Author: Shelley Powers

Hiding from the Unknown

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 7, 2004

Earlier today, I noticed movement in the Bird Tree on the corner – a female Harrier Hawk was flying in among the branches chasing finches. Considering how closely packed the branches were, I was amazed at her agility.

I was saddened too, a little, because the tree is normally a sanctuary for the smaller birds. Now, they’ll have to scramble for a new shelter and I’ll lose some of the company that perches on my office window sill when the sun is out.

But the finches weren’t the only creature around frightened out of their normal habitat. This afternoon my roommate received a package containing a new down vest, and promptly started wearing it (it is a cold day). Whether it was the box or the smell of the feathers or what, but it scared Zoe, my cat, and she took off upstairs, refusing to come down all evening.

Instead of her usual evening lap time with my roommate (I have days), she stayed in my room, as close to me as she could, helping me work with my photos.

It was nice having her company, but a bit much when I had to escort her downstairs to use her cat box.

Political

Monuments

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 6, 2004

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Outside of the polls at the church where I vote, two men stood, handing out flyers regarding a a bond issue and more money for the fire department. I already knew how I was going to vote for Presidential candidate, as well as the two other issues on the ballots so I declined the papers.

After voting I walked past the men, but instead of just nodding and smiling hello, I stopped and asked them who they supported. It was a rather rude question and I wouldn’t haven been surprised if I were politely but firmly rebuffed, but both seemed eager to chat.

“I’m supporting Kerry,” the first said.

“Kerry and Edwards for VP”, said the second.

“Yeah. Kerry and Edwards. That’s the ticket we need.”

They continued back and forth.

“Kerry is careful, but Edwards is optimistic, which makes a good mix.”

“And Kerry’s a Vet.”

“Edwards will bring in the South. Kerry the rest of the country.”

“And Edwards is young and good looking..”, one started.

“…and Kerry is not!” laughed the second.

Both men were older white guys, one in his early 50’s the other in his 60’s. But their views aren’t that uncommon in Missouri–there’s been a lot of talk about a Kerry/Edwards ticket here even before Iowa. And Kerry isn’t seen as the best of a bad lot – these men were enthusiastic. They liked Kerry.

They think he can win.

I haven’t seen much enthusiasm for Dean in the mid-west, something I’ve written about before. Ultimately in the end, it cost him in Iowa. And there was no surprise that he didn’t even bother to come to Missouri, as he knows the folks here don’t like him that much. But then, according to people I and my roommate have chatted with, doesn’t seem like Dean much likes the people here, either.

Oh it wasn’t just the ‘pickup trucks with Confederate flags’, crack. It was a lot of things that people didn’t like. My own particular one was when Dean talked about how his supporters may not go with any other candidate. I didn’t like that. If this was a brand of Dean activism – our way or the highway – that wasn’t what I was looking for in a President.

I was watching interviews at different candidate headquarters after the New Hampshire vote. I noticed that at the Kucinich camp, folks were dancing about and having a grand old time, but the man barely got any votes. Didn’t matter to his people – they’re not out to win, just making sure their voices are heard.

People say that Dean is the ‘liberal one’, the ‘outsider’, but Kucinich owns both of these – and a lot of class for saying at a lunch attended by Kerry’s wife, Teresa:

“While I intend to be the next president, this country would be well served by a first lady like Teresa Heinz Kerry.”

I remember getting an email from the Kucinich camp after New Hampshire, with words to the effect, “We got ‘em on the ropes now, people!” You have to admire that enthusiasm, especially when you realize – as I didn’t last year– that Kucinich keeps the potential Green Party members and others of the far left included in the Democratic party. Hopefully, gracefully, he’ll bring these people to the vote for a Democratic candidate come November. As the OpEd piece that quoted Kucinich said:

Yesterday, Heinz Kerry noted that both Nader and Kucinich are men who have asked “very important questions” and deserve “respect” for what they say.

She then made a vital point: “I do not know if we can afford any third party right now.”

Will the political left give up its self-indulgence in order to get George W. Bush out of the White House? Around here, that’s asking for a lot.

I know that there’s a lot of criticism of Kerry for voting to support the war in Iraq. But voting to support a war and starting one are two different things. I ask myself, “If Kerry were President during that time, would he have invaded Iraq without UN support?” And my answer is, without a doubt, absolutely not.

There is a difference. And there still are a lot of countries that the shadow of our current President’s ‘preemptive defense strategy’ hangs over.

