Radical Georgia Moderate

He called payday loans servitude. I have mixed feelings about payday loans. On one hand, yeah, the people who offer them are generally scumbags who are preying on poor people. But, on the other, at what point should buyer beware end and government regulation begin? I guess to me it’s a question of what the unintended consequences are of regulating them, and I’m not sure what those are. Anybody care to venture a guess?

Isn’t it funny (not ha-ha funny) how life is supposedly soooooooooooooo important to the Republican Party before a person is born and so unimportant to it afterward?

Some Georgia legislators are hoping to change state law so people like Harris could be condemned to death even if only nine jurors agree on the sentence — doing away with the unanimous jury requirement in death penalty cases.

As Shelby noted, don’t let a small inconvenience like the justice system get in the way of a good execution.

When I bought my Powerbook Macbook Pro, I also bought a copy of Final Cut Express. There was a special that allowed me to pay only $99 instead of $299 since I was also buying a new computer. I figured I’d need a video editor with more horsepower than iMovie at some point, so I bought it. Also included in the deal was Apple Soundtrack, which is sort of like Garageband’s big brother.

I’d tried Garageband before but not been real impressed with it. It felt like a toy and a lot of things didn’t seem intuitive. I haven’t used it since.

Soundtrack does a lot of the same things Garageband does, but with an interface that’s more comfortable to me (for what I imagine are mostly superficial reasons since it isn’t that much different). After playing around with it for an hour or so tonight, now I understand why people like Garageband (and by extension Soundtrack) so much: it makes any idiot feel like they could be a music composer.

In this case, I’m any idiot. I have a crappy loop for you, created during an hour when I’m sure I could have been doing something more productive, but wasn’t. Enjoy:

[8:54 a.m.] The drive down for BlogSavannah last night was littered with radar traps. Amber and I had trouble sleeping last night.

Now we’re sitting in Bryson Hall just off Chippewa Square, waiting for things to kick off. I’m no architecture buff, so I’ll just tell you the place has dull white tiles on the floor, ornate metal rails painted black like balcony rails in New Orleans (maybe that’d be French-style?), and yellow and off white painted walls with panels and trim.

Everybody seems to have a camera. The crowd is still thin, and I’ve spotted no less than seven still cameras and one ginormous video camera.

[9:01 a.m.]: One fella that Amber and Sherry are speaking with is talking about how much money he makes consulting, and it makes me wonder why I have a day job. I could do that.

[9:07 a.m.] Drew says 111 people registered for this. It’s doubtful I’ll be able to live blog the whole thing because there aren’t any power outlets at the table.

[9:11 a.m.] This is the part where they go over ground rules and “what is an unconference.” This is the part where I hand the laptop off to Amber to let her put up a post. bbl

[9:37 a.m.] Phil Sellers from iTourSavannah is giving the Podcasting 101 session. We’re recording it with the Zoom H4 since there aren’t any mics rigged up. It’s behind him, so hopefully the sound will come out okay. Phil is talking about a tour of Bryson Hall and the surrounding square that he made this morning to demonstrate how easy podcasting is. Good example.

[9:53 a.m.] I just gave an answer about fair use of music in a podcast, and I hope I didn’t sound stupid. I backtracked somewhat and told people to just do a Google search for the words “podcast fair use” and click the first link. The first few explanations were really off, so I hope people paid attention to the last part.

[10:03 a.m.] FYI, if you’re here and you’re male, the door to the bathroom doesn’t lock. When I went, I had a flashback to the fourth grade.

Also, this dude from Evoca needs to shut up. Phil needs to reign this sales pitch in. This is an unconference, not an infomercial.

[10:08 a.m.] Phil, please stop jerking Evoca off. kthxbye.

[10:15 a.m.] Phil is making a good point that the neatest podcasting isn’t sitting around in your garage pretending to be a radio station, but in carrying around a small portable recorder and recording conversations with people in everyday settings.

[10:19 a.m.] Most people don’t need prompters. Disagree there.

Now the talk has shifted to how to monetize a podcast. Getting a sponsor is nice.

