If you are watching US politics these days and live outside the US - then this YouTube user will be of great help to you. He or she not only collects all the relevant CSPAN broadcasts, but also debates, interviews and pundits comments on all the mainstream channels including Fox, MSNBC and ABC etc.

Sure it’s all from a ‘libuuural’ viewpoint, but you simply watch the videos and form your own opinion.

By the way, it always so funny, when some Americans say their media is all right wing and the other political side complains it’s all left wing. From my European perspective it’s almost ALL bad news reporting.

Anyway, thank you CSPANJUNKIEdotORG!

Just in case you can’t show off your muscular body or titties or penis or butt … there is always your Turban - groar!

RateMyTurban.com - endless ours of fun.

Is this a joke? Sadly it isn’t.

I already find the concept of real life speed dating pretty horrid: you meet in a big crowd in a restaurant and each person gets a few minute to introduce themselves to the next person. Then the guys rotate to another place and the next round of speedy first impressions starts …

Now you’ll do it all over the net or just leave a video resume via webcam. I presume having sex and splitting up is also done via a cool web interface?

I am no stranger to Internet dating myself, but I am afraid that people get more excited about all the tech and the huge ’selection’ of partners - instead of really getting into making new friends and dedicating some time to getting to know someone better.

Friendship takes time. Relationships even longer. There is no such thing as speed as for good love or lovemaking. Only mental mouseturbation works well with speed …

I am so glad that these CompuServe Avatars never set the standard for all future chat programs.

I think mass media rightfully portrays the net as full of pr0n. Usually the discussion centers around porn mongers, porn sellers, porn buyers, pedophiles and sexual predators - mostly male and eager to get the easy kick.

But who talks of webbased sluttism like ‘flickr’s finest females‘, suicidegirls.com and those many webcam whores? These - often very young girls and woman - are not forced by pimps or poverty to sell themselves. Many do it for personal kicks and some extra luxury money.

All the old concepts of pornography and prostitution fail when confronted with webbased slutism: there is no physical contact involved, the woman do it themselves, there is a lot of technology involved and so much of it is for free or very little money for the buyers. Most interesting of all is the female networking: woman recommending other ’slut friends’ or running whole networks all by themselves.

As much as I am for a liberated sexuality and female empowerment but often unlimited ‘hotness’ smells of stupidity and a very egoistic, greedy or even obsessed mindset. And you hardly can call that liberated, but rather a case for serious therapy.

Everybody can be famous with a good ‘leaked’ porn video.

I also have noticed a growing social pressure for web exhibitionism for young people (MySpace.com is only the current tip of the iceberg). Many online communities and single sites over the years have developed into ‘hot zones’ instead of ‘just’ social meeting places. I guess ‘leaked’ videos by big stars like Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and absolute nobodies like ‘Tammy‘.

I guess the sexual revolution is not eating it’s children, but well connected grandchildren. The pressure to public slutism, to look cool and sexy and do horny stuff has risen to new levels. Slutism on the web or mass media are hard to ignore, neither are the gazillion of young girls who get plastic surgery at an alarmingly early age.

Sexuality should be explored, but it should be a personal and intimate thing. Especially when you are young. So ladies go and explore yourself and your talents, but don’t ‘bless’ the rest of the web with it.

More? Love the spoof Paris Hilton Video

The BBC News website started ten years ago - so happy Birthday to the world’s best news source online!

The BBC site has won numerous prices, but most important of all it has become the #1 source for many people in countries with ‘bad’ or censored news. This state controlled public broadcaster beats all the big commercial outlets like CNN. And the BBC is one the few remaining broadcasters that keeps it’s OWN huge reporter network running - and doesn’t outsource everything to Reuters or AP (as good as they may be).

Another precious gem is also BBC Radio, which has literally hundreds of good shows running every week. Thank you British TV license payers for letting us non-brits watch, read and hear all that good reporting and newscasting.

I use Wikipedia on a daily basis - so I donated €50 today to keep this brilliant source of shared knowledge working. I think this is one of the few web projects that appeals to everyone - so I ask you humbly to donate some of your hard earned cash to keep it running as well.

Wikipedia is an open and very international effort with a huge infrastructure behind it (servers that eat a lot of bandwidth). Although many companies support Wikipedia as well - it’s still down to us mere mortals to keep the torch of knowledge burning, either by participation or donation.

Bitte donate some of your money as well! 

Vielen Dank my friends.

Meditation is a good thing. But this is the new millennium - so get you notebook on the floor, activate your web based meditation timer and off you go. This one even has some nice music (click on the musical note to see the selection).

I am wondering if this is not turning into some machine worshipping? Maybe this tool can be expanded with a virtual candle, a virtual monk slapping you on the face and a virtual Buddha points counter to tell you when you are finally an enlightened being yourself?

