Did Blogging Moot the “Difference Between Lightening and the Lightening Bug?”

I used to spend more time revising my writing. My dad often said that, “writing is re-writing.” This held true for me throughout most of my student life. The first drafts of my school papers often contained unfinished ideas. When I re-read them, I immediately saw that more needed to be said. So I unpacked and reorganized them thoroughly before handing in the assignment.

Now, I must admit that I didn’t give every school paper equal attention. Some topics were just plain boring to write about. But writing assignments on subjects that captured my imagination received the benefit of many red pen strokes before the professor got a crack at them.

All of this changed after college. Mark Twain famously wrote that “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug.” But what happens to that noble idea when the fast-paced world of Internet media urges you to settle for the almost right word because you don’t have five minutes to mull the difference between “ineffable” and “inarticulable?”

Blogging - especially blogging for business as I do, is a get-in, get-out, get-on with it art. It revolves around brevity: both in the time spent writing and in the prose itself. It allows for, and even embraces the publication of unfinished thoughts. The revision process happens in the comments and in later blog posts on the same topic.

But what does this say about the quality of our writing? Is being a good writer relative to the medium in which you publish your work, or will the advent of easy personal publishing platforms make good writing less relevant? John Milton might not have been a very good blogger. But could Robert Scoble give us Paradise Lost?

Like my father before me, I write for a living. But unlike him, I spend next to no time revising my verbal concoctions. In that sense, blogging has taken something away from me and I plan to get back. From now on, I will take the time to revise my work before I send it out into the ether. Starting now.

PS: I know that the use of “moot” as a verb is considered an “uneducated” usage, but language is fluid and I like the way it works. If anyone else knows of a better word for, “to make irrelevant,” I’d love to hear it.

An Assignment for My Female Readers

The next time you feel less than your best, go out of your way to make a woman you don’t know feel like a princess.

It will make you feel 100 times better.

What the Hell is Up with Akismet?

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of spam has crept through today?

Of Cows and Corn: Artificially High Corn Prices Put the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association on the Same Side as Thomas L. Friedman

The Wall Street Journal reported today that corn plantings have hit the highest level since 1944. This is because the booming corn ethanol industry has sent corn prices skyrocketing to $4 a bushel, as Fortune reports.

The corn farmers are ecstatic. But the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association feels differently. All the surplus corn in this country due to our absurdly high corn subsidies means that corn has become an integral, if environmentally unsound, part of cattle feed. The skyrocketing price of corn has led to skyrocketing costs for beef and pork farmers.

The NCBA knows that sugar cane ethanol from overseas would provide the American corn ethanol industry with stiff competition because sugar cane ethanol is many times more efficient than corn-based ethanol. That’s why they’re lobbying the U.S. government to get rid of both the 54 cent tariff on sugar cane ethanol from Brazil and the 51 cent per gallon tax credit for ethanol refiners.

Coincidentally, this is the same position that New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has taken repeatedly over the past few years. I wonder just how often he’s on the same page as the NCBA.

In any case, these protectionist tariffs and our $10 billion per year corn subsidy have created a real economic, environmental and human problem. In 2002, Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire told the Christian Science Monitor:

We’re producing way too much corn. So, we make corn sweeteners. High-fructose corn sweeteners are everywhere. They’ve completely replaced sugar in sodas and soft drinks. They make sweet things cheaper. We also give it to animals. Corn explains everything about the cattle industry. It explains why we have to give [cattle] antibiotics, because corn doesn’t agree with their digestive system. It explains why we have this E.coli 0157 problem, because the corn acidifies their digestive system in such a way that these bacteria can survive.

And we subsidize this overproduction. We structure the subsidies to make corn very, very cheap, which encourages farmers to plant more and more to make the same amount of money. The argument is that it helps us compete internationally. The great beneficiaries are the processors that are using corn domestically. We’re subsidizing obesity. We’re subsidizing the food-safety problems associated with feedlot beef. It’s an absolutely irrational system. The people who worry about public health don’t have any control over agricultural subsidies. The USDA is not thinking about public health. The USDA is thinking about getting rid of corn. And, helping [businesses] to be able to make their products more cheaply – whether it’s beef or high-fructose corn syrup. Agribusiness gives an immense amount of funding to Congress.

So how do we get ourselves out of this mess? We open the market. We allow cheap sugar cane ethanol to compete directly with our corn based ethanol industry. Simultaneously, we erase the corn subsidy and use the money to bail out farmers who wind up on the wrong side of the course correction. Once the farming economy has diversified sufficiently, we take the $10 billion a year we were spending on corn and put it to better use. And we tell the NCBA to start recommending that farmers use something besides corn in their cattle and hog feed.

Some Guys Just Can’t Take The Hint, Don’t Know When to Sod Off

As a reasonably attractive member of the female sex, I sometimes get hit on by straight men. That in and of itself isn’t a problem. It’s flattering to know that someone thinks you’re hot stuff. But there’s a thin, sometimes inarticulable line between what is appropriate and what is not. And lately, I seem to be getting a lot of the inappropriate kind of attention.

