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My project, EPA Superfund Mashup: Exposing Environmental Hazards In Your Area is in the NetSquared Mashup Challenge. Nonprofits and other social-change agents are expressing their visions of how data can be recombined to advance social missions. Mine is V2 of, StopNewNukes.org. I’ll be extending it to include all EPA Superfund (environmental hazards and disasters) sites so you know who to blame when you find yourself hanging out with Blinky, the three eyed fish.
Vote for me and help determine which of the other 120 projects that were submitted to the NetSquared Mashup Challenge will go on to the 3rd Annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y3). The top 20 projects will have an opportunity to discuss and display their projects at the Conference. Conference attendees will vote to select the top three projects. All 20 projects will receive a share of $100,000 in prize money.
Peace Action West: Stay Strong!
This is something I set up for Peace Action West this week. I think it's pretty cool. It's essentially a prettified LiveJournal Blog, with VoicePosting enabled, thanks to some friends at LiveJournal.
Yesterday, Peace Action West sent out an eAlert to all of their members (around 40,000 of them) and gave them VoicePost instructions. You can also get instructions and post, by signing up on the page (this also signs you up for the mailing list, so there is a bit of marketing involved too. But isn't there always?).
I've been monitoring all the posts as they come in, and we've been transcribing them too. It's been pretty amazing to hear everybody, especially the people in places I would otherwise never really hear from...
...like from Lexington, Kentucky.
107K 0:32
The clips from the first two weeks of the Peace Action West Audio Petition is getting sent off today - all three hours of audio!
It got a nice writeup in the Post Conflict Resolution Blog as a good example of Web 2.0 advocacy.
"Today's new cool example of these technologies in practice is from Peace Action West and their online audio petition to Representative Pelosi and Senator Reid regarding President Bush's threatened veto of Congress's Iraq war supplemental funding package. Whatever you think of the current debate on the direction of the Iraq war, we're sure to see more of this type of advocacy work."
Postage in sheets of 20 - 1 sheet for $20 | GoodStorm.com
This is brilliant. I'm still not sure how they got around the postal service bit, since I don't think you can get these at the post office (officially endorsed, yadda yadda). My guess is that they got that barcode in the corner to work like a metered mail stamp.
In any case, I think its a worthwhile effort. It also made me think of Rich Mackin's recent letter about those completely obnoxious yellow ribbon magnets.
About Time Clock: Kinda Accurate
This is a really nice solution. If you know me, you know that I prefer my art off the walls. I like things that do something other than look pretty. Or things that look pretty while doing something. This not only looks pretty and does something, but it seems really thoguhtful too.
After working for The Long Now Foundation I think about time and our perception of it in an entirely different way. For those of you who've never heard of them, they're responsible for the Clock of the Long Now, it chimes every millenium, and is made to work for 10,000 years. The point is not that it is keeping time (though it does, and very accurately) but that it reminds us that time is keeping us.
This clock reminds me of that that too, and it is much appreciated.
The U.S. military has found the perfect way to demonstrate that it's purely the thought that counts. This bugle emulator sits in a real bugle and plays a collection of calls, including "Taps." Due to a shortage of actual bugle players, the Pentagon had already ordered 700 of these to be used at military funerals in 2003.
Apparently it took congress passing a law to allow for Virtual Bugles to be used in public ceremonies. No, I'm serious.
This made remember something. A few saturdays ago I was sitting on my porch in the morning and I noticed a boy, maybe 9 or 10 on one of the adjacent porches. He very solemnly brought out an american flag, hooked it to a clothesline attached to a post, raised the flag. He pulled out a piece of paper and started laboriously reading the pledge of allegiance out loud.
It struck me as really weird. Or one of those weird things that I just don't encounter in my life anymore, and certainly not in San Francisco. I assumed it must be something boy-scout-like that was going on. I think the last time I heard the pledge of allegiance (outside of a ballpark) was probably in my high school homeroom class, long after I refused to say it. It's sort of strange to me that its even still around with all that god and republic stuff.
Designed by ad agency Leo Burnett with the input of an engineer, the billboard features a real sundial whose shadow falls on a different breakfast item each hour until noon, when the shadow of the McDonald's arches are dead center.
There are so many reasons this is a cool idea. I think its really depressing that it was wasted on McDonalds.
McDonalds's launches next strike in breakfast war in Wrigleyville
This is an email from my friend Karen. She just got back from two weeks volunteering in New Orleans. I was really involved in New Orleans web news coverage, and knew some people down there. Still, months later, I've heard from only one of the three that I met while I was visiting last August.
