August 20th, 2006 | Uncategorized
WARREN ELLIS
Coilhouse - 20 Nov 09
Every time an issue of the magazine goes to print, things somehow turn Highly Inappropriate here at Coilhouse. This is apparent to anyone who was there on Twitter during the hours of our final revision deadline last night. And it’s only going to get worse before Issue 04’s out.So to celebrate, a video of Miss Piggy singing “Fuck the Pain Away” by Peaches. It’s that kind of day.
[via Shannon]
Brian Wood - 20 Nov 09
Will Blanche, ?The Newly Constructed Towers of the World Trade Center Seen From the South Side on West Street, May, 1973? (via These Americans)
See also:Mitch Epstein, ?West Side Highway, New York City? [looking towards World Trade Center] 1977
Kung Fu Monkey - 20 Nov 09
John Robb - 20 Nov 09
Short Answer: divide it.
It's long been my contention that Iraq was stabilized at an acceptable level of controlled chaos due to a happy accident by al Qaeda (in an attempt to expand/lead the loose insurgency in a new direction). What did they do? They blew up the Golden Mosque in Samara in 2006. This act of symbolic terrorism did indeed disrupt social networks as anticipated, however the consequences were ultimately disastrous for the Iraqi open source insurgency.
The reason for this is it broke the dynamics of the open source insurgency in ways the US and Iraqi government's COIN efforts could not. First, it created a permanent split between Sunni and Shiite insurgent groups/militias. Coopetition ended. Second, it motivated large Shiite militias to start an ethnic cleansing of Sunni areas. This put acute pressure on Sunni guerrilla groups who were too small (by design to avoid US counter-pressure) to defend themselves against large militias operating in the open. The result was an opening, very close to the one I described in my 2005 NYTimes OpEd, that allowed the US to convert Sunni guerrilla groups into militias that were not loyal to the central government (in direct contradiction to its COIN manual).
It's a nice example of the dynamics of many to many conflict, social network disruption, and the development open source counterinsurgency.
See this excellent description at the blog, "Musings on Iraq" for more detail on the ethnic cleansing operations. It also includes this money quote: "the majority of the Sunni insurgency gave up and switched sides to align with the Americans rather than face annihilation at the hands of the Shiite militias, Al Qaeda in Iraq, or the United States."
NOTE: it's pretty clear from the above that social network disruption (either through attacks on symbolic targets or blood and guts terrorism) is like playing horseshoes with live hand grenades. It's ultimately a losing strategy for advancing an open source insurgency. Social network disruption is very likely to break standing order 6: don't fork the insurgency.
Girl Farts - 20 Nov 09
John Robb - 20 Nov 09
Some random items of interest:
Jean Snow - 20 Nov 09
Beautiful (and simple) site design featuring the illustrative work of Yorifuji Bunpei. Via Paul Baron.
Jean Snow - 20 Nov 09
Coming up at the Kakitsubata gallery in Nakameguro is the show “Kodai,” running from November 25 until December 6.
Three important laws characterize the nature of communications technology. Sarnoff’s Law says that the value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of potential receivers.
Metcalf’s Law states that the value of a point-to-point network, such as the phone system, is proportional to the square of the number of endpoints. The third law, Reed’s Law, states that the value of group forming networks, or GFNs, is increases exponentially with the number of participants. eBay is such a network, allowing buyers and sellers to form groups around specific interests.
This formula leaves little room for you to be involved except as a consumer of broadcast ads. Yet, if the last 50 years can be called the era of broadcast democracy, fans of the Internet should rightly be asking “when will the era of connected democracy begin?” How does the eBay experience inform our views about democracy?
The Howard Dean campaign may be the first example of how the Web can be used to change the nature of politics.
In stark contrast to the standard formula of the last 50 years, Dean’s campaign has been using simple, Internet-based tools to mobilize volunteers for everything from letter writing to raising funds. Most campaigns don’t want volunteers because they’re difficult to manage, but the Dean campaign has figured out how to use principles of decentralization familiar to any open source developer to let volunteers act. This is a huge leap of faith because it requires letting go of the central command and control structures that are the hallmark of modern campaigns.
The Dean campaign uses the standard email and mailing lists technologies, but they also use weblogs and services like MeetUp.com, an online service for organizing off-line meetings of volunteers. Dean’s “Blog for America” project is run on a platform called DeanSpace, an open source blogging tool developed in PHP by over 180 volunteers for the Dean campaign. RSS is widely used for events and content change notification.
Uh oh, Warren, looks like you’ve got a spambot infestation.
Just a quick general question: Was anyone seriously WAITING those 15 years for Seka to do another sex scene? What is she now, 70? That’s a pretty specialized niche.