Has anyone noticed how Darwinists were the ones who were mainly promoting and worrying over global warming, and that it was the opposite in the case of Creationists?:

And now, it’s recently been found that the some of the top global warming scientists, all Darwinists, had been lying about there being a global warming trend, and that Earth had actually been cooling, possibly about to enter another ice age even (on the ice age site is a link to a book being sold which goes along with the false claim that Earth is billions of years old, and that animals suddenly evolved new useful features or into other animals because of magnetic reversals, but obviously magnets don’t cause people to grow wings or tails).

One notorious psuedo-scientist, a trolling idiot, claimed that it wasn’t true that Darwinists were the ones always promoting global warming when a notorious plagiarist atheist and wannabe-wise woman noticed the same thing months ago, claiming, “Not true” because oil companies were denying global warming. So a few oil companies are the majority of Darwinists? There are so many millions of Darwinists oil companies that other atheists not apart of any oil companies or any company at all are just a small minority? And how can oil companies deliberately lying (lying in their own minds) count as people who sincerely deny the truth, if, again, they “knew” they were lying? How absurd and stupid atheists are, especially Darwinist ones.

On top of that, Mr. “Not True” Atheist was lying about all oil companies denying global warming, though in my judgment in his ignorance being that he busies himself trolling Christian creationists, desperately and frantically posting mere claims without evidence to defend anti-Christian doctrine, like he did in this case, rather than carefully researching.

So, Psuedo Christian Science Monitorers, who seven months ago mocked Christians and those who believed in Intelligent Design scientists over their disbelief of global warmin, lumping them in with astrologers, and who continues to mock them, clearly, the jokers, are you, the evil type: mockers. Not April fools, you liberal fools.

By Alexander C. Kaufman

Gregory Lamb has whetted our lips for a coming technological phenomenon: augmented reality.  In his latest post in Innovation, a technology blog, he provides five different examples of computerized perception, be it with glasses, iPhone applications, scannable baseball cards, among others.  The brief summary of augmented reality which began the post was almost the only text in the article, the overviews of the examples being Youtube videos.

Though Lamb promises a full article next week, the videos exemplify the diverse range of products available to computerize everyday life.  A BMW technician dons a pair of glasses which digitally instruct him on how to do repairs.  An iPhone user in London seeks out a nearby Underground station on the smart phone’s screen.  By imaging a parcel in available shipping box sizes, a US Postal Service customer selects the best fit.  Esquire magazine premiers a barcoded publication with interactive features for the computer.  A baseball card collector plays a miniature videogame with his cards.  Gamers are enthralled with tags that activate 3D action figures onscreen.

Needless to say, virtual reality is no longer the mere plaything of arcade-goers and science fictionists.  And as it is further synthesized into everyday life, so is electronic storytelling into journalism.  While the post contains little text besides an introductory summary and a title for each video, the videos themselves provide the meat of the article.

And moreover, Lamb shows the variety and breadth of available products and just how accessible a digitalized view of the world has become.

Here are the videos:

Chicago schools get new tool in fight against youth violence | csmonitor.com

Last week, the Anchorage Daily News’ Alaska Newsreader blog reported on a story from the Huffington Post’s The Daily Beast blog that ranked Alaska second in failing to properly feed its people. The story used data from a new USDA survey on household food security in 2008, where Alaska was ranked in the middle of the pack, but it re-ranked the states based on the household food security rankings combined with statewide income and access to programs (including bureaucratic issues) that feed the hungry. By the way, Colorado had the dubious No. 1 ranking. The Juneau Empire ran an editorial from the Washington Post about the USDA survey that compared food insecurity vs. hunger.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Science blog reported on a food security meeting in Fairbanks earlier this month hosted by the Sustainable Community Action Network for Fairbanks (SCANFairbanks, site hasn’t been updated in more than a year). The UAF SNRAS blog article mentioned food security projects from around the state, including work being done by the Sitka Local Foods Network. The Fairbanks Community Cooperative Market blog also had an article about the meeting.

The food security issue has been around for awhile. Earlier this year, the Alaska Food Coalition reported on Alaska’s Hungriest Communities. More than a year ago, back when Sarah Palin still was governor, Kim Sollien of the Alaska Trust Food Network (and Chickaloon Tribe) wrote an open letter to then-Gov. Palin detailing Alaska’s food security problems. While the letter is more than a year old, many of the issues still exist. Last year, the Christian Science Monitor ran an article about Alaska’s food challenges and how new farmers are coming online.

In other local foods news this week, the Tundra Drums reported that a teacher from the Kuskokwim River village of Quinhagak is receiving a $10,000 grant from former talk show host Jenny Jones’ foundation to build a community greenhouse.

Laine Welch’s Alaska Fisheries column this week discussed how more halibut this year was consumed in homes instead of restaurants.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported on a problem moose hunters in the Interior have been having with Tanana Valley Meats being overloaded so it’s taking too long to process the meat, processed meat returns have been light and some meat has been rancid.

