November 2011
1 post
Obama 2012 & Hope Lost
I was reading this passage from “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron and it called to mind the 2008 presidential campaign and our celebration (obsession?) with “hoping” for a better future. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dopka. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and...
October 2011
2 posts
Vanity Fair: Excerpt of Courtney Love Feature
“I don’t understand how you have no money,” I told her.
“Get me Maureen Orth,” she grumbled, referring to another writer for Vanity Fair. “Have you looked at all the documents Jessica sent you?” I had. For months I had been receiving emails from Jessica LaBrie, a 33-year-old administrative assistant in Vancouver who told me Courtney’s music has...
Ralph
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am no solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look up at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches.
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult...
September 2011
1 post
May 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Those Damn Commie Propaganda High School History...
I wonder if the answer to this 1998 question on an AP U.S. History exam has changed since Republicans began revising high school history books:
18. The recession of 1937 was primarily caused by:
a) overextension of easy credit and high inflation.
b) excess business speculation in the rebounding stock market.
c) failure of New Deal programs to effectively lower unemployment and restore faith...
Pastimes
From Ken Burns’ famous 18.5 hour-long “Baseball” documentary series, sportswriter Thomas Boswell:
It’s one of the gentle forms of poetry that runs through our lives, and makes living more bearable.
You need moments that give you pleasure - your children or your hobbies or your games. Life can’t all be big issues and heart surgery. Something has to bring joy into...
Reading Francis Perkin's Autobiography
Willkie made his labor speech in Pittsburgh before an audience largely of labor men. I thought it was pretty good. He put himself on the record in favor of the things that labor traditionally wanted, but we would have expected any politician to do that in 1940. Then he worked up to what he would do as President in improving the labor laws and their administration. He was not specific, except on...
April 2011
4 posts
Excerpt "Clouds Near San Leandro"
In the middle of your life
you cast off the brittle flame;
…
So share off the iron shoes
of fame and image and sing
near the dumb branch. Or enter
the pond where the angles swam.
Aren’t there visions involving everything?
Some animals are warm in paradise;
your little alchemical salamander tericha tarosa
fresh from the being cycles stumbles
over rocks in its lyric...
Excerpt from "The Big Change"
I’m reading “The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950” by former Harper’s editor Frederick Lewis Allen. Allen an interesting glimpse into the socio-economic views of 1950’s America. My overall impression is that the middle class felt pretty damn comfortable. So fucking comfortable that, well, I kind of understand why the cooked up the Red Scare.
But the...
March 2011
2 posts
LVL3: Artist of the Week: Emily Keegin →
lvl3:
Born in San Francisco, Emily Keegin received her BA from Bennington College and her MA from the Royal College of Art in London. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and makes photographs and multimedia sculptures about the 21st century American dream.
If you had to explain your…
October 2010
5 posts
http://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/ →
Chinese Ai Weiwei is the first artist working in... →
June 2010
1 post
November 2009
1 post
June 2009
1 post
Reading Roosevelt: The Landon Campaign
Home sick with a fluctuating fever, and reading The Politics of Upheavel by Arthur Schleshinger. The book chronicles the Presidency of FDR and provides thorough accounting of the partisan politicking of the era. The similarities between now and then are striking. Most notably…
GOP fear-mongering about DEBT DEBT DEBT
…The Republican National Committee prepared a series of radio...
April 2009
3 posts
Rethinking Taxing Health Care Benefits
In the move toward reforming our health care system, it’s altogether possible that we may have to impose a tax of some kind to help offset the costs. Everyone - Republicans and Democrats alike - silently agree that a tax will be necessary, but no one in Washington wants to speak of it.
I’m indifferent to the financing of a new system, so long as there is quality, universal coverage....
Reading Roosevelt
Developed against the backdrop of depression, [Roosevelt’s] philosophy of compassion had a particular bias toward the idea of security — “a greater physical and mental and spiritual security fo the people of this country.”
“Security,” he once said, “means a kind of feeling within our individual selves that we have lacked all through the course of history....
July 2008
1 post
May 2008
1 post
deep thoughts?
Sometimes I buy unappetizing snacks—like this stale trail mix that I’m currently picking raisins from—because I know that I won’t enjoy it very much, which means I won’t eat very much of it. And then I think…man, life can really suck sometimes.
April 2008
9 posts
Nonprofit Messaging in an Attention Economy →
Notes from UStream Forrester Conference
Watching the Forrester conference live on http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/ Quotes & Notes: “You need to design for desirability” “You need to touch upon emotional relevance with your customers” “Desirability is difficult to define. Almost as difficult as it was for Justice Stewart to define ‘obscenity’ in 1946. He said, ‘It’s...
They're Now Our Peers! Oh no!
