So is the Dark Knight actually Bush? It's certainly another lens to look at the film with.

But let's see what we can learn from the TV show. Here, Batman is running against the Penguin for Mayor of Gotham.

Batman Vs. Penguin - The Debates:

As expert representatives from various sectors (including energy, green job creation and consumption) have been predicting in droves lately, the bright spot in the current global economic crisis may be the opportunity that it provides for long-awaited growth in forward-thinking, more sustainable policies and innovation.

On Saturday, Roger K. Lewis at the Washington Post contributed an excellent column discussing what the economic downturn could mean for smart growth.

Lewis identifies a new vocabulary of "R-words:"

rethinking, redeveloping, renewing, revitalizing, retrofitting

that are cropping up repeatedly in connection to new suburban development in the region surrounding the U.S. capitol.

He continues, noting that the housing bubble collapse and increasing foreclosure epidemic are now exacting a heavy toll on homeowners in sprawling exurbs in high-growth areas, and offers the following glimmer of hope in smarter planning for the future:

Today's nightmarish economic crisis does teach a lesson. It at last illuminates the consequences of policies and practices yielding costly sprawl. It shows that growth by limitless outward expansion is no longer sustainable, no longer an option.

What's possible and desirable, if not unavoidable in the future, is growth characterized by the R-words. We must transform portions of our cities and suburbs that already enjoy favorable locations and serviceable infrastructure, but are poorly or insufficiently developed. Properties apt to become economically and functionally obsolete should be revived.

Shifting demographics make such transformations more feasible. Traditional families -- parents with children -- may continue to opt for the suburban model. But traditional families represent less than half of all American households. Millions of households are made up of singles, couples or housemates who neither want nor need the traditional suburban home. They tend to embrace a more urban lifestyle, choosing to live in mixed-use environments where they can go shopping on foot, commute via transit and get along without a car.

Investments in roads, transit and utilities must be aimed at enhancing infrastructure quality and performance within metropolitan areas, not at the fringe. Rather than continuing to suburbanize the agrarian landscape, we should urbanize more of the existing suburbs. This is the essence of "smart growth."

Thanks to John Brown at Slow Home for bringing this to our attention.

Photo credit: flickr/mikesoron, Creative Commons license.

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A quite funny sketch from Saturday Night Live ridiculing the incredible interaction and visualization features of CNN's multitouch screen, also called the Magic Wall.

The video can be watched either below or at nbc.com. The screen bit starts somewhere at 5:30.

I might have discovered this way too late to allow you to really enjoy the "live" aspect, but the documented videos are still quite impressive and relevant: Reconstitution 2008 [reconstitution2008.com] by sosolimited was a live audiovisual remix of the three 2008 Presidential debates, each coinciding with a live broadcast of the debates. Special software sampled and analyzed the video, audio, and a closed captioned text of the television broadcast. Through a series of visual and sonic transformations the material became reconstituted, revealing linguistic patterns, exposing content and structures, and fundamentally altering the way in one watches the debate.

For instance, for the screenshot above, every time Obama or McCain mentions themselves, the audience, or their opponent, that reference is cataloged and stacked. Each candidate's words are transcribed in real time and sorted into three columns : "You", "Me", and "The Other Guy". It is easy to see that both Obama and McCain talk about themselves much more than each other or the voters.

Check out the three introduction videos below, or watch them all here.

Via nytimes.com, boston.com and npr.org.

Thnkx Christopher!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Add your own fave Obama art to this BuzzFeed page.
  
• Yes but no but yes.
• Obama street art: 1,293 strong on Flickr.
• The Obama Art Report -- a blog about Obama art.
• Artists for Obama: Blue-chip work for MoveOn and the NAACP Voter Fund.
• Gemini G.E.L.'s Artists for Obama, featuring prints by Johns, Serra and Marden. The images are here.
  
• Eva Holland with lots of pics of Obama-themed street art, design, etc.
• The Obama Craft Project.
• The Warhol/Nixon/McCain t-shirt? [via]
  

San Francisco - Reporters, bloggers, and voters across the country can monitor problems at the polls on Election Day on OurVoteLive.org, a project built and hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of Election Protection, the nation's largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition, and its toll-free voter-assistance hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE.

