McCunications

This blog has moved

2012-01-01T00:11:00.000-08:00

In case you're wondering ... this blog has moved to http://cynfern.wordpress.com/

First day of class

2010-08-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

Fun with PhotoBooth

Why I love estate sales

2010-04-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Only at an estate sale could you stumble across a treasure trove of department store mannequins in a backyard gazebo. No, I didn't buy any. I am a collector, but sometimes getting pics is enough.

I started going to estate sales in Kansas City with my office pal Pam. She was an old hand at it. She taught me how to do a quick cruise of a full house, how to recycle and reuse.

I still have a couple of nice '50s swing coats that I picked up at KC estate sales. That's also when I developed a fondness for vintage hats and linens.

One of my most treasured finds at a KC estate sale was a collection of three old pattern books (McCalls, Simplicity) at the home of an elderly woman (deceased) who had obviously been an avid seamstress. One of them was from the 1920s; it was filled with flapper dresses, middys and bloomers. Another was from the late '40s, with suits that looked like they came out of a Katherine Hepburn movie. The third one was from the early 1950s; it featured lots of wasp-waisted, full-skirted dresses ... shades of Doris Day.

I still scan the estate sale listings for mentions of "fabric" and "sewing." I've never found any more old pattern books, but I once in a while I find some wonderful vintage patterns. At 10, 25 or 50 cents a pop, they're a cheap to collect and a fun find. I think of them as my "baseball cards."

Tags: estate sale, collectibles

A stroll through computer history

2009-03-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

The best way to visit the Computer History Museum is with someone who worked on early computers. That's what I did last week when my favorite uncle, Jordan Spofford, and my Aunt Bev were in town for a few days.

I enjoyed seeing the Apple computer prototype, but my uncle (at left) got most excited about seeing the Cray computer and a reproduction of the Babbage Engine, the first automatic computing machine. I'd never heard of the Babbage before, but he knew all about it.

My uncle worked at Western Electric in Massachusetts in the early days of computing. Here's a photo of him testing the wiring in the D2 computer bay at Western Electric. (He said Hughes Aircraft made the test equipment they used back then.)

This pic shows my uncle and me, reflected in the glass covering over the wiring of the Cray computer.

Tags: computers, Cray, Apple, Babbage

Unexpected guest

2009-03-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Alzheimer's came to my door last night, and I let her in.

She was wearing pink flowered pajamas topped by a green V-neck sweater. She was standing at the end of my driveway, after ringing the doorbell at 1:30 a.m. From a distance, her blondish page boy hair reminded me of a friend.

"Pat?" I asked from the doorway.

"No," the woman replied, turning toward me, but remaining at the end of the drive. I walked out to meet her, tugging my bathrobe close against the cold.

She was frail, much shorter than my friend Pat, maybe five-foot-two. She said she'd been driving a friend home and had gotten confused. Her car had run out of gas and she'd been walking for a while around trying to find her way home.

I said we'd figure it out and led her inside. She said her feet were cold. I looked down and saw she was barefoot. I sat her down in the family room and went to get her a pair of socks -- a pair of thick, warm woolen ones. As she slowly tugged them on, I asked if her car was nearby. She didn't know. How about her address? She couldn't tell me. Anyone we could call to help? No answer. Her name? That she could tell me, so I looked her up in the phone book and found she lived just three blocks away.

My husband and I took her out to the car and drove a few blocks, then started looking for her address. She gave no sign of recognition, no "That's my house!" I got out with a flashlight so I could read the house numbers. According to the phone book, this was her house. There was one light on inside. I tried the door. Locked. I rang the bell. No response. A car parked on the street directly in front of the house was also locked.

I went back to the car. She was still sitting quietly in the back seat. What next?

"I think we should take her to the emergency room," my husband said. It was either that or call the police.

The emergency area was quiet. I asked her to take a seat in the waiting area while I talked to the admittance clerk, who had a hard time figuring out our relationship.

"No, I'm not related," I told him. "I think she lives in my neighborhood, but never met her until she rang my doorbell about half an hour ago."

Another young man -- a nurse, a doctor? -- came out and asked her some questions. Did she know what day of the week it was? Could she give him the name of a family member to call? Did she know what year it was? No, no and no.

"How old are you?" the young man asked.

"Umm ... 28?" she responded.

"I don't think so," he said. "I think we need to admit you."

She followed him without protest into the hospital, and my husband and I drove home.

Journalism as remix?

2009-03-12T18:05:00.001-07:00

Is it art ... or appropriation? Creativity or theft?

Take a look at the web's latest phenom, Kutiman, who makes music videos by mashing up and remixing short clips of other people's YouTube videos.

Daniel Sinker, a member of the journalism faculty at Columbia College in Chicago, comes down on the side of art. So do I.

In a recent Huffington Post piece, Sinker said, "If your reaction to this crate of magic is 'Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who did this' ... instead of, 'Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,' it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page."

Perhaps the Associated Press might want to consider taking that advice. Instead of acting like RIAA gestapo and suing Shepard Fairey for "copying" an AP photographer's campaign photo for his now-iconic Obama "Hope" poster, the AP might want to consider adopting similar techniques instead. Instead of regarding Fairey's poster as "a threat to journalism," the AP might want to lighten up and bask in the glow. After all, I doubt anyone would remember that photographer's name, or that photo, if it weren't for Fairey's poster.

I think Kutiman's music ... video ... whatever you want to call it ... is seriously cool and creative. But I also like Sinker's larger point ... that musicians and artists aren't the only ones who can take advantage of the proliferation of raw material on the web. He says journalists should be tapping into that mother lode of material too, instead of viewing the web as a threat.

Sinker advises journalists to "Be like Kutiman: use the millions of blog entries, photos, tweets, and videos that find themselves on the web every day to build something new."

See Daniel Sinker's "Where is Our Orchestra? What Journalism Can Learn From the Mind-Blowing Remixes of Kutiman" on Huffington Post
YouTube remixer Kutiman may be the best mashup artist yet -- on Gawker's Things We Actually Like
AP, artist feud over famous Obama poster, on USA Today
tags: music, web, youtube, mashup, journalism

iPhone envy

2009-02-26T17:02:00.000-08:00

Just got a call from my hubby. He's in downtown SF and apparently his car got towed. Bummer!

What next? Is there a BART station nearby? How do you find if your vehicle's been towed ... or stolen? And how do you get it back?

It just took me one Google search and a couple of clicks to find out. Called the SFPD number listed ... yup, it was towed. Got the details, called him back, told him where to go (so to speak).

But I couldn't help thinking ... if he'd had an iPhone, he could have sorted it out without my help.

Yes, I want one! I'll be so glad when my current phone contract expires!

Tags: iPhone, Google, SFPD, towed

Deck Chairs

2009-02-24T23:37:00.001-08:00

Oh, no ... say it isn't so! My favorite local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is on the ropes.

According to the Hearst Corporation, the Chron lost $50 million last year, and if the company can't make major cutbacks "within weeks ... it will be forced to sell or close the newspaper."

Of course, I guess I should have seen it coming. After all, plenty of other newspapers are falling by the wayside ... most recently, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Register, Journal Register chain and the Tucson Citizen. And then the Chronicle's management appears to have wasted the past 6-12 months fiddling with fonts and negotiating a 15-year contract for a new printing plant ... otherwise known as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Even if the Chronicle survives, it will be in a significantly reduced form with a decimated reporting staff. Either way, I will miss my daily dose of Chron.

Linking and sharing

2009-02-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

As I work on my computer and listen to music on songza.com, I take a moment to read an LA Times article on musician J.J. Cale. Apparently he's been a source of inspiration for a number of well-known rock 'n' rollers, including Eric Clapton ... but here's what I'm wondering: Why doesn't the LA Times include a link to one of his songs along with the article? Seems like a pretty simple and pretty obvious thing to do ... if they want to make their website more useful.

And it's not like there aren't plenty of links available ... they're just a Google search away, after all. Really, would it be that hard to include a link to the guy's web site?

If newspapers want to compete online, they've got to pay attention this kind of stuff. It's not just about "telling" anymore ... it's also about linking and sharing.

P.S. Here's one more link to a 2004 NPR interview with Cale.

A Grandin suprise

2009-02-14T11:07:00.000-08:00

Reading a Philly Inquirer article about Temple Grandin this morning reminded me of my own favorite Temple Grandin story.

Grandin, who is autistic, is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and noted livestock industry consultant. She is also the author of several books on livestock handling, animal welfare and autism, and an autism advocate. I first met Grandin in the mid-'80s, when she was beginning to become known in the livestock industry.

It was the summer of 1987, as I recall, and I working at the Livestock Industry Congress, an annual conference put on by my employer, Livestock Marketing Association. I'd helped develop the conference program and recruited most of the speakers, including Temple Grandin, who was scheduled to speak on livestock handling, and Ellen Haas, then executive director of Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, representing consumer concerns.

It was an ambitious program for its target audience of leaders in the livestock and meat industry, most of whom had little awareness of (or interest in) the budding animal welfare and consumer movements.

The late Orville Sweet, then president of the National Pork Producers Association, opened the program by bringing out two big cartons full of postcards proclaiming bacon and eggs as the "breakfast of cruelty." The postcards, all sent to the NPPA, were part of a campaign against factory farming organized by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). PETA had also helped organize the animal rights protest that was going on outside the conference hall that morning.

Haas and Grandin were up next, with Haas speaking first. She was interrupted almost immediately by an animal rights protester who marched up to the stage, shouting, and took over the microphone. After a couple minutes, someone thought to turn off the microphone, and an security guard asked the protester to leave. She did, and Haas resumed her talk.

Then it was Grandin's turn to speak. Instead of stepping up to the microphone, she strode over to the cartons of postcards, still sitting at the side of the stage, grabbed one and upended it while turning toward the audience. Postcards spewed in an arc across the stage, some showering over the edge to land at the feet of the people in the front row. No one moved. All eyes were on Grandin, astonished, wondering what she'd do next.

What she did was proceed to tell the group, in no uncertain terms, that they needed to clean up their act when it came to livestock handling and production -- or they could expect to see a lot more animal rights protests. I like to think that speech helped launch her career.

Afterewards, some conference attendees told me they thought we'd choreographed the whole thing just to get their attention. I didn't need to choreograph it ... not with Grandin as a speaker.

Now, Grandin's story is headed for a larger stage. HBO is making a movie about her, starring one of my favorite actresses, Claire Danes. I can't wait.

Tags: Temple Grandin, animal welfare, livestock industry, HBO, LMA

Teacher's nightmare

2009-01-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

I'm having that dream again, the one where I'm rushing around campus after my morning class, talking to students and colleagues and such, when I realize I've totally forgotten about my second class, the one that's at noon.

Of course, it's mid-afternoon now so it's too late. And I realize I've stood up that whole class of students not just once but twice ... because it's my second day of classes, and I realize I forgot them on the first day of classes too. (What happened to my iCal alarm?)

I look around for a place to set down my bookbag and laptop so I can email my forgotten students to apologize. In this class, we are supposed to produce a play, and I fret that we are now so far behind schedule that we'll never catch up. Worry, worry.

Too many people, no place for me to sit. I wander the halls, wondering if I should fess up to my department head, or just to my students. Wait a minute ... maybe my students have already complained to my department about my absence ... why, of course, they must have! I head back to the office. But why didn't one of them email me? Worry, worry.

Then I wake up. And I realize four things: 1) My second class doesn't start until tomorrow; 2) my first class is fully online and has no on-campus meetings; 3) I do not teach in the theater department or produce plays; and 4) I've had this dream before. Whoa!

Yes, it is the teacher's nightmare ... variation #32, I think ... and I am glad to be awake and over it. Thank goodness tomorrow is another day.

2009-01-21T13:37:00.001-08:00

We all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw ...

... get on that helicopter and fly away.

He's lucky it was a polite group and he didn't get a more appropriate farewell salute.

Words fail

2009-01-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

Watching the inauguration with friends, I am ...

Proud

Relieved

Teary-eyed

Heartened

Grinning

Glad

Hopeful

It was a very good year...for buzzwords

2008-12-21T11:01:00.001-08:00

"Picking out political buzzwords from 2008 is like shooting moose in a pigpen," say Mark Leibovich and Grant Barrett, authors of The Buzzwords of 2008.

They note, for example, that "the lifespan of Hillary Clinton’s campaign 'meta-narrative' could be charted entirely in buzzwords and catch-phrases — 'inevitability' to 'Clinton fatigue' to 'Obamamania' to 'he can’t win' to 'team of rivals.'

What really makes this New York Times piece work are the illustrations -- the font and graphics created by Jessica Hische. They're fabulous.

My favorites: Greyjing, recessionista, edupunk, Plutoid and TBTF ("Too Big To Fail," replete with cracks). Which ones do you like best?

Tags: nytimes, buzzwords, graphics, typeface, design, slang

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

A new business model?

