Mini-mine?

Meh.

Oh well. The speaker set looks nice. I think I read about something very similar to this before by another manufacturer, obviously minus the dock.

But the Mini is kind of a disappointment. Good, they have more USB ports. Good, digital audio input and output. Shared video memory? How Wintel can you get? Blech. When is 512MB of RAM not equal to 512MB of RAM? When the video processor grabs 64MB of it, that's when. For that kind of hardware downgrade, the price ought to be a hell of a lot more attractive than $599.00. It costs too much! No Mini for me in the near future, and that $429.00 refurb G4 Mini looks kind of attractive now.

I'd say today's announcements were no big deal.

Bummer.

Oops...

Seth Finkelstein points out a flaw of the recent Top 100 analysis by Tristan Louis, brought to his attention by Theron Parlin in a comment on Tristan's post. Seems like Tristan may have been comparing apples and oranges. Doesn't mean his conclusions were wrong, just that they can't be supported by the data as it was presented. Technorati changed their ranking algorithm in September 2005.

Monday

I love Scientific American's Mind magazine. It's a bi-monthly publication and there's almost always something in it that I find worth reading. This issue has more than the usual quantity of interesting reads. It's geared toward the interested lay person, so the articles are very accessible. It's "popular" science in its best sense.

One of this month's articles is Mastery of Emotions by David Dobbs, and it covers the work of Joseph E. LeDoux who studies emotions and the brain. Here's a brief excerpt that tickled me very much:

LeDoux recently told me in his office at New York University that he did not much care for his business studies, yet they ultimately led him to brain research. "I studied marketing," (emphasis mine) he explained in an amiable voice that carries the slightest hint of Cajun. It was a bright day and the Empire State Building gleamed in the distance outside his office window. "As I went along, the thing that interested me the most was why people bought stuff they didn't really need." (Emphasis mine.)

An interest that I share as well, particularly as it has to do with why I buy stuff I don't really need.

"Know thyself."

The article goes on to describe LeDoux' work and the focus he has made on the role of the amygdala in emotional processing. Another excerpt that may sound familiar to regular readers:

This Oz-behind-the-curtain power has LeDoux convinced that the amydgala and its subcortical allies, rather than our consciousness define who we are. "Consciousness may get all the focus," LeDoux notes, "but consciousness is a small part of what the brain does, and it's a slave to everything that works beneath it." (Emphasis mine.)

"Know thyself."

Also in this issue is an article on the Dalai Lama's somewhat controversial appearance at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting last November. In Meditations on the Brain, contributor and adviser to Scientific American Mind, R. Douglas Fields writes,

In this quest, the Dalai Lama is confronting the same ethical issues as neuroscientists. He did not come to the symposium with pat answers, and that confused some audience members. Most expected a religious leader to resolve difficult questions with doctrine, but he refused, replying at times with, "I don't know." Coming from a scientist in a white coat, this response is reasonable and acceptable, but from a person in religious robes it seemed to clash with expectation. In objecting to the Dalai Lama's appearance, they revealed their own dogmatic view that science and religion must always be at odds.

I don't claim to be an authority on Buddhism, nor do I identify myself as a Buddhist, except in the sense that each of us is a Buddhist, seeking liberation from suffering. But I've long regarded most early Buddhist thought as more scientific than strictly religious. But then, philosophy means, literally, the love of wisdom. So go figure.

All of which was a happy coincidence as I had a rather unhappy, if somewhat amusing to others, experience today.

The building I work in had its lower floor renovated to host a new organization, and some of that included exterior work to correct problems with the stucco, which requires that the exterior be painted as a result. Before painting, they had to pressure-wash the exterior, which is what happened today.

The entrance door to my building has a defect of some kind that allows water to collect at the top of the door every time it rains. On those occasions, the first person to open the door after a shower usually gets doused by a small, but not insignificant quantity of water that has collected between the top of the door and the door frame. This is usually no big deal, apart from the surprise and having a very wet shoulder or leg for a short period of time.

I decided to go to lunch a little early today, and the sun was shining in a clear blue sky and I opened the door to exit the building and was shocked to receive the usual dousing from the door when it rains. I then saw the hoses and the workman who was doing the pressure washing, who thought it was very amusing that I got all wet. I was pissed that he thought it was funny, but it wasn't until I got in my car and noticed my new pants were, literally, discoloring everywhere the water had hit them that I really got pissed.

I got out of the car and approached the laughing man and said something to the effect of "What the hell was in that shit?" I might have said "What the fuck was in that shit?" I don't recall. I was pissed, but not "throbbing vein in the temple" pissed. Ripping the guy a new asshole hadn't crossed my mind yet. At that point, his supervisor had appeared and they both insisted it was just water. They had used bleach, but only on the base of the foundation. They tried to explain discoloration as dye from the awning over the door or something.

At that point, there was little more I could do, so I went to lunch, looking like something out of a laundry horror story. As I got out of the car at the sandwich place, it had become obvious just how badly I'd been hit. I don't buy clothes often, but the good news is I work in a casual environment. I was wearing a new pair of Levi's Dockers I'd purchased about three weeks ago, and a new Izod polo shirt I bought two weeks ago, along with my new Timberland shoes I bought about a month ago. The shirt and the pants are a total loss, the shoes didn't get hit as badly and the spots don't show unless you know to look for them, as I will each day when I put them on. But it's not like I was wearing a $3600.00 "bespoke" suit or something. Of course, it's not like I could afford a $3600.00 "bespoke" suit either. At most, I'm out about $100.00 and I can live with the shoes, so it's more like $45.00 for the shirt and the pants since I can shop at the Navy Exchange and the major labels are pretty discounted. Anyway, I'm a pretty unhappy guy.

So I get back to the office, with my sandwich in hand, and I see the supervisor talking to some other guy looking like an authority figure. I go on up to my office, figuring I'm going to hear from this guy and not really knowing what I have to say to him. I'm wondering if I can file a property claim against the base, but I'm thinking $45.00 isn't worth my time and aggravation dealing with the bureaucracy. Sure enough, the guy shows up a couple minutes later in my office and says he's the project supervisor and he heard I'm pretty unhappy.

I agreed that I was pretty unhappy, but I was especially unhappy that the guy doing the work thought the whole thing was pretty funny. He said he was sorry about that, but that he'd heard I'd "cursed them out."

I loved that.

This is something I used to get fairly often. People who are as potty-mouthed or even saltier than I am, get all offended and sensitive when I use a bad word around them, usually in the context of something they've fucked up. I didn't call the guy a name, I didn't comment on his ancestry. And knocking the fucking smile off his face didn't occur to me until I was driving over to the sandwich place. It's just a way of deflecting criticism from themselves. In later years, I'd learned to become somewhat more circumspect in my choice of language, but I admit that under some circumstances I can get a little lax, this being one of them.

So I agreed I'd used a bad word or two, but they had lied to me about what was in the water they'd sprayed on the building. He admitted it was a bleach solution, and the clothes were probably ruined. I showed him what the source of the problem was and asked him if someone was going to be paying for my clothes. He said, no, but that if I wanted to, he could have me talk to someone. And I asked him why I would want to talk to anyone? He said he just wanted me to be happy. I said pay for my clothes and I'll be happy. So then he said that he, personally, would pay for my clothes. He couldn't shop at the Exchange, even though he was a disabled veteran, but he'd pay for my clothes. Oh, so now I'm supposed to feel sorry for him because he's a "disabled veteran," who can't shop at the Exchange. I'm sure he's a disabled veteran, because I'm one too. But you have to serve long enough to retire to get Exchange privileges, not just have a 10% VA disability rating. So now I'm just pissed at this guy. I don't want him to buy me new clothes, I just want him to stop wasting my time. He hands me his card and insists that he wants to buy me new clothes, which just pisses me off more and again insists he just wants me to be happy.

Leave me alone! I'll be relatively happier! (I didn't share this.)

So I take his card and say good-bye and try to enjoy my sandwich, all the while fuming at this asshole who just wants me to be happy. Well, sometimes we're not going to be happy, no matter what other people want. And I'm thinking a lot of unkind thoughts about guys with careers in pressure-washing, which is a whole rank-in-the-hiearchy, self-soothing little bit of thinking.

Then I start to read Scientific American Mind and about LeDoux' research and emotions, and the Dalai Lama, and I'm reminded to ask myself "what's going on inside you?"

To the guy who was out there, spending his day trying to earn a few bucks to pay his rent or his car payment or his child support, spraying water on the side of a building, it probably was pretty funny seeing some guy in Dockers and an Izod shirt and new shoes get all wet. Getting mad at him was something that had to do more with me than with him. The supervisor was just trying to cover for his employee, and maybe himself, not sure who I was or if I was somebody who might cause problems for him on a job he probably wasn't making a whole lot of money doing. The project supervisor probably was just trying to do "the right thing," in a circumstance that probably hadn't presented itself before. And me, I was just a pissed off guy with a propensity to utter obscenities when I'm unhappy. Altogether, I'm sure nobody was terribly happy as a result of an unfortunate incident that wasn't anyone's fault, really.

I was never interested in having the project supervisor personally pay to replace my clothes. The base normally covers these kinds of property losses, but chances are this one is so small that my time is worth more than it would require to go through the paperwork to file a claim. And making my misfortune the project supervisor's doesn't make the world a better place.

In an ideal world, water wouldn't accumulate on the top of that door. In an ideal Dave, I wouldn't have gotten mad about it, or mad at the guy who laughed at me. But in the best of all possible worlds, I get to read a magazine after ruining some clothes and be reminded about some things I need to learn about myself, and the people who have to share this life with me.

Net-net, it still comes down to this: "Know thyself."

And learn to recognize and appreciate the opportunities to do so.

Sunshine on My Folders

The sun is out in full force this morning, in a dazzling blue sky. While this is a happy occurrence, it also makes for an uninteresting picture. So, no Florida sunrise for you, I'm afraid.

I'll also note that it's 42 degrees (F) out there too.

Keyword: Mike

Mike Warot comments on the limitations of keyword searches in turning up diversity of opinion.

