Evony - A Cool Online Strategy Game

I discovered Evony through the online banners that have been popping up on various websites. It pitched itself as a cross platform, web browser based, player vs player online strategy game with thousands of people playing simultaneously. It is set in a "classical warfare" environment with castles, swordsman, cavalry, archers and of course. . siege engines. The players themselves are the lords of one or many cities which can each build up there own defenses, armies, resources, technology upgrades. . etc.

Evony guarantees that it is "free forever" which it is. All aspects of the game can be played and enjoyed for free without advertising or subscription fees. Unlike many of the other "free" offerings I have researched, Evony doesn't really hold anything significant back to people who aren't paying. Evony's business model is to draw people into the fun of the game and then offer special items which give abilities and enhancements above and beyond the basic gameplay. These items are purchased with a currency called "cents" or "game coins." These coins are bought as an online purchase with a credit card at a 10X exchange rate. So $10 is 100 coins. When you first start you are given a small amount of coins and a generous amount of items as "starter packages." Some are available right away and others are rewards for achieving certain levels of growth. There is also a daily gift of a random item that everyone has available so nobody goes without these enhancements. The game creators also run many specials and offers regularly which give additional items or bonuses for spending money.

I would describe Evony as having the look and feel more like a HUGE interactive board game than a video game. Each server is a massive "gameboard" with hundreds of thousands of "spaces" which can be controlled by players. This "world" is divided up into "states" which each have their own local factions and power struggles. There are interstate relations and travel, but the heart of all the action is mostly the struggle between alliances within a given state. The battles and troop generation are all presented in text within game windows and through "reports" which describe what happened in battles and various other actions. This simplicity makes it possible for the battles to be truly epic with millions of troops involved between many players at their peak. There is also a mail system and a chat window visible no mater what you are doing which is the heart of all communications with individuals, across alliances or across the whole world.

Evony is a little relaxed in the beginning stages while the player is getting established. I entered the game not knowing anyone and with no connections to alliances. With nothing to do but wait on buildings to finish constructing and only the chatter on the world chat for company, it felt downright slow at first. It was on that world chat channel that I found my alliance, however, and the shift from lone wolf to team player improved things immensely. Once I was able to start attacking things it started to get much more interesting. As the politics, intrigue, conquest, and war got more and more intense it became downright gripping and hard to walk away from. The chess players, strategists and lovers of games such as Axis and Allies or Risk will be very pleased with Evony.

There are no "turns" in this game. It is all in real time with each player all doing their own things simultaneously. The currency for every action is a timer which must count down before your action is complete. The more powerful your actions are, or the more travel they involve, the longer the timers take. Actions can be anything from training troops, traveling to places for supply runs, reinforcements or attacks, creating and improving buildings, technology, resource gathering, etc etc. The timer based system provides a significant advantage because you don't need to be in the game to get things done. You can set a bunch of actions up and then log off and they will be completed on their own. This also makes it easy to play Evony for periods in a more casual way while doing other things like working, watching TV, or even playing another video game. More focus is needed during the more intense moments of conflict and communications but for the most part, if you choose, the game can be set on "autopilot" requiring only periodic maintenance while your focus is elsewhere.

While there is a lot of "automation" possible in Evony, the environment is pretty hardcore and the system is not foolproof. The power struggles are always in flux. Smaller alliances are often swallowed up or destroyed by larger more powerful ones and the more powerful you become, the more you put on the line. Players who are inactive and/or without an alliance might find themselves the target of more active players who knock out the defenses and "farm" the city's resources. Even when you are part of an alliance, if you don't have adequate defenses or if you are in the middle of an intense war, you may still be attacked or possibly even have a city taken over while you are away. This is the risk you take for expanding your power and it actually adds to the thrill of the game despite the occasional pain. The good news is that you can never be left with nothing. You can build and loose multiple cities as you become more powerful but you will never loose your last city standing. Recovering and rebuilding also become much faster the more powerful you become. While the end game environment is always dangerous, beginners are not thrown to the wolves. For 7 days after a player begins they have what is called "beginner protection" where they cannot attack or be attacked. This gives adequate time to get familiar with the game, get the city and defenses setup and build up a small army. A very generous quest system goes with this protection period so new players can quickly build up their first city without a lot of down time gathering resources.