Finally, the Alaska Dispatch reported on a KTVA-TV story about Permafrost Alaska Vodka, which is made by Glacier Creek Distillery and uses potatoes grown in the Mat-Su valleys, earning a top ranking from the Beverage Tasting Institute of Chicago.

A recent editorial in the Christian Science Monitor, “Time to End Home Subsidies,” gets it half right.  It rightly criticizes Washington for continuing housing subsidies.  It points up how such policies in the past have misallocated resources and have led to boom-bust cycles, of which the most recent is one of the harshest.  It also correctly warns that if the subsidies continue, so will this destructive and painful pattern.  But then it goes on to urge a different emphasis on Washington, a subsidy for export industries.  That would be a mistake.  The Monitor would simply substitute one destructive distortion with another.

It is not that exports are bad.  On the contrary, they help with economic growth and job creation.  But then, neither is home ownership bad.  It shelters people and creates a sense of community.  The problem lies in Washington subsidies themselves, whatever the chosen beneficiary.  Washington’s money always brings excess and overbuilding that then begs a painful economic correction.  The editorial actually, if inadvertently, points to the evidence of such folly by drawing a parallel to Japan.  The government in Tokyo has spent decades subsidizing exports at the expense of consumption and home building, and though the effort helped Japan grow at first, it has in large part been responsible for that economy’s inflexibilities and its sub-par growth of the last 20 years.

Like anything else in life, economic prosperity depends on balance and an ability to adjust to new information.  When the government push’s subsidies, it runs on rules and policies that are out of date before they are even e-mailed to the functionaries who administer them.  There is no flexibility, no adjustment.  Government cannot help but go too far, a fact to which the housing disaster speaks loudly.  It would happen with exports, too, if government were to get involved.  Better that Washington simply get out of the subsidy business altogether.

I got a call from a lawyer the other day. “How are you?” I said. “Better than you will be,” she replied. Turns out she was calling on behalf of Ode Magazine to tell me they could not afford to pay their bills and I would not be getting compensated for my contribution to their magazine. They wanted to be up front with me and with everyone else who was beating down their doors to get paid for their work.  I wrote an article on touring Brazil’s favelas for their spring travel issue. It was the first time I’d written an article for a magazine and I was very proud.  They asked for 1500 words and said they’d pay fifty cents a word.  The story ended up being 900 words but they’d pay me $750 anyway.  They warned me it would take a long time to get paid.  Eight months later I was starting to feel my story would not have a happy ending.

I’d like to say I’m angry or even disappointed by Ode’s failure to follow through but more than anything I’m sad.  This was a really good publication and the editors had wonderful intentions to create a smart magazine for “intelligent optimists.”  They were responsive and seemed to work very hard from their offices in the Bay Area and the Netherlands.  But the economy is killing Ode Magazine just as it’s ushering in the demise of so many publications.  Ode can’t even afford to file for Chapter 11 so it can reorganize.  Short of a funding miracle, Ode Magazine will most likely die a quiet death.  The magazine is trying to raise $50,000 in the next ten days to stay afloat. 

By the end of the year we’ll have written the obituaries of Metropolitan Home, Fortune Small Business, and Conde Nast’s Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride.  Other magazines bit the dust before them.  They were victims of a declining advertising market where ad sales, according to one report, were down almost 12% since 2008, while the cost of printing continues to skyrocket.  Newspapers are taking it on the chin even worse than magazines as we’ve seen with the deaths of the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, even the Christian Science Monitor.

More established publications have been able to downsize, outsource and cut costs but it seems Ode Magazine, even with its good intentions, might not be able to outrun the bad economy.  There are many others besides myself who are not getting paid for their work.  For me, it is the very first time in my career.  The money would have been nice but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter that much.  What matters is that a really good magazine is running out of time and another voice will be silenced.

For more information on Vicky Collins visit http://teletrendstv.com.

An archivist at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague files some of the 280 million pages’ worth of secret-police reports. (Photo: mjj)

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, some in Eastern Europe miss the days of full employment and before free elections brought extremism.

By Michael J. Jordan | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

From the November 8, 2009 edition

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC; and PARTIZÁNSKE, SLOVAKIA – In the airy lobby of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, George Santayana’s immortal words are a daily reminder to Czech staffers digitizing millions of Communist-era files: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Yet even the institute’s spokesman says his grandparents criticize the organization’s mission. They brush aside four decades of neighbors and co-workers spying on one another in the former Czechoslovakia and long wistfully for a time of full employment.

“My grandmother says the Com­munists were great, while my grandfather says we’re stupid to open the archives, because people don’t have jobs, which is more important than … history,” says Jiri Reichl.

On the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germans and others across the world are celebrating the moment that clinched the end of the cold war. But the Czech Republic reflects another trend across Eastern Europe, 20 years into the traumatic shift from dictatorship to democracy: creeping nostalgia.

Each positive development of “democracy” ushered in negative consequences: Free-market competition brought soaring prices and joblessness; free elections brought extremist parties; free press brought incitement; free movement brought cross-border crime and westward “brain drain.”