I think its worth reposting because its touching, but more than that its a reminder that there is still so much to do. And its a reminder that, yes, our government screwed up there, but it's still screwing up there. Its absolutly amazing to me.
Here I sit, in my local public library-something I used to take for granted. Then I went to St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.I am truly humbled. I don't know where to start, even though I have been thinking about little else since leaving sunnuy, southern LA. Sunday afternoon.
I left Arabi listening to Mississippi Public Radio doing a program called "The Voices of Katrina". They were interviewing local musicians....I got to hear their stories, as well as the music that has come out of them since they lost everything. I felt numb leaving LA. and Miss., and was given the gift of the soundtrack I needed to take me thru the earlypart of emerging back into normalcy. (People had been blessing me all week long - maybe this one came out of that!)
By Alabama, I finally started to notice that everything around me wasn't broken and didn't smell bad. I cried my way thru much of Alabama. By Tennessee, I could start seeing beauty again and started to get a grip on myself. By the time I reached the mountains of western N. Carolina, it occurred to me that the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita that hit St. Bernard Parish and the 9th ward of N. Orleans was more devastating than Sept. 11th. No one called HOME to the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or a field in Penn. Many, many people - for many, many generations - have called St. Bernard Parish home. Their ancestoral homes are gone and that's a true American tragedy that all of America should know about. Much history has been lost. And many, many lives.
The people of St. Bernard Par. are still living in limbo - can they rebuild? will their neighborhoods exist when the powers-that-be ever get around to making that decision? wind damage or water? will they ever properly qualify for their FEMA trailer? when will they start picking up the literal tons of trash again? when can they get a copy of their driver's license, Social Security card, birth certificate so they can look for work? when will the businesses start to rebuild so they have someplace to look for work at? will they ever get mail delivery? traffic lights? parking lot lights? telephones? internet? a supermarket? But especially - WHEN are they going to start picking up the trash again?????
Emergency Communities (emergencycommunities.org) is the organization I went down to volunteer with.Between them and Common Ground, they are practically the only thing holding St. Bernard Parish & the 9th ward together. They are giving those communities a chance to survive.They are feeding the residents, the volunteers that are going into the community gutting houses (they call it "mucking" - I'll give you no details on where that word came from - let your imagination run with it...), as well as the contrators, cops, EMTs, firefighters, nurses, FEMA and anyone else who wanders off the street. During spring break, when some20,000 college students came down to work - and work their asses off, they did - we were serving 3000 meals a day!! They are back now to averaging 1300-1500 a day, as more residents come back to what they call home.
The people I had the honor to meet and learn from were varied - a slice of Louisiana - Cajuns, Creoles, fishermen and shrimpers, retired folks and families with roots going back many, many generations. The people of southern LA. love their food, their music, cracking jokes, laughing, telling stories and dancing....and not necessarily in that order! I did a lot of laughing and listened to many, many stories - not all of them sad. But the sad ones were heart-wrenching and personal and I am priviledged to have been able to share in so many. I felt very at home amongst the residents there and had a handful of people tell me my Fall River/Boston accent sounded like I was from the 9th Ward...never wanting to seem like a tourist anywhere I am, I took that as a compliment! I left with a fistful of addresses, phone numbers and invitations to come back. I believe I have made some new friends out of the deal! I will go back....this time I went to work, next time I'll go to play!
I could go on and on, but I'll control myself. I took 9 rolls of film and acquired a disk with 800 more pictures on it. I'll subject anyone who is interested to them. Check out emergencycommunities.org-it's a great website and you will have your eyes opened. If you can spare a little time, GO THERE and help. If don't have time, but can spare some money-send them some. They are doing amazing work and need cash donations or wishlist donations to be able to keep doing it.
This was one of the most amazing and important experiences of my life. It is good to be home,3652 miles later, but I'd give anything to be able to be sleeping in my tent in Arabi again. I wish I could be there in St. Bernard Parsh, trying my best to remind those good people that America hasn't forgotten about them. Send them money, send them socks and underwear and stuffed animals and diapers.....cards, notes, flowers...anything that will help them realize that their nation still cares. They are proud and they are resilient but they need an awful lot of help to get back to normal. They love life but life really sucks for them right now. Send money, send love.
The most astounding part of this story, elaborated on in the NYTimes, is not that her face was reconstructed using a cadaver. Of course we have the technology for that. I, myself have a dead persons ligament holding my left knee together. But the strange part is the fact that she took enough sleeping pills to not wake up when her dog was eating her face off. Don't you think you'd notice something like that? I wonder what happened to the dog?
