This morning, I found this troubling and totally batshit crazy article on The Drudge Report.  This lady, and I don’t pretend to understand her grief right now, describes her father’s attack on the IRS as “inappropriate”, but considers him a hero.  Inappropriate?  Inappropriate is farting at the table or flirting with your sister-in-law.  A deranged man flying a plane into a building is, well, more than inappropriate.

Now, I don’t really care if you call people like this terrorists or criminals.  I don’t care who interrogates them, assuming they are caught before they execute their attacks.  My primary concern is getting them away from people they can hurt.  If that’s done in a Navy brig in Charleston, a camp in Cuba, or a maximum security prison in Illinois, I really don’t care.  Just make sure they stay in whatever lockup facility until they don’t present a risk to sane people.  If that requires their entire natural life, so be it.

What does matter to me is that people are treated consistently.  If John Doe is called a criminal for flying a plane into a building in an attack meant to create fear or even the score, then Mohamed Doe is also a criminal.  But enough of that, this situation is a bit complex so I thought I’d create this handy-dandy (though not ready for FlowingData) visual:

I guess it all depends on point of view. Maybe it’s true that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter…

Here’s something you don’t see everyday.  Yep, that’s snow on a sago palm.  On the 12th, we had about 2.5 inches of snow.  Now, it only lasted overnight.  By the next morning, the snow was gone.

This snowman made it another day or two, but was gone by Monday.

This is our snowman.  Sad.  Kinda an afterthought.  The girls in the neighborhood built the first snowman and also made one for our 90 year old neighbor.  So we couldn’t be the only ones on the street without a snowman…

We also finally started on the house.

That used to be a door to the back porch.  The wall on the right is coming down next.

From outside.  Now, if it would just seal and paint itself.

My classmate, Brendon Cooney, turned over command of the local National Guard unit.

Has anyone read this in the past few years?  In class today, though focused on the separation of church and state, we did a bit of background on the Founding Fathers, Mr. Jefferson, Madison, etc.

For those of you who haven’t read the Papers in years, #10 is Madison’s warning on factions, or groups of people, who have interests contrary to the rights of others or the goodness of the nation. (Wikipedia)  Honestly, this is really good stuff.  I wish they’d make politicians read this stuff.  Some parts are a bit dated and clearly off point, such as these:

In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the Representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude.

By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.

Madison just couldn’t have anticipated the expansion of the nation or the communication advances that we have seen in the past two hundred plus years.

Another fun quote that time has eclipsed:

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source.

I wonder if Madison could even understand what Twitter is?  I wonder who is today’s Madison equivalent?  Where is s/he?  When will we see real leaders again?  If you had to revise #10 to solve the issues of faction facing our nation, what would it say?

Ok, autofollow is pretty cool.

I like the rich media sharing too.

But, I’m curious about the usefulness if it’s a separate tab.  I mean, honestly, I’m running out of screen real estate.  If it’s not integrated into my inbox, I mean directly, not on a separate tag.

Some of this stuff looks a lot like Posterous, which I’ve been using for quite a while.

UPDATES:

1.  Public and private sharing-NICE. Instant indexing to Google’s Social Web.

2.  Also like the google contact integration.  Really like the @reply auto resolve.

3.  Just the good stuff?  Recommended Buzz–Maybe an extension of Cool Via Recommendations RSS Feed?

4.  So you have user feedback into the recommendation engine?  Pretty awesome.

5.  Whoa–Mobile integration–Holy Hell–>Check in maybe?  With auto guess of your location!!

I’ve long wondered about the logic behind removing children from their parents in the name of ‘giving them a better life.’  I’m fine with people adopting children in danger, girls from China for example, or handicapped children in countries where they might be at risk.  But I’m not onboard with the Madonna/Jolie/pick another star celebrity adoptions.  I’m also not a fan of ‘rescuing’ children from poverty or material want.

The story from Haiti today got a bit worse, especially for the ten Americans charged with kidnapping and criminal association.  They’re now looking at up to 25 years if found guilty of both crimes.  Now, I think everyone knows that most of the people charged had nothing but the best intentions in taking those children.  It appears that the group’s lawyer is tossing the leader under the bus.  The lawyer contends that 9 of the group had no idea that they were kidnapping children, but that the leader of the group was clear that they were not complying with Haiti’s laws.

The best of intentions…  Isn’t that what most of us have?  Take, for instance, the people who responded to the Haiti earthquake by sending clothing.  Seems like a good idea, honestly.  American’s are wealthy, they have too many clothes, many in good condition, isn’t it a good idea to send the clothes to those in need.  Well, no.

