Accidental Blogger

Sunday Cyber-Sermon (Sujatha)

Here are the suggestions of Sujatha, the humble not-so-uber-geeky blogger, on C&Ping from webpages when composing blog posts:

1. Focus on Tested Websites, not obscurities. (Psalm 345:1-3)

Notice how Sujatha extols Google first. Then, in comparison to Google, she has no need of alternate search engines.

"The Google is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"

"The Google is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

Undoubtedly one of the greatest hurdles to overcome in blogging is fear, the fear of PC Viruses, Trojans and Malware.

Sujatha did not let fear take the blog out of her life.
Blogger Ruchira shares the story of a person who had a very bad day.

"Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen."

It began when Mike was suspected based on his internet charges by his employers of excessive internet usage. An investigation turned up pornographic pictures on his computer, which cost him his job and thousands of dollars in money spent to clear himself of the charges, which were found to have been the result of PC viruses downloading porn on his computer when he wasn't even at work.

Have you ever felt like that? One minute you’re whistling through life, blogging away happily and the next you’re caught up in a whirlwind of stress, as unwanted ads pop up on your blog's webpage.  Life sucks you up into its vortex and just when you think you’ve recovered from one trouble another wind of adversity blows in your direction.

Don’t be like Mike. Don’t let the blog go out of your life.

But how is this possible? It becomes possible when we focus on who the Devil WebAdsman is. In the case of Ruchira and her blog, it was the material cut and pasted from the Smithsonian website, that had the horrendous hidden code, which showed up C&Ping to Notepad. It quoth "Read more:http://smithsonian.blah.blah.blah.com" and stealthily, like the verily serpent that is Satan, downloaded Ads for cars and other monuments to human greed to tempt us faithful bloggers from the path of righteousness.

He is our light. He is our salvation. We are no longer living in the darkness of sin. We will diligently check for hidden code when we cut and paste from internet sources. No enemy can take the Internet’s salvation from us! No enemy can impose Satanic Ads on our blog posts!

--With apologies to The original sermon creator and a tip of the hat to Margaret Atwood and her marvellous alternate theology of The God's Gardeners in her latest book "The Year of the Flood"

Four Years of Fun, Frolic and Occasional Fury

Today Accidental Blogger enters its fifth year. For the past four years my co-bloggers and I have shared our thoughts with each other and our readers, doing our bit to add to the cacophony of the blogosphere, whether or not anyone was listening. On the past three anniversaries, I reported on the health of the blog and some of the more interesting moments that we encountered on our way. This year I will let my co-bloggers weigh in on what they think of being Accidental Bloggers. Also, instead of posting one of my own paintings, I am attaching a festive image associated with the Indian festival of Diwali which was celebrated last Saturday. It is interesting and heartening to note that despite the multiple voices that have been added since its inception, the character of this blog remains true to what I had envisioned when I first launched it as a solo effort in October, 2005. Thanks to my co-bloggers and our readers for staying with A.B. over the years.

The authors' comments appear in the order that they were sent to me.

Joe:

It's hard to believe that A.B. has been around for four years.  In that time, lots of things have changed: I went from being an aspiring law student to a lawyer.  Anna and Andrew got married.  Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush.  And yet, how does the saying go?  The more things change, the more they stay the same?  So it will no doubt be comforting to my co-bloggers and our readers that, for example, Dean remains, self-describedly, an unrelenting curmudgeon.  Or, take the recent balloon-boy incident.  Among other things, I have been complaining about the media and their news creation/reporting since I started blogging.  As Ezra nicely sums it up: "it certainly served as a perfect metaphor for cable news: America spent hours riveted by a powerful and gripping story that turned out to be totally meaningless, and will have no significant impact on anybody's lives going forward."

Sujatha:

We all love to tell our stories and anecdotes, wax profoundly and eloquently, or indulge in occasional silliness. We are thoughtful, mordant, indignant, pedantic, satirical, political, conspiratorial, as the mood takes us. We are the bloggers at Accidental Blogger, and are having a blast blogging and discussing here. Happy Blogversary!

