Category Archives: Technology

Maybe I’m putting too much into Twitter…

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It occurs to me that maybe too much of my energy that could go into making my blog better is going into Twitter.

Traditionally, I get a lot of my blog ideas when I’m reading the papers over breakfast in the morning. That first cup of coffee coinciding with the reading generally leads to far more ideas than I have time for. I used to stew through the morning meeting, which came right after breakfast, when I was at the paper because I was anxious to get to the computer and start putting some of the ideas on the blog before my enthusiasm (or the coffee, whichever you want to think of it as) wore off.

Now, since I started Twittering, I just go ahead and post a lot of the ideas as they occur to me, on my Blackberry, while eating. Which is great, I guess. Except that this gets each of those ideas out of my system, and by the time I’m at my laptop (It’s possible to blog on the Blackberry, but it’s a LOT harder), my mind has moved on.

So they don’t go totally to waste, bleeding off into the Twitter void, I decided to reproduce this morning’s tweets here, improved with links to the original sources of these brief comments.

You’ll see that only one was developed into a full-fledged blog post. The others I share for whatever minimal value they have:

  • Gov says calls to quit are “pure politics.” Let’s hope so. The alternative is the divine right of kings. (This, of course, is the one that became a blog post.)
  • Paper says “South Carolinians aged 18-20 cannot drink alcohol.” Actually, they CAN, but aren’t allowed to…
  • Twitter followers come and go so quickly. The number constantly fluctuates; the pattern eludes me…
  • Ad in paper touts “powerful joint pill,” which makes me think “THC,” but that’s not it, apparently…
  • Sanford sez other govs flew 1st Class. Yeah, but they weren’t hypocrites about it. Big difference…
  • Just inadvertently did a subversive thing: went to the WSJ Web site and searched for “trotsky”…
  • Just saw meter maid downtown, and the bag across her shoulder made her look a little like a military man…

And as a bonus, here’s one I just posted:

  • Gov says he won’t be “railroaded” out of office. How about “trolleycarred?” Or “pickup-trucked?” Or “little-red-wagoned?” Any mode will do.

So do you have a better phone than Obama?

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You know how I mentioned that I’ll be driving back from Pennsylvania on Monday?

Well, because of that I called the local Employment Security office. They sent me a letter a while back saying that they would call me at 2:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 3, and that it was really important. I just realized that was when I would be traveling, so I called today to see if we could set another time.

I was told no, if I couldn’t be available then, it would be at least September before anybody could talk to me. I think the lady on the phone wanted to be helpful, but she didn’t quite understand why I was worried about the call — it’s a cell phone, right? So why would it matter where I was?

Well, yeah, but — here’s why I’m worried:

On a previous occasion driving this route — I want to say it was summer 2007 — Barack Obama tried to call me. It was a previously arranged call, set up Kevin Griffis of the Obama campaign. I had read some briefing papers to be ready for it, and I got my son to take the wheel at the appointed time.

But we had just entered the mountains in Virginia, and the call kept breaking up. I kept hearing Sen. Obama say, “Sir?… Sir?” (He’s very polite.) But he couldn’t hear me. He called back a couple of times, and then just gave up.

No, he wasn’t the president yet — not even the nominee. But hey, if not even he could get through…

So that’s why I’m concerned. But I didn’t think I should tell the lady at the unemployment office that story. She might think I was topping it the nob, putting on airs, and so forth. So I just let it drop…

If I’d invented this, I wouldn’t be looking for job

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Prof. Stanley Dubinsky, a purveyor of cool links (more than I have time to read, but keep ’em coming, Stan), passes on this gee-whiz development:

A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.

The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.

Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.

He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

“There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.

Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires “to get power from where it is created to where it is used.”

How does “Witricity” work? It “exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.” Duh.

Contemplate the implications. Your electronic stuff just recharging itself where it is. Imagine the eventual implications for electric cars. I don’t know what the range is for this transfer (it seems to suggest about 100 feet), but I expect it will get longer with development. Or maybe not. Still, a car that recharged itself in your driveway without having to be plugged in would really be something.

Wow.

Sorry, but my e-mail is down

I apologize to all and sundry for any inconvenience, but on this extremely busy day — it was extremely busy before I got called in to that craziness regarding the governor — my e-mail suddenly stopped working, at exactly 4:30 p.m.

After finishing my day’s work about an hour ago, I started trying everything I could think of to restore it, but no luck. I’ll have to try to get some help tomorrow (which promises to be just as busy).

Again, sorry for the inconvenience. It’s pretty inconvenient to me, too. I’m probably missing out on some paying work because of this, but what are you going to do?