I’m not a pundit, and make no claim to be one. I’m not going to provide post political process overviews of why Dean seemed so popular and is now fighting for his political life. I’ll leave all that to the guys who get the nods. I do know that when I read about an email being sent with the Dean name, asking for 50.00 for a “must win campaign” in Wisconsin, or he’ll quit the race. my first inclination was to say – what did you do with the 41 million? Well, $7.2 million of it went to Joe Trippi’s media firm for managing the Dean ads.

Joe Trippi. So much for darlings of the New Media. Now that we have that out of the way, maybe we can focus on what’s important – making sure Bush doesn’t have four more years.

Speaking of what’s at stake: there was a local item in the news here, about a change in the mandatory covered items for the so-called ’stripped down’ health insurance policies – policies that basically provide minimum coverage, primarily for catastrophic illness or injury. There’s a new bill in the Missouri legislature that would remove these mandatory items so that insurance would be affordable to small businesses here. The bill was pointed out at the St Louis Blogger site, and at Punitive Art, Rev Matt’s place.

What would be removed if this bill were passed? Well, maternity stays in hospitals, new born health screenings, mammograms, child immunizations, in addition to screenings for prostrate and colon cancer.

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I had to pay for my mammogram, I wouldn’t get it. I just don’t have the money for it. I’m not ure what the women will do about having babies. Return to the good old days of having babies at home, I suppose, and hope to God they can rush the baby to a neonatal ward in time if something goes wrong.

But, says the Missouri legislature, the costs of including these items is too high and small businesses can’t afford the premiums. Well, that’s a load of hogwash – these items are fixed cost items, and costs can easily be negotiated between carriers and providers.

No, the insurance companies can make big bucks from ‘catastrophe only’ insurance policies. It’s the odds thing – the costs of cancer screenings you know will happen by the number of people who get them, versus the cost of treating those that do get cancer. And usually, by the time cancer is discovered in later stages, most people only have an option to die. This is very cost effective from a health maintenance point of view.

That’s the kind of insurance that the President wants to give credits for in our income taxes. Not the kind that pays for screenings, and lets a woman have a baby in a hospital.

On and then there’s the Medicare Bill. This is so controversial, the White House has started a multi-million dollar ad campaign to promote it. They say its to provide important information. If so, then why not play the ads in 2005 or 2006 when the Bill goes into effect. Why this year? An election year?

Then there’s the situation about jobs in this country. I don’t personally know a lot of people in St. Louis, but those few I do know, about half don’t have jobs, or have lost their jobs recently.

On the other hand, my roommate will get back about $300.00 from his share of the Bush tax cut. $300.00. I told my roommate he has an obligation to go out and spend that money, in order to generate jobs. But he wants to pay off a bill.

What can I say? The man just is not following the Bush plan.

A budget that increases spending for defense and Homeland Security, while cutting spending for domestic policies; weak job growth in the face of record corporate profits; tax cuts that add to the deficit, while primarily benefiting the more affluent; an astonishing disregard for the environment; an increasing encroachment of religious views and doctrine in every aspect of our lives, partnered with increasing loss of our rignts; and a pugnacious foreign policy based on shoot first, ask questions later…

These are things that concern me more than what will happen to Dean’s Blog for America if he drops out.

I say, give it to Bush. Maybe, if we’re lucky, it will do for him what it did for Dean.

Bandwidth sucking photos were taken in and about San Antonio, Texas, and were posted in answer to a special request. I hope you have enjoyed them. Feel free to leave comments about the photos even if you don’t like the words. And vice versa. If you didn’t like the photos or the writing – why did you stay around long enough to read this?

Weblogging

The Arch throws the curve

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 5, 2004

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

This week the St. Louis Weblogger group was featured on the local Fox News channel. Ben Vierck, otherwise known as bumr, and also otherwise known as the father of Bloghorn, a hosted weblogging solution, was interviewed as was another St. Lou blogger group member, Mae from Mae Midwest. Ben is hoping to get permission to post his captured video from the piece, and if he gets it, I’ll link to it.

This story has resulted in several new Bloghorn webloggers, and because new members have posting privileges at the St. Louis blogger site, there’s been a great deal of newbie talk, which is rather fun. In addition, the Live Journal St. Louis group invited the Blogger group to join them at their next get together. I thought this was rather funny — the television show acted as a link to the weblogging group for the Live Journaling group (I don’t use ‘weblog’ with Live Journal folks, they don’t usually like it). Hypertext in hypermedia.

