Joe Fullman

The internet turns out to be neither the problem nor the solution for the global recession. As an indifferent bystander it doesn’t lend itself easily as a revolutionary tool. The virtual has become the everyday. The New Deal is presented as green, not digital. The digital is a given. This low-key position presents an opportunity to rethink the Web 2.0 hype. How might we understand our political, emotional and social involvement in internet culture over the next few years? - Joe Fullman

The sphere of political representation has come to a close. From left to right, it’s the same nothingness striking the pose of an emperor or a savior, the same sales assistants adjusting their discourse according to the findings of the latest surveys. Those who still vote seem to have no other intention than to desecrate the ballot box by voting as a pure act of protest. We’re beginning to suspect that it’s only against voting itself that people continue to vote. Nothing we’re being shown is adequate to the situation, not by far. In its very silence, the populace seems infinitely more mature than all these puppets bickering amongst themselves about how to govern it. The ramblings of any Belleville chibani contain more wisdom than all the declarations of our so-called leaders. The lid on the social kettle is shut triple-tight, and the pressure inside continues to build. From out of Argentina, the specter of Que Se Vayan Todos is beginning to seriously haunt the ruling class. - Joe Fullman

But it takes time and millions of dollars, and possibly risible branding campaigns, to turn quintessentially middlebrow secondary reads into upper-middlebrow must-reads. And even as Time and Newsweek attempt to copy The Economist’s success, they seem to be misunderstanding what it is, exactly, that they should be copying. - Joe Fullman

Let's start with Arab leaders, who are experts at vote rigging -- if they hold elections at all. What could they possibly say about the Iranian election, or the allegations of vote fraud, without sounding hypocritical? Nor would they rush to congratulate longtime nemesis Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leader of a regional rival with nuclear ambitions. - Joe Fullman

A Connecticut church posted a controversial video on YouTube that raised questions about the treatment of children by a leader of a gay and lesbian teen mentoring group among others The video features church elders performing what looks like an exorcism, of what they refer to in the video as "homosexual demons" - Joe Fullman

"Dennehy" classic Chicago rap song by Serengeti. Watch for the new album "Dennehy - Lights, Camera, Action!" - Joe Fullman

Iranian power, both soft and hard, is felt from the Mediterranean to the Indus. Indeed, Iran's influence in southern Lebanon and Gaza is part of a historical tradition of empire and Shiite rule. By puncturing the legitimacy of the clerical authority, the demonstrations in Tehran and other cities have the capacity to herald a new era in Middle Eastern and Central Asian politics. - Joe Fullman

In the spring of 2007, David Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, brought Ceasefire, his strategy for fighting inner-city-youth violence, to Cincinnati. The centerpiece of Ceasefire is a dramatic public forum known as a “call-in,” in which the cops, standing with morally influential leaders from the community, confront offenders with their crimes, and tell them they must stop now. Though Kennedy is the architect of Ceasefire, the people who employ it are the members of the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (C.I.R.V.), a team made up of cops, social workers, and ex-cons. I wrote about Kennedy and his efforts in Cincinnati in this week’s issue. (Subscribers can view the entire article online.) - Joe Fullman

Using this methodology one can look at what they examined for the slice of Over-the-Rhine that they examined and extrapolated for the rest of the neighborhood. The study look at areas found within the 45210 and 45214 zip codes (part of northwest OTR and some of the West End) and they predicted an annual violent crime count of 457. They then created a violent crime rate (per 1,000) and came up with a 266.94 figure. Finally this all translates into what they claim is a 1 in 4 chance of being a victim in one year in Over-the-Rhine. - Joe Fullman

Keyboard cat approves - Joe Fullman

A New York City man arrested in an elaborate fraud scheme clearly has Mommy issues. For six years, 49-year-old Thomas Prusik-Parkin of Brooklyn, N.Y., allegedly impersonated his dead mother to collect Social Security checks and rent subsidies — racking up a total of $115,000, according to the Kings County District Attorney. - Joe Fullman

