Humanity is younger than global warming and the conditions that cause and have caused global warming.
As the world heats, the authorities among our relatively young species look for industries to blame and nations to blame – and we come up with formulas and needs for more formulas, all of which are based on economic legislation and policies. Kyoto stands as a high-profile example – as the entirety of the Kyoto proposal rests on economic foundations, with penalties targeted at western civilization and the industries that feed western civilization. The need to do something – the act of doing something defined in economic terms – is underscored by parades of scientists who state and restate that the planet is indeed getting hotter.
Questioning these financial formulas is seen in popular media and culture as illogical and as misinformed ranting. Cocktail conversation on the subject takes on a certain smug and unruly demeanor should one suggest that we are living in an unusually calm period in geologic history; that we are existing between ice ages and that snow during winter is not an entirely welcome occurrence for our frail species; that life on our blue planet benefits from the wobbly course of its orbit – with the poles tilting as they do – and that from time to time that wobbly orbit can slip a bit too far and turn our sweet blue planet deathly white; that the planet heats and cools through vents on land and undersea and in manners that we do not understand.
“Seemingly,” wrote Bill McGuire in The Guardian, “the fact that we are still within an interglacial period, during which the ice has largely retreated to its polar fastnesses, has been forgotten – and replaced with the commonly-held view that one good thing you can say about global warming is that it will at least stave off the return of the glaciers.”
The conversation tends to grow quiet when the facts arrive at the party. We are an incredibly fragile species – and one that holds desperately to its crutches. The drinks are put down on the coasters and the coats are summoned when these subjects are explored. We need to believe that we are special; that there is a wondrous place for us when we die; that our wildly fragile planet is ours alone to nourish or to destroy.
A recent video has emerged on the internet and has spread virally under this curiously anthropocentric banner of power and economics-based logic (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI). In the video, the narrator challenges the viewer to test the formula he has drawn up in four simple boxes. The quadrants point to a financial coaxing. Inaction will almost certainly lead to doom, as demonstrated in the Business 101-type rows and columns. One wonders how many other thorny global questions can be put down on graph paper.
And so we are left with a truth – the world is warming at present.
Can we create a cooler planet through economic incentives and investments? Even if we could, do we want to create an artificially air conditioned planet? The shortcomings in the above-mentioned video and in these questions are found in a dangerous ignorance of geologic time and history. Every 15,000 to 20,000 years, the planet cycles through a heating period – called an interglacial period – and we are nearing the end of one of these periods, according to the geologic record. When the heating ends, our orbiting rock starts to cool – and the earth will regress back to an ice age environment, where much of North America, Europe, and Asia will be covered in glaciers.
The geologic record points to frightening spikes in heating and cooling periods as well. An example of one of the more likely spikes we may witness is the ticking bomb that is Yellowstone National Park. One of the largest super-volcanoes in the world lies just beneath the surface of Yellowstone – and it is active. Recent reports in the press and in scientific journals have noted increases in this activity. Yellowstone’s last major eruption was 640,000 years ago – and it has been exploding with a fair amount of regularity every 600,000 years, so it can be argued that we are overdue. The ashes released from an eruption of this nature would significantly cool the planet and could hasten our return to an ice age.
Facts have a way of putting things in perspective. It is important to understand that we do not understand how the macro scales of the earth tilt. The planet is heating – but it is doing so through mechanisms and courses that we do not yet comprehend. It is important also to come to grips with the idea that we have not invented global warming and that its trends are not a byproduct of the relatively brief history of Homo sapiens.
In some circles, questions are being posed on whether or not the earth is a living organism – and the heating and cooling cycles may point to a larger behavior that can help us determine the broader nature of our host. Known as the Gaia Hypothesis, it states that “…the physical and chemical condition of the surface of the Earth, of the atmosphere, and of the oceans has been and is actively made fit and comfortable by the presence of life itself. This is in contrast to the conventional wisdom which held that life adapted to the planetary conditions as it and they evolved their separate ways.” If this hypothesis is proven correct, and if our host should become significantly warmer – mimicking the fundamentals of a fever – we may be in for a challenge that will transcend the collective weight of our currencies.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Reflections on a Declining Transit System and Our Origins
Our problem is with the switch.
This is announced through the train’s PA system. We are on a 7:22am train heading eastbound to Manhattan. A woman sitting across from me says something, but I am thinking about the switch. She is wearing a bulky wool coat and holding an earphone between her fingers – the other earphone is buried in her ear. She is looking at me peevishly.
“Were you talking to me,” I ask.
“What did they say? I missed it.”
“There’s a problem with a switch.”
“What does that mean?” She seems like an important person – has a satchel of documents and an expensive-looking scarf.
“It means you should probably get comfortable.”
The woman smiles awkwardly, stuffs the earphone back in her ear and closes her eyes. I listen to the hot air blowers and look out through the sparse trees at the small anonymous backyards. The land rises where it was altered to meet the tracks and the gray stones that swell below the tines and iron binding and the rails and our train upon the rails.
***
It is early December and we are having a bathroom done. Having a bathroom done means the original one must be torn apart. The gutted space – adorned in tufts of insulation and the snaking yaw of electrical cords and copper pipes – represents our only shower/bath. We do not live in one of those houses so common these days – one-to-one ratios of full baths to bedrooms, as if we are a country of mud-slung diuretic addicts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Manufacturing, Mining, and Construction Statistics – Americans spent $106 million in alterations among owner-occupied properties in 2006 alone. This investment is partly due to an antsy culture that is nourished on its need to perpetually improve itself. It is also due to the simple fact that the older spaces in question no longer functioned properly.
Now I am throwing some necessities in a bag – a washcloth, a pair of underwear, a towel. It is just after 9 pm on a Tuesday night and it is starting to snow. I will have to drive about three miles west to shower at the YMCA. I have never showered there and am certain it is a very public facility. I imagine there will be plenty of open space – of the bare form and comfort usually reserved for prisons; there will be men propped here and there in casual repose, in all uncomfortable manner of natural states and postures.
“I’m sure there are curtains or something,” my wife says.
“There aren’t going to be any curtains.”
“Well, there’ll be something – compartments or walls or something. The women’s showers have curtained stalls.”
I toss a balled pair of socks into my canvas bag, zip it shut. “Maybe I can shower in the women’s locker room then.”
She does not offer this as an option.
***
The switch is frozen and we are waiting on a technician.
Every year, winter is a new phenomenon to the New Jersey Transit train fleet and the infrastructure that supports that fleet. I watch a slouched and somewhat obese man playing Tetris on his cell phone and he somehow demonstrates my interest in making our mutual situation known more broadly. I take out my Blackberry and go to www.njtransit.com. I plan to find a phone number and to speak to somebody there about winter and what it means for both atmospheric temperatures and the ability for metallic objects – like rail lines and switches – to retain temperatures.
Metals are conductors. They are conduits – and this is why they are used in cooking and in electric wires and cables and in industrial plates and insulators and in hosts of known technologies in need of conductors. I plan to mention all of this to the customer service person – but there is a Contact Us link and when I click it I am taken to a screen of blank forms.
You can use this form to send feedback to NJ TRANSIT.
I am not interested in using a form to send feedback. I want to talk to somebody about hot and cold transference and atoms and what it means in metals – and in turn what that means for switches and rail lines and the trains that ride on rail lines. I want to talk about the technician’s tools in this instance and how one taps a frozen switch.
This cannot be accomplished in a form – and I see that the form’s purpose is found in the consolidation and disposability of thought.
***
The men’s locker room at the YMCA is locked. It is now 10 pm. This is my only option and – having banked on it – I have run myself harder than usual on the YMCA treadmills and machines, and I am a study in perspiration and the bacteria that build civilizations in perspiration.
“The locker room’s locked,” I tell a bored-looking desk attendant. The whole thing seems irritatingly appropriate – a locker room should be locked.
“You need a key,” he says.
“I realize that. How do I get one?”
“You give me your membership card and I give you a key.”
The key has an elastic band and I affix it to my wrist and shuffle off like some kind of inpatient. There should be a sign somewhere or some direction on the whole card-for-a-key program. It could be that I am in need of too many signs. That is possible. The routine compass that I so regularly consult has limited notches in the points between North and East and South and West. And getting lost is getting easier.
The temptation is to exist on a line between two points, but it is more accurate to understand that I am living in a pudding.
***
Japan operates its network of trains through numerous tactical challenges. The population in Tokyo alone – at 12.58 million people – is 53% larger than that of New York City. Tokyo boasts the most extensive urban railway network in the world, operating 101 passenger train lines in the service of the city alone. It is estimated that 20 million people use rail as their primary means of transport in the metropolitan area daily. Beyond the strain of population, Tokyo also must contend with the structural threat of earthquake tremors.
And Tokyo’s trains are on time daily – to the minute.
We have just creaked past the switch and have come to another stop. We are told that we must now wait for a westbound freight train. We are on an eastbound train, heading for New York City where the day is ticking by. Referencing New Jersey Transit’s 2005 statistics, average daily boarding at New York Penn Station is a mere 68,000 passengers.
68,000 > 20,000,000 and Freight > Homo Sapiens.
I am unable to discern these equations.
***
A strikingly hairy naked man is staring vacantly at the faucets he has just opened. The shower space is a simple rectangle – maybe ten feet wide by twenty feet deep, with shower heads spaced four feet apart on both walls. I drop my bag onto a small bench and take out my towel and balled socks and underwear and everything. The man looks at me and nods when I look at him directly.
“You might not get hot water from that one,” he says.
I am not interested in receiving any advice at the moment. There are borders and there are DMZs – and some people say that they are one and the same, but they are not. I am not a communal animal. This is uncomfortable for no other reason than our common anatomy is ugly.
I open the valves and the spray is almost immediately the right temperature. I step into it, let it rake and permeate and work its magic unhindered. I am comforted in the simple closure of the washcloth upon my face. It is warm and heavy and I am malleable, having come as far as I have from the waters and going now back to the water and to the wilderness of origin – piped as it is.
This is announced through the train’s PA system. We are on a 7:22am train heading eastbound to Manhattan. A woman sitting across from me says something, but I am thinking about the switch. She is wearing a bulky wool coat and holding an earphone between her fingers – the other earphone is buried in her ear. She is looking at me peevishly.
“Were you talking to me,” I ask.
“What did they say? I missed it.”
“There’s a problem with a switch.”
“What does that mean?” She seems like an important person – has a satchel of documents and an expensive-looking scarf.
“It means you should probably get comfortable.”
The woman smiles awkwardly, stuffs the earphone back in her ear and closes her eyes. I listen to the hot air blowers and look out through the sparse trees at the small anonymous backyards. The land rises where it was altered to meet the tracks and the gray stones that swell below the tines and iron binding and the rails and our train upon the rails.
***
It is early December and we are having a bathroom done. Having a bathroom done means the original one must be torn apart. The gutted space – adorned in tufts of insulation and the snaking yaw of electrical cords and copper pipes – represents our only shower/bath. We do not live in one of those houses so common these days – one-to-one ratios of full baths to bedrooms, as if we are a country of mud-slung diuretic addicts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Manufacturing, Mining, and Construction Statistics – Americans spent $106 million in alterations among owner-occupied properties in 2006 alone. This investment is partly due to an antsy culture that is nourished on its need to perpetually improve itself. It is also due to the simple fact that the older spaces in question no longer functioned properly.
Now I am throwing some necessities in a bag – a washcloth, a pair of underwear, a towel. It is just after 9 pm on a Tuesday night and it is starting to snow. I will have to drive about three miles west to shower at the YMCA. I have never showered there and am certain it is a very public facility. I imagine there will be plenty of open space – of the bare form and comfort usually reserved for prisons; there will be men propped here and there in casual repose, in all uncomfortable manner of natural states and postures.
“I’m sure there are curtains or something,” my wife says.
“There aren’t going to be any curtains.”
“Well, there’ll be something – compartments or walls or something. The women’s showers have curtained stalls.”
I toss a balled pair of socks into my canvas bag, zip it shut. “Maybe I can shower in the women’s locker room then.”
She does not offer this as an option.
***
The switch is frozen and we are waiting on a technician.