Nostalgia is born of deep disillusionment with the present, says Libuse Valentova, a Czech professor.

“People here admired the freedom and prosperity of the Western world,” says Ms. Valentova, who tears up when recalling her time in the streets during the 1968 anti-Soviet revolt. “Now what they see is materialism, corruption, inflation, lawlessness – and they can’t find spiritual or material prosperity.”

COLD WAR’S END BROUGHT HARSH COMPETITION

Generations reared during Com­mun­ism typically yearn for the days of free healthcare and education, of more affordable goods and services. But they forget the years of deprivation, poor-quality goods and services – and the climate of fear and severe censorship. Most frustrating to them is the divide between those who could and couldn’t adapt.

Take the city of Partizánske, in neighboring Slovakia. The vast Bata shoe factory, at its zenith, employed 10,000 workers, produced 30 million pairs of shoes, and saw factory officials and ruling Communists control every facet of work and social life.

“Here was ‘Strong Bata’ and ‘Strong Socialism,’ ” says Partizánske’s mayor, Jan Podmanicky. “Families didn’t have to struggle for anything, because the boss provided all their needs.”

‘WHEN THERE’S NO WORK, NO MONEY, THERE’S NO HAPPY LIFE’

That was just fine by Julius Mich­nik, who arrived here in 1943 as a 15-year-old apprentice. He attended mandatory morning exercise in the town square, then donned his uniform and headed to the factory.

“If you worked hard, you made enough money; even enough to save some,” says Mr. Michnik, now president of the company’s alumni association.

In time, he joined the party. “I was a Communist,” says Mich­nik, who later had 1,500 workers under him. “To be a director, you had to be.… But I’m not ashamed. I never did anything bad to anybody.”

When the regime crumbled in 1989, so did the firm. Asian competitors meant that only a sliver of the workforce remains.

“This is the hardest thing to learn about the new system: Things rise, things vanish,” says the mayor. “How do you teach people to be independent and take responsibility for themselves? People from the outside can give you advice, but you have to change yourself.”

Laid-off workers remind Michnik of what was lost. “Work, it’s the most important thing,” he says. “I see all the unemployed here, spending their last cents in the bar around the corner. When there’s no work, no money, there’s no happy life.”

UNEMPLOYMENT: 14 PERCENT

Back on the Czech side, Jan Klan is from the youth wing of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, the third-largest parliamentary party.

Just 26, Mr. Klan is a Communist candidate for parliamentary elections next year. His grandfather was a Communist, as was his mother, the local party official in their Bohemian village of Záborí nad Labem.

When the system disintegrated, some neighbors turned on her. “They blamed her for what the Communists did,” says her son.

Whereas the Communist era boasted “full employment,” joblessness here is now 14 percent. Drawn to Communist solutions, Klan joined the party in 2003.

In the old days, too, the party ordered Záborí nad Labem residents to regularly clean up their village. They resented it, but the village stayed tidy. Today, no one is required to pick up litter or tend to vegetation – and residents decry the slovenliness.

If elected, Klan says he would offer residents an economic incentive to clean up. But what if he has no budget, or if they simply refuse? Would Communists revert to their brutal methods of the past?

“We would want to change the mentality, that they should do it for the good of the village,” he says. “I know there were some mistakes in the past that we would want to avoid. It would be against human rights to force someone to do something.”

Mr. Reichl, of the Prague Institute, says such whitewashing – simply noting “mistakes” – drives his colleagues to not only expose the regime’s secrets, but “do PR for history,” to puncture nostalgia with public events, exhibits, and classroom education.

“We don’t want the younger generations to forget,” he says. “We want them to think about the history of their own family and friends, and what actually happened during this period.”

View the original article here.

“Anyone with a laptop thinks he’s a journalist.”

Are you talking about me?

Actually, I think I was one of the few people at last night’s panel discussion who wasn’t typing away as the four participants ruminated on “The Future of News.” (The incessant keyboard clacking behind my right ear was particularly irritating.) The event at Yale featured some of the usual hand-wringing among some veteran journalists  over the rise of the New Media (blogging, YouTube, Twitter, etc.) and the demise of the dinosaurish Old Media, a slow death many others seem to relish.

I don’t. And neither do the panelists: Ward Chamberlin, author of the opening quote, David Greenway, Robert Kaiser, and John Yemma. But we all seem resigned to the fact that changes are afoot, many of them not good. The Old Media is trying to adapt, but cultural and financial forces are a major obstacle.

Suffice to say, we will most likely not see again the Golden Age of American Journalism the four panelists represent. Between them, I would guess they have well over one hundreds years of experience. Chamberlin was present at the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR; Kaiser has worked for almost 50 years at the Washington Post, as both a reporter and editor; Greenway has been at the Post and the Boston Globe; and Yemma worked under Greenway at the Globe and now works for the Christian Science Monitor.