A couple of thoughts: First, never has the idea of "don't believe everything that you read," been more important. Because the internet lowers the barriers to entry, the marketplace for ideas, even bad ones, has never been larger. This is where the idea of challenging everything, and understanding how emotions and feelings are manipulated to control beliefs is also important.

Second, we have to learn to use the machine to our best advantage. A Google search on "markets are conversations" turns up most of the usual suspects on the first page. Interestingly, a post by David Burn of AdPulp, a person and a weblog I've never heard of, and posted on 21 February of this year, turns up at number eight in the results. (Must get a lot of "link love.") Number ten is Doc responding to one of my posts. But my sense of the first 10 (and the next 20 as well) is that they are largely endorsements, or otherwise uncritical repetitions of the slogan "markets are conversations. I don't appear until result number 53, which is actually better than I expected.

But if you search on "markets are not conversations," to see who may be taking the opposing point of view, I appear at result number eight, and result number two is Dave Weinberger responding to one of my posts.

So, while I have by no means tested his idea exhaustively, I agree with Mike's observation that simple keyword searches may not generate a wide diversity of opinion, especially on verbatim phrases; but it doesn't mean we can't find the diversity of opinion if we become more sophisticated in our use of the machine.

Of course, the "machine" we really need to learn how to use well is the one between our ears.

MacGyver

Ken Loo is posting again. I liked this post.

This one is good too.

Ear of the Dog Update

Getting Mandy's ear infection cleared up took longer than I, and the vet, expected. Part of the problem was some lingering misunderstanding regarding the prescription. Long story short, after three follow-up visits, it looks like the infection is gone; but I have one more follow-up a week from Tuesday to make sure.

Interesting Week

This week offers some interesting diversions, at least from my perspective. Apple is slated to announce some new products on Tuesday, and that's always doubly interesting. There are the products themselves, but even more interesting is the response. That's always entertaining.

Also interesting is part one of the two-part season finale of Battlestar Galactica, Lay Down Your Burdens. Part 1 is a normal one hour episode, Part 2 will be 90 minutes. Hopefully they'll be hitting on all cylinders and we'll have something to talk about while we wait for Season 3.

More Gray

It warmed up a bit yesterday, and the sun even came out briefly, while it was raining. But it cooled off a bit and the forecast suggests we won't reach 60 today. I'd hoped for a better sunrise this morning, but was disappointed to see only another uniform gray blanket covering the sky.

They aren't called the Dark Ages for nothing.

Supposed to be sunny tomorrow though!

The sun'll come out tomorrow

Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow...

Deva Premal

Battlestar Galactica fanboy that I am, I was reading an interview with Edward James Olmos where he mentioned that he listens to music by Deva Premal while he's working on BSG.

Intrigued, I checked my favorite online music retailer, and they offer a number of her albums. I bought an album (Dakshina) and a half dozen other tracks. It's good background music when "I'm tryin' to think, but nothin' happens," it's also good to start the day with. And I don't listen to any music when I'm trying to not think, so I don't try to sit to this. It's mostly mantras put to music, so lyrically it's repetitive but musically it's interesting in a minimally invasive way. It's not the same as Muzak.

Not to everyone's taste, but you might want to check it out.

BSG: Brave Little Toaster

Last night's episode is told mostly from the point of view of the cylons on Caprica. It was interesting and entertaining. It wasn't compelling drama, but it was more satisfying, in some ways, because it wasn't trying too hard and it did advance the plot in some interesting ways.

Fade to Gray

I got up a little early for a Saturday morning, hoping astronomy and meteorology would combine to afford an attractive dawn of another day. Alas, the six more weeks of winter thing remains in effect, and the sky is overcast with a uniform gray.

Bummer.

Five Reasons

Found this via a comment at Backup Brain: Five Reasons to Get Cancer.

Friday Cat Post

Karma and Squeaky, my two house cats, are strictly indoor cats these days. That means they don't get a lot of stimulation apart from when I play with them, or the odd roach, er, I mean, palmetto bug, wanders into the apartment. I used to let the two of them wander around outside, but when I moved into this apartment over a year ago, I decided to keep them indoors.

I've purchased various toys for them over time. About the most entertaining one has been this cheap little fake fishing rod that had a little thing at the end of the line you could flick around and make them chase. That got old for me pretty fast.

My brother Mark mentioned to me that he had something that his cats played with that was kind of a "robo-mouse" that had a wand on it that twitched a little toy around for them. So I wandered into Petco the other day and saw something that looked a lot like what Mark had described. I wasn't sure if it would work on carpet, but they opened the box for me and I got a look at the wheels and they're pretty substantial so I thought it might work on my floors. I asked them if I could return it if it didn't work well, and they said I could so I figured it was worth a try.

(Here's the same thing at Amazon, from Toys-R-Us, for $10.00 less than I paid for it at Petco. I should return it and buy it online, but I'm lazy.)

Anyway, I didn't really understand how the thing worked until I got it home and got it set up. The thing doesn't move except when you tell it to by the remote control. What does work unattended is the wand on the top, that twitches the little fuzz ball this way and that. It does seem to fascinate the cats. The only downside is when they attack it and manage to get the claws hooked into it and flip the base unit over, which happens fairly often. They aren't at all interested in it when I'm moving it by remote control, but they do love to chase the fuzz ball when the base unit is stopped. (It uses "chaos technology!" so you know it has to be good!)

It's kind of expensive for a cat toy (probably the secret chaos algorithms), and a little ludicrous in that respect. But it does keep Karma off my keyboard when I'm trying to write something here.

Karma eyes the fuzz ball.

Karma prefers to stalk and kill while lying on her side.

Squeaky attacks!

Squeaky staring at the fuzz ball.

Mares' Tails Moon

While technically not "mares' tails" the darker clouds lower in the frame resembled them enough to bring them to mind.

While Shelley is able to capture images of eagles soaring in flight, I have less luck with moving birds. Most mornings, when I remember to look, I see this crane or another one, silhouetted against the morning sky. It's a pretty big bird, and it's a beautiful sight. Too bad I couldn't share it with you.

The little point of light in the upper left corner is Venus. The other guy you already know.

Elena

No words.

"If this keeps up..."

I may indeed go back to cat blogging.

Ethan Johnson pointed this post out to me from The Slacktivist. It discusses evangelism as a marketing scheme, with an emphasis on the religious notion of evangelism, but it has relevance to the "markets are conversations" fiction as well.

If you're a product evangelist, an evangelical anything, or if you just care about living in a world where everyone isn't trying to sell you something, and where, because we've been duped to believe "markets are conversations," everyone has to compete to be heard, it's worth a read.

Fedex (non) Tracking

Apple shipped my parents' new eMac on the 16th, and there's been no update to the Fedex tracking site for that tracking number since the 16th. It just says "Arrived at Fedex location." UPS does better than this with free shipping. Hell, the United States Postal Service does better.

It's scheduled (predicted?) for delivery on the 23rd, so perhaps it will update on the 22nd. Who knows? So far, checking tracking has been nothing but a waste of time.

There must be some curve that plots the quality of service of a company or product against the volume of business it does. My guess is there's a peak somewhere and that after that point, as the business grows, the quality of service declines.

Wind

Upstate New York, along with other parts of the northeast, experienced a severe wind storm last Friday evening. I spoke to my parents on Friday afternoon, but didn't pay much attention to the news over the weekend. I spoke to them again yesterday and heard a bit about the storm. (This link will vanish behind the paywall in a few days.)

Their power didn't go out at all, other than a momentary interruption, but my sisters over near Albany were dark all weekend, and it was an exceptionally cold weekend as well. (Jim Kunstler relates his experience here.)

I hadn't seen anything from Elaine of Kalilily since the 16th, and worried a bit about her and her mother and brother in their somewhat isolated location. Being mostly powerless to do anything else, I e-mailed Elaine expressing my hope that the lights were on and she was safe and warm.

I was relieved to hear back from her not long after, and that all was well. She even used the occasion to give us an update.

By Bread Alone

After a lovely day Saturday, we had a cold, gray Sunday and a foggy, gray, cool Monday. I take a little comfort in the knowledge that it's all of 19 degrees fahrenheit up at Mom and Dad's.

As for writing something today, I got nothin'. Of course, I continue to be astonished by some of the stuff I read, but I think I should be over that by now. I would point to it and criticize it, but that does no good. Every person believes they're right until their mistakes bite them in the ass; and often even then, they'll blame it on someone or something else. Such is life, and it makes for great business opportunities in the self-help, mental health and pharmaceutical industries.

So, in lieu of me boring you further, I commend to your attention the honest efforts of one man to bake a loaf of bread. Reading Cecil's adventures in bread-baking is to observe someone who is getting inside the process, becoming a part of it. I use a machine, and I know only enough to follow the directions. Cecil's doing more than baking a loaf of bread, but I'll leave it to you to think about that.

"Challenge Everything."

I don't want to get into great length on this issue, but this is a brief reply to Mike Warot.

Although it's a marketing slogan for EA Games, "challenge everything," like "think different," has a much higher utility value than a slogan like "markets are conversations."

Challenging authority simply for the sake of hoping to garner attention as a contrarian is an ego-centric act and one that is mostly destined for futility. You must challenge authority, and when you recognize it on some basis of your own authority, then you don't necessarily need to keep challenging it. But always remain skeptical, even of your own authority.

There is no such thing as "power." (Leaving aside the physics/engineering definition.) The only power that exists, as an abstract notion of being able to effect change, is the power to choose. Everything else is authority. Recognizing authority is a choice. An unconscious choice is a powerless one.

Much of our unconscious "thinking" is emotional. Most of the time, it works exceedingly well. "Go with your gut," is often the best advice. But beware, because it can be used against you. If someone flatters you, or presents you with appealing ideas with a great deal of positive emotional content (read: "marketers"), they are trying to get you to recognize their authority, to unconsciously choose to accept their views as your own. When this is done clumsily, or badly, it is obvious and we can protect ourselves. "That's a lovely dress you're wearing, Mrs. Cleaver." But we've grown far more sophisticated in our ability to present appealing messages in subtle and indirect ways. Also bear in mind that appeals to negative emotions and fear can be just as effective, subtle and indirect - something to think about as we go about surrendering our civil liberties in pursuit of the illusion of security.