Dean:

A lot of discussion concerning A.B. over the years has taken place "under the radar," via email between the authors, usually with Ruchira at the hub of the network. We get caught up in a topic, have at it among ourselves, and then--oops, sorta accidentally--we end up publishing the proceedings as a post and comments. I seem to remember that this is how I met Ruchira, by introducing myself individually via email, but in fact it could have been the reverse. I might have posted a comment or two in response to one of her posts, and then heard from her later via email. This situation continues. I'll often vent to her directly, and then she'll remind me to "Comment, please." Of course, I've never actually met her, nor any of the other authors, except Anna and Andrew, who coincidentally moved to the area not two years ago. I never thought much of Howard Rheingold's touchy-feely notion of a virtual community, but there is something both comforting and perplexing about the familiarity that grows among remotely dispersed people who talk to each other occasionally using digital telecommunications. It goes without saying that A.B., the blog, couldn't exist without all the wires, silicon chips, tubes (pneumatic and vacuum), and protocols that are the 'net. Friendships or acquaintances with Ruchira, Sujatha, Joe, somebody who goes by D, another who goes by M, Narayan, or the folks who regularly comment could have arisen without any of that, but likely would not have done so.

D:

Hullo all, and it's lovely to be accidentally blogging, interacting with such excellent co-bloggers and commenters. A big huzzah then for our gracious host. And it's a privilege to have an audience for my rants, of which I promise more in the future.

Andrew:

I really value A.B. as a place where people from around the country can gather to talk about current events without the excessive snark or knowingness of a lot of the political blogs.  And as a jazzhead, I appreciate its free-form nature, i.e., the opportunity to bounce ideas about musicians off of the various co-authors.  Lastly, I first fell in love with Ruchira's writing from her eviscerations of Thomas Friedman -- though she generally keeps her tone level, it's still a pleasure to see her let it rip every once in a while.

( Editor's note: "D" is our newest author who came on board in the past year . So far five authors have sent me their thoughts. If and when I hear from Anna and Narayan, I will publish their comments as updates. Or perhaps we will hear from them in the comments section.)

October 2

October 2^nd is Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. Check out today's Google logo commemorating the anniversary.

Bob Mankoff Thinks Big About Humor

Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of the New Yorker was interviewed at Big Think about various aspects of humor - its roots, triggers, social utility and form. In the following videos, Mankoff answers some questions:

1. How do men and women use humor in a social situation?
2. When does humor, which almost always originates in bad taste, work effectively?
3. What is the future of humor and why do liberals tend to be more humorous than conservatives?

(Thanks to Andrew Seidler of Big Think for sending in the links)

Finding out that your boyfriend is "single" again .... on Facebook! And limits of free speech on blogs.

Two items in the news regarding web based networks - the social dynamics of Facebook and the limits of free speech on blogs.

ALBANY, N.Y. – Alice Connors-Kellgren was surprised by her boyfriend's new Facebook profile picture a few weeks ago: He was kissing another girl on the cheek.

The picture was up only briefly. And she figures it was just a friend. But she plans to discuss it with him when they're back together this fall at Cornell University.

"We trust each other. Deep down, I know nothing is going on. But when you first see it, it's like `Oh my goodness! What's going on here?'" says the college student from Westchester County, N.Y.

All this friending, poking and picture-posting on Facebook can get you in trouble with your significant other. Couples are finding that old flames and flirty friends on the social networking site have a unique ability to stir jealousy and suspicion. ...

"It seems like Facebook is creating jealousy even where there was not jealousy to begin with," said Amy Muise, a doctoral candidate at the University of Guelph's psychology department who led a recent study on how Facebook can spark jealousy in romantic relationships among college students.

She said Facebook doesn't necessarily make people more jealous than they would be normally. But all the information divulged on Facebook — those answers to "What's on your mind?" and reactions to those posts — can increase "triggers" for jealousy.

"Part of the issue with information on Facebook is that it lacks certain context, " Muise said, "so there could be things posted on your partner's wall that you really don't know what it means."

And then there is the blogger who threatened federal judges on his blog and has landed in jail. How about threatening doctors, businesses or the president of the United States?

CHICAGO -- Internet radio host Hal Turner disliked how three federal judges rejected the National Rifle Association's attempt to overturn a pair of handgun bans.

"Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed," Turner wrote on his blog on June 2, according to the FBI. "Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions."

The next day, Turner posted photographs of the appellate judges and a map showing the Chicago courthouse where they work, noting the placement of "anti-truck bomb barriers." When an FBI agent appeared at the door of his New Jersey home, Turner said he meant no harm.