Ward Chamberlin

Ah, the Golden Age: Chamberlin recalled the days of Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow at CBS, and mentioned their news programs that not only recorded events, but shaped them, in particular Murrow’s piece on Joseph McCarthy. Friendly’s ethos, as recounted by Chamberlin: “What the American people aren’t told [by governments, corporations] may kill them.” Without investigative reporting, the kind that goes on for months and requires big bucks to finance, what New Media outlets are going to uncover the deadly, hidden truths? The Huffington Post? Hmm…

CBS News set a high standard for foreign reporting too, with bureaus around the world. All the panelists lamented the decline in foreign news, while globalization speeds along. How can we deal with the economic challenges India and China will present (are presenting), not to mention the security challenges of foreign terrorists, when several major papers have closed all their overseas bureaus, and TV news virtually ignores all but the most obvious foreign stories?

Robert Kaiser

For the Washington Post, Kaiser said, the salad days meant huge profits, now-unheard-of  levels of subscription “penetration” in the local market, and the kind of investigative reporting that helped bring down a felonious president. The Post once made $130 million in annual profits. It now loses about $100 million every year. Only the Post company’s cash cow, Kaplan Test Prep, keeps the newsgathering afloat. The other two remaining major dailies, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, also lose money.

New Media outlets are sometimes called aggregators, as bloggers gather up links and presents them in “their” news blogs (of course, most of the substantive links, the ones you regularly trust, go back to Old Media stories). The great papers were once aggregators of another kind, Kaiser said. They collected readers from a variety of backgrounds and gave them a common cultural identity. Everybody read about the JFK assassination or the first man on the moon. Now, the specialization of many New Media outlets fragments the audience, to the detriment of a sense of national culture (and forget about consensus). The papers also aggregated talent: Smart, young journalists wanted to work for the biggies, and they learned from smart old journalists and tried to keep some professional standards (in theory, anyway). The solitary bloggers are not part of a community, might have an ax to grind, just might not be any good. Some people like the free-for-all nature of it; so what if a little truth gets tossed aside along the way.

David Greenway

Greenway talked about the blurring of opinion and news. Now, I have always argued there is no such thing as objective news, but there is accurate news. The rise of opinion shows on news channels, especially Fox, seems to dampen the call for accuracy as networks put more emphasis on entertainment. On the Internet, Greenway says, the problem is even worse, since there is no gatekeeper of any kind, no concern for checking facts. Yes,  we should get a variety of viewspoints – though I doubt many people who rely solely on the New Media for their news do – but if all the views are just plain wrong, what kind of conclusions can you draw? Pretty ill-informed ones. Greenway sums it up: “Civil discourse is being debased and dumbed down.”

John Yemma - yes, another old (oldish) white guy...

Yemma approached the subject form a different angle. The CSM, in the name of cost cutting, has stopped printing its daily paper (a “green” decision as well) and put almost all its content on the Web. (Yes, even a non-profit news organization has to think about losing less money.) And who knows, Yemma says, online ads and some subscription services could even make a profit for the Monitor. Yemma says web traffic is up, though story word counts are down (folks can buy the CSM’s weekly newsmagazine for deeper analysis of key events), and he trumpets the up-to-the-minute nature of the e-paper, something that has made the Post’s and Times’s websites popular too. But those are Old Media newsgathers using modern tools; it’s not really New Media.

The CSM approach may or may not be a model for others in the Old Media. Other alternatives include the non-profit, independent online “newspapers” that are popping up, with income (usually from grants and the like) paying real reporters to cover local events. New Haven has one, among other cities. But again, for the national stories, the foreign, the deep investigative reports, you need the funding a large corporation provides.

Or a billionaire. The great urban newspapers were mostly founded by wealthy citizens of a community. They and their families ran the paper as a public service – and an ego boost – not a source of income. As those papers die off or get swallowed up, the bottom line replaces the sense of responsibility, of the duty to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Maybe it will take a Gates or Buffet to use some of his billions to endow a newspaper foundation. Of course, some sort of wall between the paper’s journalistic duties and their benefactors’ business interests would have to be erected.

Newspapers are a fairly new development in the world’s cultural history – less than 400 years old. Electronic newsgathering is a mere tyke. The tools change, the formats change. But there’s one constant, at least in America -  voters in a republic need access to accurate information from a source separate from vested interests. I know some New Media do that. And plenty of corporate Old Media is pretty well vested in the status quo. But the Drudge Report’s releasing a leaked memo or some guy videotaping a candidate saying “macaca” does not quite equal Murrow, Woodward, and Bernstein. (Though YouTube videos from Iranian protests were gripping, and the Internet does make it easier for Old Media companies to use foreign stringers to replace some of their shuttered bureaus.) Maybe the New Media will reach that level of relevance, as far as playing a role in meaningful civil discourse. But will it be something truly new that emerges from that media, or an adaptation of the Old Media to the new technology?

I close with quotes from two of the Founders on the importance of journalists, not bloviators and aggregators. Ben Franklin: “When Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.” And James Madison: “To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity, over error and oppression.” Let’s hope the New Media  lives up to those standards, and the Old Media that have strayed return to their roots.

