Eure Zukunft ist Nicht Unsere

My German is still good enough to know that means something like, "Your Future is not ours." It's an interesting idea, but what did that mean on the back of a sweatshirt? It could have lots of different meanings depending on the context.

So, I asked the young woman wearing the sweatshirt.

It's the motto of the band of her boyfriend.

And what band was that?

A few letters are missing here. It's "Zivilversager." I didn't know that word. She said it meant "loser." (Zivil means civil and the verb versagen means to fail.)

So here's someone visiting Anchorage from Germany, spreading an aspect of German culture. It made me think about all the travelers in history who as they passed through foreign lands shared music and food and transferred bits of their culture around the world and took bits of other cultures back home. It's easier today to travel the world online and find other customs and arts. Yet I doubt I would have heard of Zivilversager had I not seen this sweatshirt.

Would I have missed anything important? Probably not. This is a punk rock band - obviously US culture already mixed into German culture - but it does add a bit more to my understanding of Germany today. Maybe. As long as I put it as one more bit of data that eventually adds up to impressions (not conclusions.)


You can listen to Zivilversager's music here.  There's even one in English (Broken Glass).

It turns out when I went looking online, I first got this video.  The idea is very similar, but slightly different:   "Unsere Zukunft wird nicht die Eure sein!

My German is good enough to get me into serious trouble. That is, I think I might understand, but could be totally wrong. Is this a neo-Nazi anthem? Or is it a left wing cry against unemployment and poverty, "the State against the country, the employed against the officials, the blue collar workers against the white collar workers, the people of Bavaria against the Prussians, the Catholics against the Protestants"?  I think the latter, but I'm not completely sure.  Anyone out there reading this who can clarify what this video is about and what it represents?

HTML Table Generator - Makes Tables Easy for Bloggers

[From Wikipedia:

HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML is the basic building-blocks of webpages.]

Sometimes if I want to do something more than blogspot lets me do easily, I google for the html code.   I'm working on a post with a long table and so I googled to get reminded how to do that.  I've done it a couple of times and it's not that hard, though it can be time consuming.

This time I found a page at Quackit with an HTML Table Generator. 

All you have to do is type in the number of columns and rows you want and it spits out code to cut and paste into your blog.  Then you can erase the contents of the table (it says 'table cell' in each cell) and fill it in.  Here's a screenshot from their page.

 As you can see, you can change the width of the table, the space between cells and the border width.  Play around to see how it works.  "More colors" takes you to a page that shows all the color codes in html.

Then you just

• copy the html (down on the bottom of the page you generate at Quackit) 
• go to your blogspot post page
• click on the Edit HTML tab at the top right of the post box
• paste the code where you want the box in the text.

Then when you go back into Compose mode (again upper right of post box) you can see your table:

Table Cell	It starts with	Table Cell	In every cell
Table Cell	But you can	delete	and type
Table Cell	what you	want in	the cells
Table Cell
Table Cell

HTML Tables

There are some tricky parts.  You need more skills to make longer or shorter cells, though just typing in will widen a cell.   Play with the space key until you get things to fit right. 

Truthing

Ever since I was a college student and wandered around campus looking at the names of the buildings, I wanted to be able to put up plaques that said how the donors really made their money, how many people they screwed over, and how this building was a way to buy some sort of respectability.  Not everyone who makes such a donation has a nefarious past, and maybe most got their money through hard, honest work and good fortune and genuinely want to give back to society.  But even back then I wanted to peel back the facade and see where the money really came from.

This blog reflects that need to get below the surface.  So this video caught my attention.  What an honest political ad (courtesy of ifc at Youtube) would look like:

Board Signs Proclamation and Other Documents, Then Goes to Executive Session

This morning's meeting didn't get started until 2pm.  I'd called in and learned that board member Brody hadn't made it from Kodiak.  I had been at the computer for much of the day listening for them to begin. By 2 I'd wandered off to do other things.  I called at 3pm to see if they were meeting at all, was told they'd readjourn at 4.  So this is from listening online:


4:09pm 
Torgerson:  Board passing out Proclamation of Redistricting, Metes and Bounds Report, maps, truncation, 2 and 4 year terms, we'll sign today to meet the Constitutional timeline.
Moved and 2nd that we adopt all the things I mentioned.

