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2009by Jon GarfunkelI appear to have found evidence of plagiarism of a 2005 copying from a 1995 without proper attribution -- but I can't tell with absolute certainty until I open the 1995 book. For now I am trusting Google Books. [See update at bottom from the 1995 author.] by Jon GarfunkelI wanted to take a few moments and try to understand the hysteria at Facebook's changes, what it means, and what users should really be concerned with. I am not a Facebook apologist. I use Facebook, I use Twitter, and even get lulled into using emerging sites like Twine. by Jon GarfunkelKudos to David Berlind for predicting seven years ago that IBM would buy Sun (His headline was When Will IBM Buy Sun? Essentially: "As a tool for marginalizing Microsoft, Java is everything OS/2 was not.") by Jon GarfunkelEvery so often I peruse the local readings list in the Boston Phoenix to get a sense of what readings are in town. It lists the title, author, time, location. Simple enough, but I then generally Google the book to see what the heck it's about. by Jon GarfunkelDear Bob,
I didn't join Go Daddy as a customer after your first Super Bowl commercial, or even after the second. A lot of other people did, and when I noticed you were the market leader, I figured I couldn't go wrong. I also thought it was cool that your image was anti-Silicon Valley: an ex-Marine in Scottsdale, a flag-waving NASCAR sponsor. 2008by Jon Garfunkel"The thing to do with good ideas," Oscar Wilde never said, "is to just wait until Google develops them, to save you the trouble of doing so yourself." by Jon GarfunkelA year ago, I articulated the Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting (PONAR): a framework of icons, forms, and processes which could be deployed to help mitigate the effects of injurious speech online. by Jon GarfunkelIt's been a number of weeks since the last substantive post, so I wanted to provide an update on some of the planning I've been doing for a couple of conferences this spring.
First a quick review the elements of my grand unified theory of media: by Jon GarfunkelRudolf Elmer, the key source in the Wikileaks/BJB story, has created a website Swiss Whistleblower. Some of the information he'd been posting at Wikileaks will now be posted to the new website. by Jon GarfunkelIt's about time someone mentioned the elephant in the room-- the locker room. A professional sports locker room has limited space. Does it have room for bloggers? Here's one media mogul who says no: by Jon GarfunkelWikileaks is not out of the woods yet. The full hearing for the suit brought by Bank Julius Baer is scheduled on May 16, with motions, countermotions and briefs due at some intervals until htn (see the details from CNet's Declan McCullagh, who was the only reporter to pass it along.) [UPDATE 3/6/08: BJB has vacated the lawsuit. by Jon GarfunkelObviously, the word that Harvard's FAS faculty has voted tonight on a measure to ensure open access to their published papers -- and passed it -- is fantastic news. by Jon GarfunkelFour years ago, I picked the hometown favorite for the Democratic primaries, albeit very late in the game, long after he was all but crowned as the presumptive nominee. by Jon GarfunkelA bunch of merry pranksters have had some fun with the phrase anti-social networking over the last few years. ("You can use Nemester to: Find out the enemies of your enemies and conspire with them Denounce your enemies... Make new enemies... Help your enemies meet their demise..."; Introvertster is an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing you online.") by Jon GarfunkelThis article takes a brief look at basic web findability guidelines, how they are addressed by federal guidelines in the United States, and how the FCC, an agency which most commonly deals with Internet issues, fails some basic tests of such guidelines. by Jon GarfunkelBack in 1999, in the Web 1.3 era, I posted a survey of existing web annotation tools on the web, and was cited (twice!) in academic papers for that minor amount of scholarship. 2007by Jon GarfunkelOn Sunday I discovered a potential privacy leak in the Site Meter traffic logs; I was able, with a fair degree of confidence, to determine the IP addresses used by ten anonymous commenters to a well-trafficked blog. by Jon GarfunkelIf you're in the web publishing practice, you ought to know about this essential paradox: the disparity between the safe harbor exemptions governing copyright infringement (“DMCA”) and defamation/exposure (“CDA 230”). by Jon GarfunkelA couple of days ago, I wryly observed that supposed political revolution of blogging hadn't brought out any of the Presidential candidates to blog. Instead their blogs are all what the 2003 blogging know-it-alls scoffed at: a series of press releases. by Jon GarfunkelOne theory of weblogs is that they've settled into a niche of being “unplugged” alternatives to over-produced media. The same words used to describe the popular MTV series could be used to describe blogs: they promised an intimate, direct connection to the audience. by Jon GarfunkelThe thrust of this series has been about online influence. Do we even have a good understanding of it? This short concluding piece will raise some new questions for further research. I'm indebted to Philip Meyer, one of the pioneers of statistical journalism research. In his work on the Quality Project at the University of North Carolina, he has developed the Societal Influence Model. It's a very basic model; the data in his latest book, The Vanishing Newspaper, validates the connections. Societal influence (as opposed to commercial influence, which newspapers also sell) is associated with circulation and credibility. They tend to go up, and down, together. More circulation leads to more profitability, which leads to more spending on staff, which leads to more credibility. by Jon GarfunkelWhen the New York Times announced TimesSelect in 2005, the merry cynics among the media bloggers asserted that it would lose any or all of the following (1) money, (2) Google referrals, (3), influence, (4) respect in the blogosphere. Most of those predictions were based on the assumption that TimesSelect would be a permanent change; that's no different from any other prediction. It lasted only two years. Still, many commentators stuck by their original assessments, and few put forth data. This series aimed to extract the data. Here are the findings. by Jon GarfunkelAfter my investigation into Search Engine Obfuscation-- the case of the Times's pages on Allen Kraus dwarfing the search rankings on Google-- I emailed a number of the bloggers who'd written about it last week. The response was underwhelming. (Begging the Times to start a blog back in 2003, Dave Winer had explained: "In the weblog world we don't string together soundbites to create a 'story' -- we continually cover an area, and comment on developments over time." In theory, yes...) by Jon GarfunkelIt seems that Allen Kraus of New York City is a victim of search engine obfuscation. by Jon GarfunkelThere's two ways to show you've got a successful CMS platform.
