Liminal states

Dancing with the dinos … how cool is that?

Infinite Connections does a great job with these parties.  As always,  nwtekno has the details.  I’m psyched!

by Mark Kleinam on The Reality Based Community:

Old Abe is approaching the podium, looking even more like a badly-dressed and ill-proportioned scarecrow suffering from a depressive disorder than he usually does. I mean, if you’re going to be an empty suit, couldn’t you at least find a suit that fits?

And as usual, he’s not wearing an American flag lapel pin. Too good for it, I suppose. Probably thinks it’s tacky, and that “real patriotism” doesn’t have to be displayed. Typical intellectual arrogance.

and much more, with Ann providing line-by-line commentary

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I’ve been working on a couple a potential proposal a keynote for this year’s Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference related to the topic of intersectionality and social networks. Here’s an overview:

Since first being developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1970s, theories of intersectionality have become a powerful lens for examining questions of race and gender. In the interim, advances in network theory have shown the importance of intersectional hubs; and research in cognitive diversity and problem solving have highlighted the unique contributions of those at the intersections. Does the recent development of social computing technologies, allowing “micro-niche” generation of content as well as enabling people to participate more easily in multiple online social networks, point to new approaches for valuing and leveraging intersectionality? And what does this imply about technology policy in a web 2.0 world?

To explore this area, I propose an joint keynote session (perhaps over lunch or dinner), featuring an expert on intersectionality and an expert on social networking. Crenshaw herself, currently at UCLA law school, would be ideal for the intersectionality expert [unconfirmed; if she’s not available, there are many excellent alternatives]. From the social networking perspective, researchers such as TL Taylor, danah boyd, Joi Ito, and Clay Shirky who explicitly consider questions of race and gender would be good choices.

Thoughts? As always, critiques, suggestions and feedback welcome!

The Economist’s Technology Quarterly has an excellent article on Software bugtraps: software that makes software better. This is something of a followup to an article they did a few years ago; most people quoted think that the situation is improving, although of course as Capers Jones points out it depends on your metrics. And why the improvement?

According to … the chairman of the Standish Group, most of this improvement is the result of better project management, including the use of new tools and techniques that help programmers work together. Indeed, there are those who argue that computer science is really a social science. Jonathan Pincus, an expert on software reliability who recently left Microsoft Research* to become an independent consultant, has observed that “the key issues [in programming] relate to people and the way they communicate and organise themselves.”

Indeed, I have argued that — in keynote talks Analysis is necessary but not sufficient at ISSTA 2000 and Steering the pyramids at ICSM 2002, and then more explicitly in the “BillG thinkweek paper” Computer science is really a social science (draft) from early 2005 and my 2006 Data Devolution keynote with Sarah Blankinship applying this lens to computer security.

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Update, March 27: The Columbus Dispatch reports statewide officials say prosecution for Limbaugh is very unlikely: “lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime.” Ari Melber’s Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation on The Nation’s Campaign Matters blog has a lot more.

Kim Zetter’s The Mysterious Case of Ohio’s Voting Machines, on Wired’s THREAT LEVEL, has context for Ohio in general. From earlier in the month, Lingering questions in Ohio and Uncounted delegates & Ohio’s delegate math on Dan Tokaji’s excellent Equal Votes Blog cover the equally-important non-Limbaugh issues.

(originally posted March 7)

Art House Queen’s picture of the streets blocked surrounding the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections symbolizes voter disenfranchisement across the state. They ran out of ballots in Sandusky County and Franklin County; voting machines broke down in Montgomery County and no doubt elsewhere; a dozen computer memory cards spent the night in the back of a sherriff’s van in Lucas County before being counted; in Obama stronghold Cuyahoga County, voter privacy was compromised and huge numbers of provisional ballots still haven’t been counted.