By Alexander C. Kaufman

Little has kept Gregory Lamb, a Christian Science Monitor (CSM) staff writer and editor, silent.  His hefty portfolio of articles includes movie and book reviews, cutting-edge technology reports and environmental blogging.  But the diversity of his beat is itself a testament to the multi-faceted specialization media-consumers have come to expect of online journalists.

The Internet age has redefined the New York minute, setting new standards for brevity and quickness and a front page story is usually outdated before the newspaper even goes to print.  So with the CSM, formerly a print daily, adapting to its new business plan–daily online editions and emails, weekly print edition–Lamb’s multiple blogs on environment and technology play an integral part.

But take his latest articles for example. There are few links, other than the author, between his most recent review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book “Bright-Sided” and his preceding blog posting about the future of online college, published within a few days of each other.

And yet veteran news-media analyst Tom Rosenstiel recently told Lamb that the term “blogging” is a dying word denoting a thriving informational tour-de-force.  According to a study Lamb reported on, newspapers are becoming increasingly more like blogs, and vice versa.  With bureaux, editors and staff writers, many big-time blogs such as The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast are beginning to resemble their yellowing forebears.  Meanwhile periodicals like the CSM, which was founded as a daily in 1908 and effectively became a weekly in April 2009, are facelifting their businesses by integrating blogs with their usual Web articles.

In subsequent postings, this blog will specifically analyze the work of Gregory Lamb, tracking how his innovative beat mirrors the innovativeness expected of and by his employers and a 21st-century audience.  As long as Lamb keeps posting, this blog will keep posting; so keep posted.

CAIRO – In the desert east of the city, off the highway to the Suez Canal, is the new 260-acre campus of the 90-year-old American University in Cairo (AUC). It opened last fall at a price tag of more than $400 million, a quarter coming from USAID. University administrators and developers hope New Cairo will one day be home to some 2 million people. It’s a model of Cairo’s present and future urbanism, a profitable solution to congestion and overcrowding in one of the world’s largest and most polluted cities. Faculty and administrators are split on the changes.

“We should not immediately approve of this kind of transformation without asking about the wider context of privatization and how a university relates to society,” says Hanan Sebea, an assistant professor of anthropology.

In the face of Cairo’s crowded infrastructure, the development answers for years have looked to the possibilities of building elsewhere. AUC is keeping part of its old, eight-acre campus on Tahrir Square.

“Central Cairo is overloaded with lots of pressures that are beyond the capabilities of its infrastructure,” says Ashraf Salloum, the university architect who oversaw the large design team behind the campus. “If we want to really help the development of the city, we need to give the city space to breathe.”

AUC will be an “anchor for development” in this stretch of desert, he says. But are new, world-class facilities enough, even at the loss of a central urban site?

“Space is very symbolic, but it’s not only about infrastructure,” Ms. Sebea says. “Downtown, presence is very important, and it goes beyond fieldwork. It’s accessibility and the interest of the university to interact with society.”

Another recent story for the Christian Science Monitor.

A week or so ago, I wrote a post about my first published article with a real, live national publication–the Christian Science Monitor.

Well, it’s that time again, and I’m here to announce my newest piece that has now appeared in the Christian Science Monitor. It is a feature story about hope in a bad economy, and a profile on Erik Proulx, a filmmaker, blogger, entrepreneur, creator, and advertising freelancer.

I’m absolutely thrilled about this piece (to the point where I can’t really explain how wonderful it is that I was able to help Erik and to see my name in print all at the same time.)

The piece was run on their website on October 26, 2009, and also appeared in the CSMonitor’s weekly print edition that came out on October 25, 2009.

Enjoy. Let me know what you think.

      I had posted a recent youth violence story out of South Florida, where a teenager was set on fire by five of his classmates. The violence was done by youth, and not on racial lines. Then there is the young blackteenager who was brutally beat to death in Chicago by a group of black teenagers.

      Paul White, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, says that racism is not the issue, but parenting:

The question is not whether young blacks, particularly males, get involved in violent incidents more frequently than other races. The question is why.

White and black liberals blame this disparity on a racist society that misinterprets and discriminates against black culture.

White and black conservatives explain these statistics as the result of less respect for the law, caused solely by poor parenting. They cite as proof that high-achieving blacks have been well-parented.

This is not a new problem. Consider a memo written in 1965 to President Lyndon Johnson from Assistant Labor Secretary Daniel Moynihan in which the secretary expressed his great concern over the high rate of out-of-wedlock births among blacks (25 percent at that time). Unaddressed, Mr. Moynihan predicted, this large number of fatherless children would result in increasing school failure, criminal delinquency, and joblessness. Sadly, because liberals across the board condemned this call for action as racist propaganda, President Johnson didn’t want to risk heated public debate and so did nothing.