One, your PR blogger can claim so before the next major version is released.
Two, when a customer has questions, somebody from the community is able to supply an answer. Well, Micrsosoft SharePoint did achieve the first, thanks to the Scobleizer. by Jon GarfunkelLast week I wrote about the recently resurfaced 1994 Dick Cheney video clip, and compared it to a video from the same year of George W. Bush in a Texas debate (see “Tales of the Tapes”). For the newsworthiness of these videos, both took a rather long path towards widespread viewing. by Jon GarfunkelIt's closing in on ten years since my last pitiful appearance in the Times, and an opportunity arose to try again. by Jon GarfunkelMachines and humans see the Internet differently. At the machine level, two systems which are communicating are able to do so reciprocally. One system can send a message to the other with the expectation that it can get a response. At the human level, however, this does not hold: one person can send a person a message without any return address. This basic asymmetry has been at the heart of most of the abuse on Internet. by Jon GarfunkelI caught wind before the weekend of Governor Deval Patrick's bid to freshen up his image by unveiling a new website. Dan Kennedy asks why he didn't do it on Mass.gov? I suppose it's simply easier for him to post the information there. And the discussion on Blue Mass Group basically confirms this. But let's look at the details: by Jon GarfunkelWhen life gives you apples... Sunday's Times amplified the story of one Melanie Tucker, whose suit against Apple Computer, Inc. last year must now be updated to reflect that the defendent has shed the "Computer" appellation from its corporate name. Apple is now quite solidly in the media business, and it is for this Ms. Tucker complains in her suit. To wit: the Apple iPod can play music from only one electronic music store, Apple's itTunes (as well as, it should be noted, music files from the owner's collection). And music from Apple iTunes can only be played on an Apple iPod and not any other device. What is fairly convenient for the Apple, Inc., and to millions of users, is apparently some gross inconvenience to a few. To Tucker, this is "crippleware" a product tie-in which violates United States and California antitrust laws. 2006by Jon GarfunkelA year ago, a colleague asked for a wiki to be set up at work to accelerate our collaborative efforts. I responded by setting up Drupal, because it can act like a wiki and do so much more (like forums, portal layout comments-on-the-page, user/groups management, etc., and that's the reason I had familiarized myself with it long ago). by Jon GarfunkelNow that I was committing money to buy a Google AdWord for Alaa, my cause was his. I realized I ought to spend a little more time to learn about him. The thought crossed my mind that he might have different politics than I, and that somebody might pick on me later for this. Whatever were his thoughts on Israel, I wondered. I searched his website, and found some topical entries-- but couldn't find any actually written by him, only by the folks he was drawing in. I figured if I ought to draw the line somewhere: I couldn't support anybody who advocated aggression against U.S. or Israeli interests. Anything else he had to say-- well, it was up to him, I was defending his right to say it. by Jon GarfunkelRegrettably, I do not have a channel tuned to alerts about human rights violations; so I rely on the pinball nature of news to get them to me. Normally one could find them through the blogs, though, I remain overwhelmed by the overall mundanity have stopped reading many of them regularly. Only by the grace of perusing Seth Finkelstein's Infothought last week did I learn about the jailing of Egyptian blogger Alaa Ahmed Seif Al Islam. Alaa had won an award last November by Reporters Without Borders for his Manalaa.net Drupal site, an aggregator Egyptian blogs. He was participating in ongoing protests for an independent judiciary, when he was arrested along ten others; Now a mighty wind had blown across the the plains of the blogosphere to raise support for one of their own. The wind also carried seeds of activism: as a protest measure, bloggers were invited to link to the new Free Alaa website, but using the link text Egypt. Doing so, on a massive scale, was supposed to effect a googlebombing. by Jon GarfunkelSince Ronald Reagan, U.S. Presidents have added "signing statements" onto laws to indicate how (or whether) they expect to enforce them. Two weeks ago in the Boston Globe, Charlie Savage reported on the 750 signing statements of the current President Bush, which have come at a pace several times that of his father and President Clinton. This story has caught on, but perhaps not as quckly as one might think, for a couple of reasons. First is that it has been just one of many troubles battering the current Administration. Second, and what interests me, is that the phenomenon has yet to win a pet name. The common name for the effective veto as described by Article I, Section 7 has been popularly known as the "pocket veto." This I'd like to call the "sock-it veto." by Jon GarfunkelIt was eleven months ago that I published the New Gatekeepers series. I'm still learning. Just last Friday, Elisa Cooper of Berkeley, CA, posted a comment informing me about the concept of rankism, and its supporting website, Breaking Ranks. The concept Rankism has been coined by Robert Fuller, a past Professor of Physics at Columbia and President of Oberlin College. He had come to realize that all of our old scourges