This nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© averages roughly 50 hits a day. As reading L-HC indicates that faithful reader indubitably has exquisitely refined taste, I’m not unhappy with that number, exactly. It’s about 50 more people than ever read whatever I might have written before taking up blogging.

Today, 96 hits.

Wow, did my latest post, on web conferencing, hit a nerve?

Not exactly.

50 people clicked on a link from last August, a story about Barack Obama. And I have WordPress.com to thank.

It seems recently they added a delightful feature when one publishes a post: Possibly related posts: (automatically generated) wherein the system pulls out three or four stories that share a tag or category with the article just posted. It’s a handy resource, one small example of the feature-rich service that WordPress.com provides (in my case, nearly cost-free) to nearly 3.5million blogs.

Turns out that FoxNews.com, of all sites, is the source of today’s doubled traffic.

They happen to be hosted on WordPress.com. Now, that’s an interesting fact in itself. One would think that a large global organization such as Rupert Murdoch’s would have the resources to host its own blog. But I suppose they know a better mousetrap when they see one (I certainly do!), and thus let WordPress.com do the heavy lifting.

Today, FoxNews.com ran a story about an incumbent Republican candidate for senator in Oregon who is running an advertisement “touting his ties to the Senate’s most liberal member,” Barack Obama. And guess whose post from last August, “Barack Obama’s Republican edge” did WordPress.com include in its automatically generated “possibly related posts?”

Now, one has to wonder about those 50 people. I imagine they clicked away in mere microseconds when they realized what sort of blog they innocently encountered. Certainly not quite the political approach they’re accustomed to if they’re Fox News devotees.

I must say, that WordPress.com sent me to the Fox News site for the first time; I never, ever watch their cable news station. Unlikely that I’ll be back any time soon, mirroring I’m certain the instincts of those 50 lost souls who found themselves in such foreign territory.

So, the synergy of the Internet strikes one yet again. In the same way a Republican in a liberal state reaches out to independently minded voters by invoking this year’s favorite Democratic Senator, folks reading a blog run by one of the most cynically illiberal news organizations on the planet are directed here, a site most un-illiberal, if I may coin such a doubly-negative, aspirational characterization. Go figure.

50 Fox News readers. Glad I had my clean underwear on.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

As I start to write this post, it’s 8:56pmCDT, pretty late to begin a project on a Monday night.

Mondays. (Or, I guess Sundays. If you observe the Sabbath on a Saturday). (Or, I guess Saturdays. If you observe the Sabbath on a Friday).

Any way you look at it, the first day of the work week is the tough one. The alarm clock, which if one is fortunate, stayed off for the entire weekend, resumes working its mischief on schedule, in Mr. & Mrs. MUDGE‘s distressing case, at 5:10am. That’s a hurtful note, indeed.

So, an advantage of beginning the day with the roosters, is that one has the capacity to end the day reasonably early. And, as is typical, the nine-hour workday, and the two-hour round trip commute still had me home and ready to hit the ‘Sphere at a very reasonable hour.

But there were responsibilities that had prior call on my precious blogging time tonight. Spent the past 2-1/2 hours reconciling bank accounts and paying my various creditors and other mid-month obligations, something I might have done when fresher yesterday, had my good friends at Comcast cooperated and left me with a connection I could depend upon while accessing my on-line banking resources.

By the time service had restored itself just as mysteriously as it had gone away, two lengthy waits in customer service jail plus an hour or two later, the impetus to do the responsible thing had seeped away, restored in full tonight, thankfully.

Now, faced with limited access to blogging resources (suitable computer, software [see the Blogging Process Hall of Fame in the sidebar], and most of all, time) yr (justifiably) humble svt has arrived at two tactics to honor the blogger’s prime directive: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!

My most often called upon tactic is to pull out a gem (subjective, I know) from the lengthy archives of Left-Handed Complement (well, there are 14 actual months with posts!), package it up as a Blast from the Past! and consider myself as having honored my obligation.

In pursuit of that, I actually have prepared and set aside some prepackaged “inventory,” already formatted, categorized and tagged, which simply need to be converted from draft to published, the work of a few minutes, thanks to the excellent facilities of WordPress.com.

It’s an answer, but feels like cheating somehow. But, this is my avocation, after all. I just hate it when business, professional and personal obligations get in the way of my blog!

Tactic two is what you’re reading. Just riffing on the condition I’m in. Rather be writing and commenting about the political, the technological or the wondrous world of Enterprise 2.0. But that takes organization. Organization takes energy. And energy has been dissipated sending off treasure to keep Casa MUDGE afloat for another half a month.