The recent Chicago incident, and countless others that occur daily, are the result of not heeding Moynihan’s warning 44 years ago. The previous out-of-wedlock birthrate has almost tripled, and 7 out of 10 black children now grow up not only without a father, but also in disproportionate poverty. That means millions of young kids lack adequate parental guidance to make the transition to become successful adults.

See the article in the Christian Science Monitor: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091022/cm_csm/ywhite

Full interview here.

So to Robert Kagan, Fukuyama might argue:

“…the pessimism about civilization that we had developed as a result of the terrible 20th century, with its genocides, gulags, and world wars, was actually not the whole picture at all. In fact, there were a lot of positive trends going on in the world, including the spread of democracy where there had been dictatorship. Sam Huntington called this “the third wave.”‘

And (particularly with Russia in mind):

“Clearly, that big surge toward democracy went as far as it could. Now there is a backlash against it in some places. But that doesn’t mean the larger trend is not still toward democracy”

Fukuyama also points out on what he bases much of his thinking; extending Samuel Huntington’s framework:

“Huntington’s argument was that democracy, individualism, and human rights are not universal, but reflections of culture rooted in Western Christendom. While that is true historically, these values have grown beyond their origins.”

And what about China?:

“You cannot solve the problem of the “bad emperor” through moral suasion. And China has had some pretty bad emperors over the centuries. Without procedural accountability, you can never establish real accountability.”

You can teach people to be moral in this argument, and instill moral values, but without levers and counter-levers, we’re only a step away from tyranny.

Related On This Site:  Kagan’s new book “The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams“ seeks to challenge Fukuyama’s thinking…does it succeed?: Obama’s Decision On Missile Defense And A Quote From Robert Kagan’s: ‘The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams’

Stanley Kurtz suggested Fukuyama’s Hegelian influence is too much to bear:  From The Hoover Institution: Stanley Kurtz On Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington

Also:  From The American Interest Online: Francis Fukuyama On Samuel Huntington…A Few Thoughts On (Absolute) Idealism, Both Religious And Political/Philosophical

The Census Bureau says 15.8% of Americans live in poverty.

This is up from a 13.2% “official” estimate that the Census Bureau announced last month.

The difference is that the new number reflects medical expenses, transportations costs, child care costs and geographical differences in the cost of living.

From the Christian Science Monitor—”Here are the alternative poverty rates, followed by the official rate in parenthesis, for groups where the gap is significant:

• Single dads: 19.8 percent (versus 14.2 percent)

• Hispanic Americans: 29 percent (versus 23.2 percent)

• People in the West: 19 percent (versus 13.5 percent)

• People in the Northeast: 16.1 percent (versus 11.6 percent)

• People age 65 and up: 18.7 percent (9.7 percent)

The poverty jump for the West and Northeast reflects higher living costs in some of the most populated areas in those regions….For one prominent group, children, poverty is about 1 percent lower using the alternate measure than the official one. But Americans under 18 had a poverty rate of 17.9 percent, higher than the national average.”

(I’m sorry, but because of ongoing browser and blog troubles, I can’t add the link to the story. The Christian Science Monitor article was written by Mark Trumbull and appeared on October 20. There are many stories on this issue on Google News if you use the search term poverty rate. Or, if you want better time for reflection, your local newspaper may well run a story on this concern in the morning. Then you can think about it at home with your corn flakes and coffee.)

It is no surprise to me that one in six Americans live in poverty. Where are people going to get good 40 hour jobs with good benefits in this society?

I’m glad that President Obama is addressing the issue of health insurance. After he makes progress on that concern, he should then address the issue of poverty in our nation.

One in six Americans in poverty here in the so-called “Richest nation on Earth.”

This tragic fact of poverty in our nation is hardly a political issue at all. Where is the President? Where are the Democrats in Congress? Where are all the bible-thumpers? Where are the so-called good people? Where are the so-called liberals?

OK. We weren’t going to post on this stupid story because it’s stupid. Then no one would shut up about it. Look at all the fuggin’ baloney about it today:

Wonkette (although their post is really funny)

Valleywag (also funny)

Examiner

CNN’s Political Ticker

The Christian Science Monitor (yes, that fucking Christian Science Monitor)

As if Meghan McCain would ever stop using a platform that’s netted her hundreds of new followers. What a bunch of nonsense. And just in case anyone’s still not seen it, this is the photo that McCain just can’t believe people would get all huffy about:

I dunno if what’s generating attention so much is McCain’s tits, or her completely unbelievable suggestion that she had no idea her tits would cause this much of a kerfuffle. Look, Meg, I’m sure girls with large breasts sometimes forget how big their breasts are (not really). But they probably don’t take a photo of them and put them on Twitter. Or if they do, they know what they’re doing and fess up. Or if they blah blah blah whatever, look at her tits! My God, how did you even get your tits to do that? Did you hang upside down, snap the picture and then turn the photo 180 degrees in Photoshop?

