Proud to Pass the Word: Victory Valley Camp

Free Camp for Kids of Military Parents Deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007

As an expression of gratitude for the sacrifice of our troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Victory Valley Camp is offering a free week of day camp (ages 5-to-11) or overnight camp (ages 8-to-13) for their children during summer 2007.

This offer applies to families of troops deployed to either of these theaters of operations during the 2007 calendar year. A week of Valley Day Camp normally costs $135. A week of overnight Camp or Outpost costs $335. For these families, we will charge nothing....

Victory Valley Camp has no fund set aside for this effort. We’re doing it because it seems like the right thing to do. People who wish to help, may contribute online or by mail. To learn more, click here. But whether folks give or not, the offer stands.

If you know someone who would enjoy some fun in the sun share this story

Timewave HamlinkBT

This could be perfect for operating my ICOM IC-706MKIIG from the house with the radio in the garage or mobile from the truck with the radio in the trailer.



I've been impressed with the bluetooth performance of my BlueAnt Interphone and would like to see the specs on the HamlinkBT for operating distance and travel speed.

So, when does it go on sale at Timewave?

"New Media" Thoughts

‘New Media’ Program Seeks Opportunities in 24/7 Global Networks

Since its launch in October, the New Media office has worked to develop personal relationships with military “bloggers” and online journalists, improve and expand the department’s Web presence and usability, embrace content-sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace, and make communications products available on devices like cell phones, iPods and MP3 players.

After Desert Storm, there was much discussion in the military about the "new media" (pdf) and the "CNN Effect." Over the past 15 years, "new media" has taken on a whole new meaning.

The new "new media" has had a significant impact on the old "new media" and its role as gatekeepers of one-way information conduits between news sources and the people. This impact represents a shift in who can be a news source and how news sources communicate over different media platforms.

It's important to recognize that the old "new media" still retains significant resources to reach many people around the world and will continue to attract news sources that want to communicate through those resources. However, the new "new media" provides additional platforms for reaching out not just globally, but also to niche communities. News sources now seek out both old and new "new media" to get out their message and influence public opinion domestically and globally.

It is with this understanding of the changing media environment that I read Armchair Generalist's review of Sir General Rupert Smith's "The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World." I was struck by this excerpt from the book:

The political leader and the commander expect the reporter to tell his story as he would wish it to be told and as he told it to the journalist. But the journalist sees them as the source of his story, and the events and meetings of the day are presented to support this story rather than that of the political or military leader. I am not suggesting either party is deliberately twisting or spinning the story (although that happens). Rather the media claim to be objective, and tend not to be, whilst political and military leaders persistently expect the objectivity of a shared perception where one is most unlikely to exist. In other words, they know the media is not objective - yet they still speak to it, use it, become disappointed and complain. This is mainly because they seek a platform or at best a conduit, not understanding that the media is a medium in which all events are mixed, presented as if happening concurrently and all of the same importance, reported in tiny digestible chunks - then discarded.

I wonder if Smith is aware of Allison Barber, Bloggers Roundtables, Liveblogging Joint Urban Warrior 07 and the many other changes in the military- media landscape. Military leaders that express disappointment and complain about the old "new media" lack imagination and understanding of the new media environment.

Times have changed. If you're complaining that the media isn't objective, you're going to get rolling of the eyes more than nodding of the head.

Lessig's Evolving Activism

Lawrence Lessig has announced that he's refocusing his activism away from Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to "corruption." By "corruption," he means money's influence on politics (although I'd argue that money doesn't influence politics, people influence politics politicians with money, among other things).

Lessig became well known for his advocacy in the Eldritch Press v. Reno case. I agreed with Lessig that extending copyright terms was "wrong." I disagreed that a court could or should find that the law was illegal or unconstitutional. I fully agreed with Arthur Miller when he said,

''The case has sparked a public discussion that wasn't happening before,'' said Arthur Miller, a Harvard Law School professor who filed a brief at the Federal District Court level opposing Mr. Lessig on behalf of several entertainment companies. ''In a 21st-century environment, do you need a 95-year monopoly to promote the progress of science and the arts or is society better off enriching the public domain earlier? Have we reached the point where we have to be much more sophisticated in calibrating copyright? With the Eldred decision Congress can go back and think about it.''