Challenge everything.

No matter how "flat" or "fair" or "good" the results of a revised mechanism for searching the contents of the "blogosphere" might be, the burden and the responsibility remains with the reader to critically examine the information that is being presented. You'll never find the meaning of life in the output of some search engine, though perhaps you have to look there first to understand this.

The main purpose, the main value of the A-List is to the people creating the list. It's secondary value is to other people who wish to appeal to high attention-earners; because we often confuse attention with authority, which is why actors and professional wrestlers can be elected governor or even president. These ranked lists are of exactly no value to anyone seeking answers to any substantive question. Technorati and its "authority algorithm" cynically exploits human nature and has no ethical or morally redeeming features, I don't care how beloved their "advisory board" members are.

The Zen expression, "The finger is not the moon," is one you should always keep in mind. The finger (authority) can point or show or illustrate, but it is, in the end, up to you to apprehend the moon. If you keep in mind the fact that everyone making assertions about the truth of things, even me, especially me, is really "giving you the finger," it'll help you to keep your perspective. Challenge everything.

Recalling Heraclitus - Applicants for wisdom, do what I have done: inquire within.

This isn't easy. If it were easy, we wouldn't need things like courage, imagination, faith, tenacity, compassion or love. Don't look for the easy way. The hard one is much more rewarding.

And the finger is not the moon...

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

After relating how February is always the coldest month of the year, and, truthfully, the only time this winter when I've had to scrape ice off my car (Two days in a row even!), today is a perfectly lovely day.

I was able to leave the windows open last night, and there's no describing the joy of listening to birds singing right outside my window this morning.

BSG: "Meh."

Last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica didn't suck, but it was still pretty far below their best efforts. If you're a fan of the series and haven't seen the episode and want to be "surprised," read no further. But there were no really "shocking" developments.

The story takes place about a month after last week's episode, and Apollo is out of the hospital and in the sack with Dualla. That still rings hollow to me, and I really don't understand what the writers were thinking. I have yet to listen to the audio commentaries to the last two episodes, so they may offer some insight. But it sure doesn't flow from the story line.

Adama made the Chief Engineer of the Pegasus the CO, which made sense to me in a lot of ways. The CHENG is often the senior department head in the chain of command, and would be the logical successor to the XO. Some engineers are restricted line officers, Engineering Duty Officers, ineligible for command at sea, so it wasn't exactly clear if that's what Apollo was saying to his father when he was commenting that Pegasus's CO wasn't a "command officer." I suspected it might be something similar to the restricted/unrestricted line distinctions we have, with which Ron Moore is likely familiar.

The CO made some disparaging comments about Starbuck, TAD (temporary additional duty) to Pegasus, and her approach to her job, which reflected something of the genuine differences various warfare communities have with one another. The reference to "snipes" is right from present navy vernacular, and the adherence to procedure the CO advocated is also characteristic of propulsion types, though more so with nuclear trained officers than conventional snipes.

So that was all very interesting, though the guy playing the CO was chewing a little too much plexiglas scenery for my taste.

The Pegasus plot line for this episode was pretty good, jumping into a Cylon ambush against three base stars. The damage they were taking, the CO turning the conn over to Apollo, the effects of the damage, and Apollo's tactical decisions to cope with it all were good. It was probably the best naval combat engagement in space since the mini-series and far better than anything you ever see in Star Trek, Stargate, or Star Wars.

It was a little trite with the CO/CHENG being the guy to save the ship, and dying for his trouble. I would have played that a little differently, with an underling making the sacrifice (more realistic), the CHENG realizing he wasn't cut out for command and that his snipes needed him in the hole, but I guess we need a huge heroic sacrifice a week on BSG these days, and it did create an unambiguous command opportunity for someone. Guess who?

So the ultimate resolution is that Apollo is now CO of Pegasus, which neatly separates Apollo/Starbuck and Apollo/Dualla. Stay tuned next week, when Dualla's request for transfer is turned down by the XO and drama ensues! Will Apollo find a new squeeze? Or will it be "you and me again tonight, Rosy?"

The other plot line dealt with the issue of abortion in a species-crisis. I thought it was a very good moral issue to examine, and for the little amount of time devoted to it, they did it pretty well. I'm really growing fond of the Doc on Galactica.

If anything, I think they had good material for two episodes and they didn't do justice to either part of the story. I really didn't care about Pegasus's CO when he got killed. The set for the engineering space he died in wasn't terribly convincing, but it almost worked.

I don't know if they're trying too hard, with too many good ideas and unwilling to pace themselves, or what. They're not giving these stories enough time to stretch out, breathe, and make us care about them.

It was potentially two great episodes of Battlestar Galactica crammed into one below average one. Of course "average" for BSG is still a pretty high bar, I think. I liked it. I wanted to like it a lot more. I think they tried too hard and they let their audience down.

God Is In the Details

This is a fascinating post over at AKMA's, and if you're at all interested in logical arguments about the existence, or non-existence of God, it's worth a read.

I have little to add except I think relying on the idea of "God as good parent" to draw logical inferences regarding the nature of God is flawed. First, it implies that all beings must be as "children" to God, and I'm not sure that's reasonably the case. Second, it's not always obvious what being a "good parent" means. In some circumstances, acting as, in what would at first appearances be, a "good parent" can actually impair the development of a child into an adult. Second, the idea that receiving "God's comfort" would require making God's presence "known," seems to imply a "knowing" that is directly comparable to "knowing" the presence of a comforting, present, parent. To "see," and thereby "know," a present, comforting parent, a child must open his or her eyes, or rely on some other sensory organ. To experience a present, comforting God, would seem to require that a child or person open another organ.

All of which is not to say whether or not God exists, I'm an authority on nothing, after all. Merely that I think relying on the idea of God as parent to make logical inferences about what God "must" or "should" do, if God exists, is fraught with peril.

Just because I "see what I want to see..."

Point: Try this. Look at how much is given to this place some of us call the Live Web. Look at how little is taken back in the form of money, much less fame.

What we have here, the best of it, cannot be reduced, cannot be understood, in terms of transaction.

Counter - point: Also, notice that Technorati has a way to “claim” a blog and if you do that you’ll get a little picture next to every one of your posts. Posts that have pictures win!

The defense rests. It doesn't "win." (No picture.) But it rests.

Meet the New Box, Same as the Old Box

I have to find some new songs to use as titles to posts. I've seen far too much of The Authority Song and Won't Get Fooled Again floating around of late. But this one will do for now.

I bought my parents an eMac back in June or July of '03, soon after the iSight and iChat AV hit the market. Of all the technology that touches my life, none of it has had the same impact that the iSight and iChat AV have had in my relationship with my family. So they're an important part of our lives, and if something were to go wrong with that connection, well, we'd just have to fix it.

The other day, my dad mentioned that the screen on the eMac started going dark or very dim. It would come back after a restart, but it would happen again. I used Remote Desktop to take a look at the video control panel, and made some adjustments, and I also looked at the Energy Saver control panel as well, but that looked normal. Dad later reported it had happened again after I'd adjusted the brightness and contrast.

So I'm thinking the analog video board might be going bad. It's hard to say. My iMac is six years old and has intermittent video problems like this, but right now it's fine. Chances are, the eMac would act flakey for a while, then seem to fix itself, at least until it appeared again, or it might fail hard tomorrow. Either way, it's not an encouraging situation. At a little more than two and a half years old, it seems a little early for the video to be failing, but that machine is on nearly all day every day. The last time I was home, I blew a lot of dust out of the cooling slots by the fan and every place were air could enter the machine, so it may be an issue with dust and heat too, and just blowing it down might resolve the problem. But I can't be certain.

The eMac weighs over 40 pounds, and it's probably too much for my parents to drag over to the Apple Store in Syracuse for a repair, and I'm guessing it'd probably be something on the order of a couple hundred bucks to open it up and replace the analog board, assuming it would manifest the appropriate symptoms on the bench, which Murphy's Law dictates it probably would not do. So another approach is in order.

Apple no longer sells the eMac to consumers. I think I read somewhere that they may still offer some to school districts, but I could be wrong about that. In any case, they do appear from time to time as refurb'ed models at the Apple Store online. I happened to spot a listing for some with the 1.42GHz processor, combo-drive, 80GB HD and Redeon 9600 GPU for $639.00 the other day. I was helping Dad with some print jobs when he mentioned that the screen had gone dim again, but it came back. So right then I figured I'd just go order the refurb and replace the original one. Well, I went to the store and they appeared to be all gone again.

I was a little bummed, because they've been more and more infrequently available of late, and it's just a matter of time before you won't be able to buy one from Apple, and if they're available elsewhere, the price is usually full list at $799.00 for that model.

Well, I checked again yesterday and they were back, so I went ahead and ordered one. The store indicated it wouldn't ship for four or five days, but I just got an e-mail from Apple indicating it shipped today, so that's nice.

But how soon it shipped wasn't that important. We'll have to wait until my brother can make it home from downstate to set up the new one for them, and it might be a few weeks before he can get up there. In the mean time, I'm pretty sure the old one will continue to limp along a bit. It might even fix itself, like my old Volvo used to do and the iMac seems to do.

But the new one will be a nice improvement over the old one anyway. The old one was an 800MHz model with a 40GB HD and a CD-ROM. We couldn't install Tiger on it because it doesn't have a DVD-ROM drive. The new one will come with Tiger installed, and we'll be able to install any new software that comes on DVD media in the future. And with a 1.42GHz processor, they should be able to participate in multi-person video chats, once one of us gets a G5 or better to act as host.

I could have gone with a refurb'ed Mac Mini, but then I'd have to buy a display as well, and the eMac has better hardware specs with the 9600 GPU (Core Image capable), a faster HD and built-in speakers.