The Secretary of State is “very pleased”, citing it as improvement over 2004 despite horrible weather; and very importantly, the move to paper ballots in Cuyahoga County went well, and the state’s pressuring Diebold to refund the $21 million for the decertified voting machines. Democracy in America, 2008. Nothing to see here, move along, move along …

Except …

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The Obama campaign’s response to Geraldine Ferraro’s attack perfectly illustrates several things I talked about last week in The day after. Campaign strategist David Axelrod emphasizes the pattern:

Axelrod said Ferraro’s comments were part of a “pattern” of negative attacks aimed at Obama. He pointed to Clinton’s former New Hampshire co-chairman Bill Shaheen, who questioned whether Obama ever sold drugs; supporter Rober Johnsen, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who raised the specter of Obama’s past drug use; and Clinton’s own “unwillingness” to “definitively” shoot down rumors that Obama was Muslim in an interview this month.

[All of these, and others, are documented on the Clinton attacks Obama wiki. See, I knew it would be important :-)]

Susan Rice brings up a variant of the “reject and denounce” standard:

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Originally posted as a comment about The Day After.

There’s an interesting thread started on Feb 8 in the One Million Strong for Barack group on Facebook, How many Political Cards Hillary has played and whats more to come? I went back and looked at it today seeing how accurate it was; here was my summary:

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Facebook once again is in the middle of major flakiness right now: links to nowhere, spontaneous logouts. The best thing to do when something like this happens is to treat it as a sign that it’s a good time to take a break from Facebook for a little while. So I decided to write this blog post.

Given the high tensions on all sides, the ongoing troll infestation in the group, and examples in the election campaign of what certainly seem to be some Republican dirty tricks being played, it’s natural to wonder whether this is some kind of attack like those described in “How to Rig an Election”. Speaking as somebody who’s had a lot of software engineering and computer security experience, my initial answer is probably not.

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My brother, aka Gregory K of Gottabook (best known for his Fibs) also does Oddaptations, which he describes as “Cliff’s Notes/Spark notes of picture books… but with some attitude (and rhyme) thrown in.” Here’s the start of his latest, which I’d describe as something of a Seussian mashup:

HORTON HEARS A WHO
by Dr. Seuss
Oddaptation by Gregory K.

Every Who down in Who-ville liked Horton a lot,
But a sour kangaroo and some monkeys did NOT!
They all hated Horton, who claimed there were houses
And Whos on some dust that was too small for mouses.

…

More on Gottabook, including the ending one reviewer described as “genius”.

Go, bro!

jon

original essay March 5, 2008

see the comments for updates

Back on February 7, Catherine Dodge and Alex Tanzi of Bloomberg News broke a story on an Obama campaign spreadsheet, “inadvertently” released by the campaign, with their projections (or maybe predictions) of delegates. Ben Smith on Politico has a nice screenshot, and even better a link to the version of the spreadsheet that Catherine and Alex shared. Barack Obama said he hadn’t seen it; his press secretary Bill Burton had a great quote: “This ‘newsy’ spreadsheet is basically an electronic piece of scratch paper with a dozen scenarios blown a little out of proportion.”

As far as I can tell, the press, media, and pundits covering the election responded with a collective “oh okay” and went back to talking about more important topics like their own prognostications, their importance to the electoral process, their responsibilities, their inadequacies, and the threats to mainstream media from blogs and social networks.

From both a strategy and a narrative perspective, this is fascinating on several levels. So building off my past “narrative as strategy” experience with Ad Astra, I’m going to wrap up my month of being a full-time political activist and blogger with some thoughts on these subjects.

Impressively, the Obama campaign’s projections in early February for delegates from yesterday’s voting likely to be within 1% of the actual results, which I bet is a lot more accurate than any professional polling firm or pundit was at the time. Until yesterday, though, they were off-target in most of the other primaries and caucuses. Interestingly, they were always off in the same direction: consistently underestimating their actual performance.

Saying it another way, the Obama campaign’s results between Super Tuesday (when they first said they thought they would have a pledged delegate lead at the convention) and yesterday consistently exceeded their own projections: +3 (three more delegates than expected) delegates in Louisiana, +4 in Maine, +6 in Hawaii and Wisconsin, and so on — including the jackpots of +14 in Virginia and + 15 in Maryland. If I did the math right, it’s +60 overall, for a swing of 120 pledged delegates from Clinton to Obama. From a strategy perspective, this is substantially exceeding expectations, and making success far more likely.