of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry had a common root-- an -ism called rankism-- but it was not until he left academia that the idea coalesced. He told Publishers Weekly: "Lacking the protection of title and status in the years after Oberlin, I experienced what it's like to be taken for a nobody." by Jon Garfunkel[This post is a response to a thread on the ONA discussion list. It got too long to email.] When talking about the best use of technology for uses like computer-mediated communications, a skeptical philopsophy is invariably voiced along the lines of "technology can't solve all problems; humans can." This is sensible, but the statement is problematic due to a different understandings of what exactly "technology" means in this sense. by Jon GarfunkelI've been promising this story since Monday, but I must disappoint for now as I'm still waiting to hear on a couple of key source that I only contacted late in the week. If I haven't contacted you, and you think you need to improve upon the historical, shoot me a message, or post yourself. If you want to scoop me, be my guest, but here's what you have to reach for: you're going to need to come up with the particular faults of RSS, and also illustrate a model of how it could be completely re-imagined. And you also might want to deliver something on the order of 5,000 words, which is where I'm at right now. It was longer, but I've cut out many parts where I was just quoting directly five-year old quotes-- as in years ago, not the age of the quoted person. I'd like [As for this little game? Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek floated such an idea this past Monday. I was skeptical then, but under the circumstances, I accept.] Whatever you got, tag it rss+quest. by Jon GarfunkelI wanted to start the new year if with a modest proposal. But it would be immodest without some proper background. The subject for today is UN Reform, because here at Civilities we occasionally distract ourselves from the mechanics of media structures to find out how they apply in the real world, and furthermore whether there is any course of action we might take to better mankind. The New York Times begins the year by giving an update on such a modest proposal: Officials at U.N. Seek Fast Action on Rights Panel. Paraphrasing the article, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan explains thus: some countries participate “not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others” with the consequence being that “a credibility deficit has developed, which casts a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.” The position of the United States, according to Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Kristen Silverberg, is “to improve the membership criteria so that countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan were not eligible.” 2005by Jon GarfunkelA year ago I had theorized that if you shrunk the blogosphere to a much more compact pundisphere, the majority of people who use the Internet for something like getting political information wouldn't notice. That was a useless prediction to make as it can't be test. But what would be useful for the lesser pundisphere to do is to actually track predictions that the greater pundits make. It doesn't take many people to make predictions, so it's probably more of a noble calling for the rest of us to keep score. With the A-List, if you can't join 'em, beat 'em. In thinking about how to write up a Civilities-style proposal, I started mining the old Brill's Content magazine-- which for a few years at the turn of the millenium was a handy gloss of the information age. Its hundred-and-fifty pages,were news about the news, reviews of the news, and just about everything would look for in a magazine if one weren't lookinf for advertisements. It had a running gag which took the trouble to actually rate how many of the predictions made by the Sunday pundits came true. For kicks, the magazine also compared them to a prognosticator on loan from a local zoo, Chippy the Chimp. (In his debut in the August 1999 issue, Chippy went 3 for 6 , “good enough to beat George Will and John McLaughlin”). by Jon GarfunkelHere are my own brief answers to Who's Respected in Online Journalism? These are quick thoughts, and I have ludicrously high standards, and I have the bias of working on reactionary theories. I'm still most curious to learn what other people think.
by Jon GarfunkelOk, you've written a really good, original, article on your blog or webzine or civ or whatever. Your next step is to promote the heck out of it: not just get people to read it, but get people to reference it later, and recognize you as the smart person behind that idea.
by Jon GarfunkelI'm returning from my summer break away from writing. As I hinted three months ago, I'd be on a bit of a break for a while-- work had gotten pretty intense, and I was in the process of moving across town (which caused two outages of over a day last month: one by my poor planning, one by Verizon's mistake in fixing my phone line), and then setting up the new place. And I wanted to get some normal sleep.
by Jon GarfunkelReading Civilities, one might get the impression that I have no respect for the work that Harvard's Berkman Center does
(I happen to have sympathy for Seth Finkelstein's case), or respect for the "A-List Gatekeepers" (Mike Sanders does not say that, though he uses that quoted phrase), or even respect for women bloggers (Shelley Powers lumped me in with some alpha-bloggers, and later modified that, downgrading me from an onion to a scallion.)
