Exercising My Right to Petition the Government
On Tuesday I visited five Congressional offices in the Capitol to make the case for small publishers who rely on targeted Internet ads for revenue, an event that rated a story in Politico. The Interactive Advertising Bureau invited web entrepreneurs to come to DC and meet members of Congress and their aides, hoping to make the point that thousands of Americans are running businesses powered by these ads. We're one of the only sectors of the economy that's been growing during this recession.
Although I had to pay my own travel and hotel costs, I accepted the invitation to tell the story of the Drudge Retort. As a former newspaper journalist, I've been able to run a social news site that receives two million visits a month because of the revenue generated by online ads. My wife lost her job as a reporter in a layoff two years ago, and we've endured the tough economic times with the help of the site.
There are a lot of Americans running web-based businesses in circumstances like ours. Reporting jobs are disappearing, so we've started our own media empire out of the house.
With several web publishers and a lawyer for the IAB as chaperone, I met aides for Reps. Diane DeGette (D-Colo.), Michael Castle (R-Del.), Bill Young (D-Fl.), Charlie Melancon (D-La.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). We wandered around a catacomb of ancient underground hallways that connect the Rayburn, Longworth and Cannon buildings where members of Congress work, getting 10-15 minutes with each aide to argue that proposed new legislation would crush our businesses, send jobs overseas and cause web advertising to be considerably more annoying than it is today. There's an Internet privacy bill by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), currently being circulated as a draft, that could be interpreted to require every bit of targeting in online marketing to be opt-in.
Although that sounds OK in principle, in practice there's a lot of personalization going on today thanks to anonymous cookies, IP addresses and the relationships customers build with online sites. Dell sends an email to you offering a warranty extension for your laptop. Google delivers local restaurant ads based on the geographic location of your IP address. An Amazon shopper who buys the latest Justin Bieber album is told he might also enjoy earplugs.
I thought I did OK in the meetings, though it's a challenge to pitch the public benefit of something that's so obviously tied to your own self-interest. I was reminded of the old saying that "what's good for IBM is good for America."
Before I went to the Capitol, I sought advice from the members of the Retort, getting all manner of helpful and not-so-helpful suggestions. One comment from Dirk, a libertarian member of the site, gave me something to talk about in several meetings.
At the end of the day the internet is about servicing humanity through the vital sharing of information. Government intrusion only hinders this important service that you provide. ...
Right makes might and you are in the right. This is "a unique medium for humanity to share information and ideas" don't let anyone compare it to any other areas of communication that have been regulated in the past and if they attempt to point out where those forms of communication have died off.
If you've spent any time on the Retort, you know that it's a cantankerous community of people of all political stripes who show up each day to yell at each other about the news of the day. And yell at me.
But one thing the members do agree on is that the Retort and thousands of other independent blogs are an important vehicle for free expression. The third-party ads that run on the site leave me beholden to no one, because I'm not required to directly solicit advertisers and other entities for support. The stories that run on the site are based on my own editorial judgment and that of the users who contribute their own links. The users of the site are as invested in the success of this business model as I am.
Although I did not get to meet a member of Congress in an official capacity, while crammed into one of the Capitol's tiny elevators in the Rayburn building, I accidentally elbowed a well-dressed mustachioed gentleman square in the nose. He had been graciously helping us find the tunnel to the Longworth building.
I found out later he was Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas).
Related posts:
- Todd Curl (another event attendee): The Pungent Aroma of Democracy
Credit: The photo of the U.S. Capitol tunnel going to the Cannon Building was taken by Indianagal.
Mr. Cadenhead Goes to Washington
I'm in Woodbridge, Va., this morning about to head out to the Long Tail Alliance Fly-In, a gathering of small web publishers organized by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google. As a publisher who uses context-based advertising on the Drudge Retort and other sites, I was invited to come to DC and meet with members of Congress to talk about why this form of advertising is important to online media.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has concerns that Congress is working on regulations that would kick this form of advertising in the fiddly parts:
Political campaigns have been launched at the federal and state levels to seek government regulation of many of the core processes and technologies that support interactive advertising. The IAB believes a disproportionately negative impact would be felt by small publishers whose advertising sales are largely or entirely managed by ad networks. This would affect advertising revenues and potentially diminish the diversity of voices and ideas on this most diverse of communications media.
I'll be liveblogging the event on Twitter using hashtag #iabdc. Follow me on Twitter to live this adventure in real time.
I don't know yet who I'll be meeting (Michelle Bachmann! Michelle Bachmann! Michelle Bachmann!). As the publisher of a liberal-leaning web site that calls itself "Red Meat for Yellow Dogs," it could be amusingly awkward if I get some conservative Republicans.
Then again, I'm here on my own dime trying to keep my bidness free of government regulation. So I'm practically speaking Republican already.