He is now behind bars awaiting trial, accused of threatening the judges and deemed by a U.S. magistrate as too dangerous to be free.

Turner's case is likely to test the limits of political speech at a time when incendiary talk is proliferating on broadcast outlets and the Internet, from the microphones of well-known commentators to the keyboards of anonymous netizens. President Obama has been depicted as a Nazi and slain Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller as "Tiller the killer." On guns and abortion, war and torture, taxes and now health care, the commentary feeds off pools of anger that ebb and flow with the zeitgeist.

Eaters vs. Gay People (Joe)

Stephen Bainbridge, a conservative law professor at UCLA, in response to Brian's veganism poll:

[T]he efforts by some vegans to turn the issue into a political one, using the state to regulate food choices (see, e.g., foie gras bans), needs to be resisted at every opportunity.

But the same Professor Bainbridge on gay marriage:

I don't have particularly strong views one way or the other on the issue of gay marriage as a legal institution. As long as the government isn't telling the Catholic Church (or any other church) that it has to recognize gay marriages as a religious matter, my libertarian instincts incline me to take a laissez faire attitude towards marriage as a legal institution.

Whatever happens with the legal institution of marriage, however, ought to happen as a result of democratic processes rather than by judicial fiat.

So when the democratic process results in laws banning foie gras because the people of a state disapprove of foie gras, it's a bad law.  This type of result ought to be resisted.  But when the democratic process (which apparently does not include courts interpreting constitutions) results in laws banning same-sex marriage because the people disapprove of same-sex marriage, meh.  It doesn't really matter.

Consumers of food should have more rights against the tyranny of the majority than GLBT persons?  Am I being unfair in reading his position this way?  I really don't think so.

Leiter Poll: Veganism (Joe)

Brian Leiter has a poll on his law blog asking about veganism as a moral choice.  I haven't thought deeply about this -- I'm not giving up meat, although I admire those who do -- but isn't the poll missing a choice?  Given that vegetarianism is more prevalent than veganism, it's plausible that a fair number of people don't consider veganism to be morally superior to vegetarianism.¹  These people wouldn't think veganism is the most morally defensible diet.  How are they supposed to vote?

------
1.  It's also possible that they're like me but a little more committed, so they're willing to cut out shrimp, chicken, lamb, etc., but they're not willing to go so far as to cut cheese or eggs or yogurt out of their diets.

Who Acted Stupidly, Indeed (Joe)

Over at Faculty Lounge, Calvin Massey somehow manages to conclude (1) that Gates acted stupidly and (2) that the police officer did not act stupidly.  How?  By twisting the facts -- beyond even those stated in the official police report.

A pedestrian out for a walk notices two men wearing backpacks jimmying open the front door of a house.  She calls 911 to report what appears to be a burglary in progress.  A cop responds to the broadcast of an apparent burglary.  He finds two men inside the front door of the house.  The cop asks for their identification.  One of the men refuses and hurls abuse at the cop.  The cop persists in his request.  Finally the man produces ID from his university employer.  The man continues the abuse and, after delivering various threats to the officer, demands the officer's name and badge number.  The cop gives it to him.  The cop, apparently satisfied that the man does in fact live in the house, exits the house to the front porch.  The man pursues him to the front porch, heaping more abuse upon the cop and repeatedly demanding the cop's name and badge.  The cop tells him he has already provided that information.  A small crowd gathers.  The man remains in high dudgeon.  The cop then tells him to cool down and warns him that he is engaging in public disorderly conduct.  The man continues his tirade.  The cop arrests him.  The man has a friend, who happens to be President of the United States, who then says that while he "doesn't know all the facts," the cops "acted stupidly."  Oh, the man is black; the cop is white.  The man says this is a case of racial profiling.  Racial profiling?  The man was arrested for his abusive behavior towards a cop performing a service for the man in question.  After all, the man was jimmying his front door because, by his own admission, his house had been the subject of a recent burglary attempt.

Nice.  We don't know why, or at what point, Gates got pissed off at the cop.  But we do know that the officer asked Gates to step outside and join him on the porch; Gates did not "pursue[] him to the front porch."  Again, this is by the version of facts as presented in the police report.  Massey makes it sound like the officer just decided to leave ("thank you, have a nice day") when he saw identification proving that Gates was who he said he was and that it was in fact his own house -- but that's just not the case or he would have, you know, left.  It's pretty clear that the only possible basis for asking Gates to join him outside was to create the basis for an arrest for disorderly conduct. 

