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Since my plane buddies from the other night and I talked at length about what could be done to stop this slow, terrible erosion of democracy we all seemed to see and help resurrect public discourse about real issues :

Adbusters, the anti-consumerism culturejammers , have launched a legal challenge against the major Canadian media outlets which refuse to let Adbusters buy airtime on Canadian networks for airing their ads.

How important is this case? For a generation of people, and a growing social movement that sees the media as its main battleground, a victory here will change everything. Without media democracy - which means genuine public access to the most powerful forms of communication - we can’t raise healthy children, create good public policy or hold elections that are legitimate or that matter. We lose power to shape our consciousness, our culture and our future. We even lose the power to imagine what that future should look like.

Quick followup on the wikipedia authority challenge .

Ed Felten did a quick smackdown comparison ; the mighty Wikipedia vs Brittanica cage deathmatch.

Very interesting actually. Wikipedia seems to do very well against Brittanica when it goes toe to toe. Would be interested in seeing how far that actually goes though for a representative statistically significant comparison of entries.

Overall verdict: Wikipedia’s advantage is in having more, longer, and more current entries. If it weren’t for the Microsoft-case entry, Wikipedia would have been the winner hands down. Britannica’s advantage is in having lower variance in the quality of its entries.

Several very highly qualified bloggers Mike of techdirt , Joi Ito , Cory Doctorow recently lambasted Al Fastoldt’s article where he says that a librarian said the Wikipedia is not authoritative and that it should not be used as a knowledge source.

Much more than a proof of concept, I think the wikipedia is fascinating as on the surface it does appear a very fragile way to generate knowledge. Allowing anyone, anywhere to edit and alter an article page on something or create new knowledge appropriate is a revolutionary idea and I can definitely see why a librarian would have a problem with this.

Great op-ed piece worth reading by perhaps America’s foremost security expert, Bruce Schneier, on the DHS security warnings (Department of Homeland Security, for the non-US acronym followers) and their actual effect in terms of security (zero) versus the effect on the populace (fear). Short, pulls no punches and questions the political motivation of the entire system.

There are two basic ways to terrorize people. The first is to do something spectacularly horrible, like flying airplanes into skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. The second is to keep people living in fear.

by Dr. Seuss

Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away! You have brains in your head, You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself Any direction you choose.

You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look’em over with care. About some you will say, “I don’t care to go there.” With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, You’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

Yesterday’s post about Firefox raised some questions about what else is on my desktop. I have to admit I feel much more productive on Macs. I’ve also selected the apps that really enhance my productivity. Macs have excellent apps. These are the ones I think help the most with little comments as to why I’ve selected them. Some of them have windows or Linux equivalents for those of you who haven’t switched or find other platforms work better for you.

OK, so a few people have asked about the tech setup, so this is how it all works.

WARNING! The following blog entry may contain scenes, depictions and descriptions of graphic technical content not suitable for non-technical audiences. Prolonged exposure may cause seizures. Viewer discretion is advised.

I’m using Wordpress 1.2 for the server. It is a php and mySQL based open source, open standards and free blogging system which I particularly like because it is fully standards compliant (XHTML even), very extensible, has rss everywhere for feeds (stories, comments etc.) and completely divorces presentation from data through the use of Cascading Style Sheets for the interface (so redesigning the site look and feel, I can just change it via css. No muss. No fuss.).

This post didn’t make the cut for the blog reboot in terms of content, but had some historical significance, so the placeholder is here.

Basically, this was the start of moving to something relatively fixed and online rather than something meant to replace emailed updates from my 1999 round-the-world exodus and other itinerant wanderings.

The blog has been around for more than 13 years in various forms, but was originally dubbed Across Weirdish Wild Space from Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You Will Go .