Every year, winter is a new phenomenon to the New Jersey Transit train fleet and the infrastructure that supports that fleet. I watch a slouched and somewhat obese man playing Tetris on his cell phone and he somehow demonstrates my interest in making our mutual situation known more broadly. I take out my Blackberry and go to www.njtransit.com. I plan to find a phone number and to speak to somebody there about winter and what it means for both atmospheric temperatures and the ability for metallic objects – like rail lines and switches – to retain temperatures.
Metals are conductors. They are conduits – and this is why they are used in cooking and in electric wires and cables and in industrial plates and insulators and in hosts of known technologies in need of conductors. I plan to mention all of this to the customer service person – but there is a Contact Us link and when I click it I am taken to a screen of blank forms.
You can use this form to send feedback to NJ TRANSIT.
I am not interested in using a form to send feedback. I want to talk to somebody about hot and cold transference and atoms and what it means in metals – and in turn what that means for switches and rail lines and the trains that ride on rail lines. I want to talk about the technician’s tools in this instance and how one taps a frozen switch.
This cannot be accomplished in a form – and I see that the form’s purpose is found in the consolidation and disposability of thought.
***
The men’s locker room at the YMCA is locked. It is now 10 pm. This is my only option and – having banked on it – I have run myself harder than usual on the YMCA treadmills and machines, and I am a study in perspiration and the bacteria that build civilizations in perspiration.
“The locker room’s locked,” I tell a bored-looking desk attendant. The whole thing seems irritatingly appropriate – a locker room should be locked.
“You need a key,” he says.
“I realize that. How do I get one?”
“You give me your membership card and I give you a key.”
The key has an elastic band and I affix it to my wrist and shuffle off like some kind of inpatient. There should be a sign somewhere or some direction on the whole card-for-a-key program. It could be that I am in need of too many signs. That is possible. The routine compass that I so regularly consult has limited notches in the points between North and East and South and West. And getting lost is getting easier.
The temptation is to exist on a line between two points, but it is more accurate to understand that I am living in a pudding.
***
Japan operates its network of trains through numerous tactical challenges. The population in Tokyo alone – at 12.58 million people – is 53% larger than that of New York City. Tokyo boasts the most extensive urban railway network in the world, operating 101 passenger train lines in the service of the city alone. It is estimated that 20 million people use rail as their primary means of transport in the metropolitan area daily. Beyond the strain of population, Tokyo also must contend with the structural threat of earthquake tremors.
And Tokyo’s trains are on time daily – to the minute.
We have just creaked past the switch and have come to another stop. We are told that we must now wait for a westbound freight train. We are on an eastbound train, heading for New York City where the day is ticking by. Referencing New Jersey Transit’s 2005 statistics, average daily boarding at New York Penn Station is a mere 68,000 passengers.
68,000 > 20,000,000 and Freight > Homo Sapiens.
I am unable to discern these equations.
***
A strikingly hairy naked man is staring vacantly at the faucets he has just opened. The shower space is a simple rectangle – maybe ten feet wide by twenty feet deep, with shower heads spaced four feet apart on both walls. I drop my bag onto a small bench and take out my towel and balled socks and underwear and everything. The man looks at me and nods when I look at him directly.
“You might not get hot water from that one,” he says.
I am not interested in receiving any advice at the moment. There are borders and there are DMZs – and some people say that they are one and the same, but they are not. I am not a communal animal. This is uncomfortable for no other reason than our common anatomy is ugly.
I open the valves and the spray is almost immediately the right temperature. I step into it, let it rake and permeate and work its magic unhindered. I am comforted in the simple closure of the washcloth upon my face. It is warm and heavy and I am malleable, having come as far as I have from the waters and going now back to the water and to the wilderness of origin – piped as it is.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Walking Shoes and The Consumption
I am walking past the shops on West 4th, enjoying the crisp November air that is snapping from the Hudson. I have become more slumberous, heavier now in the cooler tick – and the more carnal creep toward winter. I can feel it in my knees – weight and age and season – each step a nano-bit more ginger than the last.
I am breaking in a new pair of walking shoes. I am told that “walking shoes” has a distinctly dated ring, (the actual phrase shared with me was “elderly-sounding”), and in mixed company I will defer to the Dicks Sporting Goods “trail runners” identification. It is more acceptable to use the retail descriptive when attempting to be seamless in social settings. And seamlessness is important. But I am marveling at their rubber-toed ugliness now, their waterproof and cleat-soled utility, their cushy knee-preserving comforts.
I bought the walking shoes as a small material reward to myself. They are simple and tangible items that can be pointed to and brought out and worn and steadied and brandished. Dicks Sporting Goods was having an Election Day Weekend promotion. My walking shoes were exclusive of that promotion. That was what the Dicks Sporting Goods saleswoman told me. I am not usually drawn to exclusivities, but the promise of a deal around a democratic event pulled me in.
Yesterday was Election Day. I live in New Jersey, where the crisp air seems to originate today and where the Democratic Party columns were widely selected in curtained machines in towns in every county. New Jersey’s population is projected to decrease for the first time in recorded history. The projected reduction is due specifically to the ongoing increases in property taxes and automobile insurance. I am interested in population movements, and this abandonment seems so clearly tied to the Democratic Party and their fiscal policies. And yet the populations vote them in again.
I live in a misinformed state.
One of my neighbors had a political sign planted on his lawn. It read:
VOTE YES FOR PROPOSAL #3
I did not know Proposal #3 and was not sure that I could trust it. There are too many biblical and other conspiracy associations with that number for me to feel entirely comfortable in choosing it. A few houses north, another neighbor’s political sign read:
KEEP TAXES DOWN – VOTE NO ON ALL PROPOSALS
That one had a nice nihilistic ring to it. Vote no on everything.
Now I am in Washington Square Park. Here there are jugglers, lazing NYU students, miscreants and the alternative mindsets. But I am stopped by the strikingly friendly smile of a dark-skinned Caribbean man. He is beseeching me with a simple chrome-toothed smile – brilliant sunlight refracted and dancing in his mouth.
He is a Siren. Somewhere I know this truth – that he is some kind of sentinel, gleaming as he is in this small Manhattan park. Everything is easy. He is and I am and the cement below us both is – but that could be due to my shoes. A cadence is being readied, and then it is delivered – a kind concussion. And he is speaking.
“Yo,” he says, smiling – a dazzle of silver teeth, easy brown eyes.
I stop, my hands dumb and dangling at my sides. I have nothing to say – coming to a stop is comment enough.
“You shopping,” he asks.
I want to show him my walking shoes. I am in the market for other things – pants and maybe a new belt. My waist has a determination in its somewhat new thicker circumference. But it is not possible that he knows this. I guess I could tell him. I want to tell him so much more – a confession I have been honing like a yeast. I have so much to share, so vast an inventory to explore. I wonder too now if he is shopping – because he has found a store between us. I will say it and I will not say it together.
Mitochondria have their own DNA. I was brought up through the public school system to believe them to be the POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL. The reality is different. It is a completely different organism that lives inside the host cell – a symbiotic relationship struck a long, long, long time ago to give birth to the kingdoms of complex multi-cellular creatures. The bigger fact is that before Mitochondria, life – as simple as it was – participated in savage wars. Bacteria against bacteria against viruses against bacteria. The curiosity in all of this is that this partnership between an invaded strand of bacteria and its Mitochondria invader yielded every dimension of visible life form. It is simply the most productive known partnership ever.
Our species is a member of the visible life matter spawned from this partnership. This is why we share so much DNA with bacteria. We are also participants in this festering war between cells – punctuated here and there with the benign common cold and moving on through the more nasty viral and bacterial applications. It is my core and most fundamental belief that human beings have been assembled through this ancient partnership with Mitochondria to eradicate the single-celled enemies of the Mitochondria. That is our purpose. The assembly of our brain matter is a mobility to construct and deconstruct on visible and invisible planes. In this regard, we are puppet-like grunts – but our anthropocentric belief systems will likely not allow us to fully embrace our role in just one colony of an empire we can barely comprehend. The pharmaceutical onslaught that we have created is just one example of the Mitochondria’s war machine. We are a very impressive weapon assemblage, and our achievements in other areas and miscues in other areas are side projects against the overall Mitochondria objective.
I am not shopping. I am too much entangled in consumption. And there is a season upon us.
I am breaking in a new pair of walking shoes. I am told that “walking shoes” has a distinctly dated ring, (the actual phrase shared with me was “elderly-sounding”), and in mixed company I will defer to the Dicks Sporting Goods “trail runners” identification. It is more acceptable to use the retail descriptive when attempting to be seamless in social settings. And seamlessness is important. But I am marveling at their rubber-toed ugliness now, their waterproof and cleat-soled utility, their cushy knee-preserving comforts.
I bought the walking shoes as a small material reward to myself. They are simple and tangible items that can be pointed to and brought out and worn and steadied and brandished. Dicks Sporting Goods was having an Election Day Weekend promotion. My walking shoes were exclusive of that promotion. That was what the Dicks Sporting Goods saleswoman told me. I am not usually drawn to exclusivities, but the promise of a deal around a democratic event pulled me in.
Yesterday was Election Day. I live in New Jersey, where the crisp air seems to originate today and where the Democratic Party columns were widely selected in curtained machines in towns in every county. New Jersey’s population is projected to decrease for the first time in recorded history. The projected reduction is due specifically to the ongoing increases in property taxes and automobile insurance. I am interested in population movements, and this abandonment seems so clearly tied to the Democratic Party and their fiscal policies. And yet the populations vote them in again.
I live in a misinformed state.
One of my neighbors had a political sign planted on his lawn. It read:
VOTE YES FOR PROPOSAL #3
I did not know Proposal #3 and was not sure that I could trust it. There are too many biblical and other conspiracy associations with that number for me to feel entirely comfortable in choosing it. A few houses north, another neighbor’s political sign read:
KEEP TAXES DOWN – VOTE NO ON ALL PROPOSALS
That one had a nice nihilistic ring to it. Vote no on everything.
Now I am in Washington Square Park. Here there are jugglers, lazing NYU students, miscreants and the alternative mindsets. But I am stopped by the strikingly friendly smile of a dark-skinned Caribbean man. He is beseeching me with a simple chrome-toothed smile – brilliant sunlight refracted and dancing in his mouth.
He is a Siren. Somewhere I know this truth – that he is some kind of sentinel, gleaming as he is in this small Manhattan park. Everything is easy. He is and I am and the cement below us both is – but that could be due to my shoes. A cadence is being readied, and then it is delivered – a kind concussion. And he is speaking.
“Yo,” he says, smiling – a dazzle of silver teeth, easy brown eyes.
I stop, my hands dumb and dangling at my sides. I have nothing to say – coming to a stop is comment enough.
“You shopping,” he asks.
I want to show him my walking shoes. I am in the market for other things – pants and maybe a new belt. My waist has a determination in its somewhat new thicker circumference. But it is not possible that he knows this. I guess I could tell him. I want to tell him so much more – a confession I have been honing like a yeast. I have so much to share, so vast an inventory to explore. I wonder too now if he is shopping – because he has found a store between us. I will say it and I will not say it together.
Mitochondria have their own DNA. I was brought up through the public school system to believe them to be the POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL. The reality is different. It is a completely different organism that lives inside the host cell – a symbiotic relationship struck a long, long, long time ago to give birth to the kingdoms of complex multi-cellular creatures. The bigger fact is that before Mitochondria, life – as simple as it was – participated in savage wars. Bacteria against bacteria against viruses against bacteria. The curiosity in all of this is that this partnership between an invaded strand of bacteria and its Mitochondria invader yielded every dimension of visible life form. It is simply the most productive known partnership ever.
Our species is a member of the visible life matter spawned from this partnership. This is why we share so much DNA with bacteria. We are also participants in this festering war between cells – punctuated here and there with the benign common cold and moving on through the more nasty viral and bacterial applications. It is my core and most fundamental belief that human beings have been assembled through this ancient partnership with Mitochondria to eradicate the single-celled enemies of the Mitochondria. That is our purpose. The assembly of our brain matter is a mobility to construct and deconstruct on visible and invisible planes. In this regard, we are puppet-like grunts – but our anthropocentric belief systems will likely not allow us to fully embrace our role in just one colony of an empire we can barely comprehend. The pharmaceutical onslaught that we have created is just one example of the Mitochondria’s war machine. We are a very impressive weapon assemblage, and our achievements in other areas and miscues in other areas are side projects against the overall Mitochondria objective.