2008-12-16T12:20:00.001-08:00

Detroit’s big news as seen from a key design insider - SND Update

"It’s official: The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, will become the first major U.S. newspapers to cease seven-day home delivery."
- Hello to three-day delivery: The JOA will instead focus on Thursday and Friday delivery of both papers and Sunday delivery of the Free Press only. Those days are the most lucrative for advertising and have often been considered in the newspaper world as the “money” days for both sales and circulation.
- Clearly one of the biggest design challenges is to try to continue serving current single copy readers and perhaps even improve their experiences, while also appealing to long-time home delivery customers and trying to serve their needs.
- "We’ll have to look at ways to maximize reader connections through all existing and newly developing channels (ex: Kindle, iPhone, etc and whatever comes next). That is definitely part of our planning."
- Some critics have panned the process with IDEO, worrying that the design firm does not completely understand how to work with the news media.
- The influential designer Juan Antonio Giner of Innovation called it “the way to death” in a posting last week, and the Gannett Blog has been buzzing with rumors about IDEO’s role. But the leaders of the transformation defend the IDEO process.

tags: future of newspapers, future of news, online

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Prop 8 - the musical

2008-12-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

If you haven't yet seen the video, Prop 8 - the Musical, starring Jack Black as Jesus...well, here's your chance.

What he said

2008-11-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

I'd heard about this commentary by Keith Olbermann on the passage of Prop. 8, but hadn't seen it until today. It's heartfelt and worth watching.

Get with the program

2008-11-12T14:32:00.001-08:00

Time for newspapers to get with the program? The video program? That's what journalism pioneer Michael Rosenblum said recently to the Society of Editors conference. Here are some excerpts on his presentation from a blog post by Dominic Ponsford on Press Gazette (U.K.) blog:

'News websites must embrace video or die' - Press Gazette

tags: video, future of news, business model
- “Any idiot can do this, making TV is not hard, it's not complicated, it's not difficult. The technology makes it incredibly simple.”
  
  And he said print publications “must have video” on their websites or else go out of business.
- “If you only have print or stills and your competitor has video your going to get eaten.”
- He said print journalists were danger of becoming as obselete as the New England whalers of the 19th century.
- “You are not in the newspaper business...When new technology like the internet comes along you can hide from it or you can embrace it.”
  
  He said: “Like the oilmen of New England you are already in the business but you have to remember the business you are in.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stand on the side of love

2008-11-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

Since the election, I have done a lot of thinking about the passage of Prop 8. I keep wondering how so many Californians could be more supportive of the rights of farm animals than of the rights of people. I keep wondering how people who have experienced discrimination could vote to inflict it upon others and enshrine discrimination in our constitution. I simply do not understand.

What I do know is that this is the next civil rights struggle. What I do know is that one day we will be as appalled by Prop 8 as we now are by the laws that forbade interracial marriage. I can only hope that day comes soon.

If, like me, you are looking for a way to express your support for the right of all individuals to marry the one they love, please consider attending one of the following Peninsula candlelight vigils on Monday, Nov. 10, from 5-6:30 p.m.:

* San Mateo corner of El Camino Real and Fifth Avenue (I'll be here)
* Belmont at El Camino Real and Ralston Avenue (CalTrain side)
* Redwood City corner of El Camino and Jefferson Ave.
* Palo Alto at the corner of El Camino Real and Embarcadero
* San Jose at S. Bascom and Hamilton Ave. (southeast corner, just west of 17)
* San Jose downtown at Metropolitan Community Church, 65 South 7th Street

Click here for the most up-to-date list of venues, and links to maps. Bring candles. Rainbow flags and banners from faith communities are also welcome.

How Unitarian-Universalists view the right to marry
Listen to the UU hymn, Standing on the Side of Love

Waiting

2008-11-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

The answer to the question we've all been asking: http://isobamapresident.com/

Election day impressions

2008-11-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

I spent most of the day on the front lines of the No on Prop. 8 campaign, greeting voters and handing out hand cards at a San Bruno polling station at a middle school.

(In case you're not a Californian, Prop. 8 would overturn the recent California Supreme Court decision allowing gays to wed.)

Here are my election day impressions:

We Prop. 8 volunteers got lots of "thumbs up" from voters and passing drivers. We could tell they were really glad to see us when they honked their horns or took both hands off the steering wheel to give us two "thumbs up."
We decided to "kill them with kindness." We smiled and wished everyone a wonderful day, even if they told us they were voting "yes" on 8. We even smiled and waved at drivers who stopped to yell abuse at us (yes, there were several of those).
I expected a majority of younger people would support us, but I was pleased to see how many older men and women also told us they were voting no on 8.
About two-thirds of the people we greeted said, "You've got my vote." About 20-25 percent avoided us, ignored us, or waved us off. About 5 percent were rude or abusive.
One man, already in line (and thus out of reach) when we got to the polling station around 7 a.m., stopped on his way out to tell us how happy he was to see us there. I thought he was going to hug me.
One middle-aged woman and her husband stopped to say she's been angry ever since she first heard about Prop. 8. Saying it was "unfair," said she'd been waiting to vote against it.
One guy drove up around noon on a motorcycle, thanked us for being there, and gave us some homemade rice krispie bars. They were good.
I helped several people maneuver into tight parallel parking spaces on the street outside the polling station. One of them, when I handed him the No on 8 hand card, told me he wasn't that thrilled with the idea of gay marriage, but since it was now law, he was going to vote no on Prop. 8.
Big domestic model pick-up trucks and SUVs usually indicated "Yes on 8" voters.
A surprising number of people (8-10) questioned our presence outside the polling place. Several times I had to tell someone that we had indeed checked with the precinct captain and we were well outside the 100-foot limit.
A sizable proportion of Yes on 8 voters seemed angry, some downright nasty.
Many Yes on 8 voters couldn't seem to just pass us by or wave us off; they had to stop and taunt us, saying "you're going to lose because we voted yes" or the like.
Several Yes on 8 voters stopped their vehicles in the middle of the street yell out their windows at us. Some just yelled "Yes on 8" at us. Some yelled, "You're gonna lose; you're going down." One woman told us to repent because we were going to hell. So it goes.
Our "No on 8" stickers were a hot item with middle-school students. We gave out all we had and wished we had more. A good sign for the future.

Campaign tinnitus?

2008-11-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here is New York Times columnist Gail Collins' theory about the voters who, at this late date, say they're still "undecided":

My theory is that whenever they hear someone start to discuss the issues, they cover their ears and make humming noises, the way my husband does when I say it is time to take a look at our 401(k)s.

Her Nov. 1 column is called Our Election Whopper.

For another sound of the campaign, check out "Don't Speak for Me, Sarah Palin: The Musical," a hoot of a video posted on the barakoblogger.com.

And if you want to hear a blast from the ugly side of America -- the side I dearly hope doesn't prevail this time around -- read some of the vicious comments appended to this KC Star editorial. In it, Yael T. Abouhalkah (you can imagine how well that name goes over) notes that Obama is "poised to become America's first black president" and suggests his opponents get used to the idea.

From the sound of these so-called "Midwest Voices," I'd say that's gonna take a while. Makes me glad I no longer live in Kansas City.

The power of Diigo

2008-10-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

I've been using Diigo, the online bookmarking tool that's available here as a Firefox extension, for a while now. I've mostly used it to bookmark interesting articles, blog posts and such that I find on the web.

What I like is that Diggo not only lets you easily save items, it lets you highlight the "good parts" so that when you go back to the article you can easily find them. That turned out to be a real asset when I was working on my part of the JACC Norcal keynote a couple weeks ago.

It's been a real pressure cooker of a semester, so I had very little time to put my JACC presentation together. However, I'd been bookmarking, highlighting and saving relevant blog posts and articles into my JACC list on Diigo (yes, you can categorize what you save) for weeks. So when I finally sat down to create a presentation, I had everything I needed at my fingertips. I was able to put it all together in a day. (By the way, you can view that presentation, Journalism in the Starbucks Era, on SlideShare, another great online tool.)

But after downloading a Diigo update this morning, I realized I'm just scratching the surface of what you can do with Diigo. For example, my previous blog post on Greenspan's sudden epiphany...well, I posted it direct from Diigo while reading and bookmarking the article. Pretty cool, huh?

When I ran through Diigo's "how-to" overview this morning, I found several other things I didn't know. In addition to using the one-click "Send to Blog" feature, you can also use Diigo's "send" feature to:

send annotated and highlighted pages by email
post to other websites such as twitter, facebook, delicious, etc.

Cool! I'm using it for a tweet next.

But what really caught my attention was the idea of using Diigo as a hub for group research projects. You can set up a group Diigo account to share bookmarks, and make it public, private or semi-private. This has real potential for students working on group projects, especially since Diigo's "sticky note" feature also lets you add comments to the material you save, in addition to highlighting key passages.

OK, I'm sold! I'm going to start demo-ing Diigo for my students.

Greenspan shocked at failure of free markets

2008-10-24T09:14:00.001-07:00

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has finally stopped believing in the fiction of a self-correcting free market. In other words, he's realized that Ayn Rand is not only dead, but that she was a novelist.

Greenspan shocked at failure of free markets
- It was a remarkable moment: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a lifelong champion of free markets, publicly questioning the philosophy that guided him throughout his years as the world's most powerful economic policymaker.
- Greenspan said that, in light of a crisis he characterized as "a once-in-a-century financial tsunami," he was wrong to think financial markets could police themselves. He incorrectly had expected the discipline of the market would prevent financial institutions from taking life-threatening risks.
- Greenspan replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" asked Rep. Henry Waxman (chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform).
- For his whole adult life, the former Fed chairman has been a devotee of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who celebrated free-market capitalism as the world's most moral economic order and advocated a strict laissez-faire approach to government regulation of the marketplace.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Starbucks-era journalism

2008-10-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

You know you've got their attention when you get heckled during your presentation. At least that's my theory.

It happened at last Saturday's JACC NorCal conference (that's the Journalism Association of Community Colleges of Northern California), held at SJSU. My colleague Steve Sloan and I were the keynoters, addressing an audience of about 250 community college J-students and faculty on "Journalism in the Starbucks Era."

During our talk, we discussed some of the trends and online tools that are shaping journalism, including blogging, YouTube, Twitter and other forms of social media. I am a self-proclaimed blogging evangelist and a fan of Twitter, so my perspective on these tools is largely positive. I see them as tools, not as implements of destruction.

However, one CC faculty member, tucked in the last row, apparently disagreed. He took issue with the idea that bloggers could also be journalists. He interrupted us. Twice.

So here's what I told him: Blogging and journalism are not mutually exclusive. Journalism is what you do, not who you work for. Some journalists are also bloggers, and some bloggers do commit acts of journalism. After all, blogs are just another distribution channel, not the infidel.

Today, for example, some bloggers are doing something that looks a lot like journalism to me. They're digging through public records for background information on "Joe the (soon to be infamous) plumber," who was cited by Sen. John McCain in last night's presidential debate. Turns out that a number of the things McCain said about "Joe" last night are not true: Joe is registered as a Republican, not as an independent; he's a plumber's helper, not a plumbing business owner; and he doesn't make over $250,000 a year. Yes, it appears that Joe was a "plant."

Bloggers helped ferret some of that information out. Instead of looking at them as impediments, perhaps journalists should look at bloggers as potential resources...as people who could be helpful in these times of news organization cutbacks.

As the old saying goes, "Many hands make light work."

P.S. If you'd like to view my segment of our JACC presentation, you can see it on SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/camccune. Links to all my resources are included on the final slide. And if you didn't "Hack the Debate," be sure to check out that link.

Daily laugh

2008-10-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

Three things that made me laugh today:

"I thought it was just some creepy guy, like a very advanced Internet predator, who had worked really hard on his backstory."

~ Bo Burnham, YouTube phenom, on his first call from an agent (I read it in my morning SF Chron; you can read it online here)

"McCain finally shows his true zombie form."

~ Kitsune Noir, photo link via Twitter.

"The GOP likes to say it's a big tent. Looks more like a yurt to me."

~ Christopher Buckley, National Review writer and son of the mag's founder, conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., after his recent Obama endorsement sent NR readers and editors off the deep end. Buckley has resigned.

A Little Persuasion

2008-10-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

I should have been grading papers, but at the last minute I decided to play hooky for a few hours to see one of my favorites musicians, Richard Thompson, who was "playing real good for free" this afternoon at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest in Golden Gate Park.

Traffic was thick and the parking garage I'd found on Google Maps turned out not to exist, but I finally found a tiny parking space on the edge of the park just a few blocks from the stage. I squeezed my little VW Golf into it and hot-footed it into the park.

As I approached the open-air stage, I could hear Richard Thompson striking the opening chords of Bathsheba Smiles. A couple walking in the same direction asked, "Oh, is that Nick Lowe?"

"No," I replied, "that's Richard Thompson."

"Teddy Thompson's dad?"

"Yes, that's him."

