Open Media Boston Blog

Open Media Boston Gets Nice Plugs from Noted Media Mavens

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:41:00 +0000

When I first launched Open Media Boston in March 2008 (although I actually started preparatory work back in July 2007), I knew it was probably going to be a long time before the publication got much recognition from nationally-known media experts. That's because OMB was not only a new news outlet, but we were trailblazing a new news model - the specifics of which I will soon begin discussing more in public - that I wanted to present in a low-key way in practice over many months. Rather than in hyperbole-laden press releases. I figured that if we did a decent job, OMB would get noticed in new media circles. And it's obviously important that we get some attention if OMB is really going to succeed and stick it out over the long haul. But there was no way to know in advance if that would ever come to pass.

Then suddenly, over the last couple of weeks, we've started getting more positive attention in a shorter time span than we have heretofore. Which is certainly gratifying. We've been working hard week in and week out for almost two years now - quite a long time for an experimental social media operation like ours. So it's nice to get some validation of our efforts from people that think deeply about the promise and perils of the new journalism.

First, Michele McLellan of the Reynolds Journalism Institute added OMB to her list of "promising online news organizations" on her Knight Digital Media Center blog. That was way cool of her, so I called her up and told her how much we appreciated our inclusion.

Then, through friends at Free Press, the entire OMB staff had the opportunity to hang out a bit with Robert McChesney and John Nichols (both Free Press founders) at the Cambridge, MA stop on their speaking tour in support of their new book "The Death and Life of American Journalism." Which was a fun and informative evening from start to finish. And not only did they say nice things about us to the crowd at the Cambridge event, but they went on to plug us on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show two days later.

I don't automatically assume that either development will lead to exactly the kind of outcome that can improve Open Media Boston's chances of long term success. But it's still an excellent sign that our project is getting some positive vibes sent our way by people who are key figures in the construction of a new (and hopefully better) journalism.

Howard Zinn, Historian and Optimist, 1922-2010

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:48:00 +0000

"No, it's not true!"

Those were my words of denial last night when I first heard Howard Zinn had died.

There's so much to say, I'm at a loss for words. He was a hero and a mentor and someone who helped bolster my belief that humanity is basically good.

"I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?)," Howard wrote a few days after the 2004 presidential election, "but I keep encouraging people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests."

He wore many hats and accomplished many things - historian, author, teacher, playwright, orator, television producer - but it was his unflappability that I hope people remember most.

In March 2008, colleague Chuck Rosina and I recorded Howard and Professor Irene Gendzier at a symposium on empire and war at Harvard Law School. During the question and answer period, a student criticized Irene and Howard as "naive and impractical" for proposing an immediate US troop withdrawal from Iraq and asking them why, after so many decades of activism, "have groups of your persuasion accomplished so very little?"

Howard seemed a little angry at this student's ignorance but kept his emotions in check. "So here's what you're saying, I think, 'we haven't changed policy, therefore we've failed, therefore there's something wrong with what we're saying.'"

"Well, you have to examine what you're saying," Howard continued, "and see if it's right or wrong. I examine what we're saying about withdrawal from Iraq and I conclude we're saying the right thing. And you say, 'but our policy hasn't changed.' And I point to the fact that any time you look at any movement that is going on, before it succeeds, it has failed.

And you can look at the Black people in the South after they've been doing this and that and the other thing, and nothing has changed and you say 'see, you must do something different; must be something wrong with your tactics, you failed.'

No, the tactics of protest and resistance and spreading knowledge and agitation and civil disobedience, those are the tactics that have been used historically, and are still being used. There are no glamorous new tactics, that are required in order to bring about change. What is required is persistance and patience. Not the patience of passivity but the patience of action, continued action."

Author, social critic, and comedian Barry Crimmins agreed to come on the radio show this Sunday to help Marc Stern and I remember and reminisce about Howard. Barry's taking this very hard, noting that Howard was a father figure to him. Barry also is writing about his friend and mentor, saying that one of Howard's most endearing features was his voice: he could scold governments and sooth his audience at the same time, his words always articulate and never shrill.

After a long hiatus away from the grind of the road, Barry told me he's considering touring again, to speak-out about the issues important to Howard and to fill some of the void that inevitably will be left by Howard's absence.

"I have never felt so despondent over the death of an 87 year old man," says Barry.

Sums it up for me too.

Hang In There Baby!

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:24:00 +0000

Like that poster cat hanging on for dear life, I’m going waaaay out on a limb to make a bold prediction: Martha Coakley will win the Senate election.

I’m not saying this is equally a sure thing as predicting Jack E. Robinson will lose any election in which he takes part.

But there’s a new paradigm developing in the minds of Republicans that their guy, Scott Brown, can turn a blue state red and I’m just not buying it.

[By the way, please read the editorial by OMB’s Jason Pramas who giggles at the way Repubs have co-opted the color traditionally associated with communists…]

Why am I prognosticating a Coakley win on Tuesday? Because I don’t believe you base a new paradigm on ONE poll.

Recently, a voter survey originating from Suffolk University in Boston put Brown slightly ahead in the race. Oh my gosh, you would have thought the editors at all the local TV and radio stations and networks such as CNN had lost their minds at the exact same moment. A collective hysteria, if you will, which gained momentum through the bloviating of pundits desperate for an upset to talk about.

After all, who’s going to win big money gambling on two great teams with close odds (the Colts and the Saints in the Super Bowl) meeting to decide the victor when an underdog (the Jets anybody?) can be elevated to the role of supreme spoiler?

Secondly, much of the discussion is being driven by television commercials for and against the two candidates and extensively paid for by political action groups from outside the state.

[By the way, congratulations to all the broadcast stations on all the revenue this election has generated for them in campaign ads. I hope we see an increase in hiring across the TV and radio industries.]

But short of Brown’s calling Coakley a puppet and Coakley accusing her opponent of being anti-choice, how much will voters remember of all the vitriol once they step into the booth? Very little is my guess.