How I flunked my IQ test

You know those quizzes people are always taking on Facebook — like “which ‘Friends’ character are you,” or “what’s your real nationality?” Well, I took one of those one day recently, and as I was taking it, a dialogue box popped up saying that some of my friends — one of them closely related to me — had “challenged” me to take an IQ test.

Well, this hit me in one of my weak spots, naturally. As y’all know, one of my few skills is that I’m good at tests. Whether it’s the SAT or a current events quiz or whatever, I tend to score way over what you would think by looking, say, at my high school transcript. I play way over my head. Some people have a natural ear for music; I test well. Just one of those things.

Add to that the fact that I was recently laid off, which makes me additionally vulnerable — all that much more eager to show off, if only to myself. You know, the “I’ve still got it” phenomenon.

So I bit. I went to take the test. And boy, did I do well. The questions were so easy as to arouse one’s suspicions under most circumstances. Sort of on the “answer this correctly and you win a free dance lesson” level. One was how many states are in the U.S., and only one of the multiple-choice answers was anywhere near 50. The hardest question was picking the 16th president — even if I hadn’t known it was Lincoln, he was the only option offered within a century of the right time. I think the closest ones before and after were Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton.

But instead of thinking, “Hey, wait a minute — what kind of scam test is this?” I’m going, “Man, I’m really acing this? What kind of IQ do you get with a perfect score?!?”

Then, when it was done, I get a page that tells me I just need to do one thing before my IQ score will post on Facebook — type in my cell phone number, and choose my service provider.

Which I did.

First of all, my extremely high IQ score never showed up on Facebook.

Second, I started getting these text messages. Really stupid, irritating text messages, saying stuff like “Which male celebrity from ‘The Hills’ is dating Paris Hilton?” I am not making this up.

I would have protested, except that, you know, I didn’t want to tell anybody how I had let myself in for this. Because as dumb as it was to fall for this, I was smart enough to see what had happened.

Anyway, earlier this week the Verizon bill came. And I had been charged $29.97 for 3 “Premium text” messages. Yes, ten bucks apiece.

So I got on the horn to Verizon and got them to block all such messages subsequently, which they agreed to do. Of course, by this time one or two more had come in, which will be on my next bill, no doubt. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Because, you know, I had signed up for them.

When I got off the phone, I reported to my wife that I had taken care of the problem, going forward. She asked, how in the world I came to get such messages? I said, “How about if we just leave it at, I’ve taken care of the problem, and not delve into that?” But I went on to explain, and she agreed with me that yes, I had certainly flunked the IQ test.

Oh, but the tale doesn’t end there.

Today, I was in the Harbison area shopping for Father’s Day for me Da. And suddenly, I got another one of those messages, from the same source, which the words “Premium Messaging” appearing in the headline field.

I immediately went over to the Verizon place, fuming, and got in the queue for service. The lady at the door urged me to call instead because I was in for a long wait, but I said no, obviously one couldn’t get this taken care of on the phone. I was all indignant.

Fortunately, the wait wasn’t long at all. When it was my turn, I went through my indignant spiel again, and the service rep took my phone, and clicked on the message. It said, “Premium Messaging to this mobile number has been blocked…”

Oh.

So I looked really stupid again. I thanked the guy, and thanked the lady at the front door, and left sheepishly.

But you know what? Deep down, I have this gut fear that it’s going to show up on my bill again anyway.

Of course, this kind of scam should be illegal. Anyone who practices it should be drawn and quartered.

But who’s going to report them? The victims know how stupid they’ve been…

100 followers, and counting…

Just reached the 100-follower mark on Twitter. So that makes me like a centurion, right? Like the one in Matthew 8:9:

For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

OK, I’ve already figured out that no one is going to do what I say just because they’re my “followers.” But as silly and insubstantial as it all is, I’ve acquired a miser’s acquisitiveness on this point. How many MORE followers can I get? I picture myself like Spartacus (just to continue with the ancient Rome thing), roaming the countryside while hundreds, thousands flock to my banner… (Warning — it ended badly for Spartacus and his followers.)

And even though there are no rules, or even conventions I can think of, I have it in my mind that, if only I can have more followers than I myself am following, I’m … I don’t know… an influential person. Or at least, ahead of the game. Whatever the game is. It’s the only way I know to keep score, anyway. And currently my score is 100 to 75.

Time-Warner spins off AOL, restoring order to the universe

Did you see this news?

Time Warner to spin off AOL, ending ill-fated deal

By RACHEL METZ – AP Technology Writer
NEW YORK — Time Warner Inc. is dumping AOL after spending nearly a decade trying to build a new-age media empire only to wind up in a weaker position than when the marriage began.

The divorce, announced Thursday, will spin out AOL as a separate company run by former Google Inc. advertising executive Tim Armstrong. He was hired in March to try to restore the luster to a brand once known as America Online.

