Archive - Aug 2004
August 15th
Sunday in August
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 08/15/2004 - 10:34It is a lazy Sunday morning in August. Kim and Fiona are on the Cape. Mairead and Miranda are on their way back from Michigan. Hurricane Charley, now a tropical storm, or even less, is on his way out into the North Atlantic. I should probably be at church, but I am doing a little last minute packing and cleaning as I await the kids’ return and then head out to Cape Cod with them.
August 13th
Creating political maps
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/13/2004 - 10:50Recently, I’ve been interested in using computers to generate maps for political purposes. Folks from CCAG helped train me in using ArcView. ArcView is a very impressive mapping program. It is very powerful, and hence very complicated. I’ve used it to produce turf maps like this.. I still feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface. I am hoping to see some integration between mapping software and projects such as CivicSpace or Advokit
About patriotism...
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 08/13/2004 - 09:21A recurring theme I've been running into is taking back patriotism. Samuel Johnson's quote, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" has often been brought up. Many people claim that his barb was really aimed at those false patriots who equate patriotism with their specific political philosophy.
On one mailing list, I sent this as my reply discussions about flag waving at the Democractic National Convention:
August 12th
My Social Networks
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/12/2004 - 10:45Today, I receive an email inviting me to join Multiply.com I'm on many online social networks, so I thought I would provide a few comments about them here.
Ecademy
I've been on Ecademy for a long time. It is based on an early version of Drupal, and is a pretty good group of people. It has a strong focus on ebusiness and particularly in England.
Ryze
I've been on Ryze for quite a while as well. It seems very business oriented, particularly in the States. A lot of people are on both Ryze and Ecademy.
August 11th
Blogging the Republican National Convention
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/11/2004 - 17:24(Initially published at http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/archives/000161.html)
After my experience blogging the Democratic National Convention, I have been spending time thinking about what I want to do during the Republican National Convention. I have been offered credentials by the Republican Party, and I sort of doubt that I will. I have asked around to see if I can find some other way to get credentials through working with a more traditional medium, but nothing has materialized.
However, as I discovered last time, much of the story takes place outside the convention hall, and I suspect this will be even more of the case with the Republican convention. Today I received an email from the New Democratic Majority about a Progressive Tourism Bureau that will be set up at a performance space called The Tank.
The Progressive Tourism Bureau is “an exciting collaborative project during the Republican Convention in New York of [many organizations] … to give protestors a direct route into the massive grassroots effort underway to win this election and to build an enduring progressive coalition at the local and national levels.”
