As Obama Evades Issues, McCain Uses Web to Make Them His

John McCain's web site currently has some really great images and big text emphasizing his concern for the environment. He's got a little whiz-bang presentation that really says nothing but looks fancy and makes people feel safer about his take on "climate change" and cap and trade. It shows how jobs will improve in the system (oversimplified to say the least). The use of green and pretty pictures is effective in grabbing attention.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's web site is begging - on the splash page, no less - for cash. Which is actually very effective. And Barack Obama's got John Edwards next to him in images on his splash and home pages, like they're a couple or something, they're so cute and cozy. At least Obama is working for his last remaining delegates.

However, yesterday when a reporter in Michigan asked Obama to give her a real policy response and he answered with "hold on, sweetie," never to come back with a word about the issue at hand. That's already biting him.

I personally am sick of how little attention the environment is getting in this election. I'm really amazed given all that Al Gore and others have done over the past few years to raise awareness. It's pitiful. But what's worse is that the Republican candidate is the only one talking about it. (It being "climate change", of course, never "global warming.") Democrats have been the only ones giving the environment more than a second thought for years, and now McCain is trying to take the issue and make it his.

Tactics-wise, he's doing a better job than the others. He's in a position where he can talk about whatever he wants right now until a nominee is selected from the Democratic side, so it's smart to focus on the environment now, before he's forced back onto talking about the war and the economy 24x7. Still, I wish there were more dialogue about what needs to be done, and I wish we had real leadership on the issue from someone we can trust will make it happen.

FWIW, I'll have a post up on MOMocrats about this topic later today or tomorrow.

Two Great Chronicle Articles: Web to TV & Blogging with Babies

In today's Chronicle, two interesting articles:

First, "Web sites enable campaign TV ads on the cheap" by Joe Garofoli tells about how the web and sites like VoterVoter.com and SpotRunner.com are making video ads easier and cheaper to create and disseminate, and it discusses the ramifications of this in terms of the presidential campaign.

Micah Sifry of techPresident (and the Personal Democracy Forum) is quoted about how technology and "mass participation" is changing the face of politics. Anyone who has worked in a statewide or national campaign knows that the majority of campaign budgets go to TV advertising even now with the Internet gaining speed and digital democracy becoming a more prevalent term.

Still, the majority of voters are reached through television and it's expensive. This is why the Internet staff always takes a back seat in terms of campaign strategy; it's just a fact that television still makes the rules. I see the tides turning, but it will take time. Sites like these will help with the transition to new media as new generations of voters who are online gradually become the majority.

Second, one of my co-contributors at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog Group, Charlene Li is mentioned in Ellen Lee's article, "In parenthood, sometimes a blog is born," which I know from personal experience has many truths. Granted, I wasn't twittering from the delivery room, but blogging helped keep me sane while on bed rest and going through a lengthy postpartum recovery.

The article also quotes Elisa Camahort Page, BlogHer cofounder, and it throws around buzzwords like Web 2.0 as much as possible to get socnet cred. What is most poignant about this piece to me are the stats about how much moms are targeted now in advertising online. It's always been that way on TV, but now mommybloggers are discovering their power with corporations and other sponsors to this effect. Beth Blecherman has a great post up at SVMoms that touches on this, and I think it may be eligible for some kind of "most links in a post" award.

MOMocrats on Blog Talk Radio Tomorrow

I recently joined the MOMocrats, and this great group of women are undertaking a variety of different methods for driving attention to the real issues that interest moms, particularly Democratic moms. This is an excerpt from my friend, Glennia Campbell's email to the MOMocrats about a new adventure starting tomorrow at Blog Talk Radio:

"The MOMocrats are launching a podcast on Saturday, May 10 at 3 pm Eastern, 12 pm Pacific on Blog Talk Radio. It will be 45 minutes long. We're hoping some of our friends will listen in and give us feedback. This is a pilot show, just to test the timing and how the thing works, so it will be rough. If you could listen and let us know what you think, that would be awesome! Just go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/MOMocrats to listen in live at the time listed above, or anytime thereafter for the archive."

So there you have it. Glennia, Stefania and Joanne will be on. Enjoy.

