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| Sunday, March 13, 2005 |
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Affirmative distraction 
Nonpropriety
| | The older I get, the more I realize that Being Right is way overrated. I'd much rather be understood. Or better yet, to have what I'm saying understood. Especially if what I'm saying isn't just mine. In fact, I've noticed that the less an understanding is mine (or anybody's alone to be Right with), the more likely it is to be understood. |
| | "I told you so" may be the most useless thing anybody can say. |
Still looking
| | Since we don't have an answer yet, here's another look at yesterday's picture, with more of the surroundings revealed. This picture was taken at 9:04:12am on August 11, 2004. That's 12 minutes and 15 seconds after I shot a picture of Moab, Utah, en route to New York, looking almost straight North. I shot Moab at a higher angle (it was a bit closer) and at 57mm. I shot this one at 71mm, so it was a bit farther off. (And pardon the blurring in the middle... it wasn't the best window.) If we were going about 500mph, that means I was about 100 miles East of Moab, looking North. |
| | I think the dark slot of land just above the bottom of he picture is the West end of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (of which I have many other pictures, none featuring this scene), but I'm not sure. |
| | Again, we're trying to indentify the spire-like formation in the middle of the picture. I've seen it so many times, but never could figure out What It Is. |
| | [Later...] Richard Cowin nails it. The spires are called The Castles, and belong to West Elk Peak, in the West Elk Wilderness. They're higher than they look from either picture I took (up to and over 13,000 feet). And the Black Canyon of the Gunnison is indeed what we see in the foreground. My view also appears to be to the Northeast, rather than the North. Dig this site and see if you don't want to visit the place on foot. It's remote and quite unspoiled. Not surprising that The Castles don't show up in a lot of pictures on the Web. |
Dis content
| | FEC Commissioner David Mason does not understand the blogosphere. He's thinking Kos and instapundit and not obscure weblog outposts like, for instance, the rexblog. |
| | He spent several minutes pondering whether or not blogs are "publications" and protected speech. (Note to regulators: the word "publication" is a metaphor when applied to the web. The blogging format is a set of conventions. Blogging is a medium, or a software platform, or to use a paper metaphor, a blank page, with which anyone can do whatever they want. The last government regulatory agency I want determining what a blog is, is the FEC, especially if its members are like David Mason who seems more interested in how much an ad costs per day on Instapundit than on what the vast majority of bloggers are doing. |
| | Bottom line: This faux controversy is not going away. However, the real rule making issue will focus on the role of blogs by regulated political and advocacy groups -- those groups that are already subjected to regulation and have to work within those parameters. |
| | For hardcore political bloggers there may be guidelines and regulations they will need to familiarize themselves with and adhere to. But for the citizen blogger (and, I will go on record saying the "business vs. home" computer issue is a red herring -- but that's only my guess) I predict that if the FEC approves any "anti-blogging" rules affecting individual citizens, there will be lawmakers stampeding to save blogger's right to link to their lawmaker's campaign website. |
| | ... I am inclined to direct Mr. Mason and the FEC (also the FCC) to the first blog. |
| | As for webblogs, if the big media cover the subject at all, it's as a "phenomenon," which is to say an epiphenomenon. That's because big media journalism is preoccupied with stories, which tend to be transient. Hardly a week goes by when some reporter doesn't ask me if blogs haven't been "overhyped," or to try to make me take sides against bigtime journalism, as if there's some kind of war going on. |
| | But the real war isn't between blogs and journals. It's between journalism and mediaism. |
| | The Web is about journalism, and has been since it was born. It's no coincidence that we "author" something called "pages" that we "publish" on the Web. |
| | The Media are not about journalism, except as a subordinate concern. They are about publishing and broadcasting, which are both about distribution. |
| | That's why it's no coincidence that when Big Media (and .com wannabe Big Media) saw the Web, they took everything we used to call "art," "editorial," "music," and "news" — and recharacterized it all as "content." Because "content" is something you ship, something you distribute. It's not necessarily something you share. |
| | More about content vs. speech here. |
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