Yesterday, with the aid of a timely leak from the conservative Canadian government that has already provoked questions in their Parliament; equally-timely help from Limbaugh along with an appearance on right-wing talk radio by Bill Clinton, a proposed lynching by O’Reilly, and a Drudge misinformation campaign that manages to be simultaneously racist, anti-Somali, anti-African, anti-Muslim, anti-Democratic party, and anti-Obama; an attack on Obama’s qualifications by McCain coincidentally enough on the same issue as the Clinton campaign’s Rovian “fear over hope” 3 a.m./red phone campaign video (certain to be recycled by Republicans in November no matter who is nominated); some brilliant political theater “live from New York”; and a press and media justifiably ashamed of its sexism and misogyny playing lapdog for a few days while engaging in narcissistic self-analysis about how horrible they are for not doing a better job of covering newsworthy events …

With aid of what they describe as “the kitchen sink,” the Clinton campaign came out tactically slightly ahead: somewhere between four and ten delegates out of the 370 in play. Kudos to them. Even so, yesterday’s results are almost exactly what the Obama campaign had projected a month ago, a likely +3 or +4 over projections in Texas balanced by a likely -2 or -3 in Ohio. The Obama campaign continues to have a huge cushion: 120 pledged delegates over their early-February projections. With less time for a Clinton turnaround, Obama’s strategic advantage has grown … guess they were prepared for the kitchen sink, or something like it.

The common wisdom on the day after the March 4 voting seems to be along the lines of “the kitchen sink worked!”, portraying the Clinton campaign’s comeback in having (somewhat) blunting the Obama campaign’s momentum — Chris Bowers goes so far as to say “Obama has to win Pennsylvania!“. Looking through a strategy lens, that’s not how I see it at all.

What I see is the Clinton campaign having thrown everything they had into a last-ditch effort, barely managing to get a small tactical victory out of it while their overall situation worsens dramatically. In the process, they repeated their disastrous strategic mistakes from South Carolina of going negative and aligning with racists:

• despite having vowed not to split a party they have been leaders of, and the magic moment in the presidential debate where she described herself as “proud” to be in a presidential race with Barack Obama, they still appear to have collaborated with the Bush-backed Republican candidate in an attack on Obama’s fitness to be commander in chief.
• The Clinton campaign’s potential role in the Obama-in-Somali-garb photo will call more attention to earlier “Obama is a Muslim” email from Clinton staffers, the series of racially charged attacks documented on the Clinton attacks Obama wiki and elsewhere, and the Clinton campaign’s earlier “playing along” with Drudge. At the same time, the “denounce and reject” standard she proposed in the debate will get continued attention thanks to McCain and Lieberman’s welcoming of virulently anti-Catholic anti-LGBT anti-New Orleans anti-Palestinian (and anti-so-much-more) John Hagee’s support. How many volunteers, staffers, supporters will the Clinton campaign “denounce”? How many contributions will they reject?

As for the press and media, well, props to Saturday Night Live (Al Franken for Senate!); well done indeed, and this is going to keep the spotlight trained the coverage of all the candidates. Has the press really been harder on Hillary? Or, have they been ignoring what appear to be Clinton’s repeated exaggerations of her “experience” and (as Obama put on the table today) the more general issue of judgment and fitness for commander in chief? Will attention to the sexism in the mainstream media’s coverage continue and be followed by attention to the racism and anti-Muslim biases? Will Hillary’s attempt to distance herself from Bill’s NAFTA policy be followed by scrutiny on this and other issues (Iraq sanctions, welfare “reform”, warrantless searches, HIPPA, etc.) to see what she advocated at the time — and what, if anything, she did to persuade the administration of her views? We shall see; I think at least some of these cards the Clinton campaign will played for short-term tactical advantage that will come back to bit them.