Specifically, it feels like the men that find me attractive think that I owe them something simply because they find me attractive. I can drop all the hints in the world that I’m busy or disinterested, and they keep pushing. Eventually, I have to be downright rude. And then I inevitably get treated as though I’m some kind of stuck up bitch for exercising my right to be left alone.

I don’t want to be cold or unapproachable. It’s sometimes fun to have a light, flirty conversation with a stranger while I’m waiting for my morning latté. But other times, I really just want to read my Wall Street Journal in peace. It’s nothing personal, guys. Really. In fact, there are mornings when Johnny Depp himself couldn’t tear me away from the editorials page.

What’s worse is when a guy is so socially awkward or inept that he can’t pick up on the signals I’m sending. When a guy makes me uncomfortable, I’m not shy about shutting him down with my body language and tone of voice. But sometimes, it can be like talking to a Martian.

And the worse of all? When the aforementioned socially inept types put me on the spot and then turn into raving assholes when I shut them down verbally. What do they expect? Guys, if you don’t take the time to understand how women signal that they want you to back off, you’re going to spend the rest of your life getting drinks thrown in your face.

I don’t mean to make generalizations about all men. The vast majority of male creatures I’ve come across have been interesting to talk to and had a good sense of personal boundaries. But there are a few creeps out there that really get to me, and recently they’ve all been crawling out of the woodwork simultaneously. :shudder:

What do you ladies think? Have you had similar experiences?

And what about my male readers? I’m really interested to hear your insights into the less-than-savvy members of your gender.

Why MeanKids.org Failed

Some very cruel things were said in the blogosphere this week about a friend of mine. When I read them in Google’s cache of the now defunct Meankids.org site, I nearly lost it. I can only imagine how she, her husband, and her family felt.

When faced with genuine human goodness, some people can’t handle it. They attack and belittle it because they simply can’t understand it. They try to sully it and tear it down to their level. And they fail every time.

The people behind those very cruel posts on Meankids.org and its offshoots can’t handle Maryam Scoble, Kathy Sierra, or any of the other people they targeted. Their only hope in the face of brilliance, decency and honesty is to tear down and belittle. They are no better than sixth grade bullies. Their jealousy and bitterness erupted sideways and exposed them for the pathetic cowards they truly are.

Some say that Meankids.org casts shame on the entire blogosphere, but I don’t believe we should give them that much power. They’re simply not worth it. They failed because they can never permanently tarnish the people they set out to attack. They can hurt, and they can instill fear. But hurt and fear can last only so long before righteous anger and growing strength take their place.

Robert Scoble wrote that we should spend the next week talking about how to fix the culture of misogyny and cruelty in the blogosphere. The solution is in our ability to stand up for one another and call the perpetrators of death threats, hate speech and viciousness on their disgusting pettiness. It’s in making genuine human connections paramount.

The rest is just details.

The Best Blog I Ever Built

Check out the new Blog Business Summit, I did a lot of work in building it, and I’m unbelievably proud of it.

Expressing Support for Kathy Sierra

I need to get to sleep soon, but I wanted to quickly express my support for Kathy Sierra in the face of some truly devastating behavior from some truly deranged individuals in the blogosphere.

Kathy’s blog about creating passionate users is one of my favorites. She’s obviously intelligent, and she contributes a lot to the conversation. But even if she had nothing interesting to say, she wouldn’t deserve the kind of treatment that has been leveled at her. Nobody deserves what Kathy has gone through this past month. She has recieved death threats that include blatant sexually violent imagery. She’s been harassed all over the Web, and it’s wrong.

Kathy, I hope you will blog again. Your ideas and your involvement in social media have been an inspiration to me. I’m proud to be one of your readers and I hope that you will emerge in due time and continue to share your ideas with the world. That said, you’ve earned a break from the online world. Go take care of yourself for a while. You’ve earned it.

Twitter and Justin.TV: Swimming in Streams of Content

I would be writing about this on my company blog, but unfortunately it’s down due to some propagation issues surrounding our new site. We should be back up and running soon.

I’m just watching my old friend Justin Kan on his new “lifecast” Justin.TV. Basically, he walks around with a camera on his head all day and does interesting stuff. Yes, he even goes to the bathroom with the camera on his head.

Watching Justin got me thinking about the changing pace of content on the Web. With the “microblogging” on Twitter and this kind of “lifecasting” now a reality, all the streams of content are picking up speed. It’s honestly a little overwhelming for me. Call me old-fashioned, but I still like to spend some of my time offline.

I still think that discreet chunks of information are the most powerful force on the Web. Justin.TV provides an archive of all the hilights from Justin’s day on their blog. Twitter offers archives. If they didn’t, it would be too much information to take in.

All of this underscores the problem of how do you sort through content to get to the most relevant chunks? It’s even more of an issue now than it was six months ago.

Finally, A Solution To The Abortion Problem

This might be the greatest thing the right-wing has ever done. A Texas legislator is proposing a bill that gives pregnant women considering abortions $500 in exchange for carrying their baby to term.

Personally, I think this is a great idea, provided a few pregant “liberals” don’t abuse the system and claim they are “considering an abortion” to get $500.

