Web changes

Someone asked on a listserv, “Does anyone know of a service for tracking not just website changes, but exactly what content on the webpage changed?” As a result of the question, I joined ChangeDetect, a free web page monitoring system. It’s my intention to add all of the web sites and blogs which I follow that do not offer an RSS feed, but I’ve only gotten around to tracking the website of my ol’ friend Fred Hembeck thus far.

So how does it work? So far, fine, though the e-mail notification takes about a day from the actual site change. Still, when I actually get around to using it more frequently, it’ll beats going to the page and seeing the same old stuff.
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Blogger has this feature where it’ll let you know when an RSS-equipped blog on the sidebar was last updated. I discovered, however, that if the blog poster says the post was entered two days ago, it’ll note on my blog that the blog was posted two days ago.
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I used to have something called Jigli on my side panel, a service that was creating a word cloud of my blog, which I liked. Unfortunately, it was creating an unintended consequence. It seemed to create what appeared to be hyperlinks on words that weren’t actually hyperlinks. I thought it was just my computer, but when a good friend of mine saw the same thing, I deleted the Jigli and the problem went away.
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I was on a listserv when someone provided info about a conference in Italy. One reader took great exception to this and said, “I saw the announcement for a conference that cost $15 to attend within driving range for most of New York State.
One does not need to spend hours on an international flight plus all of the money for staying in a hotel in order to present at a conference or to attend a conference.” Others responded with comments such as “funding issues notwithstanding, some people may be interested in knowing this is happening. Why the need for the nasty responses?” ou’d be surprised how heated librarians can get.
Finally, I wrote: “To quote Sylvester Stewart: ‘Different strokes for different folks And so on, and so on and scooby-dooby-doo.'” That generated a “Roger: Best. Post. Ever.” and another positive comments. That made me feel really good!
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I’ve got nothing pithy to say about the passing of Studs Terkel. I’ve read only one of his books – Working – though I did enjoy seeing him express his views in various venues. But here’s a nice piece:
Studs Terkel: The Power of His Prose By Dennis Kucinich, October 31, 2008

Studs Terkel knew the real America. The America of grit and gumption, heart and soul, passion and nerve. He chronicled five generations of American history with a compassionate and deep understanding of the American character.

He was the quintessential American writer. He was our Boswell, our Whitman, our Sandburg. He was able to get people to open up and share their innermost thoughts and their deepest dreams. In the words of Kipling ‘he walked with kings and never lost the common touch.’

Infused in each word he wrote and in his spoken word, he was a master story-teller and could regale groups for literally hours with his deep understanding of human nature its possibilities and its foibles. He was a person of great appetites and his greatest appetite was for the truth. America has lost a tribune of the people. But the power of his prose lives on.

Studs was a dear friend. My wife, Elizabeth, and I have enjoyed many visits in Studs’s home. His good humor was a constant even during a visit a couple of years ago when he was recovering from heart surgery.

I was touched by the forward he wrote to my book, A Prayer for America. I’ll never forget the encouragement he gave me to run for president in 2004.

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After 2009/1/20

Something I got from a United Methodist listserv, even though I’m no longer a UM; the date of the originating post is after May 2: Methodist Ministers Launch PR Campaign To Stop Bush Library At SMU»
Earlier this month, at the United Methodist Church’s (UMC) Quadrennial General Conference, the UMC’s governing body, voted overwhelmingly — 844 to 20 — to refer a petition to its South Central Jurisdiction. The petition urges the rejection of President Bush’s presidential library which is set to be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The library has received significant criticism from SMU faculty, Methodist ministers and the public because of an attached institute —
independent of the university — that will sponsor programs designed to “promote the vision of the president” and “celebrate” Bush’s presidency. The South Central Jurisdiction, which owns the university property where the library is set to be built, will vote on the petition this July. In anticipation of the vote, some Methodist ministers have launched a public relations campaign to highlight the partisan nature of the library: [T]he opponents have hired a Maine public relations firm to design ads for Methodist publications and do other strategies, said the Rev. Andrew Weaver of Brooklyn, N.Y. He said the goal is informing people about the partisan think tank, which won’t be under SMU’s control and will promote the Bush administration’s policies — such as the war with Iraq and harsh interrogation techniques of military prisoners — that some Methodists feel conflict with church
teachings.
Which begs the question, where does one get to sign up?

Actually, though, it seems as though we can be out of Iraq in practically no time. Maliki wants a timetable, Bush seems to want a drawdown, so we can just declare victory and leave.