Internet Archive Wins Settlement with FBI

From the Chronicle, the Internet Archive recently won a settlement with the FBI about a "national security letter" i.e. government request for private information that was sent to them demanding they turn over data that they probably don't even have. The Archive, legally considered an online library, for those who don't know, was founded by Brewster Kahle who is also on the Board of the EFF. They keep books online as well as web sites, and they run the Wayback machine, a great tool for finding older versions of sites online. (Want to restore from an older backup of your site that's gone? Try the Wayback machine.) Anyway, Brewster's a good guy who just wants to share information with people, so it looks like after 4 months and $10,000 in donated legal services, the FBI got off his back. It's a good article. I haven't spoken with my EFF buddies about this particular case, but I'm guessing they're happy a precedent's been set to show others that the Patriot Act induced loophole can be fought.

What Beatles Song Describes You? Mine is "Hey Jude"

facebook has a multitude of fabulous and silly apps designed to suck up all of your time and keep you up way too late... tonight's culprit is the "Which Beatles Song Describes Your Life Right Now?" app, which doesn't necessarily describe you at that exact moment, but it gives a pseudo-personality assessment with a musical twist.

Mine is "Hey Jude", saying I'm "a little hesitant when it comes to taking action" (sometimes true), "extremely capable and full of life and hope" (mostly true), and "a natural leader" (I'll leave that up to other people to decide. It also says "you are slowly learning to let people into your heart and let go of your fears." Slow being the operative word there. I found this because one of my facebook friends had her song as "Here Comes the Sun", one of my all time favorites. Maybe I'm "Hey Jude" wanting more of "Here Comes the Sun".

Anyway, have a gander at the app if you are killing time or sucked into the facebook abyss.

Spam Turned 30 Today

From the Interesting People List - Dave Farber sent out this clip from ABC News (where he was interviewed) re: today being the 30th anniversary of the sending of the first spam email. Here is the link. It's amusing.

Done Lately?

I'm not writing here much right now, but I have been busy on many many collaborative sites so I wanted to share a brief update about that...

I recently joined the MOMocrats. I've been blogging about politics on and off for a while, and doing it on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog gave a few of us the idea of doing it for our respective presidential candidates. I was frankly too busy to start another collaborative blog myself, so I just blogged about Hillary wherever I could (which has other advantages of reaching a broader audience vs. preaching to the choir), but some of my friends started blogging together about John Edwards and their site was great. We talked early on about working together once a nominee was selected and it was sort-of de facto that we would put our efforts together whenever that point came. When Edwards dropped out of the race, most of them began supporting Obama, but they also opened up the blog for everyone to participate and so I joined. I'm in the minority there as a Hillary supporter, but we have a great dialogue and it's a wonderful group of intelligent people. So I haven't written much yet, but stay tuned, especially toward the election.

For Playborhood, I did some research about preschools and wrote an article about the preschool search pertaining to kids and play. I also put that research to use when interviewed for Bay Area Parent magazine. And I wrote a brief article for Bay Area Parent which I believe will be in the May issue. I still write regularly for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, including putting up a post last night about meeting Maria Shriver, First Lady of California, which was a real treat - especially after reading her latest book.

I spent last weekend in Sacramento being trained on legislative advocacy in the State of California since I'm now the Junior Representative from the Junior League of Palo Alto/Mid-Peninsula to the State Public Affairs Committee for the Junior Leagues of California. (I know it's a mouth full. Sorry.) What that means is that I get to review proposed bills, research them, meet with legislators, and vote within a committee over the next two years as to any legislation the Junior Leagues will support. As we focus on women and children, our issue areas are education, health, family support, and domestic violence prevention. It's a great learning opportunity and it's a wonderful feeling to know we're helping change lives.

Early last week, I compiled some materials that USACM had written about our positions on national technology policies into a paper that we submitted to the Yale Technology Law Journal for the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference that supposedly will be submitted to the next presidential administration as recommendations on information technology policy. I like keeping active in the tech policy arena when I can, and as a member now of USACM for over 10 years, I enjoy the people involved immensely. Anyway we'll see if the paper is accepted. I would like to think the next administration could learn from USACM - some incredibly brilliant people are involved.

SFBayStyle is growing strong. With a large group of interesting writers, we're getting some great feedback and we're having a lot of opportunities to cover some fantastic events. What I love about creating our own blog about style and fashion is that we can do whatever we want with it, which to me means emphasizing the nonprofit, philanthropic and community component as often as possible. And we have nearly 300 articles up in under a year.

I recently began blogging for ecofabulous, a great site for finding everything that's beautiful and eco for homes, clothes, dining, travel, etc. I also covered the World Figure Skating Championships for BlogHer (Sports & Fitness) and I look forward to writing more for them in the future.