BP Reporter Calls Cleanup 'Ballet at Sea'
On May 28, BP-employed reporter Paula Kolmar filed this dispatch from a shrimping vessel hired to skim oil from the Gulf of Mexico before it reached Alabama's coastline:
Over about four hours we, all guests of Gulf Coast native Captain Wade and his local crew, enjoyed the spectacular ballet at sea. ...
Watching the captains weave the long black boom as seamlessly as a professional ballet troupe performs an intricate dance, I found it difficult to believe that the rehearsals only started some weeks ago. ...
Gently caressing the sea surface, the three vessels circled and swirled, guiding the boom without changing the design.
A ballet at sea as mesmerising as any performance in a concert hall, and worthy of an audience in its own right.
If you'd like to see the ballet, made possible by a contribution of 40,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, it will be running through August and may be extended into the fall.
I Fill Random Target Employees with Rage
The seven-week break I took on Workbench, which just ended 11 words ago, is the longest since I began my personal blog in 1999. I'm doing some work in social media these days and thinking about launching a new company to commercialize software I've been developing for my own use the past six years. I also am deep into the manuscript for a new edition of Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours.
My absence did not make Target employees fonder, as a recent comment to my five-year-old tale of shopping humiliation demonstrates:
Lady,
You and your disgusting, obnoxious kids are the reason people hate working at Target. You come in, with your head up your ass, while your kids act like monsters, and then are offended when an employee has the audacity to mention it to you. Is it your goal to come into the store and make everyone else around you miserable? Please, do us Team Member's a favor and take your business elsewhere.
Sincerely,
A Fed-up Employee
Sorry to tell you this, Fed Up, but my kids and I still shop at Target. I'd rather be harangued by teen-aged girls every time I visit the store than get within a mile of Wal-Mart. With your attitude and the fact you searched Google for the term Target sucks to find me, you're never going to become a Leader on Duty.
Professor Wants to Raise His Own Clone
In a draft of his upcoming book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, the economist Bryan Caplan mentions that he'd like to clone and raise himself:
I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet. Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son. Seriously. I want to experience the sublime bond I'm sure we'd share. I'm confident that he'd be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me. I'm not pushing others to clone themselves. I'm not asking anyone else to pay for my dream. I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone. Is that too much to ask?
I'm surprised that Caplan takes it as a given that his son would be "delighted" by such a scenario. His clone wouldn't be raised by the same parents that he was, but instead would have a father with an extreme sense of his child's likes, dislikes, talents and flaws. That influence -- likely to be domineering and a little creepy -- would produce a much different person over the span of a childhood than how he turned out.
Caplan writes that he has twin sons, but they must not be very old yet or he'd realize that his clone will reject some of dad's traits on principle. Kids have a natural inclination to do things differently than their parents. With my three partial clones, if I'm trying to persuade them to try an activity or a hobby, the least persuasive argument I can use is that I liked it when I was their age.
So no matter how many genes we share, none of my sons will watch One Life to Live with me.
How Johannes Kepler Discovered Sex
San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Mark Fiore won the Pulitzer Prize yesterday for his animated political cartoons. His work appears exclusively online, so it's the first time a non-print cartoonist has won the Pulitzer in its history.
One of his submitted cartoons was Science-Gate, which mocks the scandal over the ClimateGate emails in the style of an overheated political ad.
All of the quotes scribbled by the scientists in this cartoon are real, including a jaw-dropping one by the 16th century German astronomer Johannes Kepler about how he had sex with a virgin:
I suffered continually from skin ailments, often severe sores, often from the scabs of chronic putrid wounds in my feet which healed badly and kept breaking out again. On the middle finger of my right hand I had a worm, on the left a huge sore. ... At Cupinga's I was offered union with a virgin; on New Year's Eve I achieved this with the greatest possible difficulty, experiencing the most acute pains of the bladder.
This Kepler quote comes from an essay by Evan S. Connell printed in his book The Aztec Treasure House.
Kepler was 21 when he started the New Year off with a bang. He suffered from "boils, mange, smallpox, hemorrhoids, constant stomach trouble, and such bad eyesight that he often saw his world doubled or quadrupled," Connell writes. "He seems to have been impatient, sarcastic, cowardly and stingy, and he almost never bathed."
Candidate Fakes Air Force One Photo
Jonathan Bourne discovered something funny on the web site of David Benning, the Republican running for Congress against Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).
Take a look at this photo of Benning, his wife and an unidentified couple in front of the famous door of Air Force One:
The photo is displayed on Benning's about page, where it has the filename airforceone.jpg. But as Bourne reveals, Benning wasn't actually rubbing elbows with the president and other high fliers:
Turns out the photo is of SAM 27000, the decommissioned Air Force One that has been an attraction at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley since 2005.
Anyone willing to pay the $12 admission fee can get his photo taken in front of the former Air Force One (copies of the photos are extra). How do I know this? Well, I had my photo taken with the Presidential prop last January.
Not only did Benning spend time on Air Force One, he was also SportsToday magazine's athlete of the year.
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