Summer Saturday. Errands, and more errands. Chores. When’s the week start, so I can relax?

A DVD matinée. Very little time to blog. Ouch.

So, back into the archives yet again.

I console myself by guessing that most of you weren’t here nine months ago. As one of my favorite paper publications used to say: “If you haven’t read it yet, it’s new for you!”

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, and always in season, originally posted October 11, 2007, and originally titled “mm167: Writer’s Diarrhea.”

MUDGE’S Musings

… is the opposite of writer’s block, right?

So another blog about blogging. Why bother? Take two Imodium and call me in the morning.

There’s never a lack of news and features to write about. Although, today…

There are frequently referenced topics in this space that could stand another post, MUDGE: web conferencing, our latest profession.

Or, the odd current interest (some of you must feel) in UAVs: unmanned aerial vehicles or, robot aircraft.

Or, politics: impeachment (first Cheney, then Bush); Michael Bloomberg; this horribly mismanaged war.

Or, air travel, probably our most popular topic (thanks, Patrick Smith [who actually noticed and commented on one of our several references to his wonderful column -- talk about finding a plankton in the Pacific]!).

Or, technology, especially One Laptop Per Child, a wonderful initiative deserving of everyone’s support.

But not today.

Spent spare time today reading about blogs and blogging. As I evaluate my efforts according to some of the experts, I give myself a grade of B+. Ignoring the experts, who probably would hold their noses and call L-HC a D+.

Because, of course, there are so few readers. And of course, there’s no monetization going on (just as well, since there are so few readers). So, why bother?

It doesn’t take much reflection to realize that the millions of bloggers out there are primarily, with some gaudy exceptions, keeping personal journals. A custom, and habit, recently revived from the eighteenth and 19th centuries.

The difference is that what used to be kept locked up in a desk or closet is now published to the world in a technological tour de force unprecedented in history. And no quill pens, ink wells and blotters required.

Quantitatively, even with billions of potential readers out there, most of the millions of blogs and bloggers will go unnoticed.

Qualitatively, most of us deserve the lack of notice.

But, this newly awakened urge to write, for most of us, is probably not about notice. It’s about expression.

After scores of years passively accepting written and broadcast news and entertainment, we’re once again entertaining ourselves, by writing.

And our diaries, no longer locked away in desk drawers, hang out as strings of electronic plankton just waiting for an admiring public to suck them in through the baleen called Firefox.

For most of us a few people pop in occasionally, and once in a while a small fraction of those take the trouble to comment about what they’ve read.

Thanks for noticing!

And, thanks, also, to the experts, whose blogs about blogging make for interesting reading.

A few who made an impression (in no particular sequence), a couple of whom have today earned a spot in the L-HC blogroll :

• Performancing
• BloggingTips
• Successful Blog
• ProBlogger
• Copyblogger
• Circular Communication

Any of these are worthy of some time and attention, should you be interested in improving your game, or joining this phenomenon of the Naughts: the electronic diary.

And yes, I’m an easy grader. The B+ is because I enjoy reading what I write.

A hobby that gives one pleasure (and prevents one’s brains leaking out due to any exposure to “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?”) seems like a worthy end in itself, regardless of its infinitesimal interest outside this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©.

And if this hobby fills a few moments of a few intrepid readers’ spare time, sparing them from “CSI Omaha,” how bad can it be?

Not bad at all. B+ for sure.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Well, today was that Thursday that actually began at 10:00pm last night, flowing seamlessly from Wednesday, and save for about two hours between the end of one meeting at 2am and the preparation for the next at 5:15am, sleep for yr (justifiably) humble svt has been as scarce as home buyers.

So, we’re on a reduced blogging schedule, with just enough energy to faithfully observe the Prime Directive: Thou Shalt Blog Daily.

As we’ve opined in the past (recently, actually) one of our favorite bloggers regardless of topic is Sandy Szwarc.

The first time we found her was last October. Enjoy!

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, and always in season, originally posted October 8, 2007, and originally titled “mm165: Junkfood Science: Obesity Paradox No. 13 — Take heart.”

MUDGE’S Musings

Welcome to one of the newest members of the Left-Handed Complement blogroll, Junkfood Science.

Sandy Szwarc seems to have the credentials, and she has a point of view.

Points of view are not lacking in the blogosphere (although credentials may be!), but I was attracted to hers immediately.

Anyone glancing at the rendition of Yr (Justifiably) Humble Svt that graces the top of the sidebar of this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© can probably tell that one might charitably describe MUDGE as horizontally challenged.

Fat.

Obese even.

A war fought over all but six decades. Oh, a battle won here or there, but the trend is lousy. And, the implicit message has always been: get skinny or die early.

Well, heredity and Snickers bars have long impaired my ability to do the former.

And over the past decade, the promised life-shortening chronic diseases have appeared as threatened: diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, all controlled as well as can be expected through (to some extent diet, but mainly) the wonders of the pharmaceutical arts, which is pretty well indeed.

This past summer, a promising exercise program that played to the only exercise MUDGE can comfortably handle (other than blogging!), walking, turned into Achilles tendinosis, and the pounds lost so arduously over the past four years are packing on again, as the recreational and therapeutic walking halted while various medical professionals in MUDGE‘s life attempt to figure out how to end the annoying ankle pain.

Then, the other day, thanks I believe to reddit.com, I encountered Sandy Szwarc.

For the first time in MUDGE‘s time in the ‘Sphere was I tempted to write: “WTF!” But I won’t.

Take a look:

What is most amazing is how long it has been known that body fat doesn’t cause heart disease or premature death, yet how vehemently people hold onto this belief. “The notion that body fat is a toxic substance is now firmly a part of folk wisdom: many people perversely consider eating to be a suicidal act,” wrote Dr. William Bennett, M.D., former editor of The Harvard Medical School Health Letter and author of The Dieter’s Dilemma. “Indeed, the modern belief that body fat is a mortal threat to its owner is mainly due to the fact that, for many decades, the insurance companies had the sole evidence, and if it was wrong they would presumably have had to close their doors.” That can still be said today, although the obesity interests have since grown considerably larger.