Although AOL has been eclipsed by Google and other Internet stars, Armstrong still can try to build on a wide-reaching online ad network as well as AOL’s Web sites, which remain a relatively big draw.

I’ve always looked at the deal where AOL essentially bought Time-Warner as the ultimate example of the Dot.Com bubble’s madness. And this isn’t me as an old-media guy being phobic about new media. The problem was that AOL was lame new media. I mean, AOL wasn’t anywhere near the cutting edge of dot.com at the time, but rather a relic of the early dialup days of the PC. It was, as I recall, actually sort of late to the Web.

And here it was swallowing Time-Life and Warner Brothers and cable TV and all those old media giants, which still had demonstrable value. It just didn’t make any kind of sense.

And now, for some time, Time-Warner has been trying to rid itself of the death-grip of AOL. Which for me, sort of restores some order to the universe.

My former employer is having me followed

Not sure what to make of this.

One of the pleasures — for a megalomaniac — of Twitter is that instead of having “friends” (and I’ve never quite gotten the meaning of the word as Facebook uses it), you have “followers.” My number of followers has been steadily, but gradually, growing since I signed up over the weekend. Each one makes me feel slightly more powerful and influential, just because of the word.

But what am I to make of my 26th follower?

The State Newspaper (thestate) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Not Warren or Cindi or even Mark Lett, or Gary Ward with thestate.com. No, the institution itself. Its icon is an extreme closeup of the paper’s nameplate.

Of course, you know that I’ve always loved Big Brother. Even ex-Big Brother.

I guess I should deal with this by following it right back, huh?

I surrender to Twitter

OK, I did it. I signed up for Twitter. After months of dismissing and abusing the very notion of it, I gave in yesterday and signed up.

The last straw was that Tim Kelly told me last week that you could arrange it so that when you post on your blog, the headline goes out on Twitter. Haven’t figured out how to do that yet, but seems like it would be pretty cool. He said there’s also something clever I could do with Facebook vis-a-vis the blog.

I need to either get serious about this blog — fix up the appearance, promote it more, and most of all post more often — or give it up. As I’ve mentioned before, I actually find it harder to blog without full-time, permanent employment. As busy as I was at the paper, I was sitting at a computer (actually, two computers, or even three if you count the Blackberry) for about 12 hours a day, and I could post any time things slowed down a bit — when I was waiting for copy, or for somebody to call me back, or for proofs, or whatever. I had to go through tons of e-mail each day, and frequently things that came over the transom that way made for quick-and-easy blog fodder.

Now, as I run hither and yon trying to earn a living, I might have ideas for blog posts, but I don’t have time to sit and write them. I need to either figure a way to do that, or the blog’s gonna die on me.

Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me thus far. And suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Perspectives on hydrogen

Here’s something that struck me as interesting this morning. Did you read the op-ed piece by my friend Kevin Dietrich, arguing — as you would expect someone at the S.C. Policy Council to argue — against our state’s investment in hydrogen research? An excerpt:

In the past few years, taxpayers have poured tens of millions of state and local tax dollars into hydrogen research even though multiple experts question how viable the technology will be in offsetting U.S. reliance on foreign oil or reducing carbon emissions.

“A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases,” said Joseph Romm, a physicist in charge of renewable energy research during the Carter administration. Asked when hydrogen cars will be broadly available, Romm replied: “Not in our lifetime, and very possibly never.”

The Los Angeles Times was blunter in assessing the future of hydrogen-powered vehicles: “Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won’t work in cars…. Any way you look at it, hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars.”

What struck me about it was that, without naming the author, Kevin was quoting the very same L.A. Times column by Dan Neil that I was praising yesterday. (Now I know why Cindi Scoppe happened to run across the Neil piece and bring it to my attention yesterday — she was doing her due diligence as an editor in checking Kevin’s source material, and recognized the piece as something I’d be interested in.)

The difference, of course, lies in the degrees to which Kevin and I considered the full text of the piece to which we referred. I was up-front with y’all about Neil’s arguments against hydrogen as a fuel source for cars. I didn’t blink at that at all. But I also emphasized the very positive things he said about Honda’s hydrogen car project, on my way to making some positive points about why hydrogen research is worthwhile.

Kevin, in standard S.C. Policy Council “if it involves the government spending money, it’s bad” style, cited ONLY the negative. Kevin’s a good guy, and he’s completely sincere about the things he says. But I ask you — given what I got out of the Neil piece and what Kevin got out of it — who has his eyes completely open? Who explored the full implications of the piece (which I again invite you to go read for yourself)?

I raise this point not to criticize Kevin, but to praise our state and community’s commitment to this research. From what I’ve seen and heard, the hydrogen researchers are very realistic about the limitations of H as a fuel source for cars from where we stand at this moment. But their eyes are open to what this research DOES offer South Carolina, Columbia and the nation.