And so we have the mythology of Scott Brown, languishing in obscurity in the Massachusetts state legislature, rising up to slay the Kennedy mystique (a bit of a mythology itself) and the “in the back pocket of the Democratic machine” state Attorney General Coakley.

The problem with this theory of Republican ascension is that the vast majority of voters in MA belong to the ranks of the unenrolled; nearly half of all registered voters in fact. And trying to predict what they will do is like figuring out what kind of a season Daisuke Matsusaka will have.

It’s true that during the 1990’s and early aughts, Massachusetts voters installed Republican Governors and in the legislature, overwhelmingly Democrats. Former Governor Michael Dukakis has said he believes this phenomenon came from voters who believed one party should keep the other in check. But in the aftermath of the social and economic devastation wrought by the Cheney/Bush administration and a Republican controlled Congress, has there been any evidence that independents are ready to vote for gridlock rather than maintain Democratic control of the Senate?

Not at all…

Are people angry at and scared of double digit unemployment, tens of thousands of foreclosures, and cuts to education, welfare, and municipal services of all stripes. Yes, of course. But are they thrilled that federal stimulus money is filtering down to cities and towns and non-profits doing all sorts of recovery work in neighborhoods, and that the cost, for example, of having COBRA – the federal program that guarantees health insurance for families of people who lose their jobs – was slashed by two thirds by the Obama administration and recently extended for another 18 months?

They should be…

In this humble opinion, voters in Massachusetts are more sophisticated than either party gives them credit for. Citizens will remember that if recent history teaches them anything, it’s that members of the party of big business (the elephants) constantly scream bloody murder about taxes and yet gainfully accept subsidized health benefits and all the perks that taxes provide them: like police and fire protection.

Oh, and the two wars the Republicans have been saying we can’t do without for the past decade.

Finally, if you live in the Bay State, don’t forget to actually cast a vote on Tuesday; regardless of the weather. And don’t fall prey to the trap into which the professional gamblers would have you stumble: that a confident “poker” face should cause you to fold your cards.

4chan vs Sharecash: Sharecash Responds

jessekirdahyscalia@openmediaboston.org (Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:26:00 +0000

Our recent article on 4chan's DDoS attack against Sharecash has garnered quite a lot of attention. As a matter of fact, it has been our most popular story so far (measured by weekly traffic). Most of that attention has come from 4chan regulars and sympathizers, but Open Media Boston also received correspondence from the owner of Sharecash and one of its more vocal (and less sensible) supporters. While these emails were not worth responding to individually, they were hysterical, and are worth sharing with our readers, who we think will appreciate them.

In the first email, Sharecash's owner, who reluctantly identified himself only as "Paul" for (justifiable) fear of retribution by the 4chan mob, took issue with Open Media Boston's reportage of the facts and our framing of the story. Discrepancies between Paul's and the 4chan community's perceptions of the weekend's events were addressed in updates to the article itself and need not be repeated here. Instead, let us focus on Paul's complaints of our framing.

Complaint One: You Say Attack, I Say Spam

According to Paul, Sharecash users who consistently posted child pornography and viruses to 4chan should not have been called "attackers." Paul wrote, "People who posted links are not 'attackers', that is a completely incorrect term. Spammers, perhaps, would be more appropriate, but 'attackers' is totally out of context. An example of attackers would be the people who attempted to flood our servers."

We used the word "attackers" because the repugnant content and sheer volume of posts to 4chan effectively shut down several of the site's most active boards. The constant flood of child pornography and links to viruses drove users out of 4chan boards, preventing them from using the services the site was designed to offer, just like the DDoS attack Paul claimed did not affect Sharecash's server prevented its users from utilizing Sharecash's services. This might not be illegal, but it is unethical.

It would be petty of me to start listing definitions of the word "attack" and explaining why so many of them are appropriate to exactly this situation. So I'll just pick my favorite and provide a link to the rest. Attack (n.): "The onset of a corrosive or destructive process." Sounds about right, no?

Complaint Two: Actually, Let's Not Say Spam

After calling those Sharecash users who attacked 4chan "spammers," Paul insisted our depiction of Sharecash as a "cash for spam" service (as was written in the article's title) is "not only derrogatory [sic] but shows a lack of understanding of internet marketing." This statement implies that Sharecash does not pay users to create spam, but in the very next sentence Paul defended those exact actions, writing that "nearly every single online income source, from Google Adwords to CPA Networks have people who spam their links to earn money," and that "these companies, too, don't ban the users, because it is not against their ToS nor illegal."

So which is it? Is Open Media Boston's characterization of Sharecash as an outlet that encourages users to spam unfair, or did it just hit Sharecash in a sore spot? We really can't say because just one sentence later, Paul wrote that Sharecash "never enouraged [sic] users to spam," but that doing so "was not against our ToS." I'm really confused now. Doesn't paying users who spam sites encourage them to do so? And if Sharecash was concerned with being perceived as a legitimate marketing service — rather than as an ATM machine for script kiddies and blackhatters — wouldn't they explicitly forbid spamming in their terms of service? I think so.

Anyone who has any lingering doubts about the nature of Sharecash's business model need only read the "Money Making" section of the site's forum. It includes topics like "Make money playing WoW," which advertises cash for (virtual) gold services, and "YouTube Commenting and Rating Service," which advertises YouTube comments and ratings for a fee. It is clear these are conversations between Sharecash users who buy and sell information and services intended to bypass other websites' terms of service agreements and spam protections.

The most telling fact, however, is that more than half the topics in this forum include referral links to Sharecash users' other sordid and disreputable sites. That's right... Half the posts on Sharecash's forums are spammers spamming spammers.

Complaint Three: Open Media Boston Encourages DDoSers

In the final paragraph of his email, Paul suggested Open Media Boston encourages organizations to utilize DDoS attacks to achieve their goals, and offered ~~a veiled threat~~ heartfelt concern that such a stance "could lead to a bad reputation" as our audience grows. The article in question briefly explains what a DDoS attack is and touches on the moral and ethical implications of recruiting users' systems into a botnet without their knowledge or consent via trojans or other malicious code. The article examines the then recent DDoS attacks against Iranian targets as an example of how such tactics disrupt civilian networks, but can potentially harm isolated targets without compromising network infrastructure or the systems of unwitting users.

