Amazon Push Blogs

Amazon is currently beta-testing Plogs:

Your Amazon.com Plog is a diary of events that will enhance your shopping experience, helping you discover products that have just been released, track changes to your orders, and many other things. Just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. When we think we have something interesting or important to tell you, we'll post it to your Plog.

In practice, if you're signed in to your Amazon account, the "plog" will turn your Amazon index page into a blog written by Amazon and featuring things they think you're likely to buy, based on your past purchases.

I'm sure this isn't the first time a major corporate presence has tried to co-opt the blog form for profit, but it's the most insidious for me. At best, this will be just one more way Amazon lets interested customers know about items they "want" to buy—especially if they start giving you the option to subscribe to your "plog" via RSS. At worst, this could be the death of the blog as a form of communication on the web; if average surfers (who aren't yet really aware of blogs) begin to associate "blog" with "just another marketing ploy," they'll lose interest fast.

The reaction from Defective Yeti—one of the blogs listed on Amazon's plog page—is right on the money:

A Plog, as near as I can tell, is a "personalized log," and is like a "blog" except you can't personalize it. Also, instead of you writing it and other people reading it, robots write it and you read it. Also, instead of being open to the world, only you can see it. But aside from that, it's pretty much nothing like a blog.

As far as I'm concerned, Amazon can take its plog and shove it. If I don't already know I "want" or "need" something w/out Amazon telling me about it, then I probably don't really want or need it, do I? That's what I thought.

Editor's Note: Funny. I'm unable to post this entry right now because, guess what, the MT-Amazon and MT-Bookqueue extensions that power the sidebar books feature of this site are getting an XML error from Amazon. Again I'm reminded that I seriously need to redesign this page to eliminate those two plugins!

Posted 01:08 PM | meta-blogging

Pathological Pursuit of Profit

After reading the book a couple of weeks ago, we saw the documentary film version of The Corporation last night. Of the two, I recommend the book. It's a quick read, very accessible, and it's packed with terrific nuggets of information. By comparison the movie seemed overly long, depressing, and at times downright boring. To be fair, I'm probably being harsh on the movie both because I've read the book and because I had such high hopes. After reading the book, I hoped the movie would be a pithy, riveting, incisive distillation of the book, a highly accessible and even entertaining vehicle that would carry the book's main message—corporations are, by definition, anti-democratic and antisocial—to a wide popular audience. And while the movie is great and I highly recommend it, I fear it's a little too much on the spinach side of cinema to really reach or convince large numbers of people.

The filmmakers have provided an excellent summary of the movie so you can get the gist of what it's about if it's not coming to your area. (It's only in very limited release right now.) The movie is long almost by necessity; the negative effects of the modern corporation reach so many aspects of the world and of society that even at over two hours long the movie could only skim the surface of a few of them. Because it was so packed with information, it's hard to pick out highlights. Still, one scene stands out in my memory as a compelling reason to pay attention to the issue of the pathological pursuit of profit that is the sole reason for the corporation's existence. That reason comes from Ray Anderson, the Chairman of Interface, Inc. (a carpet company). He compares our current situation to the early stages of human flight where people would stand on the edge of a cliff with some wings strapped to their backs and jump off, hoping they could fly. If the cliff was high enough, the jumper might initially think he was flying, but really he was just in freefall, rushing to his death. According to Anderson, the world is in just such a position today, except we're all the jumper, and when we gave corporations the rights of a person we jumped off a huge cliff. Our wings are the corporate/capitalist system that we think is flying, but really we're in freefall. It's easy to think we're still flying because the cliff was so high, but some people can see farther ahead and they see the ground rushing up to meet us and they know we're plummeting to our destruction. Those are the people (like the makers of this film) who are shouting warnings and working to wake people up to the fact that the corporate takeover of life on earth is not sustainable. In fact, the pathological pursuit of profit is rushing us headlong to the end of life as we know it.

I guess I'm a sucker for extended metaphors.

But like I said, the book is better than the movie. It covers much the same ground, but adds more depth, such as describing how the dominant position of the corporation in society has created an entirely new kind of person:

"The corporation has essentially replaced the church in terms of who you are," says Edison Schools financier Michael Moe. It wants the same thing as the church, he says: "obedient constituents that . . . pay [their] dues and follow the rules." Human nature is neither static nor universal. It tends to reflect the social orders people inhabit. Throughout history, dominant institutions have established roles and identities for their subjects that meshed with their own institutional natures, needs and interests: God-fearing subjects for the church, lords and serfs for feudal orders, citizens for democratic governments (134).