Let me correct those mis-impressions which I've just made for myself:
by Jon GarfunkelIn the last 4 months, I've written 60 articles. These fifteen are ones that I feel follow the style of Liebling. After the first piece, a rather sober analysis about media mistrust, I started diving headfirst into news stories. I looked at why stories broke they way they did. Like Liebling, I avoided jumping to the conclusion that some all-powerful conspiracy was to blame; instead these stories represent cirumstances where average people just ambled along, sticking with old habits, making simple mistakes, not listening to others. And it's not just the press that's wayward these days; it's the new blog-press, too.
by Jon GarfunkelThe ideal of journalism is to be responsible to the truth. Whether individual journalists or publications meet that ideal is often debated, but they all, at a basic level, have a definitive responsibility-- to their readers.
by Jon GarfunkelOn Sunday I went to hear Howard Zinn speak at the Boston chapter of the National Writers Union. He said that he sees more activism today that any time during the 1960's.
I wasn't there then, but it's possible that the perception leads reality. Wherever one looks on the Internet, there is activism, though the physical evidence, and quantifiable acheivements, are harder to discern (Zinn did not admit to much web-surfing, let along blog-reading, other than reading his email).
by Jon GarfunkelTo bring order to the universe-- at least that part we call the Hub here in Boston, home of the repeat NFL champion New England Patriots and World Series champion Boston Red Sox, Adam Gaffin has organized the Universal Hub. (I've only lived here seven years, and live in neighboring Brookline while working in neighboring Cambridge, but one of the first things I learned was that Oliver Wendell Holmes originally dubbed Boston the "hub of the universe." It's the hub of my commute, for sure.)
by Jon Garfunkel"Blog This!" the button on your browser's Google toolbar beckons. You click the button, and see a prompt for name and password. Sign up, and boom! you're one of 27,000 people a day who create a blog-- perhaps most of whom don't even know it, or may not be sure you wanted to do that.
As I've explained, blogs are different things to different people. Rebecca Blood one of those people who is more respected than most, and here's her recent definition: "The weblog is at once a scrapbook, news filter, chapbook, newsletter, and
community."
by Jon GarfunkelOn Martin Luther King Day, I celebrate by listening to WGBH's Eric Jackson's salute to the great man, which he does by interespersing King's speeches with jazz music. There are very few evenings on the radio as
by Jon GarfunkelTonight the Powerline Blog, on a roll from its December triumph as Time magazines "Blog of the Year," relays this blurb: "Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal reports the news that has been roiling the blogosphere today: 'Dean campaign made payments to two bloggers.' Roiling? Will this roil blogosphere? There have been three trackbacks to Powerline, and two of them have debunked this as truly being news. This will be third, but I promise the most thoroughly written and the most fun.
by Jon GarfunkelFrom the department of "Breaking News":
2004by Jon GarfunkelI suppose it is a bit unfair to judge others about their initial response to the tsunami, without posting my own thoughts.
by Jon GarfunkelHere's a way to browse Civilities.Net, along with blogs, online news, and any other website that provides an RSS: go to bloglines. What's RSS? It popularly stands for "Really Simple Syndication," and is basically is a way for websites to provide a summary, or feed, to subscribers to see what's new on the websites. RSS developed in parallel to weblogs (see On Blogs for more), but it's an open format which any site worth its bits is using.
by Jon GarfunkelReflections on what motivates me to write -- long.
by Jon GarfunkelPost election, it's time to degroup... and regroup. Here's where:
I went to the last hurrah party for the "Young Professionals for Kerry" last week at M.J. O'Connor's. A few people objected, not wanting to have to leave the "unified" group and have to choose between the three tribes listed below. We assured them that a little competition is good in the off years. So here's what to do, if you're young and want to keep the patriot fires burning in Boston:
by Jon GarfunkelHere are the 25 Warrant Articles for the Annual Town Meeting. Also, here are the Town Meeting Members, which include 240 elected members and 8 at-large.