I am not shopping. I am too much entangled in consumption. And there is a season upon us.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
How Should Societies Pay For Their Journalism?
The question of how societies should pay for their journalism - or at least to compensate professional journalists and eradicate the credibility concerns - was addressed very recently by Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. He was speaking in London and said that the greatest threat that independent writers and bloggers pose was found more in the "failure of resolve on the part of the people who make newspapers."
This is coming from The New York Times - where credibility issues have presented themselves, as they do in any news source from time to time. This notion of the Newspaper-as-Establishment-and-Stature is false, and the issues around fragmentation in journalism and reporting are not the newspaper industry's issues to resolve. Time and again the newspaper establishment lumbers and misses the point - and this is reflected most acutely in the sell-sell-sell recommendations now put upon The New York Times Company.
The public in any free society deserves the highest quality reporting across all given media buckets - print, television, web, radio. No single news source in any of these media buckets is consistently more credible or more able than another. This is important to understand against the wide varieties of reporting vehicles we see in the media landscape today.
Quality reporting can mean many things to the spectrum of audience tastes out there - it could be entertaining, pithy, intellectual, punchy, dry, long-form, humorous, etc. Quality reporting is defined by the desires and the lifestyles of the audience base. In some cases, sources that consistently break stories are seen in a more important light. In other cases, sources that take a more analytical view are deemed more valuable. On and on this goes. However, now the lines are obliterated. Google alone has brought anonymity to broad swaths of sources, and in the process the search engine has cannibalized the source brand and made it a commodity. The leading journalism brands today still believe incorrectly that an on-the-move American society will remain with them.
So how should a free society pay for its journalism? There is an undercurrent in comments like Mr. Keller's above: the free public is unable to discern the impartial journalism for themselves, and it is up to "the people who make newspapers" to sort it all out. One gets the sense that he was wearing a cape and matching boots when he made that comment - and that he has not read the financial reports coming out of his own publicly-traded company. The free public pays for journalism by choosing freely to consume a given story.
Much like the music industry's initial rejection of the song-by-song model brandished by web demand, "the people who make newspapers" do not want to acknowledge that we are in an era of story-by-story consumption. This consumption is measurable - and that measurement directly determines the payment a free society makes. Should consumers be forced to buy an entire music CD when all they want is one or two songs? That same question is being forced upon big and small journalism brands alike - but the answer has been in motion for years now. Outside of their control.
Newspaper brands in particular can protect their financial interests by getting together and prohibiting the search engines and crawling bots from quite effectively stealing their core intellectual assets. Nobody believes that Google's stock price would be north of $500 - or even north of $100 - if the journalism content arteries were severed. And would that denial not help the stock price of The New York Times Company? But this is another topic entirely.
Free society and free market forces have been demonstrating this deployment of journalism currency for some time. Advertising revenue follows these deployments very efficiently - and in that sense the reporting is paid for. Shelling out coins at a newsstand is simply a relic of a dead era.
This is coming from The New York Times - where credibility issues have presented themselves, as they do in any news source from time to time. This notion of the Newspaper-as-Establishment-and-Stature is false, and the issues around fragmentation in journalism and reporting are not the newspaper industry's issues to resolve. Time and again the newspaper establishment lumbers and misses the point - and this is reflected most acutely in the sell-sell-sell recommendations now put upon The New York Times Company.
The public in any free society deserves the highest quality reporting across all given media buckets - print, television, web, radio. No single news source in any of these media buckets is consistently more credible or more able than another. This is important to understand against the wide varieties of reporting vehicles we see in the media landscape today.
Quality reporting can mean many things to the spectrum of audience tastes out there - it could be entertaining, pithy, intellectual, punchy, dry, long-form, humorous, etc. Quality reporting is defined by the desires and the lifestyles of the audience base. In some cases, sources that consistently break stories are seen in a more important light. In other cases, sources that take a more analytical view are deemed more valuable. On and on this goes. However, now the lines are obliterated. Google alone has brought anonymity to broad swaths of sources, and in the process the search engine has cannibalized the source brand and made it a commodity. The leading journalism brands today still believe incorrectly that an on-the-move American society will remain with them.
So how should a free society pay for its journalism? There is an undercurrent in comments like Mr. Keller's above: the free public is unable to discern the impartial journalism for themselves, and it is up to "the people who make newspapers" to sort it all out. One gets the sense that he was wearing a cape and matching boots when he made that comment - and that he has not read the financial reports coming out of his own publicly-traded company. The free public pays for journalism by choosing freely to consume a given story.
Much like the music industry's initial rejection of the song-by-song model brandished by web demand, "the people who make newspapers" do not want to acknowledge that we are in an era of story-by-story consumption. This consumption is measurable - and that measurement directly determines the payment a free society makes. Should consumers be forced to buy an entire music CD when all they want is one or two songs? That same question is being forced upon big and small journalism brands alike - but the answer has been in motion for years now. Outside of their control.
Newspaper brands in particular can protect their financial interests by getting together and prohibiting the search engines and crawling bots from quite effectively stealing their core intellectual assets. Nobody believes that Google's stock price would be north of $500 - or even north of $100 - if the journalism content arteries were severed. And would that denial not help the stock price of The New York Times Company? But this is another topic entirely.
Free society and free market forces have been demonstrating this deployment of journalism currency for some time. Advertising revenue follows these deployments very efficiently - and in that sense the reporting is paid for. Shelling out coins at a newsstand is simply a relic of a dead era.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Worldwide Freshwater Scarcity Causes Found in Global Population Growth
When I was in high school, I worked for a local environmental advocacy group – canvassing throughout a warren of suburban neighborhoods on the issue of polluted underground aquifers that ran below those neighborhoods. While it was the kind of door to door work usually relegated to impressionable high-energy high school kids, our tight band of scruffy amateur ecologists knew too well that we were the only voices giving shape to the somewhat formless threat the wide variety of everyday runoff pollutants posed to this key regional water supply. Beyond a handful of non-profit organizations, the hard truth was that few people cared about the state of freshwater in an unseen underground aquifer – or the quality of the freshwater coming from any other source for that matter – even if it was being piped right into their homes.
Fast forward to the present day, and it is still difficult to imagine that the plastic bottle toting societies of western civilization can come to grips with the fact that 1 billion people are existing elsewhere without adequate drinking water. To complicate matters, the popular U.S. media outlets are courting the celebrity classes and the political left around the global warming issue – a meaty topic for the anthropocentric among us who believe our species can actually reverse the planet’s natural warming course by altering fossil fuel emissions. Under this backdrop of apathetic hydrated bliss and misdirected eco concern, it is easier to understand how the freshwater scarcity issue – which if not resolved will lead to world war considerably faster than the oceans will rise – can be overlooked.
One could say that a splash is needed – pun being intended – to elevate this topic on the collective minds of the more affluent countries in the world. One organization, Blue Planet Run Foundation, has taken a flashy if not intelligent approach to this challenge. Understanding that a common bond between national and regional cultures exists in the spectacle of sport endurance, (the Olympic games standing as a decent example), Blue Planet Run Foundation recently hosted the first-ever worldwide relay run – a 15,200-mile run around the planet in the name of safe drinking water. The run crossed 16 countries and 3 continents over 95 days and featured Dow as the presenting sponsor – a nice touch in the annals of corporate underwriting.
The Blue Planet Run Foundation believes it can solve the drinking water problem with individual donations – and they lay out the costs of specific projects quite clearly on their web site. But can these projects offer sustainable results in regions where freshwater scarcity has already become endemic to the local ecology? To better understand the scope of the problem, we need to examine the sources, treatments, and distribution methodologies available to the threatened localities.
Freshwater accounts for only 2.5% of the earth’s total water supply, two thirds of which is frozen in ice caps and glaciers. It is drawn from underground sources – springs, aquifers and deeper ancient wells – and from surface sources. There is a hundred times more water in the ground than is in all the world’s rivers and lakes, yet the majority of the water that is used by humans daily comes from surface sources. Contamination of present day surface freshwater has a disturbing domino effect, as the ruined water bleeds into the aquifers and groundwater supplies that humans will need to tap in the future. Developing nations like China and India face a significant challenge as more and more freshwater is contaminated with sewage and industrial/agricultural runoff – as well as naturally occurring chemicals such as arsenic and fluoride.
Sources of safe drinking water are also being depleted at alarming rates as human populations grow faster than the water tables can be replenished. The global human population is growing at a rate of roughly 80 million people a year. Given this pace, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health estimates an “increased demand for freshwater of about 64 million cubic meters a year – an amount equivalent to the entire annual flow rate of the Rhine River.” This population growth is powered by the regions most in need of safe drinking water. China, India, Africa, and the Near East have the highest population growth rates in the world and are increasingly facing water shortages that are certain to cripple their economies and ecologies.
The Johns Hopkins report details the problem further and identifies a likely and unsustainable solution. “Calculations of water stress and water scarcity are based on estimates of a country’s renewable freshwater supplies and do not include water withdrawn from fossil groundwater. Fossil groundwater is essentially a nonrenewable resource: it takes tens of thousands of years for these deep aquifers to replenish themselves. A country may temporarily avoid the effects of water stress by mining its nonrenewable water supplies, but this practice is not sustainable, particularly if the population continues to grow rapidly and per capita demand for freshwater increases.”
Freshwater treatment plants can clear some contaminants but cannot be relied on to salvage water sources that have been exposed to the biological and chemical byproducts of human existence and industry. Groundwater sources generally require less treatment than surface water sources. Desalination technologies can create freshwater, but the process demands the extensive use of energy and produces a highly concentrated brine waste product that must be disposed of properly to avoid significant environmental damage. Given these hindrances, it is unlikely that desalination approaches will offer a sustainable alternative in the coming decades.
The 1 billion people forced to consume inadequate drinking water also face the problem of water distribution. Plumbing is a luxury among populations with abundant freshwater supply. Good distribution requires good infrastructure. Some regions rely on water trucks, while others sell barrels of water at centralized water shops. But the highest growth in distribution methodologies is found in bottled water. Nations that use bottled water often have tap water infrastructures in place. However, according to the National Academy of Sciences, bottled water is on the rise in developing countries: “From 1999-2004 per capita bottled water use doubled in China and tripled in India.” As global demand for bottled water has risen, regions with the most pristine freshwater sources have begun passing legislation and enacting governments to protect their resources. For example, when Nestle Waters struck a deal with Michigan in 2006 to begin extracting bottled water from the Great Lakes – the largest surface water resource on the planet – the agreement was met with stiff resistance from citizens and the legislature and has found its place in the Michigan Supreme Court.
This brings us back to the Blue Planet Run and the need to highlight the drinking water issue in general. The challenges around freshwater sources, treatments, and distribution are mighty, and they expose the root cause of the problem – uncontrolled human population growth. 80 million additional human beings annually cannot be sustained. A relay race or other high-visibility event around this troubling reality is a great idea – however, a greater cause might be found in cross-culture family planning education and the worldwide encouragement of condom usage.
Fast forward to the present day, and it is still difficult to imagine that the plastic bottle toting societies of western civilization can come to grips with the fact that 1 billion people are existing elsewhere without adequate drinking water. To complicate matters, the popular U.S. media outlets are courting the celebrity classes and the political left around the global warming issue – a meaty topic for the anthropocentric among us who believe our species can actually reverse the planet’s natural warming course by altering fossil fuel emissions. Under this backdrop of apathetic hydrated bliss and misdirected eco concern, it is easier to understand how the freshwater scarcity issue – which if not resolved will lead to world war considerably faster than the oceans will rise – can be overlooked.
One could say that a splash is needed – pun being intended – to elevate this topic on the collective minds of the more affluent countries in the world. One organization, Blue Planet Run Foundation, has taken a flashy if not intelligent approach to this challenge. Understanding that a common bond between national and regional cultures exists in the spectacle of sport endurance, (the Olympic games standing as a decent example), Blue Planet Run Foundation recently hosted the first-ever worldwide relay run – a 15,200-mile run around the planet in the name of safe drinking water. The run crossed 16 countries and 3 continents over 95 days and featured Dow as the presenting sponsor – a nice touch in the annals of corporate underwriting.