5-0, the Board has adopted the Proclamation of Redistricting.  Now I'll have Taylor go around and have everybody sign these.  Ladies first. 

Brody:  Long, drawn out process, the Board has excercised as much care and caution as we could and reached out to the citizens of Alaska,  Good plan, not everyone will be happy, but we did the best we could.  I hope it serves the state well for the next five years. 

McConnochie:  It's been a good mix of people and I'm proud . . .

Torgerson:  Gee thanks. . .

It's official. 

Greene:  It's been an honor and privilege to be onboard.  And more so to travel the state and listent to the heartfelt testimony.  I know it's been a difficult challenge.  The one day we had voted and gone back so many times trying to do the boundaries.  Thank the chair for coming into the office to help me.  Proud of the young leadership here running the office.  And Michael. 

Mr. Holm:  It's been a pleasure trying to keep up with you and your singing.  So much occurred in the last three months I never expected.  I thought it would be easier than it was.  Having been a life-long Alaskan, like you Ms. Greene.  I was truly humbled.  When you look at your particular area and think whats important to your area, then you have to look at the others because each of us have a different perception of what's important, thanks for all the comments from everyone, trying to promote their own welfare and we need to consider them all.

Torgerson:  Putting 5 Alaskans from different walks of life, unfamiliar with rules and regulations, but they worked very well, thank you for working together, listening together, conducting yourselves very professionally.  Many turns in the road we had to undertake.  We're glorifying and raising it because we're a 5-0 board.  Not because we jammed it down anyone's throat.  I don't know how PeggyAnn and Marie made all the changes they did.  It's humbling to know someone's comments from a small village were as important as a mayor of big town.  We now have a signed proclamation and accompanying documents.

Brody:  I want to thank the staff, Taylor, Jim, and Mary, the contributions of Ron Miller, Michael, Eric.

Torgerson:  We will go into recess and then executive session.  Tomorrow we'll meet at 10am and go through all these speeches over again.  We'll sign the proclamations and each member will have their own copy.  We'll go into executive session to discuss litigation issues.  Stand in recess for five minutes to let the room clear out.  In teleconference land folks, we'll sign off now.
4:18pm

Flying to the Light - From Seattle to Anchorage

One trip experience I particularly enjoy is flying in summer from Seattle at night to Anchorage.   Since our flight left at 9:05pm Saturday, it wasn't quite dark when we took off, but the sun had set and it was nearing dark.

 We flew south out of Seatac then circled back over Puget Sound as the sun had gone down it was getting dark.

 Then around and up past Bainbridge Island.

 And for my Nanaimo readers, I took this shot as we went by the southern end of Vancouver Island.

 A little more than an hour into the flight, the sun appeared again over the horizon.

 Passing over a Prince William Sound Glacier.

 And 20 minutes before landing we passed these mountains blocking the clouds.

And before looping over the MatSu and heading back into Anchorage, we got a good dose of sun with Foraker and Denali silhouetted on the horizon.  Foraker is on the left and Denali is the very faint pyramid just right of center.  It's slightly clearer if you double-click the image.

Despite all the clouds in the picture, it was mostly clear in Anchorage as we landed at 11:30pm.

Board's Attorney Suggests 2 Year and 4 Year Pairings; All But One Truncation

The Board meeting is about to begin (10am) and you can listen in here and watch their computer screen here at GoToMeeting.

Tomorrow their proclamation is due and it's their last meeting.  I'm doing today's meeting from home since I have a zillion things to do this week.

They do have their attorney's letter posted today that identifies the Senate seats that should be truncated (all but Juneau's - old B and new P) and which should be two year and four year terms.    Below is an excerpt from the letter.

I'm not sure why it's simplest to make the one seat that was not truncated (held by a Democrat) a two year seat. They've alternated two and four year seats alphabetically.  It would seem even simpler to make the chart start with A in the two year column and B in the second year column.  Perhaps Mr. White will explain that.