I'm still writing on occasion for Acceller's Digital Landing site. It's a great place for learning basics about technology - TV, phones, computers, etc. So I know my audience here is above all that, but you can send your parents there.

Looking back at this list, it seems like I'm doing a lot, and I am, but I like participating in a lot of different venues because it means I can write about all sorts of topics that I find interesting while working in the community as well. For anyone who wants to keep tabs on my current endeavors for whatever reason, see grangers.com. Otherwise, please be patient and I'll write more of my own thoughts here soon.

Six Degrees of Tom Perkins

I hosted a book club meeting for the first time last night and the book I chose was a little different than the novels we've read in the past. The book club is for my (relatively new, as of a little over a year ago) neighborhood and the group is largely social, but also highly intelligent, well-read, well-traveled, and full of interesting people. I'd read some good reviews about Valley Boy, Tom Perkins's autobiographical book, and had made it through a few chapters when I made the selection. Some of the neighbors who came to my home liked it; others didn't, no big surprise, but nearly everyone had some kind of connection to the book either through people they knew, places they had traveled or worked.

Perkins, founder of Kleiner Perkins (later to become Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers), the most well-known venture capital firm in the world, wrote about everything from sailing to IPOs, and he wrote it well. Various people had their opinions of Perkins and his opinions after reading the book, of course, but everyone thought his take on the HP-Compaq merger was interesting as well as his philanthropic endeavors and what he wrote of his love life. (For those who don't know, he was involved with the San Francisco Ballet board, he lost his wife of many years to cancer, and he was briefly wed to Danielle Steel.) He also helped build Tandem Computers and Genentech. He's now on the board of News Corp.

Here is a bit of a bio and a recent photo of Perkins, here is the publisher's info, and here is his Wikipedia entry. Even if you're not a fan but you find these topics of interest, check the book out at the library - it's an interesting read.

Late Night Amusement - Russian Spam

I get the best Russian spam late at night these days - somehow it's evading both of my spam filters - but instead of deleting it, I'm using it as a chance to brush up on my reading in Russian. And the messages are a great combination of really basic words that I know, complex words that I'm able to discern meaning from given a basic understanding of spam, and cognates, which are always fun.

Yeah, so I have better things to do with my time and reading short stories or Russian newspapers would probably be better training, but this way I get a little every day to keep those neurons active in preparation for Sochi 2014. If you are interested in any great Russian spam, just drop me a line - I'd be happy to forward...

RIP Arthur Clarke, One of Sci-Fi's Greatest

He turned Jupiter into a second sun and now he's gone. At age 90, one of science fiction's greatest, Arthur C. Clarke, has died. He passed his last years in Sri Lanka, this Brit served in the Royal Air Force in WWII, survived polio, designed preliminary modern satellites, and wrote classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's quite a life.

The Washington Post has a nice write-up, and Space.com wrote about the industry response. USA Today covers his body of work in impressive detail.

I recall vividly the first time I read 2001: A Space Odyssey the realism of his ideas and how they affected me. He was a visionary. Arthur C. Clarke will be missed, but not forgotten, with 80 books and 500 essays.

Star Wars, Candidates, and Shot Down Satellites

It's my birthday; I can cry if I want to... getting older isn't what it used to be. I saw Princess Leia live this week and seeing her age just brings home my own aging. But I was really happy to see Carrie Fisher's one woman autobiographical play, "Wishful Drinking", at the Berkeley Rep. Definitely worth seeing if you like her work or if you are a fan of either of her parents. I personally think both her acting and her writing are stellar.

This week, for those of you who haven't heard, the Navy "successfully" shot down a U.S. spy satellite that was plummeting toward the earth... that's what they say. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but there is evidence out there that the government has been working on this and that related to the ol' 80's Star Wars program for a while now, so although I'm not sure what they used to shoot the thing down, it is interesting in that context. And yeah, I'm glad they used the Navy supposedly for something useful to protect innocent people from getting bits of satellite debris dropped on their heads.

Finally, one of the best things I received in email this week was a link to the Star Wars Guide to the Candidates. Most are out of the race now, but it's hilarious! Enjoy.

Then What Exactly Does the Pentagon Do?

Here's a scary article - supposedly according to a retired Major General, the Pentagon's disaster planning "couldn't move a Girl Scout unit". Well, in their defense, a bunch of girls is hard to herd, but this is really sad considering the billions we spend in tax dollars that ends up flowing through the Pentagon. So they send us to wars that blow things up, shuffle regimes around, kill people, make terrorism easier to hide and raise the price of gasoline and they push paper around under the auspices of "defense" and "disaster planning" is just a word. That's fine. Anyone else ready to move to Antigua?