OurVoteLive.org collects and analyzes reports from calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, which is staffed by hundreds of volunteers across the country. Tested during the presidential primaries, the site is already documenting over a thousand examples per day of voters needing information or reporting problems such as registration and identification issues, difficulties with voting machines, and polling place accessibility issues. Over 200,000 calls are expected to come into the hotline and be documented on OurVoteLive.org through Election Day.

"Improved transparency in all aspects of the electoral process is critical to ensuring accurate results as well as diagnosing systemic problems and helping voters," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "OurVoteLive.org is helping the Election Protection Coalition make that possible."

In addition to call incident data, OurVoteLive.org also features maps, nationwide trend information, and an active election issues blog that will highlight important election incidents as they develop.

"OurVoteLive.org will allow us to help more voters more effectively," said Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which leads Election Protection. "We -- along with election officials and the media -- will be able track trends and identify problem areas quickly so that we can remove any barriers that voters face as they cast their ballots."

Election Protection has more than 100 partners at the national, state and local level and is providing live voter protection services now through Election Day across all 50 states. On November 4, Election Protection will mobilize tens of thousands of volunteers, including 10,000 legal volunteers to monitor polling places, educate voters, facilitate a dialogue with local and state officials, provide legal support to poll monitors, and answer the 1-866-OUR-VOTE voter services hotline -- a monumental undertaking designed to ensure smooth voting in November.

On Election Day, reporters who have questions about OurVoteLive.org or particular incidents reported on the site should contact Nell McGarity via email at press@ourvotelive.com or by phone at 202-262-0721.

Contact:

Matt Zimmerman
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
mattz@eff.org

Where Would the Election Be without Net Neutrality? -- Media & Technology Voter Guide from alternet: http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/103005/

Contagious Media!

from LocalVoicesForObama.com

"A group of award-winning filmmakers have created twelve ads featuring local voices — folks from battleground states who speak compellingly of their support for Obama — and now those ads are reaching their undecided neighbors in Missouri, Ohio and Nevada. UPDATED In one week of running Local Voices ads in Joplin, a city of 50,000 in southwest Missouri, a coalition came together within the city: they call themselves The Secret Society of Joplin Democrats. They have pledged that for every negative call or email response to a Local Voices ad, they’ll match with dollars to run the ad again, meeting intimidation with action." - from buzzfeed.

As Nov. 4 nears, the presidential campaigns must make quick decisions about how to use the candidates' limited time. Two experts talk about what the scheduling process is like.

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A series of live visual thinking (or infographic sketching?) videos, narrated and drawn by Paddy Hirsch, Senior Editor at Marketplace, that explain different complex economic concepts. These concepts range from collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, to more imaginative metaphorical stories like the credit crisis as Antarctic expedition.

Matt Haughey lists a bunch of ways that political candidates can get his nerdy vote.

I've been thinking lately about a dream candidate for my nerd habits, my nerdy business, and the way I live my nerdy life. Regardless of party affiliation, if you're running for an office from as small as city council all the way up to president, if you hit on any/all of these things, you just might get my vote.

Universal healthcare, universal broadband, and a renewed commitment to science are on his list...anything missing?

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of public interest groups called on four television networks today to stop stifling vibrant political debate on the Internet with overreaching copyright claims and proposed two measures to help YouTube protect online political speech in the final days before America's presidential election.

In an open letter sent to CBS, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Fox, and NBC, the coalition asked the broadcasters to stop sending takedown requests based on copyright in short clips of news footage used in election-related videos. Last week, the McCain-Palin campaign contacted YouTube after CBS, CBN, and Fox targeted the campaign's videos for removal from YouTube. The Obama-Biden campaign has had at least one of its videos removed from YouTube in response to a similar copyright demand from NBC.

"The videos at issue include clips of news footage that last only a few seconds, used as part of constitutionally-protected political speech. This is not piracy, but fair use, no different from what Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show do every night," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Sending unfounded takedown notices is not only against the law, it also threatens to interfere with the vibrant political debate occurring on community video sites like YouTube. Remixing the news to make your point is what political speech looks like in the 21st century."

