Tree Trimmers

Looked out of my window to see the tree trimmers tonight.

Alaska Apple User Group Meeting

Tonight we went to our second meeting. They have a library of books and dvd's to borrow and books to review. If you review, you can keep the book. So looking through the pile I found "Naked Conversations: How Blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers." Since one of my purposes on this blog is to learn more about blogging and what it means, I took it and committed to a review.

The book is about the impact of blogs on businesses. Their argument is that blogs totally change the way businesses and customers (as well as employees, vendors, etc.) communicate. This is threatening to those who want to maintain centralized control and the risk management types, but the benefits of putting a human face on the organization and allowing customers to talk directly to employees (while the rest of the world can watch) way outweighs the risks. Also threatened are the traditional PR types.

I've read two chapters and learned a lot already.

Didn't know about Technorati or PubSub. Two blog search engines they suggest businesses use to keep track of who's talking about them, what they are saying, and joining the conversation.

25 Peeps

As I said in a previous post, I sent in a picture to 25Peeps. This is the site with 25 pictures and people click on the pictures and go to their blogs. Essentially a way to advertise your blog. The webmaster, in Germany, has some sort of point system based on how many people click on a picture and how many people click back to 25Peeps from the blog. He adds a few new pictures a day, dropping out the pictures with the fewest points. So right after I sent in my pic - the one in the shaggy mane post - I checked out the changes in his pictures. After a few days, there didn't seem to be much of a change. About two weeks of no changes, I emailed him and he replied promptly that he'd been sick and would start again. Well, the last few days have seen massive changes of pictures. Eventually mine should get up there. Looking at the ones that stay a while, I've found they have very prominent links back to 25peeps. So I'll try to set up a post for the day I get posted. Meanwhile I offer this little tidbit on what I'm learning blogging. Also I'm finding some interesting blogs. I'll try to figure out how to set up a side bar to link a few of the best.

By the way, my counter in the Profile section seems to have died. Anyone have any ideas on how to turn it back on?

No Bias Policy - Maguire's Firing

Today's NY Times reports on the firing of Paul Maguire from Reuters because his book about Ann Coulter was deemed to violate their trust principles. I don't know what went on behind closed doors, nor have I read the book. But I have looked at their trust principles. Actually, that's confusing too. The link actually goes to their editorial policy and that has a link to their trust principles. The editorial policy includes, "We are committed to reporting the facts and in all situations avoid the use of emotive terms." The title of the book is "Brainless:The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter." Perhaps they consider "Brainless" an emotive term. But this is not something Maguire did for Reuters.

It also says, "We do not take sides and attempt to reflect in our stories, pictures and video the views of all sides. We are not in the business of glorifying one side or another or of disseminating propaganda. Reuters journalists do not offer their own opinions or views." It would seem that their policy 'takes the side' of objectivity. But what happens when a reporter objectively analyzes someone's argument and finds it to be lies and lunacy? I understand the logic of the policy, but there comes a time when that sort of reasoning castrates the press To take everything at face value, to not question what people are saying, is to give standing and credence to lies and lunacy. . At the extreme, as appears to be the case here, reporters should treat logical falacies, lies, distortion of truth the same as truth and logic. To do otherwise, it would appear from this action, would entail bias. There used to be a fairness doctrine in broadcast media. While it is legally gone, a distorted version of it still exists - the idea that there are alwasy two or more sides to a story. Often there are. But sometimes, one side is clearly right and the other side is clearly wrong. (No you shouldn't make that judgment immediately, but in the case of writing a book about someone like Ann Coulter, we can assume Mr. Maguire has had time to reflect.) Being evenhanded by giving equal time to lunatics, or worse, to people consciously trying to distort the truth, is a perversion of the idea of even handedness. Like Fox's Orwellian claim to being Fair and Unbiased.

Furthermore, I find Maguire's firing to be part of the chilling affect on the media which has hampered good reporting that might have prevented many of the misguided policies of the Bush administration.

Seattle Pics

A few pics from Seattle yesterday and today.

