Burning Man...

The Burning Man Project

I was going to head to LA for Labor Day to visit my college roommate Aaron Fallon, who some of you may know. Unfortunately, or fortunately for Aaron's sake, the trip has been delayed as he heads off to burning man in Nevada (check the link).

Aaron offered me this info on the trip...

Don't know what to expect---but last night I did get to check out the vehicles our friends built for the extravaganza... I got to ride in a six seated, satellite radio outfitted, fake fur seated, completely lit up influorescents, giant snail--it wasn't too fast, but what a blast.

The Eye of the Beholder

Virginia Postrel takes on aesthetics once again in her latest NYT piece. Her new book is out, and though I haven't read it yet, it is on my list (her first book -- The Future and Its Enemies is a great read also.


Competition has pushed quality so high and prices so low that many businesses can no longer distinguish themselves with price and performance. To add value, they turn to aesthetics: the look and feel of people, places and things.

Today's successful restaurants do not just serve food; they create environments. Cellphones do not just communicate; they let owners swap face plates and personalize rings. Toilet brushes do not just remove grime; they come in caddies with a personality — from Philippe Starck's sleek Excalibur to Stefano Giovannoni's playful Merdolino.

East Coast for Life...Where HipHop and Libertarianism Meet takes on the Guardian for shoddy journalism.

Ice T is not a hip hop superstar by any stretch, but I can see how that could be confused. Now stating that PE is from LA is a joke.

Ice T, in hip-hop terms, is unquestionably the real deal. Now 44, he released his first rap record in 1983, becoming one of the first musicians outside of the genre's New York birthplace to gain favour within the nascent hip-hop community. By the end of the decade he and the bands Public Enemy and NWA had succeeded between them in establishing Los Angeles as hip hop's second, western, centre of gravity. Literate, politicised and angry, they didn't share the preoccupation of New York's early, cheerful hip-hop crews with clubs and parties; they rapped instead about car chases and corrupt police officers, niggaz and triggaz, pimps and hos - outraging feminists and terrifying conservative America in the process.


I dont't think you can include Public Enemy in any manner in establishing LA as "the western center of gravity" of hip-hop. I think this can pretty clearly be taken as proof of shoddy journalism.

Hysterical Ahhr-nold interview (via twistedfans.com)

Steady Flash Mobbing...

Reason piece on Howard Dean and how he is using technology to spread his message (as horrible as it is) and to recruit for his election efforts. On the whole, you have to give the guy credit (plus he is a blogger and took over for Lessig for a week), it is just a shame his message is so bogus. Note -- Lessig is a prof at Stanford's law school and a big-wig on intellectual property law.

"When we send you stuff, you send it to your e-mail list. A hundred people on everybody's email list here, that's four hundred thousand people!" Dean said at a rally on Monday that dwarfed the response other candidates received.

Is Dean nuts or is he onto something? Probably a little of both, which makes him dangerous to status quo assumptions about how 2004 will unfold. Maybe people really want to hike the minimum wage, repeal President Bush's modest tax cuts, bail out crumbling, mismanaged municipalities, and keep shoveling money into Social Security. You never know.

The kicker though is the final paragraph...

And suppose lightning strikes and Dean takes the Democratic nomination. That's the end of his high-tech organizational juggernaut, right? Karl Rove executes a massive TV air campaign for George W. Bush and Dean does an amazing impersonation of George McGovern circa 1972. Except just like the Net that was built to survive nuclear airbursts, Dean's smart mobs might be hard to defeat without meeting them on the ground. Bush TV ads might be dissected and neutralized in real time in every market they are run in.

Or all the mobsters might all be out playing duck-duck-goose in the park or pretending to be robots, an inherent risk when your campaign rides the bleeding edge of culture and tech.