Great quote from Brian Solis: Instead of top down communications and focusing on the influence and control of messages and perception, we’re learning that those influential groups of people are now our peers and therefore require respect, honesty, and support in order for us to earn their trust – and hopefully their business and enthusiasm along the way.
WatchSeth Godin on curiosity and fundamentalism.
Email Worst Practices
Ignorance is (Not) Bliss Not using a friendly “from” name in the sender line, just using an email address. Using an exclamation point in subject lines. Not having a welcome email. Hiding the email opt-in on your Web site. Using single-large-image emails. Lazy is as Lazy Does Using and not optimizing the default system-generated text (converted from your HTML...
Fun Facts About a Dying Industry
• Thirty years ago, 71 percent of adults read a daily newspaper. Ten years ago, it was 59 percent. Last year’s figure: 48 percent. • Last December, 63 million unique visitors came to newspaper Web sites. Google’s figure: 133 million. • Ad revenue for newspaper Web sites rose 21 percent to $773 million in the third quarter of last year over the previous year. Print ad losses during...
The New Rules of Media →
Email Insider - Making it Personal
From Email Insider: http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?p=613#comments Here are four ways to personalize your email program today: 1) Include the recipient’s name somewhere in the message. This is one of the simplest but most powerful personalization tactics. As Dale Carnegie famously said, “A person’s name is to that person the most beautiful sound in any...
March 2008
6 posts
the end of the online petition
The folks who started MoveOn.org were pioneers in the art of online organizing. Avaaz, which was envisioned as the global arm of the MoveOn brand, deploys many of the same techniques as the older MoveOn. It’s my sense that these techniques are obsolete, relics of the web1.0 era. The online petition. The letter to the editor. The message to your member of congress. These tools were...
idea for blog post
Nonprofits and businesses alike will do well in social media by involving their staff. The conversation in social media starts with staff, not consumers or supporters. Debate the issues. Question your assumptions. Enable an ongoing dialogue between decision-makers and task-masters. Let folks own a piece of your organization.
Zogby Interactive poll on journalism
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews2.dbm?ID=1454 Highlights: Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets - 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news,...
Jonny Goldstein's wrap-up
From Jonny Goldstein: Bloggers and PR/Marketing people talking about how to piss off bloggers. From a conversation at SXSW led by Rohit Bhargava: 1. People who are obviously not longtime readers who pretend they have been. 2. Stealing content, messing with your identity 3. Getting you on mailing list and not getting you off it. 4. PR based outreach. Treating bloggers like journalists. 5. Getting...
From Jeremiah Owyang
I was saving these up, analyzing them, and looking for patterns. Eight Meaningful Measures of Social Media 1. “Number of unique users 2. Returning versus new readers 3. Referring source statistics 4. Links from other sites 5. Google PageRank 6. The ratio of blog comments to blog posts (where applicable) 7. Total time spent on the site 8. The popularity of the...
SXSW 08 highlights
10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals: make tiny decisions, tiny decisions are easy to roll-back, easy to make forward progress. Break down problems to their “atomic” levels, which allows one to tackle a whole set of issues in a rational manner. Focus on non-consumers; that is, find the consumers that are not using a specific product but need the salient points of that product (why do I need MS...
February 2008
5 posts
AdWeek: Walk the Talk →
Marketing the Campaigns, Obama vs. Clinton
Tobaccowala uses one of the fiercest brand battles of the day to underscore his view: the race between Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Politics aside, he believes one of the reasons Obama is outperforming Clinton is that the New York senator is borrowing from marketing practices circa 1980, while Obama’s strategy is rooted firmly in the present. ...
Review of DIY Video Summit →
Possible blog post
A recent legal training suggested that its ideal if our members speak for themselves online. That by hosting content or facilitating the production of content online, we become somewhat liable. Defamation is just one issue. So, all this got me thinking. We need to be equipping our members with the tools to be heard. We can no longer speak for them.
Grumblings on Facebook
I am becoming a Facebook hater. I use it, but I’m noticing that I never use it deeply. And an informal polling of friends suggests they do the same. My theory is that Facebook’s template/customization restrictions prevent people from ownership over their corner of the social network—and they feel the same way about their friends’ pages. Same goes for security. It’s...
January 2008
5 posts
“The big issue with most blogger relations articles revolves around a tendency to...”
– Media Bullseye article by Geoff Livingston
Really wish that Twitter wasn’t down.
DC for Democracy and Obama's PAC position
This morning I received an email from DC for Democracy - a local nonaffiliated 527 group that has recently endorsed Obama. Not only is the Obama campaign refusing to accept financial contributions from the group (which has been donated by individual DC4D members), but has also been told by the campaign that “any volunteer efforts for the campaign by individual DC4D members cannot be...
Chinese Gov't spying via mobile phones
A little alarmed to see this post by ImageThief. Guess it was inevitable. “We know who you are, but also where you are,” said the CEO of China Mobile Communications Corporation, Wang Jianzhou.