*Thanks to all the people who sent this to me - must have been at least four via Stumblers. I guess they all think I am in dire need of some enlightenment!

Since 2000 there has been an explosion of good pixels on the intranet. Thank you cheap DSL and digital cameras! JPG Magazine is a peer made topical collection of excellent images from all over the world. You can participate with your own artwork, download all them as PDF or simply watch all old issues online.

Or you can simply support the project by subscribing to a proper printed edition.

Love art? Go and knock yourself out: www.artdaily.org. But bring some time with you - this website has some depth!

Sometimes sketches are better than fine art. Go and look into artists sketchbooks at the Moleskin Project.

Go forth creepy wizard and conjure your own nightmare here!

And don’t forget to name it properly!

*thanks to edosan for another total timewaster*

Since there are so many stupid and meaningless blog awards out there I simply create my own!

I hereby give myself the high honors of winning the first place as the best orangeblog of all orangeblogs. I like to thank my mother, my mouse and my operating system.

Tribal symbols and kanji characters seem all the rage with some people. So they get tattooed with letters and symbols which they can’t decipher. This great blog by Tian actually analyses photos of tattoos and tries to explain what they mean (hanzismatter.com)

Many times the tattoo artists got the Chinese characters wrong or simply wrote stupid stuff on people’s backs, arms and legs. I love it! Some people are really doing anything stupid just to be cool. This is a truly original blog!

Just updated my Blogroll and included some of my StumbleFriends.

Blog Action Day - isn’t it wonderful to join the crowd and discuss the environment. Or even donate your earnings of today to a environmental charity of your choice Wow! Cool! Awesome!

BOLLOCKS!

This is not the 1980’s - you no longer have to raise awareness or simply educate people that something’s rotten on this planet. We are way beyond awareness. Most people who know that something must be done are still either ignorant or too lazy to do anything.

Talking about it won’t change this. Action is urgently needed - not more talk. We running out of time.

So the Blog Action day should have been ‘kick some ignorant ass’ day or ‘buy some energy efficient light bulbs and give them to your stupid neighbor’. Something like that, but not burning more electricity for even more green propaganda and wanking on a global scale.

Once again Mousetivism gets it totally wrong.

Over at Lifehacker.com there is a nice round of geeky exhibitionism. People show their stuff. Another fine example of social porn on the intranets.

So - how much does your bag tell us about you?

Hamlet would have a cool dark gothic MySpace page today!

(Warning: stupid word creations ahead)

There is a lot of personal porn to be found on the blogosphere: death, breakups, terminal illness, angst, family affairs, war stories, fetishism, any kind of sexual encounter, romance or just plain everyday Weltschmerz.

Why this intensive openness and almost offensive sharing of pain? We has the web exploded with a gazillion video blogs, social bookmarking sites and even more cute baby pictures? Why do people pour their innermost secrets and feelings onto the blogosphere?

Writing as Therapy

Diaries are hardly a new invention. Blogs are evolved diaries. People have been writing their intimate thoughts literally for thousands of years. But diaries were always considered a private affairs, as personal reflection of life, emotions and ‘books of pain’ to cry into. My dear diary I feel like shit today …

I type, therefore I am.

But the age of personal intimacy is over. Overall society has opened up. With the ‘invention’ of psychology on one side and mass media on the other we much more understand how our psyche works. Writing is good! Sharing is even better! Crying is no longer only for girls and Britney Spears fans.

Expressing yourself to the global family is a good thing - no need to bottle it all up and keep not only a stiff upper lip. Let your emotions flow. Breath in, blog out!

The MeWe

But the desire ones own thoughts can hardly explain the incredible explosion of personal tidbits, video diaries, family blogs, instant messaging, social networking sites and all those nifty gadgets to share, collect, compare and publish the lifes of the ‘Always-On-Generation’?

Living in a box?

We actually face a total restructuring of our social fabric since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The classical family has been dissolving for almost 200 years.

But there is another important aspect to our modern society: the ‘tele-lifstyle’ has massivly changed our perception of life and speed of our socities.

The ‘Me’-Generation.

Since the start of the industrial age the ‘breeding collective’ is no longer necessary. It took only a short time to deconstruct the big family clan via the small modern family to arrive at the single parent. Today society takes much bigger part in raising children so woman can basically ‘breed’ by themselves. The big family clans support is no longer required for financial, legal, religious or moral reasons to get your clone up and running. No wonder we see such a huge explosions of single moms since the mid 80’s.

Old school family fantasies …

The result: most modern cities are filled up to 60% (or more) single people. Extreme individualism is no longer a choice, but the way kids grow up.

The ‘Me’-Generation has arrived.

