Year: 2008

Can the President of the U.S. use e-mail?

The Times has a nice little article today about why Barack Obama will probably have to give up the use of his Blackberry - and e-mail altogether - when he becomes President:

As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

Surely there's some middle ground to keep a President as tech-savvy as Barack Obama from being forced off of e-mail altogether? I mean, this is the guy who announced his VP pick by SMS text message, for crying out loud.

Here are some scenarios to explore: Continue reading "Can the President of the U.S. use e-mail?" →

Links, and what I'm thinking about

I haven't had the chance to blog lately, but here are some bits and pieces to chew on. First, some links:

Some topics I'm thinking about, and may eventually blog about:
Continue reading "Links, and what I'm thinking about" →

The Most Important Part

The most important words spoken last night, I think:

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Congratulations to President-elect Obama, and to all of the people who put themselves into the political spotlight during this campaign to seek change in their communities at all levels. May the integrity and dreams of a better world that got you this far continue to ground you in the years to come.

Buy Local press conference - at the mall?

It's not April first yet, so I couldn't really stop my jaw from dropping to the ground on this one: The Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce and the City of Richmond will be holding a press conference tomorrow afternoon to promote buying local - to be held at the mall, which is predominantly occupied by chain stores.

It seems like QUITE an unfortunate juxtaposition to me to have this kind of announcement in that kind of setting.

Malls like the Richmond Square Mall certainly provide great shopping opportunities, but tend to be populated by businesses that are not locally owned and that give less back to the local economy and community over the long run than businesses that are locally owned. In most "buy local" campaigns across the country, one of the primary goals is to get shoppers to expand their notion of shopping opportunities beyond "the mall" to once again consider what small business districts and downtowns have to offer.

If Richmond residents think that buying local just means going to a shop within city limits, the potential impact of the buy-local message is diluted as their dollars leave the community for corporate headquarters elsewhere.

I asked the Chamber and Mayor's office to reconsider the venue - feel free to do the same if you're so inclined.

Undo

Corn Maze Navigation Done RightYou may have noticed that I was playing around with the Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress, and that it was generating these weekly digests of my Twitter posts on Fridays.  I'm not going to do that anymore, but you can always follow me on Twitter directly or with your favorite blog/RSS feed reader/twitter tool or by looking in the sidebar of the blog front page.

I'm removing Google ads from my blog.  I'm tired of them, and they're not earning their keep.

You can now subscribe to the comments of a specific post such that you receive an e-mail message when new comments are posted.  Look for the checkbox right where you submit your comment.

As always, feedback is welcome, drop me a line.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-10-31

  • "I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing, I think I thought I saw you try, but that was just a dream." #
  • Important lesson from the movie Atonement: always encrypt sensitive communications, especially love letters delivered by young children. #
  • Oh no, the U.S. military has realized that the Internet is a communications tool for vegetarians: http://tinyurl.com/5jmxcj #
  • @DougMasson Great! They had a verifiable paper trail in place this year, right? in reply to DougMasson #
  • I'm considering going rogue, everybody's doing it. #
  • Three movies I suggest you avoid: "Noise" (too weird) "Queensized" (too cheesy) and "Silver City" (what the heck WAS that?) #
  • Hi, I'm ____ and I'll be your dedicated Dell sales rep until I'm replaced right after you place an order and my email address stops working. #
  • Congratulations on convincing yourself that today's stock market gains mean that everything is going to be okay. #
  • @jlharter Yes, who are those folks and what brought them here? And wait, who are you? 🙂 in reply to jlharter #
  • @hodgman If you have to ask, maybe you already know the answer? Unless you're being melodramatic for effect, in which case, carry on sir. in reply to hodgman #
  • If dogs take over the world, and chose a king, I hope they don't just go by size, b/c I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas. #
  • Today I pressed some areas on a screen and a machine told me I voted. I asked it to give me a paper trail, and it was silent. Machine wins. #

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Too many community builders in one town?

GazeboOne of the recurring themes in my writing in speaking about how to make our communities more self-reliant is that we can't necessarily depend on entities and organizations that aren't locally rooted to address the issues that are of local concern. The natural corollary to this is that, in addition to individual citizens taking action, we should be able to look to locally rooted organizations to be moving the community forward, helping us make it the place we want it to be.

But one only has to look at the long list of community building organizations and entities in Richmond - and the overlap, duplication, and even competition that some of them represent for each other - to wonder if maybe this isn't an area where we're actually holding ourselves back instead of moving ourselves forward.

Consider, in no particular order: Continue reading "Too many community builders in one town?" →

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-10-24

  • If I survived that high ropes course today, surely I can wean these kittens off of their bottles. #
  • What a lovely day, full of those moments C.S. Lewis described: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one." #
  • Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet. #
  • New blog post, "On practicing what you preach" #
  • Why do the caterpillar and the ant have to be enemies? One eats leaves, and the other eats caterpillars. Oh, I see now. #
  • NO CARRIER #
  • New blog post: Failed Attempts at Being You #
  • Maybe some day, the Drupal project will get its security vulnerability announcements down to less than what seems like 1 per hour. #
  • Ending a long and interesting day, looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. You? #
  • Getting on the road to speak to some great folks in Cincinnati. #

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Failed Attempts at Being You

I keep encountering this quote and keep liking it, so here it is:

"The world in which you were born is just one model of reality.

Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit." --Wade Davis

I'm not sure I have much more to add, beyond some related queries to chew on:

  1. In what ways do I assume that my model of reality is everyone else's model of reality?
  2. When do I hold other people and other cultures to a standard of success that is defined by becoming or being me?
  3. What threatens me about people and cultures that have different goals and hopes than I do?
  4. How can my sense of spirit and life be nurtured by appreciating other (sometimes radically different) manifestations of spirit and life?