Memepark

These Are The Times That Try Men's Souls

2009-06-08T12:03:00.007-04:00

Thomas Paine was an early and passionate advocate for the American Revolution, expressing in his pamphlet Common Sense the painfully optimistic hope that "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Unfortunately for his political career, the American victory did not put an end to his principled stand against slavery, monarchy, economic exploitation, war, and religion, and by the end

Martin Luther King, Jr. on Canada

2008-01-23T11:05:00.000-05:00

It is a deep personal privilege to address a nationwide Canadian audience. Over and above any kinship of U.S. citizens and Canadians as North Americans, there is a singular historical relationship between American Negroes and Canadians.Canada is not merely a neighbour to Negroes. Deep in our history of struggle for freedom Canada was the North Star. The Negro slave, denied education, de-humanized

The first rule of Clean Room is...

2007-10-11T10:55:00.001-04:00

I put together a set of slides last night about Clean Room Design for my presentation at the SFLC Legal Summit. Clean Room Design involves a small, dedicated group of obsessive personality types - usually men - who sequester themselves away from the rest of the community and engage in intensive, secretive projects with the intent to disrupt established monopolies. They follow a strict protocol

Is It Me You're Looking For?

2007-10-06T20:17:00.000-04:00

Twice in the last two weeks, I've gotten embarrassing mid-80s easy-listening classics stuck in my head after accidental exposure over the speaker system at some retail outlet or deli. Right now, it's George Michael's 1984 solo outing "Careless Whispers", which has been bouncing around my cortex for over 24 hours. Last week, it was Lionel Richie's "Hello" (also 1984), which occupied a significant

I'm Not In The Business; I Am The Business

2006-12-11T14:26:00.000-05:00

I was reading a string of interesting articles on hipsterism, semiotics, and science fiction, and it occurred to me that Blade Runner is about hipsters. It takes as its central theme the anxiety about being a real person instead of one of those machines manufactured by the megacorporations; someone with real hopes and dreams and feelings, not implanted memories of spider cannibalism and

Proverbial Antagonism

2006-10-04T10:22:00.000-04:00

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bushvs.Nothing ventured, nothing gainedDon't cry over spilled milkvs.Sour grapesGood things come to those who waitvs.The early bird gets the wormHaste makes wastevs.He who hesitates is lostMeasure twice, cut oncevs.Fortune favors the boldDon't sweat the small stuffvs.A stitch in time saves nineDon't count your chickens before they're hatchedvs.An ounce of

Mahir, lonelygirl15, and the Sexbots of the Future

2006-09-14T11:52:00.000-04:00

"WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE !!!!!!!!! I KISS YOU !!!!!"With these words was born the age of the Internet celebrity, and Turkish journalist Mahir Cagri was immortalized as an icon of Internet kitsch by the homepage set up as a prank by one of his friends. The URL was passed around via email for a few days in 1999 before being reported in Salon by Janelle Brown. The persona of "Mahir", a naive,

A Brutal Example: John Yoo's Historically Blind Constitutionalism

2006-09-07T16:12:00.000-04:00

"Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren. Provide everything necessary for them on the road." - George Washington, 1776, on the treatment of Hessian prisoners after the Battle of Trenton Introduction The Bush administration has announced that it is fighting a war

US v. Naughton: One-Off Criminal "Fantasy Defense", or Turning Point for the Jurisprudence of Online Identity?

2006-09-07T15:54:00.000-04:00

In 2000, Patrick Naughton, vice president of Internet search company Infoseek, was arrested for traveling across state lines with the intent to have sex with a minor. He had corresponded extensively with an FBI agent impersonating a 13-year-old girl in an AOL chatroom and had made plans to meet her and have sex. When he showed up, the FBI arrested and charged him.At his criminal trial, Naughton

Kathy's World

2006-03-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

One of the consequences of having a not uncommon name is that you sometimes read about things that happened to you that you don't remember. Last summer, I ran a vanity search on Technorati and came across a mention of my name on something called "Kathy's World". Kathy's World, it turns out, is the Microsoft-owned "MSN Spaces" blog of a 16-year-old girl in Clay Center, Kansas named Kathy Beichter.

You Can't Handle The Truth!

2006-02-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

I called this back in October:From: Matt Norwood To: Brendan Norwood , homegirls Subject: Saddam on the standDate: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:28:59 -0400I'm psyched for this trail. I just wish they weren't running it with adelay. Saddam's going to be all,"You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. Andthose walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You?You

Some Big Gorilla

2005-11-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

The studio is pushing Peter Jackson's upcoming "King Kong" movie hard in New York: they've got advertising tie-ins with the lottery, posters all over the subways, and God only knows what kind of crap on TV. And I can't for the life of me figure out what Jackson's going to do with project that won't label him as a shallow, socially clueless film-history geek for the rest of his career.I've always

The Trouble With Contextual Advertising, Part 2

2005-09-06T12:13:00.000-04:00

Another example of why contextual advertising is an inappropriate model for funding web content in a civil society:Found on Sploid by way of Gawker.Previously: Advertising on 43 Things