Ugh. That perfectly staged photo is spontaneous? Your hair perfectly mussed, the book just out of the way of your tits. Yeah, a rank amateur job if I ever saw one. Maybe next time you’ll think before you twat, twit.

chalkARTblast 001

Welcome to Chalkboarder.com’s first issue of chalkARTblast! Inside you’ll find ~

• Our Client’s News
• Social Web News Clippings
• Chalkboarder.com News
• Video Pick of the Week
• Job Openings at Chalkboarder.com
• Favorite Blog Posts Last Week

And other goodies we liked from last week J

ADVERTISEMENT

Customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty are

built from the table up.

Your food, service, management and corporate identity meet the customer in the restaurant. So why wait until customers leave to measure their experience? Through Rewarding Feedback your customers can articulate specific experiences that are important to them. Rewarding Feedback allows your managers to “hear” what customers are saying while they are still seated and at the height of their dining experience.

Rewarding Feedback

Chalkboarder.com Client News This Week

Rewarding Feedback Inc,

Headquartered in Toronto CAN with a US Sales office in Las Vegas, Rewarding Feedback retained Chocorua Group and Chalkboarder.com to collaboratively strategize and execute market penetration into the USA.

As part of that process, they and Chalkboarder.com are creating an extended eight month social media campaign.

Jenee Halstead

Jenee is in partial retreat for now – working on music and other lifestyle developments. Her newest release, an EP, is almost ready for release. With Chalkboarder.com, Jenee is crafting a holiday campaign and the social web distribution of her new EP.

Tapwater Music

It seems to be the time of year when music groups go into partial seclusion – Tapwater is taking some time off from the road, while their frontman spends a month or so in Africa. We’re really looking forward to his return and sharing new sounds he’s discovered. For Tapwater, Chalkboarder.com is busy building a new website and blog, in addition to developing a comprehensive year long social web strategy.

Savant Culinaire

While Savant Culinaire is a sister company to Chalkboarder.com – or, more of a pet travel project of ours – we think its appropriate to share what Chalkboarder.com is doing on their behalf.

Savant Culinaire is offering a sweet package gastronomic tour of Chile in late March of 2010. Chalkboarder.com is executing the social web networking and promotion of this amazing itinerary.

Chocorua Group

Chocorua Group offers strategic brand and concept development for organizations. They are excited to announce that Rewarding Feedback has retained their services for the next eight months.

Chocorua Group will be assisting Rewarding Feedback with market presence in the USA hospitality and other industries. Stay tuned through Chalkboarder.com for more announcements – such as taking Rewarding Feedback to the following trade shows:

• New England Food Show, Boston
• Las Vegas International Restaurant, Nightclub & Bar Show
• National Restaurant Show, Chicago

Social Web Clippings ~ Our Favorites From The Last Week

Social Media Today ~ A great article on Best Buy’s recent Facebook snafu. Did they handle it appropriately?

Mashable ~ Mashable reports that Internet Ad Spending in the UK has now topped Television spending.

Mashable ~ We love Mashable’s reporting on the social web. This article lists the 10 Most Romantic Social Media Finds.

Christian Science Monitor ~ CSM is reporting on how Facebook and Twitter are helping the flood victims in the Philippines flee rising waters.

Mashable ~ Five Ways to Make Your Business Transparent. Good reads, good reads.

Social Media Explorer ~ Social Media for a Small Business Restaurant

Chalkboarder.com News

Employment Announcements

• Group Creative Director. Searching for a PortlandOR based Creative Director experienced in edgy public relations/marketing campaigns, communications, social web. Must be street and business savvy and “get” cutting edge social media.
• Chief Technology Officer. Searching for a CTO well and deeply versed in Web 2.0 and 3.0 developments. Must have deep experience in web and mobile applications.
• Regional Sales Directors. Chalkboarder.com is searching for uniquely qualified persons with established networks, especially in the hospitality industry. Commission based with benchmark milestone ownership opportunities.
• Social Web Strategists. Searching for talented and creative account managers. Based in PortlandOR. Must be fluent and established in the social web. High personal follower counts are a plus.
• Human Resource Director. Searching for a talented and savvy HR Director to be based in PortlandOR.
• Chalk Artist. We’re looking for one unique artist, experienced in the traditional medium of chalk art. Half-time to start. This position is Oregon based and will produce a video-taped chalk art rendering of a Chalkboarder.com’s client message for each chalkARTblast. Videos will be permanently maintained on You Tube and distributed virally. Great opportunity to get your skills noticed.

Negotiations This Week

• Social Grub. We’re in dialogue with Social Grub on many levels. If we land them, you’ll be first to know!
• Montana Stock Growers Association. Dialogue should resume again this week. We’re patient with these folks – they’re ranching families that live pretty rurally. We did hear this morning that it had snowed deeply in parts of Montana, so we guess they are pretty busy getting their stock into appropriate quarters.
• Denominational Capital Campaign Consultancy. This quiet, yet effective consulting group, has approached us for assistance in guiding churches on social media applications. Very intriguing ideas.
• Subcontracting to traditional PR/Marketing Agencies. We’re exploring two negotiations this week, one with a firm in NYC and the other with a firm in VA. Both are very talented PR/Marketing firms. The VA firm is led by the former Marketing Director of AOL and Mapquest.
• We’re launching a global social media campaign pitch to one of the world’s most distinctive alcohol brands. We think we’ve got a great idea – and since we’re only one connection removed from the top – an outstanding chance.

