As you may have heard, The Wire Season 5 is coming out and HBO is putting each episode on OnDemand a week early, so I am already up to episode 2. Season 5 is all about how the Baltimore Sun can't handle the disintegration of society around it.

Matt Yglesias is a liberal guy who blogs, and could perhaps be classed into the easygoing Washington Consensus crowd who don't want to get into the 'weird stuff' i love so well.

Yglesias attracted show creator David Simon's attention in a thread, as my boy awgrbr noticed on his twitter. Here's Simon lurking in web comments:
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Enjoying this.

Writing to affirm what people are saying about my faith in individuals to rebel against rigged systems and exert for dignity, while at the same time doubtful that the institutions of a capital-obsessed oligarchy will reform themselves short of outright economic depression (New Deal, the rise of collective bargaining) or systemic moral failure that actually threatens middle-class lives (Vietnam and the resulting, though brief commitment to rethinking our brutal foreign-policy footprints around the world). The Wire is dissent; it argues that our systems are no longer viable for the greater good of the most, that America is no longer operating as a utilitarian and democratic experiment. If you are not comfortable with that notion, you won't agree with some of the tonalities of the show. I would argue that people comfortable with the economic and political trends in the United States right now -- and thinking that the nation and its institutions are equipped to respond meaningfully to the problems depicted with some care and accuracy on The Wire (we reported each season fresh, we did not write solely from memory) -- well, perhaps they're playing with the tuning knobs when the back of the appliance is in flames.

Does that mean The Wire is without humanist affection for its characters? Or that it doesn't admire characters who act in a selfless or benign fashion? Camus rightly argues that to commit to a just cause against overwhelming odds is absurd. He further argues that not to commit is equally absurd. Only one choice, however, offers the slightest chance for dignity. And dignity matters.

All that said, I am the product of a C-average GPA and a general studies degree from a state university and thirteen years of careful reporting about one rustbelt city. Hell do I know. Maybe my head is up my ass.

If The Wire is too pessimistic about the future of the American empire -- and I've read my Toynbee and Chomsky, so I actually think a darker vision could be credibly argued -- no one will be more pleased than me as I am, well, American. Right now, though, I'm just proud to see serious people arguing about a television drama; there's some pride in that. Thanks.

D. Simon
Baltimore, Md.

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Ahh Chomsky. really he writes like any other Macalester joker i know. Hehehe...

A big adventure is at hand: I and two friends are going down to Iowa right now. We are going down there to see what is going on and wander around. I just figured out to upload videos directly from my phone, and we will have other tech items to capture the Iowa Caucus scene.

Videos will be posted to YouTube consistently under the username HongPong unless we get bored/and/or thrown out @ http://www.youtube.com/hongpong . We will also have some updates posted on http://www.hongpong.com .

My friend Bobby "the Captain" is a strong Ron Paul supporter. I, Dan Feidt, am suspicious of the whole scene, and Andy French is a renegade philosopher. With one Ron Paul and two agnostics in the mix, what will happen?

Anyone on the scene or having a tip for us, can send us a buzz at 6513387661@myhelio.com or 651-338 7661.

Thanks for your interest!

First: This is (also) why the Minnesota right-wing blogosphere is sad. I met Wedge at the 331 blogger thingy and he's a nice guy. Yeesh.

Over at work we have cancelled any links to the rightwing AntiStrib blog because they are really quite racist towards Native Americans on a regular basis. Another horrible anti-Indian rant ticked off the guy at Minnesota Democrats Exposed enough to cancel all links to the 'vile and racist' postings:

Doug whines that we tried to educate the Indians, but what choice did we have? Their acts of terrorism against the settlers and the military assured that they could no longer be allowed to roam at random over other people’s lands. Their poverty-based societies filled Indians with a deep desire to steal and kill at will. The only alternative to integration was extermination. Andrew Jackson reached this conclusion and rode this issue to the White House. He was veteran of the many wars with the Indians and had no illusions about the Indians.

So skip the noble savage crap. American Indians were domestic terrorists permanently stuck in the Stone Age. Even the God Damned French contributed more and managed to create a better society than the humanoid animals that once roamed our continent.

Wow, someone is angry with many spirits. The banner below is hosted from the more reeled-in freedomdogs blog. Hm. The vast network, etc.

not complete assholes, but hosted @ http://www.freedomdogs.com/images/AntiStribBanner.jpg.

There is no doubt that this is somehow related to an unprecedented number of categories!! Haha!

No doubt about that! You can purchase a linked slice of one freakin awesome image map. Most assuredly, if you follow all the links on this page, you will surely find the Ultimate Truth until the Black Helicopters come and take you away!!