I'm Going To Be "That Dad"

2005-09-02T10:59:00.000-04:00

Reading this post on Slashdot today, I had a glimpse of my future:Yesterday I had the prideful pleasure of watching my eldest daughter show me how she can play ANY of her CD's on her linux box. She uses FireFox, openOffice, Gaim, Thunderbird, Gimp, and soon Blender3D; All on KDE from a Knoppix distro. Her "Jump Start" games are starting to collect dust next to the Win'98se master cd. When she

Attaching Social Context To Personal Decisions

2005-09-01T09:39:00.000-04:00

Free-market economic theory and democratic political theory share a fatal flaw: they are both premised on perfect information and rational decision-making, neither of which describes the situation of the average political or economic actor. For the last several years, I've been trying to come up with (or discover) tools for addressing these failings. The most promising approach I've seen is an

Willy Wonka, Hippie Industrialist

2005-08-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

[I went to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" a few weeks ago with my brother and his girlfriend. I was impressed. This is what emerged from our post-film conversation. Note that I never read the book, and although I did read the sequel, "Charlie and the Glass Elevator" and see the original film from 1971, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", I remember them only vaguely. So this post is

Advertising on 43 Things

2005-08-18T15:43:00.000-04:00

I just registered for an account on 43 Things, a system that allows you to publish your life goals and share insights and encouragement with others who share them. It seems cute and even kind of revolutionary in the way that much social software is, but it's supported by ad revenue. I started thinking about why this might not be such a hot idea, and then got my answer when I added my goal to "

P2P Airport Security

2005-08-15T16:33:00.000-04:00

My friend Mako told me about a joke he'd seen at the hacker conference What The Hack last week: "Do-It-Yourself Security Inspection". This is a joke about what Bruce Schneier calls "security theater": overt acts by institutions to assuage citizens' fears of terrorism that do nothing to actually make anyone safer (see e.g. NYC subway bag searches).I thought it was pretty funny, and I fired back at

My Lawsuit Gets Curbed

2005-07-21T13:02:00.000-04:00

The litigation blog I'm maintaining (sporadically) with my old roommates made it onto Curbed on Tuesday, and somehow I failed to notice despite my subscription to their RSS feed. They give me grief about all the PDFs (what else do you do with scanned documents?) and speculate as to how this thing got online:... we know there's at least one Columbia Law student in the group, and all those lame-o

Nazi Cowboys and the Faux Patriotique

2005-07-15T09:29:00.000-04:00

I'm currently in the middle of Robert O. Paxton's excellent The Anatomy of Fascism. I was amused and slightly disturbed by this passage on the Marquis de Morés:The term national socialism seems to have been invented by the French nationalist author Maurice Barrés, who described the aristocratic adventurer the Marquis de Morés in 1896 as the "first national socialist". Morés, after failing as a

Network Protocol For Telepathy

2005-06-23T13:35:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a lunchtime presentation by Tony Fletcher, one of the partners at the lawfirm where I work, of his collection of old science-fiction movie serials. The final clip, from the serial "The Lost Planet", was taken from episode 8: "Snared By The Prysmic Catapult". The first scene shows the evil scientist at work in his underground lab, where he is interrupted by a telepathic

A Prayer For The Hipsters

2005-06-16T10:37:00.000-04:00

So much hatred for hipsters. I've tried to heal the rift by reaching out to Aimee Plumley at the New York City Anti-Hipster Forum. I've tried making friends with the little yellow Brooklyn Kickballers. Yet still, the most common Google search terms that lead people to this blog are "i hate hipsters". One of the strangest things about this phenomenon is the fact that many of those most fervent in

Kickball Epilogue

2005-06-15T14:22:00.000-04:00

[Read Part I and Part II first.]From: B.A. Miale To: rowan@media.mit.eduDate: May 9, 2005 3:08 PMSubject: kickball rivalries----... are stupid.Hi!I came across your blog while googling BrooklynKickball. I should tell you I am one of the directorsof the yellow league, but don't judge me on that.I actually played with big blue a few times in 2003.The thing that turned me off

Goodbye, Harlem

2005-05-07T23:56:00.000-04:00

Last week I left my apartment in Hamilton Heights, Harlem and moved my things to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I will miss the cafe con leche and the cubanitos from "El Rey De Sandwich"; I will miss the view of New Jersey across the Hudson; I will miss the olive bar at Fairway Market. I will not miss the filth all over the sidewalks, the junkies living on the stairs down to the river, or the neighborhood

My First Lawsuit

2005-04-27T12:12:00.000-04:00

I took the 1-9 down to Chambers street yesterday to file my Application for a Summons with the Civil Court of New York County, naming my landlord and the management company that oversees my building. My roommates and I have been dealing with electricity outages, massive leaks of waste water in our kitchen, collapsing ceilings, bizarre fungal infestations, vermin, and water shutoffs since December