Postcards from the Funny Farm

Don’t Tase Me, Bro.

-’07’s #1 most memorable quote

As everyone rattles on about their assumptions and vague definitions of Web 2.0 and the new Web 3.0, the truth is that a blog is about caring, and caring and compassion has to be the foundation for the web in the future, from all perspectives, as it becomes more and more dependent upon the social and not just the technical.

-Lorelle on WordPress

Mozilla releases Firefox 3 beta 2 for testing

I’m looking forward to this upgrade, but recently I have gone 100% Netscape, mostly for the superior visual presnetation. Besides that, nearly every Firefox extension is compatible with Netscape.

Jamie Lynn Spears Confirms Pregnancy

I’d been mulling this news over for a couple days now and then this article came out and pretty much said it all. It’s not so much in the dexterity of the writing (the author is 16 herself) but rather the credentials of being in high school and watching these Nickelodeon shows. Besides all that, I am impressed this young lady is already publishing to BlogCritics: Way to go Maddy!

There are scientistic fundamentalists, and they think and behave exactly like religious extremists. They’re just as irrationally attached to their point of view, just as absolutist, just as unable to consider opposing views calmly and reasonably, and just as sure that civilization and the planet can’t survive unless their version of reality is the prevailing one.

-BlogCritics article

I have to say I appreciate this quote.  I am a Christian but not a fundamentalist. I respect the study of science and it complements my world-view. I have run across vehement fundamental scientists (usually professed atheists) and they have less ground in fact than most cults who knock on my doors.

Televangelist refuses to turn over more financial ...

The story linked above caught my eye tonight as I was reading the news. This “preacher” Creflo Dollar (please, couldn’t a man of the cloth change his last name?) is being asked by the senate to turn over financial records and get this: he’s refusing! I find this reprehensible. As a teacher I can barely make ends meet and yet it the state asked me to turn over any financial records or otherwise, I would do so immediately. What is he trying to hide? His church brought in 69 million last year and he lives a very lavish millionaire lifestyle. All we want to know is if they are abiding by the non-profit rules for an organization. My take is that this refusal shows evidence that they are not.

Reuters News: Bush unveils plan to stem wave of fo...

I found the story linked above disturbing, more so than the “wave of foreclosures” it alludes to. People are supposed to count the cost and weigh the risks along with their ability to repay when they get a home loan. Legions of buyers did not do that. In fact, they bought into loans that only required a small payment (sometimes as low as $400/month on a 400K home!) with the agreement that the payment would balloon out after a given period (usually 5 years).

They knew what they were getting into and did it anyway. They should suffer the natural consequences of rushing in where they had no business. Even more important to consider are the legions who DIDN’T buy during the “boom” as these folks did. They either weren’t approved or they wisely decided to not buy into these risky loans What benefit will they be receiving for being wise? Answer: NADA.

They get to go on renting while the government bails out the hasty, mismanaged homeowners now facing forclosure. And while we’re on it, who is government to help people in bad loans? Last I checked our government was multiple trillions in debt. Who’s gonna bail them/us out when they come to repossess our country? My wife and I still rent. I’m 38 and she’s 30. We figure when she starts her career after college our income will give us better long term options to buy. I hate to hear that so many are getting aid for being irresponsible. It’s kind of like when you find out someone with no job got a higher tax return that you did.

It happens.

I usually don’t get confrontational on my blog. After all, it’s just my online diary. However, today I am on a mission to expose local newspaper, Victorville Daily Press, employee named KATHERINE ROSENBERG (I won’t call her a reporter). You see, she said things about my school, and the staff I work with, that are slanted (to put it lightly) and ridiculous. The press should not be able to defame and lie and just get away with it. I hope to give her back own albatross. While she is claiming “freedom of the press,” I am claiming “freedom of my WordPress blog.”

If you are just a mild mannered passerby, I apologize for this heated post . . . check back later for more of the good old Riley Central postings as normally found here!

Before I start my rebuttal to her grouping of words in a printed source (I won’t call it an article), let me encourage you first to read it so you can decide if you agree that it is wrong, irresponsible, and that it should never have been published.

My Synopsis (I will try and be as “unbiased” as possible which is more than she did for my school):

A photographer came to my school, Westside Park School in Adelanto, CA, and set his camera up to the side of our marquee aimed at kids sitting against a wall, playing, and otherwise . . . just being kids. He says now after the incident is over that he was there to do a story on our school. My Principal was made aware of him and the mysterious camera through concerned students and parents who said he was taking pictures of the kids. My Principal went out and no one was at the camera. She picked it up and walked around. Not finding anyone walked it back into the office. If any of you know the corner of Adelanto we are on you can I am sure assume that this COULD have been a very bad person doing very twisted things. The man who brought the camera to our school (again I will not call him a reporter) stormed my Principal with a loud voice and started going on and on about his first amendment rights to be there.

Then he deviously filmed a video happening at the school of a hysterical parent whose child didn’t get on the bus that day to attempt to portray that the principal and the school are negligent towards children. People who work in schools will know that upset parent situations sometimes occur. He saw it as fuel for his fire. A very biased “editorial” posing as a newspaper article was “written” by KATHERINE ROSENBERG, published and as a result thousands of readers who have never heard of our school, now have a negative impression. I’d be surprised to find that either of these people have college degrees and yet the photographer calls my Principal “uneducated.” Does he know the requirements to become a Principal? One I know is a mandatory class in the US constitution (which as of last check includes the 1st Amendment) . Is that a requirement to work at the Daily Press? What loyalty this reporting woman has. What my Principal did was done to protect children, I have no clue what the Daily Press’ motive was other than to slake their thirst for vengeance at her and my school.

