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Dan
A group blog for authors from a variety of backgrounds, founded on the notion that there's more than one way to skin Schroedinger's cat.
Interests: Culture. Art. Media. Science. Politics. Sex. Literature. Technology. Poetry. Blogs. Small engine repair. Podcasting. Oil painting. Archaeology. Chess. Diving. Wilderness. Net sociology. Simplicity. 'Leet. Football (American). Environmentalism (global). Quantum physics. Marine biology. Psychology. Taoism. The Church. Neo-paganism. Megaliths. Shakti. Rock and Roll. Blues. Jazz. Classical. Hip Hop. Remix. Mashups. Tofu. Communes. Libertarianism. Free expression. Networks. Grassroots. Journalism. Science Fiction. Travel. Tranquility. History. Futurism. William Irwin Thompson. John Steinbeck. Walker Percy. William Gibson. Patricia Anthony. Ernest Hemingway. Ken McCleod. Paul Di Filippo. Elmore Leonard. Raymond Chandler. Jack Kerouac. Paul Theroux. Graham Greene. Edward Abbey. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Susie Bright. Violet Blue. James Ellroy. Joseph Campbell. Carl Jung. Philip K. Dick. Russell Banks. John le Carre. Stephanie Yuhl. Shelby Foote. J.D. Lasica. Dave Winer. Dan Gillmor. Jay Rosen. Brian Greene. Seymour Hersh. Danny Schecter. Fred Alan Wolf. Amit Goswami. Masuri Emoto. Ramtha. Gary Synder. Allen Ginsberg. Neal Cassady. William Borroughs. S.V. Date. Arthur Phillips. Jim Banister. Jerry Bledsoe. Ed Cone. Kristina Borjesson.
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Recent Activity
Rethinking Clovis at Topper: June 2012
Posted May 6, 2013 at Xark!
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'Publishing is such an outrageously stupid profession'
Posted Feb 17, 2013 at Xark!
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Why middle schools should add 'Bike Shop' to their curriculum
Posted Jan 13, 2013 at Xark!
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Why I shut down comments
Long-time readers of Xark (and yes, my web analytics indicate you're still out there) will have noticed a number of changes over the years, but I'd say none have been more profound than my relatively recent decision to remove the... Continue reading
Posted Jan 11, 2013 at Xark!
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'It's not gun power'
Posted Dec 21, 2012 at Xark!
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Our fact-checking dilemma: What could journalists do right now?
The day after President Clinton's speech to the Democratic National Convention, the Associated Press produced a “fact-check” that could be best described as the perfect parody of the systemic flaws I described last week. Rather than offering a limited, measured... Continue reading
Posted Sep 10, 2012 at Xark!
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My biases have changed over the years. One of the things I attempted to do here in 2005 was to declare them as formally as possible -- which is one way of driving a stake in the ground before surveying the ground. It also helps because if you've declared your perspective in advance, it's not quite as easy for others to ascribe their preferred biases to your motives in order to dismiss you.
I'm glad that the mainstream press has begun to pick up on the problem of "view-from-nowhere" neutrality. Glad that there's at least some discussion of the role of the press in terms of trying to present and declare facts.
But what I didn't like about the weekend fallout was the way the press effectively treated the Ryan/Romney fact crisis like any other pack-mentality meme. Once it was clear that everyone was going to challenge Ryan's honesty, everyone had to join in. It's only courageous when you're the first to take a risk.
Commented Sep 4, 2012 on Why Fact Checkers fail at Xark!
Why Fact Checkers fail
My interest in fact-checking grew out of years of running political coverage in the Carolinas, in places where facts were often far less important than the nameless angers that animate our Southern culture. Doing that job is, in fact, a political act, though not a partisan one. A political edit...
My latest thing: CHS Uptown Bikes
Posted Sep 4, 2012 at Xark!
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Why Fact Checkers fail
My interest in fact-checking grew out of years of running political coverage in the Carolinas, in places where facts were often far less important than the nameless angers that animate our Southern culture. Doing that job is, in fact, a... Continue reading
Posted Aug 29, 2012 at Xark!
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The Laws of Combat: They're not just for G.I.s anymore
I heard a bunch of these back in the Army, and today there are multiple lists that purport to be The Laws of Combat. Most of these lists include plenty of rendundant, overly clever "laws" I never heard in uniform,... Continue reading
Posted Aug 1, 2012 at Xark!
