Jay Rosen writes: I will be discussion leader for a session at BloggerCon that we are tentatively calling “What is Journalism? And What Can Weblogs Do About it?” If you plan to attend, (see Dave Winer’s invitation) or follow along by webcast, or if you just have an interest in the subject, here are background notes, some distinctions that might usefully be drawn before discussion starts, and an initial list of questions for the group. There will be no lecture, no speeches, no panel. Dave’s philosophy at BloggerCon (and I agree with it) is that the people in the room are the panel. Keep that in mind as you read this. If you show up, you are a participant. It helps to be on the same page as others, and that’s the purpose of this post. ...

A while back I mentioned the anti-immigration attempt to take over the Sierra Club. Followup: the white supremacists lost (original). Good times.

I didn’t like Five Deadly Venoms as much as I thought I would. The kung fu was awesome, particularly the final battle, which provided a suitable climax to the movie. The DVD transfer was, again, superb. The story didn’t really grab me, though. I think in retrospect I was expecting big kung fu action with all five Venoms from the first minute, which is not what I got. Instead, I got a somewhat complex mystery, and I wasn’t quite in the mood for that. It was a pretty good mystery, and I only figured out who was who five minutes before the revelation. Also, I’ve realized that I like the big sweeping epics like Water Margin better than the close-focus kung fu flicks, on average. ...

I was irked that John Kerry wasn’t releasing his military records, but he fixed that. The difference between Bush’s definition of releasing and Kerry’s definition of releasing (original) is pretty substantial. Kerry put his military records up as PDFs on his web site, and anyone can see them. Bush showed his records to reporters and gave some of them 20 minutes to review some medical exams. In all fairness, I don’t see Kerry’s military medical records on his web site, and I think they should be there. I still believe there’s a difference between handing your records out to a small group of reporters and making them available online for anyone to see. Someone at the Kerry campaign gets the Internet.

“You wanna know what it takes to write mashups? It takes brass balls to write mashups.” Yeah, it’s all about Glengarry Glen Ross this week, and don’t you forget it. It’s a movie about desperation. It’s really brutal. It’s really good. I’m gonna mash it up. It’s not gonna be exactly work-safe.

Mention Count: 2. In Angel, characters have Drama Points, which can be used for a number of quasi-narrative purposes. PCs get either 10 or 20 at the start of the game, depending on how powerful they are otherwise. (Think of the difference between Angel or Buffy on the one hand and Xander or Wesley on the other hand.) They have five uses, as follows: Heroic Feat, which gives you a +10 bonus on any one roll; I Think I’m OK, which instantly heals half the damage a character has taken to the point it’s used; Plot Twist, which creates a “lucky break” for the characters; Righteous Fury, which costs 2 Drama Points and gives a +5 bonus for all rolls for one fight; and Back From The Dead, which allows a character to come back from death. ...

I don’t know how to listen to Live365 stations easily on my Mac, but I am fairly certain that someone reading this will be happy to know that there is a 24/7 Muppet music radio station out there.

Justin suggested (original) the Titanic as a mashup subject, and that seemed like a pretty good idea to me. I’m not going to use the movie as source material, since I’ve never seen it, but don’t let that stop you.

In Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey (original) is running against Arlen Specter in the Republican Senatorial primary. Toomey is a hard-right conservative who currently serves in the House of Representatives. Specter is a center-conservative Senator who fails many hard-right litmus tests, most noticably by being one of the handful of prominent Republicans who supports abortion rights. Both Bush and Rick Santorum have endorsed Specter. This is one of those wedge issues — Bush’s hard-right supporters can’t be pleased that he endorsed someone so centrist, particularly since he differs with the Republican Party on such a hot button issue. Run, Roy, run!

Now, this feels good. It is my great pleasure to — well, let’s be honest, to brag — that I will be in Austin, Texas on the weekend of December 5th to attend Butt-Numb-A-Thon 5. It’s a 24 hour movie marathon, programmed by Harry Knowles. I made it to the second one after reading the report on the first one, and I had a hell of a time. I was sad to miss number 3 and I was mournful about missing number 4. ...