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.

RPM Challenge

Fun, Making Stuff, Music, NaNoWriMo

(A kind of unicorn chaser, yes.) If you liked the idea of writing a novel in a month, what do you think of writing, recording, and editing an entire album in a month? Better yet, how about doing it in the shortest month of the year?

The RPM Challenge is to record 35 minutes of new music in 28 days, 10 songs you can burn to a CD and ship off before the end date. Sounds like a lot of fun if you have the time, which I don’t, but I wish I did. (I’ve had some fun noodling around with GarageBand before.)

See also: February Album Writing Month. (The difference? Beats me.)

like a flan in a cupboard

Economics, Iraq, World

Nick sent along this depressing article entitled “Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling.”  In other words:

You know your empire’s crumbling when it’s considered an achievement to pretend that you’ve halved the rate at which you’re adding to the massive mountain of debt you’ve already accumulated.

You know your empire’s crumbling when you’re spending tens of billions of dollars you don’t own on new nuclear warheads and space weapons that don’t work, to be used against an enemy you don’t have.

You know your empire’s crumbling when gays and immigrants are used as diversionary issues to keep people from thinking about the pillaging of their country and their wallets actually taking place. And it works.

I’d go on, but it’s all so distressingly familiar.