Meanwhile, Dennis Kucinich is trying to get Bush impeached. A quixotic, though understandable, effort, but all I really want is this:

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Left Behind

Every once in a while, a news story will irritate me so much that I feel the need to respond somehow. Such is the case in last week’s Metroland:

Doing the Lord’s Legal Work

Bloggers and journalists find themselves threatened with lawsuits after criticizing a video game

Evangelical Christian post-apocalyptic video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based on the book series of the same name, was introduced last year to a storm of controversy. Now, with an expansion on the horizon, the maker of the game, Left Behind Games Inc., apparently have launched a legal campaign to silence its critics.

The game has been condemned by both secular and Christian blogs and publications that have criticized that the game at best excuses and at worst encourages religious-based violence against gays, Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians. Critics also have expressed disapproval of gender roles within the game, where women are limited to the professions of nurses or singers. Apparently, the game play wasn’t that great, either.

Beginning in early October, various blogs and Web sites that had posted negative reviews of the game, such as Talk to Action, Public Theologian, and the Daily Kos, received identical, nonspecific legal notices from an attorney representing Left Behind Games Inc. demanding that they take down their content regarding the game, which the company alleged was “false and misleading.”

Delmar resident Glenn Weiser, who owns and maintains celticguitarmusic.com, was among the recipients of the letter due to his article “Let God Sort ’em Out,” which he first wrote for the June 29, 2006, Metroland, and which he also hosted on his site.

Weiser was unable to comment on the case due to the fact that LBG hadn’t specified complaints. Weiser has contributed dozens of articles to Metroland and was recently quoted in The Village Voice.

Weiser removed the story from his Web site on the advice of his lawyer and has posted a statement denying “knowingly and maliciously posting anything false or misleading about the game or LBG.”

The article remains online in the Metroland archives.

Metroland has not yet been contacted by LBG or its legal representation, according to Stephen Leon, Metroland’s editor and publisher.

“It’s an attempt to squash free speech, but it’s a clumsy one,” said Leon. “It’s very nonspecific. That’s a meaningless, empty threat right now. If they ever confront me with anything more specific, I’ll deal with that. If I got that letter I would just chuckle and put it in a folder and put it in my file drawer.”

Metroland will not remove the article from its site even if receives a similar threat from LBG.

The threat has all the makings of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or SLAPP suit, a tactic that has been gaining popularity with corporations and other entities that is meant to halt discussion of issues through legal intimidation. Regardless of the threat’s validity, the tactic usually serves to warn others against further debate lest they face legal action themselves, according to the California Anti-SLAPP Project’s Web site.

Legal fees can total tens of thousands of dollars if a lawsuit progresses; a daunting amount for a private citizen or small business to scare up. To date, only smaller Web sites and blogs have received notices, while larger publications, such as PC Gamer and Metroland, remain unthreatened.

So far, the SLAPP suit seems to have backfired, as many of the blogs have decided to defy and deride the notice rather than comply with it.

—Jason Chura

It bugs me for a number of reasons. As a librarian who believes in free expression, I don’t like LBG’s bullying tactics. As a Christian, I don’t like LBG’s theology.

So, in protest, I decide to re-post Glenn Weiser’s article myself. Let me make it clear that I do this without Glenn Weiser’s knowledge or permission – I don’t believe I even know Glenn Weiser – and will take it down only if he or METROLAND request that I do so.
***
Impeachment TV.

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The Candidates QUESTIONS

This is an audience participation thing, or as Frank Zappa once put it, “enforced recreation.”

1. Go to http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html and answer the questions, but leave your intensity about the issues at Medium.

2. Cut/paste and send me the results (or post on your blog, and let me know in the comments section.)

3. Re-vote, but this time, indicate the intensity of your position.

4. Cut/paste and send me THOSE results (or post on your blog, and let me know in the comments section.)

Before revealing my picks, you’ll note that there is something called the Composite Candidate: “The calculator compiles the most popular responses from all voters to create a composite candidate, a candidate whose views match most with the average responses of users.”