A “garnet-red teardrop falling from the cheek of the future…”

Dan Neil won the Pulitzer in 2004 for his automotive column in the L.A. Times, and you can see why in his piece earlier this year about Honda’s hydrogen car, the FCX Clarity. A colleague shared it with me today, and I just had to share it with y’all — both in the interests of promoting talk about hydrogen and alternative fuels, and just to celebrate the words. A sample:

Perhaps obscured by questions of practicality and cost is the fact — and it is a fact — that the FCX Clarity is the most beautiful car to ever wear the big H on the nose. It’s just gorgeous, a big garnet-red teardrop falling from the cheek of the future, a sweet stanza of robot-written poetry.

You might be able to infer from that passage that Mr. Neil was essentially trashing the practicality of hydrogen elsewhere in his piece. His objections ranged from the general — the energy cost of producing hydrogen to start with — to the specific, which in this case involves pointing out that each one of these little beauties costs Honda $2 million to make. He reckons that a large part of Honda’s motivation is simply to reach California’s quota for emission-free cars sold by 2014.

But not entirely. As he acknowledges, Honda is learning some practical lessons from this exercise. Mr. Neil argues that the future is more likely to involve plug-in electrics (and I find that persuasive, which is why I’m anxious for Detroit to start mass-producing the affordable electrics it already knows how to make, and for clean nuclear plants to start popping up to power them). But Honda is learning a lot about how to better make those from making these:

The second reason Honda might have had for building the FCX Clarity: Nothing invested in this project goes to waste. The car’s state-of-the-art fuel cell can be amortized in Honda’s portable power generation division (the company makes awesome generators). And since a fuel-cell vehicle is essentially an electric vehicle with a hydrogen heart, all the technology — the glossy aerodynamics; the powerful, quiet and compact 100 kW (134 hp) electric motor; the new space-saving coaxial gearbox — can be rolled into future electric and plug-in electric projects.

And it has loads of interior space and a huge trunk.

Me, I’m all for efforts such as Honda’s, and if it takes a little utopian prodding from California to make it happen, then great. The Left Coast has gotta be good for something, right? What I generally hear from hydrogen experts is that automobiles are unlikely to be the most practical application, but they do dramatize the possibilities. And you learn from trying to build them.

Beyond that, I’m reminded of something I learned at Rotary Monday. Our speaker was the manager of the new Starbucks roasting plant in Sandy Run. He explained why Starbucks uses only arabica beans grown above 4,000 feet — such conditions make the plant work harder to grow and produce “cherries,” and that makes the coffee better.

The harder we push on hydrogen and every other promising source of power other than oil from countries run by tyrants, the better the result is going to be. So we need to keep pushing. In California, that means making “unreasonable, impractical” demands on automakers. (And maybe it will soon mean the same thing in Washington, with the gummint taking a big role in running Detroit.) And in South Carolina, it means continuing to push to be at the fore of hydrogen and alternative fuel research.

Just for fun, while we’re on the subject, here’s a link to one of my most popular videos ever, the one I shot in Five Points on St. Patrick’s Day 2007, the critically acclaimed “Who Resurrected the Electric Car?”

Who’s going to tell Al Gore?

I see in the Spartanburg paper that the “Father of the Internet” spoke to some students in the Upstate yesterday, and then I found to my surprise that his name is Leonard Kleinrock:

Speaking to the 18 students in Adriana Ahner’s Web page construction class — appropriately, via a 90-minute Webcast from his home in southern California, UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock spoke of how he overcame humble beginnings to eventually develop the mathematical theory of packet networks that became the foundation of Internet technology.

“I had a background of curiosity, independence and trying to make new things happen,” said Kleinrock, the son of Polish immigrants who was born and raised in New York City. “When I got to (Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a graduate student in the early 1960s), I decided not to follow the pack. I noticed that we were surrounded by computers that were full of information and interesting applications and capabilities and services, but they couldn’t talk to each other, and I figured that sooner or later that’s going to happen.”

Which makes me wonder — if this Kleinrock guy is the father of the Internet, then the Mother of the Internet needs to have a long talk with Al Gore.

Seriously, though, apparently the headline meant A father rather than THE father, because there were a number of guys involved in siring the ARPANet. Apparently, Mr. Kleinrock is actually the father (or a father) of packet switching, which I don’t really understand any more than I do the rest of how the Internet works; I just know it does.

But all this reminds me of the irony of the Internet — the most open, vulnerable (in a security sense) invention in the history of the world — starting as a defense thing. As we learned from the recent intel breach story regarding the Joint Strike Fighter, the LAST thing you want to put on the Internet is defense secrets. And yet, that’s now the whole thing started.