The articles sure to generate the bulk of the discussion are #7 Underground Utilities, #11 on the cell tower (even though it recommends passing to a committee), and #21, a study to overhaul the 2-hour parking limit. I'm leaning against $7 for the cost. The Griggs Park Neighborhood Association is in favor of it. I'm willing to hear both sides.
by Jon GarfunkelI just had an interactive conversation in a community forum about the subject of the blogs, with the one individual who asserts that I am a blogger-- and the whole conversation hapened without a blog!
by Jon GarfunkelIn spite of the convention hoopla over blogs, there's still some terrific non-blog sites out there for the campaign. Have you seen Electoral Vote Predictor 2004? 72,000 people did the other day. It's the one political website I read everyday. Now, the NYTimes has a slick interactive electoral map that gives a slew of information about not just the Presidential race, but House, Senate and Gubernatorial (I love that word; they don't use it) races. Not to mention a key map of the Nader factor -- which stage Ralph is at in getting on the ballot in each stage. But, interactive as it is, it doesn't tell me anything new.
by Jon GarfunkelAs tough as summer is for sitting down to write-- I've been nicely distracted from my Civilities-- it's even tougher to put aside summer and dive into politics. This coming week I'll have to do both, with Democratic National Convention 2004 steamrolling into town. We asked for it, and we got it.
Here's the list of convention bloggers. I'm not on that list, since I take exception to calling this website a blog. Nonetheless, if I do come up with some idle thoughts that are blogworthy, Jon Lebkowsky and Aldon Hynes have asked me to contribue to Greater Democracy. With 15,000 journalists in town, it's going to be a challenge with any unique slants. I expect to contribute one or two articles here. And about 200 pictures.
by Jon GarfunkelThe former Mayor of New York, Ed Koch, a lifelong Democrat, is backing the re-election of President Bush on the basis of essentially one issue: Israel. Or, as he explains it, Bush is "the only one willing to stand up to international terrorism." (see the interview in the March 2004 Hadassah magazine) Asked whether he basing his endorsement on a single issue, Koch grew defensive. Or rather, offensive. "When someone says to me what’s Bush’s position on abortion, I want to hit him."
by Jon GarfunkelThe old idiom about that news "breaks" has on occasion led observers of the media scene to wonder whether it has any use in its broken state. "...We fix it" announces the tagline Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (Similarly, NPR had a recent print ad campaign about "putting it back together") Here's an account of some of this week's of "breaking news", which on the face of it, does not look very broken:
by Jon GarfunkelHere's my list of current fundraising bundling efforts:
- From the Roots -- for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSSC)-- help the Democrats capture 51 seats in the Senate
- John Kerry Volunteer Center -- one more month to raise money for Kerry for President.
by Jon GarfunkelMany conservative commentators have asked where the outrage is surrounding Nicholas Berg's death. The Boston Herald editorializing on Al Gore's MoveOn speech, began so: "He never mentioned Nicholas Berg. Or Daniel Pearl." A reader of my Civilities piece on Abu Ghraib demanded, in effect, equal outrage for Berg. by Jon GarfunkelMy parents, who have volunteered on numerous political campaigns over the last thirty years, attended their first "Meetup" in Tarrytown, NY, at Horsefeathers on US-9. As the campaigns instructions for meetup are not very concrete ("discuss the issues, plan local actions, and build networks of people... or any other action your group wants to take."), the Tarrytown group discussed the issues and came up with some action that they'd like. Here's a plan that my Dad put together and sent to me:
by Jon GarfunkelHere's a mild proposal to consider as we bring people into the political campaign. When you signup for an organization-- whether that person does it online, or at a meeting or meetup or at information booth, you should be able to specify your "captain". This is the person who will email you, call you, and be responsible for your involvement. You may pick the person who brought you into the organization in the first place. You may pick the actual precinct captain. Or you may look at the list of people volunteering to be captains, and pick the most attractive one. Up to you. That's democracy. That's how real estate companies work. Big brand, personal agent.
by Jon GarfunkelI'll be doing the American Lung Association Asthma walk on the Charles River in two weeks, and I've joined team Sánchez. For a couple of simple reasons. One, my Dad has suffered from an asthma-like condition. The more direct reason is that Rep. by Jon GarfunkelIf you go to sleep with the radio on, you may find yourself waking up at 6am to the delightful strains of This American Life Ira Glass's remarkable show which "documents everyday life in this country." The show has apparently been broadcast on in this early-morning timeslot on WGBH 89.7 for the last year. (Previously it had been on in a comfortable afternoon slot, where WBUR 90.9 has it).
by Jon GarfunkelI've read many excellent pieces in the New Yorker in the last seven years of being a subscriber-- some which come to mind. Malcolm Gladwell on the "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg" (1/11/99), Michael Specter's "The Rug Missionary" (3/6/2000), Katherine Boo's "The Marriage Cure" (8/18/2003). by Jon GarfunkelWhat does the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities mean? Reading through the news, I came upon a couple of damning questions. Is there a culture of permissiveness in the government? Or of suppression of truth? And which is worse?
by Jon GarfunkelIn my Performance Management training at work today, I learned something absolutely remarkable: words matter only 10% of what is communicated. Body language and tone account for 30% of the message, while 60% is based on perception and prior prejudices. Absolutely remarkable; I am glad I spent two days in my coworker (and fellow volleyballer) Josh Perlman's excellent training class.
