Joe's Amazing Technicolor Weblog » Politics

Looking further into MA regulation 201 CMR 17.00

joe — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:11:10 +0000

Thanks to MSCPA, I finally tracked down the Governor’s press release which, at first glance, has a reasonably clear description of the regulation’s intent. Also came across an analysis by Beth Israel’s CIO, a positive blurb from a Maine consultancy, and a brief mention by a MA payroll company.

As for me, I still need to do my official audit of our procedures vs. those specified by the regulation.

Superstruct

joe — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:09:57 +0000

I’ve spent a few hours this weekend poking at Superstruct, an ARG set 11 years in the future. The game posits that 5 interrelated challenges are on track to wipe out the human race in another 20 years, and it falls to the players to assemble existing social structures in new ways (hence the name) to overcome those problems and extend humanity’s existence.

Observations:

I have a habit of thinking about medium-to-long term societal challenges, so the premise works for me.
The first task, developing a profile of what your life will be like 2019, is pretty interesting. Although I’m used to thinking in these directions, having such a specific task is a different kind of exercise. Developing your own narrative before spending time exploring other people’s content is an interesting sequence, too — as I’ve been getting more into the game, I’m starting to appreciate the narrative challenge of 5000 users all telling their own stories that disagree with each other & with the official narrative in various ways.
The main site is not very well done. It’s always logging you out, has a crude UI, and an absence of content navigating tools. However, people are working around those limitations on 3rd party resources, such as their own blogs, wikia, and on custom-built services like search and a player directory.
The official story is largely set by a handful of video briefings. In trying to get up to speed on the story, I didn’t find that to be very effective. I think I’m really looking for the wikipedia of 2019 (or, of 2029 looking back, to mitigate POV issues).
The game’s supposed to run for 6 weeks, and it’s close to being halfway through. Check it out now if you’re interested.

Will I spend more time with Superstruct? Maybe, maybe not. On the plus side, it’s a bold idea, and I’m curious what kind of projections and plans people can come up with in a game setting. On the minus side, I’ve got a whole bunch of real-world contributions I’d rather be making in my spare time.

All about the 2007 & 2005 Boston City Council elections

joe — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:51:39 +0000

Adam at Universal Hub has a comprehensive post on Tuesday’s city council election.

Boston.com has two year old articles.

Score one for the bloggers!

Update: Brighton Centered posts scans of Globe sidebar on candidates. Bloggers 2, boston.com 0.

You Too Can Help Save the Internet

joe — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:43:13 +0000

I could have sworn the whole Net Neutrality thing was taken care of last year, but it looks like I wasn’t paying enough attention — AT&T, etc. are still conspiring to transform the Internet into a crippled, pay-to-play service for distributing approved content to consumers.

Fortunately Free Press is coordinating a ton of comments to the FCC, and has a dandy site of them. For example, a quick scan of Boston-area comments showed this one from local educator Kevin Driscoll. Thus inspired, I’ve added my own, and I’ll bet a bunch of you out there have dandy stories of your own. It’s pretty fun seeing your name, title, and town rendered in fake handwriting font after all.

If you only watch one video about U.S. copyright law composed solely of Disney footage

joe — Sat, 19 May 2007 20:30:22 +0000

Then let it be this one.

(via Boing Boing)

How dangerous are two acoustic-guitar wielding Mexicans?

joe — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:44:41 +0000

According to the news at Rodrigo y Gabriela’s site, too dangerous to be allowed into the US:

ATO Records recording artist Rodrigo y Gabriela will unfortunately be unable to honor their upcoming American Langerado performance this Sunday March 13th. Due to new U.S. immigration policies and procedures, guitarist Rodrigo Sanchez’s visa renewal has unexpectedly been delayed.
ATO Records and artist management are diligently working to expedite and resolve this issue. We will keep you abreast of the situation as information becomes available.

So much for Tuesday’s show at the Roxy. Hope it’s all worked out soon.

Update - it’s back on, now for April 17th.

It is very difficult to wrap your head around complicated issues like regional climate change policy, but I’m giving it a shot

joe — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 02:16:45 +0000

I was talking to a friend today about our collective sense of dread over climate change. We know it’s happening; we know it’s probably the biggest problem facing any children we may be lucky enough to have, if not ourselves in a few years; and we know that all kinds of things need to be happening both on personal and societal levels to improve the situation.

Given that very recent conversation, it’s interesting to observe that trying to get through Environment Northeast’s recently released Climate Change Roadmap for New England and Eastern Canada gets my eyes glazed over in no time at all. I truly believe that this is vitally important stuff, but I’m sure having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

Part of the problem is that the solutions outlined in this roadmap all require action at a higher level than the individual - legislatures, executives, and other institutions. Not belonging to any such group, it’s a little tough to relate. What I can do, besides the various personal efforts that I will refrain from boring either of my readers with, is nag my elected officials. According to this Globe article, the Patrick administration is on board with the roadmap, so I’m planning to start bugging my elected officials to see what they’ve committed to on this issue.

As soon as I make it through the roadmap.

The rest of the upcoming election

joe — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:13:14 +0000

I have nothing further to add about the high profile portions of the upcoming Massachusetts election. My thoughts about the less widely covered parts:

Green-Rainbow endorsed Jill Stein for Secretary of State, because the person in charge of state elections ought to show up for his own debates.

The brand-new Working Families party endorsed Rand Wilson for Auditor. Fascinating interview with Wilson here.

On a related topic, I’m voting yes on question two. Good discussion in the interview above; an example of how it’s worked in New York here.

Also voting yes on question three, for these reasons.