After about two months playing Evony I feel like I can say that the environment is hostile and a little brutal at times. . . but the mechanics are pretty well balanced to my taste. There is an over reliance on archers as tools of siege to some extent which I find curious but it might be a necessary balance against other, larger balance concerns and it is manageable. Defensive tactics are as important as offensive tactics. I find it a strong selling point that alliances who use the proper methods and cooperation can still function even under hostile pressure from large overpowering forces. Depending, of course, on the loyalty of their allies. Loyalty and honor on the web can be a fickle thing with it's own realities.

The growth curve in Evony can be easy or challenging depending on personal gaming style and how much "heat" is on the player after beginner protection is over. In either case it is still a much faster growth than the typical online RPG which can take months or years to reach the highest levels. The basic currency for growth is the players time management and consistency. It is not hard to grow in the mechanical sense, but it takes periodic maintenance and focus to keep things building and training. Other players are also at times working to foil those plans so there can be a forward/backward dynamic at times. The public currency of growth that everyone sees is "prestige" which is a collection of points that players gain by building things and training troops. Prestige is generally related to the level of achievement you have gained while playing. The more troops, cities, and technology you have, the higher your prestige grows. A public measure of combat skill is "honor" which is another kind of points you collect for winning battles. Unlike prestige which is permanent, however, honor can be won or lost depending on battle outcomes.

Joining an alliance is highly recommended for the full experience of Evony. When players work together it takes less effort to achieve goals and much more advanced tactics become available. There is also room for lots of different play styles within an alliance. Aggressive players can build massive armies and be out in the field attacking. Players who prefer to play a support role can run resources to alliance members. . . or create massive corps of scouts. . or they can still build large armies but keep them garrisoned as defensive units in other cities to hold down the defense while the local troops are out attacking. There is also a working marketplace where resources can be put into an anonymous system that connects bids with offers. Players can sell their surplus resources for gold and then buy the ones they need. Players who like trade can even try their skill at buying and selling for profit.

All In all I found Evony to be a pleasant surprise and I have had many enjoyable hours playing so far. The discovery of Evony led me to research other, similar, kinds of offerings that are now available out there. While there are a variety of different genres out there who offer a similar kind of free play model, Evony is, in my view, the most generous with what they are willing to invest in you and your fun right up front. The starter packages and quests get your first city up and running very quickly without a lot of effort. The tactics and game balance make survival very manageable for those who us their brains (and their charm). Most important of all, though, is you really can have a great time on a small budget and reward the game developers in what amounts to a "shareware with benefits" sort of model.

The Brazen Heads - Who's Yer Paddy

The Brazen Heads - Who's Yer Paddy

If anybody has been wondering where I have been lately this is why. I just finished the second music video for my Celtic rock band The Brazen Heads

Music: Preston Reed - Life

I found Preston Reed while browsing around at the Broadjam Website. It's pretty cool solo guitar riffing. Broadjam is also a cool independent music site where you can upload your songs and get reviewed by the community. They also do videos and let you sell your songs as downloads for 99 cents. One of the downsides is that you can only acess the content on the broadjam website. There doesn't seem to be any way to embed their content into blogs so I can share a direct link to the material. I had to find the YouTube version to share it here. Looks like YouTube gets the clicks this time until Broadjam can work it out.

People at Current TV

[UPDATED BELOW and the body has been edited for more clarity]

"Well, as you know, viewer-contributed content is essential to our mission, which is about democratizing television. We're about telling stories that aren't being told right now. We're about giving the audience a complete voice and a complete role in what we're doing. Our mission statement begins with working with the audience, to create a new category of content.

So I don't think you're ever going to see us increasing the amount of professionally produced content we offer. But I think what you are going to see is that the quality level of viewer contributions is going to get better and better."


-David Neuman, President of programming, Current TV

As some of you may know all of us here at Media Crashers are citizen video producers who have been past supporters and contributors to Current TV , Al Gore's cable network. Over the past few months, many of us have been very troubled by the changes at Current which seem to be taking away the essential genius that the network represented: putting citizens in control of what they see on TV.

