As in, it’s fit and working again.

UPDATE: The annoying thing about this is that the basic points that the Damascus Citizens make are valid — the process is under-regulated and potentially dangerous. That said, the neighbors of theirs who I interviewed see them as arrogant, blinkered, and incapable of compromise. IN other words, they find it hard to work with people who accuse them of failing to understand the English language or say that the dispute will lead to “war”. The problem, in other words, is the messengers, not the message.

The Three Stupidest Guys in the Universe are now all blogging: I’m one of them, Ron Pyke is, as mentioned previously, is the second. And Steve ‘Zim’ Zimmers, is the third.

Bonus home town content: The Three Stupedist Guys’ friend and former bandmate, Joe P, is also bloggin’ up a storm.

I’m about to start tweaking the design — the white-on-black text, for instance, is annoying. Text is too small. And so on. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on design and ease of use. It’ll take me a few days to bring myself up to speed on how CSS and PHP work.

I’m going to consider the site to be in “beta mode” for the next few weeks. In that time I hope to get the core contributors signed up and posting a few things. Then I’ll do an email blast to try to generate some traffic. Around the time my PBS show airs in October, I’ll try to generate more buzz, and I’ll probably start including a reference to the blog in my bio.

Broadly, I’m looking for posts in three categories:

TECHNOLOGY -V- CULTURE … is for posts that address the core TechnoPop concepts — that technological innovations affect the aesthetics and economics of culture. By “culture” I mean “mediated culture” or “material culture”, i.e. music, film, TV, radio, print, fashion, games, digital media, and so on.

MUSICALITY … is for posts that address the creation, production, consumption, and enjoyment of music. I realize there’s some overlap with the first category. Broadly, I’d say that only “big picture” posts on music belong in Technology -v- Culture (e.g. the history of reverb devices and their effects on the sound of recorded music; the overall ramifications of analog versus digital recording, and so on).

POLITICS … doesn’t need any explanation. As the Guardian says, “Comment is free”. But as Atrios says, “don’t shoot anybody in the face.”

I’m reserving the fourth category, META, for myself.

In order to comment, you need to have a user account and be logged in. Anyone can create an account. For now, new users are “authors”, which means they can publish posts, edit posts, and upload files. In theory, the posts can include audio and video, including YouTube material. I’ll post when I’ve figured out how that works.

Please email me any suggestions you have for links that should be in the blogroll. In fact, please email me with any suggestions you have, full stop.