More and more kids have no brothers, no sisters, no uncles, no aunties. They are grow up in a reduced family environment, while the social fabric is becoming ever more lose as well.

The Tele-Lifestyle

But also the way we experience and learn about our world has changed dramatically. We always had verbal communication and written reports to keep us informed, exchange ideas and archive knowledge to improve our chances for survival. But inventions like the telegram, telegraph, telephone, radio and most of all the television have radically changed our lifestyle and how we grow and connect as societies.

These new inventions enabled us to have a ‘tele-presence’ almost anywhere in real time on the globe. In contrast to the old slow days we can now experience live reports from the Hindenburg catastrophe, watch moon landings and the start of wars in shock and awe. We are ‘there’ without leaving here.

There is no longer a delay between events and the reports we receive. We can see and hear events as they unfolded - we are tele-present. The first time in human history you can participate in events far away from physical existence.

We loves our TV!

The television transports us within one news broadcast to a dozen places. Death in Iraq, a naked celebrity in Hollywood, a cute polar bear in Berlin. Been there, seen it, taped it.

With telephones and video conferences we can interact with people all over the world.

All these forms of communication are cheap and available to almost anyone these days. With cell phone armed with cameras and Internet access anyone can broadcast from anywhere. You can be everywhere without leaving home - you can establish a tele-presence with a mouse click, flipping on the TV or by dialing a simple number.

Amazing - especially when we remember that our grandparents just started with radio and the telegraph. No TV, no telephones, no computers, no cell phones, no Internet, no Google, no eMail, no video cameras.

The new ‘We’

But the new Tele-Presence had another effect. People shared mutual memories of events they haven’t been. A mass event  without a crowd.

Billions of people watched the first moon landing or listened to it on the radio without being there. There was no crowd on the moon - but billions shared that moment with intense involvement.

These are the new virtual ‘We’-Moments.

We now have gazillions of shared memories, emotions and experiences although we have never made them together. This is the new collective memory, the new ‘We’.

When you talk with others about global ‘tele-events’ (like the moon landing) you share deep down images, emotions, associations. These are like emotional ‘bookmarks’ we can use to connect and link our lifes. And these bookmarks are global ingrained in the individual and collective memory.

Almost as good as being there yourself - only safer …

For example: the images of 9/11 were burned live into our collective memories. We all can recall these images, we all shared that moment.

But not only such sinister moments connect us. It is amazing how TV shows, movies and advertising have created a huge library of moments and associations in our global psyche. Captain Kirk is as much a modern ‘We’ moment as Sesame Street or using ‘The Force’ (TM).

We are all Waltons now.

TV shows like the Waltons, Friends and almost any other soap opera are our new surrogate families. We learn from their lives and share their experiences we often can no longer get from our own social networks and often non-existent families. Like in ancient times we model our behavior on our virtual gods and role models.

The new ‘We’ has many fathers, mothers, lovers, relationships, enemies, brothers and sisters. ‘We’ lives and feeds on real and virtual events. It doesn’t matter if JR, John Lennon or John F. Kennedy gets shot, it all influences the ‘We’ psyche.

Everyone is a broadcaster on the Intranets

If TV has taught us anything it is the mechanism of sharing moments and exposing yourself to an global audience.

The web finally gives us the tools to link our lifes into the global psyche. We add to the ‘noize’ of the human condition.

The ‘Me’ digitally melts with the ‘We’.

Our minds spent more and more hours each day in other people’s lifes - real ones and virtual ones.

Am I connected or what?!

We participate in ‘tele-lifes’, ‘tele-families’, ‘tele-news’ and ‘tele-gatherings’.

It is no surprise that new types of websites or functions have developed: the YouTube’s on one side and the MySpace’s on the others. They serve two important functions: collecting and sharing mutual ‘We’ moments - and establishing your own global ‘Me’ tele-presence. We peek into other people’s ‘Me’ and compare our ‘Me’ to them - to see how much ‘We’ there is.

Via blogs and sites like StumbleUpon as well as social networks or social bookmark collection we put out our ‘Me’s: these are the websites I like, these are the videos & moments that are part of me, these are the pictures I can identify with, this is how I date and mate, these are snapshot from my ‘real’ life, these are my buddies, this is how I vote, these mp3s are part of my life’s soundtrack.

I am a well connected diversified prosumer individualist …

Come here, click me, compare me, link me, read me, watch me, email me, IM me, bookmark me.

This ‘Me’ is part of our ‘We’.

Blogschmerz

So is it any surprise that you can read, hear and watch almost any aspect on the global ‘We’? How much of your ‘Me’ can be found there? How much time do you spend in your many ‘tele-lifes’, avatars and online nicks?

Ah the simple life: no windows updates, no spam, no config.sys and no Paris Hilton!