The Blue Planet Run Foundation believes it can solve the drinking water problem with individual donations – and they lay out the costs of specific projects quite clearly on their web site. But can these projects offer sustainable results in regions where freshwater scarcity has already become endemic to the local ecology? To better understand the scope of the problem, we need to examine the sources, treatments, and distribution methodologies available to the threatened localities.
Freshwater accounts for only 2.5% of the earth’s total water supply, two thirds of which is frozen in ice caps and glaciers. It is drawn from underground sources – springs, aquifers and deeper ancient wells – and from surface sources. There is a hundred times more water in the ground than is in all the world’s rivers and lakes, yet the majority of the water that is used by humans daily comes from surface sources. Contamination of present day surface freshwater has a disturbing domino effect, as the ruined water bleeds into the aquifers and groundwater supplies that humans will need to tap in the future. Developing nations like China and India face a significant challenge as more and more freshwater is contaminated with sewage and industrial/agricultural runoff – as well as naturally occurring chemicals such as arsenic and fluoride.
Sources of safe drinking water are also being depleted at alarming rates as human populations grow faster than the water tables can be replenished. The global human population is growing at a rate of roughly 80 million people a year. Given this pace, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health estimates an “increased demand for freshwater of about 64 million cubic meters a year – an amount equivalent to the entire annual flow rate of the Rhine River.” This population growth is powered by the regions most in need of safe drinking water. China, India, Africa, and the Near East have the highest population growth rates in the world and are increasingly facing water shortages that are certain to cripple their economies and ecologies.
The Johns Hopkins report details the problem further and identifies a likely and unsustainable solution. “Calculations of water stress and water scarcity are based on estimates of a country’s renewable freshwater supplies and do not include water withdrawn from fossil groundwater. Fossil groundwater is essentially a nonrenewable resource: it takes tens of thousands of years for these deep aquifers to replenish themselves. A country may temporarily avoid the effects of water stress by mining its nonrenewable water supplies, but this practice is not sustainable, particularly if the population continues to grow rapidly and per capita demand for freshwater increases.”
Freshwater treatment plants can clear some contaminants but cannot be relied on to salvage water sources that have been exposed to the biological and chemical byproducts of human existence and industry. Groundwater sources generally require less treatment than surface water sources. Desalination technologies can create freshwater, but the process demands the extensive use of energy and produces a highly concentrated brine waste product that must be disposed of properly to avoid significant environmental damage. Given these hindrances, it is unlikely that desalination approaches will offer a sustainable alternative in the coming decades.
The 1 billion people forced to consume inadequate drinking water also face the problem of water distribution. Plumbing is a luxury among populations with abundant freshwater supply. Good distribution requires good infrastructure. Some regions rely on water trucks, while others sell barrels of water at centralized water shops. But the highest growth in distribution methodologies is found in bottled water. Nations that use bottled water often have tap water infrastructures in place. However, according to the National Academy of Sciences, bottled water is on the rise in developing countries: “From 1999-2004 per capita bottled water use doubled in China and tripled in India.” As global demand for bottled water has risen, regions with the most pristine freshwater sources have begun passing legislation and enacting governments to protect their resources. For example, when Nestle Waters struck a deal with Michigan in 2006 to begin extracting bottled water from the Great Lakes – the largest surface water resource on the planet – the agreement was met with stiff resistance from citizens and the legislature and has found its place in the Michigan Supreme Court.
This brings us back to the Blue Planet Run and the need to highlight the drinking water issue in general. The challenges around freshwater sources, treatments, and distribution are mighty, and they expose the root cause of the problem – uncontrolled human population growth. 80 million additional human beings annually cannot be sustained. A relay race or other high-visibility event around this troubling reality is a great idea – however, a greater cause might be found in cross-culture family planning education and the worldwide encouragement of condom usage.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
POSTED ON TOTALITARIAN MUSEIC'S THOUGHT LEADERSHIP FORUM (FACEBOOK) - The Birth of Direct Democracy is Founded in Internet Voting
As municipalities and telecommunications providers partner on WiFi and WiMax infrastructures – and as debate still rages along the many ridges of the digital divide – the promise this broader web access can bring to the public with respect to digital democracy is said to be decades away. The positive implications of electronic voting to unencumbered democracy far exceed the hurdles of implementing the necessary technological foundations. At least this is how it could be understood.
The 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was conceived to replace punch card and lever voting machines throughout the United States. After the embarrassing debacle of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, it was widely determined that the American republic needed a modern solution to its bingo-like voting methodology. HAVA established another mild bureaucracy, and committees are now working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to recommend solutions that do not necessarily need to center on electronic alternatives.
However, one of the key recommendations is the establishment of a national electronic voting platform. Electronic voting solutions are comprised of two camps – electronic voting machines installed at local voting facilities or internet-based electoral options.
Most of what is being written in the press and debated among state agencies centers on electronic voting hardware, and there have been numerous shortfalls among the different machine models currently being tested in states across the country. Success or failure with electronic voting machine implementation has obvious financial implications for a variety of hardware manufacturers, and the lobbying efforts of these manufacturers may be clouding the perspective of the relevant government agencies charged with assessing the entirety of options.
The most promising option for a more direct democracy – defined here as an immediate dialogue, without an electoral college, between citizens and their elected government – is found in internet-based voting applications. According to InternetWorldStats.com, 70% of the U.S. population is online – 233 million people. Of the additional 30% that may not have access at home or at work, access can be found at traditional voting centers.
Internet penetration is not a hindrance to electronic voting in the United States.
The internet-based option is also considerably less expensive to taxpayers than the purchase and installation of specialized hardware – and the more lucrative contractual upkeep of that hardware over time.
But the web-based model is continually described as less realistic – and the lead reasons for this dismissal are identified under the socioeconomics of access as discussed above and perceived technological hurdles around security.
“Online voting is much more problematic than electronic voting machines,” said Annalee Newitz, President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. “We do not yet have the appropriate security online to handle any election of significant importance,” she said. “Hackers can manipulate results, and there is no way to provide a valid paper audit trail – as you can with electronic voting machines. Internet voting is decades into the future.”
But are there not a vast amount of financial transactions that occur daily over the internet? Everything from consumer online banking to corporate stock and bond transactions occurs at a high volume over the web. Many people now pay their taxes through online offerings, and surely the U.S. Treasury Department is going to demand security to ensure receipt of those payments.
The financial institutions that offer these complex interfaces do so with a number of security measures that cannot be spoofed or hacked or in any way compromised – otherwise these firms simply would not be in business. It could be argued certainly among software programmers that immense financial data is a more unwieldy item to secure than a voting record.
There has to be a lesson in this among those who have been selected to think through the question of online voting. What have the banks figured out that the committees assembled after HAVA have not? Or is the internet simply going to remain a scary and insecure place among the minds of these decision-makers?
In order to move forward with direct and accountable democracy, the internet-based voting model will need to see implementation. Prior American generations built a physical infrastructure – roads, schools, bridges, etc. – to democratize mobility. Today, with 70% of the U.S. population online, providing immediate access to the remaining 30% is a considerably lesser task than building a single skyscraper.
It can be done if it is simply understood that it already has been done.
The 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was conceived to replace punch card and lever voting machines throughout the United States. After the embarrassing debacle of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, it was widely determined that the American republic needed a modern solution to its bingo-like voting methodology. HAVA established another mild bureaucracy, and committees are now working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to recommend solutions that do not necessarily need to center on electronic alternatives.
However, one of the key recommendations is the establishment of a national electronic voting platform. Electronic voting solutions are comprised of two camps – electronic voting machines installed at local voting facilities or internet-based electoral options.
Most of what is being written in the press and debated among state agencies centers on electronic voting hardware, and there have been numerous shortfalls among the different machine models currently being tested in states across the country. Success or failure with electronic voting machine implementation has obvious financial implications for a variety of hardware manufacturers, and the lobbying efforts of these manufacturers may be clouding the perspective of the relevant government agencies charged with assessing the entirety of options.
The most promising option for a more direct democracy – defined here as an immediate dialogue, without an electoral college, between citizens and their elected government – is found in internet-based voting applications. According to InternetWorldStats.com, 70% of the U.S. population is online – 233 million people. Of the additional 30% that may not have access at home or at work, access can be found at traditional voting centers.
Internet penetration is not a hindrance to electronic voting in the United States.
The internet-based option is also considerably less expensive to taxpayers than the purchase and installation of specialized hardware – and the more lucrative contractual upkeep of that hardware over time.
But the web-based model is continually described as less realistic – and the lead reasons for this dismissal are identified under the socioeconomics of access as discussed above and perceived technological hurdles around security.
“Online voting is much more problematic than electronic voting machines,” said Annalee Newitz, President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. “We do not yet have the appropriate security online to handle any election of significant importance,” she said. “Hackers can manipulate results, and there is no way to provide a valid paper audit trail – as you can with electronic voting machines. Internet voting is decades into the future.”
But are there not a vast amount of financial transactions that occur daily over the internet? Everything from consumer online banking to corporate stock and bond transactions occurs at a high volume over the web. Many people now pay their taxes through online offerings, and surely the U.S. Treasury Department is going to demand security to ensure receipt of those payments.
The financial institutions that offer these complex interfaces do so with a number of security measures that cannot be spoofed or hacked or in any way compromised – otherwise these firms simply would not be in business. It could be argued certainly among software programmers that immense financial data is a more unwieldy item to secure than a voting record.
There has to be a lesson in this among those who have been selected to think through the question of online voting. What have the banks figured out that the committees assembled after HAVA have not? Or is the internet simply going to remain a scary and insecure place among the minds of these decision-makers?
In order to move forward with direct and accountable democracy, the internet-based voting model will need to see implementation. Prior American generations built a physical infrastructure – roads, schools, bridges, etc. – to democratize mobility. Today, with 70% of the U.S. population online, providing immediate access to the remaining 30% is a considerably lesser task than building a single skyscraper.
It can be done if it is simply understood that it already has been done.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Facebook Story Appears in Online Media Daily
Online Media Daily carried the Facebook story today - a notable distribution through the Mediapost franchise. This is the second commentary piece the Mediapost family has published. The link is included below.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=64972&Nid=32876&p=428616
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=64972&Nid=32876&p=428616
Sunday, July 29, 2007
POSTED ON TOTALITARIAN MUSEIC'S THOUGHT LEADERSHIP FORUM (FACEBOOK) - Should Governmental Candidates Run on Their Opinions?
Among democracies, candidates seeking elected positions universally run on issue-based platforms – Candidate X believes in Y, and therefore should be elected to a given position. The assumption is that if enough of the voting public subscribes to position Y, Candidate X will be elected and will follow through on the promises that embody the Y position. This issue-driven and opinionated orientation among candidates is increasingly yielding disappointment and alienation among voter populations in democracies worldwide – as candidates regularly miss delivery on the solutions promised during campaigning.
What if a different formula could be implemented? What if a candidate did not take a position or hold an opinion at all?
This may seem like a foreign idea – as the voting populace currently has a need to select a candidate through an understanding of where he or she stands on a key issue. But candidates are asked to provide their positions on multiple issues – and invariably the sum of those positions will not align with the identity of the individual voter. At some point in this process, the voter is going to have to dismiss certain issues voiced by their candidate as less important than others. This whittling away of different issues leads voters to settle for a more vanilla choice – or worse, to select the lesser of two evils.
Candidates should desire to service the will of the people – as documented in the U.S. constitution. There is no need for a candidate to voice an opinion or to take a certain posture – other than to express how they will implement the needs of the people, what logistical hurdles they will overcome to institute the wishes of the constituency. As societies become more wired, and technological infrastructures become more advanced, the desires of an entire population can be transmitted to the appropriate government offices. This is no longer the stuff of science fiction. This is a tangible way forward for modern democracy.
Too often, elected government officials take dismissive authoritative positions that creep toward a polite and tolerable totalitarianism. It is easy to draw supportive examples from the current Bush administration – but all U.S. presidencies have had their autocratic moments. In these instances, the elected authority chooses to be a supreme executive authority, and the people are just the ambiguous people – vague and anonymous masses that need only be respected and understood during election cycles.
This totalitarian behavior flourishes in an apathetic public. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 36% of the eligible American public did not vote in the 2004 presidential election. This inactivity is especially notable given the wartime polarity that was circulating throughout the United States during the period.