Speaking of which: are they truly blind to the huge costs (to their claims of “electability” and to the Democratic party) of focusing attention on whether or not Bill Clinton is there in bed with her when the phone rings at 3 a.m.? He’s a huge drag on her popularity, and a reminder of the past in a time when she’s trying to embrace the rhetoric of change. And I’m as tired of hearing about Monica as everybody else, but it’s folly to ignore the persistent stories that Bill’s partying on the campaign trail this year: whether or not it’s true, the Coulters, Roves, Drudges, Limbaughs, and other “fair and balanced” right-wingers will make hay with this video (and at some level, who can blame them), and so will a million comedians of all political stripes trying to outdo SNL. Where’s the judgment in handing a loaded weapon to opponents who will enjoy profit from and enjoy using it against you, and are very good at what they do? For that matter, since these names are all familiar ones, where’s the learning from all this “experience”?

From a strategy perspective, the Clinton campaign in desperation threw everything they could into March 4. (You can only align with Drudge, Limbaugh, O’Reilly and McCain so many times before voters and superdelegates start to ask whether this is good for the party — and there aren’t a lot of other friendly foreign governments they can call on these days.) At the cost of substantially damaging their campaign as well as their individual reputations, they managed to claw their way to an inconsequential and Pyrrhic “victory”. Mathematically, they’re now very close to elimination. Not a good result for the Clintons at all.

And in terms of the narrative, go back to the spreadsheet. The projections going forward leave plenty of room for overperforming in some states (such as Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana) — and the projections already factor in potential losses in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico, so (as we strategists like to say) “the downside is capped.” The likely do-over primary in Florida and caucuses in Michigan (not included in the spreadsheet) offer Clinton a chance to pick up a handful more delegates, but nowhere near enough to outweigh the 120-vote cushion so far. When the convention comes around, Obama is going to have a substantial lead with pledged delegates; superdelegates who decide to reflect the will of the voters will follow that. Superdelegates who instead base their vote on electability (see above), party unity, or future party growth (do they really want to alienate the 30-and-under generation to pick the candidate who’s favored by the same 65-and-up crowd as McCain?) will come on board as well.

So, while it’s not over and anything can happen, once all the hard work is done and the votes are counted, I predict that March 4 will be seen as the day that the voters in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont — and the grassroots volunteers for Obama all around the country and the world — virtually assured Barack Obama’s nomination as Democratic party’s candidate for President of the United States of America.

Like a lot of political sites these days, the Barack Obama Facebook page and One Million Strong for Barack group have been suffering from an infestation of trolls and hate speech. Obama supporters, like others, use Facebook to help with “get out the vote” work (for example posting links to information about polling places) and phonebanking — and get their questions answered. Especially with the key Ohio and Texas votes on Tuesday, the trolling’s a lot worse than just a nuisance: it’s an example of the dirty tricks described in How to Rig an Election.

The group’s admins are doing a great job of trying to keep things under control, and Facebook is apparently working on tools to help them. There are only a few admins, though, so in the short term, it seemed like a good time for a “community defense” effort. Building on Classy Williams’ earlier idea of a troll registry, I started up a thread, and sent out mail to a “secret” group of about 60 people who were concerned about the trolling. Here’s a greatly expanded version of what I said, with some background for non-Facebookers.

Originally posted March 3

Most recent update May 6

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Free speech advocates immediately hailed as a victory the decision on Friday of a federal judge to withdraw a prior order turning off the Web address of the site Wikileaks.org.

Indeed! Jonathan D. Glater’s New York Times article is an excellent overview of the complexities of the situation, including jurisdictional issues, the privacy rights of named account holders (as a lawyer pointed out in court “That’s how you identify who’s been salting away money in accounts” — but what about those who are falsely accused), and the difficulties of defining Wikileaks more concretely than “an organization of dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, technologists, and grad students.”

“Whatever this entity is, it has not filed a response,” Judge White observed.

True enough. Fortunately for Wikileaks, organizations like American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen and the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped forward on its behalf in defense to plaintiff Julius Baer’s suit in early February.

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