The Dog With Nine Lives

This blog has become so politically charged these days, I almost feel guilty for failing to post mundane details of my life. So here goes...

Madison is my mom's dog. My sister picked Madison up from the shelter a couple years ago in the late fall. At the time, I remember commenting that getting a dog right before the New York winter hits probably wasn't the best of ideas. After all, who wants to take a dog outside in the winter cold to train it?

I was right. The dog went essentially untrained and now runs amuck, chewing up whatever it can get it's paws on. We marvel at what Madison has consumed thus far, wondering how the dog manages to go on living without regular operations to remove all sorts of household crap from her digestive tract.

Here's a running list of some of the stuff Madison has managed to snarf up. We're astounded she hasn't managed to off herself with some of this stuff...

1. Several golf balls - We're rather fond of golf at the Hespos household. My brother-in-law Rob hits balls in the back yard on a regular basis. Occasionally, Madison will get a hold of a golf ball, chew it to the best of her ability, and swallow it. I have not witnessed what a golf ball ends up looking like after it's taken a trip through a dog's intestinal tract, but it's a semi-regular occurance with Madison. How it doesn't get lodged in her plumbing is beyond me.
2. One motorcycle helmet - One Sunday, I decided to take my quad out for a trail outing and couldn't find my helmet in its usual spot in the garage. One of my first instincts was to take a look in the back yard, where I found several fragments of plastic and foam rubber. If you're familiar with what motorcycle helmets cost, you know how much this sucks.
3. An entire box of Slug N' Snail bait - I didn't personally witness this, but Mom told me that Madison got loose in the garage and managed to eat an entire box of this stuff, box and all. You know what I'm talking about - that loose granular stuff you sprinkle on your walkways to kill all the slimy critters. One would assume that this stuff is highly toxic. For some reason, Madison was unaffected. Mom says she knows Madison ate it because fragments of the box came out in her poop.
4. A pair of Timberland work boots - My Timberlands, which I use when riding and when doing yardwork are now low-tops. Madison chewed the leather right off the top. I had previously thought that Timberlands were indestructable.
5. The TV remote - The one that operates the big-screen TV in the basement. It's been missing for quite some time. The one that operates the cable box downstairs is still with us, but bears telltale teeth marks all over it.
6. A PVC plastic barbecue cover - While we weren't looking last summer, Madison dragged the cover off the barbecue with her teeth and proceeded to chow down. There is now a 2-foot hole in the middle of the cover. The plastic was definitely ingested.
7. Three large chocolate Easter bunnies - This was the latest casualty (last weekend). Mom bought Kim, Rob and myself chocolate easter bunnies (she just can't let the kiddie aspects of Easter go...I'm 31 and she still makes me an Easter basket every year). Madison got a hold of them and wolfed them down. I know chocolate is supposed to be toxic to dogs, but this supports my theory that Madison is, in fact, a walking trash compactor. She's fine.

Madison's tolerance for pain and gastrointestinal distress is becoming legendary. Last fall, she learned how to break through her Invisible Dog Fence, getting a running start and leaping through it with a yelp as her collar administers a healthy shock. She does this to visit The Cute Dog Across The Street, which is to Madison what The Little Red Haired Girl is to Charlie Brown. We've cranked the invisible fence up to maximum. It does no good.

For several months now, Madison has been engaged in a protracted war with my sister's two cats. Madison's food and water are kept upstairs in the kitchen, while the cats have their food in the basement. Lately, Madison has taken to wolfing down her chow in the kitchen, waiting until she sees an open basement door, and raiding the cat food. This has earned her several claw wounds to the face from Kim's cats, not to mention scoldings from Kim, who feeds her cats that expensive Eukaneuba crap that keeps them from coughing hairballs all over the landscape.

Honestly, I don't know how Madison keeps herself out of doggie heaven. I once caught her getting ready to make a meal out of my '93 Les Paul (she opened her mouth wide and tilted her head to try to get her mouth around the guitar's body). One thing's for sure - If I ever find teeth marks on any of my guitars, there will be hell to pay.

And George Was Smote Such A Buffet That He Was Unhorsed...

G-Dubya in military dress,
preparing to lead his crusaders
into battle

I forgot to add something to my prior post about the Bush press conference. What the heck is all this nonsense about freedom being a gift to the world's people from The Almighty and it being America's obligation to spread freedom? Well, George, if you're intent on a crusade, you're looking for the Sangrail in the wrong place. If your true motives are securing freedom for oppressed people (and not securing cheap oil for Americans and more no-bid contracts for Halliburton), can I suggest a few other places you might want to launch a crusade?