by Jon GarfunkelJock Gill and Aldon Hynes of Greater Democracy suggested that people looking to volunteer with the party should check if their town commitees have any seats unfilled. I know that my Brookline's Democratic Town Committee never short of candidates. So I thought it might be helpful to look into whether such a chart exists of opening across the state.
by Jon GarfunkelFor the longest time I thought that every Supreme Court justice sounded like Nina Totenberg, and never interrupted each other. That all changed in the last two days. NPR's legal affairs correspondent gave her commentary and then ran the tape. Souter, Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, O'Connor, all let themselves be heard. It was like a Japanese citizen hearing the emporer's voice for the first time after V-J day. The exchanges were fast but not furious, a little more intelligent than the Hardball slam-fest we're used to.
by Jon GarfunkelWith the Kerry campaign blasting out as many as 3 emails a day, and MoveOn and other activist groups pumping them out as well, an average Internet user might think that mass email is an effective tool for advocacy. It's certainly cheap-- especially if you don't have to write it yourself, and instead just forward some junk you got from someone else.
by Jon GarfunkelToday the Brookline TAB, our weekly town newspaper, published my piece
Rallying for a Neighbor as a guest column. This was a vast reworking of the piece on Yang Jianli of several weeks back. I met Dr. Yang's wife, Christina Fu, in preparing this story, and we had a nice chat about the neighborhood and about activism and such. I rewrote the piece a couple of times, and settled on a theme of zoning. Our neighborhood retails shops are zoned for commerce, and we customers are "zoned" for commerce as well when we do business there. All in all, it was a nice exercise in writing, editing, and cutting. by Jon Garfunkel"I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it."
-- President Bush, at his 4/13 press conference.
This perhaps drew winces in every living room in America. But it did inspire me to consider how a structured forum for questions & answers can offset some of the better-known deficiencies of press conferences. I wrote it up in a proposal called the Question Scoreboard. This page is a sampling board for questions for the President and the 2004 campaign.
by Jon GarfunkelI've written on length about Social Network Fundraising, which is so called because it pulls people in to the network. The nature of this "pull" campaigning is that a relationship ties each person into another person closer to the campaign. by Jon GarfunkelMy friend Stephanie has hooked me up to three social networks now-- the original SixDegrees.com, which shut down in 2000, the still-popular Friendster, and now LinkedIn. This trend is partially due to the fact that Stephanie is one of my oldest and most trusted friends, and also, being a journalist and events publicist, it's her job to be hip on this.
And if you want to meet Stephanie, or learn more about me, just search for me on either one of them.
by Jon GarfunkelFollowing is a bunch of hack attacks against my server which are trying to exploit the problem identified by the Computer Emergency Reponse Team (CERT) as
CA-2003-09 Buffer Overflow in Core Microsoft Windows DLL (also see its CVE entry)
Essentially, my access logs fill up with lines like "SEARCH /\x90\x02\xb1..." (for 32,000 characters), and my Apache configuration has proved very stubborn in filtering them out automatically. So it's a bit annoying. Plus I don't like 32KB getting sent to my server unsolicited, in much the way that spam is.
by Jon GarfunkelI've updated the discussion systems to leverage dynamic HTML better-- namely, by making the message bodies collapsible. See a page where users have responded.
I've made my best effort to make them multi-browser compatible, with the help of
QuirksMode, a website by PeterPaul Koch of Amsterdam. In every (web-browser) generation there comes along a website which clearly and plainly illustrates the different ways that each browser implements web standards (javascript, DOM, CSS). QuirksMode is it today, and for the foreseeable future. Koch's illustrations are simple and elegant.
by Jon GarfunkelYou donate through me, of course. I signed up as a KerryCore fundraiser, which means you can list me as your link when you give. You in fact don't have to even write my name anywhere, just use this link to donate:
https://contribute.johnkerry.com/index.html?source_code=00016157
I've included a little rallying statement there to indicate why it's important.
by Jon GarfunkelCan't tell the politicians without a scorecard? Looking for a free online equivalent of the Elias Sports Bureau of American politics? Check out On the Issues, a website which made its debut in the 2000 Election and has continued keeping its data updated to reflect recent votes. It has vote details and issue grids for each national poltician, governor, as well as those for many challenging candidates.
by Jon GarfunkelWhat's the difference between a falsehood spread by a journalist and one spread by an amateur who gets up on a soapbox when he writes a letter, or calls a radio show, or posts to the web? Well, after the journalist is exposed, the publisher will acknowledge the error. (The fabricator will write a book, option a movie). When an amateur does it, the falsehood just hangs in the air; the publisher couldn't be bothered to correct it.
by Jon GarfunkelI was trying to figure out how The Passion's resonance with believers can be understood by non-Christians. Were there any equivalent movies that could be made, or had been made? Movies about faith and inspiration which are overtly religious demand not just a suspension of disbelief, but a suspension of belief-- one's own-- which make them difficult to watch.
by Jon GarfunkelI ran into my streetcar lawyer again this past week, and he still buttonholes me on Kerry. "Why does he take two sides of every issue? Why can't he stand for anything?"
by Jon Garfunkel
Picking a candidate is hardly done rationally (as I had feebly done earlier in trying to deduce, according to the Civilities Themes, who would be the best candidate).