Besides, if I bought something different, I couldn't use the "Meet the New Box, Same as the Old Box" title.

Follow the Bouncing Links

If this keeps up, I can go back to "cat-blogging."

Ethan Johnson...

Jane Pratie...

Achenblog...

Marc Cooper...

Andrew Postman (guest blogger at Jay Rosen's Pressthink).

And thanks to Shelley Powers for pointing it out to me. (I do subscribe to Ethan's soon-to-be-shuttered weblog, but I hadn't read the feed when Shelley sent me the note.)

Opera on DS

Saw this at Russell Beattie's weblog, Opera will be offering their web browser on a cartridge for the Nintendo DS. Maybe a little flash RAM in there to store cookies and history and some cache. Pretty cool, I think.

10.4.5

Installed in the G4 MDD to no ill effect. Took no special precautions, it "just worked." I know that's not always wise, but it's nice when it happens.

Spoiled by Success

In discovering the principles of success and applying them, the world has become more polished but dishonest...

Stop the Funny™

My $.02

The Technorati "authority" filter should be called the "truthiness" filter. The more you dial up the "authority," the greater the likelihood what you're reading isn't true, but the authors think it should be.

On second thought, maybe it could be called the Colbert filter.

William James

On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.

A bit of a long read, probably worth it.

Coldest Month of the Year

The title isn't an expression of some fact, nor is it an effort at expounding on some finer point of "truthiness," I don't necessarily feel February should be the coldest month of the year. But in my experience, February is always the coldest month of the year.

At the Naval Academy, we called these days the "Dark Ages," an appellation that seems in some ways more appropriate now than it did then.

We had a brief warm spell a few weeks ago, and the trees began spewing pollen everywhere. I commented to a neighbor who is a new resident of Florida not to be fooled, February is always the coldest month of the year.

For the second day in a row I'll be scraping ice off my car's windows with my Books-a-Million discount card.

I wonder what I'd use to scrape the frozen, pretty, glittery illusions and myths that obscure any view of reality from my computer screen? I don't seem to have anything for that in my wallet.

Heart of Gold, Balls of Brass, Feet of Clay

Like nearly everyone else, I'm growing weary of the discussion of the A-list and the hierarchies and the inequalities mirrored in the "virtual" world, as they exist in the real one. It's a topic that doesn't bring out the best in anyone.

Cheers to those who are at least admitting of the inequality. I find that more intellectually honest than warm and fuzzy and vacuous notions of an egalitarian "flat" world brought to us courtesy of our ingenious use of technology. In a world that isn't flat, certain forms of advancement are achieved by competing with your fellow human beings, and there are a number of ways of doing that, some more ennobling than others, and many, far less.

If anything, the internet and larger economic trends portend a future that is even more competitive than the present. In some respects, that may be fairer; but I think it also has the potential to be uglier. So, call me a pessimist.

The tag-line of this effort is from the movie Groundhog Day, and it's something of a personal reminder to me.

A lot of what is written about in the "blogosphere," (which is such a diverse thing now, one ugly neologism can't begin to capture it all) is a form of advocacy as various thought leaders and opinion makers compete with one another to "make the world a better place." That's why we get "metaphors" like "markets are conversations," and defiant manifestos that declare that the age of brain-dead marketing is over, thanks to our technology-enabled, newly empowered collective "wisdom of the crowd," and let's not forget "smart mobs."

Yet marketing hasn't changed. It can't. It's competitive. Each marketer must seek an advantage over all other marketers in seizing attention, which is why marketers respect nothing. Is The Purpose Drive Life an effort to "change the world," or is it a marketing effort to make someone wealthy? You can decide for yourselves, but I'll tell you that I don't think it's going to change the world any more than The Cluetrain Manifesto has changed marketing.

Groundhog Day doesn't make the world a better place. What I write here, day to day, doesn't make the world a better place. The only way I make the world a better place is when I "don't drive angry."

I spent a lot of time reading a lot of books and I learned a few things about being, perhaps, a better person. But none of those books made the world a better place. The only time the world is a better place is when I remember some of the things I think I learned from those books, and I "don't drive angry."

"Driving angry" is an apt reminder for me, because that was the first place I noticed that I was an angry person. In many ways, I still am. Each time I get behind the wheel, I have to remember to pay attention to what's going on inside me, and that's when I get a chance to make the world a better place.

Sometimes, I don't do so well. I flipped a guy off this morning who cut me off and then later on, when I had come abreast of him to make a left-turn, and he wanted me to let him in front of me so he could pass a disabled vehicle, I flipped him off and didn't let him in. It wouldn't have hurt me to let him in, but I was pissed because he made a left turn into a middle turn lane, then jammed his car between me and the truck in front of me when there were no cars behind me all the way to the last light. It was a stupid, selfish thing to do, but I don't know where his mind was at. Maybe he was preoccupied with problems at home. That would be an experience familiar to me. Or maybe he was just a selfish dick. I didn't know. If he was someone already struggling with a difficult day in a difficult life, not letting him in and flipping him off probably didn't make him a better person, it certainly didn't ease any of his burdens. And I know it didn't make me a better person. So, sometimes I fuck up.

A lot of the crap I've read recently criticizing the critics of the "A-list," calling them "whiners" and dismissing their criticism with a wave of the hand and "nobody cares," really makes me angry.

So I have a choice. I can give in to what is a very powerful urge to indulge my anger and say some very unkind things about someone who has made me angry in a way that would give me a great deal of pleasure and which is, sad to say, too much my habit. Or, I can let it go.

Which do you think "makes the world a better place?"

And if you count yourself among those who, like me, believe the world is unequal and unfair and very likely always will be, isn't the better response to that to be kinder and more charitable to those with whom we disagree? If there's "nothing we can do" about inequality, maybe there's something we can do with how we treat one another.

So you can write your books, and write your blogs and draft your manifestos and proclaim how this idea or that is "changing the world," but I think the most you'll be changing is the idea of what the most popular notions of the moment are.

You can hawk your wares, promote your products, make a lot of money and do other "interesting" things online, but I hope you'll forgive me if I don't believe you're "changing the world." You may be changing the scenery, but I don't think you're changing the world.

In the end, I'm not sure you change the world by competing with other people. Mostly I think you change the world by competing with yourself, to try to be the better person you think you might be.

But what do I know? If I'm so smart, why ain't I rich?

No Comment

I wished to respond to a post on Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void weblog, but when I tried to post my comment I got this helpful error message:

Oh Dear! It seems my comment spam filter doesn't like what you wrote... probably one of the words you used is also used a lot by spammers, and therefor has been banned. Just type in the word "test" and enter, to see if it's working, and it should be fine.

Type in the word "test" where, exactly? To see if what's working? I'm baffled. I have no idea what word is causing the problem.

Here's what I tried to post, at least it'll appear here. It's probably important to read the preceding comments to understand this one, so my apologies for the non sequitur nature of this post. If someone could bring it to the relevant parties' attention, I'd be most grateful:

"If that voice becomes influential, then great. If not, then does it matter?"

It matters if it's right.

The problem is that what's right is often not what's popular.

Popular is usually more influential.

Always charming, Shel and Hugh, to see reasoned criticism dismissed as "whining," and "unfair" at that, with an implied criticism that he's just doing it for the attention. Well done, gentlemen. Is it just me, or is there something "unfair" about that? Should I wait for the rest of the blogosphere to rush to Seth's defense here, or is it just going to be me?

Lest anyone think I'm part of some "sour grapes" crowd, I don't track my traffic, have no means to check and I don't care. I punch above my weight because I don't agree with many of the popular myths framing the debate, not because I desire attention from legions of people I'll never meet.

What goes around, comes around...

I'm not sure what it may be an indication of, but there does seem to be something ironic about Jon Garfunkel's 14,000 word series entitled The New Gatekeepers, published last May, being displaced in its Google rank by Tristan Louis' roughly 1200 word post (6000 characters according to Smultron) post of the same name.

Is the "authority" of the "new gatekeepers" pushing Tristan ahead of Jon?

Or is it just the "meritocracy" of the blogosphere?

Beats me, but I don't use scare quotes for nothing.

This'll Be Good Too

Dan Gillmor had replied to Frank Paynter's post at his weblog. He does not respond to Seth Finkelstein's post, dispelling any obligation to do so with this:

Frank, notwithstanding his disclaimer, Seth's comments strike me as classic "When did you stop beating your wife?" I respect Seth and his work a great deal, but I'm not going to engage in a discussion framed this way at the outset.

One of the ballsy, brash, boastful and arrogant slogans that opens The Cluetrain Manifesto is this:

We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings - and out reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.

Dan Gillmor is a journalist, formerly of the San Jose Mercury News. I don't live in California and I'd never read the Mercury News, so Dan Gillmor first came to my attention when Dave Winer set him up with an early version of his Frontier-based weblog hosting and content management system, which I believe Mr. Gillmor used in connection with a course or a seminar on journalism that he offered in China. Dave Winer mentioned Mr. Gillmor's name often, which, I suspect, helped to bring him to the attention of the wider web world, particularly the early adopters and the very geeky.

Today Mr. Gillmor is noted for his efforts in "citizen journalism." I won't pretend to know what that means, but then I don't know what "advisory board" means either. But if I had to guess, I'd guess that "citizen journalism" has something to do with new technology giving the average person the ability to perform many of the functions of professional journalists and mainstream media publications. To include, one might believe, interviewing figures in the "news" regarding topics of current interest. Presumably, he regards these as "goods," or "virtues" and is something of an advocate for them; but again, I could be framing this incorrectly because I don't really know what "citizen journalism" is. It may just be a way for Mr. Gillmor to make a buck.

The "when did you stop beating your wife" dodge that Mr. Gillmor invokes here, is from the "old media" and the sometimes unsavory efforts of journalists looking for attention to frame questions in a way that the answer is unflattering for the respondent no matter what they say.

So let's unpack the relevant portions of Seth's comment and see where he's accusing Mr. Gillmor of "beating his wife."