Visit conpix.thegatekeepers.biz today, and find out the secrets which only the awesome wall of links may tell you!! They gots a blog too!

Update aboot 6 hrs later: Beta 4 just came out, now thats what i call a quick dev cycle. should be at same URL

You can download it here: http://infinite-sushi.com/ecto.zip. I am using it now and it certainly ain't glitch-free, but it has been a long time in coming, and I purchased the last version, so I'm happy to see this in action. There's a new Bookmarklet which you can drop into an existing browser:

ectoize

"After installing the bookmarklet, you can create weblog entries from any webpage you are visiting. When viewing a page that you want to write about, select some text you want to quote, and then choose or click the "ectoize" item from the browser's Bookmarks Bar. This will open a new draft window in ecto with text from and details about the current webpage."

Not bad. It was able to download all the tags from Drupal quite nicely, and should rock on Wordpress and MovableType as well. They have a new website at infinite-sushi.com. Inserting hyperlinks from the clipboard is now command-shift-U . It has a little trouble styling the text, but likely this is related to a dependency on which Safari version you have.

It uses the WebKit, the Gecko-derived engine for rendering web pages, and upon launch, Ecto begs you to install Safari 3 Beta in order to make this gizmo render stuff more reliably. WebKit is provided by / is the kernel of Safari's innards. I have avoided Safari 3 Beta because I heard it was kinda hairy, and i am not really happy with Safari. But for this, I will probably bite.

The Ecto beta will work for a few weeks, then you'll have to grab the new one. I am impressed and will try to offer useful info to the developers about it, because this new Ecto has been rewritten from scratch and should provide a much better way for plugins and add-ons to push data out through the back end of Content Management Systems.

They have also released 'endo' for RSS aggregation and '1001' for Flickr stuff.

All this talk reminds me I have a very late email response owed to send to a friend who needed tips on this stuff...

Not a lot to say right now. But don't forget to look at Peter Gartrell's blog Life in a Boomtown. He has been writing a lot about that whole Gillette Wyoming Scene. And what a scene it is:

People get haircuts. Nice. Peter caught this circular story about a reporter-blog nexus that is too confusing to understand. But very New Media.

Meanwhile Alison broke her camera and I reminded her she needs to tell people checking the photo blog about why she's not writing. But in any case it's working out well: Alison got tagged City Pages Blotter Blog of the Day on March 26!

From deep in the Middle Kingdom Nick and Abby have been posting good stuff about China - and crazy photos!

!!!

There's lots more on Nick's Flickr account that they haven't posted on Chinibby.com. The fourth photo there is about a demolition next door that went down in a very Chinese kinda way.

I'm copying this post from thinkprogress today because it illustrates yet again that EVERYONE FUCKING SUCKS. AND TEH LOL the media is TEH L4m3r5. And whatever other stereotypical blog hacker sayings you want to throw in.

Basically the point is that they know they aren't really the brightest bulbs, that real debate is too much to deal with, and that celebrity journalists and the media don't fucking feel like doing their homework, like analysis of past statements, policy, deception and bullshit.

If you listen carefully, it becomes clear that NBC's David Gregory doesn't feel obliged to actually analyze anything. Not opine, analyze. They literally don't think it's actually their responsibility.

Here we go with ThinkProgress:
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In a press roundtable at the National Press Club tonight, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow led a discussion with White House correspondents about the impact of the internet on their respective jobs. Their conclusion? They don’t like being challenged by blogs.

NBC News’ David Gregory bemoaned how political coverage has “become so polarized in this country…because it’s the internet and the blogs that have really used this White House press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views.” Tony Snow admitted he sometimes reads blogs (”I’ll occasionally punch it up”) only to find “wonderful, imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out.”

Newsweek’s White House correspondent Richard Wolffe added, “[Bloggers] want us to play a role that isn’t really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender.”

Watch it:

Digg It!

Transcript:

David Gregory, White House correspondent for NBC News:

“I think politics and political coverage has become so polarized in this country…because it’s the internet and the blogs that have really used this White House press conferences to somehow support positions out in America, political views. And they will clip and digitize portions of these briefings to fit into their particular argument.”

Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary:

“You’ve got this wonderful, imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out. I think one of the most important takeaways is — it’s the classical line — not only should you not believe your own press, you probably shouldn’t believe your opposition blogs either.”

Richard Wolffe, White House correspondent for Newsweek:

“They want us to play a role that isn’t really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. … It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. … It’s not a political exercise, it’s a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.”