Publishing

Jeffrey Kingman, CEO of Chalkboarder.com posts his first article on FohBoh Thursday as one of their ten featured front-page contributors. In it, he’ll explore what the social web could mean for suppliers and distributors in the hospitality industry and how that might increase operator sales volumes.

Additionally, Jeffrey was asked by the magazine Today’s Restaurant to contribute an article for their special May issue devoted entirely to emergent technology.

Stay tuned for information and a link to a webinar on social media that Jeffrey participated in last week.

Noted Blogs

Paul Barron’s Social Coco ~ Idea Creation for your Restaurant

Progressive Dairyman ~ Seriously, It’s Time to Tweet

Video Of The Week

chalkARTblast is produced by Chalkboarder.com

Currently published Mondays. Future publishing will be daily.

Copyright Ó2009 Chalkboarder.com LLC

(503) 305-6397

info@chalkboarder.com

Video: Pickle as OLED? MIT professor explains. | csmonitor.com.

Who would have thought that a pickle could become a light-emitting device?

You will find an interesting post when you click on the photo above that talks about organic materials and their ability to become LED’ by passing current through them.

One nice by product; they will be healthier to eat than if they were fried…

After my recent move to Boulder, my one challenge has been to stay on top of what is happening in the world. In the land locked state of CO, I can feel a bit isolated from the rest of the world. As a native CA, I am used to feeling as though the rest of the world is just across the Ocean, but here in CO, although I am reminded daily of God’s grandeur and beauty…I can feel a bit far away from the International Community that I long to remain a part of.

This morning after a quick jog down by Boulder creek, I stopped at a local coffee shop for a chai and to read up on what’s happening in the news. While I learned a bit about Islamic relations in Denver and was informed about tonight’s kick off to Denver’s professional Hockey season, I was disappointed at the lack of International news being covered in my local newspapers. Yes, Boulder’s possible ban on nudity is interesting (if not hilarious), but what about the Tsunami victims and the progress at the Geneva talks?

Enter…The Christian Science Monitor!

I spent about a month without convenient internet access and came to realize that my knowledge of the outside world was dwindling at a fairly rapid rate. Now that I am back online (thank you Jeff and Becky!), I feel much more equipped to be a positive contributor in my immediate community, whether through prayer or practice.

Monitor Prayer Watch has relocated to Boulder and I look forward to contributing to my new, wonderful community intellectually, practically, and above all spiritually!

Please stay tuned for topics and events to come!

Full article here. Below are some general numbers as well as a few on healthcare lobbying. The parallels to our industry can sometimes make me twitch…

Last year, lobbying – defined narrowly by those who must register with Congress – was a $3.4 billion industry, according to CRP statistics. But when the cost of grass-roots efforts and of strategic advisers are all counted, total spending on influencing policy in Washington approaches $9.6 billion a year, he estimates.

Combing Senate records, Bloomberg News determined that 3,300 lobbyists signed up to work on healthcare and that more than 1,500 organizations have healthcare lobbyists. Spending on healthcare lobbying was $263.4 million in the first six months of 2009, up from $241.4 million in the same period of 2008, according to CRP figures.

What do lobbyists do in return for that kind of money? The American League of Lobbyists says its members research and analyze legislation or regulatory proposals, monitor and report on developments, attend congressional or regulatory hearings, work with coalitions interested in the same issues, and then educate not only government officials but also employees and corporate officers as to the implications of legislative changes.

“The next few months are going to be huge with lobbying [on] healthcare,” says Mr. Wenhold. “Every lobbyist is going to have some part of it in one way or another.”

And if some version of healthcare reform passes, demand for lobbyists will probably increase.

According to a new report from the EU, while Georgia triggered conflict with Russia one year ago, it was Russia that broke international law by invading Georgia, and subsequently declaring war. (WSJ)

Monday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat in no uncertain terms that Iran’s nuclear plan was a danger for the Middle East. (Iran Focus)

Top American U.N. official is removed from his position in Kabul, this after he publicly campaigned against Afghanistan presidential election fraud.  (Reuters)

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has voted down two key Democratic public-option amendments to the health care bill, the fate of such reform lies in Obama’s hands. (Politico)

After years of increased government control, deep economic strife is causing Russia PM Vladimir Putin to push for privatization at the country’s big businesses. (WSJ)

The New York Times is still weighing pay-model options. The paper thinks it could make everyone happier if it could just figure out how to make money out of that new-fangled internet, but at this point they lack a clear proposal from any party. (New York Observer)

SAMOA BEARS BRUNT: Earthquake in the South Pacific triggers a deadly tsunami that rips through Samoa killing over 100 people.

The Age | Al-Jazeera | CS Monitor | Economist | NYT | Reuters | WSJ