infobong.com the absurd courts the vulgar

Over on his blog, Jon Lebkowsky discusses the new concept of the “sock mob.” In online parlance, a “sock-puppet” is a user-account created to post bogus messages of support or disagreement with another online author. For example, a blogger could create a sock-puppet account to rebut critical comments on a post. The fake account would make it appear that someone else is defending the blogger, while in reality it’s the same author. “Sock mobs” are teams of users who advocate a particular viewpoint in a similarly dishonest way.

Jon says, “This is why we need a netwide standard identity framework with strong and meaningful authentication.” While I agree that sock mobs are a nascent problem and a standardized identity system would be usefule, I disagree with Jon. In order for a standardized identity system to be effective against a problem like sock mobs it would first need to be mandatory (either at the blog level or across the Internet) and, secondly, it would need to be verified through some kind of governmental identification system like driver’s licenses or social-security numbers. (I imagine that you could use credit-reporting agencies, but that would be even worse.) A universal identity system would introduce privacy problems that would exceed the value of eliminating sock mobs. There are privacy problems on a high level, where social institutions could store, share, and retrieve comments and content posted by an individual, but the lower-level privacy problems would be worse. Do we want prospective employers or dates to be able access and verify everything we post online? Most users post different information about themselves on a site like MySpace than they would on LinkedIn, would we want these tied together? Do you want a troll to be able to see each comment you leave to a blog? I don’t think so. Identity systems would allow society to police mass actions like sock mobs, but they would also police users at an individual level.

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Holy crap, it snowed in Austin. These images don’t look all that impressive, but I’ve never seen more than a few flurries here in Longhorn country.

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Typowiki seems like one of the better applications of a wiki I’ve seen. Typography may be one topic that’s too obscure for comprehensive treatment in Wikipedia, and Wikipedia’s Neutral-Point-of-View and style rules can also hamper the treatment of a topic that’s as subjective as type. (For example, contributors would be unable to offer ideas on how a face should be used.) The wiki isn’t quite populated enough to really be a useful resource, but, given Typophile’s user base, it certainly has potential.

Poking around Typowiki, I found an interesting article. Users are encouraged to offer suggestions for a list of essential typefaces. It’s worth nothing there are no “web-safe” faces listed, but I’m a little tempted to troll and add Arial and perhaps Comic Sans to the list.

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• Chronicle of Higher Education: An Educational Prank
  McKembrew McLeod satirized the corporate university by claiming McDonald’s sponsored his class at the University of Iowa.
  (tags: prank education satire activism)
• Pitchfork: Kevin Shields: MBV Will “100%” Make Another Album
  Hmmm, maybe someday…. 1991 was a long time ago.
  (tags: shoegaze music interview)

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Atrios posted an interesting idea today. He has declared February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, when bloggers “are free to make adjustments to their blogrolls and ignore any complaints about those adjustments.” Atrios has a long blogroll that lists blogs he says he no longer reads, but apparently he’s anxious about upsetting bloggers whose blogs disappear from the list.

I don’t really have the same problem. I link to a few blogs in the “friends” section that aren’t regularly updated and should be dropped, but I’m not worried about hurting anyone’s feelings. This is a good reminder to delete the old blog cruft.

I wrote more about this, but my site was down while I tried to post. My comments on clearing out my public Bloglines folder were too tedious to write through again.

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• Optimal OPML Browser & WordPress Plugin
  (del.icio.us tags: useful rss blog WordPress)
• Social Design Notes: Red Crystal
  The International Committee of the Red Cross has added the Red Crystal as an alternative symbol for regions where religious symbols may inflame violence.
  (del.icio.us tags: israel NGO design)
• The IPA’s Domino Effect:The Enron of Indie Media Leaves Publications in a Pinch
  Chris Anderson reports on the financial collapse of IPA, a distributor of mid-level independent magazines.
  (del.icio.us tags: magazine distribution indie)

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• 27B Stroke 6: Wikileaks spilled
  The archive of the email list used to organize Wikileaks has been posted online. Wikileaks seems like a really interesting project, partly because a wiki seems like the wrong software solution for their project.
  (tags: wiki surveillance email)
• Guardian: Independents’ day
  This discusses the role independent labels play in promoting hot UK rock acts, and the shift in what it means to be independent. I think it over-emphasizes the production (and textual) side of indie-ness at the expense of discussing distribution issues or
  (tags: indierock politicaleconomy music)

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• phonophilia | The Love of Sounds
  Steev Hise has relaunched his site devoted to sharing field recordings.
  (tags: audio music Web2.0 neato)
• The CSS Tinderbox - Open Source Web Design Templates
  These CSS layout templates are licensed under Creative Commons. I’m pretty sure they will come in handy when we make Blogger templates in the class I’m teaching this semester.
  (tags: CSS webdesign CreativeCommons howto useful)

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This Screenhead piece about the hardest novels to film reminds me of a game I’ve played with other Radio-TV-Film graduate students. Instead of adapting novels to film, we ask what movies would make bad Broadway musicals. While some films like The Lion King and, of course, The Producers lend themselves to the middlebrow stage, other movies probably should just stay movies. The student who introduced the game contends Agnes of God would make an awful musical. I don’t disagree, but my nominations were Nanook of the North and Derek Jarman’s Blue. One of my professors pointed out that Nanook might actually lend itself to a Disney-style musical. It would be a spectacle of otherness with Inuits and polar creatures dancing in the snow. I do think that you would have to be pretty ingenious to adapt Blue to the stage.

I’ll point out that I would have thought Tristam Shandy would be darn-near impossible to adapt into film, but I’ll put novels aside, and ask readers what films they think would make terrible Broadway musicals.

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When I was at my parents’ for Christmas, I spotted this picture of me posing in front of my sweet Apple ][e, and I knew it had to go on the blog. My best guess is that this was 1986, and I was ten years old. Note the digital watch and the Lacoste polo shirt.

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