The global warming connection 

Dave links tonight to a chilling story about global warning and weather changes.

Wow. I'm a little ashamed to admit I'd never really put it all together like this and made the link between our president's refusal to believe in the existence of global warming and his energy business sympathies.

Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.

In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when President George W. Bush was elected president — and subsequently took suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.

Actually, I think I read that Bush is just now starting to admit there might be something to global warming. I suppose it would be foolish to stand too firm in the face of so much hard evidence. Maybe now he'll take the blinders off about Repetitive Stress Injuries, too. Same kind of deal. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome can't possibly exist because it might cost business something to prevent and treat it.

Governor McGovern? 

George McGovern was just interviewed on CNN. He came to Houston to see what he could do. He was identified as a former governor on the screen graphic, and the interviewer called him "governor." Was he ever a governor? I didn't think so. The graphic didn't say which state; some CNN researcher must have been thrown by his name.

I wonder if the Jed Bartlett character takes the professor aspect from McGovern. West Wing marathon on Bravo tomorrow, but you've seen that one, that one too, seen it, seen it, oh I'd like to see that one again.

McGovern is 83. Owns a used bookstore in Montana! He always has been my kinda guy... I'll tell you a story sometime about his campaign and my dad.

Blogosphere not addressing race 

Bertrand Pecquerie at editorsweblog.org talks about Katrina and race. It may not be that bloggers don't care. It could be that bloggers, who tend to be more privileged than the rest of society, just don't have the language to talk about it, and maybe some fear they'll come off sounding politically incorrect or inadvertently offensive. I wonder where I'd find demographics on bloggers. Has the Pew project researched it?

The MSM is starting to cover this a little now. I saw two different reports on TV today that mentioned how, in nearly identical photos or videos, African Americans are characterized as looters while white people are looking for food. For people as old as I am, I guess the thinking might be an artifact of lingering mental images of race riots in places like Watts, Harlem, and Detroit in the mid 60s.

Demographics of the blogosphere 

I wondered where I'd find demographics on bloggers, and if the Pew project had researched it. Yes, in a November 2004 study. There's nothing about ethnicity but something about privilege.

"The Pew Internet & American Life Project began asking about blog creation in the spring of 2002. In June of that year, 3% of internet users said they had created a blog or web diary that others could read. By the beginning of 2004, the figure had grown to 5% of internet users. Our survey in late November showed that the number grew to 7%, which represents more than 8 million people.

Blog creators are more likely to be:

• Men: 57% are male

• Young: 48% are under age 30

• Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home

• Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more

• Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000

• Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees."

Once I went looking for this stuff, I remembered reading a lot of it before. Most of it is old news, hashed over and over. I read one thing I hadn't heard about before. In one study of female bloggers, the researchers decided to specifically exclude blogs on services like LiveJournal, terming them diaries or journals. They reasoned that the large number of teenage girls using those types of blog sites would skew the results.

My little guy (almost 17 now) objects to these sites and his friends' preference for blogs on Xanga. "It'll turn me into an emo kid," I heard him say on the phone last night to a friend who was urging him to revive his abandoned Xanga site.

I haven't been able to get a satisfactory definition out of him about emo kids.

They sulk and brood, he says.

Oh, I thought I had it, then they're like goths?

Well, no, also a lot of them are skateboarders.

Oh. That doesn't compute. I'm still in the dark.

Pop quiz 

Q: What do these songs have in common?

"Centerfield"

"Smuggler's Blues"

(Hint: their common release year, 1985, doesn't have anything to do with the similarity I'm thinking of.)

That's funny 

It's the OPML file from the Podfeed directory. It displays Dave's show notes under my podcast. It must be coming from my OPML installation, where Dave's notes accompany the editor upgrade downloads. But my podcast isn't tied to my OPML blog in any way that I can think of.