Illustration Friday: Broken

Here's the weeks Illustration Friday entry, Broken

Corrupion and the Oil for Food Program

Russia Tops UN's Oil-for-Food Corruption Report:

The final report from the Independent Inquiry Committee aims to show how companies all over the world, as well as individuals and governments, rorted the program on a grand scale, sabotaging diplomatic efforts to bring Saddam under control. Russia was closely followed by France, the report says.

Sad but true. This is why, although I'm an Iraq War skeptic, I wasn't jumping on the "yay France" bandwagon either. Suddenly France's "heroic" stance against the war sounds a little thin.

Remote

Mai pointed me to Illustration Friday, a site where they suggest a word once a week, and participants make an illustration based on that word. Here is my illustration for the word "remote".

New Drawings

I posted some new drawings to my Flickr account today. Enjoy!

Surprise!

Hungry.

Brad the Gorilla

We're in the PI!

My first post over at Seattle Metblogs, a rant about the Arboretum Way on-ramp has been re-printed in the Seattle PI's Life in the City column. Hooray! And thanks to K for spotting it in the newspaper and letting me know about it.

Daily Kos: STRATFOR - BEST explanation of Plame import

Daily Kos: STRATFOR - BEST explanation of Plame import

Political scandal is the national sport -- the only unchanging spectator activity where a fine time is had by all, save the turkey who got caught this time. That is the fourth rule: Americans love a good scandal, and politicians usually manage to give them one. Thus, the Tom DeLay story is the epitome of national delight. Whether DeLay broke the law or the Texas prosecutor who claims he did is a Democratic hack out to make a name for himself matters little. A good time will be had by all, and in a few years no one will remember it. Does anyone remember Bert Lance or Richard Secord?

A fascinating look at the Plame scandal in the light of covert operations in general.

I am a Poster Child for Neo Conservativism (and I Feel Fine)

I'm a poster child for neo-conservativism. Since George Bush took power, I've become a homeowner and a business owner. I assiduously compare insurance policies and make my choice as an informed, empowered consumer. I shop at large chain stores where the advantages of globalization give me superior prices while also exercising my right to buy locally grown organic meat and produce. So how come my predicament seems so much more precarious now than it ever used to?

Nowadays I pay a premium for health insurance. Laws that used to protect me when I was on company insurance no long apply, so I have no choice but to rely on charity or pay out of pocket for some of my daughter's required treatments. I have catastrophic insurance because I can't afford comprehensive. If I ever get a chronic illness, I'll be stuck on catastrophic unable to get comprehensive until the chronic illness is cured.

What if the unthinkable happens - I become too sick to work. Since I have my own business, there's no vacation time and no sick time. After a few weeks, I'll be broke. Bankruptcy law will probably be of no help to me.

It's true that I am happier in my work and home situation than I was before, but that situation is less stable. I'm forced to engage in a considerably more fierce Darwinian struggle for the well being of my family.

Yet on paper, I look like an economic success story. I'm just what the neo-conservative administration points to when they want to show everyone what a great job they're doing. The irony is painful indeed.

Seattle Saved! Millions Cheers!

I've just figured out how to solve all our transportation problems!

Problem is, you've got to read my latest post on Metroblogging Seattle to find out how.

Bruce Sterling Long Now Podcast on the Singularity

I don't listen to podcasts, but today I decided to try one out. For my first podcast I chose Bruce Sterling's Long Now lecture, and it is brilliant. I heartily recommend checking it out.

Find out whey we've heard of designer babies, but not designer toddlers; why futurists don't have children, but people who don't have children don't have a future; what to do if you get a cybernetically enhanced IQ of 800 and it's a drag.

Here I Come Metroblogging Seattle

A while back I got a gig as a regular poster on a Seattle blog site, Cityscene, only to discover that they are rather shady characters who out and out copied another Seattle blog site, Metroblogs Seattle.

Now I'm writing for Metroblogs Seattle. So go read my first post (a rant on Seattle drivers) and leave a comment.

Morning Links Roundup

A few interesting things percolate over my coffee this morning:

Xeni says AS BLOGS become big business, Internet giants have begun trying to profit from new forms of journalism, including war coverage. The results are not encouraging.

Bob Bly asks why get excited about blogging when there's no ROI.

Interdictor laments It seems that the press has determined the hand-wringing and finger-pointing to be the most newsworthy goings-on in New Orleans. What do you think about this?

The NYTimes notes that with Arctic ice disappearing, nations prepare to fight over the revealed natural bounty.

This last story contains a little blurb that warmed my heart: Three years ago Canada began patrolling the most remote Arctic reaches with army rangers, a mostly Eskimo force of 1,500 irregulars. Actually, the Rangers are much more than three years old. I can attest to this because I grew up in the north and worked with some of these people.

The Interview

Something a little offbeat at 2:31 am:


The Interview

Crossed Paths

Doug, whom I have never met, posted a comment on my last post, so I stopped by his blog. His theme is daily personal reflections inspired by the New York Times Crossword. What a great theme for a blog! I'm definitely going to start doing the NYT Crossword again.

A Redeisigning We Will Go

I'm finally redesigning the blog again. I'll be doing this incrementally. Please sing out if it makes your eyes hurt.

Katrina, Terrorism, Earthquakes, Avian Flu ... Resiliency?