On stage, it was just Thompson and his acoustic guitar, putting out enough sound to blow back your hair. He picks so fast and furious it always sounds like there must be two of him.

I found a open spot not too far back and sat cross-legged on the ground. Next up was one of my all-time Thompson favorites, Persuasion. As he sang, a pair of red-tailed hawks circled overhead. All around me, people tapped their feet and nodded their heads in time to the music. Some, like me, sang along on the chorus.

Also on the playlist: Crawl Back, 1952 Vincent Black Lightening, Sunset Song, a lovely ballad, and Dad's Gonna Kill Me, a song about Iraq ("Dad" is soldier slang for Baghdad, he said), and probably one or two others I forgot. He reprised with Valerie.

If you're not familar with Thompson, you can check him out on last.fm at http://www.last.fm/music/Richard+Thompson. Here's a YouTube video of Thompson singing Persuasion with his son, Teddy, who performed in town last month (sorry I missed that).

Tags: Richard Thompson, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

In sheep's clothing

2008-10-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

When I scanned this article in Salon.com this morning, I found the answer to a question that had been puzzling me since Monday. That's when I read this OpEd piece in the San Jose Mercury News. It purported to explain the author's support for Prop 8, which would eliminate the right of marriage for same-sex couples, despite his being a "liberal Democrat."

Great story. Too bad it turns out not to be true. As noted in the Salon.com article, the author appears to be a paid right-wing shill. However, MN readers weren't told that. Here's what they were told:

David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage." He wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.

Nothing about his conservative connections. Nothing about him not really being a liberal. That kind of misrepresentation makes me mad, so I wrote this letter to the editor:

The Mercury News needs to do a better job of fact-checking its OpEds. If you had, you would have found that self-professed "liberal Democrat" David Blankenhorn, who wrote the Monday's oped "Protecting Marriage to Protect Children," is not who he says he is.

In fact, Blankenhorn appears to be a paid shill for several right-wing advocacy groups. His "think tank," the Institute for American Values (of which he is president), has raked in millions of dollars from ultra-conservative Republican foundations, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, and the Randolph Foundation.

As noted in an article in today's Salon.com, the Institute for American Values is just one of a "network of right-wing Republican think tanks that promote a variety of causes," including the elimination of gay marriage, abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research, and the inclusion of prayer and creationism in public schools.

Clearly, this guy is no liberal, and I kinda doubt he's a Democrat. I'd say you got played.

I hope you will issue a correction on your OpEd pages to clarify Mr. Blankenhorn's allegiances, so those who took his assertions at face value can be aware of his hidden agenda.

I kinda doubt the Mercury News will run a correction, but I figure it can't hurt to ask.

Full Disclosure: I have volunteered for the No on Prop8 campaign. We're holding No on Prop 8 phone bank sessions at my church. I even have a No on 8 yard sign. (And if David Blankenhorn had disclosed his biases, I wouldn't have felt the need to write this post.)

P.S. So maybe you're wondering, "Why should I care?" Maybe, like me, you're straight and married. If you're asking yourself that question, please read this letter, written by a member of my church to her family and friends.

Tags: No on Prop 8, prop8, California

Hack the debate?

2008-09-25T12:12:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've read Dan Gillmor's account of the comeuppance of "poor Joe Nacchio," a financial guy who happened to be speaking at an executive conference in 2002 when bloggers first flexed their muscles.

As Gillmor tells it in the introduction to his book, We the Media (available online), he and a couple other bloggers were live-blogging the event, commenting on Nacchio's speech. When Gillmor and another blogger started pointing out some discrepancies between what Nacchio was saying and what he had done, they noticed the audience started getting hostile. Turns out that a lot of them were following the blogs while listening to Nacchio's speech, and they didn't like what they were reading.

We could see something similar take place via microblogging during this Friday's presidential debate (or town hall session, if McCain pulls a no-show).

Current TV and Twitter are planning to run real-time twitter messages ("tweets") over Current TV's live broadcast of the debate. So instead of just listening, viewers can comment on what's being said and see what others are saying...in close to real time.

The Current TV website notes that it will broadcast "as many of your debate tweets as possible right over Obama & McCain, in real time, on our live broadcast."

If you want to take part, all you need is a Twitter account and an internet connection. Then just tweet to your heart's content...and add "#current" to your tweets so they'll be queued for broadcast. You can also follow these tweets by searching #current on Twitter search.

Check it out at: http://current.com/topics/88834922_hack_the_debate

No Vista on my horizon

2008-09-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

I can see why Microsoft is having to explain their new ad -- the one where Jerry Seinfeld runs into Bill Gates at a discount shoe store. I've already seen it several times many times (they seem to be blanketing the airwaves), and I still don't get the point.

I also don't get why anyone thinks this ad is going to give me warm, fuzzy feelings about Microsoft. Especially not with my latest Microsoft experience.

A couple weeks ago I got a call for help from my brother, a relatively new computer user with a new PC running Vista. He was trying to do something simple: Add a footer to his resume so it would say "page 2 of 2" on the second page. No big deal, right?

Well, apparently not if you have Vista.

It took me several minutes to figure out why my brother couldn't find the footer/header command on the drop-down "view" menu. It was because the menu bar wasn't there. I guess the geniuses at Microsoft decided that MS Word no longer needs a menu bar...which makes it a little more challenging to complete simple tasks.

So I asked my brother to try the keystroke command. No dice. Next, I googled "Vista" and "menu bar" and found a thriving cottage industry online offering software to restore your menu bar in Vista (for a small fee, of course).

My solution? I finally had my brother email mehis resume, so I could add a footer to his resume on my Mac, and send it back. That worked.

Seriously, what were the folks at Microsoft thinking?

I recently attended a WordCamp session (Wordpress, not MS Word) featuring Kathy Sierra, a programming instructor, game developer and blogger. In her presentation, Sierra pointed out that the faster people can get over the "I suck at it" threshold when learning new software (or anything else, for that matter), the happier they'll be with your products and your company.

So I have to ask: Why is Microsoft making people relearn how to use their software, which means forcing them to go through the "I suck at it" phase all over again. Doesn't seem like a good model for success to me.

Seriously, if they remove the menu bar from the Mac version of MS Office, I'll migrating. And I won't come back.

Keywords: advertising, Microsoft, Vista, Kathy Sierra, Wordcamp, Bill Gates, Jerry Seinfeld

Journalists arrested in St. Paul

2008-09-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard about journalists being arrested in repressive nations like China. No big surprise, right? But what would you say if I told you it's happening in the United States of America too?

Find that hard to believe? Think things like that don't happen here? Then watch the video. You'll see Amy Goodman, an award-winning journalist, being arrested by St. Paul police as she was covering a protest outside the Republican National Convention on Monday.

Even though she was clearly identified as a journalist, Goodman was charged with "obstruction of a legal process and interference with a 'peace officer.'" Two of her producers were arrested for "suspicion of felony riot." Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now," a daily radio/TV program that airs on more than 700 stations nationwide.

A more honest charge would have been "covering news stories we don't want the public to see."

During the weeklong Republican National Convention, St. Paul police arrested and jailed 19 media workers, in addition to more than 800 protesters. Police used teargas and flash grenades against protesters.

So much for the First Amendment which, in case you need a refresher, reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You can read Amy Goodman's account of her arrest here.

Keywords: First Amendment, media, journalism, RNC, MSM, Democracy Now, Amy Goodman

Media matters

2008-09-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, the media does matter. And so does the truth.

It was good to see a major media outlet like ABC News fact-checking aspiring VP Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention last night. As this ABC news article notes, Palin's speech "bent the truth on her record and on the opposition."

Not surprisingly, she left out the part about her remarkable skill at bringing home millions of "earmarked" federal dollars (our tax dollars at work!) to her community, and her support for the $398 million "bridge to nowhere." So much for being a "reformer."

Continuing his record of our-reporting most of the MSM, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show used Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly's own words about candidate Palin to demonstrate their hypocrisy in defending her. Palin gets to demonstrate a fine veneer of hypocrisy too.

On a related front, the organization Media Matters for America has 'deconstructed' and charted the Republican smear campaign against Obama, calling it "Swiftboating 2.0" both for its resemblance to the 2004 smear campaign against John Kerry and for their use of web 2.0 techniques to spread the smears.

Media Matters notes:

Just as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth unleashed on the public a dossier of lies about John Kerry in 2004, this new campaign is on a mission to spread misinformation about a presidential candidate.

We call it "Swiftboating 2.0" not only because it is the latest model of a political smear campaign, but also because it shares features of "Web 2.0" sites like Facebook and MySpace: significant portions of the content are generated by ordinary people and are spread from peer to peer. Swiftboating 2.0 combines these new information pathways with traditional media -- books from conservative publishers, right-wing radio, and conservative pundits and strategists on television -- to spread the smears as widely as possible and force them into the mainstream media.

If you don't want to see America get suckered again, don't help spread the lies...instead, spread the word.

More Photo Booth fun

2008-09-03T09:55:00.001-07:00

Another day, another PhotoBooth pic. This time it's my rock 'n' roll class getting the "how to blog" demo, replete with a quick demo of how add PhotoBooth pic of yourself to your blog.

Blogging Lessons

2008-09-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

Here I am in a 100W class showing students how to blog.

The change we need

2008-08-31T23:12:00.000-07:00

To hell with the same old "drill, drill, drill" -- it's time for some good old American innovation.

Wanna help? http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/pages/371/

Faux blogs

2008-08-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

When is a "blog" not a blog?

When it's just another institutional web page. You'd think a university that uses the tagline "powering silicon valley" could do better.

Read my colleague Steve Sloan's comments on why this isn't really a blog, and what it would take to make this faux blog a real one.

Obama!

2008-08-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Obama's speech left me with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart. Maybe we can win America back. Just maybe we can redeem the American dream and America's promise, so damaged over the last several years.

My colleague, Dona, and I almost didn't make it in time for the speech. We were on the way to Lake Tahoe, listening to the convention speeches on NPR, the sound crackling at times among the mountains.

We heard Al Gore's stellar call to action. As we got closer, we wondered if we'd get there in time to see Obama's speech, not just hear it.

When we pulled in the drive, we left everything in the vehicle, ran inside and turned on the TV. The introductory video was just starting. Yes!

Obama's speech filled me with the hope. Maybe we can fulfill America's potential. Maybe we can get back on track. Maybe we can deal with our nation's problems now, instead of foisting them off on future generations.

As the TV cameras panned over the people in the audience, I was struck by how much they looked like California. All ages, all races. Black and white and Asian and Hispanic and more -- all cheering together. All looking ahead. I hope the rest of America sees the promise of that.

And now I'm listening to conservative Patrick Buchanan on MSNBC say, "This is the greatest convention speech. ...This wasn't a liberal speech at all...it was beautiful."

Hell, if Obama can appeal to Buchanan, he can certainly reach Independents...and maybe even some disenchanted Republicans.

Yes, something in America is stirring. Yes, it is.

Death on wings

2008-08-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

I saw death this morning...just a glimpse, through my kitchen window.

Picture me in my bathrobe (light blue cotton), around 8 a.m., passing through the kitchen on my way back to the sofa and my laptop. I hear three sharp cries of distress through the slightly open kitchen window. I turn and see a flash of hawk ascending from dense shrubs bordering my front yard. It is rising skyward with something clutched in its sharp talons. Then it is gone.

I figure it must have nabbed a quail.

It's been a tough month for the neighborhood coveys of California Quail. Just last week, I was sitting on my sofa when I heard a clamor of quail in the back yard, followed by a mysterious thud. I got up to investigate.

As I stepped out onto the back deck, I was startled to see a hawk take off from the deck railing. At the same time, several quail burst out of their hiding places and buzzed off to find better cover. Another dull thud. I looked around, puzzled, then realized what that sound probably was -- panicked quail smacking into the picture windows overlooking our backyard.

I walked over to the windows and looked under the shrubs that border the foundation. Sure enough, a quail lay on the ground. Dull gray-brown feathers and a small plume -- a female. It made no move to get away, so I reached down and picked it up. Its head lolled, its eyes closed, its feet gave a little twitch. Then it was still.

I set it back on the ground and looked a little further. Yes, there was another one, a juvenile, lying on the ground behind the shrub. Clearly stunned, but still alive. When it saw me, it took off, a short dash followed by an unsteady hop of a flight that took it back onto the deck. I watched and waited quietly, not wanting to scare it off again. It sat on the bench for several minutes before flying up into one of the trees beside our house.

I picked up the dead quail again, and carried it over to the deck. I laid it gently atop the railing, a kind of peace offering to hawks, before going inside. The next morning, it was still there. Maybe hawks can't see quail unless they're in motion, or maybe they don't like them already dead.

The following morning, I noticed it was gone. I hoped perhaps a hawk had carried it off, but no. When I looked, I saw it had been blown off the railing onto the ground. The ants had already found it. In a few days, nothing would be left but bones and feathers.

