The main driver bringing the cookie-blocking issue to the forefront of the online marketing industry's agenda seems to be the Jupiter report that shows nearly 40% of web users clearing cookies at least once a month.
Chatter is definitely up on this issue, and a lot of online marketers are having their "Oh, Shit!" moment, once they hear from their colleagues about how sound the Jupiter research is. Lots of people seem to want to know how their affiliate commissions are being affected. They also want to know about how ad server metrics are being affected and how site measurements regarding unique users may be inflated.
Meanwhile, MarketingVox covered a story about a possible cookie substitute based on Flash. While this would make sense as more advertisers move to Flash-based rich media ads, I'm skeptical about whether it would work in the long-term. Wouldn't consumers resort to blocking Flash or removing the specific component that allows for this kind of tracking? It seems that whatever technologists come up with to solve the problem is susceptible to the whims of the folks who develop anti-spyware tools.
Reuters is hosting a panel at its Times Square headquarters on blogging. It's by invitation only, but a colleague forwarded me the invitation. I'm trying to see if I can get a spot.
The topic is "Blogs - How Accountable Is The Media?" Issues to be discussed include:
Panelists include:
I hope Reuters will let me come. This looks like it could be a fun one.
Update: I just received confirmation that I'm in. I'm really looking forward to this one.
We've been talking about satellite radio over on the Spin Board, specifically what it can do to improve. It occurs to me that what I really want is a "Content Command Center" for my car that gives me access to audio content I already have, plus access to fresh content I might like. I see satellite delivery as a key component of this system.
First off, I'd like a massive hard drive that plugs right into my car stereo. The HD would be removable and linkable to my home computer via USB, Firewire or Wi-Fi. I'd like to be able to store every MP3 in my collection on this drive, organize it the way I like (playlists, artist and genre sub-folders, etc.) and have everything at my fingertips when I drive. (Preferably accessible via buttons on my steering wheel.)
I'd also like a website that allows me to identify content preferences. I should be able to tell this website that I'm a slobbering Van Halen fan, that I dig Aerosmith, Guns 'N Roses, AC/DC, Pearl Jam and whatever other bands I like. I should also be able to tell it that from a talk radio perspective, I like liberal politics, gaming, technology and other such things.
My preferred content profile on this website should be linked to a satellite receiver in my car, which prioritizes the channels I'm most likely to dig by shuffling them and putting most preferred channels at the top of the order. I should also have a series of customized content channels organized by genre, such that I can tune in to "My Talk" and receive talk radio programs that appeal to me, based on the preferences I submit to the website. These could be downloaded in the background and time-shifted, or streamed.
At some point, there should be a "buy" button on my steering wheel, such that if I'm listening to a song I don't already own and want to buy it on impulse, I hit the button and the content provider charges 99 cents to a credit card I submitted through the website. The song is downloaded to the hard drive in my car and stays there indefinitely.
Podcasts I identify as interesting to me on the website should be available via streaming in my car. If I want to subscribe to a regular podcast, I should have the option of having as many episodes as will fit either streamed and stored, or downloaded from the Internet to my car's hard drive.
I think all of this can be done with technology that either exists today or isn't too far off in terms of development. Satellite companies already pitch web companies that host bandwidth-intensive events like live webcasts with bandwidth solutions. If a live webcast can be carried via satellite, why can't IP-based content like podcasts and Internet radio?
I'm not saying that the problem with Social Security is anywhere as huge as the Republicans are making it out to be, but if we really want to ensure Social Security's viability over the coming years, why not simplify it and shift more of the burden to the rich and super-rich?
The cap is currently at $90,000. You pay no Social Security taxes beyond $90K, so once you've earned that in a given year, you stop paying into Social Security until the next year. Isn't this, by definition, highly regressive?
I've heard Al Franken on Air America suggest that Social Security taxes should kick in again after $350K of income or so, but why make it that complicated? Why not eliminate the cap entirely, decrease the overall percentage appropriately, along with the employer's matching contribution, and make the whole kit n' kaboodle taxable?
Our taxes have historically been based on ability to pay, so why do we stop collecting Social Security taxes after the first $90K? It hits the poor and middle classes a lot harder than it does the rich and super-rich, so why is it done in the first place?
