Wonderfalls

We've now seen two episodes, and we think that's it's definitely something you should see, or record, while you've still got a chance: I'm talking about Wonderfalls, a new series on Fox. Yes, I said Fox, where as we all know, innovative shows go to be produced and then smothered in their sleep. Even worse is that the show is in the Fox Friday Night Death Slot (Fridays at 9PM). Hey, wasn't that when Firefly aired? Anyway, Wonderfalls is funny, surreal, and smart. No doubt Fox will kill it soon, so enjoy it while you can. I hope that they at least air all 13 episodes that were produced.

What'd I do?

From a new-to-me blog, Experimental Space:

Lost E-Votes Could Flip Napa Race. Napa County discovers that one of its e-voting machines did not count ballots correctly in California's primary election. The county may have to recount 11,000 ballots, and change the outcome of at least one close race. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News] How did they select these machines. Oh, Dori. Oh, California.

What did I do? I don't live in Napa, and I don't have anything to do with voting machines. Color me confused.

Google PageRank Report

This is useful for those of us who don't spend much time in IE/Win: Google PageRank Calculator Value Report.

Bluetooth Against Bush

Officially, at least, this blog is about culture, technology, and politics, and Bluetooth Against Bush counts as all three. Unfortunately, I think that it's a dumb idea which ranks up there with the one a few months ago on Dean's blog that said that people should all set the name of their wireless access points to something like "Free Wi-Fi for Dean!" Folks, if you feel that strongly about the election, put a bumper sticker on your car. It'll be seen by zillions more people, and might convince someone other than a geek.

Leaving money on the table?

Well, damn! Here's a source of money that I've never even thought of. David Flanagan charges for commercial use of the examples from his book Java Examples in a Nutshell. Us, we've just been giving them away (here and here).

When I think about all the money that we could have collected in the last seven years... Jeez, if we'd just included this line from his license we'd be way ahead:

Educational Use If you are an educator at non-profit educational institution, you may use the examples for educational purposes in your courses. Please make the book a required or recommended text for the students in your course.

If we just could have gotten royalties from the students where the teachers required other books but then used our online materials in class... Sigh.

Calendar/temperature confusion

The calendar says that it's still winter for another week. WeatherPop tells me that it's 88 degrees outside right now at 3:40 pm. If this is winter, I'm dreading summer.

10.3.3 is out

The OS X 10.3.3 update is out. Take a backup first, y'hear?

Spinsanity debate: Al Franken vs. Rich Lowry

Spinsanity debate: Al Franken vs. Rich Lowry is a must-read.

We are pleased to introduce the first-ever Spinsanity debate between author/humorist Al Franken and National Review editor Rich Lowry, who have critiqued each other's books, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right and Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years. This is not an endorsement of their work, but a unique opportunity for our site to serve as a nonpartisan forum for a debate between two of America's top political writers. We believe both pieces represent useful contributions to the debate over those books and the issues they discuss.

When Lowry and Franken approached us about publishing their exchange, we agreed provided that the essays were generally serious and substantive. We also reserved the right to respond in order to point out deceptive claims or ad hominem attacks (just as we would for any political writers), and we plan to post our response to a few points that they raise later this week.

We hope frequent readers will enjoy this debate between two writers who appreciate Spinsanity's reputation for non-partisan fairness and that those coming to the site for the first time will stay and explore more of our work.

Much ado about manners

Cory at Boing Boing rants about SXSW's no-photos, no-electricity policies. I'm not going to talk about the no-electricity policy; that was stupid and has already been corrected. But Cory's just dead wrong about the no-photos rule.

The text of the rule is simple: "No unauthorized videotaping or photography is allowed in panel rooms as a courtesy to speakers." Now, read that again, and note what it does not say, for example

• It does not say that you can't audiotape the session
• It does not say that you can't blog the session
• It does not say that you can't take notes about the session
• It does not say that you can't ask the speaker's permission to photograph and/or videotape the session
• It does not say that you can't ask the conference's permission to photograph and/or videotape the session

In fact, the only thing that the rule prohibits is, well, bad manners. If you want to photograph or videotape the speakers, you have to ask either the conference or the individual speakers. I'm guessing that, if asked, they'll say yes, of course.

But Cory's saying things like

...someone in the audience should stand up at the start of the proceedings and say, "That sign says we're not allowed to take photos and videos without your permission. We'd like to share what you have to say with others—may we have your permission to do so?"

that are just a strawman argument. How on earth does a photograph of a session (taken without permission) "share what you have to say with others" that an audiotape or blogging (neither of which require permission) doesn't? The real difference is that flash photography is disruptive and audiotape/blogging isn't—so there's good and valid reasons why speakers might not want flashes going off while they're talking.

What's going on here is about manners, not about sharing what the speaker has to say. If you'd like to do something with the potential to disrupt the session, ask first. It's only polite, both to the speakers and to your fellow attendees.