It's an excellent read, I think, and broaches important issues, but at no point does it advocate the usage of DDoS attacks to achieve one's goals. To the contrary, it suggests that without clear international conventions to limit network warfare, the public Internet is likely to suffer. The final sentence warns, "The world has yet to confirm a case of state sponsored cyber warfare against a civilian network, but it seems foolish to think this critical component of a country's government, economy and culture would not be subject to attack just the same as any other."

I Can't Quit You, Dom

The second email, which came from "a very dedicated user of ShareCash," Dominick, had us gasping for breath. Here are the best parts:

First of all you claim that users have been posting and I cite: "... disgusting child porn..." I'm a regular 4chan visitor but I have never seen a post containing such content, maybe jailbait at most, or adults who look like children. As for malicious links and viruses, I cannot judge as I never click those links, I don't download from sharecash nor am I interested in such content.

The first point is just funny. Was there a reason write any of that? And then Dominick, a "dedicated" Sharecash user, reveals he doesn't download from the site and isn't interest in content hosted on it?

Also I don't see any paragraph in which the other side of the story is told apart from the two later added updates. The owner of ShareCash is a college student, as such he does not have sufficient time to cooperate as much as 4chan desires, this hasn't been mentioned by 4chan nor by your site, while it is an important factor in the matter.

Dominick didn't see Sharecash's version of events. Except for in the updates where we outline Sharecash's version of the events. Is Dominick unhappy we didn't rewrite the entire article to his liking? If so, we recommend he start his own website where he can blog about spam and blackhat marketing as much as he likes. Oh wait, he already has two such sites. Good job, Dominick!

Dominick's second point is irrelevant. 4chan's creator supposedly is (or was recently) a college student, a status many of 4chan's users likely share. Sharecash's owner has created a service that, by its nature, encourages users to propagate their links as widely as possible to large audiences. If Sharecash's users try to achieve this goal by violating other websites' terms of service agreements, Paul had better be prepared to deal with those users.

Third, a site owner can never be held responsible for the actions of their users. The only responsibility they have is cooperating with federal authorities of the country the website is based in. This has been like that since the beginning of the internet and will always be that way, again not mentioned.

To the first point, as mentioned just above, Paul created a service that encourages users to widely distribute referral links. If those users violate other sites' terms of service in the process, he can expect some phone calls. He might not be legally required to take action against those users, but by virtue of incentivizing and enabling them, he is responsible and should accept that. By banning posts to Chan sites, it seems Paul has accepted responsibility. Good on him.

Dominick's last point here sounds like dogma. "The Internet has always been, and will always be..." That's nonsense and is again irrelevant.

At the end of his email, Dominick wrote, "As you might be able to see my English isn't too proficient, not everyone has English as primary language." I simply don't believe this. Up until the dropped indefinite article ("a") in this sentence, Dominick displayed a perfectly correct — if somewhat simplistic — understanding of the English language. Moreover, Google searches for Dominick's full name and email address revealed only English language content. This language disclaimer just sounds like an excuse for what Dominick knew was a baseless argument made with slipshod reasoning.

Want Open Media Boston to Make Fun of Your Complaints?

Email us your comments and complaints. If they're as stupid as these two, we'll put them on our blog.

Random Ruminations On Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:39:00 +0000

Reporters writing about WGBH’s bid to buy classical music WCRB Radio, turning 89.7 FM primarily into a news/talk station, and thus competing with NPR powerhouse WBUR are missing the point.

It’s not about who wins the ratings battle; the folks at ‘GBH understand they lost that battle a long time ago.

Earlier this year, WGBH forged a deal with WBUR to collaborate on a new project funded for at least two years by the Corporation for Public Corporation establishing what is being called a “Local Journalism Center.”

According to the original call for funding proposals, station groups will be expected to investigate and report on a particular topic, such as the economy or immigration. CPB bigwigs consider these collegial efforts between regional public radio stations (and TV stations and possibly websites such as Open Media Boston) a part of a crucial effort “to expand local news gathering and digital platform reporting capabilities.”

To be sure, making WGBH nearly all news is an extension of this and other initiatives that recognize the potential audience magnet that news, talk, and public affairs formats can be.

In the Boston metropolitan area sports talk and right wing leaning talk shows originating at WEEI-AM, WRKO-AM, WTKK-FM, and most recently WBZ-FM, The Sports Hub, are proof positive that conventional over the air listeners as well as internet users will flock to these sort of broadcasts.

And while ‘BUR only reaches 4 percent of Boston area listeners according to the Arbitron and Nielson research firms, that figure (plus their fundraising successes) make them a flagship station within the NPR universe.

All of which is being counted upon by WGBH management to help make their radio station relevant again. 89.7 FM, the ratings companies tell us, is being listened to by less than 1 percent of Boston area ears.

Which is remarkable for a station that has a 100,000 watt transmitter and reaches New Hampshire and Connecticut on a bad day.

Further evidence that both stations will be acting like friends rather than fiends towards each other comes from a recent internal station memo from WBUR General Manager Paul LaCamera.

Apparently leaked to the Boston Globe, LaCamera criticizes WGBH for “overreaching” in that station’s attempt to buy WCRB.

But he could have said much worse, and in a remarkably conciliatory tone, points out that at one time WBUR itself was guilty of what some have called a smug and holier than thou approach to all aspects of their internal and external operations.

WBUR, based at Boston University, will lead the Local Journalism Center project, along with WGBH and WFCR in Amherst and possibly other stations. Sources tell me that WBUR has decided to pursue the immigration angle as its two year reporting arc.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Speaking of WGBH and WBUR, I bumped into former TV and radio public news and talk show host Christopher Lydon on the Boston Common on Thursday.