It was while watching all of this stuff that I was reminded of Clay Shirkey’s Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality. Remember the curve with the big bump for the top bloggers, and the long, long, skinny rat’s tail for the rest of us?

Anyway, it came to me that Clay’s Power Law would normally work within the weblogging community if it weren’t for one thing: people are entering the community through new ports. And a lot of these people have never heard of Glenn Reynolds. Or Atrios. Or Clay Shirky. Or even me.

As the number of people entering weblogging increases, especially through these different ports, the influence of the so-called A-List bloggers changes. It has to change, and if you look at something like the Technorati 100 now, compared to when it first started, you’ll see change.

One such change is that the power bloggers influence become more diffused — even the loudest voice can’t be heard within a large crowd. Yes, more people are linking to Glenn Reynolds or Dave Winer, or Boing Boing, but not in numbers proportional to the numbers of new webloggers/personal-journalists.

I call this the Weblog Speck Law.

To illustrate, the following diagram shows weblogging the way it was, once, a long time ago. The yellow with black edging would be the power bloggers — folks such as Dave Winer, Rebecca Blood, and Doc Searls. Notice how much they stand out?

[image lost]

A few years ago weblogging started getting a huge surge in participants. For every one person, previously, now there were tens, hundreds of people. With this increase came a whole new group of power bloggers: people such as Sam Ruby and Mark Pilgrim, Glenn Reynolds, and The Chartreuse Balls gang. Still, if you look at the ratio of power blogger to just plain folks, you can see that though the power bloggers still stand out, they don’t as much as they used to.

[image lost]

Today, webloggers or personal journalists (a distinction between the two is forming, primarily by the journalists who don’t want anything to do with ‘weblogging’ and its supposed rules) come into this medium from all over the place: through stories in television or newspapers, or at college, or talked into it by friends at high or middle school, or work or some other affiliation. Where before there were a few main weblogging tools, now there are hundreds. The days when most of us learned about weblogging for the first time through Dave Winer or Ev Williams are in the past, and with this goes the almost planetary status of most of the top bloggers.

[image lost]

There are literally thousands of new webloggers who have never heard of any of the members of the Technorati Top 100; that is, until they put themselves or their friends in the lists.

Because of these new ports, and growing numbers, the power bloggers have less influence than we originally thought. Yes, they still do have a disproportionate influence over thousands of bloggers; but when you start to think of webloggers numbering in the millions, influence over thousands just doesn’t buy what it used to at the store.

[image lost]

Can you see Dave in the above? How about Kottke? Which one are you? I’m the red one, just there on the left.

It’s not just in numbers that the Curve breaks down–after all adding more bloggers should just add to the height of the spike and the length of the tail if Clay’s assertion holds. No, Clay originally assumed that the Power Laws would prevail in the weblogging community because newcomers would only form small, unimportant circles, or would add to the power of the top bloggers. What we’re seeing, though, is something that contradicts this–instead of a static list of familiar faces, new personalities are appearing in the Tech 100 who I’ve never heard of; who many of us have never heard of. And old friends are falling off the bottom, fading into the obscurity of the Technorati Top One Thousand. Poor dears.

Aha, you say: this supports Clay’s assertion of a Power Law curve not contradicts it: new people put themselves into the Top 100, others fall into the tail, and the Power Law Curve prevails. But it doesn’t.

The Power Law implies that those who are at the top of the Big Bump all come from the same pool, the same community. In actuality, the only thing we share is the medium. For instance, this Persian weblog may be a massive influence within the Persian weblogging community, but I can’t even read it (though sometimes, as with today and the photos, we don’t have to read the words to get the message). With all the best of intentions in the world, we don’t come from the same community. The same applies to many of the other top weblogs, such as the up and coming Livejournal sites (or the Suicide Girls, though it looks like they’re now filtered from the Technorati lists).

If these weblogs are a part of the Big Bump, I’m not part of their associated rat’s tail. The only thing we share is the Internet; the only reason I know about them is the Top Technorati 100 list. And if this list continues to get more weblogs written in languages I can’t read, or with bouncing smiley faces I can’t tolerate, or nude young women with tatoos who don’t do much for me, then its relevance to me, and hence influence, becomes that much less. Instead of a Top 100 for all weblogs, it’s becoming an accidental association between the top 5 weblogs from this community, the top weblog from that one, three from another, and so on.

