I used to work for Peter Feldstein in the mid 1990s to help him manage a computer lab for the arts. His work is top-notch and he’s the nicest guy you could ever work for, so it’s great to see him get some well-deserved media attention [1]. His Oxford Project, listed in the Yahoo! most popular news stories today [2], humanizes a part of the world that some people will never be exposed to; it is a brilliant ethnographic tool.
In the current phase of his project, Feldstein has added a new twist, thanks to the help of friend Stephen Bloom, an author and journalism professor at the University of Iowa. Based on interviews, Bloom has crafted short narratives that lend a confessional, poetic and unvarnished dimension to the lives in Feldstein’s then-and-now portraits.
Way to go Peter! I really like reviewing the photos and I wonder if facial recognition technology would accurately predict the changes.
I expect to see it on the Colbert Report or Daily Show soon.
[2] The BBC has “related” links and other helpful segues on their news pages, but for some reason Yahoo! does not even suggest than there might be an official project website. BoingBoing had to be told by a reader that they should link to the project site, but at least they did so. All very strange, considering the basic concept of hyperlinking versus traditional text…
Interesting video (12 minutes) of sworn testimony by a programmer. He claims he was hired by Tom Feeney, the Republican Speaker of the House in Florida in 2000, to hack electronic voting systems. Many suspected Feeney helped orchestrate a Bush victory through nefarious methods, based on some of the language and actions at the time. For example, Florida State Senate President John McKay worked closely with Feeney to bypass the Florida Supreme Court decision and call for a special session of the Florida state legislature to pick the state’s electors:
a reasonable person could conclude that the recent [Florida] Supreme Court actions [calling for a recount] may cause Congress not to accept our electors that have already been sent to Washington.
Our sole responsibility will be to put forth a slate of electors that is untainted and ensures that Florida’s 25 electoral votes count in this election, regardless for whom they voted.
No one has ever established on what basis McKay claimed that the Florida electors would not be accepted by Congress if there was a recount. Such a claim seems absurd. Now we see that he may have had a very real reason to oppose a recount; Feeney could be a man who intentionally tainted the vote by corrupting electronic voting systems and feared a recount would expose him.
When change eventually can’t be avoided, it’s usually those in charge who are in the best position to afford the leap of faith and keep a company out of trouble. But those in charge are rarely advocates for employees keeping a healthy attitude about change, perhaps as it is far more complicated to manage and control than employees who will accept status quo.
Here’s a sad story about what happened to a family who gave their life to the steel mills at a time when the mills were in decline. Was it their fault that they became so conservative that they could not see change coming and then were unable adjust when no choice was left? Tough question but from a security perspective it seems to me that leadership should be as much about helping avoid disasters tomorrow as making a dime today, otherwise people end up in tragedy caused by profiteering.
Ethiopia is reportedly sending members of its army into neighboring Somalia to help support the Somali government’s effort to stabilize the region. The interim government was forced out of the capital Mogadishu when militant opposition forces took control of the city. Ethiopia’s support of the secular Somali government has led the Muslim clerics that run the Union of the Islamic Courts (UIC) to declare a holy war against Ethiopia and claim that Ethiopia is actually invading (and not just sending a few advisors).
The situation is not entirely surprising, since the Islamic militia has managed to work their way into a decades-long conflict and unify past anti-Ethiopian rebel causes while establishing a new pro-Islamic agenda. A long and troubled conflict over the Ogaden region has been a problem for both countries since Somalia became a country in 1960 (and the British gave the Ogaden to the Ethiopians, resulting in war with Ethiopia in 1964). Islamic forces seem to be effective at taking disenfranchised forces and turning them into a co-ordinated international effort to establish fundamentalist states.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that Eritrea is now said to be supplying the UIC with weapons and other support. It’s not clear if this is because of Eritrea’s own decades-long conflict with Ethiopia and support of the Ogaden rebellion (as it helped them gain their own independence) or because they are sympathetic to the formation of a militant Islamic state in Somalia.
Either way, another regional flashpoint is looking more dangerous than ever. Should Iran and Saudi Arabia become more and more relevant to a fight for control of disputed land around the world it is hard to see how the Bush doctrine can help countries that do not want to live under Islamic (or any other form of) fundamentalism. So far America has accused the UIC of being in bed with Al Qaeda and the UIC has accused Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf of being a puppet government of Ethiopia. The Arab League and African Union are the best hope to stabilize and deflate this dispute, and find out whether this is another case of extremist Islamic rebels picking a fight, as respect for America in international affairs continues to fade.