Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan, gave a interesting speech about online identity at SXSW, which is contradictory to the plans Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook would like to see for the future.
“Zuckerberg’s totally wrong on anonymity being total cowardice. Anonymity is authenticity. It allows you to share in a completely unvarnished, raw way.”
Read the rest of the article here.
In 1961, Russian surgeon Leonid Rogozov was stationed in the Antarctic as part of the sixth Soviet Antarctic expedition. The expedition’s task was to overwinter in a newly built polar base. With two months of winter left, and no possible contact with the outside world, Rogozov realized that he had appendicitis. Also, that he was the only one around that could do the operation.
This is it . . . I have to think through the only possible way out: to operate on myself . . . It’s almost impossible . . . but I can’t just fold my arms and give up.
The full case study at the British Medical Journal includes a chronology of the nightmarish situation, an account of the surgery itself, and Rogozov’s modest outlook on the auto-appendectomy that saved his life. Read the full 2009 case study here.
The US government revealed that they’re dumping more money into anti-terrorist social media propaganda machines that can already be measured at a bloated $200 million. Jeff Jarvis said they look like “clumsy spammers,”
“But the effort is amusing as well, for there is absolutely no need to spend millions of dollars to create fake identities online. Any child or troll can do it for free. Millions do.”
Indeed. What’s most ironic, however, is that while it would be “unlawful to ‘address US audiences’ with such technology,” it’s perfectly acceptable to commit such crimes against foreign people.
Shortly after AP reported that Libya has declared a cease-fire, AP reported that the four missing New York Times journalists have been found. Coincidence? Likely not.
The UN may have strong-armed Libya out of the path of destruction by declaring a no-fly zone and mobilizing international military forces, but that doesn’t mean this conflict is over. There are many questions still unanswered: Will they honor the cease-fire? What will the rebel forces (aka protesters, aka opposition movement) demand next? Will Gadhafi share the fate of Mubarak? Whatever happens, we should ‘proceed cautiously’
‘ “so we don’t get into the kind of situation that we got into in Iraq by not having a Plan B for the morning after.” ‘
Appropriate advice from retired General of the British army, Richard Dannatt.
UPDATE 3/19: To answer at least one of the previous questions: Gadhafi calls UN resolution ‘invalid’, forces attack heart of rebel territory.
Can Crowdsourcing Help Japan’s Nuclear Disaster? Perhaps. But it may already be too late. The Telegraph reported yesterday (with video) that they were trying to dump water on the overheated plant in a last ditch effort to cool it off. They also said that early warnings were “insufficient and understated,” and the worst case scenario could be in the “same range” as Chernobyl.
Not even crowdsourcing can outsmart a deadline.
Good welcomes a new editor, Ann Friedman, and she explains why this is a good time to be a journalist.
A few months ago I had lunch with an editor who’s been in this business for nearly 30 years. Our conversation found its way to a topic that always tends to crop up when journalists of different generations hang out together: What does it mean to be an editor and writer when journalism has become associated with aggregating instead of editing, optimizing instead of writing, clicking instead of reading?
Mubarak may have been ousted as Egypt’s President, but that doesn’t mean that the revolution is over, or that Egypt turned into a genuine democracy overnight. There is still much work to be done. —read on »
“My stories run up and bite me in the leg. I respond by writing them down – everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.”
Ray Bradbury