Composite Candidate
* Delaware Senator Joseph Biden (D) – 43.48%
* Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) – 41.30%
* Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (R) – 41.30%
* Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (D) – 36.96%
* Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) – 36.96%
* New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) – 34.78%
* Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) – 34.78%
* New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) – 34.78%
* Businessman John Cox (R) – 32.61%
* Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (D) – 30.43%
* Arizona Senator John McCain (R) – 28.26%
* Texas Representative Ron Paul (R) – 28.26%
* Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) – 28.26%
* Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (R) – 28.26%
* Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) – 26.09%
* Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D) – 23.91%
* Kansas Senator Sam Brownback (R) – 21.74%
* Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (R) – 21.74%

Also, there’s a list of Most Top-Matched Candidates
* Gravel – 14.20%
* Tommy Thompson – 12.42%
* Romney – 10.95%
* Giuliani – 10.93%
* Kucinich – 10.52%
* Biden – 6.40%
* Clinton – 4.68%
* Cox – 4.47%
* Obama – 4.19%
* Hunter – 3.64%
* Dodd – 3.63%
* Fred Thompson – 2.66%
* Tancredo – 2.51%
* Paul – 2.16%
* Huckabee – 2.06%
* Richardson – 1.82%
* Edwards – 1.32%
* Brownback – 1.02%
* McCain – 0.42%

Now, here are my top selections, with no regard to intensity:
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (D) 100.00% match
Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D) – 94.74%
Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) – 84.21%
Delaware Senator Joseph Biden (D) – 78.95%
Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (D) – 78.95%
Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) – 78.95%
New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) – 73.68%
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) – 73.68%
Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (R) – 57.89%
Businessman John Cox (R) – 47.37%
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) – 42.11%
Texas Representative Ron Paul (R) – 36.84%
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) – 31.58%
Arizona Senator John McCain (R) – 26.32%
Kansas Senator Sam Brownback (R) – 21.05%
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) – 21.05%
Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (R) – 15.79%
Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson (R) – 15.79%

Whereas, when I add my intensity factors:
Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich (D) 96.88% match
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (D) – 81.25%
New York Senator Hillary Clinton (D) – 71.88%
Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (D) – 68.75%
Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd (D) – 65.63%
Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D) – 65.63%
Delaware Senator Joseph Biden (D) – 59.38%
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) – 56.25%
Texas Representative Ron Paul (R) – 37.50%
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) – 28.13%
Businessman John Cox (R) – 25.00%
Arizona Senator John McCain (R) – 25.00%
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) – 12.50%
Kansas Senator Sam Brownback (R) – 9.38%
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) – 9.38%
Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (R) – 9.38%
California Representative Duncan Hunter (R) – 6.25%
Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (R) – 6.25%

Strange: Kucinich and Gravel, the two guys left off some recent Iowa debate, switch for the top spot, Clinton (who I’ve never voted for) moves from 7th to 3rd, and Obama falls from 3rd to 6th, but the Top 7 are still the Top 7, with Richardson 8th in both scenarios. One thing is for sure: I won’t be voting for Tom Tancredo. Or for Sam Brownback, though I’d probably enjoy hanging out with him, based on his appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows.

A curious glitch: Duncan Hunter isn’t on the first list (or on the composite candidate roster), while Fred Thompson’s missing from the second.
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“In his new book, The Evangelical President, Bill Sammon paints a riveting portrait of a president who is as committed to worldwide democracy as he is to his faith—and guided by legitimate principles that his critics aren’t willing to understand. In this far-reaching book, Sammon details:
Why Bush believes the Republicans will hold the White House in 2008″

Interesting. Haven’t read the book, probably won’t read the book, but I’m beginning to come to the same conclusion.
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Let the most popular candidate win: Instant runoff voting is simple and effective.
By John B. Anderson (1980 Presidential candidate)
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I wish we could get as 72-25 vote, condemning Blackwater, something actually under Congressional budgetary control. Anyway, MoveOn has moved from Petraeus – Leave Petraeus alone! to a much more appealing target, Rudy Giuliani:

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Pat Buchanan (!) on the hysteria that greeted the request of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lay a wreath at Ground Zero.
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If Bill O’Reilly Was a Rapper.

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Next Post QUESTION

I’m curious how you folks who look at other blogs actually find them. Initially, I went through the links of the handful of bloggers I knew then, but I soon found a certain redundancy of common sites.

So, my favorite thing to do became using the Next Blog feature on the Blogger sites. However, I’ve been trying it recently and finding it increasingly unsatisfactory. I keep finding, every fourth or fifth hit, a sex site. And not just a sex site, but one site nearly identical in spite of mild permutations. It’s always a white background with a title of the video, which may be fairly innocuous – “David Beckham’s first MLS goal”. But on the right is a list of:
Related Top Posts that include – and I’ve eliminated more than a few:
# PAMELA ANDERSON AND JENNA JAMESON BOTH IN ONE SCENE!!!!(772)
# Sexy Chopper Biker Girls Naked(708)
# hot girls part 3 – the russian(445)

Of course, the non-sex sites I find are uneven. Either, I can’t understand the language or it contains information such as: “Well let me just say this, Zac Efron totally hotty! Danngg!” What’s a Zac Efron? (OK, I DO know about High School Musical.)