But, I find myself rather bemused and somewhat pleased that stream of consciousness riffing is, apparently, possible at this late hour and depleted energy level; whether it’s worth reading or not, faithful reader, I leave in your hands.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

BTW: My Comcast rant struck a nerve, and actually elicited comments: unusual and therefore most precious in this space. Please click on the commenters’ links to see what they’re about. Each different, and eloquent, in totally different ways. I love the ‘Sphere!

Roxy: Thanks for the kind words, and the vote. My record is appalling in Battles of the Blogs at BlogExplosion, and I actually won today. I’m sure your vote tipped it in.

Faith: I appreciate your comments; I guess misery does love company! At least you heard from that mythical public affairs guy that supposedly monitors the ‘Sphere looking for bad press. Anything good happen?

Doctor Chip: Very colorful, not to say adult, writing, as always! Thanks for stopping by and taking the trouble to reach out.

The Family MUDGE is happily celebrating the graduation of our youngest scholar with a party that will have taken prep time and cleanup time and party time, leaving no blogging time. So, as one must blog daily, we present the following in fulfillment of the obligation.

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 last summer, originally posted September 9, 2007, and originally titled “Process, again”.

MUDGE’S Musings

Couple of months ago, we wrote about the process of blogging, as we understood it after about 2½ months of consistent posting.

Not sure that understanding has increased, although the consistency has remained. At least in frequency, if not quality.

The quality thing can always be improved.

Received a modest number of hits in the past four months; averages about 16 per day, day in and out. A couple of times about 90. A bunch of times, a loyal few. Some of the early weeks — totaled 20.

Thanks, loyal few!

Where do those statistics come from, you may wonder? From our weblog host, WordPress.com.

What a terrific organization! Hosting at this site is free. Support has been superlative.

Two examples: Recently registered at a site that promised to promote this blog. (Early days yet and the jury is still out — so a more complete mention will wait for a future process episode.)

L-HC was rejected. Why? They reported that L-HC was not interpreted correctly due to a bug (go figure!) in Internet Explorer v6. We never saw it, because we run v7 at the CurmudgeonDungeon (say that 10 times quickly!).

At work next day, pulled up the site on the office PC (something we try not to do because we’re not at all sure that freedom of expression in a blogging context exists there) to verify the issue; sure enough, the sidebar contents fell to the very bottom of the lengthy page. A very ugly look.

So, I contacted WordPress support. Got a prompt answer: Yes, it’s a bug in IE6, usually caused by graphic elements of excessive width in the main panel. Maximum such width for our theme, Contempt (wonderfully appropriate for a curmudgeon — and one of WordPress’ most popular themes) was stated as 460 pixels.

Thus, I needed to go back into the bowels of history to find the offending post(s). A big task, that took some time to get to (this is supposed to be a hobby, right?).

Finally, a couple of weeks later got around to rooting around in the past, a job made reasonably easy by WordPress and a member of MUDGE’s Blogging Process Hall of Fame, Windows Live Writer.

Found a couple of potential offending graphics, resized them with an ancient, paid for version of Paint Shop Pro, and all seemed okay in IE6. Reapplied to the promotion site, was accepted this time, and am gradually figuring out what makes that site tick.

But the point: the rapid response from WordPress support, considering that their census of blogs they host is up substantially from last reported on 21-July-2007:

Take a look at today’s stat:

A 20% increase in 50 days!

And yet, got an answer within hours to my query.

Last weekend, WordPress was experiencing some kind of problem, because several posts did not land cleanly. The result, a lack of synchronization between Windows Live Writer and the blog on WordPress. Thought it was me.

Sent off a query. Got a response within hours seeking further information. Replied with a clarification of the incident, and received a response to the reply within a very short time, promising some research.

Received another response shortly, admitting a WordPress.com server timing issue, since repaired, and all has been well since.

The point is not that they had an issue on their side. The point is, with nearly 1.5million sites, they still could respond so promptly, courteously and effectively.

Thus we proudly announce an update to MUDGE’s Blogging Process Hall of Fame:

WordPress.com has vaulted to the top of MUDGE’s list, not to make any less of numbers two and three, used to great effect every post.

And, the price for the entire suite is right: $0.00. Can’t beat that!

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

We’ve occasionally been moved to comment about process.

This hobby/pastime/obsession we know as “blogging” is made possible through a host of technological artifacts: the Internet itself; the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who, for better or worse, are the ‘Net’s gatekeepers; and, most of all, the indomitable urge for self-expression that has found such fertile ground to manifest itself in these times.

And then there are the tools that we bloggers use daily to self-express.

