Category Archives: Politics

The Eventful Politics Project

Events, Politics, Web 2.0

I don’t usually blog about my work, not because it’s boring but because it tends to strike me as advertising. I guess I assume that you couldn’t possibly be as excited about the things I do as I am. (Don’t tell me if I’m right about that.)

Today, however, I saw something on Eventful that I just have to share: The Eventful Politics Project, started by Jed Sundwall and Alex Hunsucker. In their own words:

…while conservative bloggers blog for conservative readers and liberal bloggers blog for liberal readers, we hope that technology can serve to remind us that, as Thomas Jefferson said in his inaugural speech, “We are all Democrats, we are all Republicans!” There are millions of passionate voters in this country, voters with myriad concerns and needs that don’t necessarily fit in with either of the major party platforms.

We’re building a database of all event information in the world (yes, all). This means we’re sucking up info on conventions, town hall meetings, rallies, protests, meetups, house parties, etc. We’re doing this because we think the internet can—and should—make smaller events more discoverable. It’s a pursuit that parallels transparency. That is, we believe that there are tens of thousands of wholly public events that are essentially hidden from the public simply because there’s no simple place to find them…

The blog is worth a read, but the really impressive part is the site they’ve put together to answer the need. (I’d love to say “the site I put together,” but aside from the base technology I wasn’t involved.) With a few clicks you can discover that house party down the street you didn’t know was happening, demand that the politicians come to earn your vote, or invite the world to come to your Lefty Libertarians for Literacy meeting.

The proof, for me at least, was that on my very first view of the page I discovered three different things I’d like to be doing, none of which I would have known about otherwise. Hopefully you’ll find something similar.

Jed and Alex are hoping to make a mark on the 2008 election. They have quite a long road ahead of them, but the first steps are really exciting.

continuing the permanent war

Iraq, Politics

So I was reading the latest comments by William Kristol on opposition in Congress to the escalation of hostilities in Iraq, and they sounded a bit familiar:

It’s so irresponsible that they can’t be quiet for six or nine months and say the president has made a decision, we’re not going to change that decision, we’re not going to cut off funds and insist on the troops coming back, so let’s give it a chance to work.

(Emphasis mine.)  I kept getting that tickle in the back of my brain, so I searched this very same blog for the phrase “six months” and found something eerily familiar:

“Six months.  Just let this play out.“

Date written?  May 2006, about “six to nine months” ago.  (Follow that link for a similar chain of six-month timelines, stretching back to 2003.)  How many more six-to-nine-month extensions are we going to be asked for?  How many thousand-death promissory notes?

Poor Taste, Indeed

Agriculture, Community & Activism, Environment, Food, Organics, Politics

This is a very good article, titled Poor Taste, on Grist debunking a recent anti-sustainable, anti-organic and anti-local food rant in The Economist that even invokes one of the chief architects of the ill-fated Green Revolution.

I mean, point well taken that creating a truly environmentally conscious and sustainable food system is NOT just limited to what you put in your grocery cart, but that is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater . . . Heck, in this case, they are throwing out the entire bathtub.