Incidentally, that's a great implicit potshot at Obama: why is he making a judgment about who acted stupidly, when he doesn't know all the facts?  Of course, Massey's understanding of the facts is apparently even worse, yet he's willing to defend the cop against this unfounded charge while at the same time leveling the same charge at the black professor who didn't enjoy being wrongly treated like a criminal.  Proving, once again, that law professors often comment stupidly on things they apparently don't know enough to comment on.  [UPDATE: I apparently misread the last part of the post -- there's nothing implicit about it, he actually says it was stupid of Obama to call the cop stupid while admitting he didn't know all of the facts.]

Speaking of Obama, shouldn't it also be mentioned that his "stupid" comment was his way of defusing the situation?  Read as: "I don't know what role race played in this situation, so I'm not going to call the cop a racist.  But drumming up a disorderly conduct charge in order to arrest a man who broke into his own house, because he annoys the police officer and isn't subservient during their interaction, is police behavior that should be discouraged."

(I really also want to comment on police character attributes, too.  It seems to me that people become cops -- also, soldiers -- because they want to be put in the societally accepted role of dominance as a part of their job, which gives them license to frequently beat the crap out of people.  But I don't have time for that post at the moment.)

“We just want to have a little fun”

What is the problem with Israeli made commercials?  A few months ago we featured this ridiculously tasteless spectacle and now a friend points me to another ad from Israel whose makers seem equally oblivious to the implications of the imagery they present.   

So, some Israeli soldiers are gleefully playing a game of soccer with invisible Palestinians on the other side of the "wall." What does that signify? That the wall has been effective against suicide bombers and has made Israelis so safe and secure that even uniformed soldiers can indulge in a lighthearted game of ball with the enemy? Or does it mean that the wall can shield Israeli citizens from thinking uncomfortable thoughts about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories? A simple "out of sight, out of mind" solution for a complex and intractable problem. Or did the ad makers mean to invoke something deeper, like the WWI Christmas Day truce between German and British soldiers, who were rumored to have played soccer with each other during a brief period of camaraderie? (never mind that they went back to slaughtering each other after the armistice was over.) Perhaps it doesn't mean anything. The tacky video is probably just another example of a crass attempt at peddling a product. After all, as my friend translated for me, the voice-over at the end of the mindless message coos, “We just want to have a little fun”.

When Blogs Die

I haven't posted here for a while - probably the longest time since the inception of the blog. I don't know how that has affected regular readership. Although A.B. is not a personal blog, this article about slow and moribund blogs or those whose contents change abruptly resulting in the loss of readership, caught my eye.

Back in 2004, the blogger known as “Mister Bachelor” was swinging at the top of his middle-aged game — collecting women and readers (nearly 8,000) — with salacious tales of his Lothario lifestyle.

He was revered and reviled and loving every minute of it.

Then he fell in love, and with that it was all downhill — for the blog, that is.

Earlier this year, the once frolicking Mister Bachelor of heavy Web traffic and outraged comments was laid to rest. In its place, The Blog and Chain was born, snarky and sardonic but devoid of sex and drama. At last count, it had fewer than 150 readers, according to the reformed Mister Bachelor, who now goes by the alias Daedalus.

Personal blogs are like child stars. Some soar too quickly and die too young. Others drop out, lay low for a while and come back stronger than ever. More often, they return reinvented, uninspired and lackluster, missing that special something that used to leave audiences wanting more.

Blogs are born, blogs die — it’s a cycle as old as blogging itself, said Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming and Why It Matters.

“Things grow and mature, and then they reach their end,” he said. “That’s the shape of our lives.”

Blogs end up in the virtual graveyard for as many reasons as they came into being in the first place. Sometimes, the bloggers get out of their system whatever they wanted to say. Or they reach the fame they were after. Other times, they just give up.

“In some cases people stop because they achieve their goal,” Rosenberg said. “Others stop because they’ll never achieve their goal.”

.....

Jessica Cutler has birthed and buried four blogs and is authoring a fifth. But she’s never matched the fame of her 2003 effort, Washingtonienne, which lasted just 13 days but scandalized the nation’s capital by chronicling her liaisons with Washington power brokers. The notoriety led to what she termed a “mini-career” of writing about herself. She penned pieces for high-profile media outlets, usually about sex or scandal, posed for Playboy and wrote a book, Washingtonienne, that is being made into an HBO series.