Originally, members of the Current website had two options: those who had production skills could submit "citizen journalism" videos for consideration as TV content and those who didn't could still participate, in a very real way, by becoming "citizen programmers." Any member could contribute their vote to "greenlight" submissions and this would push the videos they liked up the ranks. The heart of this voting system was was called "the leaderboard" which was like a top 1000 list of the videos as ranked by the voters. There was a unique, dramatic, thrill to watching your video, or a video you voted for enter at about 200 or 300 and slowly rise and fall through the ranks, depending on how well it did. To win the number one spot was the ultimate rush and the greatest validation a producer could receive. The process was also very open. Just like a democracy where citizens can watch the votes being counted, the web interface displayed the greenlight voters, the scores, and the value of each person's vote so that it was possible to go back and do the math if someone wanted to.

Unfortunately, this whole system of bringing the people directly into the programming choices was done away with as the final stage of what appears like a slow takeover by the Current staff. Ironically, this was right about the time Al Gore won an emmy for "interactive television"

The "redesigned" website has no leaderboard and it looks more like a social networking meets DIGG/Delicious page where staff and members blog their thoughts. People can still upload videos but they are all buried in the mechanics of things like collecting each other's profiles, sharing links with each other, answering staff questions with webcam videos, following staff "assignment desk" projects rather than making up their own, and collecting links to viral videos they like. These things in themselves are not necessarily bad additions to the website. The problem is that all of this stuff goes into a giant blob of "content" which also includes in house staff videos mixed in, with no separation or distinction. The "leaders" in the community seem to me much more staff centered than member centered. As a citizen producer, you can't even find a list of your own videos in your profile.

So how has this all worked out?

Someone just sent me some interesting research they did about Current TV.

Here is a screenshot they took of the "People" page at Current.com. It is the front page of this section where the most popular and most active people can be found.

Here it is:

Click on it for a larger image:


This next picture shows the exact same screen shot but the researcher went through the profiles of each person and anyone who is on the Current Staff has been marked:


Click for Larger Image:




I'll let the images speak for themselves.

UPDATE:

Apparently some in the comments believe that it is the ability to pitch stuff to Current that makes it democratic. I would submit that every network in the world accepts pitches from people, even ordinary people which is what all feelance TV producers start out as. Listening to anybody who wants to talk is not what makes something democratic. It is the process people can use to put their voices forward that defines "democratizing the media." I don't believe that a cable network staff is an underrepresented minority when it comes to deciding TV content. I also don't believe an "assignment desk" where staff tell the people what kinds of productions they want submitted is a brave new approach to making television. Democritizing the media means that people can start the conversation, submit their ideas and then look at everyone's ideas and vote, in an open and verifiable way, for the ones that should go on TV. The Current staff have always made their own content along side and they have also made their own choices from the submissions. I don't have a problem with that. The difference today is that the audience is no longer bypassing staff and choosing content independently as a way of balancing out staff picks (or vise versa). That is the heart of the problem for me. The voting today has no transparency and it is a "recommendation" not a final decision.


UPDATE II:

I my recent contacts with Current I have been informed that they understand the problems with their website and have changes coming including a "bigger and better" leaderboard. I'm not sure what this means. It was the "improvements" they made to the old leaderboard that led to it's dysfunction and eventual termination in the first place. Despite my lack of confidence, I will remain hopeful. The community that they inspired is still there trying to make a difference.

Music: Tommy Emmanuel - Classical Gas

This is some mindblowingly good guitar playing.

Comedy: Zefrank - Writers Guild Strike

Zfrank is a very prolific and popular internet personality that did a daily show for a year between 2006 and 2007. It is by far the most prolific comedy web show I have ever seen to date. His works range from commentary to stand up comedy to music videos and responses to viewers. I like him because he has a great delivery and a lot of different talents that he brings to bear.

Video Activism: The Real Terrorists

This video is posted on YouTube by an account holder named Knowitz. The account says his name is Justin from Canada and this is the only video he has offered.

Being that this is the date that lives in infamy, I thought it would be nice to review how politics has handled it all. This is a flashback to 2004. Very little has changed.