Shortly after we began for real this grand adventure called Left-Handed Complement, we were moved to comment about the fantastic, free of charge nature of this medium.

The platform, the means to access it richly (although said platform is highly capable in that area), and some on-line resources whose existence makes life easier — essentially, the only cost to self-expression is one’s time.

Thus, we established MUDGE’s Blogging Process Hall of Fame, which we have returned to several times, as faithful reader will rediscover when s/he browses through the link table at the top of this post.

Well, it’s high time to revisit M’sBPHoF.

If you blog, and don’t know any or all of the above tools, you owe yourself an exploration.

First, we catch up with the latest addition. FuelMyBlog is a traffic-building site that we have featured in our sidebar for some months, and wrote about here and here. Its contribution to this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©‘s traffic has been modest, but high quality and most appreciated. I’ve encountered and interacted with a very select group of insightful and entertaining writers, and one hopes that they’ve similarly appreciated the efforts made here.

Next, WordPress.com. Yr (justifiably) humble svt has been raving about them from Day One, or nearly so.

As I’ve written consistently through the months (some of the more recent: here, here, here and speaking especially about the social networking element here), WordPress.com has provided the means to effortlessly exercise insufficiently used writing muscles, with little technical muss or fuss.

And, as a professional IT person, I know full well that only ferociously creative effort behind the scenes keeps it so simple and reliable where our rubber meets the road.

Yesterday, WordPress.com rolled out some new behind-the-scenes features for we, their blogging customers. They’ve completely updated and overhauled the Dashboard, the man-behind-the-curtains functionality that let’s us command and control our site. Very thoughtfully, and technically adroitly done.

By the time I read their announcement of the changes, the morning after first encountering them and being impressed, there were several scores of comments, surprisingly many of them negative.

Guess people really don’t like change. Lighten up guys: after all, it’s free!

Well, I do love the new Dashboard!

Thus, I felt compelled to add my comment to the lengthy stream, announcing there that WordPress.com had achieved Platinum status on MUDGE’s Blogging Process Hall of Fame.

So, I had to make that happen! Permanently on the top spot of this listing of the free-of-charge tools that make this hobby/pastime/obsession the blast that it has been for most of the past year.

Oh, not quite free. Full disclosure: I pay $10.00 for the ability to access the blog on their wonderfully reliable site using the domain address I own: http://mudge.essoenn.com.

Again, that’s the beauty of this hobby, as manifested in the tools shown in M’sBPHoF. Let’s review, shall we?

WordPress.com: $10/annually, for a feature most people probably don’t need; for most people, it’s free.

WindowsLiveWriter: $0, and this from what guys in my business often refer to in the pejorative, Micro$oft. I use it every day to create the posts that it sends to WordPress.com, and while not perfect, for the price it’s beyond excellent.

Picnik: $0, for this web image-scraping tool, which comes complete with an add-on to Firefox making access seamlessly convenient. Although they have a $25/year upgrade, I haven’t had occasion in all these months to miss any feature the upgrade offers; the recent update has improved Picnik’s functionality and processing speed. What a great boon for we graphically challenged amateurs!

BlogExplosion: $0, for the biggest single contributor of traffic directed to this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©. As does FuelMyBlog, BlogExplosion requires reciprocal surfing in order to generate that traffic, so one spends in time what would be otherwise unavailable without expensive and in this site’s case, inappropriate marketing.

FuelMyBlog: $0, as discussed above.

Total annual cost for, thus far, 364 posts (plus today’s, and please note that that total was made much easier to ascertain on WordPress’s delightful new Dashboard!): $10.

The excellent overall experience enabled by those tools, by the commenters and friends, the respected sources of so much of the content examined and admired here (as seen in our blogroll ), as the commercial puts it:

Priceless.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Not dollars, yen, pounds, rupees, tolars, etc. You.

WordPress.com, those absolutely wonderful folks who provide safe harbor for over 2½-million bloggers, is good enough to keep track of page hits.

And, as I write this, this infinitesimal nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© has received just over 9,000 hits in the 9½ months of its active lifetime.

That number represents a blink of a fraction of an hour for many blog sites out there, but it’s a significant number for yr (justifiably) humble svt.

So, I’m grateful.

Left-Handed Complement is not a paying gig. If it were, somehow, as if these random thoughts might somehow be worth being paid for, they wouldn’t appear here at WordPress.com, as they insist that blogs hosted here be strictly non-monetary.

I pay a price in flexibility to be here, adhering to fixed limits as to templates and sidebar contents and the like. But, considering how little it has cost to be here ($15 to accommodate domain mapping (so that the blog’s address is mine, rather than WordPress.com) — that’s entirely it — everything else has cost only personal time), and the great amount of personal satisfaction reaped from said safe harbor (six sigma availability, by my measure) for a writing itch that has only been fitfully scratched until now, WordPress.com is definitely among the good guys.