The fact of the matter is that my school is an extraordinary example of what teachers and Principals can do when child achievement becomes a priority. The Academic Performance Index (API) of Westside Park School, a High Desert ‘inner city’ type demographic school with 90+% of its students on free lunch programs, was In 2003 “560.” The latest official data from the California Department of Education attests to astronomical growth now in 2007, Westsdie’s API sits at 755. The Daily Press put us in an article stating this days earlier but the title unflatteringly reads adroitly: “Two Adelanto schools get out of the Hole.” They pair us with George School which, although I am very happy for and proud of George teachers, is at the rock bottom of the District. Westside has worked HARD (students, parents, and teachers) for years incorporating state of the art technology and strategies such as “Explicit Direct Instruction” (EDI) and even now serves as a model training school for the District. You won’t find that in the Daily Press. We will continue this trend regardless of what the daily Press “reports.”

In my opinion every parent (and while a teacher myself, I am also a parent of a 9 year old in the district and two other young babies at home) should want a Principal to go out across the street from the school (and ED Code permits this) to seize something that might be harmful to students. I say: this person should have come into the office and said: “Hi I am from the Daily Press and I am going to be taking a few pictures for an article on your school.” That would have solved everything. Instead, he was devious and later chose to get KATHERINE ROSENBERG to publish a smearing article that has very very little truth in it if any. He should have come in in respect for kids, parents, and education, if not for HIS own safety.

Please let me know what you think of what he did. I need to understand if I am off-base here. KATHERINE ROSENBERG is invited to as well.

While I’m mentioning KATHERINE ROSENBERG, I think she owes Westside Kids Another Article. You may contact me for an interview Katherine. Make it right.

Please feel free to spread this article around the blogosphere by using the “Share This” button below. Thank you.

Doc Searls Weblog has a great feature this morning that really captivated my attention. He gives extended quotations from a couple of experts on the new “IP” based “on demand” television services that are coming out. It would appear to the experts that advertising on television (as well as in life in general) is quick falling by the wayside thanks to modern technology and the power being in the hands of the viewer, not the media (bold are Doc’s words):

Terry Heaton, TV consultant extraordinaire, writes:

I just moved into a house, and the nice fellow from Verizon came yesterday and installed FIOS, which is the new 800-pound gorilla in this whole TV/Internet thing. Everything’s available on-demand. There’s a button you push that shrinks the screen and reveals real time weather and traffic information, provided by some distant company (why not a local media company?).

Everything is IP-driven, so the system is two-way without a phone line. Viewing metrics won’t be based on panels or algorithms or statistical analysis or any formula-based guesswork.

If you can do it online, you can do it on your TV. Widget development has just begun. The thing is absolutely amazing, and Verizon makes everything customer-friendly. (BTW, My internet is lightning fast, although not up to what’s advertised.) I mean, I hate to sound like a commercial, but you cannot imagine the difference until you have it. I’ve been writing about Fiber To The Home (FTTH) for years, and it lives up to its potential.

I have never been more convinced that the business model of television is at serious risk and that broadcasters who continue to believe that their real competition is the guy across town (see Steve’s excellent piece below) are on a one-way path to the tar pits. It is not a time for same-old, same-old, and reaching for revenue in a multi-platform delivery paradigm alone is not going to produce enough revenue growth to offset losses to our incumbent businesses.

Local information is rapidly becoming commoditized, and that’s our core competency. You can’t scale a content business in such an environment; the economics have to come from elsewhere. This is path two of our Simulpath™ strategy for local media.

He also points to Jeff Jarvis, responding to this report, which says online advertising will be bigger than newspaper advertising by 2011:

The report also says that our total media usage is declining, though what’s interesting to me is that part of this, they say, comes from efficiency and that’s an important concept in the morphing of media: The internet exposes the inefficiencies of old media for both “consumers” and advertisers. The internet makes direct connections. Note also in the report that we are taking in less ad-supported media because there is more media without ads and also, again, because we can connect directly to information around advertising.

The vector here is not toward more advertising online. It’s toward less advertising overall, and a less “mediated” world.

This is a world where The Media will only be part of the mediated picture. Consumers will always be legion, but with producers and intermediaries becoming legion as well, what makes the rest of the picture? The short answer is anything. This should be good for the economy, as well as civilization, even as it threatens every institution that ever called itself “media”.

What inflates the Web 2.0 bubble is not the technologies and practices it encompasses, but the belief by businesses old and new that advertising will sustain everybody as a “business model” (a term which, along with “content”, became buzzvogue during the Web 1.0 bubble). Free money is a huge reality distortion field, but that’s how too much business looks right now from downstream in the tidal flow of advertising money from many old media to one big new one.

But, to mix metaphors, trees do not grow to the sky.

Advertising has always been woefully inefficient. Improving targeting and making advertising accountable by counting click-throughs does not solve the problem that advertising has always been an exercise in guesswork. At some point the guessing ends — not by absolute improvements in targeting, but by the creation of new methods by which demand finds supply. These methods will be anchored in better tools for customers, and better means for sellers and intermediaries to satisfy demand by connecting to better-equipped customers.

The Net revolution has always been about radically improving the connections between demand and supply, and about equipping profusions on both sides of the relationship — while reducing intermediary costs and frictions in the direction of zero.

As a term for describing this development, “commoditization” is a misleading failure. Roles are changing far more than “content” — a term which itself misleads by reducing the informing of people to deliverable commodities. People still need to inform other people. More ways to do that will emerge. There will be business models there. Supply and demand will find each other. We need to figure out how to make new and better money with new and better roles. Advertising will still be part of that picture, but it won’t fund the whole thing.

(quotation source)