Now happily married and pregnant, Cutler seems ambivalent toward her blog-earned fame. When the URL on JessicaCutlerOnline expired, she just let it die. Her latest blog is a hodgepodge of domestic fare and profane but witty observation. Blogs, Cutler has concluded, are “like trees falling in a forest.

“If no one read them, it’s like they never really existed.”

NCBI ROFL (Joe)

Bringing new meaning to navel gazing and much, much more, is NCBI ROFL. Am I just giving a shout out to a friend's blog? No -- I'm giving a shout out to a friend's blog that posts abstracts from real scientific research articles that are often hilarious enough to have you rolling on the floor laughing. So check it out!

Bloggers Under Scrutiny

Bloggers can continue to rave and rant about anything that suits their fancy. But now the Federal  Trade Commission plans to monitor their claims, especially if money or freebies are changing hands.

Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services, scouring through comments from everyday Joes and Janes to help them find a gem or shun a lemon.

What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all.

The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers - as well as the companies that compensate them - for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts

It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer - and getting commissions for any sales from it - would be enough to trigger oversight.

"If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk," said Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices. "Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and ... they have an economic motive for what they're saying, that's information a consumer should know."

The guidelines also would bring uniformity to a community that has shunned that.

As blogging rises in importance and sophistication, it has taken on characteristics of community journalism - but without consensus on the types of ethical practices typically found in traditional media.

Journalists who work for newspapers and broadcasters are held accountable by their employers, and they generally cannot receive payments from marketers and must return free products after they finish reviewing them.

The blogosphere is quite different.

More here from the Associated Press Report.

Hand - Eye Coordination

If only the problems of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel-Palestine, N. Korea and the Republican right were as easy to swat away! (Link via a friend's e-mail)

Publius (Joe)

Some snippy conservative twit outed Publius, of Obsidian Wings fame (measured relative to the blogosphere, of course, which still puts him WAY behind that guy in his mother's basement who suggested some baseball player in Philadelphia might be using PEDs, let alone people anyone actually cares about). He's some law professor, not that it matters (although it matters to him, obviously, since he blogs/blogged pseudonymously).

Anyhow, I'm saddened over the loss of Publius's pseudonymity. Not because of the larger debate about pseudonymity and outing pseudonymous bloggers (Leiter goes off here, for example, making points about consequentialism, fairness, etc. Typical of a law or philosophy professor, of course, Brian fails to mention that the only reason Whelan outed Publius is that Whelan is -- and was particularly being -- a snippy twit. An annoyed child acting out of spite. I think this is also a deontological fail for Whelan, but again, the petulant child/brat angle is what actually stands out to me).

Instead, I'm sad because that's one fewer blogger I can claim to be. Thank goodness there's still Giblets. And, in a pinch, Michael Bérubé.

Summer Hiatus

I will be posting very infrequently in the month of June. Unless my co-bloggers find the time to write, there will be little new material on the blog until the middle of July.

I should be a sports columnist. (Joe)

Vince Young, the (currently backup) quarterback for the Tennessee Titans, recently said in a radio interview that he wants to start, and if he's not going to remain on the bench for the Titans, maybe it would be best for his career to move on to a team that wants him to play. Paul Kuharsky, an ESPN.com NFL blogger, had this to say:

I'm guessing he doesn't realize that recent comments to a Baltimore TV station will cause a big stir, or maybe he intended for them to. Either way, it's already under way.

Yes, those are the two options: he either knew, or did not know, that his comments would cause some sort of local media controversy. Quite the guess there, Paul. Way to really go out on a limb and guess that it was either one or the other, when it had to be one or the other. (To be fair, though, it's not clear exactly what is supposed to now be underway. "It." The "big stir," which Kuharsky seems to be in the process of creating?)

Seriously, ESPN (and Sports Illustrated; I don't discriminate), I'm pretty sure I can do a better job for you -- and at a lower salary -- than some of the people you're currently employing. You know where to find me when you want to start negotiating.

Who's Up For The Top Quark?

3 Quarks Daily, a blog that I read regularly and where I have made many friends, has announced an  exiciting event - recognizing bloggers with cash prizes for the best writing. Please follow the link and find out the details. If you can remember a blog post in any of the four categories that you feel deserves the recognition, this may be a good opportunity to show your support. The first category to be judged is science and the deadline is approaching fast.  