But the evidence that fatness is not especially harmful has been shown from research that dates back to the 1950s — more than a half a century ago. While many remain incredulous, the soundest body of evidence has shown, and continues to show, that being fat is not a risk factor for heart disease or a cause of premature death, even controlling for the effects of smoking or cancer.

The people of the U.S. are simultaneously getting fatter, and living longer.

Well, knock me over with a feather (not too likely in practical terms; you probably would be more successful doing so with a 3,000-pound bale of feathers).

Quoted is Dr. William Bennett, former editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter:

“Detailed epidemiological studies, too, show no impressive connection between obesity and cardiovascular disease.

The occasion for Szwarc‘s article is another new, very underreported study, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Medicine, led by cardiologist Dr. Seth Uretsky, M.D., at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, showing the same counterintuitive findings: fat people survive cardiac episodes better than thin ones!

Take a look at the full story:

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Junkfood Science: Obesity Paradox #13 — Take heart

Is it really possible that I’m supposed to be losing this lifetime battle against obesity?

And if so, why have I been lied to– er, misled all of these years?

Bears researching further I’m thinking, and Sandy Szwarc‘s Junkfood Science blog will now become a regular read.

Because, funny thing: Except for this pesky ankle, I feel pretty good.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Misty Pfeil | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’s Musings

We wrote last post about John McCain’s electoral vulnerability. In the spirit of equal time, we cannot overlook Barack Obama’s slips, slides and stumbles in the month since he triumphed over Hillary Clinton and became his party’s presumptive candidate.

McCain’s crippled party knew what they were getting, and settled. Obama, though, raised up by the multitude of starry-eyed idealists and their grass-roots web sites and donations, has run into an on-line buzz saw as his passionate fans observe him taking positions that seem disappointingly like politics as usual.

So, they’ve struck back.

Obama’s online muscle flexes against him

Fans use his Web site to rip shifts in policy

By John McCormick | Chicago Tribune reporter | 11:48 PM CDT, July 8, 2008

The same Internet-fueled power that led to historic gains in organizing and fundraising for Sen. Barack Obama‘s presidential campaign is now providing a platform for fiery dissent in a most unlikely place: his own Web site.

Amid criticism from the left that he has eased toward the center on a number of issues in recent weeks, the presumptive Democratic nominee has angered some of his most ardent supporters while triggering something of an online mutiny. Thousands are using MyBarackObama.com to angrily organize against him because of a changed position on terrorist wiretap legislation that awaits Senate action as early as Wednesday.

The dispute has forced Obama to respond in ways never before seen in a presidential campaign, demonstrating the Internet’s growing role in the democratic process and the live-by-the-click, die-by-the-click potential it holds for politicians.

The last straw was the vote in the Senate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which threatens the privacy of millions of innocent citizens in an attempt to expand the government’s ability to monitor suspected terrorists, and indemnify communications carriers from the legal fallout.

While Obama promised to fight against the bill during the primary season, he has changed tack, and joined 68 of his colleagues approving it today.

For many, who bought into the hope for the end to politics as usual, at least from their candidate, this is shockingly disillusioning, and many are not taking it lying down.

Obama’s online muscle flexes against him — chicagotribune.com

Late today, the political blog of the NYTimes, The Caucus quoted chapter and verse.

Blogtalk: Obama’s F.I.S.A. Vote

The Caucus | By Michael Falcone | July 9, 2008,  5:54 pm

It should come as no surprise to Senator Barack Obama that his vote today in favor of expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is drawing cries of outrage from many corners of the liberal blogosphere. After all, the senator’s own campaign Web site had become a focal point for his supporters to express their displeasure with Mr. Obama’s stance on the bill.

That was the case again today. Carl from Ft. Worth, Texas, posted a message on Mr. Obama’s Web site this afternoon. The subject line read: “Obama just lost my vote.” He continued:

“I am disgusted. Obama will NOT receive my vote in November, regardless of whether it means McCain wins (at least HE’S being honest with us). Once again, Dems picked the wrong guy in the primaries. Time to leave the party I guess.”

Other comments struck much the same theme. Patrick in Chicago wrote “Can I get my money back this candidate appears to be defective” and Christopher from San Francisco put it simply “Senator Obama, you fail.”

Ouch.

Obama received some support from the blogosphere, where a few noted how tough it is for a candidate to vote against anti-terrorism security measures. But not much.

Blogtalk: Obamas F.I.S.A. Vote – The Caucus – Politics – New York Times Blog

It’s most interesting that much of the outcry has been given voice on Obama’s own web site.

Elections of any kind, from elementary school boards of education to president of the United States, require one to make evaluations of the candidates on a variety of issues. One usually chooses the candidate who makes the most sense on the one issue most important to the chooser.

Over the past 20 years, on the presidential scene, one has finally settled on the least worst candidate, with the expected outcome.

Young voters, and progressives of all ages, found Obama’s campaign so refreshing since he apparently represented a change from business as usual. And they flocked to his campaign, contributed sweat and dollars, and won him the primaries.

It remains to be seen whether the outrage expressed on Sen. Obama’s web site over the past few days will grow into something of substance, seriously weakening his prospects for what should have been a tip-in at the convention in Denver, not to speak of the general election in November.

Yr (justifiably) humble svt believes that, whether one is a delegate in Denver, or a citizen facing the ballot in November, voters will choose Obama regardless.

Because if he doesn’t quite represent their idealistic hopes for change that he originally represented, he certainly will be the least worst choice.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Spotted a couple of references (most recently and indirectly at Arts & Letters Daily) to a most thought-provoking article in the Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr, regarding the perhaps crippling effect of Internet use on the intellect.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

What the Internet is doing to our brains

by Nicholas Carr |  July/August 2008 Atlantic Monthly

“Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

So I’ve noticed through the years that my ability, or even interest, to focus for extended lengths of time on a book had diminished. I have attributed this mostly to the natural effects of my alacritously advancing age. But maybe there’s more going on.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

Carr goes on to point to researchers who are just beginning to take note of this phenomenon.

But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.”