And what kind of subjects does the corporation want? Subjects like itself: "purely self-interested, incapable of concern for others, amoral, and without conscience" (134). Sounds a lot like those Enron traders caught on tape (also here), doesn't it?

The book also contains a great indictment of one of the darling little ploys of business— "deregulation":

Deregulation . . . rests on the suspect premise that corporations will respect social and environmental interests without being compelled by government to do so. No one would seriously suggest that individuals should regulate themselves, that laws against murder, assault, and theft are unnecessary because people are socially responsible. Yet oddly, we are asked to believe that corporate persons—institutional psychopaths who lack any sense of moral conviction and who have the power and motivation to cause harm and devastation in the world—should be left free to govern themselves (110-111).

Corporations further argue that they should be free to govern themselves because they're already just helpless pawns in the hands of the all-powerful control of "the market." They say, "don't regulate us; the market will tell us what we can and can't do because if we behave badly then people won't buy our stuff." And while this sounds very nice and many people are taken in by it, it's really an argument for selling democracy to the highest bidder.

One premise of democracy is that, as citizens, all people are equal, at least within the political sphere. Everyone has one vote, regardless of his or her wealth or social position, and that means, in relation to corporations, that every citizen has an equal say about how these powerful entities must behave. Moving regulation of corporations from government to the market immunizes them to the effects of citizens' participation in the political process and leaves their control to an institution where one dollar—not one person—equals one vote. "At least in democracy each person is formally equally," says political economist Elaine Bernard, executive director of the Trade Union Program at Harvard University. "The humblest citizen, the most prestigious citizen still only has one vote. But when we move that power over to the marketplace, the humblest and the wealthiest are totally asymmetrical. And one has such immense power that they can literally crush the other completely and utterly and fully. So that's one of the reasons historically we've always felt the need to regulate markets." (145-6).

Something to think about the next time the FCC tries to decrease regulations on media ownership, for example.

Both the book and the movie end with gestures of hope that active citizens who care and are paying attention have some ability to take their society and the world back from corporation control, and return it to citizen control. And that's really the bottom line of these pieces: Corporations are, by definition and by law, antisocial. They have become frighteningly powerful. However, they are not unstoppable, and we are not helpless against them. I hope that last part is true, because if we're rushing headlong to disaster, the ground seems to be getting closer everyday.

Posted 12:10 PM | Comments (5) | ai books ai movies

Traffic Court

Traffic court was packet yesterday, with 246 cases on the docket. The judge was moving at a breathless pace, with everyone else (the clerk, deputies, attorneys, and accused) hopping to try to keep up. I wasn't the only one sitting on the edge of my seat trying not to miss any of the action. Many of the cases were disposed of quickly with guilty pleas and fines, no-show witnesses (in which case the judge often dismissed the charge entirely), or traffic school as a "punishment" instead of a fine. As most people perhaps know already, traffic school is a great option if you just have a speeding ticket or something and it's your first one or your first in a long time. If you go to court on a traffic ticket, it never hurts to ask if you could take traffic school and see if that will help you out.

Watching traffic court has taught me that a "guilty with explanation" plea rarely helps any more than a "guilty" plea—the judge may listen to your explanation, but she's probably not hearing it, meaning it won't make your sentence any lighter. I guess sometimes it does, but most of the time guilty is guilty, and the judge doesn't really care beyond that. With 214 cases to dispose of, a judge doesn't have time to care.

Another thing I've learned is that you really really should know the potential penalty you're facing before you decide to plead guilty. I saw a guy yesterday waive his right to a lawyer, then plead guilty to driving on a suspended license, then get a recommended 60 days in jail (w/30 suspended, so only 30 to actually serve) and a year additional license suspension! The guy's head was spinning when he heard the state asking for that sentence, and he begged for a lawyer. The judge had mercy on him and decided to continue the case and give the guy a chance to find a lawyer before he got thrown in jail. That was very nice of the judge, but she didn't have to do that—the guy had signed a waiver of his right to an attorney, then he found he was helpless and facing a relatively huge penalty. (Thirty days in jail is no laughing matter.)