I've never worked in the Pentagon and I'm sure if I did, I'd have a different perspective, but I have worked in government and in security and I know that it's a big bumbling bureaucracy. I also know that when things are urgent and important, it is possible to make progress. So here's a note to them: things are urgent and important - there are still terrorists out there and there are other pseudo-natural (i.e. global warming-enhanced) disasters also waiting to occur.

This is a problem that's much bigger than the Pentagon; it's a problem that oozes through layers of government regarding who does what and when. News to lawmakers and government agencies: we the people don't care who does it. We just want it done so we can have a safe, solid, secure, sensible country again.

As much as I can't wait until we have a new president in office, I still acknowledge this problem is much bigger than one leader alone can solve. It takes a village and another village and another... 'nuff said, end rant.

Me, A Sports Writer?

Those who know me wouldn't consider me a sports enthusiast. I'm one of those people who comes up with excuses why not to attend most popular sporting events. I look forward to the Superbowl commercials, I pretend not to know the difference between soccer and lacrosse, and I refuse to watch any basketball except the Kansas Jayhawks (who somehow revived their football team this year in surprise to many). This is simply because it's more of a religion than a sport when you grow up in Kansas.

Well, now I'm going to be reporting about the 2008 U.S. Figure Skating Championships next week for BlogHer in their Sports and Fitness area, and I realized that technically makes me a sports writer. Who would've thought? As a freelance writer, I've written about skating before for newsletters and here (see skating category; see also my post about last year's nationals), but this will be my first professional project and I can't be more thrilled.

I've been skating since I was five, I competed some as a kid and then more as an adult including winning medals at national and international events in my age and test category, and one of the most major accomplishments of my life was passing my Adult Gold Figure Skating Test. That took a lot of time and dedication. I've worked behind the scenes on countless figure skating events, I've done a little judging, and now my two year-old is taking to skating so I'm moving into the role of skating parent. I understand most of the angles and pressures involved in the sport as well as the physical mechanics involved and the number system as to why some things are ranked with more difficulty than others. So I'm looking forward to infusing some of my knowledge into what I write about the event.

For the Nationals TV schedule, current news and an online skating challenge, check out the U.S. Figure Skating Association (USFSA) site. And to get more coverage of the event for figure skating fans, it's inexpensive to join icenetwork.com and see the events from the whole 2007-2008 season online.

What Happened to Customer Service?

I remember the days when you could call someone on the phone and ask them about your computer software or hardware or your ISP account. (OK, so I can still do that for my ISP but it's an independent entity and that's why I use it.) Why is it that these days you can dig, dig, dig on web sites and not get to any actual human responders about questions? I have this eternal curse of being able to crash pretty much anything and nobody ever knows why. I'm a great beta tester and bug reporter, but it should be a two-way street.

I tried making some changes in my Blogger template for this blog tonight, for example, and it royally puked. I have no idea why - well I have a couple of ideas, but still the software shouldn't hang like this. I tried the changes in another browser, same problem. I went to the Help page and there's no human help or link to human help anywhere - no email address, no phone number, no online chat, nothing. Is that what they mean with "you get what you pay for"?

Iowa Caucuses and the Zone Diet

40/30/30 is how the Zone Diet reads - 40% carbs, 30% fat and 30% protein. That's how the Iowa caucus results came across for the Democrats. 38% for Obama, the sugars - what brightens our eyes, what gives us energy and motivates us. 30% for Edwards, the fats - buttering us up, telling us what we want to hear about change. 29% for Clinton, the proteins - for substance, strength and stability.

The truth is we need all of these things. Every diet is different and you can agree or disagree with them, but the Zone Diet immediately came to my mind when I saw the results tonight from the caucuses because the Zone Diet prescribes the ratio of 40:30:30 to keep the human body working. Iowans showed us tonight that they want a mix too.

Whomever will win the Democratic nomination (and from my POV, hopefully the general election) needs to come across with some sugar - inspiring speeches, some fat - issue substance, and some protein - concrete plans for how to achieve the change so craved by the majority of American voters. (I'm just projecting here based on polling, turnout thus far, and the current administration approval level.) I know it sounds silly comparing politics to dieting, but our country has been yo-yo'ing for a while now and we need to stop.

Also posted at here at BlogHer.com.