And, on the Internet, how we read is definitely different. As Carr describes it, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

So this change in the way he thinks that Carr noted, and that I reluctantly need to acknowledge in myself, is not the first time it’s occurred in human history. The good news? Our brains are not locked down into fixed ways of doing business. The not so good news? Our ability to focus attention on any subject may have become undermined by the tsunami of data in which we daily willingly drown ourselves.

Carr quotes Marshall McLuhan, the influential media analyst of the sixties. Television viewing, of course, and probably radio listening before it, radically changed people’s daily habits and the ways they took in (and probably, processed) information, and McLuhan was on top of that. We’ve had a short attention span for news since the television age began. Not for nothing has the term “20-second sound bite” become an outcome, and thus a tactic in political campaigns.

Thus our cultural short attention span predates the Internet by nearly 50 years.

I’ve got a stack of seven or eight books in my “read soonest” pile, including Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, so eagerly awaited since our mutual friend touted it prepublication in early March.

It is just simply embarrassing to me that it took several months to read and return to a patient work colleague (“don’t worry, you’re the only one here I ever can speak to about history and politics, so there’s no next person on the borrowing list”) the borrowed The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam’s brilliant, last history of the Korean War.

In some ways, then, it is rather heartening to learn that I am not the only person who, long accustomed to voracious book reading, has changed habits in favor of Internet activity.

For one, this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© itself is a tremendous, if psychically rewarding, time suck. Not only the writing, editing, and publishing, for which I devote considerable care and attention.

Also, it’s the daily pre-writing cruising among news and blogs and other ‘Net resources for inspiration and ideas. Not to mention the toiling in the vineyards of the various traffic building sites, BlogExplosion and FuelMyBlog and BlogCatalog and my newbie, BlogSoldiers.

Then there’s the simple recreational surfing that has generally replaced recreational television in my waking hours, as well as, guiltily the subject of today’s post, sitting in a plushly comfortable chair, as opposed to the more ascetic and business-like swivel chair in front of my PC, reading “legacy” books and publications.

So, my attention deficit is not necessarily due to physical changes caused by aging, although that may be part of it: I reluctantly acknowledge embarking on my seventh decade (let us be clear: I did not reluctantly embark — consider the alternative!) at the beginning of this year. Nicholas Carr, and the others he sought out for his article (and, I suppose, for his newly published book from which this material is most certainly drawn), think our brains are changing due to the way we take in information.

So be it.

Would I give up Google, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Yahoo! (well, I did long since, on merit), email (all six personal accounts!) and the rest of it?

Not a chance.

Will I embrace my newly acknowledged attention deficit? Without hesitation. I am a creature of the 21st Century Internet. I can find any arcane fact in mere seconds; I can view a 360° photograph of most any U.S. address; I can read the latest thoughts of a well-spoken mommy-blogger in Singapore; I can catch up instantly on the latest tragedy from Zimbabwe or Sichuan.

My world view may not have the depth of knowledge it might have had previously; but it is so very much the better for its magnificent breadth.

No, Google does not make me stupid. I think differently (thanks, Mr. Carr for helping me understand this), not less. Mr. Carr’s hardbound scuba diver covers a few hundred cubic feet of ocean; his and my Internet jet-ski navigates the planet.

I’ll happily take that trade-off.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Whew!

Just finished a very long day, the first day attending the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

I don’t go to so many conferences. In fact, in the nearly four years of employment at the Heart of Corporate America (not its real name), as well as the three years of contractor status that it, this is only the second conference that I have attended under the HCA aegis. How ironic that it is also located in Boston, the site of the event that I attended last summer. Of all the towns in the world…

But, I do like Boston, even though, as alluded to last post, I feel stranded in the middle of a desert, located as we are in a concrete jungle of a redeveloped industrial district. Boston is a wonderful town in which to be a pedestrian — but not in this corner, not that I could pedestre very well anyway. [Looks like I may have coined another word -- the 'r' is silent; but it does sort of look like pederast, doesn't it. Oh, well, back to the drawing board.]

Although I title this Day 1, the event’s organizers, as is often done apparently, treated today as Day 0, Monday being the more popular business travel day than Sunday. The sessions today were lengthy tutorials. A choice of two each, morning and afternoon. 9am to 12:30pm; then 1:30pm to 4:45pm. Then a further two hour panel discussion that finally ended at 7:30pm. The real action starts tomorrow. I’m already worn out.

I do take copious notes. Now, many of my fellow attendees today, perhaps most of them, brought their laptops to the sessions. There were even power strips scattered along the floor, for the first half-dozen lucky people each who got to them.

Now, yr (justifiably) humble svt would have been happy enough to note take via laptop, but as there were no tables, just rows of chairs, and as I, uh, don’t have a lap for said laptop, just a short slippery slope as it were, that might result in a potentially lethal slide for same, I took my notes the old fashioned way, pen on notebook page, six tightly printed pages to be exact. I have a lot to show for 8-3/4 hours of conference. But it all has to be transcribed.

I wanted to keep up with this daily; perhaps even transfer some of this post into the event’s blog that I’ve heard exists although I haven’t found it. But, as I type this it’s already 10pm; had too much to eat at the hotel’s surprisingly good restaurant (surprising mainly because they have no competition for at least the half-mile radius until another hotel appears in this wasteland called the Seaport neighborhood); and I was up early. Never sleep well in anyone else’s bed except my own, and the hotel is justifiably proud of its comfortable bed. I’m just a crotchety old curmudgeon.

Anyway, there are six pages. Let’s see if I can summarize, while it’s all still fresh.

1. Social Computing Platforms: IBM and Microsoft.

This was a pair of dueling product demonstrations chaired by an analyst from the Burton Group, one of the respected observational consultancies in the IT field. The products on offer: IBM Lotus Connections vs. Microsoft Sharepoint.

This session was of particular interest to yours truly, as I have been participating as an ex officio (don’t believe I have the status for official membership) of a technical review board at HCA evaluating those two products, with the aim of adopting one of them for the enterprise.

Social media, Web 2.0, is what the world outside corporations has been using for quite some time: blogs, wikis, MySpace/Facebook and the like. Corporations, especially those with an influx of twenty-something college graduates they’re hiring in unexpectedly large numbers, considering the state of the economy, due probably to unexpectedly large numbers of Boomer retirees, find that these new employees expect Web 2.0 tools in the workplace to mirror those they use in their personal places.

