January 2008
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At least he won’t have to eat that too
Here’s the last paragraph of a story about a trapped man who survived by eating rotting animals and blowing a whistle at wolves and coyotes: A hospital official said Mr Hildebrand’s injuries were not life-threatening, but the newspaper, quoting an Emergency Medical Services official, said one leg that was pinned might have to be… Continue reading
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Remembering Dr. King
I went skiing with The Kid today. What mattered more, however, was that we talked about Martin Luther King, at some length, on the good Doctor’s holiday. The Kid’s toughest question: Why was he killed? It didn’t end there. He also wanted to know why Gandhi, JFK, RFK, MLK and Benazir Bhutto were all killed.… Continue reading
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Can PR get past spinnage?
That’s a question I raise and answer in the affirmative with What open code developers can teach PR, over at Linux Journal, following up on this post from several days ago. Some key points: Focusing on influence alone suggests that PR is just looking to expand the spin business from old media to new,… Continue reading
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Doing the Big Thing
With Time Warner Cable does the right thing, David Isenberg breaks ranks with fellow net neutrality advocates by lauding Time Warner Cable’s “plan to charge more when you send or receive more Internet data”. David explains, If the problem is, indeed, congestion, or the related problem that a few “bandwidth hogs” are using more… Continue reading
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Sez du day
As a shameless fan of the Lolcat language, the Lolcat Bible (including the Ceiling Cat Prayer) and the Lolcat blog (I Can Haz Cheezeburger?), I find myself seeking translation to Lolcat of this fine quote from Don Marti: Becoming a blog-friendly company by chattering on blogs is like becoming a cat person by clawing… Continue reading
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Getting younger
Says here my “real” age (57) is three years less than my chronological one (60). If you take the test, notice how the calculated age at the bottom changes if you fool around and change your answers. The surprising difference, at least in my case, is vitamin supplements. By adjusting those from none to large… Continue reading
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Today’s re-reading assignment
At Technobabble 2.0, Johnny Bentwood of Edelman posts White paper – distributed influence: quantifying the impact of social media, with a link to the .pdf of the document. The paper “is not written as a fait accompli but rather as a contribution to the conversation”, Johnny says, adding, “I welcome your thoughts and comments”. I… Continue reading
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When social media are neither
Simon Collister in The death of spin has been greatly exaggerated: This is leads us to a potentially dangerous situation where the public (and worse the media) thinking political parties are giving the people a voice, when in fact they disenfranchising them by paying lip-service to participatory democracy. If this happens then traditional,… Continue reading
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Haze set
There’s this great haze effect you sometimes get in the mountains of Southern California in the evening. It’s not smog, though sometimes that’s involved. It’s just enough moisture in the air, nicely layered, to give you these amazing silhouettes that look like Japanese paintings. Or something. And that’s what I saw whille driving from Las… Continue reading
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Remembering the Good Old Day
Tony wishes Moxie a Happy Birthday, recalling the July 12, 2002 party at which many L.A. bloggers, including yours truly, met. Here’s my own rundown on the event. Here are PatioPundit (Martin Devon)’s pix and commentary. Nice to see both his blog and his archives are still up. Perhaps not so nice to see he… Continue reading
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Gang up
The latest Gillmor, um, news Gangs are up. Recorded last Thursday. I participated from a spot on the floor behind a curtain somewhere in the Sands, in Las Vegas. Listen via the links at Part I and Part II. Bonus post: Flakes on a Plane. Continue reading
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In CES digestion
Picturing CES, continued is my latest post at Linux Journal. It leads to a long report in the form of captions to over two hundred pictures (though far from all) shot at the show. Continue reading
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Help for Macworld attendees
Understanding Apple’s product cycle. I usually make it to Macworld for a day or two if it doesn’t conflict with CES. This year it didn’t, but I’ll miss it anyway because I’m too busy and based on the East Coast now. So I’ll miss being gaussed by Steve Jobs’ aura. But I’m sure there will… Continue reading
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Go Pats. Or Jags.
We are, by geographical necessity, Patriots fans. But family is also involved, since my cousin, Andy Heck, is the offensive line coach for the Jags. Hard to root for both the Pats and Andy at the same time. But we’ll try. Continue reading
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Improved listening
If you want to see how podcasting is better than radio (or a better form of radio), and why it’s more important than making money (because, among other things, you may make more money because of it than with it), then dig marketing, bananas and more, a podcast, hosted by Johnnie Moore. It’s a conversation… Continue reading
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The polymathematics of curiosity
While trying to make sense of some of what I saw out the window while flying from Los Angeles to Boston yesterday, I ran across Physical Geography of the U.S., an online summary of its subject that is so deep, interesting, well-written and well-sourced that it is hard not to keep reading it, and to… Continue reading
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There’s no excuse
…for a website to be as unreliable as United’s. Imagine running airplanes with the same level of reliability. Continue reading
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Read on
This is the best post on politics I’ve read in a long while. It concludes, I’m not expecting very much from people who live “Inside the Beltway.” I don’t live there, never have, don’t even like visiting the place. To me it’s much like the arrogance of Silicon Valley. You can’t pop out every… Continue reading
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Getting high
Here are the photos from the Zero-G flight I took today. Continue reading
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Getting real
I’ve never been a Hillary fan, mostly because it seemed that nothing she said wasn’t calculated. But when she choked up a couple days ago, for the first time I heard her get real. And likable. Last night after her victory in New Hampshire, she said “I found my voice”. There was nothing fake about… Continue reading