I'll put this up for now so you know what's happening.  I just called in and found out they are running a bit late and that's why the online connection isn't functioning yet.

UPDATE 10:26: Still no audio.

Metes and Bounds

One more task the Alaska Redistricting Board staff has had since last Tuesday has been 'metes and bounds.'  This is a common term in surveying, but it's one I've managed to avoid until now.  Wikipedia explains it:

Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real property (in contrast to personal property) or real estate. The system has been used in England for many centuries, and is still used there in the definition of general boundaries. By custom, it was applied in the original Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and in many other land jurisdictions based on English common law.

Typically the system uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe the boundaries of a parcel of land. The boundaries are described in a running prose style, working around the parcel in sequence, from a point of beginning, returning back to the same point. It may include references to other adjoining parcels (and their owners), and it, in turn, could also be referred to in later surveys. At the time the description is compiled, it may have been marked on the ground with permanent monuments placed where there were no suitable natural monuments.

The term "metes" refers to a boundary defined by the measurement of each straight run, specified by a distance between the terminal points, and an orientation or direction. A direction may be a simple compass bearing, or a precise orientation determined by accurate survey methods. The term "bounds" refers to a more general boundary description, such as along a certain watercourse, a stone wall, an adjoining public road way, or an existing building.

The system is often used to define larger pieces of property (e.g. farms), and political subdivisions (e.g. town boundaries) where precise definition is not required or would be far too expensive, or previously designated boundaries can be incorporated into the description.

To give you an example, I've gotten, from the Lt. Governor's website, this description of the current (until the new districts become final) Alaska House district 6, which is the largest electoral district in the United States.

House District 6 - Senate District C - Interior Villages

Download map for District 06
House District 6 is bounded by a line beginning at the intersection of the common boundary of the Bering Straits and Yukon Koyukuk Rural Education Attendance Areas (REAAs) and the Northwest Arctic Borough, north along the borough boundary to its intersection with the North Slope Borough, east along the borough boundary to its intersection with the Alaskan/Canadian border, south along the border to the City and Borough of Yakutat, west along the borough boundary to the Ahtna ANRC, west along the ANRC boundary to the Copper River, north along its western bank to Urantina River, north to its headwaters, north along a non visible line to the headwaters of Bernard Creek, north to a point east of the intersection of Bernard Creek Trail and an unnamed trail, north along the creek trail to the Richardson Highway, north to Squirrel Creek, west to Trans Alaska Pipeline (TAPs), east to its intersection with a road just south of Pippin Lake, east to Richardson Highway, north to 16APL-3 Road, west to TAPs, north to 19APL-1 Road, east to Richardson Highway, continuing east along a non visible line to the Copper River, north along its western bank to the Klutina River, east to the New Richardson Highway, north to the Old Richardson Highway, north to the southern boundary of Tazlina ANVSA, west along the ANVSA boundary to TAPs, north to the Tazlina River, east along its northern shore to a trail that connects with the intersection of Copperville Road and the Old Richardson Highway, north along the highway to the Glenn Highway, west to TAPs, north to its intersection with the Richardson High way (just west of Sourdough and Haggard Creeks), north to Paxson Lake Campground Road, east along a non visible line to TAPs, north to the Richardson Highway (just west of Fielding Lake), north to Fort Greely Military Reservation (just west of Butch Lake), north and east along the military boundary to the Richardson Highway (just north of TAPs Pump Station 9 Access Road), north along the highway to the City of Delta Junction, east and north along the city boundary to Nistler Road, east to Souhrada Road, nor th to Jack Warren Road, west to Fales Road, north to Clearwater Lake, west along the shore to an unnamed creek connecting to the Tanana River, east along its south bank to the mouth of Clearwater Creek, north across the Tanana River, continuing east along its northern bank to an intersection with the Volkmar River, north along a non visible line to Volkmar Lake, west around the lake to its northern most point, east along a non visible line to White Peak, north to the intersection of Goodpaster River and South Fork (Goodpaster River), east along the South Fork to Delta Greely REAA, north along the REAA boundary to Fairbanks North Star Borough, north, west and south around the borough to the Tanana River, west along its southern bank to the City of Nenana, south along the city boundary to FAA Way, south to a sled trail (paralleling George Parks Highway), south to Denali Borough, west and south along the borough boundary to its intersection with Matanuska-Susitna Borough, south along the borough boundary to its intersection with Kenai Peninsula Borough, east along the borough boundary to the midpoint of Cook Inlet, south along the midpoint to its intersection with House District 35, west along the district boundary to the mouth of Drift River, west along the river to Lake Clark National Park and Wilderness Area, west along the park/wilderness boundary to a point due east of Summit Lake, west to and around the lake's south shore to Tlikakila River, west to Lake and Peninsula Borough, north and west along the borough boundary to the common boundary of Calista and Bristol Bay ANRCs, west along the common boundary to its intersection with the common boundary of Lower Kuskokwim and Kuspuk REAAs, west along the common REAA boundary to the Kuskokwim River, north along its western bank to the City of Lower Kalskag, east along the city boundary to the City of Upper Kalskag, north and west around the city boundary to the Yukon Kuskokwim Portage Trail, north to its intersection with Bethel Census Area, west along the census area boundary to a point south of the headwaters of the Pitnik River, north along the river to a point just south of the Kashunuk River, north to the river, east to Driftwood Slough, east to the Yukon River, east along its southern bank to Atchuelinguk River, east along its northern bank to its headwaters, north along a non visible line to the Bering Straits ANRC, east and north to point of beginning.