I'm beginning to wonder if our government finds it more convenient to leave Osama Bin Laden alive. If he really is as marginalized as they like to say he is then he poses no real threat to us while alive. At the same time he seems to be an endless well of political capital for the "strong on national security" crowd. They mention his name and deeds whenever possible and people understand instantly how to feel. This year they scheduled major hearings on capital hill about the Iraq war around this date. I'm sure that is partly to evoke the feelings attached to it but a cynical person might also suggest that they expected Bin Laden to release a tape at this time that would probably mentionin Iraq. That way they can point to him with perfect timing and talk about how we should stay there because he mentioned it.

Think about the brand recognition, in the marketing sense, that has been created around Bin Laden. It would take a whole lot of work to create another super villian that reaches into the gut if Joe Beercan like this man does. What if his successor's name is Alani Mohamed Mehomanhobad and nobody has heard of him? Is that going to serve nearly as well as a political tool as good old Osama? It doesn't even rhyme with "Obama" or "Chelsea's momma."

Another thing that has been bugging me is how people who disagree with the administration are automatically labeled, by supporters, as forgetting the lessons of 9/11 and helping the terrorists. If you really look at the facts it is quite the opposite.

When Bin Laden said that he wanted to provoke America into occupying a Muslim contry, George Bush was the one who did it. When Bin Laden says he wants America to stay in Iraq so they can kill as many Americans as possible, George Bush said we should stay. When Bin Laden said that Americans should be afraid, George Bush and all his supporters started screaming "The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming! They want to kill your children and destroy our way of life!!" If any force in America is helping the terrorists it is good old fashion political opportunism, in this case mostly by Republicans.

Journalism: The Real News Network

Why did President Bush go to Iraq:




Does Bush Want Saddam Without The Mustache?:



Senior Editor for The Real News Network, Paul Jay, talks with Pepe Escobar, an Asia Times reporter who has been in the middle east. First they discuss Bush's visit to Iraq and then they move on to the problems with the Iraq government.

Politics: Adam Kokesh, Tina Richards arrested for defying a poster ban

Updated below

The story here is that an Iraq veteran and the mother of a marine who did 2 tours of duty in Iraq were part of an activist organization,[ The ANSWER coalition, ] posting signs to announce a Washington protest on September 15. There was a dispute with the city over the posting of signs which they are fighting:

ANSWER Coalition Press Conference in Washington DC
to Announce Free Speech Lawsuit Against DC Government

Statement by Sarah Sloan
National Staff Coordinator, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

August 20, 2007

The Department of Public Works is not telling the truth when they say we have improperly posted signs promoting the September 15 March to Stop the War. The fact is that we have posted these signs in accordance with District of Columbia Municipal Regulations.

Specifically, the 65 Notices of Violation sent to us last week from the Department of Public Works claim that we violated Title 24 Section 108.9 of the DCMR which states that “Signs, advertisements, and posters shall not be affixed by adhesives that prevent their complete removal from the fixture, or that do damage to the fixture.”

Therefore, an adhesive can be used to affix posters as long as it does not “prevent their complete removal” or “do damage.” All posters in question have been affixed with a water-based and water-soluble paste. Volunteers have in the past removed these posters following events and found that they are removed easily and quickly.

When politicians campaign for office they plaster their posters everywhere and frequently in a manner that is not in accordance with the law. They are provided 30 days following the election to remove the signs. Frequently they do not remove them. The ANSWER Coalition will remove the Sept. 15 posters following the demonstration…. read on

And so they held this press conference demonstrating that they were using the correct paste and that hanging signs was legal. A young cop, with way too much authority for his age, showed up and told them they needed a permit and they were defacing public property. Things went down hill rapidly from there, the press conference continued, the cops got all hot and bothered and the two were arrested.


This reminds me of the time a few years back when an old girlfriend and I were standing on a NYC sidewalk holding signs to protest a business that was ripping us off. We were not blocking anything or anyone. Just standing there, on a public sidewalk, holding the signs and talking to anyone who talked to us. The business called the cops who showed up and told us we needed to leave or be arrested because we didn’t have a permit. Baffled, we left the scene and went about trying to get this "free speech permit." When we got to the appropriate offices, we were told there was no such thing as a permit for 2 people holding signs.