My WP tattoo

2008-08-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm having fun at WordCamp. Like my temp tattoo?

Wordcamp or the ER?

2008-08-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

I had to make a tough choice to make early this morning...attend Wordcamp, or accompany my ailing husband to the local ER.

Wordcamp or the ER?
Wordcamp or the ER?

I hate to say it, but I went to Wordcamp...and my hubby went to the ER alone.

P.S. He was totally ambulatory and told me to go. I checked in; he's fine, now taking antibiotics.

P.P.S. Why am I blogging about Wordcamp on a Blogger blog? Because all of my school blogs are on Wordpress...love that "pages" feature. Why haven't I switched this blog over to WP? Inertia...and ease of uploading photos.

Pretty in Pink

2008-08-06T10:31:00.001-07:00

Pink Sky2
Photo by cynmccune

It was one of those gorgeous evenings, when the late afternoon sun made the neighboring hills and the city below us glow and glint with light. Every time I looked out the window, something else was gleaming in the setting sun.

As twilight approached, the sky colored pink. I grabbed my camera and stepped out on the deck to grab some pics.

The top photo is the view over neighboring rooftops, looking north. The second one is a cloud formation over the bay.

I love those sensuous, puffy pink clouds.

May nothing evil cross this door

2008-08-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a week since a man walked into a Unitarian-Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, pulled a gun out of a guitar case, and shot and killed two people.

It's been a week of realizing that religious hatred and violence are not just things that happen in places like Bosnia, Africa, Palestine or Iraq; they're alive and well in the United States of America...and sometimes they're directed at people like me. It's been an unsettling realization.

I'm a Unitarian Universalist. For about five years in the mid-'90s, I lived in Knoxville. I attended some Sunday services at that UU church, though I never became a member.

This morning at my UU church, we sang May Nothing Evil Cross This Door. The words carried a new layer of meaning. My eyes teared, at times my voice faltered.

In her sermon, our minister spoke about the Tennessee killings. She spoke of the usher who put himself between the shooter and the rest of the congregation, and was shot and killed. She spoke of those who made sure the children got out safely, and of the brave souls who tackled the gunman and held him down until police arrived. And of the woman interviewed outside the church shortly after the shootings, who was asked what the killer had said as he shot at them. She told the reporter the man said hateful things, but declined to elaborate. She told the reporter, "The hate ends here."

I've been thinking about that. Would I have had the presence of mind, or the "control of mouth," to have stopped myself from repeating -- and perpetuating -- those words of hate. Honestly, I doubt it. I even talk back to the TV sometimes.

As a former reporter, I understand why journalists asked what the killer said. But I'm glad she didn't tell them. If she had, those hateful words would have become lurid headlines, fodder for breathless newscasts and talk radio hatemongers nationwide. Some things are better left unsaid.

The day before the shooting, at the BlogHer conference, I attended a session on "Beautiful Blogging." One speaker defined it as staying open to the positive in spite of difficulties. Another put it more bluntly. Alyssa Royse of JustCauseIt.com said, "Do I want to put my crap in the world, or do I want to put out something that will make people feel better and be better?" She said she chooses to focus on the positive.

And I guess that's what we did in church this Sunday. All the money in today's collection plates, along with notes of support and caring, will go to the Knoxville Relief Fund to help those affected by the shooting.

The final verse of May Nothing Evil Cross This Door:

With laughter drown the raucous shout,
and, though these sheltering walls are thin,
may they be strong to keep hate out
and hold love in.

The hate stops here.

Link to a story on the rededication of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

Leaving caution behind

2008-07-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

Halfway to campus, something got stuck.

Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."
Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."

Finally, the train rolled out of Palo Alto station, with the auto voice still chanting.

Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."
Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."

All the way to San Jose.

A conductor rushed to the intersection between the two front cars, where the auto voice was on overload. He tinkered. He poked. No change.

Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."
Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."

Another conductor arrived. More tinkering. Some banging. No change.

Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."
Bong, bong. "Caution, the doors are about to close."

Finally, they gave up.

As we rolled into San Jose Diridon Station, I think we were all ready to leave "caution" behind. Maybe even throw caution to the wind.

BlogHer pics

2008-07-20T22:58:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my favorite photos from the BlogHer closing event at Macy's.

SueBob of Red Stapler blog snuggles up to a mannequin in Macy's lingerie department...Diane Brown of oak-in-the-seed blog and a frriend from Land 'O Lakes...a beautiful plate of savories...J.D. Bauchery's bluebird tattoo.

BlogHer Photo Walk

2008-07-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

After spending most of the day in BlogHer sessions, I took a break Saturday afternoon and joined the Shutter S isters for their first annual BlogHer Photo Walk.

We started out in Union Square, across the street from the hotel, where a crowd had gathered to watch a local fashion show. I got engrossed in grabbing some shots to add to my hair series (coming soon to my Flickr site) and soon lost track of the rest of the group. Oh well.

Some folks were selling things in the square, and I couldn't help browsing. I found a fabulous bead bracelet at the Corinthia Peoples Designs booth, and brought it from Marinda (at right). She has great hair and agreed to let me photograph her.

I also had fun taking pics of Angel's Trumpet (a.k.a. brugmansia) in flower beds on one side of the Square, and of pedestrians passing in front of a large billboard.

Then, as I was heading back to the hotel to catch the Boomers "Birds of a Feather" session at 4 p.m., I caught sight of a guy toting a really big fashion show poster on his head.

"Wait a minute!" I said. "I need a picture!"

John Bibayan, a UC-Berkeley student who's interning at 944 magazine, obliged, and I got this pic...which I just love. Thanks John!

Graveyard humor

2008-07-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, I visited Sydney, Nova Scotia, and toured St. Patrick's Church Museum. Built in 1828, this small stone church is the oldest Roman Catholic Church still standing on Cape Breton Island.

As I stood in the center of the church, docent John A. told me church about its founder, the Reverend Henry McKeagney. When he died, John said, the Reverend was buried in a small graveyard right behind the church. But when a small church addition was built, his grave had to be moved.

Where to, I inquired?

You're standing on him, John replied.

Eew!

John just smiled. We walked over to the small side annex. Turning, he pointed to a large square of new floorboards in the center of the church. That's how they got into the basement when they needed to install a furnace, he said.

But they found a surprise down there...several more graves that had to be relocated.

"Where?" I asked, right on cue.

John smiled at me and said, "You're standing on them."

Yeah, he got me again.

Travelogue, Part 2

2008-07-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

I loved Quebec City: People speaking French. Narrow cobblestone streets, lined with tall brick buildings, winding up a steep hill crowned by the Hotel Frontenac. Lots of stairs, a funicular...and did I mention lots of people speaking French?

The first thing I did was buy a French-English dictionary and try to remember some of my high school French. But it turns out it wasn't necessary. Everyone I talked to was fairly bilingual.

In between shopping bouts (QC has some great boutiques!), I heard a clamor. I saw people gathering at the edge of the street; there was a buzz of anticipation. What's up? Bicycle race!

Here are the leaders, rounding a turn on the uphill climb.

Next stop, Charlottetown, PEI, where my hubby and I rode a horse-drawn conveyance (park benches screwed onto a flatbed) around town and toured historic Beaconsfield House. The horses are Belgians; the one on the right is a former show horse embarking on a new career in tourism.

Visiting Le Jardin Botanique

2008-06-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

If you're not into flowers, if you're not a gardener -- you might just want to stop now. This post is about my visit to le Jardin Botanique de Montreal.

I went there hoping to see some of the things I miss growing in the Bay Area, where it's not cold enough for lilacs and peonies. I don't miss winter, but I do miss some of the favorite blooms of my youth.

In turns out I also missed most of the lilacs: it was too late in the season, and too late in day for much fragrance from those few still left in bloom. But the iris and peonies were in full bloom. And, oh my, what peonies! I'd never seen yellow peonies before and these were enormous, luscious blooms, some with contrasting reddish centers. Beds and beds of peonies, in maroon, red, rose, coral, pink and white...peonies to die for!

In the rose garden, most of the hybrid teas still looked scraggly: clumps of leafed-out sticks with fat buds promising harlot blooms in another month or so. But my favorites -- the antiques and the David Austin roses -- were blooming. Austin's Mary Rose was pretty in pink, lush and fragrant, much better than she ever looked in my former garden in Tennessee, where blackspot and mildew took its toll.

After two hours of wandering through the gardens, I was footsore and weary and headed for the exit. On my way out, I asked a garden official in a passing golf cart for the location of the nearest recycling bin, so I could unload my soda bottle before heading to the Metro station. We chatted a moment, and I mentioned my disappointment at missing the lilacs. He asked if I'd seen the rhododendrons. No, I replied, they were a little too far out for me to walk to today. "I could get you there in five minutes," he said.

How could I refuse? It turned out that my "chauffeur," Pierre Paradise, is head of security at the garden. And he was right -- the rhodos were worth a trip.

Anarachy, art and hope

2008-06-14T05:36:00.000-07:00

I started the week in San Francisco, touring the Mission's murals with a friend. I ended the week taking pictures of peonies in full bloom dans le Jardin Bontanique de Montreal. (Look for some of those pics in a future post.)

Yes, it was a good week, my first real week off from school. Here are some highlights of my Mission mural walk:

This mural, painted on a garage door in Balmy Ave., is a tribute to women artists. Frida, I recognized, but not the rest.

Across the alley is this compelling portrait. That's my friend Nancy coming face to face with it.

The next mural, it turns out, illustrates an apocalyptic poem by William Butler Yeats:

...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

(here's where I cut out some of the gratuitously gory parts...to get to these lines, which have always seemed to me to speak of politics and religion...especially in combination)

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Anyway, I like this mural's colorful bugs (the proverbial cockroaches, mayhaps?) crawling around the scattered grey (oh, no, are we all dead?) human forms. Instead of "The Second Coming," let's just call this one "After Global Warming."

I hate to end on such a down note, so let me close with something more hopeful. While viewing the murals, we met these lively 8th graders on a field trip. Their teachers at St. Paul's Epicopal in Oakland had asked them to pick a mural and write about its message. They described this one as "Breaking the chains of oppression."

Here they are, getting into character with the mural: Nicholas Piucci, Emily Nguyen, Rafa Moraga, Bruce Lien and Max "Cool Kid" Ornstil.

Power to the people!

Twittering around

2008-05-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been using Twitter, that short-form (140 characters or less) cross between blogging and instant messaging.

I don't post that many "tweets" myself; I mostly use it to keep track of some colleagues and former students. But I'm finding it interesting to see how others are using it.

For example, I see people using Twitter to:

Keep in touch with friends and colleagues
Promote themselves or their latest blog posts, videos, podcasts
Pass on breaking news, or to link to interesting items they've found on the web
Request information or assistance
Network

Here's a new wrinkle: One of my former students, a newly minted grad, is using Twitter as part of his job search (see below). He's already gotten one helpful plug. I hope networking on Twitter helps him find a job.

PS: Here's a link to Kyle Hansen's resume.

PS2: You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/cynmc...or read my latest tweets in the sidebar of this blog.

PS3: Here's another recent post I wrote about Twitter -- A Twitter shout out? -- on one of my class blogs.

PS4: If you're interested in Twitter, you should also check out Twitterific, a fun Twitter application for Macs, and tinyurl.com.

Older and wiser? (we hope)

2008-05-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

Losing words, forgetting names and numbers...ah, the annoyances of middle age. But it may not signal the onset of memory loss. Instead, it may indicate a change in memory function, and a transition to a wider focus.

As noted in this NYT article on the older brain:

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers,” Dr. Hasher said. “We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser.”

Could be good news for someone who's about to turn 55.

Time out

2008-05-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

For those of us who don't have enough to do (and those who prefer to procrastinate), there's...

Graphic fun at Colorflip.com: Just put your cursor at any corner, and drag.
Musical fun at last.fm.com with The Accidental's new CD, There Were Wolves, my latest find.

I know, I know...I should be grading. Later.

One more reason to get a Mac

2008-05-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Thinking of lifting that laptop? If it's a Mac, better think again!

As one of my students put it, " Haha -- this is another reason why Macs rule!"

(Thanks for the link, Carlos.)

Heat wave brings on tabouli

2008-05-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

It's not even summer yet and it hit 93 today. After a mostly cool spring, going outside is like stepping into a sauna.

It is still fairly cool inside the house, and I want to keep it that way...so cooking is out. I am making tabouli.

I used to be afraid of using too much parsley. If a tabouli recipe called for a cup or more of chopped parsley, I would think it was an insane amount and cut it in half...and wonder why I ended up with dull tabouli.

Then I had a side of tabouli at a local Mediterranean restaurant. I was shocked to see it contained more parsley than bulghur. I took a small bite, dubious, and got a shock. It was fabulous! Green and earthy, tart and lemony. Yum. It was a taste bud epiphany.