More often it's about rationalizing your choice once you've made it. Now obviously, Kerry is the best choice for me, for the Network/Access reason alone. After all, I know people in Massachusetts politics, and I'm more closely linked to Kerry than the rest of the candidates. Besieds, it looks like he's going to be the nominee.
by Jon Garfunkel
I hereby apologize to Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean: I passed on the mistaken observation that he had improperly benefitted by steering Dean campaign ads to his agency. Fortunately for me, I only told this to Same, of my lawyers on the C-line (where all of my lawyers hang out), who never takes me seriously.
As a penance, I'll promote Trippi's new blog, Change For America, where he convincingly explains that the financial arrangement with the Dean campaign wasn't a conflict of interest. Trippi in fact has picked up where he left off, which was Dean's Blog For America, with just a small change. Trippi's makeover came as he was heralded at Monday's Digital Democracy Teach-In in San Diego at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Wired News reported that he told the sesion:
by Jon GarfunkelSome readers may wonder how a site which has a few sharp attacks can call itself Civilities. I started reading the book Civility: Manners, Morals and the Ettiquite of Democracy by Stephen L. Carter, Professor of Law at Yale (The Da Vinci Code is still difficult to get without a hold). On page 22, after considering a sharp retort from Maureen Dowd against President's Clinton's "call for a more civil Washington", Carter recalls the argument of Charles P. Flynn's Insults and Society:
by Jon GarfunkelAttention Massachusetts residents who are U.S. citizens: If you are not registered to vote, you must register by tomorrow so that you can vote in the March 2 primary. ( Registration Information).
Why register with a party? So that you can vote in the primary, of course. Even though the Democratic primary may appear locked up by Senator Kerry, the Massachusetts delegates to the national convention are assigned in proportion to the vote totals they get in the primary. In addition, registering with a party in your residence is used to determine the voting power for your locality in the state party convention. Here, for example, is from the bylaws of the Massachusetts State Democratic Committee on the selection of selecting state committee members:
by Jon Garfunkel
I still haven't found any blogs on politics that are must-read on a daily basis. I thought that the Columbia Journalism Review's CampaignDesk would be one, but then I read Managing Editor Steve Lovelady remark to Jack Shafer in a recent Slate dialoge: "To date, the version that I have been to skeptical readers who ask me how Campaigndesk.org is 'different from any number of blogs?' is this: 'Read my lips: IT'S EDITED!'"
by Jon GarfunkelMy thoughts on the Dean campaign:
The social software and use of the Internet attracted the media, the media attracted attention, and Howard Dean rode the polls up. He peaked too early, and he was stung too many attacks; he criticized the "Washington establishment" of Democrats while soliciting endorsements from them. (In 1992, it was seemed ok for Jerry Brown, or even Ross Perot, to criticize the Washington Democrats for rolling over in the Reagan/Bush years. Now, when liberals think of this group, we like to think of them as the last people defending our nation from indulging into a dangerous cocktail of laissez-faire attitude and crony capitalism, and the preventing the extension of the state of paranoia). Dean just wasn't the best candidate. The only question left was, how did he spend $40M?
The DeanSpace team-- the ones driving the technology for the campaign-- have been asking whether anything went wrong. (I followed DeanSpace only in the last several weeks, so I have a marginal association at best). Mark Ratcliffe provides a summary of answers in his Meta-Analysis of the Dean Campaign. A few commentators, such as the pseudonymous Spengler of the Asia Times, have made an ill-informed comparison of DeanSpace developers to a "dotcom startup", and compare the "crash" to the Internet bubble. (It was roundly criticized by letters to the editor). The only thing I can add is some insight that the "social software" used by the Dean campaign wasn't always social, and sometimes it was anti-social.
But I'm thinking positively going forward:
- The software has to continue to be developed, especially along the lines of fostering truly effective deliberation. The emphasis on blogs will be subsumed into more comprehensive community systems. I call it constructive media. Whatever the technique is, it has to be more thorough-sounding than just "Internet-based".
- We'd have to start using the software for local, smaller efforts, and prove that they are effective complements to committee-meeting politics.
- We need candidates who really believe in this stuff and practice it, and make their way from the beginning of their political career using it.
