“We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.”
— George Carlin rant on why the planet is fine
“RSS is just a little peep, a signal, a ping that comes from a favorite blog or site, telling your computer that it has been updated. If you have an RSS reader (and they’re free and easy, and two of the easiest live on the web so you don’t even have to install anything), whenever a blog is updated, it shows up in your reader and you can catch up on the news. If there’s nothing new, it doesn’t show up and you don’t have to waste time surfing around.”
— Seth Godin
Timothy Johnston was executed this morning at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. It had been delayed by appeals based on the argument that Missouri’s method of execution (lethal injection) is cruel and unusual punishment. Johnston seemed intent to prove his defense was true as he writhed on the gurney for what seemed like a minute. But some witnesses thought he was moving before the first drug was administered.
If his death was painful, it couldn’t have been much worse than being beaten and kicked to death which is how Tim dispatched his wife back in 1989.
But let’s assume he did fake the pain, as it were. You’re just seconds from crossing over to The Other Side, hoping you know what awaits but no way to know for sure… and you pretend to be in agonizing pain to…what? Make some kind of political statement?! That takes some real focus.
And having one of the corrections officers lean over and whisper, “Dude, we didn’t give you the shot yet” …would take me out of character.
Today our farm network did a live webcast from the Nebraska State Fair. It was a 90 minute panel discussion on technology in agriculture and it was great radio. Except I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on the radio. Just our website. In fact, the last eight or ten ag events we’ve covered have not even been put up on our satellite channel and offered to our affiliated radio stations. We’d love it it they would air these long-form programs but program directors are less and less willing to air more than a short ag report in the middle of the day. And I’m not sure they’re wrong.
Are we (the network) wrong to produce this programming? We’re pretty sure Nebraska corn farmers are interested in anything having to do with ethanol. But if you’re the program director of a radio station in the middle of Nebraska, you ask yourself what percentage of my listeners want to listen to someone talk about corn for an hour. Wouldn’t our listeners rather hear some good country music?
Probably. But, as a former small-town program director, I’m convinced there is a “cool factor” at work here, too. It just isn’t cool to air all that farm stuff. Country music is cool. And everybody likes country music, the people in town and the people on the farm. It’s the safe call.
This is where we encounter the long tail of ag programming. While there may be only a few hundred people that care about the future of ethanol in Nebraska, they care very much. And it’s getting harder and harder for them to find in-depth, real-time programming on their local radio station. Enter the web with streaming audio and podcasts all the rest. You want an hour on sugar beets in southern Indiana? No problem, click here.
Radio stations could have it both ways. Put the longer, in-depth programming on their web site and promote same on the air. But radio station owners do not perceive the need. And they no logner have the staff to do much of anything “extra.” At the same time, their listeners are just a Google search away from that they want. And they don’t care too much about where they get it.
Once upon a time, the only place a farmer in Ogallala could get farm news and prices was on his local radio station. Advertisers who wanted to sell stuff to those farmers only had to advertise on that station. It was the natural order of things. The good old days.
Dear Red States:
We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us.
In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon,Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no
purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most
of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale,Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
By the way, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.
Peace out,
Blue States
Kyle Lewis missed going to church one Sunday last month. But he did not miss the sermon. Mr. Lewis, who regularly attends services of the National Community Church in Alexandria, Va., listened to the sermon while he was at the gym, through a recording he had downloaded to his iPod. Instead of listening to the rock music his gym usually plays, he heard his pastor’s voice. [NYTimes.com]
This just makes so much sense to me. I can’t believe every church isn’t doing this. Back in my radio days, the local churches paid to get air time and had to fight for it at that. I look for lots of applications like this. Literally every meeting will be recorded and made available online. School board meetings, chamber of commerce meetings…whatever.
I have always been ambivalent about adding comments to my posts. I know it’s the “right” thing to do but I don’t want to spend even 5 minutes monitoring and deleting crap. And while it’s not the same, anyone can email me if they have something to say and I frequently add it to the post.
And now we read that a blogger is being sued as a result of something someone wrote in a comment to one of his posts. Maybe it’s like inviting half a dozen close friends over for a few beers. You can discuss and argue and even yell dirty words at each other and that’s okay. But you don’t want some dildo off the street to come in and join the conversation. At least I don’t. I gotta think some more about this.
Like Dilbert, I routinely delete any email that has a subject of: Urgent, Hey!, Yo! Stuff. If you don’t care enough to provide a useful subject line, I don’t care enough to open your email.
NBC news anchor Brian Williams has been blogging (The Daily Nightly) for a few months and seems to be doing a pretty good job of it. He’s careful not to “traffic in gossip or observations that might breach his journalistic objectivity” and tends to focus more on the deliberations among his colleagues at NBC Nightly News.
This is just the kind of peek behind the scenes I think would be good for our news networks but I don’t see it happening anytime soon (see previous post). Most reporters do not feel they need to explain or justify their reports or stories and the last thing they want to do is interact with their readers/listeners. Is Brian Williams less of a journalist now that he’s contributing to a blog? More on this at NYTIMES.com (you might need a password).
USATODAY.com: Retailers are creating blogs to promote brand awareness and sales. A recent study by online market research firm ComScore Networks found that shoppers who visit blogs spend about 6% more than the average online shopper. “The people who spend time on our blog are the people who are … the very top customers that we have,” says a former CEO of fashion catalog Spiegel.
I’m of the opinion that EVERY company should be blogging. No one is interested in your static, boring “About Us” website. And, frankly, I’ve got a few of those up myself. If you’re gonna be online, talk to your customers. Listen to them. Blog.
But I have a hunch it’s going to be harder to find people to feed the blog beast than than we realize. It almost certainly won’t be the guy that writes your bullshit company news releases. I used to write radio commercials and I’m pretty sure that in no way prepares someone to blog. And a lot of news writers are terrible at the blog format. So I’m wondering, why is it so hard for some folks to write a decent blog post? I think it probably has something to do with honesty. Specifically, that “voice” thing.
Blogging is kind of like writing a letter to a friend…but letting the entire world read over your should. And if you’re faking it, people somehow know it. In much the same way the “America’s Funniest Home Videos” producers know when they’re watching a true candid moment or something staged.
I had lunch with Chuck this week. He’s been blogging for less than six months but picked it up quickly. We talked about where you would look to find people to hire to blog for a business or organzation. The first thing that popped into my head was, I would never hire someone to blog professionally if they were not already blogging. Frankly, there would be no way to know if they could do it…unless they WERE doing it.
I’m not sure I could get a job as a blogger. But the real acid test would be right here at smays.com. If you’re reading this, you probably know everything you need to know about me. No personality profile. No writing tests. You could probably skip the interview. If you couldn’t hire me based on what I’ve posted here, you wouldn’t want me. Blogging is about honesty and transparency and hanging it out there. Could someone scam me with a bogus blog? Could they fake it? Maybe for a few posts… but it would be hard work to keep up that kind of charade for weeks or months.
If I had to go looking for a new job tomorrow, I would not bother updating a resume. I’d just send them here. They could read for 3 minutes or three hours and know everything they need to know about me.