Congress could, Mr. Miller suggested, consider a compulsory licensing system that would require copyright holders to let people use their work for a set price. Other ideas to increase the public domain include allowing copyrights to lapse on works unless owners make an effort to renew them so people can have access to material that has no commercial value after a short time.

Lessig also set up the Creative Commons non-profit organization which I agree with completely and use.

I wish Lessig the best in his new pursuit. Hopefully, he can come up with smarter solutions than the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.

UPDATE: Court clips campaign-finance law

IEEE Evolution

Finally, Bipartisan Agreement on Something!

Congressional Job Approval Dips Again This Month

The latest congressional job approval rating (24%) is the lowest for the institution since Democrats took control of both houses in January, and is far below the 37% registered in February. The decline has been most evident among Democrats, whose ratings of Congress now match those of Republicans. [all emphasis mine]

New Gallup data show confidence in Congress at all time low

Generally speaking, Americans have been skeptical about Congress for decades now. But the current 14% confidence rating for Congress is down from 19% last year and is the lowest in Gallup’s history, surpassing the 18% confidence in Congress measured in 1991, 1993 and 1994.

Gallup

The percentage of Americans with a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in Congress is at 14%, the lowest in Gallup's history of this measure -- and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested in this year's Confidence in Institutions survey. It is also one of the lowest confidence ratings for any institution tested over the last three decades.

and that's not all ... how's the press doing? Not so good, or ... about as well as President Bush, but worse.



Previous: How's that working out?

Pentagon Enlists YouTube

Don't Deport Hiraldo (Jimenez)

With an estimated 10 million illegal aliens in the US, as many as 275,000 in federal, state and local prisons with multiple arrests, deporting Yaderlin Hiraldo would be a crime, wouldn't it?

Yes, it would.

Previous:
Prayers
Do the math ...

CBS Evening News Vids Worth Watching

Yeah, that's right, CBS Evening News ... former home of anchor Dan Rather and current home of anchor Katie Couric. Katie was off the night this aired.

Orphans Left To Starve In Iraq.

U.S. troops found an orphanage full of starving, neglected children in Baghdad, where it appears the orphanage director may have selling the facility's supplies to local markets. Lara Logan reports.

Eye To Eye: Baghdad Orphanage

Only On The Web: U.S. and Iraqi forces rescued more than 20 emaciated children who were living in appalling conditions at a Baghdad orphanage. Lara Logan talked to some of the soldiers.

OffTheBus Already on the Wrong Track

UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini joins the conversation and thanks for the link Jay!

Jay Rosen and Arianna Huffington have announced their new hires for their OffTheBus project: Amanda Michel and Zack Exley.

There's a brief conversation in PressThink's comments about "... how it looks to hire two liberal Democratic political operatives to run a journalism project?"

Jay responds by emphasizing he is less concerned with how it looks than how it works. He also gives us a preview of how it will work in his post:

...The majority of contributors will probably lean [liberal], as well, with a healthy number of independents and a few conservatives. (That’s what our recruiting shows so far.)

This makes it way more of a challenge to cover the Republican candidates accurately and well, but we think it can be done....

Sounds like the intellectual diversity of a typical newsroom already, doesn't it? In fact, I'd argue the decisions made by Jay and Arianna have limited the organizing outreach of OffTheBus.

I'm skeptical that the partnering between PressThink and Huffington Post has anything to do with limiting their hires to two liberal political operatives. I think Jay conflates organizations with individuals. Jay makes no mention of reaching out to Patrick Ruffini, David All or Mike Turk. He only discounts partnering with TownHall or National Review because:

In a practical vein, once I had the Huffington Post as a partner with its reputation the only way to offset that for purposes of reputation would be to bring in an equally large red state partner like TownHall.com or National Review. We considered that. In the end we concluded that we would also have to split decision-making evenly and that the chances of that structure being nimble enough to improvise and turn on the fly, as one must in this practice area, were virtually nil.

