Tuesday, December 30, 2003

BRAC   At what point does lobbying for military bases begin to overshadow the more important reason for base realignment – effective defense?   College Savings Plan   The Governor is promoting while the analysts are dissing.  And the reporters aren’t asking the right questions.  Wonder if Wooten believes that it is the government’s responsibility to explain that these savings accounts may not be all that they can be?  Oh, the Athens article actually addresses the question.   Do this for an exercise.  Look at the Governor's Press release.  The look at the Morris, AP and AJC articles covering the press release.  Do you see any value add?  At least enough to justify the price of subscribing, the dirty ink on your fingers, and all those ad inserts you throw away?   Plus, look at the Augusta edit of the Morris piece -- it leaves out the last two paragraphs which mentions criticism of 529 plans.    Now, go to Google News and search on 529 Savings -- as of now (12/30/03 10:30 am est) you will see 110 articles on the topic.  A web search gives you 226,000 hits.  With this kind of source material available, why trust an editor to include all points of the story?   Pharmaceutical Mandated Healthcare   Well, here comes another effort to get legislators to mandate what the CDC is reticent to do .. mandate a vaccine.  The doctors in this story don’t support “cost effectiveness” as a means of determining a policy decision.  But, isn’t that how you run a business? (The business of pharmaceuticals doesn’t think so).   Corporate connected connections   LA Times story on the three more prominent social network companies (Friendster, Linked In and Tribe Networks).  These companies are attracting attention because they facilitate, enable to use a now trite word, folks to meet face-to-face.  For the same reason, Dean’s use of the internet is working for him, while Kerry’s (which resembles the old broadcast model) is not.   Not getting it.   Meanwhile, USA talking about bloggers rewriting rules of journalism (rules, what rules?).  At least that is what the headline leads you to believe.  Read further and its really a story about blogging and its impact on politics. Another case of editors not understanding the content of the piece.  And, as if I need more evidence to boost my case that the editor(s) ‘don’t get it’, inside Page 2, a list of bloggers appears – without hyperlinks.  Oy Vey!   Getting connected knowledge               Recommend a read of The Great Library of Amazonia (Wired).  Here’s what I learned: ·        the process of publishing (I did not know that “many publishers do not have push-button access to the digital files.”) ·        discusses how Amazon built its amazing book archive (scanned a lot of em) and the copyright work-around to enable public viewing of the information. ·        Key point is the acknowledgement that current technology cannot replace the book for its physical attractiveness – but you can “enhance” the book with electronic aids. ·        The fact that a majority of college students search the internet for sources without consulting libraries is disturbing – that is a rather narrow-minded focus for research. ·        $12.6 billion spent on library and academic collections – little spent on digitizing books (hmm… yet legislators want to mandate electronic texts for learning). More resources ·        Gutenberg Project ·        Million Book Project ·        Eldred Case ·        Lawrence Lessig (Copyright philosopher for the 21st century)   Lists add to lists   Wired – Fantasy and Reality. Forecast 2004 roundup.  Computerworld 9:44:36 AM