Dance Dance Revolution

Hiding p2p identities with proxy servers.

Mark Glaser writes an article about whether Are Online Search Tools Lulling Journalists Into Laziness?. He quotes Eric Meyer:

“Never has it been easier to seem to do more in less time,” Meyer said via e-mail. “The operative word is ‘seem.’ A journalist can now find a story almost identical to one he or she has proposed and, with a few well-placed e-mails, assemble by the end of the day reportage deceptively as detailed as the original.”

And what have we lost in the chase for the quickie story with quickie answers to quickie questions? Perhaps the depth of character we could get in person, the attention to scenery, sounds and smells, lost in many of today’s stories. “Instead of face-to-face interviews, in which the reporter discovers angles that had not occurred to him or her, the exchanges become knee-jerk answers to knee-jerk questions,” Meyer said. “And never is there a clue in body language or conversational cadence to indicate the existence of a greater, previously not understood, truth worth pursuing…. I often speak of the Internet as having infinite breadth and infinite depth. Alas, we rarely use both to their best ends simultaneously.”

The appropriately named Marshall Brain writes about how Robots will take our jobs by the year 2050. A little too apocalyptic, methinks. Someone needs to service those dang machines! (Brian writes about How Things Work. My favorite is How Caffeine Works).

Call me a dancing fool, but I’ve been reading about Dance Dance Revolution, an activity I’ve secretly wanted to do. There’s even an open source version, and Zach “Freelance Weasel” Meston writes a review of the upcoming DDRMAX2. All this from a slashdot forum on how geeks can stay in shape.

Something I wrote about Should the Patriot Act be considered a direct consequence of 2.8 million people voting for Nader in 2000?. (I answer a question an NPR reporter posed).