Wolfmother performs “Dimension” at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore.
Archive for September, 2006
Wolfmother: Into Another Dimension
Sunday, September 24th, 2006Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006
By far one of the best acts at the Virgin Festival, Wolfmother totally rocked the house. I’d love to see these guys in a smaller setting – talk about intense. -andy
Jack White and The Raconteurs
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006
I shot this picture of Jack White with my camera phone, figuring I could at least upload it to Flickr during the concert. It was the only pic I was able to upload at the time, because my phone stopped working again soon after I posted it. -andy
Jack White’s on Stage
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006Jack White is on stage with the Raconteurs right now. A good set, but Wolfmother blew them away.
There’s been a hint of rain but not too much. Let’s hope it stays that way…. andy
Rock Hashanah: The Virgin Mobile Festival
Friday, September 22nd, 2006Tonight is the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. There’s only one way to celebrate. It’s time to rock.
Music maniacs from across North America will be converging upon Baltimore’s Pimlico Racecourse tomorrow for the Virgin Mobile Festival, one of the biggest concert events of the year. The 10-hour festival features more than two dozen bands on three stages, including The Who, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gnarls Barkley, the Flaming Lips and Wolfmother. And I’ve managed to score a press pass. I haven’t been this excited about a concert since the first Lolapalooza.
My plan is to drag around as much equipment as humanly possible, including my laptop, two digital cameras and a minidisc recorder. I honestly don’t know how much I’ll be able to capture successfully since I also just want to enjoy the show, but I’m definitely going to do my best and record some good stuff. In the small chance that there’s Internet access in the press tent, I’ll try to liveblog some of it; otherwise stay tuned on Sunday and next week.
Shana tovah, everyone. -andy
Stories I Would Have Blogged if My Blog Hadn’t Crashed Last Week
Thursday, September 21st, 2006Wondering why I haven’t posted a peep in about two weeks? It’s because some of the online software that manages my site got screwed up. Fortunately, the good folks at iBiblio.org have reinstalled the necessary files, and it looks like we’re good to go again.
Assuming I’d been able to blog during that time, here are some of the things I would have posted:
- I started my job at NPR on September 11th. So far, so good. Definitely a very cool, smart bunch of dudes there.
- Was invited to fill in for Andrew Baron at a forum hosted by George Washington University last Friday, where I spoke about user-generated content, Web 2.0 and social/political activism. Michelle Malkin was on my panel. Various liberal friends made lots of jokes (“Better wear garlic around your neck,” etc.) but she was actually very nice. She even sung the praises of Rocketboom.
- Global Voices won the Knight Batten Award for innovation in journalism – very, very well deserved. Congratulations, everyone!
- I spent the last three days back in Boston for a public broadcasting conference in Cambridge, focused on open content. Some very cool, very smart people were there, including Jamie Boyle, Dan Gillmor, Yochai Benkler, Mitch Kapor and Mary McGrath. I gave a presentation about user-generated content, talking a lot about Digital Tipping Point and the Echo Chamber Project. Had a nice conversation with Gillmor about media literacy and 21st century citizenship; told Mitch Kapor that he and Robert Mugabe were the two easiest people to liveblog, while Yochai Benkler was the hardest.
- Speaking of Mugabe, Ethan Zuckerman is on holiday in Zimbabwe.
- A mysterious stranger (from Nokia, no doubt) sent Steve Garfield a Nokia N93 mobile phone, which shoots TV-quality video. They didn’t send me one. I covet that phone. I invited Steve out to dinner last night in Cambridge with a plan to get him drunk, knock him on the head and steal his phone, but I chickened out at the last minute. I’m such a weak-willed criminal. Guess I won’t be joining any thieves guilds anytime soon.
- Our friends Hallie and Diana are both about to burst and could give birth any day now. Kayleigh will no longer be the youngest baby in our social circle.
Last but not least, I’m in the midst of making some very interesting, very bloggable plans for this weekend. Not sure if I’ll be able to pull it off, so no details yet until I can confirm my diabolical plan. Stay tuned…. -andy
Measuring The School-Home Digital Divide
Friday, September 8th, 2006The National Center for Education Statistics has just released a new report on the school-home digital divide. It’s been a while since the US government has released a report about the digital divide, let alone use the term “digital divide,” so it’s interesting to see them paint such a stark picture of the technology gap that exists between well-to-do and underprivileged students. On the plus side, the research suggests that Internet access in school is indeed equitable, with little difference among students in terms of gender, race, disability. The same thing applies to the income and education levels of their parents – low-income children with poorly educated parents are just about as likely to use the Internet in school as high-income peers with well-educated parents.
Unfortunately, this equity vanishes the moment you leave the schoolhouse gate. I blogged about the statistics in detail over at PBS learning.now, so here are some of the highlights:
At home, 78% of white students have Internet access, which isn’t enormously different than the percentage with access at school. In comparison, only 46% of African American students, 48% of Latinos and 43% of Native Americans had access at home; Asian-Americans and mixed ethnicity students fared better at 74% apiece. Regarding disability, 68% of non-disabled students and 55% of disabled students had home access.
Parental education and income levels also reveal a stark divide at home. While a whopping 88% kids whose parents achieved a graduate-level of education had home Net access, the same was true of only 55% of kids whose parents completed high school – and only 35% of kids whose parents didn’t. If parents speak just Spanish at home, only 32% of kids had home Internet access, compared with 69% of kids whose parents spoke English. Lastly, 88% of kids whose parents earned more than $75,000 a year had home access, compared to just 37% of kids whose parents earned less than $20,000 a year.
I’m still struck by the fact that the report uses the term “digital divide” so freely – more than a dozen times in the whole report. By using phrases like “There is a ‘digital divide,’” the report seems to go against the last five years of federal government officials not using the term. Does it signal a sea change? My guess is probably not. Perhaps the Secretary of Education may pepper it into a speech but that’ll probably be the end of it, unless the media and the blogosphere rally around the report’s findings and make a big deal about it. -andy
There’s Something Missing From This Hallway
Friday, September 1st, 2006
This one’s just kinda creepy. Clearly I’ve been spending too much time in hotels as of late. Like they say, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…. -andy
