Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Welcome to the Blogland Motel! 

People tell me I picked a good time to go to NY because the weather is warming up. I guess it's all relative. The 10-day forecast has a high of 53 and a low of 31. There's a snowstorm rolling into town right now. Here, today, the high was 81. Remind me again, why I am I going north?  

Big Don would go to a Foo-Camp-alike, if there's a shower and bathroom nearby that won't freak out his wife. I feel the same way. I don't go anywhere where there isn't a good bathroom nearby. But California? Hello. I live in Florida. Otherwise it seems like a fun idea. 

I have one of the highest rankings in Google for beach pictures. 

Amazingly, I have the 2nd hit on MSN for Terry Shiavo. Must've mis-spelled her name. Yup. 

The Democratic candidate for vice-president of the US in 2004, John Edwards, is podcasting. Here's the feed.  

NY Times: "There are 12 medical doctors, 3 dentists, and 3 nurses in Congress, and most did not publicly invoke their medical experience during the Schiavo debate." 

Don Park: "I've been looking at the way people using tags." 

More about evil-or-not 

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I wrote a bit about evil, and how unfortunate it is that this word has entered discourse in the blogosphere. I think we can trace it back to the Google goal of not being evil, an idea that's run its course, and should be stricken from their corporate philosophy. Google is no more or less evil than any other company, has no basis to claim a moral superiority, and should openly cancel it.

And if they won't remove the hex, let me offer a new law of the Internet, a corollary to Godwin's Law. "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of it becoming about evil approaches one." And I'd add, that the length of time is shorter, but the effect on discourse is the same. It stops all rational discussion immediately.

More on the state of discourse these days 

While we're at it, a couple of other observations on the state of discourse.

1. If someone is critical of a group, a company, a gathering, a conference, any kind of association, and you are a member of that group, or were at the gathering, etc, it does not follow that the criticism is personal. If I say Apple is really fucking the bloggers, that doesn't mean if you work there that you are. If I don't know you, how could I possibly make a statement about you? Now you're welcome to take it personally, it seems everyone always will take everything personally, but that doesn't mean it was meant to be personal. No doubt someone here is thinking I'm talking about them right now, but please, believe me, if your name doesn't appear here, it isn't about you.

2. This bit is about Doc Searls. As I've come to know Doc over close to 20 years, I've come to know that he's extremely conflict-averse. But this itself seems to put Doc in conflict, with himself, because he has strong beliefs, and they're basically sound ones, intelligent, intuitively correct, and often courageous. But if he has a chance to make friends with someone, I've seen Doc throw his principles out the window, with passion, as evidenced in his defense of Evan Williams, who is violating every rule of Doc's own manifesto. Disclaimer: My opinion only.

3. This bit is about me, Dave Winer. Now, me, I'm not conflict-averse. I think conflict gives us human beings a chance to explore alternate views of the world. And we've got some serious problems, like global warming and in the US, the declining value of the dollar, and tunnels under the US border with Mexico, just to name three. If we don't listen to some foreign ideas, and consider that they might help us solve some of our problems, we're just going to drift into oblivion.

Why it's good there are no ads on Scripting News 

Last night I had a brief phone talk with Steve Gillmor. I told him I had finally figured out why it's good that there are no ads on Scripting News, and then spaced out on saying why (our conversations are often like this, lots of ideas back and forth, we never quite finish most).

So I thought I would explain here.

First, consider yesterday's edition. Among the top items are three that are clearly anti-Republican. Now if you support the Republicans, no matter how much they abuse your trust (heh, sorry bout that), and I was running ads, you might think that, by reading this blog, you were helping finance someone who you disagree with politically. I wouldn't have much chance of talking to Republicans.

However, because I'm not running ads, and have no reason, other than wanting to influence more people, to seek more readers, you can relax and have fun, maybe mutter to yourself when you see me criticizing the President and the Speaker and Majority Leader, people you admire and respect, people who should of course have their own blogs, btw.

That's not to say that blogs-with-ads are necessarily bad, but ads on Scripting News are not for me. As I said in yesterday's podcast, I'd happily pay money to get some ideas heard more, so for me, it's consistent to run Scripting News ad-free.