wing it. He improvised as jazz musicians did."

As Kesey pointed out to Trager, Buckley's masterly transposing of classic stories into hipster argot turned out to have a surprisingly broad influence and underground staying power. Bob Dylan called him "The fuel to my success," and Frank Sinatra crowned him "the most sensational comic of our time." For those who catch the Buckley virus, their enthusiasm often mutates into a desire to proselytize. "When you get bit by the bug," Trager explains, "you want to share it with whoever will listen. Aside from the breadth of his work, the absolute uniqueness of it, there's a message there that is really thousands of years old, basic Golden Rule stuff -- that we should laugh with one another, that we should help one another. A lot of his work also explored the darker elements of the human condition -- [monologues such as] the 'Bad Rapping of the Marquis de Sade,' or 'Murder' -- but they did it with a kind of goodwill that didn't make evil seem benign, but embraced it in a way that didn't deny it existed either. He was dealing with the yin-yang aspects of human character."

During fiestas the mustachioed legend would dance all night with female camp followers, although he didn't drink. When Emiliano Zapata insisted Villa join him in a toast when their two armies met outside Mexico City in December 1914, Villa gagged on a swig of brandy. He was an avid swimmer and would run to stay in shape. According to one of Villa's last surviving widows, he officially married 26 times.

In the simple circular model that I sketched, the blogging system as a whole has value. However, no individual blog is the source of that value. I believe that this collective nature of the benefit of the blogging system is what makes it particularly difficult for an individualized economic model to be successful. Thus, I believe that neither the donation model nor the advertising model will prove to be viable (there may be some transitory exceptions).

I'm talking about is the fact that it isn't just knowledge workers, it isn't just scientists and engineers, it isn't just technology people. It's that creativity is multidimensional. Certainly there are scientists and engineers and professional-technical people, but there are people in other fields and other walks of life who use their creativity -- in particular, artists, entertainers, musicians and cultural producers.

Assuming linear growth, adding 4% every 1.5 years means that we'll add 40% over 15 years. Thus, by 2017, websites will follow 90% of the usability guidelines. A 90% compliance rate is the closest we can get to perfection, since there will always be special circumstances that make it acceptable for any individual site to deviate from a few of the established usability guidelines.

Technologies that "piggyback" on free software available on the Net, often unbeknownst to those who download it, are being used with rising frequency by marketers seeking to pinpoint potential customers. But many of those same programs can be used to spy on an individual's every move and even take over a PC's hard drive--in theory, if not in practice.

Well, humans are very aggressive and scrappy, and go to war at the drop of a hat. However, a standard land war is no longer going to work as it is no longer technically possible. There are no fronts, the commanding headquarters of generals can be smashed instantly and are number-one targets, supply lines can be interdicted at will, trans-border invasions by organized national armies are heavily disapproved by large coalitions of nations. War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize "world peace" even when we get it. Therefore, events that Queen Victoria would recognize as outrages, frontier skirmishes or minor popular rebellions will be reclassified as "war." And so will major atrocities such as biological warfare and surreptitious nuclear explosions. They used to be seen as insane or unthinkable acts of madmen. But if they take place they'll be called "war" too. And there will still be no conventional war.

Most of this site highlights deception, but it's not because I have a thing for liars and cheats. I think there's a brand of immunizing deception that helps us to expose and correct the lies we tell ourselves and the webs of falsehood that make up our societies. Harmless fibs can remind us that we've dropped our guard and let the Big Lies in.

Pranks and hoaxes and delusions and frauds remind us that we're easily fooled and that we aren't nearly as smart as we sometimes think we are. The trickster, by taking us down a notch, does us a valuable service. It's when we start acting clever that we summon forth the worst of humanity's evils.

There is no way that one could link to a stream of a fair and impartial newscast (links to streams must be to the whole stream, from beginning to end, remember) such that it can't be distinguished from advocacy or opinion. If there were NPR stories that were indistinguishable from advocacy, this indicates that the NPR stories were not impartial to begin with.

From Cory's rant:

I think you misunderstand the nature of the news (which is disheartening, considering that you work for NPR). As reporters, your job is to present facts and opinions to the public. These form the underpinnings of public discourse. That discourse (on the web) consists of links and commentary. A debate in a public hall between "left-handed socialist diabetics" and "$SOME_OTHER_STUPID_EXAMPLE" might very well include references to NPR pieces. That same debate, on the web, will augment its references with links. How very curious that a news organization would take the official position that its material is not to be cited in public discourse.

President Bush has declared: "You're either with us or against us." Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say not in our name. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in word and deed.

NPR Online's Linking Policy
Linking to or framing of any material on this site without the prior written consent of NPR is prohibited. If you would like to link to NPR from your Web site, please fill out the link permission request form.

So the public has no right to link to the NPR site?

Thanks to Glen for pointing this out. Several other weblogs have also picked it up. Be sure to let them know what you think.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 6/18/2002 08:04:01 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

Coming to New York this fall: Illegal Art! Freedom of expression in the corporate age.

The laws governing "intellectual property" have grown so weighty in recent years that artists need a team of experts to sort them all out. Borrowing from another work--like jazz musicians did in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators did in 1940s--will now land you in court. If the new copyright laws could be rendered retroactively, whole genres such as collage, hiphop, and Pop Art might have never have existed.

Also relevant: pay a visit to the Creative Commons!

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