Sherry is making a good point that people can listen but totally zone out, so there is a minimum expectation of editing. What to edit and what not to edit out should probably be a session by itself.

[10:26 a.m.] Amber just made a spectacular point about the whole point of (OH GOD HERE IT COMES) Web 2.0 is that one of its best (and underutilized) uses of podcasting is to provide unfiltered access to government meetings to let people participate who previously were unable to. Now we break.

[10:45 a.m.] Now we’re sitting in and recording Business Blogging 101, led by Chris Cree. We’re in the small room upstairs on the balcony, and it’s filled to the brim.

[10:56 a.m.] There’s a good discussion about blog commenting for business sites. A key fear businesses have is losing control of the conversation about a product. Well, you’ve lost control of it either way, so you may as well have it on your web site in a blog where you can watch it.

[11:04 a.m.] And possibly influence it. Good point Chris.

[11:14 a.m.] There is a lot of interest in that topic, and the conversation goes on. A lot of it is remedial for most people reading this, but it’s good stuff for people who aren’t real familiar with blogs.

[11:27 a.m.] I apologize that my liveblogging for this session hasn’t been better. I’ve been alternating between soaking in the conversation and reading Bloglines. Just listen to the podcast when it goes up.

[11:35 a.m.] There’s a cameraman in here recording the P.R. and blogging session. Our recorder is plugged in somewhat precariously, and he’s standing close to the wire. It’s making me nervous. The whole room is claustrophobic.

[11:48 a.m.] Interesting discussion of role of blogging vs. media vs. PR. Will make a good podcast. Not making great live blogging right now.

[11:50 a.m.] Pushing quality? Pushing depth? Pushing technology? WTF? This conversation just veered waaaaaaaaay off. The people want to give a seminar, not have a discussion. Very typical old world lack of understanding of how a two-way conversation works.

Also, the word “credibility” keeps coming up. They talk about who is a credible source versus who isn’t. A lot of what’s causing people to read blogs is smelling the bullshit coming from P.R. companies and news sources, i.e. - REGULAR PEOPLE DON’T VIEW MAINSTREAM NEWS SOURCES AS CREDIBLE.

[12:04 p.m.] Off to lunch at Locos!

[2:14 p.m.] And we’re back. Well, sort of. We’ve walked into the center of the blogging for the media session, which appears to be sort of in shambles. We expect people will be over their post-lunch malaise by the time the women in blogging session starts at 2:45.

[2:30 p.m.] Now Chris Miller from the Creative Coast Initiative is leading session. Or, he will, after EVERYONE IN THE ROOM gives a brief bio. Jeebis. Please, if you ever run a session at a (un)conference, please don’t do this. This is as exciting as pulling teeth.

[2:42 p.m.] My intro went like “I’m Rusty and I’ve been blogging in various places for three or four years, and co-founded the Georgia Podcast Network with Amber.”

Now, I am perfectly willing to own up to my comments to anybody after the fact, but I already learned my lesson from drunk blogging not to call attention to them as they happen.

[2:46 p.m.]Check 200+ photos in the Flickr pool. Here we are!

[3:01 p.m.] I’ve lost track of what’s going on this session. Amber tells me it’s a big sales pitch. Our conversation at lunch was much more interesting, with the most memorable part (to me)… hold on…

I think Chris just said bloggers are slow and ignorant.

Anyway, yeah. The most interesting part of lunch was the idea of collaborative competition, a phrase that’s come up in several things I’ve read lately. Think Yahoo, Google and Cingular on the same stage when Apple announced the iPhone.

[3:13 p.m.] There’s a guy from SavannahNow talking. He says that in eight months, with 200 to 300 posts per week on their site, they’ve deleted a total of two comments. That’s pretty good.

[3:40 p.m.] Now we’re almost an hour off schedule and in the women in blogging session. Amber is preachin’ about lack of recognition that female bloggers receive.

[3:45 p.m.] Gennie the session leader throws out the theory that men receive more traffic b/c they write about things rather than about their experiences. Amber doesn’t buy it, and says so.

[3:48 p.m.] Quote of the day: “She keeps a blog. It’s rather humorous.” Also, Dooce’s name was just mispronounced Dookie.