As the two foremost providers of collaboration software in the enterprise space, IBM Lotus and Microsoft have responded to the demand with their competing products.

Of the two, Lotus Connections tells a better, more comprehensive, prettier story. Microsoft Sharepoint is spare to the point of a Google-like stark simplicity.

They both offer blogs, wikis, profiles (the MySpace/Facebook piece) in varying degrees of completeness. They both offer integration into the email and other collaboration products that are the two standards of the corporate communication world: Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook respectively. They both have their strengths. At this stage in their development, I would have to give the nod to Connections. I haven’t used it yet, although the plan is to start testing it shortly after my return. But I have used Sharepoint, and after today’s presentation I know I will like Connections, sight unseen, better.

2. Unified Communications Comparative Analysis.

This session was paneled by a representative from Frost & Sullivan, another respected observational consultancy. Five different vendors spent about 25 minutes each presenting their interpretation of UC, the convergence of telephonic communications, heading more and more toward VOIP, with web based collaboration tools such as instant messaging, web conferencing (my two areas of concentration at HCA), audio conferencing, video conferencing, etc.

A colleague and I will be exploring some of the elements of UC that will be available as we roll out our update to IBM Lotus Sametime mid-summer, so this session also held much interest.

The five presenters all came at the field from their own positions of strength. IBM Lotus has the software killer app in the form of Sametime, which has long sported integration with IP telephony and even with conventional wired audio conferencing, although we at HCA are only now on the cusp of getting to that rarified version. Many of the other vendors have partnered with IBM to offer their own integrations with Sametime. The idea is to be able to look at a small browser with lists of frequently accessed colleagues (the wretchedly named “buddy list”), and click to instant message, or click to place a PC to PC call, or click to place a PC to land line call, etc.

It’s good stuff, converging toward the point where it won’t matter where you are, what phone you have near you, your colleagues will find you and you them, just by selecting them from that browser. As our Frost & Sullivan analyst pointed out, the bad news is that last year’s buzzword of work – life balance now becomes this year’s trend of work – life blending. Not necessarily a welcome development for us codgers; but definitely 2.0 for the kids.

For all of the vendors, the low hanging fruit in this business is VOIP, which offers quantified return on investment (the holy ROI), and even there, my employer is only slowly getting there, mainly by mandating that all green field (i.e., new) sites use that better mousetrap for telephony. Legacy sites, such as the infrastructure including thousands and thousands of long since depreciated but to our CFO perfectly useful PBX phones, will get there only slowly. And that’s with quantifiable ROI.

Unified Communications has a problem. Its advantages are more challenging to measure. Improved productivity is hard to put a number to. But, our glinty-eyed CFO should be drooling at the concept of work – life blending. After all, he’s only going to pay us for eight hours per workday, not the 168 hours per week that we’ll be exposed to UC.

[In that vein: when I joined the group I presently work with in Corporate IT, it was a big deal to be issued a Blackberry. I was perhaps the 225th person in the organization to get one, and that only because I worked in the group that supports them, not that I was entitled by any rarefied status. The Blackberry impacted our organization from the top down; we originally got into the business because our CEO wanted to handle his email from the corporate jet.

[The VP of our group simply hated them; mainly I think because she resented people responding to their buzzing interruptions to her meetings. She's long since retired, and there are probably close to 4,000 Blackberries in the enterprise by now. I hope no one has told her!

[Even so, one would think that even, no especially, our CFO would insist that all 70,000 of us be issued them. Same as Unified Communication: 168 hours/week availability for the cost of 40, plus a couple of grand a year for the device and its airtime each. Cheap at the price, one would have thought. That's one reason why I'm not the CFO, I guess.]

All five vendors who presented today made good cases for their flavor of UC; all of them sounded, and their demos looked, pretty much the same. It’s not anywhere near a mature industry yet, and I expect that there will be shakeouts and combinations galore in the next few years.

3. Evening in the Cloud

This was an intriguing panel discussion, flashily produced, regarding the bleeding edge technology called cloud computing. Cloud computing is what Google Apps and Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services (tonight’s three vendor presenters) would like all IT organizations to adopt wholesale. Let us take over your applications and data. We’re cheaper, because we offer huge economies of scale, securer, more knowledgeable than you are. It’s “Software as a Service,” one of this year’s most potent buzzwords, taken to its ultimate degree.

The four other panelists were CXO’s (fancy IT-speak for Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Officers — the heads of IT for their respective organizations) of organizations who are potential clients of cloud computing.

This was a fascinating couple of hours, with a lot of give and take. The cloud computing guys were absolutely at the peak of their games, VPs of marketing and the like, and made convincing cases for their products. The CXO’s had good, insightful questions and comments.

When they finally through the meeting to the floor, yours truly hustled to the microphone. As I told them, by that time, 7:00pm, I had been ingesting data and information for 10 hours straight, and in the spirit of the 2.0 theme of the conference, I felt it was incumbent on me to contribute, in the form of a couple of questions.

It wasn’t my greatest stint in front of a microphone, nor my worst. Got patient answers to my rather feisty questions.

The ramifications of cloud computing are dire for we peons in IT. Already we see the (help desk) support function heading toward the low cost providers in Manila and Bengaluru and Sofia. If they send the hardware into the Amazon-Google-Salesforce clouds, that’s another huge swath of IT personpower that goes away in favor of those denizens of said clouds.

Fellow gearheads, better be prepared to join your brothers and sisters, the displaced shoe manufacturing workers and textile weaving workers and furniture makers, and Hummer builders, in the reeducation lines.

Whew! Wrote more than I thought I could. Go figure. Might be all the iced tea and restaurant mellow coffee that will probably leave me buzzing for a few more hours. Sigh.

More (writing, not caffeine), I hope, tomorrow evening.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From our early days, originally posted August 31, 2007.

mm123: Classical music II — one more time, with wood

MUDGE’S Musings

Danger! Western Cultural

Treasures Content!

Run Away!

So, I was cruising the blogs at BlogExplosion.com and I found this one, courtesy of YouTube, via Subbie.