I do find some interesting places, but, where it used to take me about 10 minutes to find three commentable sites via Next Blog, now it takes a half hour, because among other things, the porn sites have disabled the Next Post button, so I have to go back before going forward. (They’ve also taken out the Flag Blog feature, not surprisingly – is there a way to report them to Blogger some other way?)

So, as I asked initially, what do YOU do to seek out new sites?
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And speaking of Disney and sex, Mark Evanier, writing about the demise of a Disney digest, writes: Once upon a time, Playboy sold seven million copies per issue and now it sells three million. This is not because of a declining male interest in beautiful nude women or because the women aren’t as beautiful or as nude as they used to be. The phraseology, for whatever reason, cracked me up.
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Geico Uncovers Secrets About Flintstones, Clampetts – the commercials will almost certainly be better than the upcoming Caveman series.
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Starting this Monday: Changes in the comic strip For Better or Worse.
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Two guys named Ken:
Levine – and his readers – on movie theater etiquette (or the lack of same)
Jennings (August 30) on separated at birth
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I had asked who won the Democratic debate in Iowa on ABC-TV’s This week a couple weeks ago. I got five voters, four of whom picked Dennis Kucinich, and one who selected Barack Obama.
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Karl Rove and now Alberto Gonzalez are both gone, and I’m not feeling the happiness I thought I would. It’s like the letdown I got when I would rehearse for a choir piece or a play; the event would go off well, but I’d be left with a mild melancholy. At least now I know why they left when they did.

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News About News

I was watching the Democratic Iowa “debate” Sunday on ABC-TV. I qualify the term because 1) the questions were designed intentionally to provoke – the “some say Obama’s not ready to lead; what do YOU think, Hillary?” or “some say Clinton can’t win the general election; what do YOU think, Barack?”; and 2) the so-called minor candidates were given short shrift. So I was surprised to see the results of an unscientific survey – I was stunned to see this as of 4 pm yesterday:

Who do you think won the Democratic debate?

Dennis Kucinich 11,821
Barack Obama 8,721
Hillary Clinton 5,546
Joe Biden 3,338
John Edwards 3,150
Nobody won. I’m voting Republican. 1,639
Nobody won. I’m waiting for Al Gore to get in the race. 1,145
Bill Richardson 1,109
Mike Gravel 1,044
Chris Dodd 201
Total Vote: 37,714

Dennis Kucinich, whose first chance to comment was about 30 minutes in. Kucinich, who had 2% of the vote in the polls in Iowa going in (Clinton, Edwards and Obama all have about 23% each). Kucinich, who provided my favorite moment in the event. When each candidate was asked about God and prayer. Dennis Kucinich said, “I’ve been praying to God for the last 45 minutes that you would call on me!” In spite of the flawed process, some things that the Ohio Congressman said hit a nerve. I’m not quite sure what, because my local ABC News affiliate cut off the 90-minute event after an hour in favor of its scheduled program, Teen News.
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I’m feeling sorry for poor Bill Plante, not about the row over the CBS News White House correspondent’s remark at that Bush bye-bye for Karl Rove (“If you’re so smart, why did you lose Congress?”, he yelled), for which he’s been labeled a rude liberal and adversarial, among the nicer terms – here are Plante’s thoughts on that controversy. Rather, because he’s ALSO been cast as another brainless MSM TOUTING Rove here. And what praise did Plante bestow on the outgoing official? “He’s not only the mastermind behind everything – he’s the president’s senior advisor…” But he WAS considered the mastermind, or as Bush put it in 2004, “the Architect”. He HAS been a Bush advisor for decades. I think Plante was just stating fact, not fawning over power.

And speaking of Rove, I heard him on Meet the Press on Sunday. As Chris Matthews was recently criticized for saying, he DOES talk really fast. I think he’s very good at manipulating information to his political advantage, but judge for yourself.

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Presidential QUESTIONS

ADD notes a “website that lists all the major candidates and their stands on the issues; at least, the issues as designated by whoever created the site.”

1. Based solely on the issues, not silly things such as “electability”, which candidate best represents your positions on the issues? For me, wide-eyed liberal that I am, it’s Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who I voted for in the 2004 Democratic primary. Second is former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.

