Machination.org

A friend, independent journalist Brian Conley, posted to Twitter about a use of the term “anti-American” by JJ Sutherland on NPR that I also questioned. Brian noted his disappointment that the term was used when “anti-occupation” would be more accurate, and obviously true. Since then I have picked-up on more seemingly lax and inaccurate uses of the term. It seems like a trend, maybe even an editorial policy.

You may parse the term anti-American differently than I, and if it is truly that subjective, I think that only gives more cause to use the term sparingly. To me the terms signifies a general disdain for all things American: Americans, American culture, the actions and policies of the US government. I’m not convinced that is accurate in the case of Muqtada al-Sadr. When you can isolate the sentiment to some subset of those categories a more accurate term can almost always be found, or qualifiers need to be deployed.

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Tags:   anti-American · Bowman · context · Iraq · journalism · Kasell · language · Media · National Public Radio · NPR · occupation · Politics · radio · Sadr · Sadrists · Sutherland · Twitter · warNo Comments.

I’ve been trying to get back into cycling, not as an athlete — I’m no athlete — but as a commuter and for recreation.

This morning I found myself relating to issues brought up today in a New York Times’ article about Times Up! tactics and sites like MyBikeLane.com, which are responses to automobiles regularly disrespecting bike lanes.

It appears that MyBikeLane.com is, while New York City specific for now, intended to scale and eventually target other cities as well.

Here in Washington I’ve had similar experiences, albeit in less harried or intense surroundings than what I know exist in Manhattan and the commercial centers of the other boroughs of New York City. It is still unnerving to be forced to quickly pass into the main lane of traffic because of a vehicle sitting idle in the bike lane.

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Tags:   bicycling · bike lanes · DC · traffic · transportation · urban planning · WashingtonNo Comments.

Independent truck drivers are organizing a protest in Washington today, in response to rising gas prices. While I caught a listing for the event in the AP Daybook, I haven’t witnessed it — I have taken in first and second-hand accounts of their lap around around downtown Washington (specifically to honk at the White House and the Capitol), and their rally (I think they parked their trucks at RFK after their lap).

They plan another lap to disrupt rush hour later, I’m told.

Meanwhile, BoingBoing has a post citing the New York Sun’s reporting on some speculation that American gas prices will have to be more in line with Europe’s (approaching $10 a gallon) sooner rather than later.

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Tags:   costs · economics · energy · environment · Europe · fuel · gas · prices · protest · shipping · transportation · truckers · United StatesNo Comments.

Tonight I quietly resurrected my attendance at Refresh DC. The first one I went to took place in a meeting room at the Library of Congress. My former colleague Jackson Wilkinson spoke at it, evangelizing Microformats — something he had recently encountered and gotten us both interested in as an extension of our shared desire for extra cases to prove web standards were more than just pedantic rules enforced by annoying geeks. Eric Meyer happened to be in the audience that day.

That one visit, with me lurking in the back (as I always do when I show), made Refresh instantly valuable as a meaningful connection to a range of professional insights into a community I care about because I want to use the fruits of its labor (even more than I want to build it — I got into building it so that I could use it).

Tonight’s Refresh session was a panel discussion, with Jackson moderating. The topic was start-ups, and the participants ranged from just-out-of-college but-already-veteran partners of Publi.us, who started out with FantasyCongress.com, to a veteran who had seen many start-ups mature and is trying to create a new service, LaunchBox, to help others through the same process. Within that range there was Eric Rupert, who I met by accident as I greeted Jackson — and who turns out to be behind the re-launching of Odeo.com. Odeo, coincidentally, I got to try out early in its first incarnation via a long-time long-distance acquaintance Rabble was working on it in its very early days.

I’m not sure I have a point. This is the selfish trumpeting of a wallflower.

I have managed to plug a bunch of things I can say have piqued my interest at various points and that I’m keeping an eye on — but I’ve got no dramatic insight or particular endorsement to give. I’ll just echo that, anecdotally, DC is feeling like a pretty vibrant new media community. It’s gratifying, also, to see how simply paying attention and making connections can give even a gadfly or a bystander (I consider myself slightly more than that in this realm, but maybe not too much more) a unique insight as how incredibly small the world can be.

It also makes me think about how large the world remains for others, in other contexts. But that’s a heavy tangent to jump onto tonight and, for the moment, I’m weighed down by too much to really get and distill that perspective.

Tags:   community · DC · Refresh · web developmentNo Comments.

A declaration that something is not political in itself will highlight the politics of the thing.

The New York Times quotes a Chinese Olympic official, Qu Yingpu, in response to the protests of the Olympic torch tour as saying “This is not the right time, the right platform, for any people to voice their political views.”

His own apparent belief that he can say that with any authority is politics.

Never mind the inherent nationalism that is always present at the Olympics.

What is poorly articulated in the most well-intentioned statements of this sort is a widely shared desire for the Olympics to be a unifying experience, despite the nationalistic undertones, and generally not a polarizing sort of experience.

That’s great, but there is no getting rid of the politics.

I get the feeling that not all the statements are well-intentioned, and I don’t just mean the ones from Chinese officials this year. I think the Olympics are something of a business, and business is always political too.

That aside, it seems futile to to me to achieve an ideal by proclamation, attempting to exclude voices of the real controversies and atrocities of the world—particularly those in which the hosts, and implicitly more powerful than most other participants in the given year’s games, have a role.

Tags:   China · free speech · ideals · Olympics · Politics · sports · Tibet · torch runNo Comments.