These are interesting times, as in "my God, my God, we're all going to die" interesting.

Evelyn Rodriguez takes a shot at the age of anxiety. I do love to see someone take a smart bite out of received wisdom.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I agree with her.

Since September 11 out fascination with anxiety and the impending doom has only increased.

In business, although nobody likes to talk about it, the sales buzzword of the day is risk. Sure the glossy publications, seminars, and white papers are full of opportunity and the promise of technology. But in the field, the sales force are talking about risk.

Our local civic dialog is currently dominated by our bizarre inability to grapple with known impending problems: the failure of the monorail and how it dooms us to a future of permanent gridlock, and the dangerous Alaskan Way Viaduct, due to fall down and kill hundreds in the next earthquake.

Science journalism, still scarred that their warnings about New Orleans were not heeded, now shouts even louder about climate change and the avian flu.

And our national voice is constantly shouting the inevitability of terrorist attack and the endless mantra of preparedness.

There's no doubt in my mind that this is the age of anxiety.

But what really matters (and I hope Evelyn will agree with me) isn't how we name our age, but how we live it. Age of Resiliency, Evelyn suggests, and she's onto something. When the primary text is doom and destruction, the subtext always turns to rebirth.

May I suggest an exercise? The next time you find yourself contemplating risk, ask yourself what remains to you if your fears come to pass. When you lose your job or your house falls down, what will you have left? Take a very careful inventory of what you find. Nurture those people and resources and they will nurture you.

Blogging the Earthquake from Lahore

Bloggers on the Metroblogging Lahore are blogging the Asia earthquake.

Metroblogs previously mentioned on this blog here and here.

Alien Planty things well Endowed with Eyes

Spotted this on Boing Boing this morning, an astouding Quicktime video by 1st Ave Machine.

Doin' High Tech the Low Tech Way

Gleaned from Infoaesthetics:

crochetted Lorentz manifold
stitched tracrt output

Legendary Seattle

Over at Metroblogging Seattle, I found a link to a LiveJournal discussion of Seattle Urban Legends. I never knew about the 13 steps to hell. Anybody know any good Seattle-based urban legends?

Here are a few of my favorites:

• The Starbucks CEO set up a sprinkler system that sprays over his fence into a public park to spray a bench where Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love used to sit because Nirvana fans are always hanging out there.


• Police found a giant python hanging on the window ledge of the apartment at the corner of Broadway and Denny.


• Ghosts in: Pike Place Market and the Seattle Underground.

Sardines and Morbidity.

As I bite into a sardine sandwich, it occurs to me "maybe this is the last time I'll bit a sardine sandwich before the bird flu epidemic strikes. Maybe terrorists will detonate a nuke before I eat breakfast tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow morning a cyclist will cut in front of me and I'll run them down before I can stop." World changing events seemt to be comming a mite too thick and fast for my taste lately. That and I'm in a morbid mood.

Silenced

So I just discovered that for some reason my blog is not being indexed by Technorati. It's sort of like thinking you're part of a conversation, then suddenly finding out that no one can hear you.

Serenity, Firefly, and some Superior Role-playing

It's a special kind of feeling to sit down with a group of friends on a regular basis and create something really good. That's the kind of feeling that I'm getting from Brandon's Firefly RPG.

I've been an RPG player for dozens of years, and lately I've come to realize that it's been a lot of shoveling to unearth a very few nuggets of gold. Fortunately, there's a community of game designers who are dedicated to broadening the scope of RPGs to include more and better gaming experiences.

One of these games is Vincent Baker's spectacular Dogs in the Vineyard. This is the game that Brandon has adapted into his Firefly RPG (note that this is in no way connected to the recently released Serentiy RPG which, I am told, is quite adequate).

Thanks to the two fisted conflict resolution design of Dogs, we've got a game where we can had a knock down fistfight or a hard edged character interaction like we've come to expect from Serenity. Yeah, any decent RPG can simulate a gunfight, but how many can simulate the tooth and nail interaction between Captain Reynolds and Simon Tam in a way that's just as gripping and meaningful to the players?

Basically, every time we sit down it's like we're creating our own episode of Firefly, and that's got to be a good thing.

Read the actual play report of our first session here.
Fins some design discussion regarding the game here.

CityScene and MetBlogs in Seattle

As mentioned previously, I was given a spot on the new Seattle CityScene blog as a regular columnist for Seattle. So this morning I was researching a post on the Seattle Viaduct by doing a Technorati search, when I ran across the Metroblogging Seattle.

As you can see, the two sites utilize a similar concept and a similar design. There are a few difference too. Metroblog seems to be more established, having about 30 cities. Metblog's a little more feature rich too, with a technorati cosmos link and a Wiki (altogether the Wiki could use some updating).

Now I'm really wondering what CityScene can do to distinguish itself. I do believe that there's room for more than one (or two or three or four) city blog aggregators, but I think they need to do something special to stand out.

Take a look at the recent proliferation of city review sites. You've got Citysearch with an established audience, Judy's Book is a members only community, and Insider Pages goes for a stronger social networking component.

But if CityScene continues to look like MetBlogs, I'm not sure how much value that brings. Any comments on this? What does a city blog aggregator need to do to stand out?

UPDATE
Metroblogs has caught on. Read about the shadiness here.

UPDATE 2
Seems like this story has made Boing Boing.