a thaumaturgical compendium

For a long time, I’ve wondered what a West Coast Revolution would look like: you know, secession by California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, and—for continuity’s sake if nothing else, British Columbia and Baja. If the latter two seem especially strange, remember that BC was a relative latecomer to Canada (joining in the 1870s) and often shares a cultural identity with the Pacific Northwest of the US, and that Baja is increasingly becoming a suburb of San Diego, and has a history of potential annexation. It’s been a while since I read Ecotopia, and ecological concerns might very well be a part of this, but I think the difference is cultural. The West Coast thinks differently, it is a different culture, and a different nation.

What has me thinking about this? The conflict between federal and state marijuana laws in northern California. Consider this part of a report in the admittedly fringe Alternet on an admittedly fringe topic:

“This appears to be a spiteful investigation on behalf of the DA, paid for by the taxpayers of California, and if Strom would like to keep her job, she should respect the laws of the state,” said Sherer. “If she did not believe this was a medical case she should have taken it to state court, and not handed over two citizens of California to the federal government for a 10-year mandatory sentence.”

This idea of California citizenship conflicting with US citizenship is an interesting one. Obviously, it’s not enough to cause a split—these sorts of events can often trigger a change that is long in coming, but for now, that change seems far removed.

Given California’s newest governor, it seems unlikely that the people of that state have the political will to make serious changes—the kinds of changes that would bring it into further disharmony with the rest of the US. Nonetheless, over time, I have the feeling that the West Coast will become increasingly integrated and separated from the rest of the US politically, economically, and culturally.

And for those consipiracy nuts out there (I know who you are) who are worried about posting because “the government” might be watching, here were the .govs and .mils from this last month. I warn you: pretty tame stuff…

• Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque
• Army Corps of Engineers, Chicago
• Army Information Systems Engineering Command
• Army Intelligence & Security Command

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Since I was already looking at the logs (see below), just out of curiousity, I decided to look at where my hits were coming from in terms of college campuses (and some HS with .edu addresses). I looked at the logs for the last month. I was pretty surprised by the number and the variety. Many of these were single visits—probably folks looking for something they would not find here. But a surprising number were steady visitors. At least some of those, I could guess out, but many I could not. If you are among the steady visitors, make yourself known!

Adams State College
Agricultural University of Athens
Akademickie Centrum Komputerowe Cyfronet
American University
American University in Cairo
Amherst College
Andrews University

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I don’t spend much time looking at the logs for this site, but this morning I looked over some of the search strings that bring people here. Note that some of these are for other blogs, etc., that I host on this site as well. Nonetheless, is there any better example of how hard it is to find info on the web. Here are a few examples I pulled, few of which will find relevant info on this site. (Of course, now I’ve made it even worse. Mwahahaha…)

• 2003 email addresses of sales ladies and sales women in asia
• ‘pretty woman’ and its ruling class
• activities that could be done with witting
• advantages of ethnography
• age of consent in louisana
• age restrictions tatoos new york state law
• alex from fraternity life has a nice ass

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Over the semester, I’ll be assembling some material for my Web-Analysis class. For what its worth, since these will be short, easily digestible pieces, I figured I would copy them as I write them to my blog. Comments are, as always welcome, either here on the blog. If you have corrections, additions, etc., I encourage you to make them over on the wiki…

In the beginning, the World Wide Web was the new frontier, an unexplored land in a world that had few unexplored places left. After more than a decade, it has become commonplace for many people. They think nothing of turning to the web to find out about a news event, to buy a second-hand television, or to discuss the latest television programs. No longer alien, it is now a part of our collective lives.

And it continues to grow, becoming a center point for convergence. It provides the connective tissue for other internet technologies, from gaming to voice conversations. As more and more media is digitized, more and more social content is carried by the web. And at the same time, the medium itself recedes from view.

For a while, social scientists were interested in the Web because it represented a novel social phenomenon. What did this new medium mean for society? This was a difficult question to answer, in part because the medium alone, despite what McLuhan might have argued, tells us very little. How people make use of the new medium, how discourse evolves and shapes, and is shaped by, the structure of the evolving technology, is of vital interest.

This web site is dedicated to exploring the process of exploring the content of the Web. It is not an effort to discover “what’s on the Web,” so much as it is an attempt to examine what this means to our social existence. At the root of many, if not all, of the questions for which Web content holds an answer is the following overarching concern: how does the use of the Web affect existing institutions and social systems? The following sections of the site will provide the tools needed to extract and make sense of the content of the Web, and will discuss the ways in which this may be changing established institutions and patterns in politics, education, news, law, health, entertainment, and other areas of social interaction. Of particular interest, and I would argue of particular import, is a special sort of interaction that the Web enables, large-scale conversations.

Gallery of Data Visualization – Many of the familiar Tufte examples, and a whole lot more.

Girls eating sandwiches – Exploring the boundaries of kinkiness (?) – Via Boing)

Blogging at Harvard – an article reviewing the blogs at Harvard. The blogs here at the School of Informatics have not taken off the way I had hoped, but then I haven’t put a heck of a lot of time into them either.

Creative Class War – Richard Florida, who writes on the emergence of a “creative class,” argues that many within this class are leaving the US to more fertile soil. Interesting, if overstated, observations.

Ms. Trammel asks if blogs can come back to bite you, and provides a number of examples of cases in which they have. This might be of particular interest to an academic in the job market, given that search committees inevitably google their best candidates. But this seems like a small nibble given the upside.

I would hate to think what someone would find if they googled me without my blog. At the very least, it provides me a right-of-reply for those who would intentionally or inadvertently put a less than favorable spin on my life. Indeed, I consider the blog in some ways to be an organ of public relations, a way of managing my personal identity.

I also use it as a way to communicate with my future self. I am candid and try to be extremely honest, both of which I believe to be less harmful to my future than some may think. If something in this record offends a future potential employer or friend, then they are offended by my past, and I am unlikely to want to have a continued relationship.

Because I am candid and honest here, I shape my actions in such a way that I won’t have too much to be ashamed of in my blog. Correct speech leads to correct action. This, in some ways, is what PR ought to be like for a corporation, but it almost never is.

(Why? Because humans are inherently good, and corporations are inherently evil, to oversimplify… Except for the company that the 40-year-old-me is trying to land a consulting gig with. You, sirs and madams, are beyond reproach.)