And remember: we are the Neanderthals of the global ‘We’ lifestyle. Our iPods, cell phones and laptops are pretty limited and primitive. Our Wikipedia’s, blogs, galleries and online footprints are not even one generation ‘deep’.

There is no firewall against ‘We’. ‘We’ are ‘We’.

PS: This post was inspired by my exchange with Judefa and Edosan - so it’s only logical I dedicate this posting to those great beings. So Judefa and Edosan this one is for you - thanks for your inspiration!

The intranets provide a cute safety net if you feel stressed out, unloved or empty. Just click for something cute - and your day brightens up. So the net becomes an emotional one-click-pony: Click-Cute-and-Relax!

We humans have the great ability to empathize: we can feel what we see. We feel the cuddly moments and gentleness of such sweet snaps. We become the picture we watch - we become the little fluffy being being cared for. For an instant we are without weight, memory and pain.

The emotional rush is better than chocolate, caffeine and Prozac. Escape the harshness of your life with a cute instant gratification.

Transform Mousetivism into Activism and browse Pledgebank. It’s a website to start your own little revolution or activism to change this to a better world. I like it’s idea and simple social mechanism: I’ll try to better myself - if other people join me. Excellent! This is how society should work - from the ground up to promote ideas and action - instead of top down.

When do you make your pledge?

(I know this is old stuff)  

And another great Internet geek moment was born! ‘Fear of Girls‘ is a video about thirtysomething D&D players - and it is perfect. Way too perfect - it hurts! And the crowd at Slashdot went bananas!

I have been an early adopter of D&D here in Germany in the early 1980’s - so I know the crowd well. Yes, I did play D&D like mad (and many other pen and paper RPGs), I went to conventions, once again dressed up in fancy costumes, wrote my own adventures and campaigns, even published a role playing fanzine called ‘Maud Magazin‘ (fan magazin) and lived through the beginnings of the LARP madness.

The video is hosted by Google - so normally the link won’t work outside the US. Use this link if you live outside the Google Videosphere. Enjoy!

For years now the ‘war’ between the mainstream media and Bloggers has been raging. A new form of media is storming in scene and shifting the balance of the old media market. This is nothing new: movie theatres complained about TV for everyone - which took away most of their eyeballs. The original press people sneered first at radio and later TV reporters as well. Every form of mass communication has to proof it’s worth and develop it’s style.

As much as I applaud the new citizen journalist I don’t think we / they have taken over the world, nor deeply influence the rich and powerful. Plus the number of Bloggers who actually contribute NEW information and reports is very small.

One of the big difference between Bloggers and journalists is, that the later ones go out and report directly from wars, press conferences and events - while most Bloggers simply recycle these reporting’s. Sure - there are Bloggers in the field, but they are few and not ‘organized’. Big news corps like Reuters and BBC News have offices all over the world and they provide a continuity that is very different from the more sporadic blogosphere.

When life was simple - only those Viking terrorists and your soul to worry about

Although I don’t think that an unorganized and unstructured reporting is a bad thing (because I believe that chaos is always a self organizing affair), it is also important and highly valuable to have news providers and archives from either state funded news organizations (like many European TV stations) and commercial ones.

But most important aspect of all is that news consumption has changed - not just the reporting. The media explosion in the 80’s (actually pushed by the likes of Rupert Murdoch) and the later web revolution has changed the viewer / reader as well. Once people read / watched only a few sources and usually never questioned it’s content. That has greatly changed for good. Equally important is that news consumers started searching for their own truths. Thanks to search engines news and fact finding is no longer a domain of the professionals.

Hey, I know how to solve your problems - trust me!

But sure as hell the extra work and the extra confusion is making life more complicated and less understandable for many. No surprise that populism also has risen strongly in the last few decades. Simple and strong messages always were a part of politics - but in confusing and harsh times there are more people willing to listen to them. Instead of working and coping with a more complex reality many people prefer a simplification of (their) problems.

So in a strange twist the more noise the old school media and Bloggers make - the less they actually support the public. They actually create more confusion and ‘white noise’. And splitting the ‘truth atom’ into even more bit doesn’t create ‘more truth or a better version of reality. But on the other side a big public discussion is better then none or a truly state organized affair like under the Nazi regime or Stalinist Russia.

Life is complex, it sucks and still we have to deal with it.

More? A BBC opinion piece about the return of the citizen journalist.

Bettie Page is certainly one of the most iconic figure of the last century. Today she hides far away from the glamour life.

But Bettie has many followers and imitators. But in contract to Bettie they only repeat what she has done. They can’t break any taboos anymore, because they have all already been broken.

I wonder if Bettie would be a young girl today she might be the Queen of YouTube and MySpace. Even more annoying and alluring then Paris Hilton, LonelyGirl15 and Pamela Anderson together …