It’s why they are Number One in  Blogging Process Hall of Fame© (introduced here, and expounded upon here, and here).

Today, though, in honor of achieving the 9,000 hit nano-milestone, we introduce a new inductee to the Blogging Process Hall of Fame© .

BlogExplosion is a cost-free (okay, gotta see some ads sometimes) site that has established a community with the goal of increasing traffic for its members (i.e., those precious hits), through a system that provides several means of reciprocal surfing of members’ blogs. They’ve a pinging service; one can post a headline to attract member viewers rather than having them happen upon you at random; and they’ve a “Battle of the Blogs Challenge” that can bolster traffic on an otherwise quiet day.

Took us a while to decide whether we liked the site, but now a goodly portion of our daily traffic here comes from members of the BlogExplosion community. And the regular surfing that I do in order to “earn” that traffic has introduced me to some interesting blogs and bloggers, some of whom now grace our blogroll.

BlogExplosion is definitely a winner, and is the newest member of MUDGE’s Blogging Process Hall of Fame©.

Once again, thanks to all who have made this space a regular, or occasional, stop during their surfing time. I don’t take any of those 9,000 hits for granted.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Well, I am. Been reading up, as an amateur, and I definitely am hooked. Even picked up on a previous story in The Economist some time ago.

Point is it’s still early days yet for nanotech. Science is coming up with ways of building really small things, but not yet how to apply many of them to create value.

But the work, and its resulting media coverage, continues to increase, and Economist seems as captivated as anyone. One senses that they believe that macro dollars (okay, £Sterling) are certain to be made.

Here’s a quick note from their last Technology Quarterly:

The small print

Dec 6th 2007 | From The Economist print edition

Nanotechnology: A novel technique borrows from screen printing to provide a way to build tiny devices using miniature stencils

THE field of nanotechnology—making widgets just a few billionths of a metre across—has been slow to take off. One reason for the delay is the difficulty of assembling useful devices from such tiny building blocks. Tobias Kraus, of IBM’s Research Laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland, and his colleagues have come up with a new way to print such structures which could help. It is based on screen printing, which uses a stencil and paint to create an image. Existing ways of printing devices at the nanoscale tend to be complex and expensive, and more appropriate for making silicon chips. By contrast, the new technique is easy and cheap.

The nano-silkscreen technique might be used, posit’s Dr. Kraus, to build an inexpensive, but tremendously sensitive biosensor for medical tests.

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

The small print | Economist.com

It galvanizes the imagination: factories on a thumbnail.

What expensive clean rooms? — just need a snow globe! What energy crisis? What stacks emitting sulfurous smoke?

Is our imagination grand enough to imagine nanotechnology?

————————————————————————————————————————————

A quick word about process: For about 24 hours, upon posting mm278, our sidebar was distorted by grotesquely large headings.

Couldn’t figure out why.

Went to the WordPress.com Forum, posted my query. Got two responses, both obviously from HTML, etc. experts (manifestly I am not one); the second one, from Isadora, pinpointed the issue (an extra tag that inadvertently was copied in five posts ago!) and the easy solution. Bingo! Two minutes! Fixed!

Unfortunately, didn’t think to look for Isadora’s response this evening before redoing and reposting what became mm278a. But that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

I am a professional at a lot of things: eating, web conferencing, curmudgeonry are but three. But I am hardly a professional blogger, and this remains a fruitful and rewarding hobby. What keeps it rewarding are giving people like Isadora, and the entire infrastructure provided virtually gratis by WordPress.com.

Thank you, Isadora. Thank you, WordPress.com.

————————————————————————————————————————————

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Responding to some internal and, interestingly, external disquiet regarding this space’s latest experiment with themes available here at the incomparable WordPress.com, we have, as we’re sure you’ve noticed, changed again.

Our latest choice is less visually jarring, at the cost of some blandness. Our critics might tell us that bland is beautiful, compared to the mess we left behind, and we apparently agreed. Responsiveness to the audience – what a concept!

Let us know whether you think we’re in a better place.

And, lest you, as does yr (justifiably) humble svt, miss our logo, as the new theme doesn’t allow header customization, here’s a fix.

Okay, let’s move on, shall we?

It’s a big planet, and there are a multiplicity of viewpoints and a waterfall of information pouring into this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© every nanosecond.

So, we’re taking a breath, and taking an alternate look at a couple of topics covered earlier.

