Category: Austin

Danah writes that blogging is a privilege, with preference to straight white males. Maybe at the top of the Technorati popularity charts. But take a look at the participants on Austin Bloggers and Austin Stories, the blog and journal portals. Core community members are women, queer, stay-at-home moms, workers in social work, teaching, non-profit, retail, tech-support, students, and job-hunting. This is a community, not a country club.

Scientists, Democrats distrust new electronic voting machines

By Scott Shepard, Sunday, December 7, 2003, Austin American-Statesman Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Computer voting machines have been touted as a solution to the problems of the 2000 presidential election, but some election officials and computer scientists are concerned that the machines, especially those with touch screens, might be inaccurate and, worse, susceptible to sabotage.

Great that the Statesman has the story. The only local folks they quoted were at Hart Intercivic.

Chip Rosenthal put together an awesome weblog navigator for the Austin metablog. A new, handy sidebar lists the participating bloggers, and can also sort by number of Technorati links, Google Reference count, last posting date, alpha, and more.
Three cheers for open web service APIs, community social software innovation, and Chip.

Classic Austin moment at a Nathan Wilcox brunch on Sunday morning — walked in, to find Jon Lebkowsky, EFF-Austin co-conspirator, deep in conversation with Erik Josowitz, the person who hired me at Vignette and brought me here.
There are two flavors of this classic moment:
1) finding that two people you know from different contexts are old friends going back a decade or two
2) finding that two people you know from different contexts are old enemies going back a decade or two.

DirecTV has been conducting a scheme of intimidation against its customers, sending letters demanding a $3500 fine to over 100,000 customers who had purchased smartcards, which can be used to secure computer systems and offices, or to steal satellite TV service. This DirecTV tactic was the model for the exhorbitant civil penalties in the Texas SDMCA.
DirecTV is now facing a legal challenge that calls this tactic by its real name. Texas physician Rod Sosa, pursued by DirecTV for the smart cards he bought to secure his medical office computer, is one of three plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit accusing DirecTV of extortion under the RICO statute.

I’m on the board of Campaigns for People, an organization dedicated to reducing the influence of money in Texas politics.
A major ethics reform package passed this last legislative session, thanks in part to pressure from thousands of citizens on the CFP activist list, and tireless lobbying by CFP and a coalition of over 60 groups representing 3 million Texans. The ethics bill, HB1606, tightens loopholes that candidates used to avoid disclosing contributions electronically, and strengthens processes to investigate ethics complaints against office-holders.
CFP is seeking a coder for a pro-bono project that is helping to nab corrupt lawmakers.
CFP has compiled a database of campaign contributors in the Houston and San Antonio area. The data can be used by citizen groups to research the influence of money on legislation. The Sierra Club — to give one example — is using the data to identify politicians who took large campaign contributions from road contractors, and then allocated plum construction contracts to their campaign donor buddies.
CFP would like to make this database viewable and searchable on the web, to make it easier for citizen groups to research campaign contributions. The organization is running on a very slim budget, so the work would need to be done pro-bono.
If you are interested, please contact Fred Lewis, CFP President, at flewis@onr.com.

A red dragonfly buzzes the ornamental pond. She lands on a stalk of bamboo, which leans perilously. She flies away.

It was a good meeting last weekend; we outlined what we think we’re doing and where we’re going. We answered questions in a circle, which meant that the people who usually talk more talked less and vice versa. We’re going to have membership which takes a higher level of organization, and will hopefully make it easier for more people to join and be active.
Then some people went home, and the folks who were left stayed out on the deck in to the evening, drinking beer and hanging out. Chip played the Zevon catalog on guitar, in sociably misanthropic and genially mournful manner. The sun set over the backyard meadow, which has clumps of cactus amid wildflowers. That’s a benefit of living in a rural area 45 minutes out of town; the backyard is a meadow not an eyesore. We watched the stars circle overhead.
We stayed at the not-quite-finished winter house of a neighbor. Plastic sheeting is tacked over the roof insulation, tarpaper peels off the walls. Electricity and running water, but no indoor plumbing or A/C. The neighbor across the street has statues of birds on the fence running to the house. The neighbors behind have cockfights. It’s a live as you please kind of neighborhood.

In Somerville and Cambridge, the only public wireless I’ve been able to find is the T-Mobile service at Starbucks. If I’m missing some good public wireless, please let me know.
My hosts have WiFi, but there’s a problem with sending outgoing mail. So I can send webmail, or queue mail, and head over to Starbucks.
Austin seems extensively unwired by comparison.
(This is the entry I mean to post in Austinbloggers, not the earlier one)

The hearings on the Delay plan to eviscerate Travis County continue today at 4pm in the State House. The plan splits Austin into three pieces — each a little bit of city, glommed onto a large swath of countryside. A new plan will be proposed today by Rep. King. Austinites who want congressional representation, head over to the Statehouse if you can.