• Julie Gomoll’s had it with twitter/facebook/social-media spam from people pitching their South by Southwest panel proposals.
• The best lessons on marketing from Second Life come from the people who are creating fashion, gadgets, and other things inworld. Learn from them.
• Your employees may be gender-switched in virtual worlds when representing the firm. I think, given IBM’s comfort with it, and Zha’s impeccable sense of fashion, that it should be a non-issue. But what do I know, as I’m a small brass robot while on company business.
• Budget cuts at the state-level in the US will force people with disabilities into nursing homes, where dehumanizing treatment, and risks to health and safety prevail.
• Here’s a couple of lighter chasers:
  • Each year at Worldcon, UK fan Steve Rogerson organizes a pre-convention pub crawl to visit places serving locally-made craft brewed beer. These are always a great evening out, even when you’re going on three hours of sleep. We didn’t make it to every place Rogerson listed on his Montreal outing, but I liked L’Amère à Boire.
  • Xach Beane has been making web toys in Common Lisp. His latest is a riff on a Super Mario Brothers cut scene.

In The IndigNation, Fred Clark talks about “The National Indignation Convention” (!) an early 1960′s movement, similar to the shouting mobs showing up at public meetings on health care, but were convinced that the danger to America was fluoridated water instead of public insurance.

Unsurprisingly, the movement started in Dallas, which at the time was a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiment in the wake of JFK’s election. Of course, there was another facet to the meanness:

The woman who assaulted Adlai Stevenson with the picket sign was affiliated with the National Indignation Convention. Photojournalist Wes Wise, who captured that incident on film, reveals another revealing detail in Robert Huffaker’s book, When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963. After the woman’s assault on Stevenson was condemned nationally, the crazy lady offered what she considered an excuse for her behavior. “I was pushed from behind by a Negro,” she said. There were, of course, no black people in the vicinity.

These Pearls Won’t Clutch Themselves is a funny dialog between someone who is scandalized by someone saying a politician is lying (in this case, Governor Palin, on the so-called ‘death panel’) and the person who pointed out the lie.

B: You realize what you’ve done, don’t you?

A: Drawn a link between the spreading of malicious falsehoods and the practice commonly referred to as “lying”?

B: Well, yes, that. That’s not allowed.

Today is also Cynthia and my fifth anniversary as a couple, so no, we don’t look back completely in anger at the last few years.

There’s a lot I can say, however, about the Bush Administration, but will leave it at this for the moment:

Consider it part of a movement.

Anger over my fellow Californians’ willingness to enshrine bigotry in the constitution. (However, that is not a done deal, even if Proposition Eight passes.)

And wondering if the Republicans will reform their coalition, shedding the anti-immigrant, evangelical, and Cold War wings.

Most importantly, an emphatic No on 8: it is discriminatory, it hurts my friends and co-workers, and it’s the most mean-spirited thing I’ve seen since, well, the Knight Initiative.

On some of the others:

Prop 1A: I’m torn over this. I want the private sector to build High Speed Rail. I was in Japan last year, and loved how easy it was to get around on the Shinkansen. And like Telstar Logistics, I want that here. Coin Toss, ask your inner libertarian.

Prop 2: Regardless of if you think regulating cage conditions is important, the state is the wrong level of governance to rule on this. This is a NAFTA matter. No.

Prop 4: Another attempt by religious conservatives to control womens’ bodies. Emphatic No.

Prop 7: No.

Prop 8: Let me repeat. Emphatic No.

Prop 10: No.

Prop 11: Bipartisan redistricting is a good start. Yes.

And if you’re in San Francisco, please vote no on ‘R’. It’s an insult to the people who work at the sewage plant.

And, even though the seat is vacant, he’ll face considerable competition from State Senator Jackie Speier, a veteran politician with support from the California Congressional delegation, who started her campaign when Lantos announced he was leaving at the end of his term. The 12th district covers much of San Mateo county and the Southwest corner of San Francisco, which is not the Google heartland.

It’s not my race. I’m in the 14th district. But it’s another round of The Web vs. The Establishment, and will be interesting to watch.

ETA: There’s a discussion of how a Lessig/Speier race could play out, and how Leland Yee could play the spoiler, at Open Left.

ETA: Shelly Powers wrote a thoughtful piece on why Lessig would not be the best candidate for the seat.

ETA: He was considering running, and had not announced. Thanks, Elkit.

ETA: Lessig has decided not to run.

Falwell's machine-instantiated consciousness will spend the next few hundred centuries pursued by an angry walrus demanding to know the whereabouts of a bucket.

kthxbye!

I heard about Ms. Sierra canceling her ETech presentation when Liz Henry IM’ed me this afternoon, and she wrote a powerful response, along with a challenge for all of us:

I’d like to make a call to action. When this kind of shit happens, we’ll call it out and document it in public. Call it in the moment. Call it in front of your coworkers. Call it if it’s major or if it’s minor, it’s all part of the same spectrum of misogynist behavior. How about just saying, once in a while, right in the moment if you can, “That’s not funny,” when it’s really not. Say it crosses your boundaries. Say it’s not acceptable to you. This takes practice, but with time, we can all do it and find strength in numbers.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the City invites any representatives of Pluto (should any exist) to an upcoming Common Council meeting where they will receive the keys to the city, passes to the Goodman Pool, an honorary membership in the Chamber of Commerce (to ensure that the folks on Pluto realize how business-friendly Madison really, REALLY is) and, finally, an autographed CD from the Dixie Chicks.

[ via NASA Watch ]