Furthermore, what would be a compelling argument for not doing it this way? You could ensure Social Security's viability indefinitely and probably run surpluses for years. Future generations could probably get tax breaks as surpluses build up.
Just in case you're in the minority - those people who believe SUVs just aren't big enough - check out this monstrosity. The thing has regular doors up front and SUICIDE DOORS in the rear. All the seats are modular (on sliding tracks) and they're all captain's chairs. It doesn't look big in the photo, but it's really huge. You could actually slide out the last two rows of seats and have plenty of room for an ATV. (Heh heh.)
Lots of the manufacturers had new SUVs and SUV concepts. Just the thing for that rapidly-expanding family.
Too bad this thing isn't launched yet. It looks like one of the only low-cost options for a full-size 4WD SUV that is legitimately off-road capable. It would be perfect for those camping and quadding trips.
I like the styling. It definitely evokes the original Land Cruiser, but it's also got a very modern and fun-loving look to it. Dunno about that blue, but maybe they'll make one in black.
Folks in the audience loved it, although the most common comments circulating around the floor were along the lines of "Gee, how much lazier can we get?"
According to the booth babe who did the demonstration, the vehicle can go "anywhere a person can go," which means that it's entirely possible you'll see these things cruising around your neighborhood supermarket in 2015. No parking or nothing - just hop outside and hit the "high speed" button that transforms the vehicle into a sit-down rider and you're off.
I agree - how much lazier can we get?
I finally got around to switching my license over to the Wading River address. When I switched it, I came to the Motor Voter section and realized my party affiliation was still Republican from high school. So I switched things over. Yesterday, I got a postcard in the mail - It's official. I'm a Democrat.
An alert Hespos.com reader this morning alerted me to the fact that Ad Tech's San Francisco show kicks off on April 25th. Passover starts at sundown on Saturday, April 23rd and this presents a problem for Jewish ad industry professionals who want to get into town on Sunday per the usual practice but don't want to miss the second night of Passover.
One wonders how this was overlooked by the folks scheduling the show.
From my band days, I have what is essentially a brand-new PA system sitting in my storage space. I've used it only a handful of times for gigs and we use it a couple times every summer when we have big parties.
I hate to have this thing sitting around gathering dust, especially since it's much better than most of the PA systems I see in use at clubs. So here's what I'm thinking...
I could go to Sam Ash or Manny's or something and buy a Karaoke machine, along with a few discs of popular karaoke tunes. Maybe I could take a Saturday night gig at a local bar.
Anyone know anything about this? My questions are:
1) How much does a good Karaoke machine cost?
2) How many discs do you need to start with in order to have a good selection of tunes for people in the bar?
3) What do the discs cost?
4) How often do you buy a new disc to keep pace with the new tunes coming out?
Seth Godin thinks the general web population isn't savvy enough to clear cookies.
I think he's forgotten one thing, though. (And this one thing was pointed out in my most recent Self-Deception Series article.)
In order to keep a Wintel machine running, it has become necessary to learn how to use spyware removal and maintenance utilities. And guess what these utilities identify as spyware? Adserver cookies.
I can't speak for Jupiter, but perhaps they're not talking about the run-of-the-mill clear-out-your-cookies.txt-file type of cookie clearing. Perhaps they're also referring to the usage of utilities that do that for web users. Those could include anti-spyware utilities and privacy software like Window Washer, Privacy Guardian and all that kind of stuff.
The next time someone in government tells you that the wheels turn slowly, remember that in the middle of a congressional recess, it took only a few hours for both houses of Congress to pass legislation allowing a federal court to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, and for the President to put his signature on it.
Note: This article has been through several rewrites since it was first started. By and large, this is due to increased industry chatter regarding the issues surrounding cookie-clearing and cookie-blocking. Several weeks ago, the issue appeared to be one the interactive marketing industry would rather not see publicly discussed. However, since that time, several writers and industry leaders have taken notice of some of the effects of cookie-clearing and cookie-blocking on campaign metrics and have written several articles. Nevertheless, the issue is still underreported and healthy discussion needs to continue in order to resolve it.
The issue of cookie-blocking as a potential threat to the de facto method by which most online marketers track direct response metrics on their online campaigns has been on the radar screen for quite some time. The earliest I can remember this being an issue was in 1998 when rumors abounded that future versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer would block cookies by default. Although these rumors proved to be untrue at the time, the industry took notice of the issue. However, since then, cookie blocking and cookie clearing are much more commonplace with consumers.