The staff has had to write one of these for each of the 40 house districts.  

Truncation and Which Senators Get 2 and 4 Year Terms?

At Monday's (tomorrow's) Alaska Redistricting Board meeting, two of the unfinished, but related, jobs to do are 1)  'truncation' and 2) determining which districts will start off with two and four year terms.


Truncation
1.   Substantially changed district requires new election.  Elected officials should represent the people who elected them.  But when the districts are substantially changed by redistricting, they have new constituents who didn't vote in their new districts.  And thus this new population is represented by someone they had no say about.  So, it is believed  that a substantially changed new district should vote for its senator as soon as possible - which would be November 2012. 

So, truncation is the process of cutting short the terms of sitting Senators in those new districts that have substantially new populations so that the people can vote for the representative at the soonest possible election. [This is not an issue for House districts since they are all two year terms.]


2.  Two or Four Year Terms?  Alaska Senators serve for four years in staggered terms.   From the Alaska Constitution:

The term of representatives shall be two years, and the term of senators, four years. One-half of the senators shall be elected every two years.  [emphasis added]

Thus, in addition to truncating, the board has to make sure that half the seats are up for election every two years. So, for 2012, half the Senators would normally be up for reelection and the other half would be in "mid-term" - that is, they have two more years left in their terms and wouldn't normally be up for reelection until 2014.  Unless their districts have been substantially changed. 



Solving the Problem

1.  Truncation
You have to figure out which districts have to be truncated because they have substantially changed.  But, according to a memo from the Board's attorney, Michael White, to the Chair last March, 

"There are no statutes, regulations or case law guidance on how to ascertain the seating process.  In 2001 Redistricting process, the Board simply alternated between two and four year seats on an alphabetical basis incorporating the mid-term incumbents whose terms did not have to be truncated into the two year seats.  Thus, in 2002 there were 17 seats up for election;  7 were for two years, 10 were or [sic] four years.  Of these 17 seats, 7 senators had their terms truncated due to substantial change in their Senate seats.  This means that 7 mid-term incumbents were required to run for election despite having served only two of their four year term.  The Board's report does not indicate which of the Senate seats were truncated and whether the truncated seats were automatically provided with four year terms.  It appears that the Board simply used an alternating alphabetical basis for determining the 2/4 year terms, incorporating the non-truncated seats as two year terms.

Based on past practice, it would appear that the Board is free to use any rational, reasonably objective method for determining how to allocate two and four year terms."