This behavior is born also from a general misunderstanding on the part of the elected appointee. It arises from a certain brand of arrogance that comes from having the “right” opinion – and if opinion can be removed from the equation, a more humble and service-based nature can be bred into future candidates.
Imagine how the public would respond to a candidate that did not have a preordained position on anything. Such a candidate would be a populist hero and a true civil servant. When asked about issue Y, candidate X would defer to the choices of the national or regional population. In this scenario, the president would not lead through subjectivity – but would act as a liaison between the people and the subject put before the people.
Implementation of the demands of a government’s population should be the core objective of a democratically elected body. With proper understanding of the population’s responsibility and accountability in the decisions of a nation, and with more coordination on the technologies that allow the communal voice to be heard, democracies can get there.
What if a different formula could be implemented? What if a candidate did not take a position or hold an opinion at all?
This may seem like a foreign idea – as the voting populace currently has a need to select a candidate through an understanding of where he or she stands on a key issue. But candidates are asked to provide their positions on multiple issues – and invariably the sum of those positions will not align with the identity of the individual voter. At some point in this process, the voter is going to have to dismiss certain issues voiced by their candidate as less important than others. This whittling away of different issues leads voters to settle for a more vanilla choice – or worse, to select the lesser of two evils.
Candidates should desire to service the will of the people – as documented in the U.S. constitution. There is no need for a candidate to voice an opinion or to take a certain posture – other than to express how they will implement the needs of the people, what logistical hurdles they will overcome to institute the wishes of the constituency. As societies become more wired, and technological infrastructures become more advanced, the desires of an entire population can be transmitted to the appropriate government offices. This is no longer the stuff of science fiction. This is a tangible way forward for modern democracy.
Too often, elected government officials take dismissive authoritative positions that creep toward a polite and tolerable totalitarianism. It is easy to draw supportive examples from the current Bush administration – but all U.S. presidencies have had their autocratic moments. In these instances, the elected authority chooses to be a supreme executive authority, and the people are just the ambiguous people – vague and anonymous masses that need only be respected and understood during election cycles.
This totalitarian behavior flourishes in an apathetic public. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 36% of the eligible American public did not vote in the 2004 presidential election. This inactivity is especially notable given the wartime polarity that was circulating throughout the United States during the period.
This behavior is born also from a general misunderstanding on the part of the elected appointee. It arises from a certain brand of arrogance that comes from having the “right” opinion – and if opinion can be removed from the equation, a more humble and service-based nature can be bred into future candidates.
Imagine how the public would respond to a candidate that did not have a preordained position on anything. Such a candidate would be a populist hero and a true civil servant. When asked about issue Y, candidate X would defer to the choices of the national or regional population. In this scenario, the president would not lead through subjectivity – but would act as a liaison between the people and the subject put before the people.
Implementation of the demands of a government’s population should be the core objective of a democratically elected body. With proper understanding of the population’s responsibility and accountability in the decisions of a nation, and with more coordination on the technologies that allow the communal voice to be heard, democracies can get there.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Why Facebook is Growing Faster Than Other Social Networks
So much has been written about Facebook over the past several months that it is almost easy to forget that there are other social networking properties available to the internet community. The meteoric growth that Facebook has been enjoying has made headlines in traditional media and across the blogosphere – and this kind of attention appears to have pushed the other networking sites to the sidelines in both media exposure and new user acquisition.
But maybe that is the point. Maybe the others should be overlooked. The Facebook phenomenon could be an incarnation of the coming Darwinist weed-out Web 2.0 has yet to experience. There are currently 15 social networking sites of significant audience size in operation – and numerous smaller entities vying for users; a lot of choices for an identical purpose.
So, what is it about Facebook? Why is it growing at a faster rate than the other social networking offerings?
In posing these questions to the Facebook user universe, there was a bit of a duh factor – the key take-away being that Facebook is Web 2.0. But that answer – albeit from a biased communal source – is not enough. The question really had to be put to the business-minded community, and what better place than LinkedIn?
The LinkedIn community can be seen as an audience conquest target for Facebook’s business development strategists. As Facebook users mature and seek to expand their business network, LinkedIn is assumed to be the most logical choice. Indications that this assumption will change can be found in Facebook’s Parakey acquisition – but more on that below. In the meantime, what does the LinkedIn community think of Facebook’s popularity?
James Schneider, Jr., Creative Director for Interactive Marketing at Target – a key strategic advertiser on both MySpace and Facebook – shared his perspective. “Facebook is safe…period. Its primary guest is not comprised of the exhibitionist, the musician, the artist or some other guest who has something to ‘wow’ you with or prove,” he said.
When looking at MySpace and the expressionist methodologies employed by users there, it is easy to recall the CB Radio days of the 1970’s where everyone had call-names and an acute anonymity from which they could espouse their colorful views. The MySpace universe does not have its roots in the university culture as Facebook does. Stemming from Harvard, “Facebook is a place for intellectuals,” Mr. Schneider asserts.
But this question of popularity growth is also about utility and usage patterns. The Facebook gains are made where MySpace experiences erosion. “My employees are all high school students / early college years,” said Adeena Mignogna, Senior Engineer at GeoEye. “At first they encouraged me to join them on MySpace, which I did. Since, most have all switched over to Facebook – some have even completely closed out their MySpace accounts.”
The Facebook momentum is built at the high school level and extends into professional life – an intelligent strategy for growth in the present day and for growth among the upcoming Millennial Generation.
In a recent interview with Time, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook put their growth in perspective. “It initially was only available to people at Harvard, where I was a college. We rolled it out to all the colleges, all the high schools, then a bunch of companies could sign up. It may seem like the growth is really accelerating at a crazy rate, but it’s actually been growing and doubling about once every six months for quite a while.”
At 30 million unique users, Facebook now has 40 billion page views per month – standing as the 6th largest site in overall traffic. Additionally, it is the number one photo-sharing site on the internet. MySpace claims 191 million users, and LinkedIn has 12 million users. The comparison of Facebook with MySpace is obvious – as they are both clearly in the social networking category, although Facebook is quick to define itself as a “social utility.”
This utility definition is notable, as it ultimately opens the comparison with LinkedIn and the longer-term strategy that Facebook wishes to exert in the business-to-business space. “I love the configurable widgets,” said Ms. Mignogna. “And the fact that other profiles I have out there on Twitter and Shelfari, for example, can be incorporated easily into Facebook.”
Open source applications differentiate Facebook – not only against the consumer-facing social networking chaff, but against the B-to-B sensibilities of LinkedIn. F8, the Facebook platform, allows applications to be run exclusively from Facebook itself – and the acquisition of Parakey could bring a whole new professional dimension to the service. The Parakey acquisition has not fully been realized in the market, but the business applications Parakey embodies will have a direct impact on LinkedIn – where the professional networking service has not emerged beyond static user listings in a classified manner. Some bloggers have even begun characterizing the Parakey acquisition as an assault on Microsoft.
This curious morph from a network to a utility has an IBM/blue-chip enterprise vibe that is undeniable. It is all about usage. “For band research, I go to MySpace,” Mr. Schneider said. “To chat with old college buddies and co-workers, I go to Facebook or LinkedIn.”
Whether or not Facebook is a network or a utility, it is clear that it is a new internet bell-weather. What happens on Facebook does not stay on Facebook – and this spillover will govern the web’s next ideations.
But maybe that is the point. Maybe the others should be overlooked. The Facebook phenomenon could be an incarnation of the coming Darwinist weed-out Web 2.0 has yet to experience. There are currently 15 social networking sites of significant audience size in operation – and numerous smaller entities vying for users; a lot of choices for an identical purpose.
So, what is it about Facebook? Why is it growing at a faster rate than the other social networking offerings?
In posing these questions to the Facebook user universe, there was a bit of a duh factor – the key take-away being that Facebook is Web 2.0. But that answer – albeit from a biased communal source – is not enough. The question really had to be put to the business-minded community, and what better place than LinkedIn?
The LinkedIn community can be seen as an audience conquest target for Facebook’s business development strategists. As Facebook users mature and seek to expand their business network, LinkedIn is assumed to be the most logical choice. Indications that this assumption will change can be found in Facebook’s Parakey acquisition – but more on that below. In the meantime, what does the LinkedIn community think of Facebook’s popularity?
James Schneider, Jr., Creative Director for Interactive Marketing at Target – a key strategic advertiser on both MySpace and Facebook – shared his perspective. “Facebook is safe…period. Its primary guest is not comprised of the exhibitionist, the musician, the artist or some other guest who has something to ‘wow’ you with or prove,” he said.
When looking at MySpace and the expressionist methodologies employed by users there, it is easy to recall the CB Radio days of the 1970’s where everyone had call-names and an acute anonymity from which they could espouse their colorful views. The MySpace universe does not have its roots in the university culture as Facebook does. Stemming from Harvard, “Facebook is a place for intellectuals,” Mr. Schneider asserts.
But this question of popularity growth is also about utility and usage patterns. The Facebook gains are made where MySpace experiences erosion. “My employees are all high school students / early college years,” said Adeena Mignogna, Senior Engineer at GeoEye. “At first they encouraged me to join them on MySpace, which I did. Since, most have all switched over to Facebook – some have even completely closed out their MySpace accounts.”
The Facebook momentum is built at the high school level and extends into professional life – an intelligent strategy for growth in the present day and for growth among the upcoming Millennial Generation.
In a recent interview with Time, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook put their growth in perspective. “It initially was only available to people at Harvard, where I was a college. We rolled it out to all the colleges, all the high schools, then a bunch of companies could sign up. It may seem like the growth is really accelerating at a crazy rate, but it’s actually been growing and doubling about once every six months for quite a while.”
At 30 million unique users, Facebook now has 40 billion page views per month – standing as the 6th largest site in overall traffic. Additionally, it is the number one photo-sharing site on the internet. MySpace claims 191 million users, and LinkedIn has 12 million users. The comparison of Facebook with MySpace is obvious – as they are both clearly in the social networking category, although Facebook is quick to define itself as a “social utility.”
This utility definition is notable, as it ultimately opens the comparison with LinkedIn and the longer-term strategy that Facebook wishes to exert in the business-to-business space. “I love the configurable widgets,” said Ms. Mignogna. “And the fact that other profiles I have out there on Twitter and Shelfari, for example, can be incorporated easily into Facebook.”
Open source applications differentiate Facebook – not only against the consumer-facing social networking chaff, but against the B-to-B sensibilities of LinkedIn. F8, the Facebook platform, allows applications to be run exclusively from Facebook itself – and the acquisition of Parakey could bring a whole new professional dimension to the service. The Parakey acquisition has not fully been realized in the market, but the business applications Parakey embodies will have a direct impact on LinkedIn – where the professional networking service has not emerged beyond static user listings in a classified manner. Some bloggers have even begun characterizing the Parakey acquisition as an assault on Microsoft.
This curious morph from a network to a utility has an IBM/blue-chip enterprise vibe that is undeniable. It is all about usage. “For band research, I go to MySpace,” Mr. Schneider said. “To chat with old college buddies and co-workers, I go to Facebook or LinkedIn.”
Whether or not Facebook is a network or a utility, it is clear that it is a new internet bell-weather. What happens on Facebook does not stay on Facebook – and this spillover will govern the web’s next ideations.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Pittsburgh/Trojan Story Picked up by Mediapost
Mediapost's Marketing Daily has agreed to carry the Trojan/Pittsburgh advertising controversy story. This is a notable distribution within the advertising community, as Mediapost is considered a must-read in the advertising sector. Marketing Daily is distributed electronically to professionals in marketing, advertising sales, media, etc.
The link to the story is below...
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=64223&Nid=32451&p=428616
The link to the story is below...
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=64223&Nid=32451&p=428616
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Putting Lipstick on a Pig – Pittsburgh and the Trojan Condom Advertising Controversy
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the estimated number of new AIDS diagnoses in the U.S. from 2000 through 2005 increased by 17% among women and 16% among men. The CDC further estimates 19 million new sexually transmitted infections per year nationally – and direct medical costs associated with STDs in the U.S. estimated at up to $14.1 billion annually.
These figures and their impact are well understood by the people who are behind the Trojan condom brand, and their latest piggish advertising campaign and the accompanying trojanevolve.com site seek to explain Trojan’s solution to this ongoing public health scenario.