That fact is that this is unconstitutional behavior but freedom is kind of an illusion at the individual level isn't it? The police were wrong in my case, they are in the wrong in this case and they were wrong when they arrested those two people with anti Bush T-shirts at a Bush event, but the people giving the orders don’t care. Those people won an $80,000 judgement against the government but they still got removed from the event. Mission accomplished for the price of a toilet seat in Iraq.

Nobody can challenge the police at the time, they are the authorities and they can taser you or beat you with clubs or even shoot you if necessary. They count on people lacking resources or being too intimidated to challenge them after the fact and, if they do, the government just says “oops” and uses taxpayer money to pay whatever penalty there is. I don’t know of any restrictions on a government from unlawfully arresting people and then paying court judgments against them as often as they want. The worst they will have is a pissed off comptroller. It’s a perfect workaround when you think about it. They basically just buy as many unconstitutional events as they want, and it’s not even their money.

Not to be cynical or anything.

____________________________________

Update:

It has been suggested that putting up this poster is a violation of the park rules but I would point out that they are not in the park. They are on the sidewalk of a street that boarders the park posting on a utility box. Cars are whizzing by. The mounted cop almost chases them into the street. This makes pretty clear to me that they are on city property not park property (as if that would really matter) and the law is very clear about the use of lamp posts, traffic signals and the supporting fixtures, such as junction boxes:

24 DCMR 108.4 Any sign, advertisement, or poster that does not relate to the sale of goods or services may be affixed on public lampposts or appurtenances of a lamppost subject to the restrictions set forth in this section.

The restrictions include details of how long the poster can stay up, the type of glue, the number of posters per block, the need to tell the city within 24 hours etc. If you follow the above link you can see the details. It is also interesting to note that The Partnership for Civil Justice has filed a lawsuit against the city claiming that many of the restrictions are unconstitutional because they do not provide equal protection under the law. Political campaigns can post for longer than 60 days. Community crime related posters can be posted forever. Grass roots organizations can only leave them up for 60 days. Forcing people to register also violates the right to anonymous speech which is also protected. Would you want to register who you were voting for with the state before an election? The same protection applies here.

So, I will say it again: This cop was a punk who didn't know the law and got uppity with a citizen because he felt like his little tin badge ego was being challenged. It has been reported that he is 35 so I will accept that it is poor professionalism and maturity rather than youthful inexperience.

Politics: Brave New Media - The Real Rudy: Command Center

I was in NYC during September 11 and I knew very early on that the reason Mayor Giuliani was walking around during all the emergency operations was because the emergency operations center was built, at his insistence, in the world trade center which just fell on top of it. He wanted it built there because it was within walking distance of city hall. The lease holder of WTC, that the city gave the rental contract to, was also a crony of the mayors. All most of America sees when they think of Giuliani is the mayor who got his hands dirty and was out among the people when the disaster hit. If the emergency command center was in Brooklyn like all the planners were recommending, he wouldn't have gotten that image so I guess his incompetence worked in his favor. . . like it seems to with all republicans.

Sunday Inspiration: Dave Media - There Are So Many of Us

Click To Play

Politics: The Largest Minority - Disney ABC Tries to Kill Off Dennis Kucinich

The Largest Minority is a progressive news blog that also posts videos and other imagery. In the above video the editor, Manila Ryce AKA John Harrison, addresses a growing scandal about the ABC news coverage of the most recent Democratic debate. This outrage couldn't come a moment too soon for me. I have been disgusted with ABC/Disney and George Stephanopolis in particular lately. It began for me when they allowed a political hack to create a miniseries that blamed Clinton for 9/11. More recently, Stephanopolus was interviewing Ron Paul and he flat out told him to his face, on national TV, that he was not going to win the election. This is not journalism or even newscasting. This is smug hackery.