Is there a problem with the blog, or are y’all just forgetful?

Today I received a string of “Password Lost and Changed for user” messages from WordPress, all involving blog regulars.

Is there a problem? Are folks getting kicked off the blog and having to re-register? Or are y’all just forgetting your passwords?

If there IS a problem, I may not be able to fix it right away — there is a lot I have yet to understand about WordPress — but I can try…

So Obama WON’T be the Energy Party president

Remember last year when I wrote about the fact that, although I really liked both Barack Obama and John McCain, unfortunately neither of them measured up to Energy Party standards? Well, I did, whether you remember it or not:

JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are lucky there’s such a thing as Republicans and Democrats in this country, because neither would be able to get the Energy Party nomination.

Well, I wish I’d been wrong, but I was (yet again) right. I can’t help it; it’s like a curse.

Just as the last administration was too focused on “drill, baby, drill” and wanted nothing to do with conservation and little to do with alternative sources, the Obama administration is looking like a typical, old-school, Democratic “no-nukes,” we-can-do-it-all-with-wind-and-solar bunch of ideologues.

At least, I get that impression from this release I got yesterday from Lindsey Graham:

FERC Chairman Says U.S. May Not Need Any More Nuclear or Coal Power Plants
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today responded to the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Jon Wellinghoff, who said our nation may not need to construct any new coal or nuclear power plants.  Wellinghoff deemed nuclear energy “too expensive” and said he saw no need to build coal or new nuclear power plants to meet future electricity needs.
Wellinghoff was named Chairman of FERC, the agency that oversees wholesale electric transactions and interstate electric transmission and gas transportation in the United States, by President Barack Obama on March 19, 2009.
Graham said:
“I’m afraid if we follow his advice we may be marching into darkness.
“To suggest a few sources of alternative energy alone could handle our future energy needs — in place of new nuclear or coal plants — defies reality.  I support capitalizing on all of our energy options, including deploying more alternative sources of energy.  However, the public is ill-served when someone in such a prominent position suggests alternative energy programs are developed and in such a state that we should abandon our plans to build more plants.  How the Chairman of FERC arrived at such a conclusion — and one which really no one else has arrived at – is not reassuring.
“I am writing Chairman Wellinghoff and want him to explain to me how America can meet its energy needs and remain competitive in the global economy without new nuclear or coal plants.  I hope he was taken out of context because what he has reportedly said is breathtaking.”
#####

Marching into darkness, indeed.

For those of you who are not sufficiently indoctrinated, we in the Energy Party believe you have to do EVERYTHING that will make us energy-independent, with the primary strategic goal of freeing us from the whims of some of the world’s worst thugs, and the side benefits of transforming our economy and saving the planet (without being all ideologically anal retentive about it). Yes, drill. Build nuclear plants. Open frickin’ Yucca Mountain. But push like crazy for electric cars (and, eventually, hydrogen). Support public transit, to get people out of their cars (and besides, I love subways, and it’s my party). Support innovation and experimentation. Lower speed limits to 55, and enforce them. And so on and so forth. Read the Manifesto, so I don’t have to repeat myself so much.

But all we ever get out of Washington in EITHER-OR. And neither ideologically limited approach is going to get us where we need to go.

I’ll take the public sector queue, please

When I told my little tale of minor annoyance about having to get a new Social Security card a couple of weeks back (35 years I went without one, and the first time anyone asks me for it is when I find myself unemployed), some of my libertarian friends out there predictably pointed to it as a sign of the inefficiency and unaccountability of gummint. Which I expected, having handed you such a beautiful opportunity. (Don’t say I never gave you anything.)

But here’s the thing about that — it really didn’t take very long, and aside from the hassles from security guards, it all went pretty smoothly. My new SS card arrived in the mail sooner than expected. I gave it to Mamanem to put in a safe place.

Contrast that to my experience at my wireless phone provider, where I went to get my Blackberry wiped clean of stuff from the corporate server (how’s that for a band name: Corporate Server), and set up my new e-mail and such. An hour and a half. The young man who helped me couldn’t have been nicer (which is why I removed the actual name of my wireless provider, because I don’t want to get him in any trouble with his boss), and admittedly the transaction was somewhat complex. But what gets me is the wait before someone starts helping you. When I asked about whether there was a time I could come back and not find such a crowd, I was told there wasn’t. One employee mentioned that his wife calls the place “the DMV of wireless.” Which is a good joke, except for the fact that the DMV has figured out how to provide its services without making people wait forever. Maybe the cell phone companies should ask the DMV how they did it.

