Aram Squalls

My new webcomic in the Vilage Voice: Liberty

Those of you who know me (and a very few others) know I've been drawing comix on and off since the puberty years. I just started a new strip, called "Liberty," on the Village Voice website. It'll be a weekly (we're not sure what day yet, so stay tuned).

Below is the first panel of the first strip:

(thanks for the hook-up, Mike!)

UPDATE: There's a bit of a political struggle at the Voice site over whether this strip will continue to run. How very exciting. Either way, I'll let you know.

Bill O'Reilly F-bomb remix

Mike Clancy over at the Village Voice's Runnin' Scared blog posted this great dance remix of Bill O'Reilly dropping the F-bomb. I particularly like the club-style appropriations of him dismissively saying "Go!".

Strangely, no Sue Simmons F-bomb remixes yet on GooTube.

UPDATE: Runnin' Scared posted another one. Good stuff.

The man who would have been president

Al Gore was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. I have to say, even 8 years after the Great Debacle, I'm still weeping. Somewhere less than a Planck's-length away, there's a parallel universe where he's been in office for two terms, and I'll bet everyone there is having a much better time.

At any rate, I thought it was interesting that, apropros of a question regarding environmental policy and the climate crisis, Gore invoked Internet regulatory policy (such as 'net neutrality and open standards, though he didn't use the terms) as fundamental to the democratic process, and therefore as imperative tools in combating the global crisis. Wish I had a direct quote, but NPR doesn't post transcripts for some reason.

I know, it's wonky, but you've got to love a guy who can see effective communications policy as a vital element of human survival. Also, just for the record, he was warm, thoughtful and well-spoken. When he slipped into a Southern-y drawl while discussing his dad, it seemed like a genuinely unconscious shift, not the kind of hamfisted put-on we're used to. I dunno, maybe it's for the best he's been able to speak honestly from the sidelines, rather than being shackled to a party line in the White House.

Well worth a listen. Here's the link.

Jay-Z and I on Reuters TV

I was on Reuters TV a day or two ago, discussing the all-encompassing, $150 million deal that Jay-Z cut with LiveNation. Here's the clip:

Whoa, oh, oh, oh, on the radio

I was interviewed on KCBS radio twice this week, opining first on the impending satellite radio merger ("creates a monopoly in a doomed industry"), and then on the subject of Elvis Costello's new vinyl+download album release (in which I summon the ghost of Walter Benjamin).

Check 'em out, they were both fun little interviews.

NYT gets it just right with Hil sched: Now, that's what I call configurable journalism

One of the great challenges for "traditional" news media in the age of configurability is to retain the benefits of editorial oversight while unlocking the extraordinary communicative power of database-driven information. The problem, of course, is that databases put power into the hands of the user, undermining the myth of perfect control over meaning production that characterized many 20th century media.

The other problem, which is far more pragmatic, is that, if everyone's presenting the same database to end users, there's very little opportunity to create a vector of differentiation between information sources; does it all boil down, like the war between Google and Yahoo, to a question of interface and "value-added" content and services?

Maybe it does. But "interface" means more than just choosing the color and placement of buttons on a dashboard. It also means making an ideological or expositional statement through the juxtaposition of information sources -- the same way a traditional newspaper does by choosing the "most important" stories for the front page, or the way a mash-up producer does by choosing two or more songs that create new meanings together through aesthetic or linguistic friction.

All of which is to say, I think the New York Times has done a really nice, elegant job (in an incredibly short turn-around time) of presenting the contents of Hillary Clinton's long-sought and newly-released White House schedules. Their dedicated micro-site offers static images of each schedule page (redactions and all), searchable by page number, date, and, most importantly, keyword. They have also editorially chosen "selected dates" which they feel may have some broad relevance or are in some way exceptional -- such as the day of her speech on women's rights in Beijing, or the day her husband admitted to his affair with "that woman."

Of course, there are still plenty of things to be done (editorial content could be written for every page or recurring subject; more complex search algorithms could be included, permitting queries such as "how many days of vacation did Ms. Clinton take?"), but considering the accelerated time frame, this is great stuff. The fact that the Times would trust its readers to engage the information on their own terms, with their own agendas, indicates that the company is really prepared to address the needs of its users in the 21st century.

FWIW, this also throws some light on Sulzberger's much-maligned claims last year that he didn't "care" whether the NYT would have a print edition in 5 years.

More Clinton PhotoShoppery?

Remember that Hil pic from the NYT I thought was Photoshopped?

My military photo analyst friend Rich just sent me this one, from CNN. In his words, it's suspect because:

This one makes it look like she is working some magic: see the strange glow between her hands . . . find a screengrab of the Emperor shooting energy from his hands from "Return of the Jedi" for comparison.

Personally, I don't think it looks nearly as weird. I mean, I generate microgalactic clusters in my hands all the time -- especially when I've just carried Ohio -- but, hey, you've got to defer to expertise.

NYT Hillary Pic PhotoShopped?

It's no secret that the NYT front page editors have been stumping pretty hard for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries (Obama's first few big wins, for instance, were described in the headlines in terms of what it meant for Hillary's campaign). However, I was pretty shocked a few minutes ago when I looked at the site's front page and saw what looks, to my eyes, like a classic PhotoShop job.

Look at how the type on the banner is strangely legible for a .jpg, and how intuitively off-kilter it feels with respect to depth of field. Also, the contrast has been messed with to such a degree that the pic looks almost cartoony.

This eerily reminds me of one of my favorite books, The Commissar Vanishes, by David King.

What do you think? Any forensics experts out there (Rich, I'm talking to you) want to weigh in?