When I’m all by myself, I seldom LOL. This video, I did laugh out loud.

YouTube: Rachmaninov had big hands

So, last post, somehow I left Rachmaninov off (no, I’m not stuttering) of my desert island list. Inexplicable. What a genius.

The music, by the way, his Prelude, Op.3 No.2 In C Sharp Minor. Here’s a great recording performed by the incomparable Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Anyway, this video made my day. Pretty good for a couple minutes, huh?

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Non-commercial Note!: the link to Amazon.com used above is for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. Deal with it.

There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From our early days, originally posted August 27, 2007.

mm119: Creating the sequitur

Had this thought yesterday.

Any of you regular reader of this nanocorner of the blogosphere are aware that MUDGE often is slightly link-crazy.

I believe I learned this style best from one of my most regular reads, Slate.com, and good teachers they’ve been.

What linking does for yours truly, and here comes that flash of insight –drum-roll please — linking sequiturizes.

We all think we know what a non sequitur is. My new toy WordWeb says that it’s “A reply that has no relevance to what preceded it.”

So, when MUDGE pops out a comment, like this one from a recent posting…

An ambitious plan, to be executed of course by the lowest bidder.

… you don’t have to be in the dark about what I might mean by that.

Because I’ve provided a handy hyperlink to let you know exactly what I had in mind.

Wikipedia’s article goes a bit into the history of the hyperlink:

The term “hyperlink” was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu. Nelson had been inspired by “As We May Think,” a popular essay by Vannevar Bush. In the essay, Bush described a microfilm-based machine (the Memex) in which one could link any two pages of information into a “trail” of related information, and then scroll back and forth among pages in a trail as if they were on a single microfilm reel. The closest contemporary analogy would be to build a list of bookmarks to topically related Web pages and then allow the user to scroll forward and backward through the list.

Ted Nelson was a genius — I remember reading him in the fondly remembered Byte Magazine (I was a near-charter subscriber, of course), and thinking “this man is a way out futurist.”

So, the non sequiturs will keep on coming, gang, sequiturized (must be the process of negating a non sequitur, right), by Ted Nelson’s (and of course Tim Berners-Lee‘s) marvelous hyperlinks.

New motto for this nanocorner:

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Can’t help but notice that we’ve achieved a mini-milestone today: we began serious blogging one year ago, May 7, 2007.

We actually registered Left-Handed Complement with WordPress.com about nine months earlier, dashed off a couple of quick posts and then once that initial burst of enthusiasm and curiosity had passed, stopped.

We’ll consider that interregnum a gestation then, leading to the true birth of this site an entire year ago.

Fortunately, unlike my children, for whom we had no such demands, L-HC was born talking. This will be the 399th post (the numbering system of our titles has been irregularized by anomalies such as our occasional Web Conferencing Week posts, and our early propensity for decimalizing multiple posts on the same day. but I trust WordPress to deliver a straight accounting). That’s a lot of talking.

I remain hopeful that I keep trying to deliver quality while observing that, as we wrote in the introduction to some Blasts From the Pasts! that we prepared to protect the schedule while vacationing, the Prime Directive of Blogging reads: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!

Blog quality. In the eye of the beholder, of course.

I am not a journalist. Don’t play one on TV. Whatever news I deliver is derivative. I attempt to add value by spotting something that you might have missed; and/or by placing the news in some kind of context, even if it’s merely my own slightly skewed view of this very weird universe.

As a result of this effort I’ve become a much more informed person, even as I try to keep up with a globe that seems to be spinning faster each day. I’ve always had some information, and for certain I’ve always had the point of view. Thanks to this wonderful new medium, combining the two has become a daily education for me; a most unexpected, and welcome outcome.

As I write this, WordPress tells me that this site has been viewed 12,856 times over its lifetime: about 35 times per day on average, for the 366 days since startup.

Lately, the trend has been up, more than 50 hits per day.

Faithful reader, you are part of a very, very selective community. With millions of citizens of the web having billions of pages per day to look at, about 54 of you stop here at this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©.

Wow! Yr (justifiably) humble svt thanks you most humbly!

I guess I would keep writing regardless, but I am grateful for the attention and the very occasional comments left behind.

And I certainly have enjoyed expanding my own world view by reading the fascinating writing of people I never would have encountered without the good offices of BlogExplosion.com and FuelMyBlog.com, and BlogCatalog.com.

So, I recognize all too well that a birthday (or a “Blogoversary“) actually occurs on the first day of the next year.

Ready or not, Year Two begins!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Ever have one of those moments? You know, the ones where you read or see something that just simply closes a loop in your mind that you didn’t know was open? Where you (one hopes, figuratively) slap yourself on the face and say (one fervently hopes, subvocally): Wow, I wish I thought of that?

Had one of those today.

I’m a history of technology guy; I even alluded very briefly to that a couple of posts ago (featuring one of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s favorite headlines, if I may be so unhumble to say so!).

So, I enjoy taking a global, macro view of technology, and how it shaped the story of civilization (technology = civilization — can’t have the latter without the former). And I also enjoy making connections.

So, my attention was captured today by the first paragraph of this post, found during typical stream-of-consciousness blogging today.

So, I read on, and the connections and insights about technology and where it’s taking us, and why it’s taking us there, were jaw-dropping.

See, I’ve often said (once, here) that one of the things I really like about this blogging mania obsession habit of mine is that after more than 15 years of consuming the Internet, now, in my infinitesimal, nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© way, I’m now contributing.

And, that’s the point:

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

By Clay Shirky on April 26, 2008 10:48 AM

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders–a lot of things we like–didn’t happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn’t until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

If this analysis had stopped at that point, I would have been happy. Here I’m thinking that the industrial revolution automated the production of, and thus made affordable to the mass of potential consumers, the spirit called gin. Whereas, in the historian’s theory repeated here, gin was a response to the upheavals and surplus attention caused by the industrial revolution, and its wholesale abuse for that reason awoke society to the need to find more productive, or at least less destructive, down-time pursuits.

Okay, so far so good. Television?

Yes, but not just television in general: the sitcom.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan’s Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

Interesting leap, don’t you think?