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The inevitable outcome of corporate media propaganda & plutocratic control of democracy and the economy is...
Posted Jul 23, 2012 at Xark!
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Knight proposal: Fund Step No. 1
If you've read this blog more than once, you probably know that I've been talking about ways to integrate data collection and storage into journalism for years now. Along the way I've learned things about data and standards and business... Continue reading
Posted Jun 29, 2012 at Xark!
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The 7 Worst Ideas in History
Posted Jun 20, 2012 at Xark!
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Sustainable quality
To recap Sunday's New York Times story about metro newspaper companies that are now cutting back from a daily publishing schedule, some companies are doing it because it no longer adds up for them to put out a daily paper,... Continue reading
Posted Jun 4, 2012 at Xark!
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Hampton Park Fun Facts
This list of facts about Hampton Park in Charleston, SC, was compiled by neighborhood resident Kevin Eberle and posted on Facebook on May 31, 2012, by Marshall Walker. I'm reposting them here to make this valuable community knowledge easier to... Continue reading
Posted May 31, 2012 at Xark!
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U.S. Soccer gets Twitter
As a freshly minted (2010) soccer fan who has traveled for one U.S. Soccer tournament and hopes to make a second trip this fall, I've had the sense that I was riding a rising tide of American interest in the... Continue reading
Posted May 18, 2012 at Xark!
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What if we give it away? (w/apologies to REM)
Today's news about the Media General/Berkshire Hathaway deal reveals just how dire things have become for our newspaper princes. Unable to turn its newspapers around, Media General has traded its print properties and a big chunk of its future value... Continue reading
Posted May 17, 2012 at Xark!
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"Recapturing the fun and excitement of journalism"
There's a nice little exchange going on between my friend Steve Buttry and Emily Olson, managing editor of the Register Citizen in Torrington, Conn., about a powerfully evocative question: How can we recapture the joy and excitement that was once... Continue reading
Posted Apr 26, 2012 at Xark!
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Yep. Got it. I see the problem with writing rules that allow the "wrangling of every fact" (allowing for the diversity you speak of) as a top-down problem. It's created an infrastructure (XML/RDF/OWL/CURIE, etc.) that anyone can use, but it hasn't created incentives for enough people to use that infrastructure. We built it, but they didn't come.
So I don't want to argue over whether dbpedia is an emergent property of Wikipedia (my point was that cooperation was the emergent property) or a better representation of the structured information within Wikipedia, or whether data (however acquired) has value outside of a structure. I'm interested in what we can do with this motion.
Commented Apr 17, 2012 on 2012: Google gives birth to the bottom-up Semantic Economy at Xark!
2012: Google gives birth to the bottom-up Semantic Economy
Back in 2009, while contracted to work on a doomed content-repository project, a flash of insight struck me: The problem with grand visions of the Semantic Web was that they all assumed a top-down structure. One wickedly clever set of rules to wrangle every fact. A global ontology. It didn't mak...
2012: Google gives birth to the bottom-up Semantic Economy
Back in 2009, while contracted to work on a doomed content-repository project, a flash of insight struck me: The problem with grand visions of the Semantic Web was that they all assumed a top-down structure. One wickedly clever set of... Continue reading
Posted Apr 16, 2012 at Xark!
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The Unauthorized Life
The World being the terrifying, beautiful mess that is, we make our way through its mazes less like wandering, wondering, free adults, and more like children hurrying through a bad neighborhood on their way to the store with a shopping... Continue reading
Posted Apr 8, 2012 at Xark!
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My suggestion to everyone on my side of the aisle, such as it is, is to stick to reported information. What on earth is the point of a pathetic screed like that?
Commented Feb 27, 2012 on The 20-Step Facebook Political Process at Xark!
The 20-Step Facebook Political Process
Post links to articles and columns from the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.. Poorly informed conservative friends post comments reciting arguments proposed by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc. Respond with facts. Poorly informed con...
SCOTUS outlook, 2012-16
Posted Feb 22, 2012 at Xark!
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The 20-Step Facebook Political Process
Post links to articles and columns from the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.. Poorly informed conservative friends post comments reciting arguments proposed by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc. Respond with facts.... Continue reading
Posted Feb 13, 2012 at Xark!
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Meanwhile, in Portland...
Posted Jan 31, 2012 at Xark!
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