October 2007 Archives

Join the resistance!

Faith at KerryVision has a terrific post today which is directly related to the DCP mission. She's raising a flag for action to preserve something which is critical to those who want to be part of a "A well-informed citizenry".

In 2003, FCC Chairman Michael Powell attempted to loosen media consolidation rules, but was halted by a federal court in a landmark decision. Now, current Chairman Kevin Martin is threatening the same, and he's meeting with bi-partisan opposition in the unlikely partnership of Senators Byron Dorgan and Trent Lott, along with legislators from both sides of the aisle.

What Martin is attempting is to allow media ownership of broadcast and newspapers by the same owner in the same market. And he's given the public five days notice to voice our opposition.

Go read the whole post, check out the video and follow your conscience as to actions required.

.. .as our Canadian students head north, without their car, many gather across the country for tomorrow's mobilizations, the Code Pink women prepare for a slew of court cases, our nation's democracy sinks into the mud...

and other concerns. Keep it clean and respectful, please.

This chart was created by Global Security after the Katrina disaster. As you can see, it is a flow chart that can be used to improve how you plan for disasters or for how your community plans for them.

As a member of staff at a college, security is certainly on our mind, particularly after the Virginia Tech incidents. And the immediate dangers of the California wildfires also present another example of why we have to plan ahead for the unimaginable.

So, take a look at that chart. Where do you fall in the plan and how well does your community do in their planning? What can you as a private individual do to affect emergency preparedness in your own communty?

What I was doing yesterday...

Yesterday the website techpresident launched their new project, 10questions.com, opening a new and unique venue in which every day citizens can participate in their democracy. They've gathered a number of co-sponsors including the NY Times, MSNBC and a broad selection of blogs. Check out their video introducing it below.

Starting today [10-17-2007], the sponsors of 10Questions are asking their millions of readers and the larger public to submit online video questions addressed to the candidates using a variety of platforms (YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo, and Blip.tv), tagging their video with the word “10Questions.” The 10Questions site will then find and display those questions and enable the public to vote up or down on these submissions. At the end of four weeks, on November 14, we'll stop the voting and after a quick audit to check against ballot-stuffing, the top ten vote-getting questions will be submitted to all the major candidates.

The candidates will then have four weeks, from November 17 to December 15, to submit answers to be posted online. As those responses are posted, the public will be given the opportunity to vote again, up or down, on whether the candidates have answered the questions to their satisfaction. Users can vote on as many videos as they like, but they only get one vote per IP address. The process will end December 31.

They've already got some questions lined up including this one which TPM highlighted in their post about 10questions.com.

Go check out the other questions and make up your own.

One of the things that our DCP 2.0 redo allows us to do is use html in the comments to do all sorts of things. Some of you have jumped right in. Others aren’t quite so sure about what to use where and how to get it to do what they want.

Help is on its way.

Actually, it’s already arrived. You can find it in the “HTML tags” link just above the comment box where you enter your text.

Or for right now you can just click here and start trying out all kinds of new tricks on your comments.

One of the most especially useful features of DCP 2.0 is the ability to link directly to a specific comment on a previous blog thread like this one, this one and this one where I talked a little bit more about how to post a picture on DCP.

Have fun with experimenting!!

E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread)

By DANIEL GOLEMAN

AS I was in the final throes of getting my most recent book into print, an employee at the publishing company sent me an e-mail message that stopped me in my tracks.

I had met her just once, at a meeting. We were having an e-mail exchange about some crucial detail involving publishing rights, which I thought was being worked out well. Then she wrote: “It’s difficult to have this conversation by e-mail. I sound strident and you sound exasperated.”

At first I was surprised to hear I had sounded exasperated. But once she identified this snag in our communications, I realized that something had really been off. So we had a phone call that cleared everything up in a few minutes, ending on a friendly note.

The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand. But there are ways in which e-mail may subtly encourage such trouble in the first place.

This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.

In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

E-mail, of course, has a multitude of virtues: it’s quick and convenient, democratizes access and lets us stay in touch with loads of people we could never see or call. It enables us to accomplish huge amounts of work together.

Still, if we rely solely on e-mail at work, the absence of a channel for the brain’s emotional circuitry carries risks. In an article to be published next year in the Academy of Management Review, Kristin Byron, an assistant professor of management at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, finds that e-mail generally increases the likelihood of conflict and miscommunication.

One reason for this is that we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders.

We fail to realize this largely because of egocentricity, according to a 2005 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Sitting alone in a cubicle or basement writing e-mail, the sender internally “hears” emotional overtones, though none of these cues will be sensed by the recipient.

When we talk, my brain’s social radar picks up that hint of stridency in your voice and automatically lowers my own tone of exasperation, all in the service of working things out. But when we send e-mail, there’s little to nothing by way of emotional valence to pick up. E-mail lacks those channels for the implicit meta-messages that, in a conversation, provide its positive or negative spin.