In a rush and walking past the site of the Alan Khazei Senate Campaign kick-off, Lydon asked when the event would start. Not soon enough to allow him to listen a while and make his train. He politely declined an offer to take some of my audio recordings from the event. (Always on the look-out to make a buck and expand the network, eh David?)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And speaking of radio, this report just in from the watchdogs at business publication Crains New York, ""RADIO: It Ain’t Dead Yet".

The gist, according to Nielson Research is that young people ARE listening to music, talk and other types of programming the old fashioned way, on traditional radio sets. If accurate, I have one thing to say to all you new-tech aficionados and media doomsayers: raspberries!

One caveat: Nielson is new to the world of radio ratings and this release may be their way of getting lots of attention from station owners and managers. According to the story in Crains, Arbitron “did not respond to a request for comment.”

Et Tu, Bernstein?

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:00:00 +0000

David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix saw fit to trash the At-Large Boston City Council Candidates Forum we held last night at Roxbury Community College in his Talking Politics blog today, saying "Man, I do love me some political theater. I went looking for some at an at-large Boston City Council forum earlier this evening at Roxbury Community College, but the poorly-promoted event had more candidates on stage than voters in the audience (this may actually have been literally true, once you subtract the press and candidates' aides from the audience). Yeesh."

First of all, Bernstein couldn't have stayed overlong at the event because there were over 70 attendees to the forum - although people were predictably slow to show up. Second, there were certainly aides and supporters present, but we estimate that those folks made up perhaps a third of the audience.

What Bernstein doesn't know - and likely didn't stick around to find out - is who the other attendees were ... and more to the point, what organizations they represented. Major community organizations like Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Chinese Progressive Association, and the Boston Workers Alliance.

Also, the event drew 11 out of the 15 candidates. Some ducked out to other events before the forum concluded, but a majority stayed to the end and spent a healthy chunk of time giving thoughtful answers to audience questions.

Finally, and most germane to this discussion, Bernstein slapped the forum down before bothering to ask the editors of Open Media Boston why we decided to do the event, how much lead time we had to work with, and why we held it at the RCC Media Arts Center instead of a smaller venue on campus.

Our answers are simple. We decided to do the event only two weeks ago when it became evident that there were very few opportunities for the at-large candidates to gather for a media-sponsored forum - compared to the number and quality of the mayoral race events.

We did it in a short time frame because we thought it was important that such a forum should take place before the primary later this month to give the full field a chance to hold forth, and get some extra publicity from our publication and the other community publications present like the Bay State Banner and the Dorchester Reporter.

We did it at the Media Arts Center because it's a very nice facility in the heart of the city right off the T and it was available for a very reasonable rate. We knew it was going to be too big for the crowd we thought we'd manage to pull in a few days, but the excellent a/v facilities there make it a very easy place to get good audio, video and photographic records of the proceedings - which we could then make available to our audience, and to other community publications (our event coverage will be up on our main site later this week).

The big question that Bernstein doesn't ask is the very one we asked ourselves before going to the trouble of overextending our very small staff and financial resources to pull the forum off in 2 weeks. That is, why don't larger publications like the Phoenix, Metro, Globe, Herald and others use their still-not-inconsiderable resources to put together a much bigger forum for the at-large candidates? Why just focus on the mayoral candidates? Aren't the council races important - especially the at-large races? Don't they have a critical impact on city politics in the near term?

We don't think that Bernstein's snarky tone was warranted or especially public spirited in this case. We did what we did in the public interest - which we believe is very much a critical part of being an urban publication of record.

In that spirit, we extend the hand of friendship to Bernstein and the Phoenix and enjoin them to work with us do a bigger and better event (with several weeks lead time) for the final 8 At-Large Boston City Council candidates in advance of the November elections. We would naturally hope that the Phoenix will see their way clear to bankrolling the event.

If the Phoenix is uninterested in staging such a public forum with us, we understand, but would say that it speaks volumes about their level of concern about the sad state of democratic discourse in Boston politics in particular and American politics in general.

MA(ck) The Knife?

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:11:00 +0000

All this talk of tagging sharks has me really creeped out.

As an Aquarius, I ought to love the water. But the image of Great Whites leaping out of the pounding surf; sharp teeth gleaming with blood and bits of seal entrails, has me tangled up in fear and loathing.

(I know they haven't done that off Chatham yet; I'm just can't resist Discovery Channel and "Shark Week.")

Also, I've never gotten over the sight of Robert Shaw being consumed toes to head by "Bruce."

But let me assure you there is deeper political meaning to all this carnivorous fish activity.

They say "when sharks circle, there must be blood in the water." So let's think about what's happening right now in Massachusetts.

We've lost a revered (by most people) elected official in Edward Kennedy. And his nephew Joe has declined to run for the office. That means it's open season on the Senate seat with representatives and lawyers galore coming out of the woodwork. First Coakley, then Lynch, and Brown, now possibly Capuano. (Maybe even Curt Schilling, and his bloody sock is sure to attract other meat eaters!)

The sharks - and I refer to them as such beasts with love in my heart - sense the blood of the Kennedys in the water and are preparing to engulf and devour.

Over at the State House, things look fishy as well. He has a fine new hip, but Governor Deval Patrick's approval ratings are approaching the Marianas Trench. (Folks, that's the deepest part of the ocean!)

Carcharodon Carcharias and their toothy brethren have their sights on Patrick's office. Tied to people's perception of President Obama as much as he is, the Governor better hope the outcome of the health care reform debate leaves the Democrats singing "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" and not "Big Eyed Fish" by the Dave Matthews Band.

And speaking of health care: all over this nation, lobbyists for the insurance industry are salivating over tasty morsels of "we told you the Commonwealth Connector and health insurance mandates would be too expensive to sustain and would never hold up as models for national reform."

Of course, the hungry fish are not all of the right flipper variety. "People before profits" lefties from organizations across the state are banding together like schools of piranha to take bites out of such titanic whales as Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.

Hmmm, all of these fish tales are making me hungry. Now I just need to find some mercury free, organically raised, Massachusetts bay harvested, CSF approved, cod.