Space Needle thru the arches of the Pacific Science Center





Experience Music Project Building







Experience Music Project Building a little later












Monica and Dan at dinner

















Steve at play on beach

Steve and Joan at beach at Discovery Park

Blogging to Nobody

When I set this up, in part I wanted to figure out how blogs work and just figure out what's happening in the blog world. I've been checking out the next blog button and leaving messages as I mentioned earlier. Here are some tentative findings:

1. Lots of blogs, not a lot of comments.
2. People get their friends to visit their blogs.
3. I was able to connect with Google early on, and they crawled my blog. I was even able to find my blog thru google with enough specific parameters. But lately I haven't been able to do that. I seem to no longer exist. Except I can get to me through Google's blog search, but not Google search.
4. There are lots of schemes for people to increase their hits. I found a couple by accident. I left some comments on other people's blogs, and two of those people left comments on mine. And there is stuff in blog help that talks about how to increase traffic.
5. 25Peeps is a site I found through another blog. It links to your site from your picture, and they have some scheme to rate each pic and how long it stays up. But they don't seem to have changed any pics since I first looked at it. It all seems to be a clever scheme to get people to keep going back to 25peeps.

Anyway, that's a bit what I've learned. If anyone reads this, and knows more than I do - not hard - please give me some tips.

A Few Pictures

It was a beautiful sunny day on Monday.

Bike trail approaching Goose Lake








Michel, visiting from Juneau, on Bird Ridge Trail


View from Bird Ridge Trail

Scott Simon's Eulogy for Oriana Fallaci

She was a journalist who pursued the story and angle she believed in. Usually that meant getting past the facade. And pissing off people in power. Scott Simon's eulogy caught a glimpse of her.

Henry Giroux and the Market's Encroachment into Everything

I've been bothered a while about our local University having sold the name of the sports center to Wells Fargo. You call up and hear, "Wells Fargo Sports Center." The name isn't just in normal lettering on the building, it's in the red Wells Fargo corporate lettering. Inside are logos from many different companies. Listening to an interview with Henry Giroux Monday helped clarify why this bothers me. He argued, among other things, that the market has oozed into totally inappropriate parts of American life. The University, for instance, is supposed to be a neutral space where issues can be debated, but universities are completely marked by corporate presence. How can one have an open debate about the problems of modern banking in a building named after Wells Fargo? Even if you have the debate in another building, the shadow of the Wells Fargo money will inevitably chill the discussion.

Later Monday I got another good example of the invasion of the market. The National Peace Corps Association is highlighting returned Peace Corps volunteers who are "social entrpreneurs." The term was coined to suggest the application of good business techniques to non-profits. However well-intentioned the coiners of the term may have been, this is part of the takeover of English by the market view of the world. We can only think in market terms - where efficiency and profit are the highest values. There's no question non-profit organizations need to manage themselves to make the best use of their resources, and successful non-profit leaders have done this. This isn't a skill that is owned by the private sector. And do we want to be like the entrepreneurs at Enron? So I hope you listen to the interview with Henry Giroux and start paying attention to how the market has encroached into your world and your language. As they say, the bottom line is...

Being Apolitical is Being Dead

Beginning this blog, I was going to steer clear of politics. But a by-word of the 60's was 'everything is political.'

We all know that walking past someone obviously in need of assistance is wrong. We have an obligation to stop and give what help we can, even if that means finding someone else who can help.

Politics is about the allocation of power in a society. Not writing about Bush and Iraq and the so called war on terror, is a political act. It is like walking past the old man who just slipped on the ice. Like not calling an ambulance when you see a serious accident. Like not defending the child who has been falsely accused. It is being silent in the face of need or injustice. In a democracy, we are responsible for our government; when it is wrong, we are responsible for fixing it.

Yesterday I wrote my Congressional delegation asking them to vote against Bush's attempts to eliminate due process (roughly the right to a fair hearing before being deprived of life, liberty, or property) and his attempts to ignore bans on torture. Our Founding Fathers added the Fifth Amerndment to the Constitution because they knew that most anyone would eventually confess to anyting after enough torture.

For over two hundred years, we have been,a beacon of hope to the people of the world. We have been proof that trusting people with freedom is far more powerful than trying to control everyone's actions. Yes people abuse the freedom, but we feel the abuses of power by rulers is more dangerous than by the people.

For whatever reasons, whether belief that imprisoning without trial and torture are necessary to fight terrorism, or for calous political gain, Bush's policies are dimming that hope for everyone around the world. Already, by getting Bush to serverly curb American liberties, the terrorists have won.

An additional note. I've put up a link to anysoldier.com. This is a site set up to help people who wanted to support the soldiers by sending them things they need. I post this site becaue I think it gives a unique picture of the war. But also becasue while I think the war is a terrible mistake, I think performing acts of kindness to the soldiers is an important model for them. Many are there because they truly believe they are defending 'good.' I think they are wrong, but at least we can talk. And maybe we can end up with better understanding of each other's perspectives and we can find better ways to do good.