The Midnight Blog

Fanboy marketing at its best
"because Nokia's marketing team is too busy tossing salad to get the word out", the raving fanboy has to help.      

RIP, Steve Gillard
I remember discovering Steve Gillard's voice on DailyKos soon after I started blogging, and being so encouraged that there was someone else as furious as I was about the way that the tragedy of 911 was being used for partisan political purposes, and someone else who could clearly see the stupidity and evil of Bush's desire to invade Iraq. How sad to hear of his untimely death at 41. His voice will be missed. Lots of good obits and memories here, here, and here.      

If Going After Cacciato had been a YouTube clip
It might have looked something like this.      

Nature, red in tooth and claw
Amazing citizen journalist footage from South Africa.      

Who knew?
The hippies did. As Mark Morford says:

The hippies had it right all along.

All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the grid and it's about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, hemp-covered apology.

Here's a suggestion, from one of my more astute ex-hippie readers: Instead of issuing carbon credits so industrial polluters can clear their collective corporate conscience, maybe, to help offset all the damage they've done to the soul of the planet all these years, these commercial cretins should instead buy some karma credits from the former hippies themselves. You know, from those who've been working for the health of the planet, quite thanklessly, for 50 years and who have, as a result, built up quite a storehouse of good karma. You think?

Nice little essay.      

David Weinberger on book marketing
Quote of the day: "Everything Is Miscellaneous is an argument. In one sense, it’s an argument with Aristotle, although that’s not what we put on the jacket cover. " I'm looking forward to hearing David talk about his book on Wednesday, and to reading it, but I couldn't pass up noting this bon mot.