On the upside, the familiarity that develops between sender and receiver can help to reduce these problems, according to findings by Joseph Walther, a professor of communication and telecommunication at Michigan State University. People who know each other well, it turns out, are less likely to have these misunderstandings online.

These quirks of cyberpsychology are familiar to Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University’s interactive telecommunications program. His expertise is social computing — software programs through which multiple users interact, ranging from Facebook to Listservs and chat rooms to e-mail. I asked Professor Shirky what all of this might imply for the multitudes of people who work with others by e-mail.

“When you communicate with a group you only know through electronic channels, it’s like having functional Asperger’s Syndrome — you are very logical and rational, but emotionally brittle,” Professor Shirky said.

“I’m part of a far-flung distributed network that at one point was designing a piece of software for sharing medical data; we worked mostly by conference calls and e-mail, and it was going nowhere. So we finally said we’d all fly to Boston and get together for two days, just sit in a room and hash it out.”

During that meeting, the team got an enormous amount of work done. And, Professor Shirky recalls, “because the synchronization by e-mail was so much better after the face-to-face piece, we actually hit the launch date.”

He proposes that work groups whose members are widely dispersed but need to have high levels of coordination — say, a computer security team protecting a global bank — do not have to assemble everyone in one room to reap the same benefit. Instead, he suggests a “banyan model,” after the Asian tree that puts down roots from its branches.

In this approach, he said, “you put down little roots of face-to-face contact everywhere, to strategically augment electronic communications.”

Professor Shirky advised the I.T. head of a global bank to gather together one representative from disparate cities for a day or two and complete tasks. That way, when the security group in Singapore gets e-mail from the security people in London, someone will be more likely to know the sender, and sense how to read the information with less risk of misconstruing or discounting it.

CONSIDER, too, the “e-mail the guy down the hall” effect: as the use of e-mail increases in an organization, the overall volume of other kinds of communication drops — particularly routine friendly greetings. But lacking these seemingly innocuous interactions, people feel more disconnected from co-workers. This was noted in an article in Organizational Science almost a decade ago, just as e-mail was starting to surge. Saying “Hi,” it turns out, really does matter; it’s social glue.

As Professor Shirky puts it, “social software” like e-mail “is not better than face-to-face contact; it’s only better than nothing.”

Daniel Goleman is the author of “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships” (Bantam). E-mail: preoccupations@nytimes.com.

Piaget was a famous Swiss psychologist who studied children’s behavior. He constructed a theory on how childrens’ cognitive skills develop based upon his many years of studying children. In Piaget’s theory, the first stage, the Sensorimotor stage, is when babys do not understand object permanence or object consistency.

Games like Peekaboo are a magic trick to babys because they don’t understand object consistency

So with that in mind take a look at this and file it under the “They think we’re babies” heading.

Thinking about Casey’s article, Islamofascism Awareness Week brought to mind thoughts of my brother.

My brother is a conservative, libertarian, nonpracticing Jew, but when it comes to Israel he is a hawk. I never really understood that about him despite the number of times we discussed the Israeli region and the intersection of the US Government’s policy with Israel’s policies.

He is pro-“building the wall,” pro-attack those who attack Israel, and pro-supporting Jewish leaders with hawkish policies. He loved the fact that Israel went in and destroyed Saddam’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and blew apart Syrians’ nukes cache. He would tell you that Iran is a mean M* F* and that we should go in and bomb them. (He just wouldn’t want George Bush to be the one to do it!)

Frankly, I don’t study the Israeli news or video sites like my brother does, and I still don’t study Israeli policy (specifically) like he does, so sometimes it’s mighty difficult to disagree with him based on Israeli history.

But I do study American foriegn policy, and I pay attention to famous Jewish leaders like Joe Lieberman and David Horowitz when they comment on the Middle East.

This Columbus Day as our Congress sleeps (still) and the President continues to think of ways to ‘hurt us’, take some time off to enjoy the finer things in life—like Stephen Colbert roasting President George W. Bush.

Part 1

What does Johnny get after marching home from the Iraq Occupation?

Not my President directed us to the article about Lt. Jon Anderson and the other 2,600 Minnosota Guard Members ordered to Iraq for 729 days. Upon returning home, they discovered that though they honorably served their 729 days in Iraq, and they avoided road bombs, risked life and limb, and spread democracy,

it wasn’t good enough to get them the free education that they thought they had been promised—simply because, they were intentionally sent there one day short
of the time required in the contract—730.

Jeff is a longtime friend of ours and oversees Teresa Heinz’s foundation work. He sent this along a few days ago. I haven’t seen it spread around but he makes some good points. Let’s discuss!

Outspoken spouse a campaign asset

By Jeffrey R. Lewis | Monday, October 1, 2007 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed

America is fortunate to have more women - and one man - who have spent time as strategists, creative policy advisers, parents and groundbreakers.

