Saturday, October 26, 2002

19:18:

Once again, I experience the mainstream news media's information blockade first-hand. I went to an anti-war protest in Washington, DC today. Held at Constitution Gardens, next to the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, the rally and then march around the white house featured speakers such as Jesse Jackson, Susan Sarandon, and many activists, community and NGO leaders, and students. Thousands of youngsters, elderly, middle-aged and young adults of all races and religions and sexual orientations showed up to protest the unwavering drumbeat of war on Iraq. I say thousands, but I know the crowd was actually of tens of thousands of people--certainly more than large enough to fill a couple of stadiums. I have been to marches at the Mall before. I know what thousands of people look like. This crowd was most certainly about 100,000 people. When i got home today, I expected that after such a large number of anti-war protests around the world (in San Francisco, Rome, Paris, New York), there would be news coverage about it. The only coverage I saw was CNN Headline News' 10-second snippet in which they failed to focus on anything other than the fact that it was Jesse Jackson speaking. I won't even say anything about their failure to mention that there was a very sizable march after the rally. But at least Headline News covered it. NBC didn't even mention it, although they did spend 10 minutes on sniper coverage (late-breaking speculation about motives). News Channel 8, the local news channel, didn't bring it up. MSNBC hasn't mentioned it on the TV, and what they have on their website is AP coverage. Now the AP coverage is probably the most comprehensive I've read, with actual attempts at suggesting that the numbers were close to what they seemed to be. But no visuals! Despite all the mobile units and choppers and cameras! Despite the fact that we've had weeks on end of live, from-the-scene coverage when as much as someone sneezed in a way that sounded like "sniper". I've written much about the ways in which the media privilege certain stories over others. But this, friends, is absurd. The Redskins got more coverage than the march today!

Thursday, October 24, 2002

13:36:

I'm employed! Employed!

Thursday, October 17, 2002

22:42: I saw Jaime Bayly speak today, I re-encountered my first Portuguese professor from Berkeley at the same lecture. I also went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. And I spent $1450 I don't have on car repairs that had to get done.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Monday, October 14, 2002

22:48: Ok, now it got scary. The damned sniper killed someone else today, this time in front of the Home Depot that I go to. I was there not four hours earlier. Traffic's screwed, people are holed up, Lee Highway in front of my place is frigtheningly, eerily still.
Let's hope they nail this/these bastard/s soon.

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

14:16: I see your point,David... but damn it, I still like seeing the ó in Rincón... otherwise my very strong sounding Rincón (the I can kick you where it hurts sound) ends up sounding like Rincon, which is reminiscent of something you'd find in a pastry shoppe.

14:09: Oh, BTW, the firm job offer turned out to be not so firm (hiring freeze got put in place 48 hours after I got the call), and the other prefirm offer hasn't transformed from liquid into jello yet.

14:09: Just got back home from The Hallowed Halls of Justice (i.e. The US Supreme Court) after hearing Eldred V. Ashcroft (aka The Sonny Bono act vs. All of Us Who'd Like to Paint Mickey Mouse In A Nursery School)--let us not say anything about the high barrier of entry there is to actually see the Court in session! Only about 40 of those of us who were lined up since dark o'clock got to go in... never mind the fact that Jack Valenti just showed up and got a prime seat. I always knew he was creepy--now I just think he's a creep in addition. But we got chairs in the way way back and got to see the tops of Larry Lessig and the Government lawyer's heads as they politely responded to Souter's, Ginsberg's, O'Connor's, Stephens' and the occasional Rehnquist's question. Thomas didn't say much (not that we wanted to hear him), and Scalia was short on the verbal quips. Say what you want, but even though very conservative, the man is bright.
In any event, I think that a crucial points of Lessig's argument which got lost in the discussion of retrospective extension (and which he made much more clearly during the post-argument press recap) is that copyright law now affects many more people and much more broadly than it would have in 1976 because of Internet-based publish-at-will. Basically, the inability to establish a firm limit to how far Congress can continue sliding the protection blanket can have a limiting effect on everyday people's sharing of cultural capital without being potentially liable for violations of really old copyrights.
Still, I think that Lessig had a difficult time making his "stifling of speech" argument because it seemed, from the questions presented by the Justices, that they were still conceptualizing publication (of derivative or new works that incorporate others' materials) as something done only by a relative few rather than the many.
I must now go and nap. Waking up at 4AM to go see judges ask questions on constitutional law is a new low in Juanfe's Annals of Geekdom.

Sunday, October 06, 2002

00:40: Finally, breakthroughs!
A firm job offer, an almost firm job offer (signatures must be obtained).
I haven't felt this optimistic and relaxed in months.