Not unless pigs can fly, said the ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates in Pittsburgh – all of whom rejected the Trojan television spots, echoing an earlier rejection from CBS and FOX nationally. Ray Carter, general manager of WPXI, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, told The New York Times that the spot was “not one we thought was appropriate for the market.”
Can media executives deem what messaging is or is not appropriate for an entire population in a given market? While media properties have the right to protect their audience from tasteless advertising creative or fictional claims in advertisements, Pittsburgh features a 33% composition of people aged 15-34 according to the 2000 census. Advertisements from condom manufacturers can have direct health benefits to this active demographic – and the Trojan campaign is no different, as it is ultimately about responsible intimacy planning.
In a press release, Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, finds hypocrisy in the position of the television networks and affiliates. “On any given day or night, Viagra and other erectile dysfunction ads also run regularly on these networks,” he stated.
The trojanevolve.com site – which offers video testimonies from numerous public health authorities, along with the controversial spot itself – has attracted more than 400,000 unique users since June 18. “As a condom manufacturer, we view ourselves as a steward of public health,” said Jim Daniels, VP of Marketing on the Trojan brand, in a recent Mediapost interview. “In our research, only one in four sex acts involves condom use, which is a very low rate versus the rest of the Western world.”
With national condom usage at just 25% and sexually transmitted infections – including AIDS – on the rise in the U.S., it could be argued that denial of these messages from reaching the most vulnerable young audiences is irresponsible. While media properties certainly have the right to approve or disapprove certain creative messages, controlling the spread of communicable disease should supersede the individual moral platforms of TV network and affiliate management – many of whom are well beyond the Trojan target audience.
The outright rejection by the management at Pittsburgh’s television affiliates may be a matter for the FCC. These decisions on what is appropriate or inappropriate with regard to responsible sexual activity certainly transcend one television market.
Or maybe this is just the kind of nibbles found over the fodder of small talk – pigs in a blanket, anyone?
These figures and their impact are well understood by the people who are behind the Trojan condom brand, and their latest piggish advertising campaign and the accompanying trojanevolve.com site seek to explain Trojan’s solution to this ongoing public health scenario.
Not unless pigs can fly, said the ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates in Pittsburgh – all of whom rejected the Trojan television spots, echoing an earlier rejection from CBS and FOX nationally. Ray Carter, general manager of WPXI, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, told The New York Times that the spot was “not one we thought was appropriate for the market.”
Can media executives deem what messaging is or is not appropriate for an entire population in a given market? While media properties have the right to protect their audience from tasteless advertising creative or fictional claims in advertisements, Pittsburgh features a 33% composition of people aged 15-34 according to the 2000 census. Advertisements from condom manufacturers can have direct health benefits to this active demographic – and the Trojan campaign is no different, as it is ultimately about responsible intimacy planning.
In a press release, Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, finds hypocrisy in the position of the television networks and affiliates. “On any given day or night, Viagra and other erectile dysfunction ads also run regularly on these networks,” he stated.
The trojanevolve.com site – which offers video testimonies from numerous public health authorities, along with the controversial spot itself – has attracted more than 400,000 unique users since June 18. “As a condom manufacturer, we view ourselves as a steward of public health,” said Jim Daniels, VP of Marketing on the Trojan brand, in a recent Mediapost interview. “In our research, only one in four sex acts involves condom use, which is a very low rate versus the rest of the Western world.”
With national condom usage at just 25% and sexually transmitted infections – including AIDS – on the rise in the U.S., it could be argued that denial of these messages from reaching the most vulnerable young audiences is irresponsible. While media properties certainly have the right to approve or disapprove certain creative messages, controlling the spread of communicable disease should supersede the individual moral platforms of TV network and affiliate management – many of whom are well beyond the Trojan target audience.
The outright rejection by the management at Pittsburgh’s television affiliates may be a matter for the FCC. These decisions on what is appropriate or inappropriate with regard to responsible sexual activity certainly transcend one television market.
Or maybe this is just the kind of nibbles found over the fodder of small talk – pigs in a blanket, anyone?
Friday, July 13, 2007
HELIUM CONTEST: Is There a Best Time to Walk?
According to marathon coach, Wendy Bumgardner, "research on lung function, body rhythms, temperature, and hormone levels says one thing - to exercise around 6pm. Surveys on exercise habits say another - to exercise in the morning before other commitments distract you, or during the day when you have a free period of time." Our behaviors being out of step (pun intended) with science are not anything new, but what is the best time to walk?
Scheduling a walk depends somewhat on climate and season. If you live in a region that regularly experiences hot temperatures, such as Florida or Arizona, your optimum walk times will fall in the early morning hours or around dusk. Some people are uncomfortable with walking at night, so dusk would likely be removed as an option. A morning walk is most ideal in a hot climate or during the peak summer months.
But the exact hours composing a good morning walk are dictated also by job and career commitments. Many of us cannot leave work early enough to benefit from a 6pm walk, so the mornings and the later evenings are necessary. In cases where commutes to and from work further constrain exercise times, the tighter clips at the fringes of the day are amplified.
Too often, the more sedentary among us get caught up in over planning a walking schedule - and to those in this mindset the answer really is that there is no ideal time of day in which to walk. Just get out there. While creating a schedule does also establish a healthy habit, a more flexible approach allows for a higher likelihood that the walk will occur. For instance, if it rains during the predetermined walk period (and walking in the rain is out of the question), having the flexibility to walk at another part of the day will ensure that the exercise goals are met.
While hormonal chemicals, body rhythms, temperatures, and other biological research point to 6pm - our lifestyles and our locales more accurately determine our walking hours.
Scheduling a walk depends somewhat on climate and season. If you live in a region that regularly experiences hot temperatures, such as Florida or Arizona, your optimum walk times will fall in the early morning hours or around dusk. Some people are uncomfortable with walking at night, so dusk would likely be removed as an option. A morning walk is most ideal in a hot climate or during the peak summer months.
But the exact hours composing a good morning walk are dictated also by job and career commitments. Many of us cannot leave work early enough to benefit from a 6pm walk, so the mornings and the later evenings are necessary. In cases where commutes to and from work further constrain exercise times, the tighter clips at the fringes of the day are amplified.
Too often, the more sedentary among us get caught up in over planning a walking schedule - and to those in this mindset the answer really is that there is no ideal time of day in which to walk. Just get out there. While creating a schedule does also establish a healthy habit, a more flexible approach allows for a higher likelihood that the walk will occur. For instance, if it rains during the predetermined walk period (and walking in the rain is out of the question), having the flexibility to walk at another part of the day will ensure that the exercise goals are met.
While hormonal chemicals, body rhythms, temperatures, and other biological research point to 6pm - our lifestyles and our locales more accurately determine our walking hours.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
HELIUM CONTEST: Characteristics of the Successful Entrepreneur
The successful entrepreneur has to be willing to alter the initial business vision and evolve - taking advantage of unseen opportunities that present themselves and abandoning loss-making products or services along the way. This kind of decision-making can be compared to the ying/yang of resolve and direction change found in expert stock market participants.
A steely nerve is helpful. Every day the entrepreneur is going to meet different challenges - prospective customers have a change of heart and a change of budget, competitors appear from unlikely sources, internal cost projections fluctuate uncomfortably, and general logistical issues present themselves. Emotional fortitude and maturity is paramount.
The successful entrepreneur anticipates the majority of these occurrences ahead of time and implements plans that have been conceived months - and even years - before their implementation. In this regard, success can be found in the forward-looking cognitive reasoning required to win at chess.
This confluence between emotion and intellect is the key ingredient. The micro-business in which the entrepreneur must operate is hyper-dependent on satisfied customers. Variances in customer moods and approaches demand an on-the-fly shift in sales style - from ideas and intelligence to the passionate and emotional conveyance of those ideas. Some customers make their buying decisions from the gut, and some buy the concept. The successful entrepreneur must be a successful salesperson.
And, of course, all of the above are woven together in a tight wrap of discipline - the discipline to stay on schedule and to stay true to the evolving plan. The successful entrepreneur is reminded time and again that sound discipline guides the business and mends the inevitable and repetitive hiccups.
A steely nerve is helpful. Every day the entrepreneur is going to meet different challenges - prospective customers have a change of heart and a change of budget, competitors appear from unlikely sources, internal cost projections fluctuate uncomfortably, and general logistical issues present themselves. Emotional fortitude and maturity is paramount.
The successful entrepreneur anticipates the majority of these occurrences ahead of time and implements plans that have been conceived months - and even years - before their implementation. In this regard, success can be found in the forward-looking cognitive reasoning required to win at chess.
This confluence between emotion and intellect is the key ingredient. The micro-business in which the entrepreneur must operate is hyper-dependent on satisfied customers. Variances in customer moods and approaches demand an on-the-fly shift in sales style - from ideas and intelligence to the passionate and emotional conveyance of those ideas. Some customers make their buying decisions from the gut, and some buy the concept. The successful entrepreneur must be a successful salesperson.
And, of course, all of the above are woven together in a tight wrap of discipline - the discipline to stay on schedule and to stay true to the evolving plan. The successful entrepreneur is reminded time and again that sound discipline guides the business and mends the inevitable and repetitive hiccups.
Syndicate Efforts: Helium and Facebook Usage
The prior Power Ballad post is a contributing piece to a contest that was held on Helium. The site offers a number of weekly contests in a Darwinist citizen journalism vein - whereby other contributors rank the pieces through side by side comparisons, and the highest-rated pieces win cash prizes. This exercise offers a unique window on writing toward a deadline and will be beneficial for future projects.
Additionally, articles posted on Helium allow for distribution through other channels like Digg, Reddit, and - notably - Facebook. Linking to other forums is clearly encouraged by Helium to further the site's viral objectives - however, the Facebook angle presents another interesting outpost in the user generated content (USG) arena.
The Matter is now accessable through Facebook, as well as Helium and LinkedIn. This will only help establish a syndicate infrastructure later.
Additionally, articles posted on Helium allow for distribution through other channels like Digg, Reddit, and - notably - Facebook. Linking to other forums is clearly encouraged by Helium to further the site's viral objectives - however, the Facebook angle presents another interesting outpost in the user generated content (USG) arena.
The Matter is now accessable through Facebook, as well as Helium and LinkedIn. This will only help establish a syndicate infrastructure later.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
HELIUM CONTEST: How and Why the Power Ballad Undermined Late 80's Metal Music
To comprehend how the power ballad diluted and ultimately undermined metal music in the late 80’s, an understanding on the variety of influences in music and in economics that shaped the period needs to be achieved. Since the 70’s were heavy metal’s embryonic years, the examination should begin in that tumultuous decade.
Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath share the distinction of fathering the metal genre – churning out long-form albums that were composed on the power chord backbone. The groundwork laid by these bands established the sound and the mythical themes found throughout metal music in the 80’s and today.
Big arena bands of the 70’s can attribute much of their success to two key background influences: a persistent economic recession that characterized the decade; and a fierce dedication – particularly among young males – to the tenets of rock and roll music in the face of a disruptive challenge from disco and the dance culture.
The economic turmoil of the 70’s – demonstrated most dramatically by the OPEC oil embargo – set a general unrest in motion among the decade’s youth, and their rebellious appetites were fed at stadiums across the country. The economic discontent was further amplified in the social and political attitude that raged out of the 70’s punk scene.
While it can be said that punk embodied an inevitable divergence from rock and roll, disco represented the first truly threatening fracture in its establishment of a new platform in pop music. More importantly than an alternative choice in popular music, disco was significantly more appealing to young females.
This demographic departure would play itself out in the 80’s and would directly contribute to the birth of the power ballad. In order to pack arenas, metal bands would have to be palatable to young women. The amplifiers and riffs would keep the boys, and the love lyrics and tight pants would draw the girls.
A formula for robust commercialism was in the making.
The same push for demographic inclusion was happening in punk – and new wave music took shape. Cosmetic influences from The Cure, The Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode, Boy George, and many others crept into 80’s metal. The result was more about outrageous hairstyle and lipstick applications than it was about the music, but it succeeded in keeping the female listeners content.
The 80’s also enjoyed another kind of inclusion – an economic prosperity that touched almost every corner of American society. However, strength in the U.S. economy contributed to a watering down in popular music. The times were too good for young people to buy music with lyrics that addressed anything other than trivial matters and lighter fare.