[3:54 p.m.] Gennie once called a city council member a titty baby on her blog. The discussion has turned to things people regretted saying. 9/11 just got mentioned. That happened, what, almost seven years ago? How long did South Park say we have to wait before a tragedy becomes funny? Yeah, it was shitty, but I’m tired of it being the frame of reference for everything.

[4:12 p.m.] Nevermind, new quote of the day: “Fools’ names and monkeys’ faces are always seen in public places.”

[4:15 p.m.] Amber just totally smacked the organizer of the conference down for taking up too much time with his comment in Gennie’s session. That’s how unconferences work.

Despite going on waaaaaaay too long, he did bring up a good points about public and private space, and that there is a whole new world of work available for intellectual property lawyers.

Here’s the link to Gennie’s blog.

My battery is about gone, so this is probably it kids. Selah.

How’s this for a national headline: White Atlanta suburbs push for secession.

I think the headline is somewhat unfair in its implication. I really don’t think (most of) the pro-Milton people are motivated by racism so much as by thinking they’ll get out of paying for MARTA and Grady, which they wouldn’t.

That said, the Republicans are damn lucky Casey Cagle was wise enough to kill the Voter ID Constitutional amendment. If both the secession effort and the Voter ID laws were trying to be passed at the same time it wouldn’t be just one headline like that; it’d be hundreds. You can argue ’til you’re blue in the face that the measures aren’t racist. But put them both together, foment suspicion of ulterior motives with some anti-gay bigotry from last session and the batshit crazy folks trying to pass HB1 this session, and it becomes difficult to believe otherwise.

I am really tired of these headlines. Georgia seems to be making the national news a lot in the past few years for all the wrong reasons. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s coinciding with the Republican Revolution™. And before commenting on this post, please refer to rule #2 on my list of 10 ways to avoid triggering my bullshit detector.

The Georgia Political and Policy Digest has been added to The Hotline Network. A $4,200 subscription to Hotline is considered part of the price of admission for anyone who wants to be taken remotely seriously as a D.C. lobbyist; sort of like that Reporting 110 professor I had in J-school who always added a question ripped directly off the front page of the local paper to his quizzes. Believe it or not, the riff-raff (me) won’t be kicked off the columnist ledger as a result of this development.

I know people like their lists in batches of 10. So here you go, in no particular order, 10 ways to avoid setting off my bullshit detector:

1. Don’t project your personal failings onto other people as if they apply universally. Not everyone who sees one titty in Playboy is going to end up in rehab because they quit their job and got divorced to jerk off seventeen times per day to Innocent Bystander Debasement Monthly. And if anything constitutes a War on Christmas or an Attack on Traditional Marriage, it’s your sanctimonious ass skipping church to open presents and get a divorce.
2. Don’t blame the messenger when your failings are put on display. Few things drive up circulation/viewership/traffic faster than a story about a sanctimonious prick who fails to live up to his own hyperbolic finger-wagging. People will pay for it over and over again. And it’s your fault for feeding the market’s demand to watch. Try not being such a fucking hypocrite.
3. Don’t try to pass “protecting tradition” off as a reason to do anything if you’re not talking about sports. Slavery was a tradition here. Monarchy is a tradition in England, and the result has been 1,000 years of inbreeding.
4. Don’t wave a pie and a bag of shit in front of my nose and try to tell me that I have two choices for dessert. To name but one example, by “bag of shit” I mean “Intelligent Design.”
5. Don’t lump two traits together and try to say that anything that can be described by one can always be described by the other. Not all seculars are progressives, and not all progressives are secular; just as not all psychotics are Christians, and not all Christians are psychotics.

   This item could also be described as “don’t speak in terms of monoliths.” Monolithic terms, generally used to make a larger and more imposing bogeyman from a loosely-related group, are The Left, The Right, moonbats, wingnuts, porn, etc. (Yeah, I’ve used “wingnut” before, and probably will again at some point. Sometimes I’m a bullshit trafficker too. Takes a bullshitter to know one.)