In weblogging/personal journaling, then, instead of Clay’s Power Law curve, with its one sharp point, I think we’re looking at the following:

[image lost]

Oh, it’s a little more jagged then curvy, but you get the point–no pun intended. Not only isn’t it the Power Law Curve, this silhouette will change and flex over time–it’s inevitable. Looks a little like the skyline of a town, doesn’t it? All because of events like Ben and Mae going on TV and talking about a thing called weblogging.

I used to worry about the Top 100; things like not enough women in the lists, not enough diversity, too much control in the hands of the few. But ultimately, the only thing the Top 100 describes is links, not communities.

Long live the specks.

(But you all knew this already, didn’t you? Shall I return to posting more photographs?)

Photography

Voted. Walked.

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 3, 2004

Social Media

…and then I quit Orkut

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 3, 2004

Today is a lovely cold winter day, with fresh snow on the ground, sunshine and blue skies. Today is also Primary day her in Missouri, and I think about having to carefully make my way down the hill to where my car is parked, just so I can make it to the voting place at the Seminary, next door. I’m hesitant about walking in snow because I’m still limping with my hurt foot and ankle and more than a bit nervous about falling again. Even if I don’t hurt anything –and knowing me, what’s the odds of that happening?–I’m still going to be very embarrassed.

To add insult to injury, I’ve been fighting some kind of flu lately, and it seems to have won if how I slept last night and how I feel today are any indication. Nasty headache, and neck pain, and every one of my joints hurts. And I’m tired of pain. There was the gallbladder operation, followed by the oral surgery, followed the fall and in each case I’m given nice pain pills that I’m hesitant to take because I like them a bit too much. So I just hurt.

Sure this is a po’me writing, but I’m not looking for sympathy, and if you extend a hand to pat me on the back, with accompaniments of ‘There, there. There, there’, you’ll probably lose it. Anything that’s wrong with me is only temporary, so just let me grouse about it and get it out of my system.

Grouse. Isn’t this a lovely word? There’s a term for words whose pronunciation fits what they represent, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what the term is. I even went the Google route trying to find it, and ended up finding this funny page instead. It’s a discussion forum called “Brunching Shuttlecocks”, and the topic is “Words that sound funny and nobody knows what they mean”. The topic quickly moved into discussions of words that sound naughty, but aren’t:

Mastication is not a dirty word; it is right and proper. Everybody masticates. Men masticate, women masticate, dogs masticate too. King Arthur and his knights practiced circle mastication.

Or:

I always like the phrase “Subduction leads to orogeny.” Sounds SO naughty, but it actually has to do with the movement of earth’s tectonic plates.

Actually, it does sound naughty. And if you think of the movement of earth’s tectonic plates as being an analogy, then…wait, wait–this isn’t the Super Bowl.

Anyway, back to the topic, words that sound like they mean. Someone in the discussion mentioned “Slubberdegullion “, which means “a dirty, wretched slob”. Isn’t that a lovely word? I mean, doesn’t it make you want to find someone who is dirty and wretched just so you could say, “You Slubberdegullion!”

Of course, when I looked up this word online, I was led to the World Wide Words, which discusses it in context of lovely old disparaging words–invectives– that have fallen into disuse. He quotes from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel penned in the 1500’s:

The bun-sellers or cake-makers were in nothing inclinable to their request; but, which was worse, did injure them most outrageously, called them prattling gabblers, lickorous gluttons, freckled bittors, mangy rascals, shite-a-bed scoundrels, drunken roysters, sly knaves, drowsy loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubberly louts, cozening foxes, ruffian rogues, paltry customers, sycophant-varlets, drawlatch hoydens, flouting milksops, jeering companions, staring clowns, forlorn snakes, ninny lobcocks, scurvy sneaksbies, fondling fops, base loons, saucy coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing braggarts, noddy meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddipol-joltheads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, flutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninny-hammer flycatchers, noddypeak simpletons, turdy gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets; saying further, that it was not for them to eat of these dainty cakes, but might very well content themselves with the coarse unranged bread, or to eat of the great brown household loaf.

Lovely, isn’t it? I want all of this for my new weblog tagline. I’ll put it into my RSS and Atom feeds. And there’s that word! Rabelais! I saw it used at Language Hat and I meant to look it up, but didn’t. Anyway, Language Hat used the word in the context of quoting another weblogger who goes by the name of ‘pf’, who was recently mugged in Russia. pf who wrote:

Okay, fine, I lost my glasses, I lost my hat. But why did I have to go and lose my Rabelais? What was the point of that?