So I have adjusted my approach. More parsley, much more parsley. Chop chop.

My tabouli is chilling, marinating, blending its flavors. And I am getting hungry.

If a tree falls...

2008-05-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

And if a story lands on the front page of the New York Times, but other reporters and news organizations ignore it, does it still count? That's the question asked in this From the Frontline blog post, What No Inquiry?

I've been asking myself the same question. After all, in the past month we've heard some startling news.

We found out that the Bush administration had enlisted a group of retired generals to shill the Iraq War for them all these years...without disclosing their "special relationship," of course. (See Behind TV Analysts, See Pentagon's Hidden Hand, NYT, 4/20/08. Also see this 2003 NYT story, which foreshadows the larger story.)
We found out that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Powell and Ashcroft sat around on multiple occasions discussing exactly how to torture detainees. And that our dear president approves of their decisions. (See Cheney, Others OK'd Harsh Interrogations, ABC News, 4/11/08)
We learned that military justice apparently is an oxymoron, as the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay told how he was pressured to convict someone...anyone...because it wouldn't look good to admit that most of those being held and tortured all these years were innocent. (See Guantanamo Prosecutor Says Why He Quit, Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/4/08, and Former Guantanamo prosecutor says trials tainted, Reuters, 4/28/08)

Real news...all buried under a barrage of "horse race" campaign coverage, speculation about Reverend Wright, and heavy breathing over the Texas polygamy raid.

Ah, yes, the mainstream media has so many more important things to do.

Fill 'er up?

2008-04-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

It was a landmark fill-up: I recently topped the $50 mark while gassing up my little VW Golf. Yikes!

Happy Earth Day from Brawny

2008-04-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

I found a special gift on my doorstep this morning: a free sample of a paper towel tucked in with my Sunday newspaper.

To deliver a single 10.5 x 11-inch sheet of Brawny paper towel to my door, the nice folks at Georgia Pacific folded it in quarters, backed it with a piece of white card stock, and tucked it inside a preprinted cellophane wrapper.

Then they stuck that package inside a larger four-color brochure detailing the delights of the NEW softer and thicker Brawny towel. Finally, they sealed the whole thing inside a pocket in the plastic bag my newspaper was delivered in this morning.

As you can see, there's way more wrapper than paper towel.

The kicker? It arrived just in time for Earth Day.

Somewhere a Georgia Pacific marketer is about to be fired.

A stroke of insight

2008-04-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

My mother's brain is being eaten away by Alzheimer's. That's one reason why I found this video of brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor so fascinating. But not the only reason.

Taylor had a massive stroke and lived to tell about it. The experience gave her new insight into how our brains function, and into that place in the brain's right hemisphere that she calls "nirvana."

The video, posted on ted.com, is titled My Stroke of Insight.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a nonprofit foundation that works to spread great ideas.

"There is no greater force for changing the world than a powerful idea."

Can we solve it?

2008-04-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

You know, maybe we can.

If polar opposites like Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich can actually sit knee to knee on small sofa and agree that we must take action to address climate change...well, maybe there's a glimmer of hope. Maybe we will come to our senses and take action before we destroy the planet.

To view the ad, just click on the pic.

The ad is part of the We Can Solve It campaign, a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by former Vice President Al Gore. The goal is to educate people that the climate crisis is "both urgent and solvable."

I'm hoping they're right.

Already the naysayers are piling on, bitching and moaning and calling them hypocrites in blog posts, comments and the like.

But I prefer to take a "the glass is half full" approach to life. I'd rather applaud them for doing what's right and trying to make a difference...in spite of their political differences. That's what we all need to do if we want to pass on a livable planet to the next generation.

Open-source science?

2008-03-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

The collaborative, open-source approach that's worked so well online -- think Linux, Wikipedia, Wikileaks and countless other open source software and social media development projects -- is now being applied to scientific research.

That's the first thing that popped into my mind as I read an article about the Myelin Repair Foundation in yesterday's SF Chronicle.

The Myelin Repair Foundation is a nonprofit organization that's trying to speed up the development of new drugs and other treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS), a disabling autoimmune disease, by changing the way research is conducted.

The foundation has focused on one key aspect of the disease: the destruction of myelin, the substance that protects our nerve fibers. The organizers developed a research plan that focuses on the kinds of research needed to understand how myelin works, how MS disrupts it, and how to repair it. Then they found scientists with the expertise needed to do that research. The researchers share their results and brainstorm the next steps. The approach is collaborative, not competitive.

That's quite different from the typical scientific (or corporate) research model. Since scientists and research institutions compete for government funding (or with other companies), most are unwilling to share their research ideas and approaches. In this model, their results may be propriety or may be kept under wraps pending publication in a scientific journal.

The result: It can take years, decades even, for promising results to work their way through the system and actually become available as a new drug or treatment.

The folks at the Myelin Repair Foundation hope to get their research far enough along that a for-profit drug company can clearly see its potential and will be willing to complete the process. They also hope other non-profits will see the merit of this approach...and help produce faster results for all the people now waiting for a treatment or a cure.

One less reason to buy the Mercury News

2008-03-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't call myself a TV addict, but for the past nine years I've been able to count on Charlie McCollum to tip me off when there was something worth watching on the tube...and when I shouldn't waste my time. As you may know, McCollum writes the TV column in the San Jose Mercury News...or at least he used to.

Turns out that Monday's column -- which told me that The Riches is back and I might want to spend some quality time with Minnie Driver -- was his last. McCollum noted that "due to the recent staff reduction and a resulting realignment of assignments at the Mercury News...I will be moving on to other writing and editing jobs at the paper."

One less reason to read the Mercury News.

Here's another: Today's SV Life section, which includes movie reviews, had no reviews by local reporters. There was one from the LA Times News Group, another from the LA Times (is there a difference?), and one from the Sacramento Bee. Oh, and commentary from the Miami Herald, and a filmmaker profile from the Minneapolis Tribune. Plus Dear Abby, the comics and the movie listings. That's it.

I guess a local reporter still compiles the "Three Things to Do Today/Tomorrow" listings for this section, but everything else is canned.

Tell me again why I should buy this newspaper?

I feel trendy, I feel trendy!*

2008-02-23T12:31:00.000-08:00

* Sung to the tune of "I Feel Pretty," of course.

I found out I was on the leading curve of two trends this week ...so, yes, I'm feeling downright trendy. The two trends? The demise of the desk and the longevity of the automobile.

Michelle Lamb, a forecaster who a few years back predicted that flat screen TVs would doom the armoire, recently said desks are also heading toward obsolescence. Many of us no longer need them, she notes, since we're using laptops. (Read about it in this article on 2008 home trends.)

I gave up my desktop computer (and desk) for a laptop about three years ago. Once you've got DSL and wireless, who needs a static spot to plug in? Now I usually "compute" on my MacBook Pro while sitting on the sofa in my family room. Instead of a desk, I've got a Levenger lap desk that I stash by the sofa and pull out as needed. Way more comfortable.

Then there's the car thing. Turns out I'm not the only person driving an older car, according to a study released this week by automotive consulting firm R.L. Polk & Co. The study says the median age of cars on U.S. roads was 9.2 years in 2007. My 2001 VW Golf isn't quite that old, but it's getting there. (Read the AP story on that report, Cars on Roads Getting Older.)

Where's the beef?

2008-02-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

Take one unresponsive government agency, hobbled by years of Bush budget cuts and misdirection, add some big meat companies with minimal federal oversight, plus a dash of YouTube...and what do you get? The largest beef recall in history and a big fat scandal that exposes just how badly the Bush administration has eviscerated the Department of Agriculture's food safety division in favor of making life easier for businesses.

Huzzah for the Humane Society, which took undercover video of the abuse of sick and disabled cattle at a Chino, Calif., meat packing plant and posted it on YouTube, where it has created such a furor that Agriculture officials had to respond. Boos and hisses for the U.S. officials who tried to downplay the problem by saying they thought it was an isolated incident (if they're not stationed at these plants, how can they know?) and that most of the recalled meat had already been eaten.

As you read the New York Times story, Largest Recall of Ground Beef is Ordered, consider that "downer" cattle are banned from our food supply to keep us from contracting mad cow disease, a fatal brain-wasting disease that has killed people in Great Britain and Canada. Then consider that "of the 143 million pounds that were recalled, 37 million went to make hamburgers, chili and tacos for school lunches and other federal nutrition programs...."

Just one more reason why we need change in Washington.

(Author's note: In the 1980s, I worked for a livestock industry trade association.)

Will there be blood?

2008-02-03T21:02:00.000-08:00

Only if I have to watch this movie again.

I know, I know. It's been nominated for a wad of Academy Awards, and it's supposed to be one of the best movies of 2007. But I have to tell you, There Will Be Blood is not a pleasant experience. Dark, gritty, at times compelling, with a sound track that periodically rattles your bones, the film's focus is an oilman whose life is, to quote Thomas Hobbes, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Even after turn-of-the-century oilman Daniel Plainview, masterfully played by Daniel Day-Lewis, gets past the "poor" part and becomes a wealthy man, he remains solitary, nasty and brutish. And so does this movie.

Reviews, trailers at RottenTomatoes.com
The Paramount trailer (with music like fingernails on a blackboard)

First day of class

2008-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Here I am on the first day of class, playing with Apple's Photo Booth and showing my students how to upload a photo in Blogger.

Everyone set up a blog and uploaded a photo, so I'm happy.

Bad blogger!

2008-01-22T23:10:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that's me. A bad blogger.

Reading the really excellent blogging advice offered on Ryan Sholin's latest brainstorm, the Wired Journalists network -- in response to the question, "What advice would you offer a journalist looking to start their own blog?" -- made me realize what a bad blogger I am.

I post irregularly. I started this blog with a focus...info related to my classes, targeted to my students...but I got tired of being focused and tired of censoring myself. I mean, periodically Bush does something so appalling that I just wanna rant. And you can't do that on a blog you're asking students to read.

I decided it was my blog, it has my name on it, and I could do whatever I wanted with it. So I did. I also started keeping separate class blogs.

Now I write about whatever strikes my fancy, whenever I have the time and the inspiration. I don't worry about readership, because I'm mostly writing for my own entertainment and satisfaction.

Of course, my personal blog is not my only blog. I maintain blogs for my classes (such as this one for my online news writing class) and contribute to the J-School's blogs (both of which I started). So I end up doing quite a bit of blogging...it's just kind of spread around and unfocused...kind of like me.

MacWorld!

2008-01-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

Oh boy! I get to go to MacWorld today. I promise to share the highlights when I get back.

Good for a laugh

2008-01-15T20:06:00.000-08:00

I was on my way to a Sunday evening get-together when I heard it, on the top-of-the-hour NPR news.

The story was about President Bush's Middle East trip, where he was busy hobnobbing with his oil buds in Abu Dhabi and giving speeches on freedom and democracy. He used the occasion to once again denounce Iran and generally try to ignite World War III.

But the part that made me burst out laughing was a clip of Bush attempting to directly address Iranians, telling them, "You have a right to live under a government that listens to your wishes...."

Hah! If Bush really believed that...well, we'd be out of Iraq by now and he would have signed the S-Chip bill to provide health care for low-income kids. Hell, we might even be doing something about global warming.

Too bad Bush doesn't believe his own propaganda.

Here's a link to Bush's speech. For another perspective on his trip, read NYT columnist Maureen Dowd's Faith, Freedom and Bling in the Middle East. Just to whet your appetite, here's an excerpt:

Puddle jumping through Arabia, the president saw his share of falcons in little leather hoods — presumably not a Gitmo reference — and Arabian stallions, including one retired stud from Texas — presumably not a W. reference. But there was a distinct dearth of wives and dissidents....

DASHing through San Jose

2007-11-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

We know something's amiss when the driver of DASH shuttle #7018 makes an unscheduled stop at Third and San Carlos. Sometimes they'll pull over between stops if someone flags them down. But there was no one waiting at the corner that we could see.

The driver turns off the engine, grabs a briefcase, mumbles something about being just a minute, and gets out. He trots across the street, pausing a moment on the median strip for a couple of cars to pass, leaving us sitting in the dark. It's 5:43 p.m.

"Where's he going?" one passenger asks.

"You think he's going for a burger?" another asks, pointing to the McDonald's across the street.

"He can't be going to McDonald's, can he?"

"If he goes to the drive-up window, I'm gonna report him."

As we watch, the driver goes inside McD's.

"Maybe he's asking for the bathroom key," someone suggests.

"I can see him," says the woman in the front seat. "He's standing by the register."

"I can't believe this," another passenger says.

"We're not going to make the six 'o clock train," says a man, shaking his head.

We sat quietly in the darkened bus for a bit, then someone says, "We should report him to the VTA."

"Yeah," says another passenger, grabbing a VTA brochure from the rack behind the driver's seat. She finds the VTA's phone number, pulls out her cell phone, dials 321-2300, presses a few buttons, waits. "All I'm getting is a recording," she says.

