By Xeni Jardin at 6:50 pm Saturday, Mar 13
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In Spain today, thousands gathered in the streets demanding answers from their government about this week's deadly terrorist attacks in Madrid. Bloggers in Spain tell BoingBoing the gatherings were decentralized "flash mobs", organized primarily by short text messages sent via Internet-capable mobile devices, and online in chatrooms and weblog forums.
Around 6PM local time in Madrid, an estimated 3,000-5,000 protesters gathered spontaneously in front of the headquarters of Spain's ruling Popular Party (Partido Popular, or PP), located on calle Genova. Participants shouted slogans against media manipulation, and carried signs asking, "Who did it?".
Flashmobs spread by SMS throughout the country, with parallel gatherings quickly emerging in other cities.
The protests occurred one day before general elections take place in Spain. Government representatives denounced today's gatherings, describing them as illegal assemblies -- but because they were organized in a decentralized manner using mobile technology, there was no single responsible party against whom punitive action could be taken.
Protesters accused Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of covering up information about the attacks for political advantage. Aznar is not seeking a third term in office, and has appointed ex-Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy as his successor.
Aznar's center-right administration first blamed the 3/11 massacre -- which killed more than 200 people -- on the Basque separatist group ETA, designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Their position has since been revised to acknowledge that Islamic fundamentalist groups, perhaps al Qaeda, may have been involved. Critics of Aznar allege that his strong support of the U.S. war in Iraq has transformed Spain into a leading target for such groups.
The events of 9/11 and 3/11 share a number of unsettling connections: the Madrid attacks took place exactly two and a half years after those in NYC, and there were precisely 911 days between the two. For these and other reasons, including this taped message, a growing number of observers in Spain and elsewhere are questioning whether or not the ETA is to blame.
Some Aznar supporters accused Cultura Contra la Guerra of initiating the text-messages calling for protests. The well-known art-protest group is a collective of artists and performers, and was originally founded to protest Spain's support for the Iraq war.
"Whether or not that's true, I don't know -- today was a long day filled with intense emotion for people throughout the country," says Cadiz-based blogger Antonio Delgado of caspa.tv. "Right now -- at 3AM -- it's hard to think clearly. The only thing that matters now is that everyone needs to get out and vote tomorrow."
Blog coverage at Caspa.TV, Barrapunto, MiniD, commentary and live on-the-scene observations by popular Spanish web pundit Nacho Escolar here. Some photos are here, including the one above. A moblog/photoblog dedicated to the event is here. More news: NYT (eng), El Mundo (SP), and Corriere (Italian). Leander Kahney's report "'Net Cries Out for Madrid" in Wired News, here.
Earlier BoingBoing posts about 3/11 news from Spain are here and here.
By Cory Doctorow at 2:29 pm Saturday, Mar 13
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Now
this is a funny lab report, from a very frustrated solderer of germanium to wire.
Check this shit out (Fig. 1). That's bonafide, 100%-real data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with nothing but the best data possible. Now, let's look a bit more closely at this data, remembering that it is absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential dependence? I sure don't. I see a bunch of crap.Christ, this was such a waste of my time.
Banking on my hopes that whoever grades this will just look at the pictures, I drew an exponential through my noise. I believe the apparent legitimacy is enhanced by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to make the fit. I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered.
Link(
via Chewy)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:01 pm Saturday, Mar 13
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Kim Stanley Robinson, who is, on the one hand, the author of a
brilliant,
seminal series of novels about terraforming Mars has written a grand, overarching survey of the speculative literature of the Red Planet for the NYT, in the wake of the discovery of Mars's aquaeous history.
Meanwhile, the feedback loop between science and science fiction continues to flow. It is, as we have seen, an elliptical loop, like the orbit of a comet. Science-fiction writers seize on new scientific findings and immediately leap to conclusions, in the form of stories. Then these stories dive into young minds and percolate there, shaping future scientists and giving them dreams, visions, plans.Leap and percolate. These days I sometimes hear from young people who tell me they are studying some kind of science because of my Mars books. ("But you forgot to mention the math.") I feel like part of the science-fiction loop. I still follow the latest Mars news, and sometimes I wonder what the next wave of Mars stories will be like.
It seems awkward. I suppose the thing to do would be to tell the story of the robot rovers, because that's what we're going to have for a while. Maybe rovers much more powerful than Spirit and Opportunity -- artificial intelligences, in fact, and happy to be on Mars, because it's the world they were designed for, and they're protecting an indigenous cryptoendolithic, or hidden in rock, bacterial culture they have discovered. So that when humans finally arrive in person, it's a disaster in the making for all concerned, and the rover artificial intelligences and little red people have to play dumb and play ghost and change humanity for the good of all, and . . .