At last week's meetings, Chair Torgerson said that he thought all the districts had been substantially changed, but attorney White suggested waiting until they had a report on this.  There were numbers talked about, but I'm not completely sure how much change equals substantial.  I think they talked about 10% difference.  That seems to come from the White memo:

"Where there is substantial change to the population of a district, and the previous district is mid-term in 2012, Egan appears to require the incumbent's term be truncated and that an election be held.  What constitutes a substantial change is not defined by law or court decision.  In 2000, the three districts the board found substantially similar, all had less than 10% change in population between the previous plan and the new plan. The next highest percentage of maintained population was 66.2%.  The data does not indicate whether that seat was a mid-term truncation or not. " [See the 2000 truncation plan here.]

In any case, Monday they should get a report that officially says how much change each district had in population.  Those over 10% will most likely be designated as 'substantially changed."  In their eyeballing last week, they identified Juneau as a district that might not be 10% changed.

Next they have to decide which seats get four year terms and which get two year terms.

Board member Bob Brody suggested using the initial numerical (as opposed to the required alphabetical) senate district labels to divide them by odd and even to eliminate any appearance of political bias in deciding who would get a two or four year appointment. 

But this got tabled until the report on truncation comes out.  What, Brody was asked, if you give someone a four year seat through odd and even choosing, but the seat is truncated?  That would mess up the scheme.  It's better to see who is truncated first. 

Except then you take out some of the randomness of the selections.

People thinking ahead could, of course, have arranged the lettering so that some targeted districts got into the 2 year group (say odd).  But I have no evidence to suggest that.  Are there board members who would do that?  Probably.  Are there board members who wouldn't do that?  For sure.  And I suspect the staff is trying to keep the process clean too.  But that's just a gut feeling from talking to them a lot over this process.

(Now that I've read and thought more about this, it appears these are two different things.  Someone who is mid-term, it would seem, shouldn't get a new four year district (extending his term to six years.)  But should a senator who would be up for vote in 2012 anyway be automatically a four year term?  I have to think this through more.)




In any case, those are two key left-over decisions they have to make:

1. Which districts to truncate, and
2. Which districts get two year seats and which four year.

Seattle Shots

Some pictures I took while in Seattle.

Walking up into Seattle from the underground light rail station.

How do you know your dog was stolen?  I guess if it had a collar and tags and it was spotted with someone else.  Later we saw the same dog on a Lost poster.

Lunch at KauKau's

In the bus tunnel

 

Ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle

Waterless Urinal

Graduation at UW Botanical Garden

I was reminded of the Berlin football fans as I saw all these people with green jerseys and a number with scarves.  But they hadn't had near as much beer as the Berliners and they weren't chanting for their team.  Looking now, I see it ended a 2-2 with the Vancouver Whitecaps.

FCC Report: Local News Decline, Blogs Democratize, But Don't Yet Fill Gap

An FCC Report, THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF COMMUNITIES:The changing media landscape in a broadband age, published a couple of days ago reports a serious decline in local news brought about by the changing news technology world.

Below I've excerpted some of their comments on blogging and bloggers.  I'll try to do more later.

But first, their key findings are outlined in their executive summary:


On close inspection, some aspects of the modern media landscape may seem surprising:

• An abundance o media outlets does not translate into an abundance of reporting
• In many communities, there are now more outlets, but less local accountability reporting.
• While digital technology has empowered people in many ways, the concurrent decline in local reporting has, in other cases, shifted power away from citizens to government and other powerful institutions, which can more often set the news agenda.
• Far from being nearly-extinct dinosaurs, the traditional media players—TV stations and newspapers—have emerged as the largest providers of local news online.
• The nonprofit media sector has become far more varied, and important, than ever beore.It now includes state public affairs networks, wikis, local news websites, organizations producing investigative reporting, and journalism schools as well as low-power FM stations,traditional public radio and TV, educational shows on satellite TV, and public access channels. Most of the players neither receive, nor seek, government funds.
• Rather than seeing themselves only as competitors, commercial and nonprofit media are now finding it increasingly useful to collaborate [emphasis added]

Recommendations:

• Our specific recommendations ollow six broad principles:
• Information required by FCC policy to be disclosed to the public should, over time, be made available online.
• Greater government transparency will enable both citizens and reporters to more effectively monitor powerful institutions and benefit from public services.
• Existing government advertising spending should be targeted more toward local media.;
• Nonprofit media need to develop more sustainable business models, especially through private donations.
• Universal broadband and an open Internet are essential prerequisites or ensuring that the new media landscape serves communities well.
• Policymakers should take historically underserved communities into account when crafting strategies and rules.