So those are my little lessons in traffic court: Just because you think your offense isn't serious, don't think the judge or the state will see it your way. Whatever your excuses, they probably don't care. Know what you're getting into before you go to court, or get a lawyer who does.

A final lesson that's really a reminder: You just don't want to get caught up in the justice system if there's anything you can do to keep from it. Perhaps it's as just as it can be, but that's not very just, so you don't want to take your chances. Keep your record clean, or your whole life could be sent down the drain b/c the law just doesn't have to care about your complex circumstances. It may care, but it doesn't have to. Is it possible that the two most merciless systems in our society are the justice system and the consumer credit system? You mess up a little in either one, you might be paying for it the rest of your life. Gotta love that.

Posted 05:59 AM | Comments (3) | 1L summer

Reality TV Peeps Should Blog

Last night Bravo aired an episode of Queer Eye UK, which is eerily like the American version—especially the opening trailer, which features the British queer eyes doing exactly what the American ones do in that little montage. Does it have to be so identical?

But that aside, the show's subject was a guy who wanted to become a television personality, so the Queer Eyes gave him a website to help him look more professional to potential employers. That's cool, but I think the queer eyes dropped the ball a bit when they didn't give their project a blog. Today, if you go to Barra Fitzgibbon's site, it doesn't look very up to date. The Queer Eye episode on which he appeared was probably filmed weeks or months ago, and it ended with the strong suggestion that his tv career was about to really take off, yet Fitzgibbon's website offers no updates about what has happened to his tv career since. I'm guessing that's because Fitzgibbon doesn't know how to update the site, but if it had been built around a blog, he could have been updating it regularly with ease. Next time, Queer Eyes, give your guy a blog!

More generally, I suggest to anyone who goes on a reality tv show who would like to "capitalize" somehow on the 15 minutes of fame it provides: Get yourself a blog! Fans of the show you were on—your fans!—might love to get to know you better, and to follow your post-show progress. I'm not talking some PR site where you just promote yourself relentlessly, but a real, honest blog where you talk about your life, and where part of your life happens to be that you were on a reality tv show. And even if you don't want to parlay your reality show experience into some sort of film or television or celebrity career, you could still connect w/fans and possibly have some fun w/a blog. With Fox set to kick off an all-reality-tv channel, I'm betting the reality folks w/blogs will be the ones w/the greatest post-show success.

Posted 05:52 AM | Comments (1) | meta-blogging tv land

Want a "job" blogging?

From the email inbox:

The American Constitution Society is seeking volunteer Blog Editors to research and write content, moderate comments and edit submissions on a progressive blog monitoring legal news and public policy. Blog editors will interact with ACS staff and distinguished guest bloggers to create a national forum for progressive legal and policy discussion. Blog Editors will be expected to contribute approximately 3-5 hours a week to writing, editing and moderation. Their principal duty will be assuming responsibility for all blog content for one day each week, including daily news roundups and breaking news summaries.

It's about time the ACS got a blog. I'm not sure how all this volunteer blog editor business will work, but at least it's a start.

Posted 06:56 AM | Comments (2) | law school meta-blogging

No Change

Sad. While Bush attacks Kerry for "values" and continues trying to say his war was justified, it's very disheartening to note that this post from a year ago could almost have been written today:

Yubbledew and Co. are still on the loose trying to salvage and extend their "scare and plunder" methods of governance. Currently they're trying to squirm out of the mess they're in by blaming George Tenent and by asserting that they didn't, technically, lie. "We got the info from Britain, and Britain did put that info in a report, which is all we said. We didn't say it was true, we just said it was a claim made by British intelligence." So why does that make it any better?

Lies upon lies upon lies. Oh, but not technically, in the strictest sense, lies. They haven't gone so far as to ponder what the definition of "is" is, but they've done everything but. And again, who died when Clinton lied?

Oh, and while I'm on the general subject of our fearless leader and his war: Advocates of War Now Profit from Iraq Reconstruction [thanks to the new BushRecall.org blog for the link]

Posted 06:38 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004 general politics

Police Humor

The police department was kind enough to give me an instruction sheet when I signed up for the ride-along so I'd know where to go, what to wear, hot to behave, what to expect generally. It contained very helpful information, and I appreciated it, but the "what not to wear" advice is a bit cute:

Please dress comfortably and dress appropriate for the weather. Ladies, we do ask that you not wear short shorts and no halter-tops. Men, so that we not exclude you, if you are so inclined to wear either, please refrain from wearing these items as well.