Stem cells and the Kulturkampf see-saw

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Here's a place for those of you who are so inclined to comment on the Obama administration's new policy on stem cells. That is to say, the latest tilt in the Kulturkampf see-saw. Republicans get in charge, it tilts one way. Democrats get in charge, it tilts the other. And so it continues, even in the "post-partisan" era.

I don't know what to say about it myself because … I don't know; I guess I haven't thought about it enough or something. The partisans seem REALLY sure of their sides, and personally, I don't know how they can be. But maybe it's something missing in me.

I suppose I was relatively comfortable with the Bush position because, near as I could tell, it was a compromise. But then, if I'm reading correctly, the Obama position is ALSO to some extent a compromise, because some restrictions will remain. And yet it is touted as a total reversal, which perhaps it is. I find it confusing.

It's not something we have a position on as an editorial board, because on these culture war things we are often genuinely conflicted. Many editorial boards are quick to sound off on these things because they are more ideologically homogeneous than we are. For us, it's not so simple, and we generally prefer to use up our political capital with each other struggling over the very difficult issues facing South Carolina, which are tough enough.

Anyway, if you read the editorials of most newspapers on the subject, you might think that there is no controversy at all, that the Obama position is of course the right and true one, and you need to be awfully backward to think otherwise — nothing short of a triumph of science over the forces of darkness. Some examples:

  • The New York Times: "We welcome President Obama’s decision to lift the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research. His move ends a long, bleak period in which the moral objections of religious conservatives were allowed to constrain the progress of a medically important science."
  • The Boston Globe: "We applaud President Obama's executive order reversing the ban on
    federal stem-cell research, and the return of science unhobbled by
    political or religious considerations." (Actually, that quote is not from the editorial itself, but from the blurb summarizing it online.)
  • The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Americans are understandably divided over President Obama's decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem-cell research. But he took the course that promises the greater medical benefit. In reversing a funding ban imposed by President Bush, Obama yesterday also took a welcome step toward restoring the rightful place of scientific research in guiding public policy."
  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Federal funding is no guarantee that embryonic stem cell research will provide hoped-for cures to dreaded diseases like diabetes, let alone guarantee that any cures might come soon. But the executive order that Mr. Obama signed on Monday will clear away bureaucratic and procedural hurdles that have hampered that research. It provides an important new source of funding. Perhaps most important, it signals a new commitment to science ideals, free inquiry and open debate in American public policy."

The relatively "conservative" Chicago Tribune was more muted in its praise and even-handed in its presentation, but nevertheless expressed approval for the Obama move, saying the Bush policy had been too restrictive:

Sensible barriers to federal funding for cloning and the creation of embryos for research purposes remain in place. On Monday, Obama asked lawmakers to provide the support that will put the country at the forefront of vital stem cell research. It's now up to Congress to get behind the scientists. All Obama did was get out of their way.

And The Wall Street Journal? No editorial. But they did run an op-ed piece criticizing the new policy, headlined, "The President Politicizes Stem-Cell Research," with the subhead, "Taxpayers have a right to be left out of it."

That last point is one that one doesn't see emphasized enough, which is that this is not about whether research is allowed, but whether we the taxpayers will pay for it. And that's a legitimate conversation to have.

Another point that I would appreciate being updated on, and that seems to get ignored in the shouting matches, is the idea that the science has made the political argument moot, in terms of moving beyond the need for embryonic cells. That was the point made in this Krauthammer column a while back:

    A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.
    Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Was that wishful thinking on Krauthammer's part? Did that turn out to be a dead-end? Maybe some of you who follow the issue more closely than I do can point to something I should read to that effect.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what Krauthammer says about it, if he addresses it. He has an interesting perspective for someone wearing the "conservative" stamp. First, to my knowledge he's not anti-abortion. Also, he is a physician by training, and he served on the Bush administration's Council on Bioethics, which HE maintains (and I'm sure some of you will disagree, although I just don't know) was…

… one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commissions in the
history of this country. It consisted of scientists, ethicists,
theologians, philosophers, physicians — and others (James Q. Wilson,
Francis Fukuyama and me among them) of a secular bent not committed to
one school or the other.

Anyway, that ought to be enough fodder to get y'all started, if you want to discuss this.