It’s that time again. The new crop of articulate, assertive and opinionated career women - not to mention an ex-president - now campaigning to become first spouse has the news media in a tizzy.

A generation of women who have spent their lives breaking barriers is being hounded by journalists who apparently believe that they should behave more like Bess Truman than the 21st century women they really are.

Is this reporting meant to deepen our understanding of the candidates, their issues and how their families might influence their roles as president? Of course not. The press is simply playing a high-stakes game of “gotcha,” waiting for the less-practiced and less-scripted half of these would-be first duos to utter something that can be ripped out of context and flung across the media-sphere.

We’ve seen this movie before; from Hillary Clinton’s cookie recipes to Laura Bush’s secret smokes, no nit is ever too small to be picked if it goes against type.

We saw this in 2004. After enjoying careers as a translator at the United Nations and as director of foundations with over $1 billion in assets, crusading as an active environmentalist, and spending decades as a mother and political wife, it came as a surprise that the national media expected Teresa Heinz Kerry to suddenly fit herself with a muzzle for the duration of her husband John Kerry’s presidential run, and do little more for the campaign than look adoringly at him every time they appeared on stage.

It wasn’t that Teresa was forbidden from having opinions different from than her husband’s. It was as though this long-time professional woman was simply not allowed to have opinions at all. So what if she’d spent over a decade studying issues related to women’s health or fighting for change in public and private sector pension systems that treat women as an afterthought. She was labeled an “opinionated” woman as though that were some sort of character fault.

Today, America is fortunate to have more women - and one man - who have spent time as strategists, creative policy advisers, parents and groundbreakers. Regardless of party and age, they have staked out a distinctive path, and have with real ideas, real vision and real sense.

Certainly there are political wives who have followed a more traditional path, and who are by nature more reserved and less outspoken. And more power to them - I hope the political press will allow them to be true to themselves. But I am not convinced that the media have matured enough to allow them to do that.

This cycle, Michelle Obama has shown herself to be an articulate spokesperson for her husband’s candidacy and a concerned mom. Her reward? A snarky column in The New York Times [NYT] fretting that Mrs. Obama’s irreverent take on her husband’s reputation is emasculating, and the revolting spectacle of TV talking heads - egged on by the right wing - taking one sentence from a stump speech and trying to spin it into “catfight” between her and Hillary. A catfight? Is this a Seinfeld episode or actual journalism?

In the Clinton camp, the situation is just as bad. Only here the worry is that a president six years out of office will overshadow the powerful two-term senator and front-runner for the Democratic nomination. It’s the same old story, though - the spouse doesn’t do anything until he does something wrong - and it still stars a woman who doesn’t know her place. Only in this case, she’s looking to head the ticket rather than be “running mate.”

In reality, most of the spouses of the leading candidates are personally, professionally and academically accomplished women. Not trophy wives, but women of incredible substance.

As America has a chance to get to know the wives (and a husband) of the candidates for 2008, and as more men realize that our success today is because many of us have great women alongside side us (sometimes dragging us ahead), then collectively we can help bring civility and respect back to the political arena and teach our children that the freedom of speech and expression by political spouses should be valued and cherished, not ridiculed!

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1035133

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This poem by Wrenwatcher at Deviantart.com is based on Walt Whitman's poem of the same name:

I Sit and Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and
    upon all injustice and pain,
I hear the soft, whispering voices of two young women in despair
    because the country they call home won't acknowledge their love,
I see the old man sprawled in an alley, once a hero in a sea of gunfire,
    ignored, cold, homeless,
I see the dissociated little girl lie motionless on her bed, I see
    her father leave the room,
I mark the fierce battles that rage behind closed doors,
    the bruised and angry teenage boy slipping quietly out his window, I see these things,
I see the crooked election, dishonest politician, unfounded war, I see
    another massacre ignored by the media,
I observe a country lied to as its children die, I observe men and women fallen
    and forgotten in sweltering desert heat,
I observe the judgements passed guiltlessly, shamelessly, daily
    upon Muslims, homosexuals, blacks—each one American;
All these—all the unending poverty and hopelessness, I
    sitting look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

Haunting, wouldn't you say?

Their class assignment had been to look at famous poems and to modernize them. So that's what Wrenwatcher did. As a teacher, I'm impressed that such a routine assignment would bring about such a well thought out poem. But as a mom, I'm pleased that Wrenwatcher is proud of herself for writing such powerful words.

Wrenwatcher's poem makes me think of Christian who came to our blog the other day and asked what he could do to bring peace and I wonder if his silence ended the day he came forth and asked questions.

Words are powerful but silence can be betrayal.

So as we begin another day on our open thread, what are your thoughts about the sorrows, injustice and pain?

But more importantly what are your ideas to end those sorrows and to fulfill the great promise our country had?

Speak up, you've got the mic!