The networks' use of copyright law to remove the videos is especially disappointing as CBS, NBC-Universal, and Fox have all officially endorsed "User-Generated Content Principles" (www.ugcprinciples.com) aimed at accommodating legitimate fair use of their material.

In a separate open letter written to YouTube, the coalition suggests two measures to protect all video contributors from unfounded takedown demands. First, all "counter-notices" sent by YouTube users protesting copyright takedown demands should be immediately reviewed by YouTube staff, and the video immediately restored if it is a clear case of fair use. Second, once a user has already provided a valid counter-notice, then YouTube should also review any further takedown notice issued to any video posted to the account.

"In clear cases of fair use, YouTube should stand firmly behind the interests of its user community," said von Lohmann. "YouTube has nothing to fear by hosting videos that do not infringe anyone's copyright."

In addition to EFF, the coalition includes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); the ACLU of Northern California; the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center; Anthony Falzone, the executive director of Stanford's Fair Use Project; the Center for Social Media, School of Communication, American University; the Program for Information Justice & Intellectual Property, American University Law School; and Public Knowledge.

For the full letter to the television networks:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/ip_freespeech/letter+to+networks.pdf

For the full letter to YouTube:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/ip_freespeech/letter+to+YouTube.pdf

For more on user-generated content and political speech:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/election-approaches-do-your-part-pr...

Contacts:

Corynne McSherry
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
corynne@eff.org

Fred von Lohmann
Senior Intellectual Property Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
fred@eff.org

With less than two weeks remaining before the US presidential election, the Publius project has released a timely essay on the danger of vote suppression tactics potentially migrating into cyberspace:

read more

For the next two weeks, Eyebeam artists, staff, and kindred activists have decided to add to the mix of election coverage by blogging artist projects, events, candidates' positions and voting histories on art + tech issues—net neutrality, arts funding, support for R&D, a few jokes, and much, much more. If there's anything you'd like to see that you're not, or have suggestions for additional content: We're listening! Send your constructive comments to info@eyebeam.org with "reBlog" in the title.

Stay tuned—our new reBloggers will begin next week!

And our Reblog today. For all you that aren't New York here are some pictures of the exhibition Other Options organized by inCUBATE and Eyebeam kindly hosted. Reblog has been fun.Thanks for inviting us. Have a nice day.

*This saturday we are having an auction by (RE) project for the closing: Bring your red items for the action! All proceedings are donated towards HIV/AIDS organizations. Installation by Project (RE): Phil Orr/Ryan Thompson

Mike Merril: Kmikeym.com

Josh Greene: Service Works

Joanna Spitzner Foundation

Material Exchange Multiplayer Pinball

Retool by Robin Hewlett & Carolyn Lambert

Gentrify! by Forays

Tanda Foundation by Geraldine Juárez

Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion

Introduction

The introductory pages contain a brief general description of the characteristics of money and how the U.S. money system works. The illustrations in the following two sections describe two processes: first, how bank deposits expand or contract in response to changes in the amount of reserves supplied by the central bank; and second, how those reserves are affected by both Federal Reserve actions and other factors. A final section deals with some of the elements that modify, at least in the short run, the simple mechanical relationship between bank reserves and deposit money.

Download pdf

Brush knuckles designed by Ken Goldman - for the toughest cleanings via BoJ.

Wooden knuckles.

Cupcake Knuckles.

Brass knuckle cup & purse.

Very cool looking homemade / modded hand grenade mouse from a Russia modding forums. Looks pretty easy to remake...

This month is the 79th anniversary of the great stock market crash that sparked the Depression.  To honor this anniversary contempo Wall Street wunderkinds have decided to offer us what appears to be a failed pilot for a reality TV show that suggests banks are not nearly as prepared for disaster as your local cub scout troop. Douglas Rushkoff expertly explains their descent into poorly orchestrated greed in a great article he wrote for Arthur Magazine, and Ron Chernow offers up notable history in last Sunday's Times.

