Design

This is cross-posted at TechPresident

Yesterday I wrote about getting Lost In Hillaryland while driving down to Philadelphia to volunteer for the Obama campaign. In that post at Kenneth Cole’s Awearness Blog, I write about how after the mini-adventure of the day, my oldest came to the same conclusion as Joe Trippi : that Obama was going to lose.

My son’s observation was the most interesting part of the whole trip because it lent credit to my recent thinking of “politics as interface”.

Let’s look quickly at the definition of interface :

in·ter·face
(ĭn'tər-fās') Pronunciation Key
n.
1. A surface forming a common boundary between adjacent regions, bodies, substances, or phases.

2. A point at which independent systems or diverse groups interact: "the interface between crime and politics where much of our reality is to be found" (Jack Kroll).

3. Computer Science

1. The point of interaction or communication between a computer and any other entity, such as a printer or human operator.
2. The layout of an application's graphic or textual controls in conjunction with the way the application responds to user activity: an interface whose icons were hard to remember.

An interface is a “surface forming a common boundary”, a space that is not only a common space but a mesh of space and communication. As the Java handbook to object-oriented programming explains rather well, an interface is not just the end result of a design process. Interfaces don’t come from the outside of the software process. It is part of the process itself.

So the surface that creates a common boundary is not outside two distinctive people or two distinctive groups. An interface is not something that is given to a “user”. An interface is a meshing of actions or simply put, it’s a two way street.

“Politics as interface” would be the meshing of actions, states of beings and phases between individuals, groups or even systems negotiating power. As a space of communication and as a meshing of actions, states of beings, wills and desires for power, politics as interface is developed all the time.

Politics as interface in Hillaryland is in the box of buckshot lighters gracing the gas station attendant’s counter. Politics as interface in Hillaryland is certainly the senior women holding posters saying “Honk for Hillary”.

Yet Politics as interface in Hillaryland was the absence of sidewalks down Cedar Road, the expansive manicured front lawns with their mansions in the background and the “Hillary” signs cleaving the dirt in the foreground. It was the absence of white people in the small crowds waiting with exhausted looks on their faces for the bus to come. And it was certainly the meshing sights on the road to Philly of million dollar mansions, to quaint family homes to the “We buy ugly houses” signs next to boarded up brownstones and row after row after row of broken down and abandoned buildings on North Broad Street.

When we got lost in Hillaryland, my son was very keen and very much aware of who had the upper hand in expressing power. And it became even more obvious to him when we went canvassing on the 14th Ward.

General Image Use Policy

If you want to become an Art, Editorial Cartoon or Photography contributors, please send us a link to your portfolio at editors@culturekitchen.com.

We have a small gallery of images in our Galleries. If you would like to contribute re-usable images to the galleries, please ask for gallery contributor privileges.

Use of third party images

At culturekitchen we take our right to fair use of copyrighted materials very seriously. We believe we should be able to use third party photographs in situations where the image is needed as a point of reference as is in the case of the People Magazine cover of Brangelina.

Unfortunately, the lawyers at People Magazine did not agree with us; prompting our hosting company to harrass us.

We will defend our rights to fair use, but we also ask you to refrain yourself from using third party photographs without their consent --that is, unless they are in the public domain or unless there is a really good fair use reason like the Brangelina story.

Which means, if in doubt, just ask us.

Here are some public domain resources for photographs and other media :

• WikiMedia
  A wiki, by the people of Wikipedia, chockful of public domain images.

• Creative Commons Search
  Find any kind of media with some or no copyright restrictions on the net through this portal.

• Public Domain Photographs
  Unbelievable advertising driven public archive of old and modern photographs. It will leave you drooling for more.

• Public Domain Central
  Do we need to explain?

• The Memory Hole
  Harrowing compilation of supressed images related to 9/11 and the current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

• Gimp Saavy Public Domain archives
  Copyright-free images made with GIMP, the free and open-source photo manipulation program.

• USA. GOVs archives
  A historical archive in photographs.

• NOAA Photo Library
  Awesome collection of metereological events.

• Other sources:
  Yellowstone National Park
  US Fish & Wildlife
  OurMedia
  Environmental Education Station

Image Hosting

culturekitchen does not host images or photos for members.

If you want to embed an original image or photo, you must load your photo onto your own image server. You can also use photo hosting services like Flickr or Buzznet.

If you open an account with any these services, you need to make sure you allow for culturekitchen posts to hotlink to your account. You should find information on this at your photo hosting service's account settings.

Allowed Image Formats

We only allow embedding of compressed file formats : JPG, GIF, PNG.

No PSDs, BMPs or TIFFs! These image formats are uncompressed files that suck massive amounts of bandwidth.

Embedding an original image or photo

You need the <img src="http://"> syntax to embed an image. So to embed the Cross Fingers image,

I had to write the following piece of code,

<img src="http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/crossed_fingers_0.thumbnail.jpg">

Sizing Images

All images or photographs posted should not be more than 450 pixels wide. As you can see the following photograph is too wide:

You don't need Photoshop or GIMP to scale this image. All you need to do is to use HTML to force to scale to 450 pixels wide. Here's how you do it:

So now the image looks like so :

You can do the same with the LENGTH of the image.

NOTE:
Images can be forced to upscale or downscale by defining their width, length or both. We strong advice against upscaling. Small images that are forced to size up with HTML usually lose focus, render pixilated and basically look awful.