So, the power ballad was a result of hyper-commercial necessity against a backdrop of increasingly fissured musical diversity. While metal would make a major comeback in the 90’s, the power ballad of the late 80’s drove many metal enthusiasts underground to the alternatives that would define the next decade. It never killed the genre outright, but it came close.
Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath share the distinction of fathering the metal genre – churning out long-form albums that were composed on the power chord backbone. The groundwork laid by these bands established the sound and the mythical themes found throughout metal music in the 80’s and today.
Big arena bands of the 70’s can attribute much of their success to two key background influences: a persistent economic recession that characterized the decade; and a fierce dedication – particularly among young males – to the tenets of rock and roll music in the face of a disruptive challenge from disco and the dance culture.
The economic turmoil of the 70’s – demonstrated most dramatically by the OPEC oil embargo – set a general unrest in motion among the decade’s youth, and their rebellious appetites were fed at stadiums across the country. The economic discontent was further amplified in the social and political attitude that raged out of the 70’s punk scene.
While it can be said that punk embodied an inevitable divergence from rock and roll, disco represented the first truly threatening fracture in its establishment of a new platform in pop music. More importantly than an alternative choice in popular music, disco was significantly more appealing to young females.
This demographic departure would play itself out in the 80’s and would directly contribute to the birth of the power ballad. In order to pack arenas, metal bands would have to be palatable to young women. The amplifiers and riffs would keep the boys, and the love lyrics and tight pants would draw the girls.
A formula for robust commercialism was in the making.
The same push for demographic inclusion was happening in punk – and new wave music took shape. Cosmetic influences from The Cure, The Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode, Boy George, and many others crept into 80’s metal. The result was more about outrageous hairstyle and lipstick applications than it was about the music, but it succeeded in keeping the female listeners content.
The 80’s also enjoyed another kind of inclusion – an economic prosperity that touched almost every corner of American society. However, strength in the U.S. economy contributed to a watering down in popular music. The times were too good for young people to buy music with lyrics that addressed anything other than trivial matters and lighter fare.
So, the power ballad was a result of hyper-commercial necessity against a backdrop of increasingly fissured musical diversity. While metal would make a major comeback in the 90’s, the power ballad of the late 80’s drove many metal enthusiasts underground to the alternatives that would define the next decade. It never killed the genre outright, but it came close.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
With Bed Bug Population Growth, Questions on Size, Scale, and Solution to the Problem
Bed bugs have received a lot of publicity in recent months – an increasing cacophony of concern over their rising numbers throughout the United States. While bed bug population growth can certainly be described as alarming – particularly in North America, Europe, and Australia – the sweeping recommendations for broad pesticide usage from bed bug experts, most of whom are employed in pest control businesses and extermination consultancies, are equally disconcerting.
Bed bug numbers are being hailed as epidemics in all 50 states. But is the bed bug question one of media sensationalism, or is their population resurgence a matter of national concern?
There is no disputing the nasty nature of bed bugs. They are ugly brownish animals, roughly the length of a fingernail, and their bites leave significant and – many times – scarring welts. Their only food source is human blood, and they can survive for six to twelve months without a meal. Female bed bugs lay one to twelve eggs per day, so their numbers can increase quite quickly. They are well-adapted nest parasites – the nest, of course, being your comfy bed – and their elusive behavior and flat bodies make them difficult to remove.
If you have bed bugs, you have a big problem.
The National Pest Management Association is quick to point out that bed bugs should not be equated with filth or sanitation problems. Cindy Mannes, media spokesperson for the National Pest Management Association, reiterates this position. “Bed bugs need a blood meal,” she said. “They are not cockroaches. Their populations are increasing in all 50 states, but we find them most where there are large groups of people. This tends to be in the urban settings, but their numbers are growing in suburban and country locations as well.”
Are their growth figures the hype of the pesticide services industry? Pest control revenue clearly will increase with increased hysteria around this voracious insect. According to Ms. Mannes, pest control companies are experiencing a boom in bed bug eradication calls – and some are hiring staff specifically to deal with bed bug projects.
But must we return to the more virulent and poisonous applications that prior generations of American households utilized?
Stephenie Hendricks, spokeswoman for the Pesticide Action Network, believes we have another alternative. “Bed bugs can be controlled with diatomaceous earth applications,” she said. This is a non-toxic approach whereby the infected bedding and surrounding space is sprinkled with a dusting of tiny fossilized water plants. The algae-like plants, called diatoms, act as microscopic razors, slicing through the exoskeletons of any insect unfortunate enough to cross through it.
The use of this specialized sediment is quite effective. Diatomaceous earth – also known as DE – has been utilized for years by farmers to eliminate pests. “The bed bug question is becoming louder,” said Ms. Hendricks. “The pesticide proponents are also getting louder.” The Pesticide Action Network offers alternatives to the pesticides on their web site – panna.org.
The most recent EPA figures demonstrate U.S. insecticide expenditures – as a percent of the world market – have increased from 34% to 36%.
Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite. Given these questions, this common phrase from yesterday is as much metaphorical as practical.
Bed bug numbers are being hailed as epidemics in all 50 states. But is the bed bug question one of media sensationalism, or is their population resurgence a matter of national concern?
There is no disputing the nasty nature of bed bugs. They are ugly brownish animals, roughly the length of a fingernail, and their bites leave significant and – many times – scarring welts. Their only food source is human blood, and they can survive for six to twelve months without a meal. Female bed bugs lay one to twelve eggs per day, so their numbers can increase quite quickly. They are well-adapted nest parasites – the nest, of course, being your comfy bed – and their elusive behavior and flat bodies make them difficult to remove.
If you have bed bugs, you have a big problem.
The National Pest Management Association is quick to point out that bed bugs should not be equated with filth or sanitation problems. Cindy Mannes, media spokesperson for the National Pest Management Association, reiterates this position. “Bed bugs need a blood meal,” she said. “They are not cockroaches. Their populations are increasing in all 50 states, but we find them most where there are large groups of people. This tends to be in the urban settings, but their numbers are growing in suburban and country locations as well.”
Are their growth figures the hype of the pesticide services industry? Pest control revenue clearly will increase with increased hysteria around this voracious insect. According to Ms. Mannes, pest control companies are experiencing a boom in bed bug eradication calls – and some are hiring staff specifically to deal with bed bug projects.
But must we return to the more virulent and poisonous applications that prior generations of American households utilized?
Stephenie Hendricks, spokeswoman for the Pesticide Action Network, believes we have another alternative. “Bed bugs can be controlled with diatomaceous earth applications,” she said. This is a non-toxic approach whereby the infected bedding and surrounding space is sprinkled with a dusting of tiny fossilized water plants. The algae-like plants, called diatoms, act as microscopic razors, slicing through the exoskeletons of any insect unfortunate enough to cross through it.
The use of this specialized sediment is quite effective. Diatomaceous earth – also known as DE – has been utilized for years by farmers to eliminate pests. “The bed bug question is becoming louder,” said Ms. Hendricks. “The pesticide proponents are also getting louder.” The Pesticide Action Network offers alternatives to the pesticides on their web site – panna.org.
The most recent EPA figures demonstrate U.S. insecticide expenditures – as a percent of the world market – have increased from 34% to 36%.
Sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite. Given these questions, this common phrase from yesterday is as much metaphorical as practical.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Matter Stories on Helium.com - A Writing Syndicate
The nature of infinity is opportunity. While browsing on Craigslist for freelance writing queries, Helium.com was presented as an opportunity to make money while posting and evaluating articles. The Helium business model is fairly simple - users post articles and rate the articles of their peers, and in turn the site promises to share a portion of their advertising revenue with their most active and most highly rated contributors.
But The Matter is not about money. In this case, Helium is simply about the syndication and the reflection back to the experiment at hand here at The Matter. Helium may represent an interesting foray into viral approaches as well. At a minimum, it is another vein.
The Corzine story and the oil reserve story have both been released on Helium, and all future pieces will be included there as well.
But The Matter is not about money. In this case, Helium is simply about the syndication and the reflection back to the experiment at hand here at The Matter. Helium may represent an interesting foray into viral approaches as well. At a minimum, it is another vein.
The Corzine story and the oil reserve story have both been released on Helium, and all future pieces will be included there as well.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Corzine's Pedestrian Safety Story Accepted by Courier News
The Courier News has accepted the Corzine Pedestrian Safey Initiative story. It is slated to run in their Community Voices section - with a bio and a head shot. So, the phone work paid off and the syndicate is born.
The challenge remains in stories of national interest. Newspaper editorial staff have varied approaches with regard to freelance submissions, but national stories do not find an immediate home - particularly among local newspapers that rely on AP feeds for their national coverage. The opportunity for distribution clearly lies with large newspapers that regularly cover stories of a national flavor.
While this is a challenge, it is one that must be overcome - and The Matter will continue to feature national stories. However, in order to foster the distribution needs of the syndicate regional and local stories will have to continue.
The intention is to get closer to the Courier News editorial team - and any of their colleagues at sister Gannett properties. This is a good first step toward an interesting pursuit.
The challenge remains in stories of national interest. Newspaper editorial staff have varied approaches with regard to freelance submissions, but national stories do not find an immediate home - particularly among local newspapers that rely on AP feeds for their national coverage. The opportunity for distribution clearly lies with large newspapers that regularly cover stories of a national flavor.
While this is a challenge, it is one that must be overcome - and The Matter will continue to feature national stories. However, in order to foster the distribution needs of the syndicate regional and local stories will have to continue.
The intention is to get closer to the Courier News editorial team - and any of their colleagues at sister Gannett properties. This is a good first step toward an interesting pursuit.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Governor Corzine's Pedestrian Safety Initiative Not Enough
New Jersey’s roads are among the most deadly for pedestrians and bicyclists in the country – a blemish that the New Jersey Department of Transportation would like us to believe is being erased.
In early June, the NJDOT published its first newsletter on bicycle and pedestrian safety, celebrating Governor Corzine’s $74 million Pedestrian Safety Initiative and offering an assortment of safety tips to community planners and to commuters. New Jersey has been identified as one of 13 “pedestrian focus states” by the Federal Highway Administration, and the NJDOT newsletter claims New Jersey to be “the first of the 13 focus states to have a plan ready for implementation.”
2006 represented an 8% increase in New Jersey pedestrian fatalities – 168 deaths, according to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign (www.tstc.org). While New Jersey may be the first to complete the task of setting a plan, Governor Corzine’s Pedestrian Safety Initiative may not be the most thorough or robust. For fiscal year 2006, the state transportation planning budget was $2.74 billion – bringing Governor Corzine’s plan to a mere .5% of total annual capital commitment.
“That won’t buy a whole lot,” said Andy Clarke, Executive Director of the League of American Bicyclists. He explained that anything less than 1% of state DOT budget is not considered significant. The spending offered in Governor Corzine’s plan “does not represent the percentage of pedestrian accidents in the state. It also does not represent the percentage of bicycle and pedestrian trips made in the state.” New Jersey is not serious about tackling the problem of its dangerous roads, Mr. Clarke concluded.
But how can New Jersey’s motorist community absorb the necessary infrastructure changes needed for bicycle and pedestrian safety, and can local municipalities realistically implement the changes? While the NJDOT newsletter claims the plan “won accolades throughout the state,” Governor Corzine’s plan does not intricately explore the specifics. The plan extends a few vague guideposts, such as the assembly of a “pedestrian impact team” and “small-scale engineering treatments” and an effort to “emphasize and clearly explain the roles and responsibilities of drivers and pedestrians.”
Mr. Clarke is more specific. “When states and counties routinely rebuild roads, they need to incorporate bicycle and pedestrian safety into the design. Most four-lane roads can be converted to three lanes – with bike lanes of proper width on both sides. Traffic patterns need to be studied, but in the vast majority of cases the three-lane conversion has no impact on traffic flow.”
The problem centers also on excessive motor vehicle usage. “People make short trips in their cars for simple errands and to get to mass transit. Most trips are two miles or less,” he said. “The education portion of any state plan should encourage people to incorporate bicycles more regularly into their trips.”