Brave new world of political discourse

37 Replies

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
ONCE, NOT so long ago, serious people decried the reduction and trivialization of political ideas to the level of a bumper sticker. Some days, I long for the coherence, the relevance, the completeness of bumper stickers.
    Let’s knit together a few of the unraveled threads that have frayed my mind in the past week, shall we?
    Thread One: A Colorado congressman who takes pride in his technological savvy claimed partial “credit” for the demise of a newspaper, saying, “Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? We’re all part of it, for better or worse, and I argue it’s mostly for the better…. The media is dead and long live the new media.”
    Thread Two: Last week, I started working out again. I can’t read when I’m on the elliptical trainer because I bounce up and down too much, so I turn on the television. This gives me an extended exposure to 24/7 TV “news” and its peculiar obsessions, which I normally avoid like a pox. I hear far more than I want to about Rush Limbaugh, who wants the country’s leadership to fail, just to prove an ideological point. The president’s chief of staff dubs this contemptible entertainer the leader of the president’s opposition. Even more absurdly, the actual chief of the opposition party spends breath denying it — and then apologizes for doing so. See why I avoid this stuff?
    Thread Three: Two of the most partisan Democrats in the S.C. Senate, John Land and Brad Hutto, introduce a mock resolution to apologize to Rush on behalf of South Carolina so that our state doesn’t “miss out on the fad that is sweeping the nation — to openly grovel before the out-spoken radio host.” The Republican majority spends little time dismissing the gag, but any time thus spent by anyone was time not spent figuring out how to keep essential state services going in this fiscal crisis.
    Thread Four: At midday Thursday I post on my blog a few thoughts about the just-announced candidacy of U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett for governor, and invite readers to share what they think of the Upstate Republican. As of mid-afternoon Friday, there were nine comments on the subject, and three of them were from me. By the same time, there were 66 comments about the Rush Limbaugh flap.
    Thread Five: A colleague brings to my attention a new Web site called SCTweets, where you can read spontaneous “Twitter” messages from such S.C. politicians as Anton Gunn, David Thomas, Bob Inglis, Nathan Ballentine and Thad Viers, with a number of S.C. bloggers thrown in. It’s the brainchild of S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP “political operative” Wesley Donehue (which would explain why Rep. Gunn is the only Democrat on the list I just cited). They see it as “a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials.” It sounds like a neat idea, but when you go there and look at it… well, here’s a sample:

bobinglis Want a window into our campaign themes? Check out my recent letter at http://wurl.ws/9coX Join us if you can!

annephutto had a great lunch

AntonJGunn Having lunch with the Mayor of Elgin.

mattheusmei Prepare to have your mind blownaway http://tinyurl.com/b6w8w9 #sctweets, simply amazing!!!

RobGodfrey Beautiful day in Columbia. #sctweets

thadviers just had lunch with little Joe at Jimmy Johns.

    Perhaps this will be useful to someone, and I applaud Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue for the effort. But so far I haven’t figured out what Twitter adds to modern life that we didn’t already have with e-mail and blogs and text-messaging and, well, the 24/7 TV “news.” Remember how I complained in a recent column about how disorienting and unhelpful I find Facebook to be? Well, this was worse. I felt like I was trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack topped with Pop Rocks, stirred with a Slim Jim.
    Thread Six: Being reminded of Facebook, I checked my home page, and found that a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago was exhorting me to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

    I followed his instructions. The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here’s the fifth sentence on page 56:
“He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame.”
    Not much without context, but you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.
    I just remembered that I said I would knit these threads together. OK, here goes:
    It occurs to me that Twitter and Facebook are the bright new world that the Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extolled. In this world, political discourse consists of partisans prattling about talk show hosts and elected officials casting spontaneous sentence fragments into the dusty, arid public square.
    I was going to write a column for today about Congressman Barrett’s candidacy for governor. As I mentioned a couple of weeks back when I wrote about Sen. Vincent Sheheen entering the race, I’m trying to get an early start on writing as much as possible about that critical decision coming up in 2010, in the hope that if we think about it and talk about it enough, we the people can make a better decision than we have the past few elections.
    But I got distracted.
    I’ll get with Rep. Barrett soon; I promise. And I’ll try to write about it in complete sentences, for those of you who have not yet adjusted.

For links and more, please go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

This is worse than Facebook

17 Replies

You know how I've complained about how I just don't get Facebook — that I find it disorienting, and just generally a lousy way to communicate information?

Well, I've found a worse way — Twitter.

Have you seen this new site that S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP "political operative" Wesley Donehue have started, SCTweets? Basically, its point is:

…to find a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials.
Specifically, we expect the Statehouse crew to be twittering a lot from
the floor and we thought it would be cool to see what they were saying.
That goal somehow expanded and we decided to showcase all South
Carolina politicos with our directory. We then gave them a way to
interact through #sctweets.

Look, I don't mean to criticize Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue at all. I appreciate the effort. Go for it. But when I try to obtain any sort of information of value from a series of incomplete, typo-ridden sentence fragments from a bunch of people ranging from Anton Gunn to David Thomas to Bob Inglis to Nathan Ballentine to Thad Viers, with a lot of Blogosphere usual suspects such as Mattheus Mei thrown in, I feel like I've trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack with cotton candy and Pop Rocks on top, stirred with a Slim Jim. Just a jumble of junk.