Or some supermarket-purchased, scroddy fish sticks. Politics has lowered my expectations, you know.

We Must Have Two Senators

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:34:00 +0000

Some pundits and politicians would spin Ted Kennedy's request to change the state law and allow Governor Deval Patrick to choose a replacement Senator rather than hold an election in 5 months as a left wing vs. right wing affair. Or Democrat vs. Republican.

I disagree. I think it's about "no taxation without representation."

We must have two Senators representing Massachusetts in Congress. The issues before that much maligned legislature are too important.

So here's my prescription: the Democrats who blocked former Governor Mitt Romney from appointing an interim Senator when John Kerry ran for President in 2004 must apologize profusely for changing the law. They need to hang their heads and beg forgiveness. Then they should change the law back to the way it was and give the Governor the power to pick someone to fill the vacant seat as long as that person agrees not to run in the eventual election next year.

The Republicans will get their chance. (Even if they nominate Kerry Healey). In the meantime, Massachusetts needs full representation.

Turning Point for Open Media Boston?

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:27:00 +0000

The Weekly Dig reports this week that the New York Times Company - owner of the Boston Globe and Boston.com - will start charging people to view the on-line content. Earlier, the Associated Press quoted a Globe spokesperson as saying, "the Globe has been conducting market research to determine what readers would be willing to pay, and weighing that against any potential loss of advertising."

Whee doggies!

This could be Open Media Boston's moment in the sun.

If the progenitors and prognosticators are right, internet users expect their web content to be free. To the extent that on-line viewers go to Boston.com for their daily dose of news, sports and weather happening right now, but will be prevented by a wall of subscription fees, I'm betting they will turn to well-written, independent, story rather than ego driven, local publications.

Just like Open Media Boston.

So why wait? Browse over to our site NOW before it gets so crowded, the pages are as cramped as an elevator at Fenway during a Yankees series.

We only ask you do one little bit of homework. While you're enjoying the arts, news, and techie coverage, can you please figure out how we're going to pay for this little slice of journalistic heaven?

Cheers,
Dave "your friendly neighborhood news editor" Goodman

Jason's Favorite Photos: Special Near-Infrared Film Edition

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:20:00 +0000

Hi folks! It's been a couple of weeks since I posted my latest fav pics ... but as previously promised, I just got a bunch of shots back from the photo lab that I took using Ilford SFX 200 near-infrared film on my old Pentax ME Super with an Osawa 49mm Red 25 filter onboard. Even though the lab's scans of the prints I got have come out a bit foggy (quite different that the nice sharp prints themselves), I still think these scanned images are worth displaying here. The near-infrared spectrum that the film and the filter create very interesting high contrast photos with a hyper-real feel to them. Best on very sunny days, the film also makes plants and bright surfaces show up as very light or white - which also makes for neat effects. Anyhow I very much like SFX 200, and if you shoot 35mm film I highly recommend that you check it out. [And if anyone can find it in their heart to donate me a professional high-quality film and negative scanner, I will inscribe that person's name onto the Open Media Boston Honor Roll of the Chariots of Fire.]

Reflections

Children at Greenway Fountain

Building on Bright Day

Sometimes People Look Like Cutouts

Windows and Shadow

Hidden Fountain

Ghost Building

Modernist Christ Statue

Burning Bush

Chimney and Sky

Tasty Gelato

Church on Bright Day

Tunnel Redux

This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

"You Can't Handle The Truth"

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:09:00 +0000

It's a reporter's nightmare.

A source knowingly gives you false information in order to subvert the search for truth or hides their identity as a way of masking less than honorable agendas and motivations.

And you publish or air that false information - usually in good faith, because you think the source is honest - thus perpetuating lies and misinformation.

At best, you look silly for not realizing you were "being played."

Something like that happened to me recently.

A man on the street, who gave his name as "Phil Davis" of Westwood, MA, agreed to speak with me briefly following a Veterans for Peace / International Socialist Movement protest against Egyptian attempts to stop an aid convoy from crossing the border into Gaza. He was very angry at the protesters; in fact anyone who would support helping the people living in Gaza, because the elected leadership of that territory come from Hamas. And Hamas, according to this man, (and frankly the governments of Israel and the United States as well) is a terrorist organization.

Now, we can debate endlessly what constitutes "terrorism:" from the plagues bestowed upon native North Americans by European explorers and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, all the way to the Katyusha rockets fired across the Gazan and West Bank borders towards Israel.

The point, I believe, is that in order to have an effective, meaningful conversation about differences in political opinion we have to trust each other.

However, "Phil Davis," rather than engendering trust acts like a bully, and goes way beyond the point of ever engaging in rational conversation.

"Phil Davis" it turns out, is Hillel Stavis, former owner of Wordsworth Books in Harvard Square, an active member of the political correctness pushing organizations CAMERA and The David Project, and self-appointed crusader on behalf of all things Israel.

I know this, because three sources came forward, after listening to my recorded interview with this man (www.openmediaboston.org/node/796) to say that "Phil" sounded just like "Hillel."

It's true, and the following video (http://tinyurl.com/mtcysy) convinces me that it's the same person.

Why am I spending so much time on this? Because Hillel Stavis goes from one event to another; from the Cambridge Peace Commission one day to a Harvard lecture the next, trying to impose "righteous" thinking on anyone with whom he disagrees.

Except, it turns out, the truth is much less important to "Phil/Hillel" than his pro-Israel agenda. So how can anyone believe anything he says, ever?

Sometimes, all we can hope for, in the words of Carl Bernstein, is the "best available version of the truth." However, Hillel and his ilk are manipulators, bending reality to fit their political world view.

Hmmm, sounds awfully like a recent former president and vice-president and their policy towards the truth.

If I were leading any discussion at any forum on any topic and Hillel Stavis raised his hand to speak, I would immediately ask him to declare his fealty to veracity; then take everything he says with a grain of salt.

So I've got egg on my face. I got duped by a professional sheister. But in my own defense, I did everything I promised. I published his quotes and aired our entire conversation on the radio.