2. Yet I’m disinclined to vote for Kucinich, or for that matter, Gravel, because they are unelectable the way the system is set up. Call that a self-fulfilling prophecy, but there it is. Then who? Let’s do this by process of elimination. Not all issues are the same in my mind. Gun background check (in favor), the death penalty (against), the war in Iraq (against), torture (against), and the same-sex constitutional ban (against) provides a pretty good litmus test. By that standard, I disagree at least thrice with Brownback, Cox, Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter (a perfect 5 for 5), McCain, Romney and Tancredo. Thompson doesn’t have enough known positions, surprise, surprise. Who’s on your “no way, no how” list?

3. So who am I leaning towards? The person who just might have enough money to actually win whose position is closest to mine turns out to be Obama, who I still wonder about, experience-wise. How about you?
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One of those bizarre political stories involves former Congressman John Sweeney, who represented the Congressional district adjacent to Albany. He was one of those Republican thugs who helped get the 2000 recount in Florida stopped. His 2006 re-election bid was stopped, in no small part, by allegations of domestic violence against his second wife Gayle (or Gaia) in December 2005. The Sweeneys denied it, claiming it was a smear campaign by his opponent, Kirsten Gillibrand. Now, he’s saying that there WAS domestic violence, but that HE was the victim, and that he’s even gotten a judge to give him an order of protection. Gayle, who said in television commercials last fall that there was no violence, now claims she was coerced to say so, and that she was the victim. Now John’s first wife has entered the fray, stating that he was never physically violent towards her.
* John getting a restraining order against Gayle doesn’t prove that Gayle was the aggressor. He’s been a very powerful man, politically.
* Wife #1’s claim that she never experienced domestic violence from John doesn’t mean that wife #2, who was considerably younger and, in her own words, “in awe of him” in the beginning, wasn’t experiencing abuse.
* In most iterations of this story, there’s a lot of alcohol mentioned.
As I said, very bizarre
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Meanwhile, the new member of Congress, Ms. Gillibrand, had a press conference this week announcing a bill to increase the tax deduction on day care costs. She had it in an Albany daycare that is not even in her district. But then I remember that her district, that runs from Washington County to Delaware County (note to non-New Yorkers: a big chunk of territory) without including any of the cities (Albany, Schenectady, Troy); it was gerrymandered to be a safe Republican district, mostly rural. I’m sure it’s easier to get the Capital District press to come to Albany than the countryside.

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VOTING Questions

I was reading in Newsweek a couple weeks ago about some (Republican) politician complaining about ex-cons voting. I don’t see the problem. I think the ex-cons SHOULD vote. Perhaps:
1) They’ll feel more a part of the society as engaged citizens.
2) They’ll be able to better suss out the crooks who actually get elected, the Duke Cunninghams, the Bob Neys.

If anything, I’d think we would like to get MORE people to vote. Are people afraid that a bunch of former felons will get together and take over the town? If so, they should get out and register (and vote) themselves.

(Greg noted this story about the White House pursing legal efforts to limit voter turnout. This is not just unjust, it’s pathetic.)

I also was interested in the recent French election. Apparently, the top two vote getters, Nicolas Sarkozy, who got 31% in the first round, and Ségolène Royal (26%), will be in a runoff, but the candidate who is reportedly most acceptable (or least unacceptable) to the widest number of people, François Bayrou, came in third (19%), so won’t be in the runoff.

So I’m wondering:

1) What restrictions, beyond making sure somebody is of age and actually lives in the district, should there be on voters? I’m against too many restridctions.

2) What can be done to engage more people in the political process? Would Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or other alternate voting methodologies work? How about voting over several days and/or online?
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For free IRV? stickers send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: voteIRV.org, 26 Glen Street, Malden, MA 02148. Spread the word and make it stick: IRV; for a better democracy!
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Dennis Kucinich, member of Congress and Presidential candidate, has introduced Articles of Impeachment Against Vice-President Richard Cheney. Kindly, Kucinich waited until the the Veep’s blood clot was under control to reintroduce the measure.
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Bush v. Bush.
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Erin Davies makes the best of a bad situation, letting the world see and contemplate the hate speech scrawled on her vehicle. The initial act of vandalism was especially disturbing to me since it happened in my city (Albany), but Erin’s reframing is quite intriguing.
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What the rains of last week did to the basement of the David Sarnoff Library last week.
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Last, but certainly not least, send some love to Kelly and Lefty.

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