You guessed it: another episode of SASB: Short Attention Span Blogging!©

©

Culling the planet’s herd

A couple of days ago, we explored some of the implications of the FDA’s approval to introduce cloned meat and dairy products into the marketplace. The concern is that as producers go for the easy, repetitive score, i.e., clone what works and eliminate the rest, the planet will permanently lose something important: species diversity.

This week’s NYTimes Magazine explores the issue from a different direction (and continent!), selective breeding rather than cloning (two sides of the same coin, actually).

A Dying Breed

By ANDREW RICE | Published: January 27, 2008

GERSHOM MUGIRA COMES from a long line of cattle-keepers. His people, the Bahima, are thought to have migrated into the hilly grasslands of western Uganda more than a thousand years ago, alongside a hardy breed of longhorns known as the Ankole. For centuries, man and beast subsisted there in a tight symbiotic embrace. Mugira’s nomadic ancestors wandered in search of fresh pasture for their cattle, which in turn provided them with milk. It is only within the last few generations that most Bahima have accepted the concept of private property. Mugira’s family lives on a 500-acre ranch, and one sunny day in November, the wiry 26-year-old showed me around, explaining, with some sadness but more pragmatism, why the Ankole breed that sustained his forebears for so many generations is now being driven to extinction….

In recent decades, global trade, sophisticated marketing, artificial insemination and the demands of agricultural economics have transformed the Holstein into the world’s predominant dairy breed. Indigenous animals like East Africa’s sinewy Ankole, the product of centuries of selection for traits adapted to harsh conditions, are struggling to compete with foreign imports bred for maximal production. This worries some scientists. The world’s food supply is increasingly dependent on a small and narrowing list of highly engineered breeds: the Holstein, the Large White pig and the Rhode Island Red and Leghorn chickens. There’s a risk that future diseases could ravage these homogeneous animal populations. Poor countries, which possess much of the world’s vanishing biodiversity, may also be discarding breeds that possess undiscovered genetic advantages. But farmers like Mugira say they can’t afford to wait for science. And so, on the African savanna, a competition for survival is underway….

The Food and Agriculture Organization, an agency of the United Nations, recently reported that at least 20 percent of the world’s estimated 7,600 livestock breeds are in danger of extinction. Experts are warning of a potential “meltdown” in global genetic diversity. Yet the plight of the Ankole illustrates the difficulty of balancing the conflicting goals of animal conservation and human prosperity. An estimated 70 percent of the world’s rural poor, some 630 million people, derive a substantial percentage of their income from livestock. Increase the productivity of these animals, development specialists say, and you improve dire living standards. The World Bank recently published a report saying it was time to place farming “afresh at the center of the development agenda.” Highly productive livestock breeds, the World Bank asserts, are playing an important role in alleviating poverty.

As controlled interbreeding takes place, Africa’s indigenous cattle are gradually converting into distinctly highly productive Holsteins.

One additional advantage of the imported genetic stock: Ankole cattle require huge swaths of grassland; Holsteins can be penned. Writer Andrew Rice quotes some experts who say that “ethnic” warfare in Rwanda and Darfur as “really a fight over grass.”

The diversity the planet is losing is dire:

Many tropical breeds may possess unique adaptive traits. The problem is, we don’t know what is being lost. Earlier this year, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization released its first-ever global assessment of biodiversity in livestock. While data on many breeds are scant, the report found that over the last six years, an average of one breed a month has gone extinct. “The threat is imminent,” says Danielle Nierenberg, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group. “Just getting milk and meat into people’s mouths is not the answer.”

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

A Dying Breed – New York Times

A lengthy, but most worthwhile read. The law of unintended consequences is one that will never be repealed.

©

Ultimately, it’s ALL recycled, isn’t it?

The water crisis in the Southeast and Western U.S. was approached a couple of weeks ago here.

Wired magazine has an intriguing update.

New Purification Plant Answers California’s Water Crisis

By Dave Bullock | 01.25.08 | 8:00 PM

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, California — As Southern California faces a worsening water crisis, Orange County has implemented a $480 million microfiltration system so advanced it can turn waste water into drinking water.

Fewer words than intriguing pix in this story.

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

New Purification Plant Answers California’s Water Crisis

Facilities like this one are going to have to become the norm if people insist on living in the desert.

Not as cheap as piping it in from the Great Lakes, Orange County, but that’s not on the table anyway.

All the water on the planet has been here since the catalytic cataclysm that created it in the first place. We’ve been drinking recycled water forever.

Thanks to this Fountain Valley facility and others soon to follow elsewhere, engineers have simply shortened the recycling time.

©

Democracy, it’s a virus

… and it could be catching on in China.