The same integrity can't be ascribed to those who would lie and cheat to get their way.

The Zen of Brick and Mortar

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:34:00 +0000

So, I was buying printer cartridges and paper in my local neighborhood "mega" office store (that's sarcasm folks) the other day, having a discussion with the store clerk about the true meaning of "100% recycled;" offering that I enjoy speaking to a live human I can look in the eye and with whom I can make human contact, when she expressed the idea that "most people don't like to come into the store to shop; they like buying on the internet."

Setting aside the fact that the preceding is an awfully long run-on sentence, my colleagues at Open Media Boston (and a good chunk of the under 30 population) think I'm a Luddite because I refuse to Facebook and Twitter. I do all my audio editing on a computer, blog, text on my cell phone (somewhat reluctantly - ask my wife), instant message, and post to the website, but to some people that's not good enough.

No, I'm required to surf and search, google and bing, and hunt down my quarry (in this case a tri-color cartridge for an HP deskjet printer) like a leopard caught between the cross hairs of a Browning A-Bolt. (ok, I admit, I googled "big game hunting rifles." Hey, I never said it wasn't cool to have a library sitting on your desk!)

Who are all these virtual people, buying notebooks, blotters, office furniture, and paper clips, sight unseen, off the web? Are they chained to their desks?

Or are they at best shy and at worst misanthropic; so much so that the thought of being in proximity of other shoppers makes them cringe like a liberal at a Republican candidate's pledge for "no new taxes."

I have to admit: what the clerk said the other day can be observationally verified. A new mega-chain office supply store opened in Roslindale earlier this year, and the place is a mausoleum. Two city blocks wide and deep, there's hardly anyone shopping there. Not enough staff either. But how can you blame the corporate owners for keeping the workforce low, given the diminshing traffic of shoppers? What this accomplishes, of course, is an ever-widening spiral of low expectations on the part of consumers, stressed out workers, and capitalists who continue to live for the moment instead of thinking of the long-term ramifications on communities.

But I digress.

What a I wanted to say is that I like going to a brick and mortar stores with shelves and cash registers and (hopefully) customer-service minded employees and other citizens. I always try to engage people in conversation especially those that look like no one has spoken to them for ages without criticizing their work performance or the supper they burned last night or denied them insurance money for a pre-existing medical condition.

A little joke here, a nod of agreement between folks when some other customer embarrasses themselves with a silly question or complaint there...this is all missing from the internet buying experience. Convenient sure; but totally devoid of community.

Now don't go reminding me that I was in the store to begin with to buy stuff to feed the computer beast.

Life, like politics in Massachusetts, is messy.

Jason's Favorite Photos - Week of 7/26/09 (plus 7/27)

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:51:00 +0000

Here are my latest favorite pics. I actually didn't shoot that many last week; so I ended up adding a couple from Monday just to round things out a bit. I like the first three a bit more than the second two. I like the light towards sunset ... especially in the summer - although watching Boston's retail economy fall apart ... capitalist or not ... is pretty painful as storefront after storefront is covered in brown paper. Not a good sign.

Aveda No More

Summer Dusk

Summer Dusk #2

What Shall We Call This? Hmm ...

2192

Unless otherwise noted, all photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Jason's Favorite Photos - Week of 7/19/09

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 06:49:00 +0000

Hi again! Here are my latest favorite pics. I found this week's shoots especially challenging because of a lot of interplay of light and shadow on the bright days we've been having lately - and some indoor work, which can be tough.

Tunnel and Sky

The rest of this set I think could have been better, but I think they're close to being good shots ... the bird shot was particularly tricky because I was standing in the middle of the street trying not to freak it out ...

Cambridge University Storage

Baker at Hi-Rise Bakery

Cousin at Family Reunion

Dodgeball at Family Reunion

Robin on Fence

Unless otherwise noted, all photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Jason's Favorite Photos - Week of 7/12/09

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:30:00 +0000

Hi folks! Here's another batch of my photos for your comment/critique. I chose them either for technical merits or because I find them interesting in one way or another. In coming weeks, I'm planning to scan in some of the film photography I'm doing. For example, this past weekend I was shooting the near-infrared Ilford SFX 200 black-and-white film on my old Pentax ME Super. Can't wait to see what those pics look like.
[Note: Click photos to see them displayed at full size.]

Window Pots

Antique Window

Friend at Party ... Late Night, Dim Light
(shot handheld at low speed, high ISO, and
wide-open aperature - which generally doesn't
work very well - I did a corrected version, but
I like the feel of this picture as shot ...)

Man Through Fountain
(using Phoenix/Samyang 500 mm f/8 super-telephoto
reflector lens on a monopod from around 150 ft. away - not
a great shot by any means, but I'm surprised I got it on a low-end
older film lens without a tripod)

Unless otherwise noted, all photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Jason's Favorite Photos 7/4/09-7/5/09

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:06:00 +0000

I do a lot of photography every week that never gets seen by anyone; so I thought it would fun to start to post some of my favorites to this blog. I figure it might also encourage me to start posting more extracurricular writing here as well. I've been a very naughty editor/publisher - setting up this nice blog like 3 months ago and hardly using it at all. D'oh! Anyhow here are some pics for your enjoyment (or constructive critique ...). [Note: Click photos to see them displayed at full size.]

Boston Fireworks 7/4/2009 #1

Boston Fireworks 7/4/2009 #2

Boston Fireworks 7/4/2009 #3

Cambridge Building Reflection

Ladybug Shadow (at a North End Cemetery)

All photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Steve Jobs Reportedly Felting Better

jessekirdahyscalia@openmediaboston.org (Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:54:00 +0000

As a socially responsible nerd, I consider it part of my duties to find cool software and share it with you all, uncover big business' security lapses, and help friends and family out with their personal computing problems. It was in this last capacity that I found myself spending a few days remote accessing a computer that belonged to the parents of an old and close friend, reinstalling software, replacing lost (but fortunately backed up) files, and setting up a security plan after Dell's stellar, one-size-fits-all-problems advice to simply reformat and reinstall Windows.