6. Don’t pretend like something must be true just because it can’t be proven that it doesn’t exist/can’t happen. Sure, I can’t prove that God doesn’t exist. But you also can’t prove that your mother never had sex with a chimpanzee, and that you don’t have a freakish half-chimp, half-human half brother running around with no pants and a flaming case of herpes.
7. Don’t pretend like correlation equals causation. The states with the highest abortion and teen pregnancy rates also vote Republican most frequently. Does that mean children growing up in Republican-voting households are more likely to get knocked up before they’re 18 and have an abortion because their parents are Republicans? No, dumbass, it means there are more poor families in those states.
8. Don’t pretend like belief for the sake of belief is a virtue. 99 percent of the people who comment on any court case that’s shown on TeeVee know exactly jack shit about said court case. Say it with me: “I haven’t seen or heard enough evidence to have an opinion about this topic.” You sound a lot smarter that way than by saying THARE’S NO DOWT IN MY MIND THAT WOMEN IN THE DOOK RAPE CASE IS A LIAR BECUZ FOX NOOS SAID SO!!1! And if you ask me well, what do you believe in? after I dismiss your opinion, expect to be smacked in the face for being a judgmental moron.
9. Don’t try to pass circular logic off as an argument. This relates closely to the pie/bag of shit as dessert false dichotomy. Atheism is not a religion. (Real) Nihilism isn’t a belief system. Relativism is not dogma. You can’t be a radical moderate. Oh, wait…
10. Don’t hide behind free speech to justify a vile remark. Sure, you’re allowed to say it. Nobody is saying you’re not. But, since we’re dealing with free speech, I am also allowed to call you a bigot or a sexist or whatever other name most aptly describes whatever behavior you’ve just partaken in. And when you whine like a little pussy when I do that, I am also allowed to say that you’re whining like a little pussy. Free speech can go on in circles forever like that.

My blogroll was totally out of hand, and still kind of is, but hopefully not as out of hand now. I deleted blogs where:

• I haven’t spoken with the person/people who write(s) the blog in more than a year
• The blog doesn’t exist anymore
• The blog doesn’t appear to be maintained regularly anymore

Don’t be offended if one of those blogs was yours. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you or think your writing is shit or anything like that, it just means I had to make space somewhere. Email me or leave a comment and I’ll put it back.

Also, I deleted all the mainstream media links (except to a couple of old media hands who have blogs). I doubt you were coming to my blog looking for an index of those. The Georgia Daily Digest does a much better job with that.

Finally, if your blog isn’t on there and you think it should be, leave a comment and I’ll add it. I haven’t put any effort into adding new links yet, I’ve just had time to clean up what I’ve got.

I may try to break the Georgia blogs into sub-categories. Or I may not. Haven’t decided yet. But I would like the list to be more readable than it is.

kthxbye

What: DPG Candidate Forum
When: Saturday, January 20th at 10:00am
Where: Horizon Theatre
1083 Austin Avenue NE
Atlanta, GA 30307
MAP

Candidates for DPG leadership positions will debate, Doug Monroe will M.C., and I’ll be there to record a podcast. Stop by and say hi! More info at Blog for Democracy.

Cross-posted on my Georgia Podcast Network blog

UPDATE: Scratch that, no podcast. They’re going to tape the event and put some of the clips on Youtube.

And how he has succeeded, judging from the scorn heaped on him on several prominent college football blogs. He was the lone vote against a resolution praising the University of Florida for winning the national championship. That after he voted for a resolution praising Boise State.

As you probably know, resolutions are time-wasting efforts designed to get people’s positions on record with no substantive outcome from their vote. Given the opportunity, I would vote against a resolution praising Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, or any other SEC school except Tennessee (my alma mater) or Ole Miss (because kicking the handicapped is bad form).

It’s a wonder to me that more politicians don’t inject a meaningless “fuck you” into the national dialog now and again. Were this a less media-savvy politician driven by pure bile, rage and disgust, I’d offer a pursed-lip nod, a cheerful golf clap and the rest of my lunch. Since we’re talking about Jack Kingston, I can only offer this blog post.

h/t Every Day Should Be Saturday and In the Bleachers