To outline the problem from a technical perspective, ad servers employed by online marketers and agencies use cookies in a variety of different ways to serve and track online ads. When a consumer views an ad, an ad server will read or write a cookie (or both) as a way of later determining whether or not a consumer has been exposed to a campaign. Ad servers also read cookies to determine the appropriate destination URL that should be served to the user, should they happen to click on a served ad. Additionally, cookies are used to determine if a user takes action on an ad, regardless of whether they’ve clicked on the ad or not. Cookies also have applications in determining the appropriate ad to be served, in the event that a user has been exposed to an ad previously and the marketer wishes them to see a different message. Can you see the extent of the problem in the case that cookie blocking or clearing becomes commonplace?
When web users block cookies, several unexpected things may happen, including:
If only a handful of consumers exposed to an ad campaign block or clear cookies, marketers tend to have few problems with a very small number of cookie-related hiccups within their campaigns. After all, server latency tends to be a much larger problem in the grand scheme of things and tends to cause more problems than blocked cookies. If you ask most professionals who work at ad serving and ad management companies, they’ll likely pooh-pooh the problem, claiming that such a low percentage of consumers block or clear their cookies that the effect is negligible.
However, the industry has seen evidence over the past couple years that the problem is bigger than we might have thought. Yet, the issue is being practically ignored. No one considers this issue a major agenda item at online advertising industry conferences, workshops, task forces and discussion communities. It appears many people would rather continue to put blind faith in the numbers, despite evidence that the technology model may be threatened.
The first threat to cookies comprises browsers and web clients that block or restrict cookies. The web clients that make up the overwhelming majority of the browser market have the capability to block or clear cookies. For example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer provides customizable levels of privacy for the user. Set at the highest level, the browser blocks all cookies. Of course, this may present problems for the user in navigating registration-based sites or online shopping carts, but it is possible to surf the web and accept no cookies along the way. Mozilla Firefox has additional features and layers of customization pertaining to user acceptance of cookies. For instance, the browser features one-click clearing of cookies, as well as options that allow the user to selectively block. One such option, “Enable cookies, for the originating website only” would effectively block cookies from all ad servers.
The problem is not limited to browsers. Certain e-mail clients block ad server cookies in many cases, including Microsoft Outlook 2003. Recently, we encountered an issue in which a newsletter ad failed to click through to its proper destination URL. The problem’s source was Outlook’s blocking of the ad server cookie such that the ad server could not determine which ad was displayed to a user viewing an HTML newsletter. The ad server defaulted to the first click URL in the ad queue, which didn’t match up with the ad displayed, and directed the user to the wrong destination on click. After discovering the issue, it took a significant departure from the usual way online advertisers serve ads into HTML newsletters to fix the problem, yet I haven’t seen any sort of notice or service bulletin from the major ad serving providers to address the problem.
Perhaps one of the biggest effects cookie blocking has on advertising campaigns is skewing measurement of reach and frequency. If a web user clears his cookies after first being exposed to an ad campaign, that user is treated as a unique user twice. If the user clears cookies regularly, he may be counted multiple times in this way. Let’s say that Fred sees an ad for IBM on a website he visits once per day. The first time that Ed encounters that ad, he is counted as a unique recipient of the ad message by the ad server that served the ad. On subsequent days when Fred encounters the ad, the ad server realizes he has seen it before and attributes additional frequency to Fred and to the campaign. If Fred sees the ad seven times in seven days, the ad server counts Fred as one person with a frequency of exposure of seven. Now let’s suppose that Fred falls into the practice of clearing his cookies three times per week. Suddenly, Fred is seen by the ad server as three different people, each having been exposed to the ad between one and three times. Reach is inflated by 3X, while average frequency is undercounted by a factor of 2-3X. See how this can become a problem?
A similar effect is seen with syndicated research studies that rely on cookies to provide measurements of unique reach. Audience may be over- or undercounted depending on how often users clear cookies. The effect is one of tilting the playing field with regard to how sites perform against various audiences in comparison to one another.
