Weekly Summary

I haven’t been posting on this blog too much. I have a lot of other things going on but I’m hoping to start a little something new here. I spend a lot of time online throughout the week, I read a lot on line, and watch a bit of online video as well. Every week on our radio show, This Small Town Life, Kinsee and I have a little segment called This Week on the Internet. I always tend to scramble at the last minute to remember what happened and come up with things to talk about. My plan is to start posting weekly summaries here, on either Friday or Saturday, both to comment a bit on what’s going on, as well as to help me with the segment for the show.

CollegeHumor Back to the Future Sex Scenes Parody — I’m a big fan of Back to the Future. And I think Collegehumor makes some of the best quality online videos (they can be juvenile at times, but the production quality is always great).

Facebook Denis All Wrongdoing in Beacon Data Breach — I remember when Beacon came out, I consider myself pretty tech and privacy savvy, so I read about Beacon, and how to disable it. I (thought) I disabled Beacon with Facebook’s instructions and then bought something from an online store that was part of the program. Sure enough it showed up on my Facebook wall. I never figured out what I did wrong, but after that I think I took a more technical approach and used a browser extension or script to disable it.

NPR on Richard Brautigan — I only heard of Richard Brautigan a couple of years ago, while at a wedding near Redwoods National Park. Someone told me I looked just like him on the cover of Trout Fishing in America the way I was dressed. I picked up a copy of the book not long after. I can’t remember the last time before this that a book has had such an impact on me. Reading The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster, while backpacking in the Sierra Nevada with friends was an amazing experience.

Net at Night Episode 139 — I listen to a handful to TWiT shows each week. I can’t stand Leo Laporte, he glosses over so many details and doesn’t research things before talking about them on the shows, it’s really annoying. But typically the guests and co-hosts are more informed. Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani on TWiG and Amber MacArthur on net@night all impress me. I liked this episode for the guests though, two people involved with streaming music online with differing views in regards to curation vs discovery.

Google Is Being Evil, Music Bloggers Say — Under the DMCA (or other laws), is there any recourse if a company (in this case a record label) files a false DMCA complaint and your hosting provider (in this case Google/Blogger) deletes all your content?

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The Economic Downturn

I listen to a lot of NPR, it seems like every other story is about the “economic downturn” going on these days. California isn’t in good shape. I’m not holding my breath awaiting my state tax rebate check. But I’ve been told that the Four Corners Region, and Southwest Colorado specifically are weathering the storm much better than the rest of the country.

While reading the Durango Telegraph, the alt-weekly here in Durango yesterday I saw the headline “Colorado foreclosures tumble in ’08” and read about how the percentage of home foreclosures last year were down in the region which is an indicator that the economy isn’t suffering as bad as other parts of the country. You can read the full story here (about halfway down the page).

A few hours later I picked up the Durango Herald, the local daily and saw a very different headline: “Foreclosures in county hit record highs” talking about how home foreclosures last year were at an all time high. Here’s a link to the full story.

Two stories published just a day apart reporting on the same area with very different headlines. The Herald article appears to be talking in absolute numbers while the Telegraph article is talking in percentages. I haven’t figured out if one of the papers is misinterpreting the data or if the Telegraph thinks the glass is half full while the Herald thinks the same glass is half empty.

I wrote a letter to the editors of each paper, hopefully they can clarify things.

Anyone out there have any insight? If so leave a comment.

UPDATE: I heard back from the columnists of each story and it looks like in my confusion between the headlines I wasn’t reading the articles properly. The Telegraph story is talking about the state doing better than the rest of the country while the Herald article is talking about the county setting a record for forclosures. Two different ways to look at the same data.

Some Thoughts on the US-Mexico Border

The REAL ID Act allows the Department of Homeland Security to disregard all environmental laws to protect our borders. I don’t think they’ve started filling in the canyon on the border near the Tijuana Estuary yet, something that will cause all sorts of environmental problems with run off, erosion and effect plenty of birds, but it’s in the works.

Today I just read a story about the DHS using the REAL ID Act to start building roads in designated wilderness east of San Diego in preparation of building the triple border fence. Wilderness designation is supposed to keep the land free of human influence, a road and border fence are definitely human influence. A couple of years ago a border patrol spokesman said the area wouldn’t need fencing because the rugged land was fence enough, but apparently something has changed and they’re going ahead with it anyways.

One of my favorite things about much of the designated wilderness areas east of San Diego on the border are that they’re not wilderness for humans. There are few trails, few natural wonders for people to visit, but plenty of wide open space for the environment to be left alone. What wilderness designation was meant for. But no longer for the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area.

The blog post linked above (and here it is again in case you missed it, because I think it’s important to get the word out) is the first mention of this I’ve seen. Nothing in the newspapers, no other press. The DHS is doing a lot of stuff with very little public input.