I have been thinking a lot about the media's role in shaping public opinion about candidates and I wonder why this is not more heavily regulated by the elections commission. Why can ABC decide which candidates get more time to speak in a debate when it is happening on the public airwaves? How can they get the rights to this public process and then bury two seperate polls on their website that says it was Kucinich people liked and not the other candidates? Why wouldn't Kucinich coming out on top even be mentioned?

I have been wondering why it is that Dennis Kucinich seems to be saying all the right things and offering all the right solutions, yet, everybody seems to perceive that his will not win. Why is that? Who is it creating that perception that one candidate is a winner or a looser so early out? Why is it that polls that show one front runner are trotted out daily and polls that show another are buried? Could it be that when a mega corporation has massive manufacturing going on as well as massive media holdings that it would try to marginalize the one candidate that promises to crack down on corporate labor practices and strengthen unions? What about NBC who is owned by GE? Are they not just good capitalists if they marginalize the news coverage of the political candidate that will cost them money? Fox news is full of political hacks but this is an even bigger problem. Why can these companies with such a conflict of interest put a stage around the whole campaign season and literally tell us who the best options are? How is it that we put up with that?

Video Activism: Wanderingmind42 - The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See

Wanderingmind42 is a YouTube director who describes himself as a high school science teacher in the process of burning out. This is citizen broadcasting at it's finest if you ask me. It is very simple and low tec. but it cuts through the global warming argument and gets straight to the logic of it, something the old media has yet to accomplish. As might be expected, this video drew the wrath of the global warming critics who proceeded to throw insults and obfuscate the argument into infinity in some of the 1700+ comments that were left about the video.

This led him to produce a number of response videos that are quite entertaining as well as informative so I am including them all below. He is clever in his use of simple, low budget gimmicks to get people's attention. I particularly like the funny hats in video #1 and the way, in video #3 he pokes fun of the short attention span of people on the web by using all his science teacher skills to create a variety of explosions and neat chemical reactions to put in every minute or so.

He calls this series of answers "Patching Holes."


Patching holes #1



Patching holes #2



Patching holes #3

Journalism: PBS NOW - Voter Caging

This is PBS which I consider part of the mainstream media but it is not as profit driven as the commercial media so there is some room for more controversial stories. The stories about voter fraud in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections, for example, is something the commercial media has turned it's back on completely.

How do you steal an election? Fix the electronic voting machines you say? Send crappy voting machines and ballots to districts that vote for your opponent you say? Not this time.

First, you figure out which populations might be voting for the other guy. Say. . . for example. . . you're a Republican. Black people unions and poor people are a safe bet to be voting for the other guy. Next, you begin collecting addresses of these people who are newly registered to vote. Then you send out a "congratulatory" letter to everyone on the list including the students while they are on break the national guard members who are serving overseas, and people who may have moved since they registered. You mark these letters DO NOT FORWARD RETURN TO SENDER. If the letter is returned because the person didn't happen to be at that address, you put their names on a new list of "caged" voters.

You then break this list up into voting districts and give it to party operatives who use their party's right to challenge fraud and stand at the polls on election day challenging everyone on the list when they show up to vote. In the case of absentee ballots from those guardsman overseas or the students on break, they just challenge it and it goes straight into the junk pile without the voter even knowing their vote won't be counted. In the case of real live voters who show up, they need to jump through several hoops which don't straighten things out until the election is over. Bada Bing! you just kept as many as 80,000 people from voting in one state alone. People whose civil right to vote is challenged because they didn't answer a piece of junk mail.

The real brilliance, however, comes when you get caught doing this. When that time comes you defend yourself by saying that there is rampant voter fraud on the part of Democrats and that this mailing gimmick is designed to help preserve the integrity of the election!! You jump up and down and point to all these lists of registered voters who "don't exist" because they won't respond. You call them "phantom voters" that are part of a fraud conspiracy. George Orwell would be proud.

This brings us to the scandal where 7 US attorneys were fired by the justice department for suspected political reasons. They are claiming that they were asked to push for the prosecution of Democrats for election fraud. This way, the Republicans could point to those cases and say "See there's the fraud we are guarding against!" Unfortunately, these attornies were not able to actually find any Democratic election fraud. They were then pressured to go after cases with flimsy evidence to make a show of it even if the accused were later found innocent. They refused to do this and were then fired, some of them directly by one of Karl Roves assistants.