Several months ago, monks in Burma led massive demonstrations noted here, against the government which were ultimately suppressed, as usual, by the oppressive regime.

In Shanghai, people have been massing to demonstrate against expansion of a maglev high-speed rail line. The Washington Post has the story.

Shanghai’s Middle Class Launches Quiet, Meticulous Revolt

By Maureen Fan | Washington Post Foreign Service | Saturday, January 26, 2008

SHANGHAI — Bundled against the cold, the businessman made his way down the steps. Coming toward him in blue mittens was a middle-aged woman.

“Do you know that we’re going to take a stroll this weekend?” she whispered, using the latest euphemism for the unofficial protests that have unnerved authorities in Shanghai over the past month.

He nodded.

Behind her, protest banners streamed from the windows of high-rise apartment blocks, signs of middle-class discontent over a planned extension of the city’s magnetic levitation, or maglev, train through residential neighborhoods.

They live in China’s most Western mainland city, and they’ve learned the advanced Western concept of NIMBY (Not in my back yard). And they’ve taken to the streets.

And Shanghai’s government has been forced to pay attention.

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

Shanghai’s Middle Class Launches Quiet, Meticulous Revolt – washingtonpost.com

The single most relentless enemy of authoritarian governments is the middle class. Even George III’s Venezuelan nemesis, Hugo Chavez, failed in his attempt to modify the constitution.

Citizens who have attained middle class status by dint of hard work, and loosened societal constraints, can embrace artifacts of civilization available to those living above the subsistence level.

Such as education.

Satellite television (Ronald Reagan and CNN both helped end the Cold War, to MUDGE’s generation’s eternal surprise).

The Internet and its blogs and bulletin boards (those portions that the Chinese government can’t censor).

Cellular telephones with text messaging.

Don’t think there’s much of a middle class in Burma as yet. So that 2007 effort was doomed. Like Chicago Cubs fans everywhere, one can only say, “wait until next year!”

Short Attention Span Blogging

… is only short for the reader, not, for heaven’s sake, the blogger! But kudos to faithful reader for getting this far!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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It’s in the air, right?

Just finished nominating our favorite blogging host, WordPress.com to the Webware 100 2008 awards.

Nominated WordPress.com in two categories, the obvious, Publishing and photography, and also the less obvious category, Social.

Nominations continue until January 25.

This was a no-brainer (just as well, I know); WordPress.com is a wonderful service that … okay, here’s what my two-sentence (that’s the rules, folks — if I want to say more, that’s what WordPress.com is for!) nomination stated:

WordPress.com hosts free of charge (for most) over 2,100,000 blogs, smoothly providing state of the art technology, awesome (it’s free, right?) reliability and brilliant, cheerful customer service. The very model of a modern web “better mousetrap” that also has grown into a unique global community of writers.

Yeah, when MUDGE gushes, the tub overflows. They’ll toss me out of the Curmudgeon’s Guild for sure. But, this is sincere.

I embraced this Web 2.0 adventure the world calls blogging seriously only last May. 275 or so posts later, Left-Handed Complement remains a force for good in a life that turns out was waiting forever for the opportunity and venue to write.

Thanks, faithful reader, for faithfully reading.

It’s satisfying also to have made the jump from voracious web content consumer (for 15 or more years!) to provider of content, even if confined to this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©.

And, entry into the social world of blogging that has become a fascinating destination in and of itself, threatening at times to swamp the time destined for writing.

As I’ve written consistently through the months (some of the more recent: here, here, here and speaking especially about the social networking element here), WordPress.com has provided the means to effortlessly exercise insufficiently used writing muscles, with little technical muss or fuss.

And, as a professional IT person, I know full well that only ferociously creative effort behind the scenes keeps it so simple and reliable where our rubber meets the road.

When the Webware 100 voting begins in February, and WordPress.com is indeed on the list of nominees, yr (justifiably) humble svt will operate in typical Chicago election fashion: voting early and often.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Yeah, the currency blog is back…

Those wonderful, wondrous folks at WordPress.com report over 7,000 visits to this micro-nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© since its inception, as of 14-January-2008. I remain totally aware that, 7,000 hits is an off day for many in the ‘Sphere (7,000 is an off minute for some!), but I’m impressed and grateful.

Thanks, especially, to faithful reader, to those of you who stop here regularly, whether or not you are regular or not (we’ll try to add more fiber!).

Thanks to those of you who subscribe to our feed.

BTW, wonderful, wondrous WordPress.com folks: can’t can’t can’t wait for those expanded feed stats you’ve teased us about!

