Lord of the Rings vs. Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Wicked mashup of the BTVS musical Once More With Feeling and The Lord of The Rings: A Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical Adventure: index.html

Machine Politics in the Blog Age?

Interesting article on the effect of networked communications to diminish the value of large organizations, and in turn the effects on politics and large political parties like the Democrats: Q: What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop? A: See below (washingtonpost.com)Back in 1937, an economist named Ronald Coase realized something that helped explain the rise of modern corporations [...] Coase's insight was this: The cost of gathering information determines the size of organizations. Size is now less of an advantage in organizations, and that means more competition in the global marketplace. For companies, it's either reorganize or die. Being a Democrat or a Republican isn't enough of an advantage anymore -- there are simply too many other places where people can get political information and find political bedfellows in an age of low information costs.

Heromiles: put those frequent flyer miles to use

I haven't flown since 11/30/2001 and have no immediate plans to do so. Of course, this means that I have a mess of frequent flyer miles on United, American, and Delta from my days as an itinerant technology drone for IBM. I'd heard about a program to donate miles for use for returning or on-leave US troops to use but hadn't found any information about it until tonight: Operation Hero Miles - Official Website. Nothing fancy as site design or technology goes, but it does provide links or forms to donate miles for the airlines who are participating. So I plan to knock a chunk off my United and American accounts (keeping enough to fly if I absolutely need to).