And that leads Mr. Shirky to the 21st Century. In the light of the surplus time the globe spends watching sitcoms, the collective effort to create Wikipedia is just a drop in the bucket.

So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought….

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that’s finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

Aha!

Wikipedia (at the high value end). YouTube and 100zillion blogs (at the questionable value end). But, participating, not just consuming.

Contributing to the world’s knowledge, understanding, entertainment, relentless need to harness electrons.

Not just moldering.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody

I’ve attempted (with variable success) to avoid being one of those snobs: “Oh, I never watch (especially, commercial) television!”

But, for the most part (especially in the past year where this mania obsession habit called blogging has taken over my life), the television is off for all but a few, wind-down minutes at the end of most days (saving some football-season-related, and lately, due to the influence of my seven-year-old expatriate grandson’s Cubs mania, baseball exceptions).

I’m applying my cognitive surplus, in Mr. Shirky’s terminology, in a productive, rather than consumptive, manner, trivial as it is. And, trivial or not, it feels great!

A new motto for the masthead:

Left-Handed Complement- Contributing my cognitive surplus to meet the world’s relentless need to harness electrons, at the rate of one post daily.

Works for me. Thanks, Clay Shirky, for helping make sense of this mania obsession habit. And, in a larger sense, of making sense of Web 2.0 in a way that had eluded me until today. (And check out his book, “Here Comes Everybody“.)

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the link to Amazon.com used above are for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor, and in any event it’s against WordPress.com’s rules. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

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Faithful peruser of this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© is aware that, contrary to the evidence of daily blogging, yr (justifiably) humble svt does earn a living, toiling away at a quite exhilarating (lately!) day job in the field of web conferencing for a large Midwestern corporation.

If I identify my employer at all, it is very circumspectly. References found at the above link refer to the “Heart of Corporate America,” or HCA. That link, by the way, is my static page (as opposed to the home page, updated with every new post, all 375 of them, and counting, thank you very much). As we produce new editions of Web Conferencing Week, we post them in both places; you might have seen this one last week.

You don’t know my employer’s identity, at least from me. They don’t know that this space exists, at least from me. That’s as it should be. I stay away from its business, while sharing with you my skewed view of the universe beyond the wrought iron fence demarcating its property, except for those technical items of interest about what I do for a living, and how I do it. Always very generic, as I feel most comfortable doing.

Please know that I do have strongly held opinions about my employer. Most of them are quite positive. None of them, in my opinion, are worth jeopardizing my job to share with you.

That brings us to this interesting incident, courtesy of one of the world’s top publications, Business Week.

Seems a lot of guys blog, known or not to their respective employers, with a business related agenda.

Read and learn:

Busting a Rogue Blogger

Troll Tracker has been unmasked as a patent lawyer for Cisco. Now they’re both facing litigation

by Michael Orey | March 27, 2008, 5:00PM EST

Of the many blogs born last May, Patent Troll Tracker seemed as innocuous as any. Its focus: the obscure but controversial subject of “patent trolls,” a derogatory term used to describe businesses that make money by purchasing patents and then suing big companies for infringement. The author was clearly no fan of the practice, but his or her identity was a mystery. The “about me” section of the blog noted that the writer was simply “a patent lawyer trying to gather and organize information about patent litigation.”

Through regular, copious posts, Troll Tracker quickly drew a devoted following in patent law circles, even among those who disagreed with its point of view. What readers didn’t know, however, was that the blogger was Rick Frenkel, in-house patent counsel at Cisco Systems (CSCO), the Internet infrastructure giant. Cisco didn’t sanction the blog, but it, like other tech firms, has waged a long, public battle against so-called patent trolls. And in its pointed commentary, Troll Tracker advanced views squarely in line with the company’s own agenda. Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler even cited the blog as a good independent source of information while in Washington lobbying for changes to patent law that would rein in trolls, unaware he was plugging the work of a Cisco employee.

Well, for one thing, I don’t have anything to worry about; my postings are hardly as focused as Patent Troll Tracker’s. And, the opinions expressed here are hardly likely to be confused with influential ones.

The fact that a few of you keep returning so regularly (you know who you are — “what’s this oddball going to say next?” might well be your main motivation ) is simultaneously morale boosting, and humbling.

As we can see from the story at hand, business bloggers may, inadvertently or not, end up playing hardball.

Ask any 10-year-old: a hardball can hurt!

Somehow, I don’t see my employer saying what Sun Microsystems has said, as quoted in a sidebar to the BW piece:

Rules of the ‘Sphere

Some companies take baby steps into the blogosphere. Others, such as Sun Microsystems (SUNW), have plunged in. Sun’s Web site tells its 4,000-plus employees who blog: “By speaking directly to the world, without [requiring] management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interests of higher rewards.” Some tips Sun offers: Link to lots of other sites, “Don’t tell secrets,” and saying something “sucks” is “not only risky but unsubtle.”

Or, as a recent business oriented white paper puts it: “Social Networking: Brave New World, or Revolution from Hell?”

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Busting a Rogue Blogger

So, we won’t mention lines of business, or brands, or corporate identities here, if they’re connected with the source of my remuneration.

Check with the guys at Sun if you’re interested in the possibilities.

I’m considering myself warned, and, besides, I’m having too much fun discussing and critiquing the other 99.99999999% of this planet.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Stanley Bing of Fortune is one of my favorite guys. His The Bing Blog has been part of the Left-Handed Complement blogroll from the early days.

Today’s post discusses the latest news of the tug-of-war now entering what is probably its final phase: Microsoft’s intention to take over Yahoo.

Yahoo thoughts and Microsoft dreams

The Bing Blog | Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:00 pm

I thought I would begin the week here by taking a moment of silence for all the good folks at Yahoo (YHOO), now under assault by the great and powerful conquistador from Redmond (MSFT).  Today Yahoo management found it necessary to combat comments made by Microsoft top pate Steve Ballmer to the effect that the company was in serious trouble and would probably tank in the very near future without the timely rescue now under consideration. This could be seen by some cynics as a blatant attempt to lower the value of the property Mr. Ballmer and team are looking to acquire, but you won’t find any cynics here. Just sympathetic skeptics who have been there and done that.