Does Howard Dean remain the patron saint of the movement? Not to me, really. It is ultimately ironic that the politician most associated with the Internet, Al Gore, did not inspire this movement after losing the most contested election in the modern age. So maybe it would be prudent to evolve the software to DemSpace for now, that would certainly please the Democratic nominee. It also might call to attention that there's no comparable "GopSpace".
by Jon Garfunkel
Timothy Noah, in this Thursday's Chatterbox column for Slate, alerted readers to the Ron Suskind's initial release of The Bush Files, an online archive of the source documents for his bestselling book, The Price of Loyalty. (This is the book about the Bush White House from Paul O'Neill's point of view, sourced in part on 19,000 documents which had been released to the O'Neill, while he was still Treasury Secretary). by Jon Garfunkel
If Super Bowl commericals have passed their peak and jumped the proverbial shark, maybe they've lost their effect completely. And if we're lucky, political campaign commercials as well.
An inspiring trend is the spontaneous guerilla marketing efforts forged by simply forwarding on emails. Now that the whole world over has gotten tired of forwarding along the chain emails which never really brough good luck, here's one that may just do that: a link to Dishonest Dubya, an interactive animation which allows everybody to hear the President in his own words.
by Jon GarfunkelLew Perelman just sent me a link of a new graphic by Valdis Krebs of orgnet.com, which illustrates a social network of current bestselling political books. There are links between books which were most commonly bought (and presumably read) by the same person. Not surprisingly, you see a red cluster and a blue cluster. Only two books bridge the two: Bob Woodward's Bush At War and Robert Baer's Sleeping with the Devil (subtitled: "How Washington Sold our Soul For Saudi Crude", which I read and highly recommend).
by Jon GarfunkelDavid Brooks devotes today's New York Times column to two points: 1, that we should take at face value the conclusions by David Kay, Richard Kerr, and senate Intelligence Committee, that there was no political pressure to slant the intelligence analysts*; and 2, that the very problem with the CIA is that it should be more politicized, and less "scientific". Just the sort of hack piece you'd expect from a guy who also writes a column for the Atlantic Monthly, edits the Weekly Standard, and is a regular campaign panelist on All Things Considered and The Newshour. by Jon GarfunkelIn more than one context, I've heard starting hearing to "the blogs" as the subject of a sentence, much as one would say, "the news." "The blogs were all talking about the Paul O'Neill book this weekend," a co-worker said. Also, the phrase "support among bloggers" has starting showing up as well: 8 hits in Google, all related to the political campaign. I think I've heard it from talking heads as well, but I can't place any right now.
But what does it mean? Are these people relying on hard data, or are they just picking generalizations from thin air?
by Jon GarfunkelThe casting call for the "electable Dean" went out: Wes Clark was drafted, but stumbled; John Kerry stepped up and has two primaries and momentum going into the primary season. And now the attempts have started to chip away at Kerry's granite image, starting with the notion of whether he is legitimate merely by being electable.
David Brooks, on Wednesday's All Things Considered with E.J. Dionne, remarked:
"Only 42 percent of people voted for him because they agreed with him on the issues. 46 percent said they voted for him because he's 'electable'. What they're doing when they're saying when he's electable is that one group is saying that he has certain qualities that appear to appeal to other groups of people. That's pretty suspect to go about voting, because people tend to be wrong."
"Multi-State Primaries Await Democrats"
by Jon Garfunkel
I heard on MPR's MarketPlace this Thursday that the USA Network has been promoting the new "Traffic" series by re-introducing into circulation 50,000 dollar bills with a promotional sticker on them.
(see the summary, hear the report). The reporter, Jeff Tyler, informed us that this was fully vetted by the company's lawyers, so I suppose it follows that this was legal. I suppose that the removeable stickers are not permanently defacing the bills.
by Jon GarfunkelIf the "State of the Union" was "strong", then the Democratic response was: long... wrong... and could have been delivered better... in song.
by Jon GarfunkelEven though Iowa's wrapped up, there are still 49 primaries left to go, and the contest is wide open. Let me take a few moments to clarify my political position.
by Jon Garfunkel
I read in the Sunday Globe of Keith Hampton's E-Neighbors project tracking the use of community networks by several Boston communities. "He believes that sticking to smaller groups helps avoid nasty postings and personal attacks." I would also suggest that it may help that those members may know each others' names, and would be kept in line for fear of public shame. ( more on user names)
by Jon Garfunkel
They're vulgar, increasing in frequency, and containing shameless displays that shouldn't be shown to impressionable young children. No, I'm not talking about the variations on profane words which Congress wishes to ban on broadcast television. I'm talking about celebrities making impromptu speeches on televised award shows.
by Jon GarfunkelI'm holding out from joining what is perhaps the fastest growing political movement in the modern world-- which, in 3 days attracted 10 million adherents, and 3 months attracted 40 million more-- the national "DO NOT CALL" registry.
by Jon Garfunkel
You'd think, with financial fraud costing society about $35 billion last year (that's over $100 per person), the credit institutions would do more to fix this. While they talk mightily about the fantastic biometric technologies on the horizon, they keep a lot of people employed handling all of this identity fraud and pitching "Identify Theft Solutions". But they don't have to. Here's a breathtakingly simple solution: start having the major credit card companies, as well as the major credit bureaus, register people's email and SMS addresses.
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