The extent to which cookie-clearing and cookie-blocking is a problem is anybody’s guess. A scientific look at the extent of the problem would be incredibly difficult to execute, considering it would require visibility into the preferences of web users – how often they run spyware removal utilities, what browser clients they run and how they manage security using those clients, what e-mail applications they run, etc. It may be impossible to gauge this effectively and reliably without violating web users’ privacy.
Anecdotally, however, we should be looking at how our fellow web users are changing their behavior with regard to cookies. We know from our own personal experience that it is necessary to run anti-spyware utilities to keep our Windows PCs running smoothly and without crippling spyware cluttering up our systems. Two of the most popular free anti-spyware utilities, Spybot - Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware, have been downloaded nearly 170 million times from C|Net’s Download.com alone as of this writing. It should be noted that both of these utilities identify ad server cookies as spyware as a default, and will typically remove these cookies along with any rogue applications that may have infiltrated the user’s system. This alone should be an indicator that the problem can no longer be ignored.
On top of that, think about how many people have downloaded and migrated to Mozilla Firefox since it debuted, how many people heighten their security settings on their browser of choice, how many surf the Internet through a proxy, and how many are using e-mail clients that block cookies in HTML newsletters. While we don’t know how big these universes are, we at least know they’re rather large.
Jim Meskauskas suggested in a recent Online Spin piece that the solution is education. He would like to see the organizations of record for the online advertising industry launch an educational effort about cookies. I think we need much more than that, including:
Without these initiatives on the table, online advertising runs the risk of losing what gains it has made in terms of accountability.
Perfectly Legal : The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and CheatEverybody Else
by David Cay Johnston
Really interesting stuff on how our tax system in the U.S. is, in effect, quite regressive.
Taxes are not my thing. (My accountant will testify to the effect that I don't know a damned thing about them.) But I find this stuff fascinating. Sometimes I have to re-read individual paragraphs to make sure I fully grok what the author is talking about, but once I do follow it, the subject matter is actually fascinating to me.
Of course, I'm not even halfway done reading yet, but it shouldn't be long before I finish this one up. One of the most interesting concepts I've encountered thus far has been the notion of the middle class' most prized tax deduction (mortgage interest) actually benefitting the rich and super-rich more than the middle and working classes. The move led to a vast increase in housing prices, and those who could afford to buy more real estate were able to deduct more from their tax returns, so the rich and super-rich were able to pay less in taxes over time.
On a similar note, I keep wondering whether the low interest rates and housing boom that have been underway for a while are screwing younger, working-class people in the long run. In 1978, my parents paid $60,000 for their house in Wading River. Adjusted for inflation, that's just under $180,000 in 2005 dollars. Yet in today's housing market, that house sells for around $450,000, which is a remarkable rate of return. First-time homebuyers are making it possible for people who are better off to lock in these gains. Granted, they're paying for it with low-interest loans as compared to what folks might have paid 10-15 years ago. But one wonders whether we're in a housing bubble or not.
After all, housing prices are affected by a number of different factors, including rents in the area, taxes and a number of other things. One of the biggest factors is the price of a home in comparison to the cost of buying land and the labor/material cost of building a home yourself. If I can do this in my area for approximately $300K, what's the incentive to pay $450K+ for something that's already built? It makes me wonder whether real estate can continue on this path.
If it does come crashing down, we'll see older, better off people with money in the bank while new homebuyers struggle (and even go into bankruptcy). This could be another way in which the gap between the haves and have-nots is both reinforced and made even worse.
Somebody is going to die in the woods.
As I've been talking to some of my fellow Long Island ATV riders, I've been hearing some very disturbing stories. (Yes, I know it is illegal on Long Island to ride ATVs on public lands. Put that aside for a second.) Riding acquaintances have told me that the latest tactic employed by law enforcement to catch illegal ATV riders involves staging situations in which a fellow rider or outdoor enthusiast appears to be injured. When the ATV rider stops to help, law enforcement officers emerge from hiding places in the woods, surround and capture the illegal rider.
Other than increased effectiveness in cracking down on illegal ATV riding, what else will this new approach bring about? Well, the word is starting to get out that riders shouldn't stop to help anybody, unless they're prepared to pay hefty fines. And that sucks.
