Recall Gary for Governor!,He's the right leader for these times. Why he's our man.:

"'Hello there, this is Gary Coleman,' he said in a voice-mail message. 'It is 3:30 on Friday. I'm stuck in Friday traffic in my car, getting ready to pull out my hair. But maybe this is something I can fix as governor. ... I am probably the most unqualified person to run for governor, but I'm willing to do it as a goof if you are. But then I need to know something: Whose ass do I kick if I actually win? Because that means I'm gonna have to move up to Sacramento -- the armpit of California -- and administer this state back to some kind of solvency.' "

Call For Papers on Digital Environments and Liberal Arts

We should both write something for this for fun, Ian. Deadline isn't until December 1st. Tempted?

The Fifth Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association
RIT Campus, Rochester, New York
June 10–13, 2004
Media Environments and the Liberal Arts

Sponsored by The Department of Communication and The William A. Kern Professor in Communications College of Liberal Arts Rochester Institute of Technology

How do changing media environments influence the ways in which people express themselves, communicate with each other, and pass on knowledge to future generations? From cities to cyberspace, and ancient writing systems to digital communication technologies, media help shape human interaction, understanding, and organization. This conference explores the various ways in which past, present, and emerging media environments influence human life in general, and its self-examination via the liberal arts disciplines. These include the subjects of inquiry and the way research is conducted, changes in human and mass communication, policy-making, and evaluation, individual expression and representation, formation and change in cultural attitudes, media representations of natural environments, emerging digital expression (hyperfiction, digital poetry, electronic music), and the social impact of media.

What is Media Ecology?
“It is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs.”—Lance Strate

You are invited to submit papers, panels, workshop proposals, and short film and video works related to the conference theme. Complete papers may be entered for the Top Paper Award or the Linda Elson Scholarship Award (Top Student Paper). Please indicate entry on submissions.

Submission deadline December 1, 2003.

Send submission to:

Dr. Sue Barnes
Department of Communication
College of Liberal Arts
Rochester Institute of Technology
92 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623-5604
(585) 475-4695 or (585) 475-6649
Email: sbbgpt@rit.edu

Counterspin Radio Program

I listened to this program today during lunchtime. Very good, well researched roundup of various newspaper's spins on current events, including some blatant ridicule of the NY Times. Worth a listen...

PK Dick's Valis

I started this book last night and stayed up way too late reading it. Then, this morning, I came across this site...pretty fun stuff if you're bored.

"We should be able to hear this information, or rather narrative, as a neutral voice inside us. But something has gone wrong. All creation is a language and nothing but a language, which for some inexplicable reason we can't read outside and can't hear inside. So I say, we have become idiots. Something has happened to our intelligence. My reasoning is this: arrangement of parts of the Brain is a language. We are parts of the Brain; therefore we are language. Why, then, do we not know this? We do not even know what we are, let alone what the outer reality is of which we are parts. The origin of the world "idiot" is the word "private." Each of us has become private, and no longer shares the common thought of the Brain, except at a subliminal level. Thus our real life and purpose are conducted below our threshold of consciousness. "