The "authors" aren't to blame. It's the medium. I'm still waiting to find any value in this Twitter thing. I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.

What do I consider to be GOOD way to communicate information? Well, here's a coincidence: I actually looked at my Facebook page this morning, and as usual got little out of it. But I noticed where a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago posted something that seemed a deliberate illustration of the incoherence of Facebook. He exhorted readers to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

So I followed his instructions (except for the posting part). The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here's the fifth sentence on page 56 (if you count the incomplete, continued sentence at the top of the page as the first):

"He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame."

And you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.

It occurs to me that Twitter is the bright new world that that Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extols. And then it occurs to me that to the extent he is right, to the extent that this is the future of political communication, we are in a lot of trouble int his country…

Congressman says he whacked the Denver paper

3 Replies

Boy, and they say the MSM can be guilty of hubris…

Some congressman out in Colorado who is apparently overimpressed with himself because he travels the Information Superhighway (golly, how futuristic!), is quoted as saying:

Who killed the Rocky Mountain News? We're
all part of it, for better or worse, and I argue it's mostly for the
better…The media is dead and long live the new media."

Here's what's really ironic about this: After this was brought to my attention, I tried following various links to find any sort of authoritative, original source as to what he actually said, and within what context, and found myself bouncing around among a number of poorly designed, unattractive Web pages that didn't tell me much.

Romenesko pointed me to The Denver Post, which pointed me to an alleged "digital recording of the event" at something called coloradopulse.org, which may be the ugliest (and least helpful) Web page I've seen this year. So I struck out on my own, via Google, and found this Denver magazine site (I think), which pointed me to this item from something called "Denver Young Democrats Examiner," which read like someone's very run-of-the-mill blog post written "from the Netroots Nation speaker series at the DoubleTree Hotel in Westminster," which actually told me less than The Denver Post did.

The congressman's own Web site didn't enlighten me. Finally, I went back to Romenesko, which provided a link to where I could listen to the guy's comments, but when it told me it would take 9 minutes to download (it's still downloading as I speak), I lost interest. (By the way, I did run across an entire site devoted to the question,
"Who killed the Rocky?" It's apparently done by one of the laid-off
journalists, and displays far more Web savvy and accessibility than
those other sites I was led to.)

Welcome to the brave new post-newspaper world, in which we all stagger around groping in the dark for information — and then, when we find it, wondering whom to hold accountable for whether it's right or not. (The answer: Nobody, sucker.)

By the way, as a sort of postscript — the Post says that on Monday, Rep. Polis was a little more "subdued" on the subject:

"It's not just 200 jobs that have been lost;
it's also the silencing of a voice," he said. "The rise of new media
and citizen journalism has hastened the demise of many newspapers, and
we, unfortunately, all share in the blame.

ANOTHER social networking site? ARRGGGHHH!

6 Replies

Just got this press release:

Hi Brad,

I hope you are doing well. I wanted to let you know about a unique social news service that just launched – BUUUZ.com.

Have you ever wanted access to a community of people who have the same interests as you? Where you can share artistic visions, muses and styles? Many people find social websites like Facebook and MySpace invasive and difficult to navigate. At BUUUZ registration is simple and members create virtual "islands" based on subjects of interest (islands are populated with news from websites across the internet as well as BUUUZ community discussion). Creating an "island" for a topic is as easy as picking a few keywords that best describe your interests.

As an example, if you love to oil paint like I do, you can use favorite artists, museums, etc. as island keywords to be alerted on stories and member conversations mentioning them. Then you instantly become a part of a worldwide conversation through this new service, where you can find and interact with new friends who have the same interests.

In light of the Facebook Terms of Service uproar from last week I wanted to mention:

– BUUUZ's subscription revenue model, makes it so they do not have to "fight" with the users about owning their data.
– At BUUUZ, when a user deletes their account, and their data is completely deleted
– BUUUZ has also set up automatic deletion of old messages

Please feel free to take a look at the service at BUUUZ.com and reach out if you would like images or have questions.

Best Regards,
Brent

Brent Bucci
FortyThree PR

… to which I can only say, "ARRGGHHH!" Or, perhaps, "AIIIEEEE!!!" Or somewhat more sedately, "Please; not another freaking social networking site."

Since I did that column over the holidays about Facebook, I have had even MORE "friend requests," and some of them have been from being I actually felt obliged to say "yes" to, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. (And yes, some of them were people I'd actually like to maintain connections with, but not all…) And some of them were … a tad… weird. Like, if I thought myself a target for such things, I'd think "stalker." Which is not a good feeling.

Who's got time for all this socializing? Hey, you've got time on your hands, go read a newspaper. And then, go to the mall and buy something, and tell the merchant to buy some ads. Make yourself useful.