Yet recently, even though we've nationalized no banks and undergone no grand reinvention of capitalism, the sense of panic seems to be easing. Perhaps this is a mirage -- or perhaps the measures taken by the U.S. government and other countries have restored normality. Over time we might see that faced with underreacting or overreacting, most governments wisely chose the latter -- and appear to have averted a systemic breakdown. Many experts are convinced that the situation cannot improve yet because their own far-reaching sweeping solutions have not been implemented. Most of us want to see more punishment inflicted, particularly on America's bankers. In fact, there has been much pain, especially in the financial industry, where tens of thousands of jobs have been lost , at all levels. Fundamentally, though, markets are not about morality. They are large, complex systems, and if things get stable enough, they move on. - Joe Fullman

David Birnbaum, the Biennale's curator, told camera crews filming the installation that he thought the project "sounded a bit megalomaniac," but the sight of the oversized house, clad in beige vinyl, flimsily bobbing up and down against a backdrop of palazzi and piazzi as it was towed through Venice's canals, was breathtaking. It was an architectural icon of the American Dream revealed in all its formulaic absurdity. Amazingly, then, one of the pontoons capsized, and the entire house sank to the bottom of the canal—an unintentional yet utterly perfect coda to the house's own built-in commentary. Now, a fake generic American suburban home will add its ruins to the underwater archaeology of Venice. - Joe Fullman

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest. - Joe Fullman

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area. The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint. Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country. - Joe Fullman

Federal regulators gave the green light Wednesday to Swiss food giant Nestlé SA's $2.8 billion takeover of Oakland-based Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream Inc. (Nasdaq: DRYR). The two companies may merge on the condition that they also get rid of some of their ice cream brands to rivals in order to keep some competition in the marketplace, according to the Federal Trade Commission. - Joe Fullman

It is not every day that you find conservative Catholic theologians arguing about the moral propriety of anal sex. But in an exchange of articles being published on the Knights of Columbus' Web site "Headline Bistro," sodomy has become a hot topic. It's part of a larger discussion about the work of Christopher West, a Catholic layman who has made a career out of propagating his interpretation of Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body," a series of speeches from 1979 through 1984. In them, the late pope tried to reconcile contemporary insights into human sexuality with broader theological anthropology and to alter the image of the church as the source of finger-wagging condemnations of sex, presenting instead a view of sexual relations that was at once positive, orthodox, and modern. - Joe Fullman

In big cities such as Esfahan and Tehran, caravans of motorcyclists stream down roadways nightly, sometimes with two people riding pillion. With one hand clutching each other for dear life, they hold up the green balloons and banners of the Mousavi campaign or the red, white and green Iranian flag, which has become the symbol of the Ahmadinejad campaign, as they roar past. In the countryside, campaign posters plaster walls in sleepy, ancient mud-brick enclaves far from the main highways, where women in all-covering black chadors sweep past stark golden desert landscapes. It's been a thrilling ride, with impromptu rallies sprouting in town and city squares alike. But beneath the good-spirited fun, there is an undercurrent of danger, highlighted by the walkie-talkie-toting plainclothes security officials hovering around the crowds and the nasty bare-knuckled chants that the rival groups hurl at each other. - Joe Fullman

Great Branding Powerpoint! - Joe Fullman

Yahoo! is also introducing Enhanced Retargeting, which combines standard site retargeting with dynamic ad generation. For example, users who visit an airline website to check offers for flights from SFO-JFK can be served a personalized offer for that specific flight when they visit a page within the Yahoo! Network. In a recent trial, a market-leading online travel company saw a 230% increase in total bookings and a 651% increase in click-through rate when comparing Enhanced Retargeting to their traditional retargeting campaign. - Joe Fullman

The lighthouse in Saaremaa is back on the market! Saaremaa, Kihelkonna vald Oju küla Majaka - Joe Fullman