In commiseration I say: who needs money?  If it is in fact a mere apparition of its former green self, then let's put it to rest and make our own economy.  Raw trade was o' so popular before banks stepped in to mess things up, so let's take a walk on the non monetary side and find our inner art student self (i.e poor).

Instead of shopping at your local designer boutique throw a naked lady party!  Commonly called a clothing swap this works best with a lot of variety in the people you invite and the sizes of clothes involved.  For me, one kind of success is bringing three bags of unwanted clothing and leaving with much, much less; it's easier to store.  Another victory might be channeling your inner Chanel when your best friend is getting rid of a scarf her boss gave her for Christmas. It's always a new experience, every one I've been to is always magically different.  Unlike the marketplace, you set the rules.  And it doesn't even have to be clothes.  Art supplies, yarn, car parts, CD's; you pick the currency then send out the invites.  Any extras at the end of the night can be saved for the next swap or passed on to your local charity thrift.

Start up a local food or drink club and take turns meeting at friends homes for an evening of fine eats and/or libations.  The host offers up her house as part of the circle and everyone else brings a dish or bottle.  Figure it out ahead of time for a thematic twist or let the randomness carry you away in DADA-ist revelry.  For party favors that double as wall art play Exquisite Corpse and build an art collection as you tour this monthly soiree around the nabe.

Do you have a burning desire to tour the south of France but no Euros to spend on hotels?  Do a housing swap and stay in a house or apartment with all mod cons and pay not one shilling.  There are several associations that hook you up with other like minded individuals, some doing a literal trade or others that allow you to 'bank' visits so you can go one place and offer your pad to a visitor from another.  You might like your vacation destination so much that you want to swap homes for good: and yes, there is a business that will facilitate that for you.

Why go out to a club when you know so many musicians? Start a local Hootenanny.  Provided you live in a space that can handle the extra noise, do a regular jam session.  Invite musicians of varying taste and ability and tackle songs by pulling titles from a jar; the novelty of the surprise works for Yo La Tengo when they play Gaylord's show for the WFMU fund raising marathon!

I am sure there are 700 billion more ways we can subvert the dollar crisis and trade our sweat and passions for fun.  Walk away from the ugly G-man and follow a path previously carved out by earlier societies, to experience a greener, more social, and less GNP trackable lifestyle.

The FTSE100 may have hit a four-year low but fine wine, art and stamps are holding their value – at least for now.

From the Telegraph

Three weeks after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy triggered panic across the world of finance most investment asset classes have taken a hit. But anyone who has recently put their cash into some bottles of vintage Bordeaux, a Penny Black or perhaps a series of Andy Warhol prints will still be able to get virtually all their money back. Whether they will a year from now, however, remains to be seen.

So far experts and valuers across most of the types of collectibles that have become investments for the adventurous report that September's doom and gloom is yet to fully hit their markets

Fine art experts report some softening of prices, but wine buffs say so far markets are holding steady. Stamp dealers on the other hand are positively bullish about the prospects for their sector.

In June I'll be releasing a new book and short film, Life Incorporated: How we traded meaning for markets, society for self-interest, and citizenship for customer service. They both look at the way human beings and corporations traded places, and how we came to accept corporatism as our dominant value system.

What I conclude is that our society didn't just end up this way. This landscape was cultivated over time. We are living on a playing field sloped towards corporate interests. Every day, we negotiate the slope to the best of our ability. Still, many of us fail to measure up to the people we'd like to be, and succumb to the tilt of the landscape.

By Howard Slater

Marx's concept of 'species being' is for some a way of re-connecting with fertile currents in the communist left. Howard Slater explores Frére Dupont's recent book Species Being and Other Stories as a vehicle of exodus from left orthodoxies

Over the past few years several publications have surfaced from what can loosely be called the non-Bolshevik revolutionary milieus. Ordinarily publications from such milieus can hardly be noted for their personal openness, play with form and stalwart exasperation with the seeming shrinkage of their circles. Such books as Call, Zones Of Proletarian Development (ZPD) and this one by Frére Dupont are noteworthy in that they seek, non-prescriptively, to provide grounds for optimism and fre