How about the Sudan, where the Janjaweed militia is killing upwards of 1,000 innocent people a week? Or how about all those other countries in the Middle East where torture is commonplace, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Or maybe we should start on the homefront, where I don't feel particularly free with schmucks like Colin Powell Junior and Asscroft running around trying to censor content that I like, or with seizure laws that allow police officers to legally steal my car if they think I smoked a doobie in it?

No, Mr. President, we don't need a crusade here. As much as we like it, we can't say with a straight face that western democracy equates to freedom. Nor can we assume it's a moral imperative to spread our values all over the known world in the name of God-given freedom. And stop acting like Sir Galahad trying to track down the Sangrail at all costs - not only is it not feasible for us to free the entire oppressed world, but it's not appropriate. So quit the crusade language, will you?

A Sustainable Business Model For Blogs

I'm thoroughly addicted to blogging. Even if nobody ever reads my blog, I find that writing a little something or two every day is good for me. Not only does it help to keep my writing chops up, but it's good for blowing off steam and advancing ideas.

In the blogging movement, I see a feasible way to change the way people consume opinions and news. I also see a way to deliver on one of the original promises of the Internet - the promise that everyone can be a publisher and compete on a relatively level playing field with the mainstream media, leading to a much truer online analog to the "marketplace of ideas."

At the same time, I see the need for a business model to emerge. There will always be a number of bloggers who do what they do out of the goodness of their hearts and a need to express themselves. But how many people do you know that climbed aboard the blogging bandwagon, posted with regularity for a few weeks, and then lost interest? How many blogs out there were once updated several times a day and are now refreshed only once or twice a month (or not at all)?

Finally, doesn't a true, level playing field entail equal opportunity to pay the hosting bills and earn money based on the audience that blogs are able to aggregate? You see where I'm going here. This movement needs a business model, for those who are interested in making money from the content they put into the blogosphere every day.

Ross Fadner from Mediapost called me last week to talk about RSS. I admit that he caught me somewhat off guard, and I told him that I wasn't following the controversy over blog syndication standards as closely as I would like. (Hey, we're getting really busy over here at Underscore...) But I did give Ross some comments that ended up in a story he wrote. My two main points were that there was a lot of bickering over standards still going on, and that it would be nice to see Microsoft integrate a reader into the next version of Office.

When the story came out, I took a bit of flak for oversimplifying things a bit and/or saying that Microsoft was to blame for holding up adoption (even though I never said such a thing).

On Monday when it came time to write my weekly Online Spin column for Mediapost, I thought a bit more deeply about how syndication should ultimately contribute to a business model for blogs, IMHO. Here's the result.

If you don't feel like following the link, here's the gist of the idea toward the end of the column...We need something that will aggregate blog content based on filters set by the end user. Said aggregation tool should also provide a revenue stream to bloggers, based on how often their content is consumed by users of the tool.

Yes, I know about Kinja, the various blog search tools, Feedster, etc. (I had to clip my two paragraphs on Kinja in my column for the sake of brevity.) While many of these tools allow for customization of feeds, they don't provide a revenue stream to bloggers. This revenue stream is needed, IMHO, if blogging is to become something bigger than it already is. If blogging continues to reside primarily in the early adopter community, it won't realize its full potential.

I'm also aware that some people like blogging just the way it is. But consider this...What if we had a huge number of bloggers all over the world simultaneously posting first-hand accounts of the things that matter to them, corroborating details of newsworthy events and covering news and opinion alongside their mainstream news media brethren? What if folks other than the owners of the most popular blogs could make a living doing this? What if governments had not only the easily-influenced mainstream media to answer to, but also a massive corps of citizen-bloggers?

Blogging has potential - potential to solve the problem of the press release-regurgitating mass media, potential to sway public opinion in ways not yet imagined, potential to keep governments on their toes much like the news media once did. In my opinion, failing to realize that potential is a great disservice and a waste of effort.

The 8/6 PDB: Looks Like a Smoking Gun to Me

Condoleeza Rice may not have lied about the contents of the 8/6 PDB, but given what is contained in that memo, she might as well have.

Although the memo didn't warn specifically of the tactic of using planes as missiles, it does warn that hijackings were possible (to secure the release of Islamic militants, including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman). It also warns of possible attacks on U.S. soil involving explosives and calls attention to Osama Bin Laden's support network in the U.S. All of this runs under the heading of a warning of possible attacks in the U.S.

Somebody tell me how this memo wasn't enough to warrant action in the U.S. At the very least we should have seen increased security at the airports. I understand the pre-9/11 context and that hindsight is 20/20, but does our government make a regular habit of dismissing reasonably credible information about serious threats, particularly when that information lines up in such a fashion as to suggest that something big is on the horizon?