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Sunday, February 02, 2003 |
Smart Mob Entertainment on Streets of San Francisco. The Go Game relies on the very latest in wireless technology, keeping the game moving with a constant give-and-take of digital information. Teams of 4 to 6 players compete with one another to complete a sequence of creative challenges or "missions" in the most ingenious, daring, creative fashion. We track your heroic deeds as you go along, verifying your location and the time it took to complete each mission. Go Game conspirators may be lurking around every corner.
Through clues downloaded to a wireless device and hints planted in unlikely places, you'll be guided through a city you only think you're familiar with. Clues can appear at any time, anywhere. Perhaps you didn't notice the woman on the bus reading a magazine upside-down. Or the note stuck to the side of the bathroom mirror of your favorite bar, or the electric scooter parked outside with your name on it. After a day of Go, you will.
As a player you may be a sleuth, a superhero, a saboteur, or all three. It all depends on, well, you. We at Go Game Central devise a diverse range of activities to suit everyone's interests, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses. We beam these "missions" to your team and you, like any good super-human, are to complete them with wit, cunning, and creativity. To play The Go Game you'll need quick thinking, a little street smarts, a lot of ingenuity, and the courage to break a few social rules.
After the final mission has been completed, teams convene at a local pub to share their experiences -- in all their high-resolution, full-color glory. Over beers and burgers, players vote on the digital photos and videos from the day as they're projected on the big screen. Points are tallied in a hilarious exchange of the day's events and the winning team makes off with the prize. [Smart Mobs]
3:46:35 PM 
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Yesterday,
Iran Celebrates Revolution Anniversary, by Ali Akbar Dareini (AP).
Helicopters rained flowers over Tehran and sirens wailed across the city Saturday to celebrate the 24th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution.
But the festive spirit was lost on Iranian reformists, with some complaining that the country's hard-line establishment had not delivered on promises made after the 1979 revolution to reform the Persian state's society.
Saturday is the first of 10 days of festivities – known as the "Ten Days of Dawn" – that mark the homecoming of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran, whose return sparked mass protests that led to the ouster of the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and establishment of hard-line Islamic rule.
Church and school bells rang out, mixing with the wail of train and boat sirens at 9:33 a.m., the time Khomeini touched down 24 years ago at Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport aboard a chartered Air France plane after 14 years in exile.
Ten days later, the shah's monarchial rule effectively collapsed following mainly student-led mass protests.
Helicopters showered flowers along the 21-mile route from the airport to Khomeini's shrine in south Tehran, where a small group of followers gathered. Police vehicles switched on head lights and honked in celebration.
Meanwhile, today, from Punxsutawney, comes news that
10:13:27 AM
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Yoko Motion by Carla Spartos, in The Village Voice, on the "Yang, Yang" remixes.
Maybe genius needs to be misunderstood. Maybe there are legions of secret Beatles fans working it on dancefloors around the globe with resentment in their hearts. Or, get this, maybe Ono's the one to rebridge punk and dance.
10:12:43 AM
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Moon mission. Here are some points of view you won't get from TV coverage of the Columbia disaster.
1. People die every day. Lots of people. Death is common, it's not unusual.
2. When people die it creates room for growth. In other words, nature abhors a vaccuum. Life goes on. And dozens of other homilies you won't hear on TV because they have a conflict of interest. They want to keep you glued to the set. They will never tell you "It's okay to resume your life now."
3. Space travel is more important than the seven people who died and the billions of dollars that were lost. Every time we've gone to space there were benefits that we didn't know about before that we reaped later. The computer you're using right now is a product of lots of space missions. This is where the "moon mission" style of development came from. I'm a big believer in it because it produces results. Declare an impossible mission and then achieve it. Then take stock. There's a pretty good chance you invented something important along the way. But you were too busy to notice.
4. When a big galvanizing news event happens and I'm near a computer, I jump on it, with no holds barred. Why? Because that's the art I practice. The astronauts practiced a different art. My goal is to learn how to organize and distribute information in ever-more-efficient ways. With a speciality in timeliness. I welcomed Sept 11, we learned a lot from it. All that was in motion yesterday. And we learned even more. I sent Glenn Reynolds a note yesterday asking him to remember where the glitches were in his editorial system, so in the coming weeks and months we could build more useful authoring tools that help him when he's shoveling bits from his inbox onto his weblog. And to make it all work better for users of news aggregators. Remember, if you can, amidst the tears, of ways you'd like the Web to work better in time of crisis. That's important stuff. That's a way you can make the world a better place, and it's a totally valid way to honor the memory of those who died.