Link (
via Nelson)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:13 pm Saturday, Mar 13
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A reminder: I'm signing copies of
Eastern Standard Tribe tomorrow Monday at SXSW at 1:30, immediately following the
Bloggie Award Ceremony on the trade-floor.
If you're not a registered attendee at SXSW, you can get a free trade-floor pass here.
And on that note, check out the sweet lovin' I got in this week's Entertainment Weekly: "Clerks meets Startup.com... Tribe is packed with big ideas."
By Cory Doctorow at 12:45 pm Saturday, Mar 13
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The remake of the NARC video-game encourages players to bust dealers, steal their stashes, and use the confiscata as performance-enhancing power-ups.
You're still a cop and you're still looking to take out the dealers and suppliers. And, odds are you'll pick up the cash and drugs scattered about once again. The hook is: In the new "N.A.R.C.", your character can -- and is, in fact, encouraged to -- ingest those drugs.Looking to slow time around you -- a la "The Matrix" or "Max Payne"? Take a toke. Marijuana puts you into "weed time." Not sure who the bad guys are? Drop some LSD and enemies will appear to have giant devil heads. Moving too slow? A little speed will take care of that, letting you zip around and fight at an incredibly fast pace.
Link (
via Costikyan)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:29 pm Saturday, Mar 13
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Just a quick plug for
The Broken Land (originally published in the UK with the much better title
Hearts, Hands and Voices), by Ian McDonald. McDonald is one of the great underappreciated science fiction writers of the twentieth century and this is one of his great, underappreciated novels. It's a biotech parable for the Irish Catholic/Protestant conflict, and the bones of that conflict are fleshed with one of the saddest, funniest, strangest stories I've ever read. Start with the Ancestor Tree, on which the heads of the recently dead are spiked, where their brains are kept alive and linked into an (ahem) neural net that makes an oracle out of the combined wisdom of all the dear departed. When the ancestors grow old, the bark grows over their eyes and they go into a dreamtime of bio-computational fantasy. There's an adventure story in here, and a coming of age story, and a lot of deeply kinky biotech thinking, and some of the most poetic prose I've ever read.
By Cory Doctorow at 11:39 am Saturday, Mar 13
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Alphavilla, the capital city of The Sims Online, is having a presidential election. At issue is the appropriate means of warning newbiess off of scam artists, and threcruitment and training of virtual intelligence agents and cops.
Indeed, differing approaches to protecting newbies from scams have evolved as the central issue in the presidential campaign. And while Mr-President seems highly popular and likely to fend off his opponent next month, he could lose to a candidate seen as tougher on scammers.If she survives Saturday's primary, that candidate could be Ashley Richardson -- the avatar name of a 16-year-old girl named Laura. Of four candidates running in the previous round, she got the most votes out of 213 cast by trumpeting her platform of confronting scammers and giving newbies as much help and welcome as possible.
Link (
via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:35 am Saturday, Mar 13
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Somehow, I missed reporting on this panel when I listed my SXSW stuff: I'm on a panel on Digital Preservation on Monday, 15 March, at 3:30 in room 15:
We take for granted that our cultural artifacts will last. It offends and horrifies us when we learn of decaying archaeological sites, looted museums and burning libraries. However, our digital heritage does not afford the durability that we enjoy with cave paintings, cuneiform tablets or even paper. How will digital content preserve its legacy? (Aaron Choate; Tanya Rabourn, Information Architect - MetLife; Barbara Taranto; Cory Doctorow , Outreach Coord - Electronic Frontier Foundation; Adam Greenfield , v-2 Organisation)
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 7:31 am Saturday, Mar 13
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Korn's new video for "Y'all Want a Single? Fuck That," consists of the band trashing a record store, screaming the chorous, while a suprisingly eloquent rant against the recording industry's treatment of artists and the radio oligopolies' top-40 mentalitity scrolls past. The band reveals that they released the video against its label's wishes and urges you to "steal" it.
Streaming WMV Link (
via MeFi)
Update: Caines sez, "Korn has a MP3 remix of 'Y'all Want A Single' with words from Howard Stern regarding the FCC & Clear Channel available for free on their site."
By Cory Doctorow at 7:18 am Saturday, Mar 13
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New from TokyoFlash, purveyors of fine and impractical Japanese hipster novelty watches: the LED by Binary. It's a watch with a naked printed circuit board, on which are situated 10 LEDs, which glow to display the time in binary notation. ¥8900.00 -- about $80.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 7:11 am Saturday, Mar 13
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Dave sez, "Hello and welcome to Comfort Stand Recordings, a not-for-profit community driven label where all releases are free for download with artwork and liner notes. Having no business model or profit motive we strive to bring you recordings that we find interesting, compelling and downright enjoyable. Everybody needs free music." This is pretty good exotica/tiki tuneage
right here.
Link
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Thanks, Dave!
