Sunshocked

I recently saw “Your Mommy Kills Animals”, a documentary on SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) and well-rounded discussion of the animal rights movement. It’s a pity that it’s a Right Wing propaganda piece.

I called my friend Brant to attend a screening of “Everything’s Cool” at the SFIFF last weekend. It turns out that he was already there, as a panelist. That was only the first of many “Think Globally, Act—Hey I Know That Guy!” moments from the film.

Having grown up in northwest Indiana, the very epicenter of the SuperBowl, I would be sorely remiss if I did not mention it at least in passing. But now that I have, let’s talk a moment about a much larger game being played, with much higher stakes.

Although my disdain for the advertising industry is well-documented (and well-founded!), I would never go so far as to call them terrorists. The fair city of Boston, however, evidently would.

US automakers gave themselves a big pat on the back this week at the LA Auto Show. Mostly, they were just making promises to catch up with technologies that we’ve been getting from Asian automakers for years now. Meanwhile, Toyota has an operational new plant manufacturing their Tundra and it’s in Texas. So what does “buying American” mean these days?

Much is written about how incredibly dangerous the new media is. Wikipedia contains inaccuracies! MySpace is full of pedophiles! Craigslist is infested with scams! Of course, much of this is perpetuated by the old media, who are hardly without sin. In fact, a recent situation illustrated to me just how the ecology of new media is vastly more healthy.

Exxon got outed last summer in its funding various “Think Tanks”. Now it seems to be getting into the Web 2.0 crowd by making videos and posting them to YouTube. Oh, and forgetting to mention that they’re Exxon.

The telecoms must be scared; they’re already fighting dirty. Consider, if you will, these three news items:

1. Hands Off the Internet, a “grassroots” website against network neutrality.
2. Tom Giovanetti’s OpEd in the Mercury News, “Network neutrality? Welcome to the stupid Internet.”
3. Sen. Ted Stevens’ already infamous “The Internet is a series of tubes” speech.