Congrats, Joe!

Dear readers, there is one more legal eagle on the A.B. roster. Our own Joe graduated from law school last weekend.

Joe was one of the two earliest co-bloggers (the other being Anna) to join me on this blog. In late 2005 he was at home waiting to get into law school for the second time. He had been admitted once before but met with an unexpected roadblock. He was to begin school at Tulane University in the fall of 2005. However, mother nature had a plan of her own that summer in the form of Katrina! Joe's law school plans were washed away like much of New Orleans. He returned home to wait for another academic term to begin his legal education. During that idle period, with time on his hands, Joe read a lot of blogs, among them, Accidental Blogger. I came to know him through his comments and recruited him to write when I needed to go on a vacation. It seems like only yesterday. But more than three years have passed since then and Joe is now a full fledged lawyer. Congratulations, Joe!  

This is the second time we are celebrating a formal landmark event in the life of one of our authors. The first time was a wedding.

New Blogger On Board

Accidental Blogger is happy to announce the addition of a new author to the current stable of six. Our roster now includes a seventh blogger who prefers for now to go by the name of "D."  Please see his profile here. I invited D to join us after reading his many incisive and interesting comments on another blog. D hasn't told me what he will be writing about. Like all the other authors here, it will be whatever suits his fancy. (I have requested him to spare us the minutiae of particle physics though) We are looking forward to his debut on our pages. Welcome D!  

The Most Influential Person of 2009 Is .... Moot!

Who is the most influential person of 2009?  Instead of relying on assorted "experts" Time magazine decided to open this year's annual polling on this topic to the "general public." And just as democracy is messy, so are on-line public polls. Totally unexpectedly, the top position has gone to someone named "moot." (There is more to moot than meets the eye. Read the story). The following nine positions are equally stunning. According to the "public" the ten most influential people of 2009 are:

1. Moot

2. Anwar Ibrahim

3. Rick Warren

4. Baitullah Mehsud

5. Larry Brilliant

6. Eric Holder

7. Carlos Slim

8. Angela Markel

9. Kobe Bryant

10. Evo Morales

How many of these have you heard of? Okay, at least some I am sure. A couple are leaders of their countries (Morales, Markel), one is the newly appointed AG of the US Justice Dept who beat out his widely popular, better known and vastly more influential boss in the White House. Then there is also a Christian pastor (#3), a wanted terrorist (#4) and a basketball player (#9). # 2 is someone I have never heard of. What gives? I guess this will teach Time (and other media outlets involved in list making and wishing to influence public opinions) a lesson in at last figuring out that the "public" is not only quite often ignorant but sometimes, as in this case, also mischievous. NASA learnt the same lesson when it opened up the naming of the International Space Station to public voting and was mortified when it ended up with Stephen Colbert. I suspect that this result too was skewed by the parochial partiality of the voting public.

Barack Obama does figure among the top 100 most influential persons of 2009.  He is at a hopelessly feeble # 37 ... well below Britney Spears, Jon Stewart, Ron Paul, Tina Fey and some other knowns and unknowns.  

This Should Be Fun!

Can't wait to see this happen. But given the physical and moral cowardice of right wing blowhards, it probably won't.

Carnival of the Liberals # 89

CotL #89 is up at Johnny Pez's blog.

But Seidel, and My Seidel? (Dean)

Rarely is a poet given the level of coverage devoted two weeks ago to Frederick Seidel in the New York Times. It takes more than merely exquisite poesy to ascend to that particular Parnassus. Seidel has more. As the article explains, he is an independently wealthy, finely suited older white man whose works address wealth and age, exercise his obsessions for motorcycles and airplanes, and explore his taste for sex. What? That's news?

It's nice to see Seidel so prominently featured, and I aim to buy the new volume of collected works, even though I have nearly all of his individual books. But the article gets so much wrong. Yes, Seidel's topics are often unsettling, the images surreal. Consider "Chartres," from My Tokyo:

The takeoff of the Concorde in a cathedral.
Ninety seconds into it they cut
The afterburners and the deathly silence
Was like a large breast as we banked steeply left.