Few topics among we who toil in the vineyards we call “IT” are more likely to elicit a curling lip than the subject of the Ogre of Redmond, “Micro$oft.”

I’ll have a few thoughts about that attitude, as well as discouraging words regarding the maiden whose chastity is under attack, Yahoo, after you read Bing’s post.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

The Bing Blog Yahoo thoughts and Microsoft dreams «

I don’t love Microsoft, any more than I love Toyota or General Electric or any other giant of business whose products I use and take for granted daily. But I don’t hate them.

In the information profession, Bill Gates and Paul Allen came out of a garage with a sharp (borrowed?) idea or two and an absolutely rapacious business style and mowed down the traditional powers. Have to respect that.

I am not such a bits and bytes artiste (although, there was a time…) that I am affronted by Microsoft’s often derivative, frequently expensive approach to the way my PC works.

If family MUDGE ultimately replaces the Sony desktop PC with which tonight’s screed is written with a Macintosh, that will reflect more the influence of the lovely Mrs. MUDGE, a professional electronic compositor who has happily used Macs at work for most of the past 20 years. Equal time, don’t you know? And it would likely be a new dual-boot system anyway, if I can’t bear to part with Windows.

Then, there’s Yahoo.

In its own way, Yahoo was a pioneer of a new generation of computing: the Internet. Long before there was such a thing as a google, except I think in the field of rarified mathematics, Yahoo was the search engine, later the home page of choice, for millions of new citizens of the web, yr (justifiably) humble svt included.

They were my window to the Internet for many long years. Beginning in 1998 when I made the switch from whatever long gone home page I had used to My Yahoo!, I steadily built a splendid and useful home base for whatever computing, recreational or business related, I was up to.

Had modules with the stock prices of my laughable nanoholdings; had weather reports in several cities I care about; news general and technical, from several sources; a window to my Yahoo Photo site (R.I.P.) that flashed a rotating thumbnail of one of the hundreds of pix in our on-line family album.

A beautiful thing.

One morning, it was gone.

A few, generic bits and pieces to tantalize, but all of the cool stuff built up over years was apparently fried.

Asked for, but received no help (or any response at all) from Yahoo support. Sigh.

So, time to find somewhere new to call home (page). Landed at Google for a while, but, for all of its technological wizardry, they’ve never really figured out, or obviously wanted to figure out, what I had grown to believe classic home page should be. And I didn’t admire their vision of one.

Eventually, Netvibes and Pageflakes came along.

Not bad, and in many ways they are definitely improvements over Yahoo or Google. Both have useful features, and now it’s an age of tabbed browsing, so I don’t really have to choose between Netvibes and Pageflakes, and I have both.

Netvibes, my preferred tool with its huge number of tabbed pages, wants me to update to their newest version, but the process seems weirdly intrusive, so I’m not sure they’ll be useful to me much longer. Pageflakes has fewer features, but it’s useful, and when it scrapes my blog’s feed, it picks up the first graphic it finds — very cool.

It’s been close to four years since that morning Yahoo went missing. I’ve never looked back.

So how do I feel about Yahoo now that they’re about to pay the price for developing a model that apparently didn’t care enough about a paying customer (and yes, I was paying $60/year, their going rate at the time for enhanced email) to even acknowledge his polite requests for assistance?

Ballmer, what took you so long? And, be careful not to overpay. Two cents should about cover it.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From our very earliest days, originally posted July 4, 2007.

mm050: Sublime to…

So, I’m casually surfing (what else?), end up at one of my favorite sites, Lifehacker, and I find one of the most oddly interestingly pieces of on=line advertising I’ve ever encountered.

I don’t do advertising here, mainly because there aren’t enough of you visiting, and most of you are friends and family for whom I have absolutely no desire to monetize the experience, but, as the cliché expresses, the exception proves the rule. By the way, in case you are curious, I have absolutely no commercial arrangement with anyone connected with advertising in general, or this product specifically.

So, I clicked the intriguing looking ad, which shows a couple of nude female posteriors with smiley faces overlaid on them.

You’ve just got to check this out: http://www.cleanishappy.com

On a visit to Japan seven years ago, I encountered a most accomplished toilet in my son’s townhouse, and the wizards at Toto (who do good work — when we upgraded our two baths, we specified Toto toilets) have apparently decided that U.S. people have evolved sufficiently to be ready for a similarly accomplished commode, actually seat cover, as you now know if you did go ahead and click the link.

And this is amazing and very, very slick advertising, also. The cable infomercial will arrive I’m sure (if it hasn’t already — I haven’t encountered it), but this state of the art web advertising certainly grabbed this blogger right in the ___________ .

I’m certain that I can’t afford one, much less two, but my God, I wish I could!

Thanks for indulging me.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Quote of the Day:
True friends stay friends.
–Al

There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From our very earliest days, originally posted June 15, 2007.

mm022: Unblocked

guess it’s the sophomore slump.

It’s been more than a week since I last posted to this blog, vs. my strong beginning last month. See I read somewhere that you have to get into a habit of daily blogging, exercise like any other (and if you saw what I look like, you’d note immediately that blogging is not the only exercise I’m failing to perform daily!).

So the new has worn off, and no one seems to be reading this anyway, so what’s the point?

How about, I like to write! How about, I’d like to be read, and I certainly won’t be if I don’t write! Simple, right? On the other hand, jillions are blogging; who is taking the time to read them? I’m sure that, aside from the professionals and the few hugely talented amateurs, most blogs go unread except for family and close friends. Even then, how many people have good and/or close enough friends that they would have patience enough to read the most interesting blog on a daily basis? Based on WordPress statistics, I apparently do not!

And the pros have one on me, since they can get away with blogging on the job — perhaps their job is in part or wholly the production of a regular column — lucky them! Working as I do in the Heart of Corporate America, I have the nagging impression that blogging on the job (no sir, not me!) — even blogging offsite explicitly about the job — would be a terminating offence. So, the few times I have written about what I do I have forced myself to be most indirect, uncomfortably so, since I’m proud of the work I do, and absolutely proud of the company I work for and the work it does in its often under-appreciated industry. My employer and its industry, and the business conducted by our country, and its capitalist system, is certainly not above criticism, but the good outweighs the not so by orders of magnitude.