Now, here are some things they say in the first 127 pages about blogging and bloggers:

Journalism as volunteerism - a thousand points of news

Perhaps no area has been more dramatically transformed than “hyperlocal”—coverage on the neighborhood or block by block level. Even in the fattest-and-happiest days of traditional media, they could not regularly provide news on such a granular level. Professional media have been joined by a wide range of local blogs, email lists, web-sites and the proliferation of local groups on national websites like Facebook or Yahoo!

For the most part, hyperlocally-oriented websites and blogs do not operate as profitable businesses, but they do not need to. This is journalism as volunteerism - a thousand points of news. The number and variety of websites, s, and tweets contributing to the news and information landscape is truly stunning. Yet this abundance can obscure a parallel trend: the shortage of full-time reporting.

One study in Baltimore:  95% of stories based on reporting done by traditional media

For instance, the Pew case study of Baltimore revealed a profusion of media outlets. Between new media(blogs and websites) and traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers), researchers counted 53 different outlets—considerably more than existed 10 years ago. But when Pew’s researchers analyzed the content they were providing,particularly regarding the city budget and other public affairs issues, they discovered that 95 percent of the stories—including those in the new media—were based on reporting done by traditional media (mostly the Baltimore Sun).  And those sources were doing less than they had done in the past. Several other studies have had similar findings.

Decline in gathering news, increase in distribution

This is not a criticism of citizen media or web-based news aggregators and commentators. Even when they are working primarily with the reporting of others, they often add tremendous value--distributing the news through alternate channels or offering new interpretations of its meaning. But we are seeing a decline in the media with a particular strength—gathering the information—and seeing it replaced by a media that often exhibits a different set of strengths (for instance, distributing and interpreting it).

. . . some of the changes hitting newsrooms may have improved coverage.

On the other hand, some of the changes hitting newsrooms may have improved coverage. Although the  Washington Post  has fewer education reporters, long-time journalist Jay Matthews says that by blogging he has gottencloser to real-world classroom issues: “I think that on balance—and this is a very contrarian view—our educationcoverage is better in the new era than in the old, because we have more contact with readers. Blogs allow us to be incontact with readers—it creates a debate and a back and forth.” He mentions a local story he covered about teacherswho no longer return graded exams to students. Parents were upset because they could not help their children learnfrom their mistakes. Matthews said the blog version of his story received about 50 comments from readers all overthe country. “Clearly this is something teachers are doing everywhere,” he says.

As in other areas, the cutbacks in education reporting have spurred the establishment of a number of non-profits that hire seasoned journalists to cover stories that newspapers miss. Dale Mezzacappa reported on educationfor the
Philadelphia Inquirer for 20 years before going to work for the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, where she is a contributing editor. Launched as a quarterly in 1994 to cover “underserved” communities in Philadelphia, the
Notebook is now available on the web. It cannot begin to replace large daily newspapers, Mezzacappa says, but it canll in some of the gaps.

Alan Gottlieb, a former reporter for the Denver Post, launched Education News Colorado inJanuary 2008.

The website, financed by local foundations, started by focusing on school-related legislation in thestate capitol, “because nobody does that anymore,” Gottlieb says.

In just a few years, the cost of publishing went from being relatively expensive to almost free

Meanwhile, the advent of free, simple-to-use blogging software was making it possible for every American to be a publisher, reporter, and pundit. By May 2011, one of the most popular blogging platforms, WordPress, was hosting 20 million blogs.

Though only a few bloggers have audiences large enough to place them among the top 100 websites, their contribution to news and commentary online has been revolutionary. The“long tail” came into view: instead of information being provided primarily by a few large players, the ecosystem now could sup-port millions of smaller players each serving a small but targeted audience.