"Here he comes!" the front seat passenger cries out.

"Look, he's got a McDonald's bag in his hand!"

"Forget it," says the phone woman, hanging up. "I'll call from the train station."

All eyes follow the driver as he crosses the McD's parking lot and pauses at the crosswalk, waiting for the "walk" signal. He's a big burly guy, top-heavy, with skinny shanks. We can tell because he's wearing shorts.

"Do you think he'll say anything?"

"What do you think we should we say?"

"Maybe we should ask him if he brought us anything."

"Let's wait and see what he says."

The light changes. The driver crosses the street, walks alongside the shuttle and opens the driver's side door. He climbs in, puts his burger bag on the dash, stows his briefcase beside his seat, starts the van and pulls out. Not a word is said. It's 5:50 p.m.

"Do you think we'll make the six-o-five train?" one brave soul asks.

"Should be there in five or six minutes," the driver mumbles.

We look at each other, shake our heads. Not likely. It's gonna be close.

We're moving fast down San Carlos; the shuttle bus rattles and shakes. We pass the next two stops, then the driver hits the brakes. A book bag slides off a seat and hits the floor with a thud.

"Oh, Almaden," the driver says. He cranks the wheel hard to the right and hits the gas. The shuttle lurches onto Almaden Boulevard.

A couple more stops, another set of lights, and we're almost at the train station. We bounce along, zipping past another DASH shuttle that's stopping at the Light Rail station at Delmas and San Fernando.

When we reach Diridon Station, our path is partially blocked by a badly parked VTA bus. Its electronic readout flashes "out of service."

Our driver grumbles. "What's wrong with them...?" He stops, backs up a bit, turns the wheel hard, and squeezes by the darkened bus. He stops the shuttle at the regular drop-off spot, and pops open the door.

It's 6 p.m. and we rush to get off. We walk quickly through the train station, some pausing to purchase or punch a ticket on the way to the platform. One train is waiting, doors open...no, that's the 6:25 Baby Bullet.

A moment later, we see a headlight approaching from the south -- it's the 6:05 train. We made it.

iMovie and YouTube...my classroom buddies!

2007-11-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

The most wonderful thing happened in class the other day, right before my very eyes...learning, yes, learning!

For their final project for the broadcast segment in my Journalism 61 (beginning news writing) class, I asked students to rewrite one of their news stories or campus event blog posts for broadcast. Their task this week: Bring their broadcast script to class, record it using iMovie, upload it to the web (ya gotta love You Tube and blip.tv!), and post it to their blogs.

As they started recording, an interesting thing happened: They started rewriting their broadcast scripts. All around the room, I could see students crossing out a phrase here or adding a word there to improve flow and clarity. They scribbled notes between the double-spaced lines of their scripts (yes, there is a reason for that double-spacing!); they tweaked and they polished. A few even said, "I need to start over," and did a total rewrite before continuing with their recording.

One student, who'd knocked off her broadcast quickly during the first of this week's lab session (and who'd stuck around during the second one to help other students upload and link), came up to me at the end of class and said that she wasn't really happy with how hers had turned out and she was going to do it over. Yes!

It was great! I was so proud of them!

So here's what I learned: You can talk to students about the need to make broadcast writing more conversational; you can preach broadcast style and urge them to read it out loud to make sure it works...but nothing beats seeing yourself on screen and hearing your own voice reading your own script...and realizing that it doesn't quite cut it. That, and the realization that it'll be online for all the world to see, proved to be powerful motivators this week, so I'd call this assignment a success.

If you'd like to cruise over to my Journalism 61 class blog and check out the links to my students' blogs, here's the direct link: http://jour61.wordpress.com/

What I can't forget...at least not yet

2007-10-31T22:25:00.000-07:00

I recognize that vacant look. I've seen it before -- on my mother's face. It's the look of Alzheimer's.

Instead of grading student papers tonight, I'm watching "The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer's" on PBS...again. I've seen it once before, but that was three or four years ago...before my mother went into an Alzheimer's care facility.

During the program, a man talks about losing his wife to Alzheimer's. What he misses most, he says, are the conversations they used to have. Sometimes now she doesn't even recognize him. It makes me think of my father, who cared as best he could for my mother and kept her at home...until the point when she started leaving home because she didn't like "that strange man" who kept talking about marriage.

In another scene in "The Forgetting," two daughters visit their mother, who is in a nursing home. She is largely unresponsive, doesn't seem to recognize them. They speak to her in cheerful voices, patting her hand, her hair. Been there, done that.

Later in the show, the daughters talk about how long it's been since their mother was diagnosed -- 13 years -- and how they know it could go on like this for another five, 10 or even 20 years. It seems endless, they say. They wonder what they will do if she gets pneumonia -- treat it, or let it run its course? I've had that conversation too.

It is nearly 10 years since I first realized something was wrong with my mother. As the out-of-towner in the family, I was the first to notice the changes. Mom had stopped doing needlepoint, which she'd loved. She'd stopped cooking; said she'd done enough of it. She'd stopped cutting her hair; said she liked it longer.

Later, I found that her last completed needlepoint was dated 1997. My brother looked back through his photos and saw that 1998 was the year she let her hair go.

We've now had a decade of living with Alzheimer's and watching our mother slowly disappear. There's no knowing when it will end...or if it will end with her.

Journalism: Form or content?

2007-10-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

As I was standing at the head of a classroom yesterday, watching Michael Wesch's Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us for the umpteenth time, I had a minor epiphany.

It was about halfway through, when you see on the screen [Title] does not define the form. It defines the content.

And I thought, you know, it's the same with journalists. It's what you do that makes you a journalist, not who you work for, or where your work is published or broadcast, or how it's distributed.

I'd just been talking about this very issue with my colleague Steve Sloan, a fellow blogger and my co-presenter at yesterday's JACC Norcal conference at SJSU (that's him at left). The night before, we'd both heard veteran broadcaster Sam Donaldson "diss" bloggers as he spoke at the RTVJ 50th Anniversary Reunion dinner.

Blogging is just opinion, Donaldson said, and without editors, how do you know if it's fact or fiction?

But when Donaldson offered his definition of a journalist, he didn't say anything about editors. He said, "We try to present our readers, our viewers, with things we believe to be true." Sometimes you make mistakes, he added, but if you do you correct them.

I didn't hear anything in that definition that would preclude a blogger from being a journalist, Sloan said.

And some of the mainstream media aren't exactly doing a great job of reporting the truth these days, I added. Does this mean they're not really journalists?

So in the middle of our JACC presentation on Podcasting, Blogging and New Journalism, as I listened once again to the Web 2.0 video, it hit me: [Journalism] does not define the form, it defines the content. It's what you do, not who you work for.

Links:

My JMC blog post on Sam Donaldson's Oct. 12 presentations to JMC students and the RTVJ reunion dinner guests
Steve Sloan's Technology & Mass Communications powerpoint, posted on his SJSU Tech on a Mission blog
Michael Wesch's Digital Ethnography blog

Going to the dogs

2007-10-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what kind of dog you'd be...if you were a dog, that is? Well, now you can find out. Just go to the Dog Trivia page of the Dog Show USA web site, and you too can find out what kind of dog you'd be.

The trivia page also includes a "who owns who" quiz to determine what kind of dog owner you are, and a dog trivia quiz (I failed...miserably).

What a good way to direct traffic to a site! And what a good promotional tool for the site sponsor, Purina.

(What kind of dog would I be, you ask? A Golden Retriever. And in case you're wondering, no, I don't have a dog, though we did have a Golden Retriever as the family pet when I was a kid.)

Direct link: http://www.dogshowusa.com/trivia.php

The dreaded "L" word

2007-10-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

Someone finally said it. Someone in the news media...on air, and for the record.

Yes, it's the dreaded "L" word...and perhaps not the one you think. Not liberal, not lesbian. LIE. LIAR.

"We are surrounded by people who lie to us," said Daniel Schorr, NPR senior news analyst, in his Week in Review on NPR this morning.

And then he pointed to President Bush, who keeps saying that Americans don't torture people, even as his recently revealed memos make it clear that we do...to Blackwater, whose representatives keep saying they don't kill Iraqi civilians, even as recent news reports and congressional reports make it clear that they do...and to Olympic gold-medal winner Marion Jones who recently confessed that she lied when she insisted -- repeatedly and publicly -- that she had not used steroids to win.

After years of beating around the bush, it's about time people in the media started telling it to us straight, instead of using "give-'em-a-pass" euphemisms like "misspoke." After all, a lie is a lie is a lie. And those who tell them are liars. Even when that person happens to be the president.

Another Bush speech, another slogan

2007-09-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

So now it's "Return on Success," a slogan vague enough to need it's own official government fact sheet.

"The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is 'return on success,' " Bush said in his televised speech last night. "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home."

Judging by our level of success to date, that won't be anytime soon.

"Return on Success" replaces a long list of previous upbeat slogans, including "Victory," which replaced "Plan for Victory," which replaced "Stand Up, Stand Down," which replaced "Freedom is on the March," which replaced "Stay the Course," which replaced our all-time favorite, "Mission Accomplished." Nothing like a good slogan to get the patriotic juices flowing.

Of course, I'm sure a missed some of them. There have been so many. These days, it's as hard to keep up with Bush's changing slogans as it is to keep up with his changing missions in Iraq. The more recent ones seem less memorable, probably because they're running out of ways to rephrase the same old, same old.

In last night's speech, Bush also described our mission in Iraq as "evolving"...an interesting choice of words, I thought, for a guy who doesn't seem to believe in evolution. But if he's looking for signs of "intelligent design" in our Iraq policy, I think it's safe to say he might as well give up.

As Peter Scheer notes on the blog, TruthDig, "The mission is “evolving” because it is the best way to conceal that there is no longer a coherent mission, if there ever was one."

While the president keeps changing his slogans and redefining our mission in Iraq, one thing doesn't change: his determination to keep us mired in Iraq through the end of his term in office...what better way to postpone the day of reckoning for his many failures and to try to blame the mess he's made on someone else.

Oh, and if you're wondering who he plans to blame next...just look in the mirror. You've heard the recent rumblings about the only way we can lose in Iraq is if Americans give up by giving in to their frustrations and impatience with the war? Well, I know a set-up when I see one.

P.S. If you're actually thinking maybe we should just be patient just a bit longer, I urge you to review this War Room blog post, and to remember the Iraq War is costing us approximately 100 U.S. lives and between $2 billion and $3 billion per week. Yes, you read it right -- that's per week.

Old Neocons never die...

2007-09-09T23:54:00.000-07:00

They just get appointed to the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. That appears to be the only possible explanation for the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld, the totally discredited former Secretary of Defense, as a visiting fellow there. According to this article in the SF Chronicle, Rumsfeld will "participate in a task force examining national security and world peace in the post-Sept. 11 era."

Framing Science

2007-09-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

I got an email from an editor last spring, asking if I'd be interested in writing an article on framing for Science & Spirit magazine. Oh yeah, definitely!

Actually, S&S Editor Larry Witham first contacted me several years ago, when he was still a freelancer and I had just started teaching, asking to use some material from my graduate thesis in a book he was writing.

I was happy to oblige...I mean, how often do you get readers for something titled Framing Reality: Shaping the News Coverage of the 1996 Tennessee Debate on Teaching Evolution? (Well, a condensed version was published in the Journal of Media and Religion in 2003, which I thought was seriously cool, but that's it.)

And that would have been the end of it...except in April Science magazine published a provocative article on Framing Science by Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney. That article prompted a lot of debate and discussion, both on the Science site and on Nisbet's Framing Science blog.

It also prompted Witham, who had just joined S&S as editor, to remember me and ask me to write an article on framing for them. And that's how I ended up spending the week after the end of the spring semester writing a magazine article.

My article, The Power of Framing: Pitching Science in a Mass Media Age, appeared in the July/August issue. I wish I could link to it, but it wasn't one of the articles they chose to post online. Rats! So the best I can do is show you a picture...yes, that's it -- that's my article!

500 days

2007-09-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Bush countdown has reached a landmark: just 500 days left in office.

Of course, it's daunting to think how much he can still screw up in the next 500 days.

Too bad we couldn't just move up the election to this fall and get on with it. The 2008 presidential campaign is in full swing already, so what have we got to lose?

P.S. Thanks to Dona for giving me this nifty keychain so I can track the countdown.

Taking it online

2007-09-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Whew! It's been a busy couple of weeks, what with the start of classes at SJSU and adding a third class that I wasn't originally scheduled to teach.

This semester is an interesting experiment. I'm teaching two sections of Journalism 61, with one regular "on ground" section that meets twice a week and one fully online class. The class I added is Mass Comm 100W - Writing Workshop, which I'm teaching as a blended class, meeting once a week with about half of the assignments being blogged. Ought to make for an interesting comparison.