Lots of people use local trails for a variety of activities, including hiking, mountain biking, paintball and all sorts of other outdoor sports. And everybody knows of somebody who has been hurt out in the middle of the woods. It's expected (nay, a moral imperative) for ATV riders to stop to help anyone in distress. Personally, I'd rather stop and get a fine than take off and wonder if I left someone who was legitimately hurt all alone in the woods.
But many riders don't feel the way I do. These days, many of them won't stop to help anyone anymore, out of fear of having their quad impounded by the DEC and getting hefty fines on top of the impound fee.
If law enforcement continues these tactics, we're going to have an incident. Someone will be hiking and take an errant hunter's bullet, or someone will break a leg mountain biking - something like that. And an ATV rider who could have stopped to help will instead take off in the opposite direction. All because law enforcement wants to use a dirty trick to catch more illegal ATV riders.
What's worse? Illegal riding or someone dying alone in the woods? It appears law enforcement doesn't know the obvious answer to that question.
More propaganda coming from the Bush administration...
To me, there are two issues here. First and foremost, there's a big difference between a video news release and a pre-produced segment that appears to be editorial. The former tends to run on stations with some editing and input. The latter does not. We need to ask ourselves whether or not the government should be in the business of producing propaganda that is likely to run unedited on TV stations, with the appearance of a hard news story.
The second issue deals with the laziness of the MSM. From my journalism days, I remember the dynamic at work here. Early on in my training (B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from Washington & Lee University), I was exposed to the process that makes it easy for such things to infiltrate legitimate news reporting. And the structures within news departments continue to allow for it.
In one journalism class, each student was assigned a beat. Regardless of what was happening on that beat, student reporters were responsible for 3-5 stories per week within that beat. I remember being assigned to the "Community" beat during weeks when very little of importance was going on and it was difficult to find 3-5 things to write about in a week. At the same time, I also remember being assigned to "Cops and Courts" when there was a major murder trial going on, plus all the arrests, court actions and whatnot that are typical of a college town. On Cops and Courts, there was never a lack of things to write about and working that beat often entailed making big decisions about what was newsworthy and what wasn't. I followed that big murder trial for weeks and wrote a huge story when the verdict was delivered, which soaked up much of my available time and made it very difficult to write about other goings-on during that time.
The point is, the dynamics involved in allocating a reporter's time and the limits on time that reporters can spend on stories is something that can be taken advantage of. Often, both in my training and in working for real-life newspapers, what was written during the week and what eventually runs in the paper are two very different things. Sometimes stories need to be bumped for whatever reason (need more fact-checking, additional reporting needed, etc.) and sometimes space needs to be filled. Sometimes, in allocating a reporter's time, something gets ignored that ought to merit a story. When there's space to fill or there's something that escaped attention, news releases come in handy.
There were many times during my training where I'd have two larger stories an hour before deadline and needed something quickly, which is when news releases came in handy. You could take a news release and gather all the relevant facts, make a couple phone calls and have a quickie story ready for publication that requires little effort. Sometimes "little effort" appeals to a reporter on deadline who needs to fill some space.
The dynamic isn't much different in broadcast. The time constraints are more stringent, and your subject matter is limited to whatever footage you might have, which may even make the problem worse. And then along comes this 90 seconds of produced footage from the government on something topical and relevant. The temptation must be overwhelming at times.
I don't want to excuse the mainstream news media here, but in an age of "better, faster, cheaper" I can see how some of these pre-produced news releases end up on the air. Shame on lazy reporters and editors for running them, but sometimes one is limited by what one can accomplish with limited reporting resources and whatnot. Reporters and editors surely shoulder much of the blame here.
The Bush administration shows remarkable knowledge of the workings of the press and how to get propaganda on the air. The big question, of course, is whether taxpayer dollars should be used in an attempt to blur the line between advertising/PR and editorial. I'd suggest that any video news releases should conform to a standard wherein stock footage is provided and talking points disseminated, but nothing that could be used to lend the appearance of a legit news reporter actually having produced the segment.
One other thing to consider here, which is that television is largely a linear medium, meaning that folks can tune in at various points during a segment and completely miss any warnings (should there be any) that content comes from the government and wasn't produced by the station or network. The only way to solve this problem would be to provide a persistant video message that indicates the source and runs throughout the segment. Not that I've ever seen any warnings, persistent or otherwise, that a video segment was produced by the Department of Agriculture or Defense or whatever...