Oh, and by the way, the Republicans were already caught doing this in the 80's and they signed a legal agreement as a result promising that they would NEVER do it again. Oh and by the way, Greg Palast, an American investigative reporter who works for the BBC actually has emails addressed to Karl Rove with attachments labeled "caging lists." These emails were accidentally sent to the wrong address (georgebush.org rather than georgebush.com) which turned out to be owned by an activist.

Moral values. . . .

Welcome to America.

Sunday Inspiration: Lighthouse Films - The Shift Movie

I thought it might be good to pick a day that highlights videos or films that are uplifting in some way and Sunday seems like an appropriate choice. These will not necessarily be religious videos but we will not be excluding them either. It could also include philosophical messages, information about positive organizations or just good inspiring stories. These will, of course, also be things that, in the Media Crashers Tradition, are taking a less conventional path.

We'll start this series off with The Shift Movie:

Lighthouse Films is an independent documentary production studio based in Del Rey California who focus on inspiring human interest stories. The Shift Movie is the latest production that Lighthouse is taking on. In a world that is full of corruption, war, global warming and an unsustainable lifestyle, there is a lot of focus on how screwed up things are. I'll be the first to admit I am one of the ones who constantly rails about all the screwups. There is also, however, a worldwide movement of people and organizations who are rising up in record numbers to make a positive difference in the world. Some are suggesting that this may be a global shift in human experience, an evolution of sorts. Here's how Lighthouse pitches the film:

A massive worldwide phenomenon is in progress, offering seeds of great hope for the future.

Millions of individuals, organizations and corporations around the world are waking up and embracing a new outlook with an emphasis on their responsibility to contribute positively to our collective future.

We are in the middle of the biggest social transformation in human history, The SHIFT.

At this critical point, it is imperative we make the masses aware of this global movement quickly. This evolutionary phenomenon is broader and deeper than the most visible SHIFT, the environmental movement. It involves our very understanding of who we are as human beings, and our responsibility to the world and to life itself.

THE SHIFT movie raises awareness to the story of our roles in an evolutionary shift in our collective consciousness.

As it chronicles the faces, the stories and leaders assisting in this social transformation, the film reveals its emergence & meaning.

This film is apparently still a work in progress and they offers ways to contribute on the website if you want to get more involved. From this trailer, however, it looks like they already have a lot of significant people on board.

Journalism: The Real News Network - Margolis says TV news is hiding the truth about Iraq civil war

The Real News Network has released a new video where their Senior Editor Paul Jay sits down with Eric Margolis, a conservative journalist, to discuss the mainstream news coverage of this weeks events in Iraq.

Journalism: Dan Rather - The Trouble With Touch Screens

Dan Rather, formerly of CBS, now has an investigative news show on the new High Definition TV network HDnet.

This is a cable HD network but I think this particular segment still falls into media crashers territory because of the importance of the subject matter. The traditional media has had ample opportunity to look into the scandalous conditions of our computer based election system and the people who run it but they have offered nothing but appeasement to the status quo. This kind of reporting cuts right into the subject and it's about time. Today there are even bigger problems than the computers but at least some people are trying to shed more light on this subject.

I am particularly disturbed by the revelations in this piece from several former Sequoia Voting Systems employees that many of the 2000 Florida ballots may have, in fact, been deliberately printed on inferior paper and with odd specifications at times, to create errors and shake people's confidence in the punch card system. This uncertainty then opens up the market for the new high tech and much more expensive electronic voting machines. . . . that Sequoia also happens to make. Imagine that. You put private corporations in charge of voting equipment and they game the market so they can sell the government and the people on upgrading to more expensive product. The only problem is that this is our democracy they are gaming.

Please consider Signing The Petition that is going around to open an investigation.

Comedy: Andy Cobb - The Orifice

Andy Cobb is a web video producer who works in conjunction with AmericaBlog, a very large liberal blog. He has done several very good videos including a call for impeachment done in musical form. This is the most recent video he has posted on his YouTube account and I think it is an excellent exercise in low tech satire.