True, what was the point of that? But I am glad that all he did lose was his glasses, hat, and Rabelais.

But what was the point of this?

All this chasing of words reminded me that Dave Rogers re-started his weblog, except that he now goes by Groundhog Day in honor of his favorite movie, or underground creature, take your pick. It was good to see him back so I thought I would shine my spotlight on him to see if he sees his shadow and if there’s going to be another six weeks of this cold and snow that I can’t walk through easily in order to make it to the polling place and do my civic duty. Perhaps this means others who have been too silent will themselves creep carefully out of their burrows and favor us with a word. Or two. But not Slubberdegullion, I’ve already used that one. That’s my word.

Speaking of pianos–oh, I’m sorry? Did that change in direction hurt you?–I found an online Java-based piano that I tried my haunting melody out on and then copied down what I think are the notes (not really knowing if I have a tin ear or not – and isn’t that a lovely phrase, too?):

E F# G
E F# G
E F# G
E F# G
F# D B

Well, I didn’t say it was a complex tune. Music that lingers as faint wisps of sound, ghostly tunes, never is. That’s why It’s a Small World is such an evil song – there! Now that will go through your mind the rest of the day.

I must find my song. An autographed copy of one of books to you if you can help me identify this song and the singer. Or one of my photos printed on quality digital ink jet paper and signed. Heck, if you live in a place I want to visit, I’ll even hand deliver it. You pay for the plane.

Now that I’ve managed to introduce the topic of photos gracefully into this conversation, I can say, safely without hurting you by another of my segues, we in the northern hemisphere need a warm note about now, so this from my archives.

I used the Photoshop unsharp mask with this photo to clarify it just a tad. I finally figured out how to use the unsharp mask in Photoshop, thanks to suggestions out at the Digital Photography community in Orkut. The best advice came from a man who teaches photography and he knows his stuff because what he said worked beautifully. He also has a very interesting profile and is connected to some other very interesting people and communities such as the polyamory community, which I guess has to do with loving lots of people and I don’t mean shaking hands kind of love.

Though polyamory is not my cup of tea, following people to their profiles did connect me up with several new communities including the Photography community where a member, Randal talked about his …31,000 photos online. It was only when I got a good look at Randal’s picture that I realized it was Randal Schwartz, a luminary in the Perl community.

That became a pretty common experience, running into people I know or know of in contexts completely different from how I know them, which just tickled me at times. For instance, ran into Betsy Devine over at the Travel Tips community where people were giving some great advice to a person heading towards New Zealand.

(I hope that Betsy doesn’t mind that I Orkuted her – outed her as an Orkut member.)

Jeneane started a new Orkut community for those people who write for a living. Wait, isn’t that an oxymoron? (Another lovely word to say, but doesn’t sound anything like what it means, and is overused being the word of the 1990’s.)

I thought what was needed, then, to be fair, was for someone to start a community for those who write but don’t make a living at it. Wait a sec! Already done. It’s called the Blogger Community. (I tried this group out for a bit, but all they talk about is blogging. Made me realize that we talk about blogging too much, like I’m, urh, well, damn, doing here. Reminds me of the author who wrote the book on paper on paper.)

What do you know. By the time I finished with my reading and writing this my headache is better and I didn’t need to use pills, and I found myself chuckling more than a bit at some of the words, and it really is very pretty outside today, and I think I might try and get a new snow picture for those who live in the Southern Hemisphere.

(You realize that if our world wasn’t so screwed up, wobbling about on its axis like a drunken stripper doing a pole dance, we’d shared the same weather. Of course, we’d all be dead, so I guess there is a down side to it.)

I don’t think I have the flu–I think I just have a case of the mopes (see, there’s another one of those words that sound like they mean). Yes, it is a very pretty day today. And I’m going to exercise my privilege and go vote. And I’m going to exercise my lazy butt and go walk. But then I need to come back and work on the book, and my writing, and my photos because I let it all slide last night spending so much time in the Orkut communities meeting new and interesting people and not once looking at their fan rating or their cool rating or the numbers of friends they had (except this guy named Valentin with an afro who everyone seems to know).

However, I already have a use for my extra time and it’s here and out there and I don’t need another Internet time sink, so that’s why I decided to quit Orkut, which is really what this writing was about.