This is indeed a disturbing little verse. Yet Wyatt Mason, who wrote the Time's profile of Seidel--rather, who wrote the profile of Wyatt Mason rubbing elbows with Seidel--seems to have missed the point about "poetry's power to disturb" with his opening account of the threatening phone message left for Seidel. Clearly, the woman who left the eerie message was disturbed, but not by poetry. The article's point seems to be to promote the new volume by scandalizing the poet, a fair enough marketing ploy. Ron Silliman gets it right when he refers to it as a "fetish piece."

Any publicity is good publicity, a cliché Seidel might admire as a topos, but he'll leave the dirty work to his publisher and the NYT. So, sprinkled among Mason's inventory of poetic improprieties are blurby superlatives: “the best American poet writing today,” "the most frightening American poet ever." (For the latter, I would have guessed Edgar Guest.) And then there's Billy Collins' petty misreading, "When he mentions East Hampton or the Carlyle or Le Cirque or Ducati, it doesn’t even seem like name-dropping." No, former poet laureate Collins, it does seem like name-dropping--call it allusion, if you prefer academic jargon--because it is name-dropping. It's a Seidel trademark, lyric punctuated with trademarks!

Most revealing to me in Mason's work is the early connection of Seidel with Ezra Pound's Cantos. I wasn't aware that Seidel had been so inspired, but with hindsight, of course! As poets go, they both often render lines palpable--compare the gutturals in the first line from "Chartres" with the sibilants in a line like "So-shu churned in the sea" from Pound--to provoke in the reader a physical engagement with the text, in the service of aesthetic qualities such as mimesis, percussive rhythm, or sonic ties from line to line that fall short of rhyme. Notice how the L in "cathedral" appears four times in the last line, where it further brackets a chiasmus of Ls and Bs: "like a large breast" X "banked steeply left"? At this level, it hardly matters that he writes lines that seem uncomplicatedly cruel, whatever that means.

The NPRization of Newspapers (Andrew)

Amid all of the print-is-dead triumphalism, Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland has taken the very encouraging step of introducing legislation that would allow newspapers to operate as not-for-profits.  This would mean that advertising and subscription revenue would be tax-exempt, and one could make tax-deductible donations to newspaper as educational entities.  I'm pretty sure this would also mean that any profits that the newspapers might make would need to be re-invested in the newspaper, rather than paid out to shareholders.

As someone who  got his his start in media in public radio, I am enthusiastic that this can work.  The traditional cash cow of classified advertising, which sustained large newsrooms for so many years is gone.  But we still need large newsrooms, and this looks like a realistic way to fund them -- and newspapers have NPR and public radio stations as models for how one can fundraise for high-quality reporting as a non-profit entity. 

I asked one of my friends, an editor at a large (for-profit) magazine for his thoughts on the issue.  He argues persuasively that a non-profit model will actually provide better quality news than for-profit newspapers that are driven ultimately by the bottom line:

I’ve always believed that news media as a for-profit venture was a flawed business model. It’s the fiduciary duty of an executive to make the most money possible for his company’s shareholders. Call it a Machiavellian instinct, but successful CEOs run a business with dispassion. They’re swayed by concerns outside profit margins only to the extent that customers or clients might find fault in their perceived callousness. That’s why a company will donate $10,000 to a worthy cause and spend several million trumpeting its good deed.

I’m not trying to judge them, just provide some context when I say that the for-profit business model is an anathema to anything requiring the public trust. Their true objective is not good journalism, per se. It’s simply the product of customer demand. That’s not to say that journalists are tainted—many believe they’re doing the public’s work—but the product will change to meet customer demands. Great journalism is the result of a commitment to the truth, whether or not the intended audience wants it.

A not-for-profit business model shows that a news entity is not restrained by profit motives. It can run stories that companies, that might have been advertisers under the for-profit model, may not like. For example, Consumer Reports regularly runs critical stories about vehicle safety to the chagrin of Detroit’s Big Three. There’s always risk of a lawsuit, but the editors at CR don’t have to worry about offending advertisers. Ditto for the Associated Press and the St. Petersburg Times.

I like the St. Petersburg Times model because it’s run by a university, where ideas are encouraged to flourish. I see the paper as one giant academic experiment. Now, more than ever, with the proliferation of bad information floating on the web, the public needs news sources it can trust.

Carnival of the Liberals # 86

The new CotL # 86 is up at The Greenbelt. With the economy on spindly legs, many of the posts are about money, naturally.