Will it work? Depends on how you define success and what metrics you use. Here are Jay's:

Four: One of the things I like about this project is the simple metrics. If I want to know how OffTheBus is doing it's going to be real easy. I just go to OffTheBus.Net and look at that page. If I see there fresh, arresting, original, informational reporting and commentary on the 08 election, and it is different kind of coverage than the boys on the bus have always produced, then I am not going to be alarmed very much if I how I got there didn't wind through J-school or city room.

Fine, but will the fresh, arresting, original, informational reporting and commentary (if there is any) come from a "wise crowd"?

"Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge.

Where Jay fails to mention the "wisdom of the crowds," Arianna addresses it directly:

In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki argued that, given the right circumstances, large groups of people are smarter than an elite few. According to Surowiecki, three of the key elements that make a crowd (ie any group of people focused on a collective endeavor) smart are: independence, decentralization, and diversity.

Our citizen journalists will be independent -- focused on their piece of the puzzle, and not what everyone around them thinks. They will be decentralized -- spread across the country, with no one on high giving them their marching orders. And they will be as diverse as possible -- a mix of campaign insiders devoted to their candidates, neutral outsiders, passionate partisans and steely-eyed observers. The mosaic of their perspectives will add a varied portrait to the traditional coverage of the candidates and their campaigns.

If OffTheBus is really going to succeed, it will need to reach out to non-participants in order to get the diversity they currently lack. It will need to inspire online conversation with conservative bloggers through links and blog comments because they've already created an atmosphere where conservatives feel they aren't wanted as participants.

Or not.

Their "fresh, arresting, original, informational reporting and commentary" (if there is any) can be a success solely within the liberal sphere. It can have an impact (a traditional measure of success) on the primaries of both parties with Yearrrrrgh!!! and macaca videos.

An early measure of success for OffTheBus is the lack of interest displayed at memeorandum. It will be interesting to watch if/how the lack of diversity at OffTheBus plays out. I certainly agree with Jay on this:

Fifth. Do we want to say that people representing a portion of the political community cannot produce news and information for the entire political community? I wouldn't want to say that in advance, although I might conclude it after the experiment.

Remember Me

Go. Read. This. Watch the video. I was sooooo tempted to post the video here (via YouTube), but ... go there.

"I felt like there needed to be more support for our troops," said Palmer, who is all of 15 years old. "This video was my contribution."

h/t: Insty

"Who's Ahead?" Leaves the Public Behind ...

[Inspired by Who's Ahead? No, Seriously...]

The most damaging aspect of the Master Narrative is the effect it has on the public's need for "cacaphonous conversation" and the damage it does to journalism in the media's relationship with the public:

Carey thinks we should “value the press in the precise degree that it sustains public life, that it helps keep the conversation going among us.” We should “devalue the press” in the degree that it seeks only to inform us or, worse, “turn us into silent spectators.” [ed: also see The People Formerly Known as the Audience]

As I've written before in response to a different PressThink post: How do we know if the press has got the politics part right?

When we have a press that is discursive with the public. It is not, currently, but is capable of becoming so. The press adheres to an expository epistemological system too often, and only becomes discursive with the public when attempting to "regain" trust.

Press politics currently is the commodification of eyeballs and ears. When press politics becomes the commodification of thought and speech by the public, then they'll have their politics right.

That requires a different narrative, Off the Grid Journalism:

It is what it is. This tries to be anti-narrative, not in some ultimate sense (Lundstrom intended to tell stories in the Bee) but just at the beginning, the intake stage. Look directly at the people being interviewed, treating each of them not as symbols for a larger electorate, whose mood (“the voters are angry”) is developing outside the frame, but as an electorate of one. She is who she is. That way you avoid the traps and dead spots in most back-to-the-people journalism....