It’s about time we started supporting these teen mothers. State Sen Patrick has the right idea; if we just give pregnant teens $500, they won’t have to drop out of school and spend the next 18 years broke and focused solely on caretaking for their baby and never have their own life.

I know $500 might not seem like much, but Mr. Patrick has assured me personally that it will be sufficient to make unplanned pregnancies seem like no big deal. He has even private confided it me that if $500 is not enough to cover all the expenses any of these women face, that he will personally make up the difference. What a stand-up guy!

Yet Another Bush Scandal

The Attorney General is now under scrutiny for politicizing the federal judicial process, and it’s pretty clear Gonzales was either incompetent or corrupt. So let’s count up the scandals/screw-ups: Walter Reid, Gonzales, Katrina, Valerie Plame, Abu Ghraib, no WMD’s, no al-Qaeda in Iraq, Haliburton no-bids, no counter-insurgency plan for Iraq. These are just the ones that pop-up in my head at the moment.

This is what happens when you elect a man who is PROUD of having gone through school as a “skydecker” (someone who sits in the top row of a lecture hall to avoid being called on by the professor) to the most important office in the world. An office which demands hardwork, intelligence, character, and attention to detail.

I want to personally go back to 2000 and bitch-slap every single person who voted for George W. Bush because he looked like he’d be fun to “grab a beer with”, or because Al Gore was too “wooden”, or “detail-oriented.” Newsflash: you want the straight A nerd with no life to run the country! It’s a tough job, and if you go to bed at 8:30 every night and take vacations regularly, you just might ruin the world.

Extremely important message to all voters in 2008: in every election, municipal, state, presidential, do not vote for ANYONE who even APPEARS to lack character, intelligence or work-ethic, no matter how much fun you think you’d have with them at a frat party.

Civil service election are not fraternity drives; you don’t pick the guy doing a 40-second kegstand over the guy writing a 40-page essay. That’s what we did in 2000, and inexplicably, again in 2004. And the last 6 years have been the most poorly managed since the Articles of Confederation.

In 2008, I’m voting for a nerd.

Lou Dobbs Goes Off at Just About Everyone in Washington

I just had to poke my head out of the bunker for a moment to link to this great rant by Lou Dobbs about the Gonzales scandal, the Iraq War, and the complete abdication of accountability and responsibility in Washington.

Many thanks to Mark for bringing it to my attention!

Best Country Lyric Ever

“I’d like to see you out in the moonlight.
I’d like to kiss you way back in the sticks.
I’d like to walk you through a field of wildflowers,
and I’d like to check you for ticks.” ~ Brad Paisley

I am still in my geeky bunker today. Back soon!

Instead of Reading My Blog, Help Save Darfur

I’m sorry for the light-to-nonexistent posting over the past few days. I’ve been in kind of a bunker working very hard on a particulary intense custom Wordpress install. It’s going to be utterly spectacular when it’s finished, though.

Until I’m finished posting will remain extremely light. So instead of reading my blog, I encourage you to do something to help the people of Darfur in the Sudan by calling the White House comment line. It takes about five minutes. Here’s what you do:

1. Dial 1-800-671-7887 (toll-free)
2. Once you’ve been transferred to the comment line leave your comment using the talking points below:
   I’m calling to urge President Bush to implement “Plan B” to help bring an end to the genocide in Darfur. Specifically, I am asking him to:
   • Enforce tough sanctions against Sudan;
   • Work with the UN to authorize and enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur to protect civilians from Sudanese bombers;
   • and Press the UN for faster deployment of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians in Darfur.
3. Click here to report your call back to the Save Darfur Coalition (this step is crucial - please don’t skip it.)

And now, back into my bunker.

Additional Geek Cred for Me!

• I can now install WordPress in my sleep. No. Literally. I had a dream about it last night.
• I can modify a custom query to a MySQL database based on poking about in PHP MyAdmin.
• I really want this code like a girl tee-shirt.

Another Fact of Human Nature

Sometimes, you don’t need a revelation. All you need is to be reminded of what you already knew.

Do Blondes Come First at American Girl?

Anyone who knows a girl under between the ages of 7 and 13 has heard of American Girl dolls. I had the Samantha doll growing up, and my nine year-old sister Anna has a “Just Like You” doll and many, many clothes and accessories.

I was looking through the catalogue today for a gift for Anna, when I discovered something troublesome. The newest doll in the “Just Like You” series has, “light skin, layered blond hair, blue eyes, and earrings.” She is clearly much prettier than any of the other dolls in the collection.

There would be nothing wrong with any of this if American Girl also offered dolls with medium and dark skin, layered hair and earrings. But they don’t. The only doll who is clearly beautiful by today’s standards looks nothing like me. And yet, if I were Anna’s age, this is the doll I would want.

What kind of message does this send to girls? Is it, “blondes have more fun?” Or maybe, “you have to be light-skinned to dress fashionably or wear your hair with layers?”

I’m sure that’s not the goal behind this doll. And I’m sure that the folks at American Girl plan to eventually roll out other versions of the doll with other hair and skin tones. But by rolling out a blonde version of the doll first, they are still sending the message that blonde girls come first.

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