I'm running all three of my classes through WordPress blogs (gotta love that "pages" feature for syllabi and such) at jour61.wordpress.com (both Jour61 sections) and 100w.wordpress.com.

Normally, online classes at SJSU are administered through a system called WebCT, based on Blackboard. I spent some time this summer talking with the WebCT folks on campus and came to the conclusion that it didn't have a lot to offer. WebCT probably works OK for lecture classes with multiple choice tests, but it's not set up to accommodate writing classes. So I said to hell with it and decided to use blogs instead.

Each student in my fall classes is required to set up a blog, even those in the on-ground section (though they won't post as many assignments on their blogs as students in the blended and fully online classes). I've subscribed to my students' blogs to more easily track their assignments via Google feed reader. That seems to be working well.

I'm also posting one lecture a week from the "on ground" class as a podcast -- the jury's still out on how well that's working, but at least I should get better at podcasting by the end of the semester.

News junkie riddle of the day

2007-08-19T11:33:00.001-07:00

Q. How can you tell when your newspaper of record has lost its way?
A. When it thinks it's a quiz-style game show.

Word to the wise #1: Newspapers work better when games like this stay in the Arts & Entertainment section.

Word to the wise #2: It's best to avoid the irony of a "soldier's death" headline underpinning a cutesy game on what's supposed to be the front page.

Word to the wise #3: Games like this work better when the illustration doesn't give away the answer.

Sally gets wacked

2007-08-16T20:33:00.000-07:00

Sally is one of my all-time favorites, but I had to wack her anyway. What could I do? She was blocking my view.

No, I'm not talking about a criminal act...though I guess you could call it a gardening crime.

You see, it's "Sally" as in Sally Holmes, one of the most lovely climbing roses ever. She has clusters of sweet apricot buds that open up into large, loose, single blush-white blooms, each topped off by a golden buss of anthers. A prolific bloomer, Sally starts with a big flush in the spring and reblooms in smaller bursts all summer and into late fall.

Sally is vigorous shrub. Once she gets settled in, she grows...and grows...and grows. And therein lies the rub.

It's my fault, really. I planted Sally in what seemed like a good spot against a bare wall outside the living room windows in my back garden. Everything was fine for the first several years, but recently we've had problems. She's overgrown. Her arching canes keep obscuring the small oakleaf hydrangea at her feet and blocking the entry to the crawl space.

Plus, Sally's supposed to be thornless, but her latest canes sport bright red thorns. Ouch!

Sally was out of control. Something had to be done. So I got out the pruning shears.

Actually, I got them out last winter and wacked Sally back pretty good. But by mid-summer, you could hardly tell. So this weekend, I wacked her again.

Now I'm considering a more permanent solution...yes, it may be time for Sally to join the relocation program. It would take a prodigious amount of digging, and I'd have to wack her back to the nubs, but it could work.

Now if I can just figure out a place in the front yard where the deer won't chomp on her....

So long, it's been good to know you (not!)

2007-08-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

Here's the chorus from an old ditty to commemorate the impending resignation of Karl Rove.
A-rovin', a-rovin', since rovin's been my ru-i-in
I'll go no more a-rovin' with you fair maid.

See related article: "We'll go no more a-Rove-ing" on Salon.com

Statistics, lies and damn lies

2007-08-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Think things are looking up in Iraq because of the surge? Think again. As Juan Cole reports in "A Surge of Phony Spin on Iraq" in Salon.com today:

...the reporters and editors who gave U.S. headlines such as "U.S. Death Toll in Iraq in July Expected to Be Lowest in '07" (New York Times) were being assiduously spun....

The dip in casualties is always substantial in July, since guerrillas usually prefer not to operate with heavy explosives when it is 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.
And as a tally noted on Foreign Policy magazine's blog, the number of U.S. troop deaths in July, compared with previous years of the war, is anything but a turn for the better:

July 2003: 48
July 2004: 54
July 2005: 54
July 2006: 43
July 2007: 80
Meanwhile, the statistics for the hapless Iraqis themselves are no less discouraging. According to icasualties.org, the Iraqi civilian and military death toll from political violence in July 2007 was 1,690, a 25 percent increase from the July 2006 number, 1,280.

Elizabeth Edwards at BlogHer

2007-08-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

I've always been impressed by Elizabeth Edwards. Seeing her at BlogHer last weekend was a treat.

She was interviewed in the closing session by Lisa Stone, one of BlogHer's founders. One of Stone's first comments to Edwards got a rise out of the crowd. Stone said, "You asked Ann Coulter to stop the personal attacks. Many women here have dealt with trolls."

"They don't go away if you ignore them," Edwards said, adding that "trolls are cowards" and the only way to make them go away is to "out them."

Edwards writes a diary for her husband John Edwards' campaign blog and comments on several other blogs. She said she views blogging as "the new town square," and as one of the "more intimate ways we can engage with voters." Blogging provides a venue for candidates to have an honest conversation with citizens, "not have some press person writing it for you."

One attendee asked how her many people review her blog posts before they're posted?

"That's an easy question," Edwards said. "Zero."

Edwards noted, "I write my own. I'm a nut about grammar. My blood pressure stays better if I write my own."

After the session, Edwards joined BlogHer attendees at the closing reception, where she spent 30 or 40 minutes talking with people. (That's where I took this photo.)

You can find more coverage of Elizabeth Edwards at BlogHer here and here.

BlogHer - techie highlights

2007-08-05T19:39:00.001-07:00

If you couldn't attend BlogHer '07, or couldn't get to all the sessions that looked interesting (and, hey, who can be in two places at once?), the good news is that you can tap into the live-blogged coverage of the sessions here.

I attended several BlogHer sessions with a technical bent, including:

What Web Designers Know, a session focusing on building design and usability into your blog plan, with Nelly Yusupova from Webgrrls International and Tenni Theurer of Yahoo! This session was blogged by Risa Beckwith and Beth Blecherman.
Blogging Workflow Tools and Tricks, with Barb Dybwad and Gina Trapani who blogs at Lifehacker.com. This session was live-blogged here by freelance copywriter Anne-Marie Nichols. The speakers also posted resource info and links at http://bloggtd.pbwiki.com/.
Taking Your Blog to the Next Level, a lab session in three parts. I took the section on transitioning to a self-hosted blog, with Heather Sanders and Jessica from Kerflop. I wish I also could have sat in on the section on "messing with your default blog template," but fortunately Krystyn Heide, one of the leaders of that section, posted this helpful resource site.

Car dreams

2007-08-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

I like cars. In part, it's probably the influence of my sister and brother-in-law, who have amassed a small collection of cars (the ones they drive regularly, plus an MG Midget, a restored Toyata Land Cruiser, and a soon-to-be-restored round-shouldered 1956 truck).

Their two young sons started down the car-collection road early. By the time he was 2, the 8-year-old could identify practically every make and model on the road...from a distance...and by the headlights alone at night. Yup, he's a car prodigy. He has hundreds of Matchbox cars, and his younger brother, now 4, isn't far behind.

I'm more of a wanna-be car lover. I learned to drive on my mother's 1966 VW bug, a great little car. After she'd had it a few years, she put some daisy decals on it (hey, it was the '60s!) and eventually let me paint it with flowers and vines.

When I was in high school, I wanted (but never got) one of those rounded 1960s Volvo sedans as my first car. In college, I lusted after an MGB-GT (the one with the hatch...I do have a practical streak). Instead, my first car was a 1972 Subaru FF-1 wagon, the first front-wheel-drive vehicle from Japan. It was a nasty gold color (my grandmother once described it as "shit brindle"), certainly not the most attractive vehicle I've ever owned, but eminently practical. I used it to haul bags of grain for my horse, and to move all my college-era belongings from one apartment to another. It was not the most reliable vehicle I've ever owned...but that's another story.

After that, I owned a string of cheap, (mostly) small cars...a Datsun (210?) hatchback that rode like a duck in choppy water, a couple of Mazda GLC hatchbacks (the first one got totaled, so I bought another), and a 1987 Nissan Stanza that was so underpowered it could hardly get out of it's own way, followed by a used Madza 626 with the same problem (you'd think I'd learn!). Now I drive a 2001 VW Golf 1.8 turbo, an antidote to all those years of anemic autos.

I'm considering getting a Mini Cooper S...which, come to think of it, looks a bit like an MGB-GT. (The more things change, as the saying goes, the more they stay the same.)

I guess you could consider this my mid-life crisis car...not that I'm having a mid-life crisis, mind you. But now that I'm in my mid-50s, I figure it's probably my last chance to own a really fun, peppy little car...you know, while I can still get in and out of it without requiring assistance.

So lately I've been looking at car stats and reading reviews in Consumer Reports and elsewhere...which is what prompted this post. The immediate impetus: reading a fun review of the Scion XB, a homely little vehicle I have no desire to drive, in this morning's SF Chronicle.

Now you probably don't think of car reviews when you think of great writing, but this review by Dan Neil of the LA Times is masterfully written and highly entertaining. Here are the two opening paragraphs (once you get started, I'm sure you'll want to read the rest):

I suppose others have a more highly refined sense of aesthetics, but I just can't get behind the debate over the old vs. new Scion xB, the funky five-seat space wagon sold by Toyota's Gen Y-oriented brand. Aren't they both ugly?
Really. If you're serving, say, warthog for dinner - juicy, succulent, fall-off-the-tusk warthog - do you fret the relative pulchritude of warthog A compared to warthog xB? So it hardly matters if the redesigned car is more or less visually appealing than the original (model years 2004 to 2006). They both make babies cry. (Click here to continue reading....)

I'm not the only one who thinks Neil is a good writer. In 2004, he received a Pulitzer Prize for his "his one-of-a-kind reviews of automobiles, blending technical expertise with offbeat humor and astute cultural observations." If you love cars, or even if you don't, check it out.

Can you ID this hawk?

2007-08-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

My husband and I have been watching hawks, and we're perplexed. Perhaps you can help us identify our mystery hawk.

We live on a suburban cul de sac on a hilltop in the Bay Area; the other side of our street borders an open space area. Besides a major updraft from the steep hill, there's one other factor that draws hawks to our neighborhood: quail...lots of them.

Several years ago one of our neighbors released some quail into the neighborhood. They thrived. They prospered. And, boy, did they multiply!

Now, we have mobs of quail. (I know...groups of quail are supposed to be called coveys, but I swear we have mobs. If you don't believe me, you should see my front yard garden...or what used to be my front garden, until the quail pock-holed it with their dusting craters and ate all my thyme and all the other small-leaved edgers. Now I tell people it's not so much a garden as great quail habitat.)

We really enjoy watching the quail, so I guess the garden damage is a fair trade-off. And, honestly, if it's not the quail destroying my garden, it's gonna be the deer, the rabbits and the gophers. This is tough territory for gardeners.

The hawks, though, are a bonus. What I really like is seeing a hawk first thing in the morning, perched on the railing of our back deck or in a nearby tree, just waiting for the quail to make their daily migration over our roof to the shelter of my shrubby front yard.

I've never seen a hawk catch one yet, but I have seen tell-tale clusters of quail feathers on the ground in my front yard. No wonder they're so flighty.

My husband and I have consulted multiple bird books and a couple of web sites, but we're still not sure what kind of hawk it is. Our best guess is a juvenile Goshawk (apparently the juveniles have yellow eyes; adults have red eyes), but it could also be a Cooper's Hawk.

If you think you can identify it, please leave a comment.

Good to be home

2007-07-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

It's only been a week and a half, but it sure feels good to be home. I woke up early, got a cup of tea and sat looking over the Bay.

The early morning light in Northern California has a luminous quality I've never seen anywhere else. Something about the way low-in-the-sky rays of sunlight beam through the morning layer of fog that so often enshrouds the Bay. The plants in my back pocket garden look their best in this soft, low light, and I can't resist taking a few photos.

My robust clump of Miscanthus senensis Morning Light, is, as the name implies, perfect in this soft light. It highlights the white edges of each blade of grass and makes the clump almost glow. Beside it, Oriental lilies are blooming, with a few buds still coming on. They'd just started to open when I left town to visit family in NH and attend the BlogHer conference in Chicago, and I was afraid I'd miss them all. Should have known better.

My husband did a good job of watering the plants in pots while I was gone. The tomatoes are a tangle of leafy stems, yellow buds and little green tomatoes. A low-hanging branch on one cherry tomato has a cluster of ripe, red fruit. That's the one branch that didn't get chomped by marauding deer earlier this summer when I put the tomato pots out on my sunny front stoop. So it goes. After a stint of trying to surround the pots with chicken wire barriers (real attractive!), I moved them to the slightly less sunny but totally deerproof back deck. They've all recovered, but tomato production has been delayed a few weeks.

In my back garden, I see the Sally Holmes rose is trying to take over the world again. It leans over the Peewee oakleaf hydrangea, shading it, and mostly obscures the entrance to crawl space under the house (a good thing, unless you need to use it). About time for another round of pruning. But I can't bring myself to do it while it's still blooming...and Sally Holmes blooms all summer and into the fall.