One thing's for sure. The system isn't working here. There's a breakdown in the news filters we all depend on, and there's also a breakdown in the ethics of the current administration with regard to passing off propaganda as legit news content. This problem can exist only in situations where both of these things are broken. Fix one or the other and the problem goes away.
Okay, MT-Moderate is installed. The basic gist of the plugin is that it takes comments on entries that are more than 7 days old and automatically chucks them into the new comment moderation feature of MT, the idea being that comment spammers generally go after posts that are older since those have the most potential to boost Google juice.
MT-Moderate is doing what it's supposed to...If you submit a comment on a newer post, it will go right through, but it automatically goes to moderation if you comment on an older post. This is pretty cool, however, it doesn't address what I initially installed MT-Keystrokes for, which is to automatically nuke comments that are submitted by bots. I still have to go into comment moderation and manually kill spam.
I don't know if MT can currently do this, but here's an idea: If you could set MT to automatically purge comments that stay in moderation for more than 7 days, that would automate a task that is a giant pain in the ass for me. If MT would do this, comment moderation would consist of manual approval of comments on old posts, weeding out the small number of spams that come to new posts, and then simply letting spam comments on old posts rot away. Does anyone know if MT can be set up to do this? If not, that's a plugin idea for an enterprising programmer.
This arms race totally blows. It's so frustrating to think that every few months, I have to go out and find something to handle the latest tactics employed by the comment spammers. It's even suckier for the plugin developers who take their own time to develop spam-nuking countermeasures and then find that they're essentially useless a few months down the road.
I think the key to this is to get some cooperation from Google on the whole "nofollow" thing. (Dunno what the current state of this is.) Basically, this approach would de-incentivize blog spammers by giving bloggers the power to tell Google to avoid following certain links. Nofollow = No Google Juice.
Here's one plugin I'd like to see: Something could automatically weed out comments by eliminating ones that link to the same base URL twice within an adjustable length of time (default would be 24 hours). That way, comment spammers would be able to get in only one comment per 24 hour period that linked to the same affiliate. This wouldn't work for everybody, but for blogs like mine that get 3 or 4 legit comments per 500 spams, it would save a lot of time. (Especially if it worked in conjunction with existing plugins.) I notice that most of my spam comes from a variety of IP addresses, but they tend to link to the same pages. True, a persistent spammer could set up multiple domains that redirected to the same page, but that requires an additional investment. Such a plugin would provide a negative economic incentive and I think it would cut back on a lot of the spam.
I've triple-checked everything in the installation of MT-Keystrokes. No idea what's wrong, but comments are still coming in faster than I can delete them. (And no, I didn't forget to rebuild the site after modifying the templates to call the script.)
The only thing I can think of is that I've missed a form somewhere on one of the templates. I've looked and looked, but I can't find anything. So, unfortunately, it's time to give up on MT-Keystrokes. I'm going to try MT-Moderate out for a while.
So I let MT-Keystrokes do its thing all day yesterday and overnight. Turns out I screwed up the implementation of the plugin. I forgot a dollar sign when inserting the tag to call the keystrokes javascript in my individual archive template, so the javascript wasn't being called from the form. Needless to say, this left an open door for the comment spammers to blast the crap out of my site for 24 hours or so. And they did, and this left me with several hundred comments to parse/delete this morning.
Not even sure the script is working correctly, or that I have all comment submit forms covered. My installation of MT is pretty standard, and I've covered the individual archive and comments listing template. Any MT geeks out there who can tell me where else that I might need to be covered?
One problem I've been having with moderated comments...Spammers will spam, regardless of whether the comments actually make it on the site or not. So I've been having to clean out my comments and manually approve, which has been a pain in the neck.
I decided to try out MT-Keystrokes, which uses Javascript to ensure that all comments approved are entered using keystrokes on the keyboard, the idea being that comment spammers will typically go right to the script and auto-submit without using any keystrokes.
We'll see how it works over the weekend. If I come back to more comment spam on Monday, I'll have to try something else.
Not only does this make me think we're going to get some accumulation, but also that Geocaching this weekend is going to impossible. We needed to have a couple days of above-freezing temperatures to get rid of the rest of the snow from the last storm. Now we've got some more fresh snow today.
Sure enough, I just checked weather.com and guess what the forecast for the weekend includes? Yep, more snow.