Compared to horse race news and strategy coverage, with their intense scrutiny of the candidate’s every move; compared to “issues” journalism where abstractions—health care, education, taxes—walk the land; compared to political punditry, which lets a journalist speculate freely about the voters and what they want, Lundstrom’s “campaign coverage without the candidates” is a tough, unglamorous, and at times tedious truth discipline— a way of starting at the bottom, making journalism from scratch. Her essay helps us realize why polls became such a potent tool of the political press. For polls say you can avoid all this.

Like I said earlier, "There's plenty of time to get it right for 2008!"

"Blathersphere"

Chertoff urges passage of immigration bill

Mr. Chertoff also faulted much of the right-wing blathersphere for its opposition to the Senate bill.

Who talks like that? I only got 7 hits on Google for "right wing blathersphere" just now!

Besides CVBT above and Aces on CVBT:

Joy Reid (Sep. 5, 2006)
Whites Creek (Dec. 1, 2006)
pkgoode at DKos (Feb. 11, 2007)
Tom Philpott, twice (Apr. 23, 2007 and Apr. 19, 2007)

Well, then there's Alexander Cockburn: The Left and the Blathersphere (Jun. 19, 2006).

Wierd.

Father's Day Greetings From Abroad

Bravo Bulldogs Beware!

Study: Sarin at root of Gulf War syndrome

As benefits administrators, officials and politicians argue the worthiness of studies on Gulf War syndrome, researchers say they have no doubts that they’ve found the root of the problem.

Sarin gas.

And they have advice for as many as 300,000 troops exposed to small doses of sarin in 1991: Don’t use bug spray, don’t smoke and don’t drink alcohol.

Information About Khamisiyah

J. Remodeling Effort: January 1998 – March 2000 (Figure 42)

Comparing each day’s hazard area from March 10 to 13, 1991.

Day 1: March 10, 1991 (Figures 43 – 44)

The 1997 hazard area generally extended in a north-south direction. Based on the wind models, the hazard area extended south-southwest almost 300 kilometers into Saudi Arabia, east of the city of Hafir Al Batin. The 2000 hazard area is divided in two due to slight differences in the wind patterns predicted by the meteorological models but generally follows a north-south axis. The hazard area extends approximately the same distance but to the northwest of Hafir Al Batin. However, the 2000 hazard area extended further to the east and south into Kuwait indicating possible exposure to US personnel not included in the 1997 hazard area. Approximately 70 percent of the 321 kilograms of chemical warfare agent modeled in 2000 had been dispersed into the atmosphere by the end of Day 1.

Figure 43. 1997 Potential hazard area for Day 1: March 10, 1991

Figure 44. 2000 Potential hazard area for Day 1: March 10, 1991

Day 2: March 11, 1991 (Figures 45 – 46)

Both models’ hazard areas have similar shapes. The 1997 model did not consider sunlight effects on the hazard area, but we added these effects for the 2000 modeling at the recommendation of the 1997 peer review panel. For the 2000 hazard area, the dispersion modeling assumed ultraviolet light from sunlight decayed the chemical warfare agent and thus reduced the size of the 2000 hazard area. Improved weather models reflected a shift in the wind to the south, which kept the 2000 hazard area mainly to the north and west of King Kalid Military City (KKMC), unlike the 1997 hazard area, which included KKMC and a much larger area to the west. Later nerve agent emissions evaporating from the soaked wood and soil in the Pit generated the four small hazard areas in the vicinity of Al Bussayyah and around Khamisiyah in the 2000 model. Approximately 89 percent of the 321 kilograms of the chemical warfare agent modeled in 2000 had dispersed into the atmosphere by the end of Day 2.

Figure 45. 1997 Potential hazard area for Day 2: March 11, 1991

Figure 46. 2000 Potential hazard area for Day 2: March 11, 1991

Distinct Army & Air Force Units in Khamisiyah 2000 Hazard Area
March 10-13, 1991

Germany

Company A, 1st Signal Battalion

Company B, 1st Signal Battalion