I'm getting fascinated by how this whole A-list/start-up ecosystem functions. As far as I can make out, it goes like this:

This is an expression of interest, and a reference to the relationship ("ecosystem") between two seemingly unrelated entities, high attention-earning webloggers ("A-list") and entrepreneurs ("start-up").

Seth is describing what he observes in the wider world. A-listers do travel to conferences and they do attract attention. I'm not sure "accumulate" is the word I would use in connection with attention. What is "accumulated," or perhaps more accurately, "cultivated" is reputation. But that's beside the point. Nothing offensive here, it's merely an observation.

With regard to remuneration, like a fellowship or a grant, again some of the A-listers do receive these from organizations like Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, to which I believe Dan Gillmor is currently affiliated. To my knowledge, Mr. Gillmor is currently self-employed in some capacity, he's no longer on the payroll of the Mercury News.

Again, I don't see anything offensive here. It would be interesting to see how many Berkman fellows are on advisory boards of start-ups, and whether the affiliation occurred before or after becoming a fellow; and the percentage of Berkman fellows who become members of advisory boards compared with unaffiliated high attention-earning webloggers (we could argue about an arbitrary number here, but I'd say if the population of current and former Berkman fellows is n, then use the Technorati Top n , perhaps adjusted for those blogs that aren't clearly identified with an individual blogger, but I know less about statistics than I do about "citizen journalism.")

The start-up gives the A-lister options, and a small measure of status. In return, the A-lister gives the company a measure of credibility, and some of the accumulated attention.

Here Seth describes the presumed quid pro quo. This is probably the nut of Mr. Gillmor's objection. Presumably, the whole "advisory board" thing is supposedly to be taken at face value. Members serve on a board that "advises." Seth is overtly challenging that presumption, and is offering an alternative, and, to my mind, more accurate description of the what is exchanged in the relationship.

There's nothing legally, ethically, or morally wrong with Seth's description, it's just a little unseemly, mostly because of the "advisory board" fiction that is used to gloss the transaction.

If the company crashes and burns, as most do, well, the attention and status exchanged was mutually beneficial.

Seth is describing one potential outcome, and the fact that there is no downside for the A-lister. They have no real "skin" in the game, and perhaps even received some additional bump in their reputation by being affiliated with a number of start-ups as an "advisor." (I wonder if anyone is tracking the record of start-ups and their associated "advisors." There's probably an opportunity for a new division of Technorati, "the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs." They could rank advisors with the best track records for their "advised" start-ups going on to success or acquisition, thereby assisting future start-ups in picking "winners." )

If the company hits big, as happens, but rarely, then it's payday all around.

Again, the upside outcome that is win-win for both parties. Nothing offensive here.

Have I got it right?

An invitation to respond, to refute, clarify or agree with Mr. Finkelstein's description.

Which Mr. Gillmor declines to do, without explanation other than offering an old dodge that does little more than indicate that Mr. Gillmor feels uncomfortable with Seth's description.

Again, if all these "advisory board" relationships were so "transparent," we'd hear a lot more about them. The fact that Mr. Gillmor dodged the question merely adds to the growing perception that there's something unseemly about them.

What is unseemly is that they are little more than endorsements, with high attention-earning webloggers trading on their reputations for the chance for a potential, probably modest, payoff. Since the start-up is likely to fail, since the payoff is likely to be small, and since there is a never-ending source of new start-ups hoping to garner a little attention and enhanced reputation by basking in reflected glory, high attention-earners would seem to prefer preserving their dignity by calling their relationships with start-ups "advisory boards," and not "endorsements."

The fiction is corrosive and corrupting.

Dave Weinberger is a member of Technorati's advisory board and an author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which demands marketers treat people with respect for their intelligence. Technorati is as cynically manipulative in its marketing as any Madison Avenue branding house. So one has to wonder what the nature of the "advice" is Dave provides to Technorati. Dave says that blogs and bloggers shouldn't be judged by how many people read them, but that's how Technorati made its reputation, by promoting its "ranking by authority" scheme. So Dave's beliefs, which have been the basis for his positive reputation, are inoperative when it comes to his relationship with Technorati. Dave says Dave Sifry is his friend, and maybe that's true, but I think Dave Sifry's company is doing damage to Dave Weinberger's reputation for its own gain. With friends like that...

Dan Gillmor is an advocate of "citizen journalism." But when he's on the receiving end of that "citizen journalism" looking into the nature of his relationships with commercial entities, he invokes the same cheap dodge used by crooked politicians. Seth's description of what the nature of the relationship is and how it functions seems uncomfortably close to the truth, and so Mr. Gillmor dodges the question. So much for the cherished belief in "citizen journalism" that has established Mr. Gillmor's reputation.

Technology does not change human nature. It changes how we do things, it doesn't change what we do.

We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings - and out reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.

Be careful what you wish for.

BSG: It's Darker in Space

Heads up: This episode contained a "surprise," so this post will spoil that surprise if you've haven't seen the episode yet.

This was the first episode of Battlestar Galactica that I haven't liked. None has been perfect, but their virtues have consistently outweighed their defects.

This episode dealt with terrorism, fear and the desire for revenge. As such, it's a fairly topical theme. The show has consistently dealt with topical themes and usually has done so in a way that helps propel the overall arc of the series. This one sort of fell flat in that regard, and it included a gratuitous shock that felt like a false note.

A woman whose husband was killed in one of the cylon raids against the fleet learns that Galactica has a cylon aboard. She fears this cylon presence and feels that its continued existence is a threat to the entire fleet. She is also, to some extent, motivated to avenge the death of her husband. She wants the cylon killed. To that end, she and several others, including her brother in law, plot to seize the lounge aboard the luxury liner of the fleet, Cloud Nine, knowing there will likely be several high-value hostages among the patrons.

Apollo is at the lounge along with Dualla. This is the first of the false notes. Since the mini-series, the story line has been about the budding romance between Dualla and Billy, President Roslin's personal aide. Since Resurrection Ship, the second half of the second half of the season's premiere (I know that's confusing, but it's a confusing schedule), there's been this implied, surprise relationship between Dualla and Apollo. I suppose that could mirror real life, where people are sometimes involved with one another that we'd never expect, but it just rings false in this context. Apollo had a relationship with a woman killed on Caprica, he's been involved to one degree or another with Starbuck, and he's been seeing a prostitute in the fleet as well. He's a pretty busy guy, I guess. Also problematic is that Apollo is regular navy, and relationships between officers and enlisted are generally forbidden, which is what eventually ended the relationship between Chief Tyrol and the first Sharon. So I don't really see Apollo pursuing an overt relationship with Dualla that would complicate their already over-complicated lives even further. But I guess the writers saw it differently.

So here in the lounge we have Apollo, ADM Adama's son, Ellen, the XO's wife, Dualla, and Billy. There's an uncomfortable moment where Billy learns Dualla is aboard Cloud Nine with Apollo, and he now thinks he understands why Dualla turned down his marriage proposal earlier in the episode.

Apollo leaves Billy and Dualla to say various things to one another and goes to the bar where he begins to twig to the conspiracy by spotting a gun in the waistband of of the widow's pants. Checking out a widow's pants. I guess he does get around. He tries to get Ellen out of harm's way by taking her into the head, with Ellen thinking he's looking for a little action. The hostage taking thing goes down, the lounge is sealed off and Apollo manages to fool the CO2 sensor with Ellen's cocktail to make the terrorists think they're running out of oxygen. Ellen runs out to try to help out by making herself another hostage. Apollo gets the upper hand on the goon sent to make sure there wasn't anyone else hiding in the bathroom. There's the usual Mexican standoff and Apollo blinks first because the widow recalls he was there with Dualla and so she threatens to shoot her unless he drops his weapon. *Yawn.*

As luck would have it, former Galactica Top Gun LT Kara Thrace, callsign Starbuck, is aboard the Cloud Nine along with three or four colonial marines. They used the CO2 problem as a ruse to get Thrace into the lounge posing as a repair tech, leaving the lounge door open a little to let more oxygen in. Starbuck's cover is blown as she's reaching for her concealed handguns, the firing ensues, the marines dive under the door but are already under fire, Starbuck fires hitting one terrorist, sees another figure diving, fires, and realizes she's just hit Apollo.

As if we haven't had enough drama and trauma with these two already.

Two of the marines are killed, one is hit in the leg getting Starbuck out, and we're back to square one with three less living human beings in the rag-tag fleet.

Dualla rushes to Apollo, tells Billy to get shirts or something to use for bandages and tries to stop the bleeding. Apollo is badly wounded and out of the game. Billy moves to help and a terrorist threatens to shoot him. Billy, who's been getting to be very assertive in this episode, says if Apollo dies, they won't get what they want from Adama. So they relent and Billy helps Dualla save the life of his rival.

You see where this is going, don't you?

Okay, I'll spare you all the rest of the plot, but in the final resolution of the hostage crisis, the widow orders someone to shoot Dualla, Billy grabs a gun, shooting Dualla's would-be killer, Billy gets shot by a terrorist, the marines storm in, (from where?), shoot all the bad guys and Dualla is left crying over Billy saying she needs help.

The bastards. They killed Billy.

For what? I hope it's because the guy playing Billy had a better offer.

I never thought they did enough with his character, but he seemed like the voice of conscience and innocence from time to time. Coming, as it does, on the heels of Roslin's deus ex machina deliverance from breast cancer, killing Billy in this hokey, contrived way just rings false.

Nice scene with Roslin over Billy in the morgue.

Episode sucked.

It's darker in space now.

Maybe Not

Frank Paynter's comment at Dan Gillmor's weblog hasn't prompted any reply from Mr. Gillmor as of this typing (9:00 AM, 11 Feb 06). It's been up about 36 hours. Of course, it hasn't garnered much attention either. Technorati reports that nobody has linked to it, while Bloglines at least notes that I linked to it, and we all know that Technorati is the authority on what's going on in the blogosphere, so I guess nobody else but me and Frank (Frank and I?) have noticed it.