Mr. Clarke has seen communities around the nation benefit from these programs. “Making these changes has a significant impact on economic development. Cities and municipalities that have implemented these programs have become attractive destinations for families.” Bicycles are zero-emission vehicles, and increased bicycle usage decreases air, water, and noise pollution in the community. But before New Jersey can become an eco-friendly utopia, this issue of bicycle and pedestrian safety has to be settled.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, New Jersey experienced a 3.7% growth in population from 2000 to 2006 – more than 300,000 new residents. Traffic congestion certainly mirrors this growth. For the state to have a realistic chance of being removed from the federal government’s dubious list of 13 most deadly states for pedestrians and bicyclists, it appears that Governor Corzine will need to break out the calculator again.
In early June, the NJDOT published its first newsletter on bicycle and pedestrian safety, celebrating Governor Corzine’s $74 million Pedestrian Safety Initiative and offering an assortment of safety tips to community planners and to commuters. New Jersey has been identified as one of 13 “pedestrian focus states” by the Federal Highway Administration, and the NJDOT newsletter claims New Jersey to be “the first of the 13 focus states to have a plan ready for implementation.”
2006 represented an 8% increase in New Jersey pedestrian fatalities – 168 deaths, according to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign (www.tstc.org). While New Jersey may be the first to complete the task of setting a plan, Governor Corzine’s Pedestrian Safety Initiative may not be the most thorough or robust. For fiscal year 2006, the state transportation planning budget was $2.74 billion – bringing Governor Corzine’s plan to a mere .5% of total annual capital commitment.
“That won’t buy a whole lot,” said Andy Clarke, Executive Director of the League of American Bicyclists. He explained that anything less than 1% of state DOT budget is not considered significant. The spending offered in Governor Corzine’s plan “does not represent the percentage of pedestrian accidents in the state. It also does not represent the percentage of bicycle and pedestrian trips made in the state.” New Jersey is not serious about tackling the problem of its dangerous roads, Mr. Clarke concluded.
But how can New Jersey’s motorist community absorb the necessary infrastructure changes needed for bicycle and pedestrian safety, and can local municipalities realistically implement the changes? While the NJDOT newsletter claims the plan “won accolades throughout the state,” Governor Corzine’s plan does not intricately explore the specifics. The plan extends a few vague guideposts, such as the assembly of a “pedestrian impact team” and “small-scale engineering treatments” and an effort to “emphasize and clearly explain the roles and responsibilities of drivers and pedestrians.”
Mr. Clarke is more specific. “When states and counties routinely rebuild roads, they need to incorporate bicycle and pedestrian safety into the design. Most four-lane roads can be converted to three lanes – with bike lanes of proper width on both sides. Traffic patterns need to be studied, but in the vast majority of cases the three-lane conversion has no impact on traffic flow.”
The problem centers also on excessive motor vehicle usage. “People make short trips in their cars for simple errands and to get to mass transit. Most trips are two miles or less,” he said. “The education portion of any state plan should encourage people to incorporate bicycles more regularly into their trips.”
Mr. Clarke has seen communities around the nation benefit from these programs. “Making these changes has a significant impact on economic development. Cities and municipalities that have implemented these programs have become attractive destinations for families.” Bicycles are zero-emission vehicles, and increased bicycle usage decreases air, water, and noise pollution in the community. But before New Jersey can become an eco-friendly utopia, this issue of bicycle and pedestrian safety has to be settled.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, New Jersey experienced a 3.7% growth in population from 2000 to 2006 – more than 300,000 new residents. Traffic congestion certainly mirrors this growth. For the state to have a realistic chance of being removed from the federal government’s dubious list of 13 most deadly states for pedestrians and bicyclists, it appears that Governor Corzine will need to break out the calculator again.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Anatomy of a Submission: Oil Reserve Story
The oil reserve story, posted on June 1, has since been submitted to editors at nine newspapers: two in the Pacific Northwest, one in Southern California, four in the Midwest, and two in the Northeast. In general terms, the Pacific Northwest was chosen for the more progressive green views of its readership; Southern California for its heavy vehicle usage; the Midwest for its cornfields/Ethanol potential and for the top-of-mind concerns in Detroit; and the Northeast for its propensity to publish stories of national importance.
None of the editors at any of the newspapers responded to the original unsolicited email submission. In follow up telephone work, two news editors in the Midwest referred me to the business news editor - and I have received one rejection one the grounds that the story was not regional enough in focus. In addition, the business news editor said that it is unusual for the daily to work with freelancers.
The learnings to date on the oil reserve story center on the regional vs. national content needs. The plan is to continue circulating the piece to other editors and to establish the underpinnings of a network with the editorial community. The next posting on The Matter will feature a story of importance to the state of New Jersey.
None of the editors at any of the newspapers responded to the original unsolicited email submission. In follow up telephone work, two news editors in the Midwest referred me to the business news editor - and I have received one rejection one the grounds that the story was not regional enough in focus. In addition, the business news editor said that it is unusual for the daily to work with freelancers.
The learnings to date on the oil reserve story center on the regional vs. national content needs. The plan is to continue circulating the piece to other editors and to establish the underpinnings of a network with the editorial community. The next posting on The Matter will feature a story of importance to the state of New Jersey.
Friday, June 1, 2007
Current Oil Prices and Alternative Fuel Research Not an Indication of World Oil Reserves
Pull up to any gas station anywhere in America and you are likely to experience some degree of sticker shock. At a glance, prices can be explained away by geo-political factors – crisis in the Middle East and America’s deteriorating relationships with oil-exporting nations, such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Sudan. These delicacies are certainly contributors to global oil prices. The world’s major oil companies are also quick to pair the inflation in retail gasoline prices with the parade of research initiatives in alternative fuel options – ethanol, liquefied coal, hydrogen, nuclear energy, windmills, etc.
But are oil prices and the push toward innovations in alternative fuels an indication that we are in the beginning stages of a global oil supply crisis? This question has far-reaching implications on a wide range of economies and yet the answers are not that diverse.
According to British Petroleum, global oil output rose by 900,000 barrels per day in 2005 – led by Saudi Arabia with 22% of total reserve, followed most closely by Iran (12%) and Iraq (10%). Sourcing BP’s 2006 Statistical Review of World Energy, “the tendency has been for proved reserves at the aggregate level to increase over time as reported discoveries, extensions, and improved recovery have exceeded production. Proved oil reserves at the end of 2005 are estimated to have been 1200.7 billion barrels…an increase of around 17% over the end-1995 figure.” Our advances in technology are increasing our abilities to find new fields and our efficiencies and collections at existing fields. The net effect has been a substantial increase in global oil supply.
But new technologies – such as deep horizontal drilling into adjacent wells – do not guarantee infinite supply, and prominent geologists maintain that we have already reached a peak. On May 10, 2006, Dr. Kenneth Deffeyes – a preeminent expert on the oil supply question – told Daily Wealth “the actual peak occurred sometime in mid-January 2006.” If the peak did occur in January 2006, we are clearly in a period of decline.
David Morehouse of the National Energy Information Center disagrees. “It depends on what you call oil,” he said in a telephone interview. “People who say that we are running out are talking about crude.” Mr. Morehouse went on to explain that there are different kinds of oil sources – crude, heavy crude, extra-heavy crude, and oil shale. Heavy and extra-heavy oils are types of crude that are dense in nature – like molasses – and contain impurities that must be removed in order to be refined. Heavy crude oils were long considered to be unprofitable because they were difficult to produce, process, and transport. There are vast worldwide reserves of heavy crude. Oil shale is a precursor of oils, a rock that contains enough organic material – called kerogen – to yield oil and gas when it is cooked. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists conservatively estimates total world resources of oil shale at 2.6 trillion barrels.
“Heavy oils and oil shale are not considered in the analysis of world oil reserves,” Mr. Morehouse said. But he is reluctant to provide his own estimate on when reserves will peak since there are too many uncertainties with regard to technological advancements. A June 2005 presentation from the National Energy Information Center offered a production peak in the year 2065 – but oil shale was excluded from the presentation.
The high price of a barrel of oil is clearly not influenced by a pending depletion in world oil reserves, and where we mark the oil production peak is a debate among academics, governments, and the private sector. It appears that we have a few more generations to figure it out. In the meantime, carpools and bicycles can provide some financial relief.
But are oil prices and the push toward innovations in alternative fuels an indication that we are in the beginning stages of a global oil supply crisis? This question has far-reaching implications on a wide range of economies and yet the answers are not that diverse.
According to British Petroleum, global oil output rose by 900,000 barrels per day in 2005 – led by Saudi Arabia with 22% of total reserve, followed most closely by Iran (12%) and Iraq (10%). Sourcing BP’s 2006 Statistical Review of World Energy, “the tendency has been for proved reserves at the aggregate level to increase over time as reported discoveries, extensions, and improved recovery have exceeded production. Proved oil reserves at the end of 2005 are estimated to have been 1200.7 billion barrels…an increase of around 17% over the end-1995 figure.” Our advances in technology are increasing our abilities to find new fields and our efficiencies and collections at existing fields. The net effect has been a substantial increase in global oil supply.
But new technologies – such as deep horizontal drilling into adjacent wells – do not guarantee infinite supply, and prominent geologists maintain that we have already reached a peak. On May 10, 2006, Dr. Kenneth Deffeyes – a preeminent expert on the oil supply question – told Daily Wealth “the actual peak occurred sometime in mid-January 2006.” If the peak did occur in January 2006, we are clearly in a period of decline.
David Morehouse of the National Energy Information Center disagrees. “It depends on what you call oil,” he said in a telephone interview. “People who say that we are running out are talking about crude.” Mr. Morehouse went on to explain that there are different kinds of oil sources – crude, heavy crude, extra-heavy crude, and oil shale. Heavy and extra-heavy oils are types of crude that are dense in nature – like molasses – and contain impurities that must be removed in order to be refined. Heavy crude oils were long considered to be unprofitable because they were difficult to produce, process, and transport. There are vast worldwide reserves of heavy crude. Oil shale is a precursor of oils, a rock that contains enough organic material – called kerogen – to yield oil and gas when it is cooked. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists conservatively estimates total world resources of oil shale at 2.6 trillion barrels.
“Heavy oils and oil shale are not considered in the analysis of world oil reserves,” Mr. Morehouse said. But he is reluctant to provide his own estimate on when reserves will peak since there are too many uncertainties with regard to technological advancements. A June 2005 presentation from the National Energy Information Center offered a production peak in the year 2065 – but oil shale was excluded from the presentation.
The high price of a barrel of oil is clearly not influenced by a pending depletion in world oil reserves, and where we mark the oil production peak is a debate among academics, governments, and the private sector. It appears that we have a few more generations to figure it out. In the meantime, carpools and bicycles can provide some financial relief.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
What's The Matter?
As American news media is increasingly polarized by the political views of editorial staff and the agendas of select journalists, much of what the public once considered balanced news has gone extinct. For a left-leaning point of view, we can turn to CNN and The New York Times; for a lean to the right, we have The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. The shame of this simply is that journalism has become perverted by emotion and by ordained perspective.
In this environment, independent investigative voices have been muted in the establishmed media. Investigative journalism is now about further reinforcing the positions of a particular news outlet - and not about the matter itself.
The aim of this blog is to establish an independent investigative news voice - one journalist poking around matters of local, national, and global importance - and to unfold a byline syndicate among relevant news sources. The items and issues covered in this blog are considered matters of importance to one journalist, but the investigation will maintain an equality and universal voice.
The secondary goal of this blog is to document the progress of establishing the syndicate, examining the anatomy of a story from its construction through to its ultimate life or death at the hands of various editors around the country. In this regard, The Matter will stand as a written documentary within written documentaries - with experimentation in the pursuit of Journalism As Exploration at its very heart.
In this environment, independent investigative voices have been muted in the establishmed media. Investigative journalism is now about further reinforcing the positions of a particular news outlet - and not about the matter itself.
The aim of this blog is to establish an independent investigative news voice - one journalist poking around matters of local, national, and global importance - and to unfold a byline syndicate among relevant news sources. The items and issues covered in this blog are considered matters of importance to one journalist, but the investigation will maintain an equality and universal voice.
The secondary goal of this blog is to document the progress of establishing the syndicate, examining the anatomy of a story from its construction through to its ultimate life or death at the hands of various editors around the country. In this regard, The Matter will stand as a written documentary within written documentaries - with experimentation in the pursuit of Journalism As Exploration at its very heart.
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