Regardless, WordPress, thanks, thanks, thanks for everything: The free hosting that is so dependable; the fun you let us have with themes (changed for only the second time ever this past weekend – anybody notice?); it’s all terrific.

Thanks to aforementioned WordPress.com, and the other members of our Blogging Process Hall of Fame© (hmmm… we haven’t presented that lately)…

©

Lately, BlogExplosion.com seems to be in a funk, but WordPress.com indicates that the site remains an origin for many of our daily readers. We like you a lot, BlogExplosion, get well soon!

And our latest find, FuelMyBlog.com, which had the astute good taste to award this site its coveted(?) “Blog of the Day” award yesterday, has both provided some traffic, as well as exposed yr (justifiably) humble svt to some superb blogging. Very humbling. Check them out at the top of our sidebar, and be sure to “Fuel” the ones you like (and us, too!).

Couldn’t do this without you, all.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

(… the opposite of writer’s block, right?)

Our wonderful host, WordPress.com, lets us know on its Statistics page what were the leading posts on one’s site for the day, and the day just past. They even provide a link that allows one to learn how many cumulative hits a particular post on one’s site has received over its life.

We mention this because for the first time someone actually was listed as having read post “mm167: Writer’s diarrhea” from 11-October-2007.

So I reread it; damn! I’m good!

Odd that this popped up when it did; it’s the rare post on the topic of blogging; now that WordPress can show how in the Categories listing on the sidebar many times “blogging” has been used as a category, one can learn that it’s been called out here in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© only 15 times in 240+ posts. And of course, I’m certain that constant reader knows that clicking on any category will bring up all of the posts for which the category has been invoked.

So, I reread the entire category; damn! I’m consistently good!

Most days we try not to be too self-referential or navel-gazing, within the constraints of course of the entire concept of blogging, which is built on self-reference and navel-gazing, and the often much too intimate sharing of one’s quotidian banalities.

Ahem. So here we try not to spend too much time in such pursuits, attempting rather to peg the day’s post on one or more external hooks, external being the zillion page world wide web. Once pegged, then one is permitted to be self-referential and navel-gazing, because it’s now in an external context.

No secret that among the zillion blogs out there (WordPress.com says that as of this writing it has 2,020,627 blogs with 71,011 new posts today, and they’re just one good sized corner of the ‘sphere, and I do mean good — love you guys!), there are predictable concentrations of subject matter: religion, politics, the politics of religion, the religion of politicians, etc. This nanocorner has even been known to indulge its political side once or twice (hence the name of the place, (Left-Handed Complement, you know) one supposes).

So yesterday I was harvesting promising stories for potential future posts, and I found this one, on a site that MUDGE is distinctly undercredentialed to be reading, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fascinating to me that before I even went to look for my own entries on the topic of why we blog, and why we choose to read certain others’ blogs, someone came to WordPress’s notice, and mm167 showed up in the stats. Meant to be, I guess.

The Polarization of Extremes

By CASS R. SUNSTEIN

In 1995 the technology specialist Nicholas Negroponte predicted the emergence of “the Daily Me” — a newspaper that you design person-ally, with each component carefully screened and chosen in advance. For many of us, Negroponte’s prediction is coming true. As a result of the Internet, personalization is everywhere. If you want to read essays arguing that climate change is a fraud and a hoax, or that the American economy is about to collapse, the technology is available to allow you to do exactly that. If you are bored and upset by the topic of genocide, or by recent events in Iraq or Pakistan, you can avoid those subjects entirely. With just a few clicks, you can find dozens of Web sites that show you are quite right to like what you already like and think what you already think.

Actually you don’t even need to create a Daily Me. With the Internet, it is increasingly easy for others to create one for you. If people know a little bit about you, they can discover, and tell you, what “people like you” tend to like — and they can create a Daily Me, just for you, in a matter of seconds. If your reading habits suggest that you believe that climate change is a fraud, the process of “collaborative filtering” can be used to find a lot of other material that you are inclined to like. Every year filtering and niche marketing become more sophisticated and refined. Studies show that on Amazon, many purchasers can be divided into “red-state camps” and “blue-state camps,” and those who are in one or another camp receive suitable recommendations, ensuring that people will have plenty of materials that cater to, and support, their predilections.

Credit for finding this article goes to the consistently phenomenal and charter member of the blogroll Arts & Letters Daily, a regular read long before we ventured into the scary practice of creating content (derivative though it may be ) rather than simply consuming it.

Of course, Cass Sunstein’s focus is on those Web 2.0 sites that tailor content to the scourings of past choices; Amazon.com still represents the ultimate commercial application: you bought this, other folks who bought this bought that, we think you might like the other.