Positioning of Images (regular flow)

You can position images without or without float on the center, left or right of the textarea.

Center Positioning
Use <center><img src="http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/crossed_fingers_0.thumbnail.jpg"> </center> to center your image on top of your text.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Left positioning
If you want an image to be on the left-side of the screen, then do nothing but embed the image link : <img src="http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/crossed_fingers_0.thumbnail.jpg">

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Right positioning
If you want it to move to the right while staying on top of the text, then you will have to force it with CSS : <div align="right"><img src="http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/crossed_fingers_0.thumbnail.jpg"></div>

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Positioning of Images (floated)

If you would like your photos to be floated, with text flowing by their side, then you need to use HTML to point to the floated side. For our images, you also should define a vspace and hspace of 10.

For left float :
<img src="http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/crossed_fingers_0.thumbnail.jpg" align="left" vspace="10" hspace="10">

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

For right float :
<img src="http://culturekitchen.com/files/images/crossed_fingers_0.thumbnail.jpg" align="right" vspace="10" hspace="10">

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

There's nothing like it! The old, the new, the coming-soon and the never-was blend seamlessly. Multidiscipline, multicultural and lingual, multieverything. I think Cirque du Soleil shows are incomparable even to each other, though the NYTimes review of "Corteo" opening last night suggests it's the only comparison we should even attempt.

[quote=John Rockwell]Drawing, like other major circuses, from the same international pool of small traveling circuses and circus schools, augmented by fresh talent from Eastern Europe and Asia, Cirque du Soleil has elevated the once marginal and innovative "new circus" experiments of Europe into an international brand name.

The Cirque format has surpassed the older-fashioned. . .
This is another exercise in slightly fey Cirque fantasizing
. . . accompanied by the sort of music mimes would make if mimes made music.[/quote]

I saw their resort show at DisneyWorld's Pleasure Island a few years ago, from the equivalent of center court, only three rows from the stage -- at any moment I was sure the tower of 50 chairs would fall directly on my head or a careening vehicle would drive off the lipless edge into my lap. And performers did come into the seats from all directions, you never quite knew what was coming or what it meant. Talk about live!

One of the things that strike about these three women is how they've laughed their way to the bank selling themselves as empowered yet arm-candy women.

They play the perfect game of well-kept women whenever alongside their men. In their videos or ad campaigns, they work the high end prostitute look.

And no, I don't think Madonna (as in Ciccone) has anything to do with it. Madonna successfully turned men all around her into accessories to match her latest look. With these three women though, their mates were integral to their image making.

When I told Peter Daou I was writing a response to his recent essay on the state of the blogosphere, THE (Broken) TRIANGLE: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness, I was thinking of breaking it down into two parts, one dealing squarely with his idea of triangulation and the other one tackling technology and the netroots. Now I see it would not be enough. We also need to look at the political ideologies and discourses that fire the netroots and how these have an impact on their use, misuse and abuse of internet technologies.

The response then will be a three part essay dealing with the politics, media, technology and the liberal blogosphere.

Part 1 is a quick look at triangulation, how it exists in the blogosphere and how it's counter to building a netroots.

Part 2 starts from the vantage point that how you use technology is affected by ideologies and ideiosyncracies. In this essay I focus on the meanings of "left", "liberal", "progressive" and how their "political activism" or practices are translated into user interaction and interfaces on the net.

Part 3 is but a draft on a proposal on how to bridge the gap between the practices of the netroots and their use of social networking technologies. This in the hope for the advancing a new progressive media.

I love Peter's essays on the phenomenon of the political blogosphere and his insights into the connection between the media and political power. They are thought provoking and insightful. But this concept of "triangulation" has been bothering me for some time now on a gut more than a conceptual level.

It was not until his recent article and my experiences with the NYC 2005 and the Alito hearings that I could put my finger on what's bothering me. It's so simple, and yet it seems that within the liberal political blogosphere, quite difficult to comprehend : nets are not triangles.

So stay tuned. In the meantime (and for background reference) please read the following :

When a blogger grows up : What software and art have taught mea bout the state of the liberal blogosphere

Thanks so much for the invite, Mr. Fundraiser

And follow the link on this own : Another way to put it: the church is an internet and each experience are blogs

Staff attorney Scott
Somerville of The Homeschool Legal Defense Association is asking when or whether any of the rest of us (read: not conservative Christians) will do something meaningful
for ourselves politically, as homeschoolers, other than just take pot
shots at his conservative HSLDA. http://hslda.org/
Basically, grab a spoon and join us to help change us or get out of the kitchen and go eat what's put in front of you, he was saying - I answered by referring him to what's cooking here in Liza's Culture Kitchen, as follows:

DEAR MAKEOVER MAVENS:
I saw the last half of "Extreme Home Makeover" last night, the Bartlett
family I think, with their own kids plus four adopted teens living
out in some flat, dusty, empty place, a family united by horses and
rodeo-riding. http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/bios/303.html

The show pros had knocked down their whole house to build
the perfect custom dream home from the ground up, all-new for this
mold-breaking, blended, good-hearted bunch of folks.

Something like 600 community volunteers with hundreds of thousands of
dollars in business donations, all workin' haaarrrd! - so I was
pleasantly teary and enjoying the complete and dramatic change of it