Right. Why not just say "no short shorts or halter tops" and leave the gender out of it? I think this, too, provides another little hint into the mind of the typical police department or police force. It displays and old-fashioned sensibility about how things are or ought to be, and a sort of alienation from or bewildered misunderstanding of the way the world works today.

Oh, but they're on the technological cutting edge.

Posted 06:16 AM | 1L summer

Messing With "Them"

The police ride-along was fascinating. It was just what it sounds like—I rode along w/an officer as he did his daily duties. It wasn't a very exciting or busy day, but even the routine calls were interesting since I'd never been on any call at all before. We responded to:

• A shoplifting call where a woman allegedly stuffed over $100 worth of steak into her purse and walked out of a grocery store. The officer said he recently busted someone who pushed an entire cartfull of merchandise out to her car w/out paying for it. If you're going to shoplift, do it in style. (But note: If the value of the stuff you're taking exceeds a certain amount—$200 in our jursidiction—you'll be charged w/a felony instead of a misdemeanor). No arrest; suspect long gone.
• A call about a suspicious person where we found a guy sleeping in the middle of a restaurant parking lot, just laying on the asphalt between parked cars. The guy said he had a mental disability and was on his way to see his counsellor when he just got distracted and decided he wanted a warm place to sleep. Apparently the asphalt fit the bill. Very strange. No arrest—the cops were pretty nice to the guy.
• A call about a woman asking a parking cop where she could buy crack. I kid you not. When we got there and talked to her, it seemed fairly clear she was high. No arrest; just threats.
• A call about a 13-year-old boy threatening a 9-year-old boy to get the younger kid to give him money. What can the police do about this? Next to nothing, but that doesn't stop them from trying. No arrest; just threats.

So no, nothing too exciting. We also spent close to two hours filing a report (fun! not.), and lots of time driving around "messing with" homeless people and people who like to hang out on park benches and street corners.

I have some thoughts on the experience that I don't have time to share, including the awesome technology at the disposal of the police (they've got laptops in every cruiser that are always online), as well as the way police dehumanize the people they "mess with" or otherwise interact with. I think perhaps my cop's world is divided into three kinds of people: Us (cops), Citizens (people who aren't cops and aren't criminals), and Them (criminals and poor people who are basically criminals waiting to commit crimes). After the ride-along, one of my fellow interns asked how it was and I said the cop I was riding with seemed like a nice guy. She responded by saying she's not going to take a ride-along because it seems like everyone who comes back from one has a better opinion of the cops. I suggested that might not be such a bad thing. Her response:

Why is it ok for the cops to dehumanize the people they arrest so they'll be able to do their jobs easier, but it's not ok for me to dehumanize the cops in order to do my job [as a defense attorney] easier?

It's a great question. But wouldn't it be nice if we could figure out a system where nobody had to dehumanize anyone else in order to sleep at night?

Posted 07:25 AM | Comments (4) | 1L summer

MT 3.0D1

Another update of Movable Type is here, but it doesn't appear to have what I've come to want most in the couple of weeks I've been using MT 3.0: Better ways to deal with comment spam.

Right now, MT 3.0 lets you ban comments from certain IP addresses, but you have do do so one comment/IP address at a time. This requires multiple steps to both ban the IP address and delete the spam comments. MT does give you a list of all recent comments w/ a checkbox next to each comment, but the only thing you can do w/ that checkbox is delete the comments.

This is a good start, but what I really need is the ability to list all comments (or the last 20-50), check a box next to those that are spam, then click a "ban these IP addresses and delete comments" button. Also, I should be able to ban comments from a certain email address, as well as comments that contain certain URLs. These options were available in MT 2.6 via MT-Blacklist, and it seems a real shame that users should have to sacrifice this functionality in order to upgrade their MT installation (and pay for the privilege!). Yes, MT 3.0 offers TypeKey as a way to deal w/comment spam, but I don't have time to screw w/all my templates to add TypeKey functionality, and I'm not sure I'd want to even if I did. MT-Blacklist works well; I hope a) its developer will make it compatible w/MT 3.0, or b) SixApart will build it more completely into MT 3.x. Please?