There are news aggregation sites that do the same, picking up on what you click on, and presenting you with more of the same. Thoof.com is an extreme example, and Mixx.com an even more recent and slightly more high minded one.

In Sunstein’s observation, backed by the Colorado experiment cited, once one finds oneself with like-minded people in such sites, reading like-minded bloggers, that mass of like-mindedness tilts one further toward the extreme end of whatever spectrum is on the table.

The Internet makes it exceedingly easy for people to replicate the Colorado experiment online, whether or not that is what they are trying to do. Those who think that affirmative action is a good idea can, and often do, read reams of material that support their view; they can, and often do, exclude any and all material that argues the other way. Those who dislike carbon taxes can find plenty of arguments to that effect. Many liberals jump from one liberal blog to another, and many conservatives restrict their reading to points of view that they find congenial. In short, those who want to find support for what they already think, and to insulate themselves from disturbing topics and contrary points of view, can do that far more easily than they can if they skim through a decent newspaper or weekly newsmagazine.

And the person with moderate views leaning in one direction continues to read, the leaning’s become a tilt, which reinforced by continual one-sided content, becomes polarization.

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

The Polarization of Extremes – ChronicleReview.com

Thus far, 7½ months in, we don’t feel too polarized, except maybe on a few choice topics: Bloomberg for President, One Laptop Per Child, UAVs, web conferencing (boy am I overdue there!).

Covers a spectrum, one hopes, of interests and political positions, nothing too middle of the road, but nothing extremely polarizing either.

We’ll endeavor to remain open minded. Tell us if we’re not, won’t you?

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Couple of months ago, we wrote about the process of blogging, as we understood it after about 2½ months of consistent posting.

Not sure that understanding has increased, although the consistency has remained. At least in frequency, if not quality.

The quality thing can always be improved.

Received a modest number of hits in the past four months; averages about 16 per day, day in and out. A couple of times about 90. A bunch of times, a loyal few. Some of the early weeks — totaled 20.

Thanks, loyal few!

Where do those statistics come from, you may wonder? From our weblog host, WordPress.com.

What a terrific organization! Hosting at this site is free. Support has been superlative.

Two examples: Recently registered at a site that promised to promote this blog. (Early days yet and the jury is still out — so a more complete mention will wait for a future process episode.)

L-HC was rejected. Why? They reported that L-HC was not interpreted correctly due to a bug (go figure!) in Internet Explorer v6. We never saw it, because we run v7 at the CurmudgeonDungeon (say that 10 times quickly!).

At work next day, pulled up the site on the office PC (something we try not to do because we’re not at all sure that freedom of expression in a blogging context exists there) to verify the issue; sure enough, the sidebar contents fell to the very bottom of the lengthy page. A very ugly look.

So, I contacted WordPress support. Got a prompt answer: Yes, it’s a bug in IE6, usually caused by graphic elements of excessive width in the main panel. Maximum such width for our theme, Contempt (wonderfully appropriate for a curmudgeon — and one of WordPress’ most popular themes) was stated as 460 pixels.

Thus, I needed to go back into the bowels of history to find the offending post(s). A big task, that took some time to get to (this is supposed to be a hobby, right?).

Finally, a couple of weeks later got around to rooting around in the past, a job made reasonably easy by WordPress and a member of MUDGE‘s Blogging Process Hall of Fame, Windows Live Writer.

Found a couple of potential offending graphics, resized them with an ancient, paid for version of Paint Shop Pro, and all seemed okay in IE6. Reapplied to the promotion site, was accepted this time, and am gradually figuring out what makes that site tick.

But the point: the rapid response from WordPress support, considering that their census of blogs they host is up substantially from last reported on 21-July-2007:

Take a look at today’s stat:

A 20% increase in 50 days!

And yet, got an answer within hours to my query.

Last weekend, WordPress was experiencing some kind of problem, because several posts did not land cleanly. The result, a lack of synchronization between Windows Live Writer and the blog on WordPress. Thought it was me.

Sent off a query. Got a response within hours seeking further information. Replied with a clarification of the incident, and received a response to the reply within a very short time, promising some research.

Received another response shortly, admitting a WordPress.com server timing issue, since repaired, and all has been well since.

The point is not that they had an issue on their side. The point is, with nearly 1.5million sites, they still could respond so promptly, courteously and effectively.

Thus we proudly announce an update to MUDGE‘s Blogging Process Hall of Fame:

WordPress.com has vaulted to the top of MUDGE‘s list, not to make any less of numbers two and three, used to great effect every post.

And, the price for the entire suite is right: $0.00. Can’t beat that!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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