The democratization of content creation caught on quickly. Wikipedia and other “wikis” enabled readers to collaborate in the creation of content; YouTube allowed a full range of users—from creative geniuses to proud parents to freaks—to “broadcast” their own videos; and Facebook gained national dominance as an all-purpose platform for self-expression and communication. Millions of people became not only consumers of information but creators, curators, and distributors. Remarkably, WordPress, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook offered these publishing tools to users for free.  It is hard to overstate the significance of these changes.  In just a few years, the cost of publishing went from being relatively expensive to almost free—at least in terms of the publishing technology.

. . .a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.”   Hardly.

The digital world continues to change by the minute.Smartphone applications, tablet apps, e-Readers, and other new services now make it easy to access news and information on-the-go, using the Internet as a pipeline but bypassing the need for a web browser to display it. As consumers increasingly gravitate to applications and services that make use of the Internet through more closed systems, such as smartphones, some even question the viability of business plans built on the current search-based,website-centric Internet.

The crop of news and information players who gained prominence on the web 2.0 landscape—bloggers,citizen journalists, and Internet entrepreneurs—was initially mocked by traditional media leaders as being inferior, worthless, and even dangerous. Famously, Jonathan Klein, then-president of CNN, declared, “Bloggers have no checks and balances. [It’s] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.”

Hardly. It is important to appreciate the extraordinary positive effects the new media—including those contributing while in pajamas—has had, not only in the spread of freedom around the world, but specifically in the provision of news, reporting, and civically important information.

More Diversity in Commentary and Analysis
The commentary business is far more open to new players. In the past, there were a handful of well-worn paths topundit-hood, usually requiring work as a big-time newspaper reporter or a top level government ofcial. The Inter-net allows for more newcomers. Markos Moulitsas, a former army sergeant, was a web developer when he createdthe Daily Kos, which has become the leading liberal blog. Glenn Reynolds, one of the top libertarian bloggers, is ab 2010, one of the top libertarian bloggers, is a professor at University of Tennessee. Matt Drudge was a telemarketer before he created the pioneering conservative aggregation site, the Drudge Report, and Andrew Breitbart, a leading conservative media entrepreneur, got his start in the online news world while working for Drudge.

The best web analysts have used the technology to improve the quality of their offerings. Andrew Sullivan was among the first to use the interactivity of the Internet to hone his argument in public, putting out an initial view-point and then adapting it, as new ideas or information challenged him. The best bloggers write with the knowledge that shoddy reporting or thinking will be caught in a matter of minutes.Some of these commentators perform the same function as the best news magazine and newspaper reporters: connecting dots (recognizing the links between seemingly isolated events) and ending inconsistencies in publicly available information. A handful of conservative bloggers, for instance, figured out that a key document in Dan Rather’s controversial 60 Minutes report on George W. Bush’s military service must have been fake, in part by noticing that the typeface on an ostensibly 30-year-old letter was suspiciously similar to a modern Microsoft Word font.

Cognitive Surplus

Web scholar Clay Shirky estimates that the citizens of the world have one trillion hours of free time annual-ly—what he refers to as a “cognitive surplus”—that could be devoted to shared projects and problem solving.

Technology has enabled some of this time to be spent on frivolous enterprises (“lolcats,” perhaps?), but some has been applied to civically important communal digital projects, as well. Shirky cites this example: Ory Okolloh, a blogger in Kenya, was tracking violence in the aftermath of her country’s December 2007 elections when the government imposed a news blackout. She appealed to her readers for updates on what was happening in their neighborhoods butwas quickly overwhelmed by the ood of information she received. Within 72 hours, two volunteer software engineershad designed a platform called “Ushahidi” to help her sort and map the information coming in from mobile phones and the web, so readers could see where violence was occurring and where there were peace efforts. This software has since been used “in Mexico to track electoral fraud, it’s been deployed in Washington, D.C., to track snow cleanup and most famously in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake,” Shirky says.

In other words, the technological revolution has not merely provided a flood of cool new gizmos. It has also democratized access to the world’s vast storehouse of knowledge and news.

I'll try to get more done, but I've got other things to do today.  Hope you're all having a great weekend.