Knowing I spent a lot of time on their computer, they tried to compensate me, but I refused (as any self-respecting nerd would, for friends). A week and a couple problems later, though, I decided I could reasonably ask for a favor in return. My friend's mother, Marguerite, produces the most exquisite needle felted dolls and I've been dying to ask her to make one for me for ages.

Although she had never felted the realistic likeness of a human before, Marguerite took on the task of felting me a beautiful Steve Jobs doll from this well-known portrait of him. And boy, was it a task. Marguerite told me, "Steve took me 50 hours, 30 of which were spent on his face. Roland [in the first photo above] took me about 17 hours, so much less because I didn't need to make him look like anyone specific. I could more or less go with whatever he turned out to be." All that time certainly shows in these photos. Thanks, Marguerite!

View more of Marguerite's felting.

Stepping Up and Out

noreply@blogger.com (Radioview) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:14:00 +0000

Yesterday, Jeanne and I attended a graduation-like ceremony for our son Benjamin - a junior at Fenway High School. The event, called "Stepping Up," took place in the Tower Auditorium at MASS College of Art. His class consists of about 70 kids so the size of the room seemed just right.

As is the tradition at this 25 year old Boston pilot school, graduating seniors line up opposite their junior colleagues, offer a bit of advice, and hand them a candle. It's a torch passing ritual that harkens back thousands of years. Because modern fire codes don't allow for lit torches in college auditoriums, the students used battery driven candles.

The senior's advice centered mostly on "working hard" and "being yourself." Juniors were warned to meet their senior project deadlines as early as possible. "Uh oh," I thought, my family has turned procrastination into an art form.

I was impressed by one student who quoted Leonard Peltier: "You don't have to be perfect to be holy..."

For a while now, I've been impressed also by Ben's ability to maintain his individuality and ideals in a culture that prizes - and often demands - conformity and obedience. It's not just the mohawk and earings; the kid has progressive values. I suppose his parents have something to do with that.

Roots and wings. That's what we give our children. The skills to fly the nest AND the keys to the condo, just in case.

We've also talked about not feeding him so he won't grow so big, but it's too late. He's reached six feet tall already and can look straight into my eyes. And when I look, I see me and my father and Ben's grandfather in there. Weird, huh? (Ed. Uh, that's the same person twice. I think he meant his grandfather, not Ben's.)

Best of luck to the rest of the graduating classes and the soon to be seniors, all of whom are going to have to re-evaluate their ties to corporate America and its wasteful, destructive appetite.

And start behaving as though community and kinship means something more than who's on the MySpace/FaceBook friend's list.

Love & Hate

jessekirdahyscalia@openmediaboston.org (Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:51:00 +0000

I am tired of working, but not sleepy. Damn my wrecked sleeping schedule. As I finish the night's tasks, I reflect on what I recently discovered and have started to love:

Mike Milosh
Dropbox (full review in OMB's tech section this Friday)
Homemade bread
Milagro Tequila (didn't know you needed to be 21 to view images of alcohol)
Twitter's new AJAX-ified "more" button

...And things I have started to hate:

Favicons (why aren't you working, you little .ico bugger?)
April 15th
Being unable to complain about how bad Battlestar Galactica has gotten

How was your Tuesday?

On the (Sometimes) Unbearable Weirdness of Reporting

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:35:00 +0000

Sometimes as a journalist, you go to events and your plans to cover them just don't work out. Yesterday was one of those times. I went over to the Pierre Menard Gallery - a very nice and rather public-spirited Cambridge art gallery that I have been to on a few occasions - to record a sort of minimally-advertised "conversation" between feminist icons Kate Millett and Catherine MacKinnon that I found out about by the old-fashioned method of seeing a flyer on a lamp post.

So I got there and there were about 25 people spiraling around towards some folding chairs set up in the front of the gallery space - the kind of nicely-dressed bohemian academics and artists that one comes to expect to see at these sorts of things. In the back were Millett and MacKinnon, who were just arranging themselves in their seats. Millett was fiddling with an old tape recorder and seemed a bit preoccupied with it, but MacKinnon was more or less unoccupied. I went up and introduced myself to both of them and and said I would be recording the event for Open Media Boston.

Even though I had just seen a guy from WMBR introduce himself and set up a recorder next to MacKinnon, she seemed a bit taken aback by my statement, and we chatted about creator rights for a couple of minutes. I explained that if they didn't want me to record I didn't have to, and that I'm active in the National Writers Union and quite understanding of the need for people to control their own work. MacKinnon, for her part, sort of argued with herself - recognizing that it was a public event, and that I technically had the right to record them for broadcast. The event moved towards getting started; so we never really finished the conversation.

German artist Heide Hatry, who was curating the exhibit of Millett's artwork that was the reason for her conversation with MacKinnon, got things started shortly after helping convince Millett that she was recording the event on video and would get Millett a copy, and that there was therefore no need for continuing to try to coax life into the old tape recorder.

So I started recording - not sure if I'd be using it or not for anyone other than myself - and taking photos. And the hour that followed unwound strangely. Millett alternately engaged and attacked the audience with a series of near non-sequiturs and rambling anecdotes. Having just written a piece about the Battlestar Galactica finale, Millett reminded me of no character so much as one of the Hybrids in that TV series - half-human, half-machine oracles that spouted seemingly nonsensical bursts of verbiage that occasionally focused like lasers into incredibly useful insights into the nature of existence and the universe.

Unfortunately, the purpose of the conversation was to have MacKinnon lead a guided theoretical exploration of Millett's artwork - which seemed to be the one subject that Millett had no intention of talking about.