Posted 06:04 AM | meta-blogging

More Wackiness, Please

Thanks to DG (via Beanie), my very own results in the latest quiz making the rounds:

------
Wackiness: 38/100
Rationality: 52/100
Constructiveness: 64/100
Leadership: 68/100

You are an SECL--Sober Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a politician. You cut deals, you change minds, you make things happen. You would prefer to be liked than respected, but generally people react to you with both. You are very sensitive to criticism, since your entire business is making people happy.

At times your commitment to the happiness of other people can cut into the happiness of you and your loved ones. This is very demanding on those close to you, who may feel neglected. Slowly, you will learn to set your own agenda--including time to yourself.

You are gregarious, friendly, charming and charismatic. You like animals, sports, and beautiful cars. You wear understated gold jewelry and have secret bad habits, like chewing your fingers and fidgeting.

You are very difficult to dislike.
------

That's what I call a backhanded compliment. On the one hand, I'm supposedly difficult to dislike; on the other, I'm supposedly a politician, which would make me very easy to dislike. Maybe I'll edit out the politician part and whip out this diagnosis the next time someone says they want to beat the crap out of me. Of course, now that I know DG is a mob boss, maybe I can just try to stay on her good side and let her take care of such problems. Or I could always ask Beanie to turn some of her evil genius against those those don't fully appreciate the difficulty of disliking me. Combined with GdG's font of knowledge, this sounds like an invincible team of superheros. As one of my neighbors used to say, "I know people...."

Posted 06:22 AM | Comments (3) | life generally

Vietnam Zippo Etching

Traveling back to D.C. from Michigan last weekend we heard a story on NPR about a new musical interpretation of the phrases and sayings U.S. soldiers etched onto their Zippo lighters while in Vietnam. I didn't care much for the music, but the sayings were pretty incredible. My favorite is featured on the NPR page about the story:

We are the unwilling, Led by the unqualified, Doing the unnecessary, For the ungrateful.

I wonder how many U.S. soldiers in Iraq feel that way.

For more on the Vietnam Zippos, check out The Vietnam Zippo, a which I think was mentined in the NPR story.

Posted 06:06 AM | Comments (3) | general politics

Police Ride-Along

Hey, I'm going to spend tomorrow morning riding around the dirty streets with some of our city's finest (police persons, that is), so here's your chance: What have you always wanted to ask a cop (but were always afraid to ask)? Send your questions in ASAP (before about 7 a.m. tomorrow morning) and I'll ask them. Of course, if asking your question will get me locked up or otherwise jeopardize my office's "good" relationship with the police, I may have to decline, but that should still leave plenty of leeway. Sorry about the short notice, but if you read this before 7 a.m. Tuesday, send me a question and I'll have an answer for you tomorrow night.

One of my fellow interns recently did a ride-along and her host started talking about what a great "polygraphist" the department has. She was a little surprised to hear this, but was even more shocked when the cop gushed: "Yeah, he's so good he'll have you confessing to all kinds of things you never did! He just asks you some questions, and pretty soon you don't even know whether you did those things or not -- he's that good!" I doubt I'll get any great material like that (or if I'll be allowed to write it down if I do), but we can hope.

Posted 09:27 PM | 1L summer

And we're back!

After a wonderful and extremely relaxing week in Michigan, it's time to get back in the groove here. For those with any interest, you'll find a few highlights from our vacation on ambivalent images (just click back through the last week of photos, or start here and go forward). Mostly we fished, played cards, read books, watched movies (in addition to Spiderman 2, I saw Paycheck and 50 First Dates) and ate too much great food. It was great times, but all good things must end, and so it's back to work here.

As everyone certainly knows by now, while we were away, Kerry picked Edwards as his running mate, so it's going to be John & John v. George & Dick. What else did I miss? Not only was I in a virtual Internet blackout (L's parents have a dialup connection so I did check email a couple of times, but no real surfing), but I was also in a virtual NPR and newspaper blackout, meaning my only source of information about the outside world was Fox News, CNN, and local tv news. After a week of that, the only thing I remember is something about Scott and Laci Peterson. TV has become a horrible source for news, unless you're watching The Daily Show or NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS. (Speaking of which, Tivo saved last Friday's edition for us and the interview with Thomas Frank about how the so-called "culture wars" have increased Americans' tendencies to vote against our own best interests is definitely worth your while.)

Anyway, even though it was a week ago now, I hope everyone had a happy Fourth of July. I'll be playing catchup around here for a while, but things should be more or less back on track...

Posted 06:35 AM | Comments (5) | life generally