monkey-wrenching the k-kapital machine:

obsessive US pol-wonks will know what this is abt viz the left blogosphere’s organised assault the last few days on the share price of a media corp called sinclair (which is planning to air an anti-kerry film just before the election on the many TV stations it owns: it reaches abt a quarter of US tv-viewing homes) === anyway the activists have targeted its advertisers, 80-odd of whom (as of like now-ish) have withdrawn advertising

this is an on-going chart of its share-price (refresh every 10 mins or so for effect)*:

perhaps this makes me a bad person, but i have always loved market tumbles – just the shape of the rallies and struggles and then OOPS over another cliff next stop the FLOOR… and of course this movement is half-mechanics or more, all sorts of automatic checks (or automatic SELL NOW programs), hence the square-wave-ish jigglin up and down round the 6.5/6.49 mark – and the fact that there are dozens of ppl involved trying to make it go in one direction or another, like a multi-participant videogame** except the future of the world is at stake***

*[dear viewer from the future it is possible the fun bit is over and wobbly calm now reigns; the vertiginous plummeting i am refreshing, re-refreshing and refreshing once again, occurred on 18 and morning 19 Oct 2004]
**[in the 60s there wz a fashion for building music-making machines where the performers had input choices – the clever thing to say wz that the music’s score wz the machine’s CIRCUIT DIAGRAM: anyway i guess this reminds me of that, only here this picture is the piece]
***[they think this i mean: i choose to present myself as a mere feckless couch potato]