Around 45 minutes into Millett's dialogue/diatribe on subjects as diverse as laws against second-hand smoke (which she opposed), the subordinate position of women in Iran (which she also opposed), her dad and mom (both of whom she seemed to like), her desire for a Viking funeral (which I vocally agreed with), and the war in Iraq (which she was against), Hatry finally said in a level but firm tone that Millett needed to answer MacKinnon's inquiries in one sentence before launching into verbal flights of fancy. Millett basically assented, and gave a more or less straight answer to one of MacKinnon's last questions - with some interlocutory help from MacKinnon and Hatry. And then they wrapped up the talk a few minutes later.

I waited for about 5 minutes near MacKinnon to try to talk to her again and finish figuring out if she cared about my running the audio recording I'd made in Open Media Boston. But MacKinnon was surrounded by 3 women who seemed to be Harvard students - and it became clear they'd be talking for a while. So I went over to the gallery owner, gave him my card, asked him to put me on his press list, and split.

Upon leaving, I mused about all the things I dislike about such events. The speakers and the curator and the owner were all fine - however odd the conversation. But the rarified "Art" with a capital A environment is always difficult for me on a class level. I mean it's hard to know people's class backgrounds in that kind of scene, yet it's a pretty sure bet that a lot of them come from money and/or privilege of various types. In that vein, the idea that I had to even discuss rights issues as a poor reporter (from the kind of working-class striving to middle class family background that I share with the vast majority of Americans) from a poor non-profit publication with a tenured professor from a powerful family with a bunch of successful books made me kind of sad. And was kind of representative of the feelings I get in crowds of such people.

Then I spent the past day dithering about whether I should run the audio after all. And finally, after discussing the matter with my wife (a feminist activist herself) and a couple of friends, I decided it would probably be a disservice to Millett to run the audio and that I didn't want to inadvertently disrespect MacKinnon. So I just bagged it.

There's no special moral here. Just another day in the life of a turn-of-the-millennium journalist dealing with famous and rich people in the rarefied air of one of the world's intellectual powerhouses. Just another choice about what to cover - up or down, move on to the next person/event/demonstration/whatever, and try to tell the truth or something like it to whomever is interested to hear. But thanks to the invention of blogs like this one - I get the luxury of discussing my otherwise internal process with a random audience. Which is nice because then I can get it out of my head, into print, and move on to the next story. Kind of like life that way, when all is said and done.

OMB Editor/Publisher Proclaims Self "Lord of the Battlestar Galactica Geeks"

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:04:00 +0000

SPOILER ALERT: Any Battlestar Galactica geeks who haven't seen the series finale yet should read no further ...

But for all other fans ... you may begin setting shrines up to me now (preferably made of sweet sweet candy) ... for I now anoint myself "Lord of the Battlestar Galactica Geeks!"*

Why, you may ask, would the mild-mannered editor (kinda) of a major (minor) metropolitan newspaper (news site) say such a thing?

Simple. I correctly predicted how the series would end - saying that since the new BG has followed the story arc of the old BG more closely than most people realize it only stood to reason that we'd see the appearance of "higher powers" in the show before its conclusion.

You can read my two comments yourself toward the bottom of the comments to this article ... and note the dates of the comments are currently listed as "9 weeks ago" - just after the original piece was published on 1/18/09

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/01/18/tv-review-battlestar-galactica-season-45-premiere-what-did-you-think/

Or check out screenshots of my comments here

http://screencast.com/t/vsL4ppUas

and here

http://screencast.com/t/py0bnAiJ

Now I didn't predict the exact ending - that is, I didn't realize that they'd actually make the conclusion of the last episode match the statements of the opening lines of the original series fairly closely: "There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens ..."

So maybe you all will have to build slightly smaller shrines to me given that fact.

But I'm feeling pretty smug nonetheless.

Kidding aside, I might go to the trouble of reviewing the last episode in the Open Media Boston Arts section because I actually think the producers kind of screwed the pooch - even though the last hour featured some of the most powerful dramatic moments in TV history.

*DISCLAIMER: May not be the actual Lord of the BG Geeks. Arena battle with other contenders to the throne TBA.

Renting Makes a Comeback

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:34:00 +0000

For years my wife and I have dreaded getting grilled by well-meaning relatives at family events with the same blunt question "when are you going to buy a house?" (naturally, the question "when are you going to have a baby?" always comes close on its heels).

But a nice piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in yesterday's Boston Globe shows that the financial crisis is causing many economists to join forces with progressives like myself that have been saying for years "what's so great about owning a house anyway?" Looks like there's some data coming in to back the usual retorts my spouse and I would level against the relatives (including amusing/sad data showing that people who own houses weigh 12 pounds more than those of us who don't on average).

What the piece misses though is a focus on vastly increasing government spending on public rental units. Renting will become a more attractive option to the extent it is decoupled from the private market ... and the extent to which more, better and more reasonably priced rental units are made available ...

I think pushing for more public money for public housing - together with instituting rent control and other needed housing regulations - is an important way to break the weakening stranglehold of a market mentality on those millions of us for whom markets like the housing market simply don't work. So it's worth having much more public discussion and debate on this issue on that merit alone.

Welcome to the New OMB Blog

jpramas@gmail.com (jpramas) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:46:00 +0000

For a while now, the other OMB editors and I have been dissatisfied with our initial blog solution on the main OMB website. It required us all to log into the same account, and we're not thrilled with the blog interface in Drupal out-of-the-box. We found ourselves mostly not making much use of it - which has been a drag because we all have the impulse to whip off a paragraph or two about stuff on our minds on an ongoing basis.

So we decided to just move our blog over to Blogger, but to host it on our own server on a subdomain of our main site. This is good for a variety of reasons, but one of the best is that it makes this blog part of a huge blog social network ... and that network is part of Google's Borg-like complex of annoyingly useful and responsive web tools (annoying because they're a huge corporation and we're a bunch of left-wingers).

This makes it possible for us to invite some of our friends to easily join in this effort with us and make this blog a much more lively place than it has been heretofore. Plus people with any kind of Google or OpenID account will be able to post here; so the discussions will be a bit more uninhibited than they are on our main site.

OMB viewers should check this blog out frequently, and chime in regularly. We expect we'll have a good bit of fun with this offshoot of our main project.

Enjoy!