I commented over at Dave Weinberger's weblog on the post he put up regarding the WSJ piece, which has received favorable attention from the mutual admiration society (his post, not my hard question). Dave normally engages with commenters, but not so much this time. Same cybernetic silence.

So if a comment falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does anyone... I don't know, where was I?

Frankly, if this "advisory board" business didn't have some stink attached to it, we'd be hearing more about it, other than stony silence whenever someone raises a question, or some manufactured righteous indignation and ersatz umbrage whenever a mainstream media person looks at it. It's a fig leaf to hold up in the name of "disclosure" whenever they have deliver some pro quo for their daily quid. "Transparency through obscurity."

Money talks and bullshit walks. Maybe if we paid these guys, they'd answer our questions; but then they'd probably only tell us what they think we want to hear. I doubt anyone will notice, but I love the way the Cluetrain guys are systematically discrediting the whole notion of the Cluetrain Manifesto far better than I ever have. "Authentic voices" and all that crap. Wooo-hooo!

Give me a break.

This'll Be Good

I pointed to Seth Finkelstein's comment at Dan "Citizen Media" Gillmor's blog yesterday and noted that it had been studiously ignored since it had been posted. (I've always found it difficult to carry on a conversation when the other party is ignoring me, but perhaps that's not true for "conversations," you know, the "metaphorical" kind.)

Anyway, Frank Paynter, who enjoys more street cred than me ("I?"), and maybe even Seth, I'm not sure, has commented as well, asking Mr. Gillmor to address Seth's comment. It's important to note that Seth was responding to Dan Gillmor before the Wall Street Journal story that has evoked all the righteous indignation and umbrage.

Since somebody was quoting the bard the other day, another bit of Shakespearian quotage comes to mind: Methinks thou dost protest too much.

39 Degrees

I turned the heat on last night. It got down into the 60s in here, and that's just a little too cool for me.

Bummer.

Karma's Bitch

I watch three TV shows regularly. Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, and My Name is Earl. (I catch Monk as I remember to.)

Tonight's My Name is Earl was excellent.

It'll never be great art, and some will disdain its "simplistic" moralism. But I like it.

And I know what it feels like to be Karma's bitch.

;^)

Disclose what?

There's a lot being written about bloggers, blogging, start-ups, "advisory boards" and "disclosure."

I've enclosed the last two terms in scare quotes because these two terms are bandied about as if everyone already knows what they mean, though I'm not so sure.

I'm pretty sure I've asked this question before, and never read an answer anywhere. What, exactly, is an "advisory board?" Are there meetings? Is there an agenda where various items of potential advice are discussed, debated and then voted upon? Are there minutes? Is the company obliged to take the advice of the advisory board? Has any member of an advisory board resigned because their advice wasn't taken? What is the quid pro quo between the company and the members of the board?

In a remarkable display of candor, some the A-listers are admitting that there is, you know, some, *cough* money *cough* involved at some point, if everything goes the way everyone would like it to, which isn't always. But, we're also told to believe that some just do it because they love giving advice, or love has something to do with it. I'm not sure. I guess they'd do it, you know, for free, but only if they had the proper credentials as a member of an "advisory board," of course. Otherwise, it'd be like trying to throw advice over the transom, and who would take that seriously? Especially in the conversational blogosphere where markets are conversations. Except when conversations are really marketing. "It's so good to see you! Do you have life insurance?"

Seth Finkelstein has some pretty cogent thoughts on the matter. You'll note that the comment where he directly asked Dan Gillmor what the story was about these advisory boards has been studiously ignored. This is a common trait in the "conversational" blogosphere, which is really little more than "all marketing, all the time." At least it hasn't mysteriously disappeared in a "glitch."

37 degrees

And I still haven't turned my heat on.

Though it does make it a bit challenging to crawl out from beneath the covers in the morning.

One of the few advantages of having a middle unit.

More Dogs and Other Things

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I thought it was kind of fun. When we got to the vet, there was this four month old mixed-breed pup in the waiting area that really wanted to play with Mandy. It looked like it might have been part hound, part beagle, a pretty thing with long legs and a lovely head. Her name was Lulu. Mandy tolerated Lulu very well, but wasn't up for horsing around with her and her owner took her outside for a bit.

When they called Lulu back to the examining room, I noticed her owner had a hard time getting her to come back in through the door. And when she got to the door leading back to the examining rooms, she sat down and refused to budge. They were kind of struggling, trying to coax her rather than just pick her up and carry her, and it occurred to me that I could get her through the door. Or rather, Mandy could.

So I said, "Just a second." I got up and Mandy and I walked through the door and Lulu followed right behind Mandy. As soon as we stopped, Lulu looked around and sat down, not wanting to go anywhere unless Mandy was going there first. So we went all the way on back to the examining room with Lulu happily following Mandy through the door.

So that was kind of fun. I don't know what makes a pupply afraid of a door, but she was only too happy to follow Mandy through them. Mandy's got a couple of phobias of her own. She's very shy of storm drains and she skirts them while keeping her eyes on them as we take a walk; and she really doesn't like men with hats, which can be a problem in Florida in the summer. Other than that though, she's a doll.

My downstairs neighbor has a black Lab named Jazz. I looked after him for her when she had to take a short trip out of town. He's a sweetheart too. They'll often be returning from a walk as I'm leaving for work or just getting home from an errand, and Jazz runs up to me with his tail wagging and his big tongue hanging out. He's an older dog, about eight, and kind of a chunk. My neighbor has him on a diet, but he doesn't seem to lose any weight. Other than that though, she says he's always been in pretty good health.

Well, Saturday morning I was headed down to leave for TKD and I happened to see my neighbor with the dog, we'll call her "A" talking to one of my other neighbors, we'll call "N." N's standing by her car with her hood up. Turns out N's battery is dead and she needs a jump start. She's got a Chrysler Sebring convertible, and the battery is deep in the engine compartment, next to the left front tire. There are a couple of terminals identified in the engine compartment for a jump start, but it didn't look like a simple task to swap out the battery.

It turned out that I was the only guy with jumper cables. Mine are fairly short, and naturally my battery is on left side of the engine compartment as well. Fortunately, we had a couple of empty parking spaces next to N's car, so I was able to make an angled approach with A watching to make sure I didn't hit the Sebring. N had to be in the car because she wouldn't be able to open the driver's side door when I was close enough to make the connection.

So while we're doing all this maneuvering and what have you, A is telling me Jazz just had a seizure of some kind, and she was talking to N about emergency veterinary services. There wasn't much I could offer on that score, so I just expressed my concern and hope that it was nothing serious, got N's car started, left her my cables in case the car died again on her way to the dealer, and headed off to get my ass kicked.

Class was especially tough that day. Caitie bailed on me, so I was paired with someone my own size. Imagine my dismay. Actually, he was probably a good six inches taller, but I probably had 20 pounds on him. And, oh yeah, he's been doing this ground fighting thing for more than a year, and he was probably 20 years younger than me. I survived class with only a moderately hyper-extended elbow during free grappling when my partner dropped me and went into the arm bar a bit ballistically and far faster than I could tap out. I sat out the next round, and then finished up with two more rounds in the rotation with different partners.

I decided that the whole burrito and beer thing I had done a couple of weeks ago was actually a pretty nice little lunch. You know beer, it's the "other" sports drink! So I stopped by Sierra Grill, feeling about as exhausted and beaten up as I've ever felt in four years of doing this, and ordered the Southwest Burrito and a Corona. I didn't finish the whole burrito, those things are enormous. The beer was so good I wanted another, but I figured it would be better to just go home and get cleaned up. And then maybe curl up on the couch and cry myself to sleep.

I got back to the apartment just as N was arriving from getting her battery replaced. She gave me back my cables, and as she was telling me how much the dealer ripped her off, er, I mean, charged her to replace her battery, A pulls up with Jazz in the back of her SUV. He seemed okay. The emergency clinic had taken some blood samples and looked him over. Said it was probably not a big deal, but they'd do a work-up on the blood and see what they could find. We commiserated about more big bucks being expended. A and N were talking with another neighbor who had accompanied A to the vet, and I took Jazz for a little walk around the complex. We ran into a Golden Retriever that was much more blonde than I've ever seen a Golden. She was just a pup too and wanted to play, but Jazz wasn't up to it so we just be-bopped around a bit, and headed back to join the others.

While we were chatting, A looked over and noticed a flat tire on her other car. Fortunately, it was a nail in the tread, which is an easy fix. I told her we could just pull the tire, pop it into the back of the Explorer and she could stop off almost anyplace on her way to work and have it fixed, pick it up on her way home and we'd pop it back on, on Monday. She didn't want to mess with it just then, so I told her to just pound on my door Sunday and I'd take it off for her.

So Sunday comes and A shows up in the afternoon telling me that the wheel has locking lug nuts and she doesn't have the key. She called one of the complex maintenance guys to see if they had a compressor, but it was Super Bowl Sunday, and even if they did, I don't think they'd be coming around to help her out.

I, on the other hand, have a bicycle pump!

I'm here to report that you can pump up a car tire with a bicycle pump. It just takes a few more strokes. Well, maybe a lot more. And I let A help, because I'm not stuck on the male ego thing, and because I'm not a big fan of coronaries. We got it pumped up to the recommended pressure in fairly short order and I left her with the pump in case she needed to top it off before she drove off in it.

She said Jazz had been fine all day, and hadn't exhibited any other symptoms. She hadn't heard the results of the blood work yet, but no news was good news.

I went back up to my place, and later on I called my parents on iChat, just as the second half of the Super Bowl had started, and just in time for me to make my Dad miss that 75 yard touchdown run! He said he'd rather see me anyway, so I didn't feel so bad.

I saw A again yesterday when she returned my bicycle pump, tire fixed. Jazz, she said, was fine and it may have been just a singular event.

So I got back from karate tonight and I saw A walking down the sidewalk, just getting home from work. I remarked that she was getting home late, and no sooner did I set foot out of the Montero than this large black mass of fur and tongue came bounding out of the darkness and into my legs. I was happy to see the big guy, and he seemed pretty pleased to see me too; and I'm relieved that he seems to be none the worse for his little episode.