And it's not even like I can take a day off and go quadding. We're right in the middle of planning for Claritin and the A+D plan just got approved, not to mention Claria and the MathWorks are about to go into serious planning. On top of that, my client at Spring-O'Brien is heading off to Europe for a week and will be giving a major presentation to the Eurail client. Busy, busy, busy.
Oh, and my quad's ball joints are really worn and are ready to snap - not something you want to happen in the middle of a snowy trail, so taking the Cannondale out is pretty much out of the question.
Grrr...
Got sucked into the ANA blog recently after reading a piece on Steve Rubel's blog. In it, I came across this piece about Bob Liodice's thoughts on marketing to kids.
As Robert Moskowitz rightly pointed out in comments, free speech doesn't extend to corporations in quite the same way that it extends to private citizens. Commercial speech has always been more highly regulated than private speech. That's nothing new. And I don't think that corporations should have the unrestricted right to market their products to kids, as kids can't make intelligent decisions on their own with regard to nutrition and diet. They need their parents to help with that.
As many of you know, I've been on a diet for the past several months - one that places a good deal of importance on regulating intake of sugars and other carbohydrates. The nutrition controversy certainly isn't limited to the question of how we market to kids. After all, there are a lot of adults that have trouble making appropriate choices with regard to what they put into their bodies.
After several months of being on my diet, I've come to the conclusion that there are a lot of people out there who aren't fully aware of the effects that sugar and bad carbs have on both kids and adults. The first two weeks of my diet were spent essentially weaning myself off of sugar and getting my body adjusted to more reasonable and consistent blood sugar levels, rather than the peaks and valleys I had become accustomed to. Once you learn to avoid foods that are high in sugar and bad carbs, you realize fully the effect that sugar has on energy levels, food cravings, ability to concentrate, weight and general health.
I was reminded of that a couple weekends ago when I went to a kid's birthday party and was offered a slice of birthday cake. (I couldn't well refuse it.) About 10 minutes after finishing the cake, my head started to pound. I had to go outside and get some fresh air. I was all keyed up and I could actually SEE my pulse as my blood sugar went up and the blood coursed through the veins in my eyes. I could feel it in my temples as well. The overload of sugar left me feeling sick and agitated. Now think of how a regular intake of sugary foods affects a young child, if it can do what I just described to a 32-year-old man.
Another of the things I've experienced while on my diet is a lack of places at which to find foods low in sugar and bad carbs. I've had to shop at health food stores rather than the supermarket. When I need to get something on the run, I'm faced with entire delis, food stores and convenience stores filled with stuff I can't eat. I can usually find small servings of vegetables, cheese snacks, sugar free Jell-O or something to get me by until I get to where I'm going, but most of the foods I find on the shelves are things that are going to kick up my blood sugar in unhealthy ways.
My point is that we're already surrounded with unhealthy foods. Many of my friends who are parents of young children unconsciously give their kids sugar all day long without so much as a thought. If the kid is thirsty, give him a sippy cup full of fruit juice. If he's hungry, give him a bunch of fruit snacks, cookies, sugary cereal or other easy-to-eat finger foods. And then they wonder why their kid is bouncing off the walls all day or doesn't want to go to bed before 10 PM.
In an environment where unhealthy choices surround us, and where parents often don't have the information they need to make healthy choices for their kids, ought we to let food marketers ply their trade unrestricted to kids? I would say no. It's not a free speech issue, it's a commercial speech issue. And regulatory bodies of the U.S. Government need to have their say in how food products are marketed to kids, with the public health as their overriding concern.
Politically, I'm usually for the option that provides the least amount of government intervention. However, the food industry has evolved to the point where the most profitable foods tend to be the ones that are the most detrimental to public health. I wouldn't support a total ban on marketing to kids, nor would I support limitations on people's choices of food items. But I would support regulation of marketing foods to kids and investments into nutritional education for all of our citizens.
I've been working on a piece about cookie-blocking and the tendency of online marketers to want to ignore the problem. Just so you know, it's on its way. I've been working on this one a while, but haven't had the chance to finish it up.
Been too cold for 'caching in recent weeks, but with the sunny weather and the temperature hovering above freezing, I'm thinking Saturday might be a good day to go out. (Provided it's not raining, of course.) Looking for a cache under a foot of snow sucks, but it looks like most of the snow is melting.