A gold crocosmia, the one I relocated last year because it clashed with the pink flowers in my front garden, is starting to bloom. It's looking fine against a backdrop of hydrangea. A neighboring beebalm, Raspberry Wine, towers above it, happy at last to be in a spot that gets afternoon shade. The white anemones beside them, now coming into bud, are looking kind of puny -- either water-starved or gopher-bit, I'm not sure which...maybe both.

Over the Bay, the sky is clearing, the morning fog is lifting...it's another beautiful day in Northern California.

I find myself humming an old Simon and Garfunkel tune:
"Gee but it's great to be back home, home is where I want to be."

Oh, yeah.

BlogHer: We are all press here

2007-07-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

"We are all press here."

That was the reminder BlogHer organizers gave to all assembled for the opening session of BlogHer 2007 today at Chicago's Navy Pier.

Everything related to the media is changing, especially traditional concepts of who's a reporter and who's the public. In a crowd of bloggers, it pays to remember we are all the media.

How the News Works?

2007-07-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow's take on How the News Works is a little too close to the truth for comfort.

Happy birthday Patrick Stewart!

2007-07-13T23:02:00.001-07:00

Today is Patrick Stewart's 67th birthday.

I'm a long-time fan, and I still rue the day the Star Trek TV franchise ended. I don't go to Star Trek conventions or dress up like a Klingon at Halloween or anything -- I'm not that kind of a fan -- but sometimes I just wanna watch an episode of Star Trek. Fortunately for me, Spike TV, the "macho guy" channel, offers afternoon reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What's the appeal? Can't be that bald dome...though my Dad was bald...hmm. Maybe it's the British accent and the fact that we both enjoy a nice cuppa Earl Grey (or at least his character, Captain Jean Luc Picard, did).

A couple years ago in Las Vegas, I ran into Patrick Stewart. He was gracious enough to let me get this souvenir shot. If he appears a little stiff, there's a reason: we were at Madame Tussauds.

Peter Pan politics

2007-07-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

John McCain says we can't leave Iraq now. Referring to Vietnam, he says he's "seen this movie before."

So have we. Maybe he forgot the ending?

Of course, this is the same guy who, after losing some key campaign staffers because he's out of money, says, "I'd describe the campaign as going well...I think we're doing fine."

Yeah, right.

Reminds me of a couple other big-name politicians who are in denial. First, there's Joe Leiberman, who's still running around saying we're winning in Iraq (what's he been smoking?).

Then, of course, there's the irrepressible George W., who's now taking a "Peter Pan" approach to the war...if he just "believes" hard enough (and gets the rest of us to say we believe too), his "Tinkerbell" war will come back to life...and he'll be remembered as a war hero, not as "the goat."

Fat chance. Baah!

Wanna read more?
SF Chron: Bush fights growing chorus for exit
NYT: McCain campaign drops top aides; new doubts rise

The dead

2007-07-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

It was 22 names this time, the most ever. This morning our minister read 22 names. That's how many American soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past week.

Each Sunday we hear the names and acknowledge the loss. They are men and women unknown to me who have died fighting on behalf of my country, in a mismanaged war based on lies. Seven were from California. Some were old enough to leave behind families...wives, children, maybe even grandchildren. Some were so young they probably never had a chance to find love and marry.

This week's dead are:

Jason Dale Lewis, 30, of Brookfield, Conn.,
Robert Richard McRill, 42, of Lake Placid, Fla.,
Steven Phillip Daugherty, 28, of Barstow, Calif.
Scott A.M. Oswell, 33, of Washington.
Andrew T. Engstrom, 22, of Slaton, Texas.
Steven A. Davis, 23, of Woodbridge, Va.
Christopher N. Rutherford, 25, of Newport, Ohio.
William C. Chambers, 20, of Ringgold, Ga.
Jeremy L. Tinnel, 20, of Mechanicsville, Va.
James L. Adair, 26, of Carthage, Texas.
Juan M. Garcia Schill, 20, of Grants Pass, Ore.
Raymond R. Buchan, 33, of Johnstown, Pa.
Michael L. Ruoff Jr., 31, of Yosemite, Calif.
Victor A. Garcia, 22, of Rialto, Calif.
Jonathan M. Rossi, 20, of Safety Harbor, Fla.
Robb L. Rolfing, 29, of Milton, Mass.
Shin W. Kim, 23, of Fullerton, Calif.,
Michael J. Martinez, 24, of Chula Vista, Calif.,
Giann C. Joya Mendoza, 27, of North Hollywood, Calif.,
Dustin L. Workman II, 19, of Greenwood, Neb.
Cory F. Hiltz, 20, of La Verne, Calif.
William W. Crow Jr., 28, of Grandview Plaza, Kan.

And since those 22 names were read this morning, the Department of Defense has announced six more American deaths (five men, one woman) on its news release web page:

Thomas P. McGee, 23, of Hawthorne, Calif., died July 6 of wounds sustained when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device in Wazi Khwa, Afghanistan.
Michelle R. Ring, 24, of Martin, Tenn., died July 5 of wounds sustained from enemy mortar fire in Baghdad.
James M. Ahearn, 43, of Calif., and Keith A. Kline, 24, of Oak Harbor, Ohio, died July 5 when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device in Baghdad, Iraq.
Christopher S. Honaker, 23, of Cleveland, N.C., died July 5 of wounds sustained from enemy small arms fire and indirect fire in the Watapor Valley of Kunar Province, Afghanistan.
Joseph A. Miracle, 22, of Ortonville, Mich., died July 5 of wounds sustained from enemy small arms fire and indirect fire in the Watapor Valley of Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

According to reports on tonight's news, the U.S. death toll now tops 3,000. And, of course, that's not counting contractors...or the estimated 160,000+ Iraqi civilians who have died since we invaded Iraq.

But there is a glimmer of hope...another Republican senator, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, has come to grips with reality and broken ranks with the president on Iraq, calling for a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq. And in one of this Sunday's editorials, The Road Home, the NYT editorial board finally stated the obvious:

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

In the eye of the beholder

2007-07-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

How do you define beauty? How have our ideas of what is beautiful changed over time? Over generations? Over the centuries? The video "Women in Art" explores that question, showing 500 years of portraits of women by Western artists...one image morphing into another, one era into another, a changing portrait of beauty.

If you'd like to see more YouTube videos by "eggman," here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/user/eggman913

P.S. Thanks to Steve Greene for passing on the link to this video.

The court's circular logic

2007-07-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

Let me see if I've got this straight...the Bush administration's NSA secret wiretapping program is so secret that nobody can find out whether or not they've been secretly spied on, or prove whether or not they've been injured by being secretly spied on. That's the reason two of the three appeals court judges gave for dismissing the case, saying none of the plaintiffs has grounds to sue.

Sounds like circular logic to me.

Link to NYT coverage of this decision.

Are you "Sicko" yet?

2007-07-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

I just sent this letter (without the graphics) to both of my senators:

Yesterday I went to see Michael Moore's film, Sicko. I left the theater wondering why -- if America is the smartest, richest, most innovative and powerful nation in the world -- we can't figure out how to provide good health care to all Americans.

If the Canadians, the British and the French can do it (to say nothing of the Cubans), why can't we?

For example, did you know that in Great Britain, doctors get bonuses based on the improved health of people in their care? If their patients stop smoking, lower their blood pressure, etc., they get a bonus. In the United States, doctors get bonuses for seeing the most patients per day, for not making referrals, and for denying requests for treatment. Our insurance companies reward doctors and other employees for denying coverage and courses of treatment -- for limiting costs, not for helping people. We've got it entirely backwards.

It is clear that our national priority has been to make health care profitable for PPOs, HMOs, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, not to care for people. This has to change. We need to put people first, not corporate profits. We need to make health care a national right, not a profit center.

I think it's time to refocus the health care debate...away from incremental and useless changes like requiring people to buy insurance (so are they supposed to stop eating to pay for coverage?), or funding some coverage for poor children (at least until those funds run out -- tonight I watched NOW's Insuring the Children on PBS; it talked about how the State Children's Health Insurance Program is running out of funds and what that means to children can't get covered...like the Georgia girl who is likely to die without her diabetes meds).

Frankly, health insurance is not the answer. It is no guarantee of health care, not when insurance companies focus on making profits by denying claims and coverage.

One of my friends, a woman in her 50s who recently changed careers, is deeply worried about losing her job. Loss of income is bad enough, but the thing that really keeps her awake at night is the fear of losing her health insurance. She's got a health problem and she's worried that it will become a "pre-existing condition" and she'll won't be able to afford to get treated. And if she can't get treated, she won't be able to work.

In other developed countries, people can focus on doing their jobs, living their lives and caring for their families. They don't have to worry about being bankrupted by an illness or injury. They don't have to worry about dying because some bureaucrat denied them coverage or a needed treatment.

I want what other developed countries have. I want the security of knowing that if I get sick or am injured, it won't bankrupt my family. I want to know that if I get a serious injury or illness, I won't be allowed to die so some insurance executive can get a bonus. I want to know that, should I be unfortunate enough to end up with Alzheimer's like my mother, my family won't go have to through hell and destitute themselves trying to care for me.

National polls now show that health care is a top concern of a majority of Americans. That's because even those of us who have insurance know we are just one job and one claim away from denial of treatment or loss of coverage.

Please, it's time to change the debate on health care. It's time to make health care a basic right, not another privatized profit-making venture. Please do something.

If you want to do something, you can start by writing your representatives a letter too. Feel free to recycle parts of mine, if you like. And go see Sicko. See through the propaganda we've been fed all our lives, and see how the other half of the developed world lives.

Patriotic garden?

2007-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

My garden...blooming in red, white and blue.

Happy July 4th!

Killing with kindness, musing on memes

2007-06-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

I almost skipped it.

I was skimming the Books Update email from the NYT Sunday Book Review when I noticed a review of The Edge of Evolution by Michael J. Behe. His name sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.

The promo blurb said, "In his second book, Michael Behe turns to genetics to poke holes in Darwin’s theory." That's when I noticed the reviewer: evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

Oh my, I thought, this is gonna be good.

It was. It's one of the kindest but most totally decimating reviews I've ever read. You can read it here.

____________________

One thing I hadn't realized is that Dawkins is the guy who coined the term "meme" to describe (as noted in his Wikipedia entry) "how Darwinian principles might be extended to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena."

One of the most thought-provoking books I've ever read is Thought Contagion, a book about memes and the transmission of ideas by Aaron Lynch. I read it at about the same time I read another influential book, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Both Lynch and Gladwell consider how ideas, beliefs and even new products or fads are spread through society. That is, they try to explain why some ideas, beliefs or products catch on and become popular, while others -- that seem equally viable -- simply don't.

In Thought Contagion, Lynch identifies several "propagation advantages," which is how he describes the characteristics that tend to encourage people to pass on or "propagate" a specific idea or belief. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell looks at the factors that make ideas or products "sticky" and more likely to catch on with the public.

Both of these books could be helpful to folks in the advertising, marketing and P.R. professions -- to anyone who's in the business of persuading others, for that matter -- as well as to journalists and others who need to better understand the factors that shape society and debates on public issues.

Pointers on writing for the web

2007-06-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

You'll find some good pointers on writing headlines and copy for the web in Who Needs Headlines? at A List Apart, a blog on "the design, development, and meaning of web content."

As Shaun Crowley, a freelance copywriter and author of 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists, notes:

People often go online for quick, easy guidance. Headlines like How to…, 10 reasons why…, and 50 top tips for… promise the reader valuable tips, and they help you to highlight the key benefits.

I also like Crowley's suggestions to...focus on the product's unique selling point...use a quote...start a story. All good advice that works just as well offline as on.

Also check out Human to Human Design, an article by Aussie web design consultant Sharon Lee, who says, "A good website is built on two basic truths -- that the internet is an interactive medium and that the end user is in fact human." It's always helpful to remember there are people on the other side of what you write.

Sisyphean PR and other follies

2007-06-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

And you think you've got a PR problem! Consider the uphill battle faced by Price Floyd, a U.S. State Department official charged with improving our nation's image in the world.

As reported in Slate, Floyd pointed to our rejection of the Kyoto treaty, dissing of the International Criminal Court, revocation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and said, "What we don't have here is a failure to communicate."

"These actions," Floyd wrote in a recent op-ed piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, "have sent an unequivocal message: The U.S. does not want to be a collaborative partner. This is the policy we have been 'selling' through our actions." As a result, our words are ignored or dismissed as "meaningless U.S. propaganda."

As marketer Chris Houchens noted in a recent post in his Shotgun Marketing blog, this is what happens when you try to "REBRAND" through words and not actions. It's a Sisyphean exercise.

By the way, wondering how Floyd got away with making such pointed comments in an administration known for lock-step message control? Well, Floyd recently quit his State Department job. 'Nuf said.