Ear of the Dog

Even though the family dog, Mandy, still resides with my kids and my ex-wife, I remain responsible for her veterinary care. That's something that was true for all our pets throughout my marriage and I guess it just carries forward afterward.

When our cat, Jaguar, managed to get himself stuck up in a tree, I was the one who went looking for him after nobody reported seeing him for a couple of days. It didn't take long, he was in a small wooded lot right behind the back fence, stuck up in a tree. Jag had no front claws, so while getting up a tree was obviously still possible, getting down seemed too challenging. As soon as I called him, he answered with a plaintive cry. Out came the extension ladder, and down came Jag. I would not recommend making a habit of using an extension ladder against a tree, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Some months later, I got a call at my apartment from my son around 10:00 PM, as I recall, reporting that Jag was stuck up a tree again. This time in the yard of our neighbors across the street. So back I went to the house, and out came the extension ladder. While I was fumbling around in the dark, trying to find a stable place to set the ladder and still reach the tree near Jaguar, I wondered if it wouldn't have been wise to alert my neighbors of my efforts, both of whom were Jacksonville Sheriff's Office police officers. I must not have been too worried, because I didn't bother to stop to tell them, and just went about getting the cat out of the tree.

Later, when Jag fell ill, I took him to the vet to find out what was wrong, only to find, several hundred dollars later, that there was nothing that could be done for him. So I was the one who had him put to sleep. I was the one who had put our family dog to sleep some years earlier. Both times, I was the one who cried with the kids over the loss of a beloved member of the family.

It's not a burden, I guess it's just my job. I'd ignore it, but then probably nothing would happen, and that's not fair to the animals.

A week ago last Saturday, I got a call from Chris that I needed to do something about Mandy's ear. He had mentioned that her ear was bothering her a few weeks before, but whenever I saw her she seemed fine to me, and when I looked in her ear, I didn't see anything alarming. Well, Chris was pretty adamant something was very wrong with her ear and she need to see the vet right away. So I told him I'd make an appointment first thing Monday.

I called the vet Monday morning and they gave us an appointment for Tuesday afternoon. I left work early and went home to pick Mandy up and take her to the vet. I figured I'd take her for a walk around the neighborhood before we left to let her have some exercise before getting in the car. Along the way, we stopped at Joe's house.

Joe is a male black Labrador Retriever. Back when I was living in the house while Maria was a public defender down in Melbourne, I used to walk Mandy nearly every day. I enjoyed it probably as much as she did. And we'd always stop by Joe's, because Joe was always outside, usually lying on the front porch. I'd let Mandy run with Joe for a bit, throw a few tennis balls for both of them, and then finish our walk.

As we were rounding the corner near Joe's, Mandy became visibly more excited. I always kind of wonder about dogs' memories, but it was pretty clear she recalled Joe. Sure enough, Joe was lying on the front porch and came up to greet Mandy and piss on his shrubbery. Joe's owner came to the door and said hi, and that she hadn't seen me in a long time. I told her I didn't live there anymore, but I had to take Mandy to the vet, so I wanted to take her for a walk around the neighborhood first. We couldn't stay long, we had to leave so we'd make our appointment on time.

Last time I took Mandy for her vaccinations, she wouldn't jump into the back of the Montero. She's only five or six years old, but back then she weighed close to 100 pounds, and I had to pick her up to put her in the back of the truck. She's lost quite a bit of weight since then, so I have to credit my ex-wife with that. I definitely over-feed my pets. But she still wouldn't jump into the truck, so I picked her up, and off to the vet we went.

We didn't have to wait very long, which is always nice; and Mandy is a very well-behaved, good-natured dog. I had no problems with her for the short time we were waiting. When we got back in the examining room, one of the assistants came in and took a look in her right ear and made a face. She stuck a swab down it and came up with a mass of grayish goo. Mandy never fussed. After she got the sample she went back to prep a slide with it. A few minutes later the vet came in and took a look in Mandy's ear and made a face too.

Turns out she has a pretty nasty bacterial infection. Something about rods and some other kind of microbial critter and having to treat it aggressively. So we did some irrigation, dropped some antibiotics in her ear, and then got some more pills to give her later on. She had to take two pills, twice a day for a week, plus eight drops of the liquid in her ear twice a day, and irrigation every other day. Mandy tolerated all that really well in the office, and I'm sure she would at home too. We made an appointment for the following week and headed for home.

When I got there, everybody was home, Maria, Chris and Caitie. I explained the prescriptions and what had to be done and everybody nodded their heads in the vertical plane.

So today came and I had to take Mandy back to the vet for a follow-up. We took another walk. Stopped by and said hello to Joe. Joe watered his shrubs. Today she was able to jump right into the back of the Montero, which was a pleasant surprise.

The doc asked me if she'd taken all her meds, and when I asked Chris yesterday if she had, he didn't answer in the affirmative right away. So my guess is, probably not. But the good news is, she was probably getting enough. Her ear is a much, much clearer and there was no sign of rods, which seemed the most important thing to the vet. But we still have to continue the same treatment until there is no sign of infection. So I got another set of meds, paid another fee, made another appointment for next week. She jumped right into the back of the truck, and we headed on back to the house.

When I got there I found the old pill bottle on the counter, with a heck of a lot of pills in it. I counted them, thinking perhaps I could return the one I had just been given, but there weren't quite enough for a full week. I explained to Chris that she was better, but she wasn't cured and we had to make sure the infection was totally cleared up before we could stop treating her. Hopefully, he'll make sure she gets her meds. It's kind of one of those things that if I'm not there...

Anyway, she's a great dog and I love her a lot. She's always glad to see me, which is more than I can say for some people, but that's okay too. She needs a bath, and I bought some Frontline flea treatment for her, that stuff isn't cheap either. Hopefully she'll get a bath soon, and someone will brush her coat real well for her. The vet's assistant trimmed her toenails for us. She's put on a few pounds since the first visit, but that might be a result of feeling better, she's still at a healthy weight for her size now.

Next week, I hope to hear that her ear is all cleared up.

So that was it. This is not a blog, and that was not a cat post.

The Unrelenting Progress of Science!

"Know thyself," said Thales. Because marketers probably already know more about you than you do.

And they're only going to know more.

Truthiness: By the Numbers

If a blog fell in the woods, and nobody counted how often the blogger posted, how many people linked to it, how many comments it had, how many trackbacks were made, and how many advertising links were clicked on, would it still be a blog?

Mike Warot agreed, in what he termed was a "gut reaction," with Ethan Johnson's post regarding Dave Sifry's "State of the Blogosphere" post.

Then Mike went on to offer some ideas for correctives to Technorati's flawed assessment that link quantity relates somehow to authority, suggesting more meta-data be added to posts so that the "truth" might be more easily discovered.

I'd say, let it go. Counting things is sometimes useful, and let it not be said that I'm not in favor of counting things. Of course, people will still count things. It's the competitive spirit. "My count is better than your count, so pay attention to me."

Sometimes the truth is revealed by counting things. But sometimes numbers obscure the truth as much as reveal it. Even if we were all to follow Mike's suggestions, would the results reveal the truth as it is, or merely the truth of how much we feel that what we want to believe ought to be the truth? If 85% of all links to The Cluetrain Manifesto were tagged as 100% Agreement, would that make it "true?"

It's part of the good old, "We've got the charts and graphs to prove it, so back off!" schtick. It's not enough to speak the truth anymore, you have to have some numbers on your side, so that your authority can be ranked and compared with others. But if you don't know exactly what you're counting, or if you willfully misrepresent what the things you're counting mean, then you're no closer to the truth than you were before you started, perhaps even farther from it. Though you may have persuaded a few people, or a lot, of your truthiness.

I'd say it's probably a fool's errand to turn the internet into a latter day Oracle at Delphi. Not that that's going to stop anyone from trying.

Truthiness: Lies, Damn Lies, and Technorati's Numbers, er, I Mean, Statistics

Ethan Johnson challenges the authority of the authority on what's going on in the blogosphere and asks readers to link to his post if we agree.

I agree.

Competing Messages: Cinéma Therapy

Here are three audio clips from the movie this "non-blog" is named after.

In the first, we hear protagonist Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, in an exchange with an employee of the bed and breakfast he is staying at. In this context, Phil is being engaged by an employee, a commercial context. Phil doesn't recognize it as a social exchange, nor would he know what to do even if he did, he's so out of touch with his own self.

In the second clip, we hear Phil encountering Ned Ryerson. (As an aside, some have speculated that Ned is also a person stuck in a repeating Groundhog Day, perhaps explaining how much he knows about Phil.) This, to my mind, is a logical extension of the "markets are conversations," metaphor. No purely social interaction takes place here, and what passes for social interaction is merely "artifice" to use a word Dave Weinberger likes.

In the last clip, we hear Phil engaged in an actual conversation, a social exchange. It is true that Phil wants something, he wants Rita's attention for the day. But he's not resorting to artifice, he's resorting to the truth. What Phil relates to Rita is the product of listening. Again, to be sure, much of that listening was first performed in an act of artifice, to gain a competitive advantage over Rita. But this is Phil after being rejected by Rita over and over again, and after countless "deaths," all of which served to extinguish Phil's ego and his penchant for inauthentic artifice in the service of competition.

This is what a conversation sounds like:

If you've never seen the movie, it's worth your time.

Colbert Again

Stephen Colbert and "truthiness" are in the news again this week. This time in Newsweek.

Sometimes the synapses are slow to fire in my aging cerebrum, but when I read the Newsweek piece, the appeal of "truthiness" became clear to me. What Colbert is lampooning from the likes of O'Reilly, Limbaugh and others, is the same kind of stuff we get from Scoble, The Cluetrain™ authors, and others. It's not the truth, it's the stuff that ought to be the truth, if you happen to share their point of view.

Witness the Wrath of the Mac Zealots!

Jon Udell wrote a piece criticizing Apple and its iTunes media player. Often, any criticism of Apple will evoke an emotional response by some Mac users who will attack the person instead of the criticism.