Comedy: Oilwellian - American Sphincters

Oilwellan is a YouTube producer who offers some very powerful slide shows, also known as montage videos, using a variety of historical and candid photography in a Ken Burns like style with relevant pop culture music to go along. I am a big fan of this technique because photos can often bring us even closer to the reality of life than video or film does for a variety of reasons: still images can include paintings and other kinds of art that takes us much further back in history, more people have still cameras so there is a much wider variety of imagery available, still photographs are much faster to grab and far less labor intensive and it is far easier for someone with low resources to access full resolution stills through the power of the internet than it is to access full resolution video. This makes still imagery a goldmine as a creative outlet. The drawback is that pretty much everyone with a computer is able to take a crack at slide show videos so there is a nauseating amount of them out there trying to be seen.

It does take talent to do a really good montage, however, because it draws on the same kind of visual and storytelling skill that filmmaking does. This video had my jaw permanently dropped as I marveled at the idiocy that Oilwellian has uncovered. The description is very simply:

The 29 percent

Video Activism: Save Kenneth Foster

Kenneth foster is on death row in Texas and all of his appeals have been exhausted. He is scheduled for execution at the end of this month. It is now a matter of very narrow legal options and a the possible notice of the governor. Kenneth is unique in that he will be someone who the state is executing even though they admit he didn't committed the crime he is being executed for. Kenneth was driving the car that a different man stepped out of and, without the knowledge of anyone else in the car, got into an altercation 80 feet away and ended up killing someone. Because Kenneth and these men were driving around committing crimes earlier, he is seen as a party to the murder that one of them spontaneously committed after the fact and without his knowledge. The law making this connection is called The Law of Parties. Under this law, if you are participating in a felony and a murder results, you are guilty of the murder as well. The problem here is that the murder was not the result of the felony, it was a seperate incident that occurred while they were all heading home. The prosecutor has basically claimed that the crimes were still in progress. The Jury was instructed that if they believed Kennith was doing something wrong by driving the men around, they must find him guilty of the murder itself under the law of parties and, therefore, qualify for death. The man who committed the murder was executed already but, adding insult to travesty, the state is not applying the same standard to the other two men that they applied to Kenneth. Those men will simply go to jail like most other felons.


If I had to define my political views I would say that I am either on the progressive side of conservative or on the conservative side of liberal. One of the things that has always put me on the more conservative side is my support of the death penalty when it comes to the worst of the worst offenders who have been proven, with direct indisputable evidence, to have committed the crime. The story of Kenneth Foster, however, gave me an epiphany. It may have single handedly changed my mind because it proves to me beyond any shade of a doubt that the prevailing social culture and the government structure in the USA today does not have the wisdom or integrity to handle the grave responsibility of taking someones life on it's own terms. Politics is the result of society and government is the result of politics. If a society is "sick" with destructive attitudes and ideologies, the government, the laws it makes and the process of enforcing those laws will carry the same sickness.

American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition:

sociopath [(soh-see-uh-path, soh-shee-uh-path)]

Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others.

I think that the combination of advertising, dirty politics and a culture of consumerism, celebrity worship and rabid self interest has led our society as a whole into the realm of a collective sociopath. Until we have a society, a political system and, therefore, a government that doesn't reward this sociopathic behavior we have no business letting our government set up a system that decides how to take someones life.

Texas has now become the poster child for me of why the death penalty is too much for politicians and prosecutors to handle wisely. Not only have they killed almost 4 times more than any other state, they have allowed themselves to codify that lust for tough punishment onto the heads of people who didn't even commit the crime. This is the worst kind of perversion of justice and responsibility I can imagine. If this is the result that our society is bringing to our law enforcement today, then this whole level of punishment should be done away with completely, in the name of humanity, until we have a more socially stable, wisdom driven, society. Kennith Foster deserves to be in jail as an accessory to armed robbery and maybe even manslaughter or accessory to second degree murder if you want to be really tough. He should NOT be on death row for failing to realize a murder might take place. Go to www.freekenneth.com If you want to see all the details of this case. There is also a Save Kenneth blog. There is an article from the Galviston County Daily News there with a good summary of the case.