And although I’ve been told I’m diplomatic, my usual impulse is to be very, eloquently, shockingly, direct — and it’s sometimes painful to dial that back. But, I love my job, and I’d hate to risk it over a few words. See last month’s rant about my retirement plans — I don’t have any, so this is one boat I choose not to rock. So I’ll continue to try to find interesting things to say about what I do, which I am passionate about (even my bosses say so), constrained by not speaking too distinctly about where I do it.

So, it’s been a little slow there for me the past week or so, and isn’t it just so true that busy people get lots more done than those who aren’t so. I’ve been content to accumulate a few more links for a future clipjoint or two, which I hope is not the total copout it feels like! But, tonight, we’ll write a little more.

And, I’ve been working on a project at home, that due to its multimedia content has been quite time consuming. My older son’s wedding is coming up, and I’ve been working on a slide show for the rehearsal dinner. It’s been fun, but frankly something of a chore (a hobby with a deadline is a job, folks!), scanning in quite a number of photographs (let’s face it, snapshots!) from years long past, and wrestling with the software purchased for the purpose of combining the photos and a music track into a DVD playable at that event, now just three weeks away. My PC, seeming so powerful just three short years ago, seems often driven to its knees by the demands placed on it for such a project. Like any complex software, Roxio Easy Media Creator Suite 9 has a steep learning curve, but it has repaid my persistence with what I will modestly term a very nice result.

So far, the slide show has consumed the long Memorial Day weekend, this past weekend and still another couple of hours during evenings this week as I fiddle with the audio software, having beaten into submission (or at least as far as my patience has allowed) the visuals. I’m really happy with the results — but like any creative effort, viewed often enough it has become difficult to stay objective. Not the worst of its genre (amateur slide shows must be almost as numerous as blogs!), hardly the best. Ken Burns’ job is safe. But, I think my precious son and his darling bride to be, and our families, will appreciate it, or at least will be polite about it!

It’s it for now (whew! I wrote something at last!).

Thanks for indulging me.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

The ‘Sphere is awash with story after story about Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic governor of New York, who has implicated in a prostitution scandal.

The ironies are so obvious, yr (justifiably) humble svt needn’t work too hard to lay them out: moralizing attorney general, who took ferocious pleasure in bringing down prostitution rings, has feet of clay. The Democrat’s version of moralizing, bathroom haunting Larry Craig.

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring

By DANNY HAKIM and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM | Published: March 10, 2008

ALBANY – Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation.

The details are everywhere; if you somehow have missed the story, the NYTimes has an evenhanded account.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring – New York Times

As the Times notes, clients are seldom arrested during crime-fighting operations like this one. Except. The Mann Act stuff is details. This is a juicy target; they’ve taken him down.

But he’s not the victim.

The world knows that all guys are jerks. Mostly, their wives are free to deal with it as they must. Only a public official’s wife has to stand next to her creep with a stiff upper lip, in front of cameras and the world while he owns up.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Fat Tuesday

This headline just popped out at me today:

Fat People Cheaper to Treat, Study Says

So I took a look, and after reading a couple of paragraphs, as I’ll suggest you do, I asked myself a question.

Fat People Cheaper to Treat, Study Says

By MARIA CHENG | AP Medical Writer | 4:00 PM CST, February 5, 2008

LONDON – Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”
In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

I asked myself: “This is prime Sandy Szwarc territory; I wonder what she thinks of this research?”

Sure enough, her highly informed take was featured on her wonderful blog, Junkfood Science.

So, knowing when I am overmatched, here are two links: first, the original story, from the AP by way of Chicago Tribune.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Fat People Cheaper to Treat, Study Says — chicagotribune.com

And now, for an expert’s take, Sandy Szwarc’s Junkfood Science:

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Junkfood Science: Calling for a cease-fire

Skyhawks

The more buttoned up our world becomes; the more pervasive the propensity of those in power to exercise it grotesquely, as with the Star Chamber that is Guantanamo; the more habeas corpus and other birthrights disappear; the more depressed we become about the state of our nation, its institutions, and the future of democracy and liberty in this country and the world.

Then, I see a story like this one, from today’s NYTimes.

Satellite Spotters Glimpse Secrets, and Tell Them

By JOHN SCHWARTZ | Published: February 5, 2008

When the government announced last month that a top-secret spy satellite would, in the next few months, come falling out of the sky, American officials said there was little risk to people because satellites fall out of orbit fairly frequently and much of the planet is covered by oceans.

But they said precious little about the satellite itself.

Such information came instead from Ted Molczan, a hobbyist who tracks satellites from his apartment balcony in Toronto, and fellow satellite spotters around the world. They have grudgingly become accustomed to being seen as “propeller-headed geeks” who “poke their finger in the eye” of the government’s satellite spymasters, Mr. Molczan said, taking no offense. “I have a sense of humor,” he said.

These satellite spotters are pretty good at their hobby, which in the story they liken to that of guys, like yr (justifiably) humble svt, who love to watch trains.

Trainspotting (a Britishism, and a whopper of a movie a few years ago) can sometimes get in the way of the railroads, in this country mostly corporate enterprises who vigorously defend their turf with fences and private police.

Satellite spotters regularly get in the way of the governments that launch most of the birds. No fences work, and so far, no police.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Satellite Spotters Glimpse Secrets, and Tell Them – New York Times

And therein lies the glow one gets from this story. Some secrets aren’t meant to be kept, not if a determined guy on a balcony (doggedly pursuing his hobby, in much the same way, albeit far more comfortably, that MUDGE pursues this one) can point a hobbyist’s telescope toward the sky and find a $zillion spy satellite, and, through the wonders of the Internet, easily and instantly make it known to the world.

Before, the free press was mainly free only for the guy who owned it.

Today, just by harnessing some electrons, the truth gets out there.

It’s how we know much more about distorted mainstream medical reporting, thanks to the electrons harnessed by Sandy Szwarc and others.

And how we know about the retired spy satellites threatening to ruin our day, or our lawn, as they topple out of the heavens.

Don’t know about you, but I like knowing when to duck!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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