This film is a documentary about the recent elections and how various tactics and methods were used to skew election results (one way or the other). Ian Inaba, the film's director, is heading up a movement to monitor the midterm elections next week with a cadre of volunteers using video cameras, camera phones, and the Internet - in an effort to not only document voting indescrepencies, but also to prevent them through detente.

American Blackout - Official Site.

John T. Unger, an artist and longtime commenter on Collision Detection, recently announced an intriguing art project called "American Guernica: A Call for Guerilla Public Art". He's calling upon artists nationwide to post replicas of Guernica, Picasso's famous antiwar painting, on billboards and the sides of buildings -- as in the Photoshopped example above.

I think I'm going to have a few dozen stickers of this work printed up.

American Guernica

Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain -- for a while -- but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil wheel. The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin. And profit is god, after all. (Genuflect here, if you must.)

What's wrong with the world, in two thousand words or less.

Wired News: Eat, Sleep, Work, Consume, Die

Tennessee Regulatory Authority Director Deborah Tate was nominated yesterday by President Bush to the Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top regulatory body for media and telecommunications industries.

This actually might be good news. Debi has previously been very pro consumer and pro competition. She's had a fairly keen understanding of how technology cycles can benefit both.

President Bush picks Tate to fill Powell's seat on FCC

An 18-year-old high school student has been elected mayor after mounting a write-in campaign to oust the 51-year-old incumbent.

awesome.

18-year-old write-in candidate elected Hillsdale mayor

A deeply flawed redevelopment program has allowed Detroit's historic Brush Park neighborhood to fall into seemingly irreparable disrepair.

Once a community of flourishing town houses and mansions, the district today, according to some experts, should be prime territory for revival given its proximity to downtown Detroit, Comerica Park and Ford Field.

There have been a handful of impressive restorations in the district, along with a successful new housing tract being built by Crosswinds Communities. But the city's development plan, drawn up in 1989 and updated twice, remains largely unfulfilled. It initially called for the construction of 1,500 homes and town houses; the condemnation, purchase and demolition of upwards of 100 buildings; and payment of moving and relocation costs for an estimated 500 people.

The difference between New Orleans and Detroit? It only took 2 days for New Orleans to be a ruined city.

How NOT to rebuild Detroit

Detroit has surpassed Cleveland as the nation's most impoverished big city, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Survey figures released Tuesday show 33.6 percent - or more than one-third - of Detroit's residents lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2004, the largest percentage of any U.S. city of 250,000 or more people.

Sweet.

Detroit Most Impoverished City

Apple Computer is coming to the rescue of Detroit's schoolchildren and, in doing so, may finally push Michigan to nuke its failed public high school system and start over.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm will announce Tuesday that the California computer maker and master of the red-hot iPod will help finance, equip and advise a small top-quality high school for Detroit students at most risk of being left behind.

Where was this when I was growing up? I had to settle for a seminar at Inacomp for the release of the Apple ][. Favorite moment? Playing Apple Panic.

Apple brings hope to Detroit

Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation's leading college admissions tests.

Many Going to College Aren't Ready, Report Finds

"Although in some ways it's 60 years too late, it's gratifying to see that this blatant instance of injustice has finally been recognized for what it was -- a legal lynching," Vodicka said.

Every once and awhile, a restless soul finds peace.

Maid pardoned 60 years after execution