So when Doc Searls pointed to Mr. Udell's follow-up post with the phrase, "wrath of Mac zealots," I clicked on the link expecting to see name-calling and juvenile behavior, wondering if it might be an example of a "smart mob," or "the wisdom of the crowd."

Alas, when I got to the piece, actually entitled "The wrath of the Mac zealots," there was no wrath to be found, nor any sign of zealotry. Just some rational responses to Mr. Udell's criticism, and a nit-picker complaining about the creation-myth of the internet. So, I guess if one doesn't agree with Mr. Udell, then one is a zealot, and any response is an example of extreme anger.

Which leads me to wonder if I shouldn't title this post, "The Idiocy of the Internet Punditry?" It might not be true, I don't know if Mr. Udell is an idiot or not, but it sure would make good copy (and, by extension, linkage). The real downside of this post, though, isn't a missed opportunity for an appropriate title; rather, it's the fact that I'm directing some attention Mr. Udell's way. One might observe that it's negative attention, but that's merely an abstraction. In the internet world, any attention is good, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Competing Messages: A Tale of Two Laptops

I was going to write a long post about this, but I'm tired and there are other things I'd rather do.

Apple Computer is introducing its new Mac Book Pro, which is refreshing if only for the pedestrian name. It's pretty clear no marketing genius thought that one up, and we should be grateful for small favors.

Anyway, Apple took some criticism from folks like Robert Scoble who would really, really, you know, totally buy the Mac Book Pro, except it doesn't support conventional PCMCIA cards. Instead, they built in a newer standard card slot, as have several other manufacturers building on the Intel Core Duo platform, which isn't compatible with Robert's latest gizmo which he just bought but now totally can't live without. So, it seems that Apple is trying to push the user community into the future, and some of the leading lights of the blogosphere are saying, "No! Slow down! Legacy peripherals! Legacy peripherals!"

Meanwhile, there's this guy from MIT named Negroponte, not the guy who's in charge of our all-seeing, all-knowing international and domestic spy apparatus, but an MIT guy who wants to build a $100.00 laptop to bridge the "digital divide" between the developed and the developing world.

And my impression is that the leading lights of the blogosphere are 100% behind this effort. In effect saying, "Faster! Faster!"

That was supposed to be the dramatic contrast. But I'm tired and lazy.

I was watching NBC Dateline's report about their sting operation against online pedophiles tonight before BSG. Pretty alarming and depressing and outrageous (In the more traditional sense of the word, not the marketing sense of the word).

I was thinking of Mr. Negroponte's $100.00 laptops while I was watching that report.

But the prospect of bringing an even larger pool of potential victims to the attention and access of wealthy and bored westerners wasn't what had me kind of down about the $100.00 laptop initiative.

I was also kind of recalling the history of missionaries who would bring the word of God to the various savage and barbaric peoples of the world. Now, that's a complicated story, and I don't want to give the impression that I think everything the missionaries did was bad. Some of it was good. But I think the general consensus is that the effect on the cultures of indigenous peoples was not an altogether benign one. But the missionaries were full of their faith, and were acting out of the goodness of their hearts in what they genuinely believed were the best interests of the people they served.

Kind of like the folks who want to deliver $100.00 laptops to people who otherwise couldn't afford one. Only their faith isn't in God or a particular religion, unless you think that the worship of technology approaches a religious practice. I'm not sure if it does or it doesn't, but I think it's an open question.

And I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that all that western technology is going to have some effect on the culture of the people who receive them. Some of those effects will likely be good, others perhaps not so good.

I must not get around enough, because I'm sure somewhere in the enlightened realms of the blogosphere there's a thoughtful analysis of the pros and cons of introducing a disruptive technology to a culture that hasn't had an opportunity to adapt to it in the normal course of technological progress. I just haven't found it.

And I'm not someone who's in favor of keeping people in the dark, or withholding from them a potential solution to many problems. I'd just like to see where we've kind of learned some of history's lessons and how we've incorporated them into our master plan for global digitization. Because the impression I have is that mostly we're all about cheerleading, such is our faith in the rightness of our vision.

And it occurs to me that it may be utterly beside the point. Even if we were to try to examine the lessons of history and apply them to an effort like this, it probably would be in vain. Because if one group decided that perhaps some restraint was called for, another competing group would proceed. Because it's not a strictly planned, volitional process. It's an emergent process, to use a word that all the cool kids like to use, wherein the dominant group within any community of groups will endeavor to spread its values to the members of the other groups, in effect competing with them. Competing with their values and their culture, subordinating them to the dominant culture. And maybe that's a good thing. I mean, I certainly don't think it's a smart mob that's rioting over some cartoon images.

But I don't know.

Fortunately, the internets are filled with people who do know. And they'll tell you. You don't even have to ask them.

So I shouldn't feel obliged to harsh anyone's buzz on this. I should just sit back and enjoy the ride, in all its emergent reality.

But I did take a perverse delight this evening in Apollo's utterance that "Bright and shiny futures are overrated," after thinking of $100.00 laptops in the hands of children all over the world, and the pedophiles who would be looking forward to loosely joining those small pieces.

BSG: 2/3 Best Line

"Bright and shiny futures are overrated."

Excellent episode.

Competing Messages: The End of Business as Usual

It seems like Doc is tired of the "conversation," and wants to move on.

That's fine, I suppose. It takes two people to have a conversation, only one to rant. I rant well.

Doc may move on, but the rest of us are all stuck with "markets are conversations," which has given permission to a generation of marketers to intrude even more into whatever remaining social space there was to deliver their commercial pitches. The Cluetrain Manifesto made that legitimate.

I've asked, unrhetorically I might add, what do marketers respect? I've seen no answer. I suspect, I fear, the answer is nothing, though no marketer wishes to admit it. For any marketer to identify a boundary, a limit, would cede to their competitors an advantage, and markets are more about competition than they are about conversation.

Dave Weinberger, another co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, said the other day that he doesn't think we should evaluating blogs and bloggers by how many people read them. Technorati, it would seem, disagrees.

Doc and Dave usually disclaim any posts they make regarding Technorati by saying Dave Sifry is a friend of theirs, and they serve on "board of advisors" for Technorati. Yet Technorati's marketing is as cynical, manipulative, and "un-Cluetrainish" as any other company's. So what advice do Doc and Dave provide, and is any of it taken? Where is the evidence of "the end of business as usual" at Technorati?

For what it's worth, everything is "the end of business as usual." Except that part about human nature, that pretty much remains a constant. Though it seems our heads are getting bigger. (Thanks, Hal.)

There was something I read the other day that partly explains why Doc and Dave are able to ignore Technorati's marketing messages. Here are a couple of paragraphs:

The investigators used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to study a sample of committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. The Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking.

The concluding paragraph:

The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making, Westen says. "Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,' " Westen says.

By all means, read the whole thing. I'm sure it's not a surprise to anyone, but it never seems to factor in our thinking very much. We'd all prefer to believe we're cool, dispassionate rational thinkers.

Thales said, "Know thyself." We still don't. Some people though, know us only to well, and use that knowledge against us to manipulate us in order to achieve a competitive advantage.

It's also why weblogs aren't about "making and changing minds," unless it's something trivial, like one's opinion about a particular event, or product.

It seems to me that there are three spheres of human interaction, and they all touch one another and intersect to some degree, but they must remain separate spheres for a civilization to function. (There's that idea about "boundaries" again.)

There's a social sphere, where we interact with one another because it's rewarding and healthy to do so. We're social creatures. In this sphere, competition exists, but unless it's being manipulated by authorities from one of the other spheres, it doesn't predominate.

There's a commercial sphere, where we engage in economic activity, and in our society, that is mostly based on the notion of competition.

The third sphere is the civic sphere, where our actions are directed toward those activities that are essential for maintaining a functioning civilization. We write laws, enforce them, and regulate, to some degree, the worst excesses of competition in the commercial sphere. Competition figures in this sphere as well.

There's a fourth sphere, and it too is corrupted by commercialism and competition, but more about that some other time.

In my opinion, today things are out of balance. The commercial sphere has become the center of gravity, and the social and civic spheres are orbiting and shrinking around the commercial sphere. Marketers are the people most responsible for enabling that, by blurring the boundaries, by mixing the messages, by inuring people to the misuse and corruption of important ideas by making them part of a marketing message. "It's just marketing."

The political parties today focus more on competing with one another for political authority than they do on ideas of governance. And what ideas of governance they do embrace, are mostly designed to secure the support of their own constituencies than they are to promote a larger public interest, turning their civic responsibilities into commercial opportunities. The commercial sphere exploits this in order to promote its own interests. We can outsource burials at sea, because it's cheaper. We haven't yet, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone hasn't already proposed it. You can't pay me to care, but caring isn't a "core competency." Disposal of cremains is, and isn't that the "bottom line?"

Doc and Dave and Chris Locke thought they were writing something that told marketers how empowered, networked individuals made their messages and methods obsolete, powerless. Instead, they merely furthered the aims of marketers by blurring the lines between the social and the commercial spheres. "Markets are conversations," is one of the most corrosive ideas ever popularly embraced, in my opinion.

Marketers can't fix this problem, because they must compete with one another. Doc and Dave won't take Technorati to task for promoting the Top 100, won't advise Technorati to just do away with the whole ranking mechanism, because Dave is a friend of theirs. They won't tell Technorati to drop the claim that it is "the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs," while at the same time disclaiming any responsibility for their service because they don't see that as devaluing the notion of authority. Which is why TV doctors can sell coffee and fake presidents can ignore the law with impunity. Authority is decoupled from responsibility, and it's all simply a matter of who shouts the loudest on TV, whose weblog gets the most links, or who has the most emotionally appealing message. Doc and Dave don't see themselves as responsible for promoting that state of affairs.

Maybe they're not. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're all about to embark on an internet-enabled technological, social, political and commercial renaissance, where "wirearchies" will replace hierarchies and a transhumanist utopia will make all our material problems disappear, leaving only the spiritual ones. Maybe I'm just not getting the message.

Maybe.