5. Back to death being common. If television wanted to do us a real service they'd take the cameras into a nursing home or the pulmonary unit of a major hospital, right here in the US, and show the people what dying is like in the world we live in. Some people don't know. I didn't until last year. The Shuttle astronauts were so lucky! They had amazing lives. They went to space. They were scientists so they knew it was risky. And they were lucky because they died quickly without much time for pain and long goodbyes. Yes it's sad they died. Yes. But it's great that they lived. [Scripting News]
10:06:27 AM
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Iran Lifts House Arrest For Prominent Cleric. By Karl Vick, Washington Post. (Jan. 27)
The cleric, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was once in line to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader, has been confined to his home in the holy city of Qom since 1997, when he sharpened his criticism of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the more junior cleric who became supreme leader.
Montazeri, 81, is in failing health. The announcement of his release came after appeals by the European Union and a petition signed by more than 100 members of the Iranian parliament, a body controlled by reformers who analysts said might consider Montazeri's release a victory.
It is very significant, very significant, said Shirzad Bozorgnehr, editor of the Iran News. It could be seen as a positive step, or a score for reformists. But overall in my personal opinion, nothing much is going to change, because he probably is not going to be allowed to hold news conferences or write books. It's going to be a while before we know what restrictions remain.
Iran Ends Dissident Ayatollah's Detention (Reuters -- Jan. 30).
An associate said this month that he was sure that freedom would improve the ayatollah's health, adding that he would resume political activities.
Freed Ayatollah Again Makes Voice Heard, by Elaine Sciolino, New York Times.
Freed from the shackles of house arrest after five years on Wednesday, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri — the man once destined to become spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic, who then became its most outspoken dissident cleric — today did what he does best.
He talked.
He talked to a delegation of Parliament deputies seated cross-legged at his feet in a simple office decorated with artificial plants and machine-made rugs. He delivered speech after speech to hundreds of men and black-veiled women who rotated in and out of a warehouse-like auditorium. He chatted with almost anyone who turned up to see him: students, relatives of political prisoners, journalists and folks from his hometown of Najafabad, about 100 miles south of here.
. . .
They kept me isolated from society for five years and wasted five years of my life this way, he said in a brief interview in his office. It was such a cruel thing to do. I could have been useful, given advice, but they deprived me from doing it. This is oppression.
His words made clear that he would keep his pledge to accept no conditions for his release and to speak out just as loudly and clearly as before.
He told members of Parliament and students that the harsh sentences given political prisoners by two special courts — one for political activists, one for clerics — were baseless, adding, They do not exist in the Constitution.
Rather, he said, these courts have alienated the clerics, have jailed religious and revolutionary figures and should be disbanded. He called on the authorities to come to their senses and release all political prisoners.
. . .
As for Iran's place in the world, he said: Chanting death to this and that is not the way to run a country. We have lost our prestige in the world. We are constantly falling behind.
Iran Cleric Rips Islamic Establishment, by Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press.
That a group of people decides for the nation is dictatorship. The only difference (from the past) is that some clerics have replaced the shah, he said Friday, referring to the shah of Iran, who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution. He also said the Special Clergy Court, which had imposed the house arrest order on him, was unconstitutional.
Montazeri, once expected to become Iran's supreme ruler, was freed Wednesday after five years of house arrest for criticizing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the successor to the leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
He was exiled to his home in Qom, 80 miles southwest of the capital, Tehran, in November 1997 after criticizing the executions that followed the 1979 revolution. He also suggested that the rule of current leader Khamenei be limited.
The 81-year-old ailing cleric said he stood by the comments that led to his punishment.
Reforms are not something the establishment should fear, he said Friday. Reforms are the same promises the late Imam Khomeini gave to the people during his exile, when he said even communists are free to speak their minds.
9:46:13 AM
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Iran's Revolutionary Fervor Is Now All but Spent, by Elaine Sciolino, NYT.
Twenty-four years ago [yesterday], a 78-year-old ayatollah with fierce eyes named Ruhollah Khomeini landed in an Air France plane to make a revolution.
As it has done every year since then, the Islamic Republic that was created in his name is celebrating the 10 days between his arrival and the surrender of the shah's army.
. . .
Today, despite an official call to pray and remember, only about 300 men and a few dozen women came. Many of the folding chairs brought in for the occasion were empty. Schoolgirls in pale blue head coverings and royal blue coats came on a field trip not to honor Ayatollah Khomeini but to visit the tomb of a rival ayatollah who was silenced after he objected to the intrusion of religion into politics.
. . .
Yasser Ayazi, a physics major in Qum, will not celebrate the anniversary. People are not too happy these days, he said.
People need a democratic Islamic republic and justice, but I see a lot of problems still untouched, unsolved. So I am not feeling particularly warmly toward this celebration.
9:27:39 AM
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Paul And Ringo Won't Let It Be. Plastic::Music::Nostalgia: Unhappy with legendary producer Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound' treatment, Paul and Ringo (and the marketing monkeys at EMI) have now decided to release Let It Be as it was originally intended. Call it the 'Musician's Cut', if you like. [Plastic: Most Recent]
9:21:05 AM
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What's up with Punxsutawney Phil today? More winter, or what?
3:19:54 AM
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