Anyone interested in going? If so, email me at Tom at Hespos.com.
Sunday shooting got a heck of a lot better this week. Craig, Dennis, Dan and I had our Sunday at the range, and everyone seemed to be shooting a lot better than they have in the past. Dan hasn't shot in years and he's already right back into the swing of things.
We threw some rabbits with the new thrower for the first time. There's still a thin coating of ice and snow on the ground at the range, so the clays were slowed down significantly once they hit the ground. I can't wait for the snow to melt so we can see how far and fast we can throw rabbits with it.
Dan and I had a little stint where we were alternating triples. We both managed to hit five sets of triples in a row.
While honing our skills for the day when the radioactive zombies descend on our homeland to eat our brains and steal our precious bodily fluids, we talked about all sorts of other stuff, including the piece I sent Dan last week about crackdowns on blogs and political speech. He was bringing up a bunch of stuff about the other provisions of McCain-Feingold that are ridiculous on their face.
I need this on Sundays, just to clear my head and de-stress.
From this piece of utter bilge...
But just as CNN was never really able to reinvent itself to be indispensable for anything except covering wars and tsunamis, one can imagine the blogs settling in forever at their present level of almost wholly media-on-media impact. For now, bloggers are a second-tier journalistic species. They are remoras. The Times and CNN and CBS News are the whales and sharks to which Instapundit, Kausfiles, and Kos attach themselves for their free rides. (Remoras evolved special sucking disks; bloggers have modems.) If the sharks and whales were to go extinct, what would the blogging remoras do? Evolve into actual reporters?
I'm simply at the end of my rope with folks pretending they can't understand the function of bloggers unless they're judged against our conceptions of what a journalist is. And then there are the folks (like Andersen) who seem to think that the blogging community is nothing more than a bunch of mobile, self-appointed ombudsmen who are making a living solely by calling the mainstream media on their bullshit.
The role of ombudsman is just one of the important roles falling to bloggers in this day and age. (And wouldn't you agree that many of them are doing a bang-up job of it?) But there's a whole lot more to it. Every day, when I sit down at my desk with my lunch and visit my favorite blogs, I find the advancement of ideas every which way I turn. A lot of these ideas are original thoughts and concepts that haven't even been kicked around in the MSM. Or if they have, they haven't received nearly the coverage they deserve. For every post about such-and-such journalist bullshitting his way through a story, there's a piece (Promoted from the Kos diaries? Taken up by Atrios?) that extends an original idea. Maybe it has to do with Social Security, maybe it has to do with the war, but all of these posts have something in common - they attempt to take an original idea, give it a start in the blogosphere, and get people talking about those ideas.
Andersen likens bloggers to remoras hitching a ride on the MSM. The last time I even thought about remoras, it was when I was doing a sixth-grade report on sharks. And IIRC, there was another fish that always seemed to be mentioned in the same sentence as the remora - the pilot fish. This fish swims out ahead of the shark, appearing to lead it along. I'd liken the role of the blogger to that of the pilot fish. Ideas are hashed out in the blogosphere and the MSM eventually picks up on some of them.
You can't tell me that the MSM hasn't picked up on many of the ideas coming out of the blogosphere. We've broken too many stories, come up with some original ideas, and have shown thought leadership all the way through. Who is leeching off of whom in many of these cases?
For instance, haven't I been writing here that the blogosphere represents a return to the "Marketplace of Ideas" concept put forth by SCOTUS Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes? And then some guy named Andersen comes out with an article in New York Metro saying pretty much the same thing, but getting it wrong as to the role of the blogger. Isn't it ironic?
Many of the classic lines were in the musical version, as well as some new material. After the show, the stage manager gave a brief talk to us about some of the changes they had made to the show, including cutting out the much-loved "Burn witches!" scene. After that, I snuck around the back and got some autographs. Then I took Eric's picture.
This is one of the most misguided things I've ever seen. Ever.
Why would federal regulation be applied to blogs and exempt other media through which news and opinion are disseminated? Furthermore, is the government intent on telling me which websites I can and can't link to? This is an assault on grassroots political organization, and even worse, upon political discourse in general.
Just when I thought no one would ever be able to wrest the Invisible Conceptual Idiot Baton away from Michael Powell...