No matter how poor people are, they find a way to purchase clothes.  Or they make them.  If you send them clothes, they’ll save a bit of money on clothes for a while, but in the mean time, their clothing manufacturers will go out of business.  When China does it with steel, we call it dumping.  When you do it with clothes, it’s considered aid.  But the long term impact of sending free clothes to needy countries is significant.  Basically, you’re guaranteeing that they will continue to be dependent on aid.  After the first clothing shipment, the local clothing industry will take a hit, but probably won’t die.  But, the second and third shipments will cement the fate of the small textile businesses.  Once the clothing businesses are bankrupt, the recipients of the aid will become dependent on the aid.  They won’t have any other way to clothe themselves.

The story’s the same with food aid.  I don’t mean emergency aid.  Of course you send as much food as necessary in response to fires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.  But, I’m taking about the continuing aid.  Starting during the Cold War and P.L. 480 (Food for Peace), the US has sent millions and millions of tons of food to struggling nations.  According to US law, at least 50% of food aid has to be purchased in the US, most of it is packed in the US and most is transported on US ship.  At the end of the day, food aid normally helps the US farmer more than anyone else.  But, beyond the problems with obtaining, packing and sending the food, the result is the same as with the clothing above.  If you’re sending free food to poor folks you create a cycle of dependency.  If you are a small business owner in a country that receives aid, you can’t compete with free food.

For the past few weeks in church, we’ve been discussing the role of the 2010 Christian.  We’ve discussed the environment, global warming, mercury poisoning, stormwater runoff, and development.  Pretty interesting stuff, honestly.  One of my friends, an Army officer who has spent some time in Iraq, made a great observation when it comes to aid and foreign assistance.  Paraphrasing, “If you would like to accomplish anything, make sure you send people without enough money or other resources to actually achieve anything.”  The logic is, if you send people who can’t accomplish anything on their own, they will be forced to work with the locals to get real work done.  If you send people with enough money to do something meaningful, they’ll do it, they won’t get any local buy-in, and once they leave, the project will be a waste.

My point here is that many thing that we do for others, we actually do for ourselves.  We give clothing, we donate food, we ’save’ children, ostensibly for the good of the people we’re helping, but when we analyze our response, we find that we’re actually damaging the very people we try to help.  We do this, not just as individuals, but as organizations and collectively as a country.  When are we going to critically analyze our actions as people and our policies as a country?  We need to create sustainable programs, not countries that simply slap a Band-Aid on the problem.  Instead of kidnapping 33 orphans, how about you make a long-term commitment to creating a safe environment for Haitian children?  Instead of sending clothing, how about you work with a local Haitian organization to increase the competitiveness of local clothing manufacturers?  The bottom line is that we’re going to have to do more than just respond to emergencies.  We need to start thinking of our commitments as long term investments in the future of the people we help.

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I’m a big reader.  I subscribe to a few newspapers, a few news magazines, at least half a dozen magazines in different categories.  I’ve watched newspapers die before: I still have the final edition of the The Greenville Piedmont, my hometown’s afternoon paper that closed about 15 years ago.  I’ve run a small, local news site, for about a day.

Anyway, I’m really interested in how newspapers are going to make money in the next decade or so.  I’m not trying to jump on the bandwagon of “Whoa, the sky’s falling, newspapers are all screwed, they might as well shut down now.”  But, it’s pretty obvious that the old revenue model isn’t working well.  I’m not sure I can pin down a perfect revenue model; if I could, I think there are thousands of newspapers that would pay well for the info and I wouldn’t be writing about it here.  But, there are a few options out there.

Force Your Readers to Buy What They Don’t Want:

Newsday.com, a local daily in Long Island, NY, threw up a paywall about three months ago.  For a mere $5 per week, you can access their online content.  But, do I have a deal for you.  For only $4.50 a week, you can get the paper delivered to your house and online access.

In the three months since the paywall went up, there are a whopping 35 subscribers.  That’s about $600 a month or so.  Total crap.  But, I bet their subscription numbers have gone up quite a bit.  Seems like a great deal, huh?  Except, it’s really shitty to force your customers to buy things they don’t want.  Everyone does it: You walk into a store looking for a crewneck sweater, you ask the salesperson for a crew neck and she says, “We don’t have one, but let me show you the turtlenecks…”  Come on folks, if I wanted a turtleneck, I’d have asked for one.  Or said, I want a turtleneck or a crew neck.

Same with the NewsDay.com site.  People might be willing to pay for the paper to get the online access, but someday, someone is going to find a way to serve the news needs for the community, not make them buy a paper, and not charge them $5 a week.  The real funny part is that Nielsen estimates their monthly traffic has dropped from 2.2 million uniques before the paywall to 1.5 million uniques.  That’s a 33% hit to your CPMs.  I’m pretty sure advertisers won’t put up with that for too long.

Selling Advertising:

This is a popular solution to the newspaper death spiral issue.  Makes sense to me, afterall, it’s a model that the newspapers already know and are really good at.  Honestly, newspapers have been giving away content for years.  Many years before the internet threatened newspapers, the papers were giving away content and subsidizing their operating costs from advertising.  So, moving to the internet shouldn’t be a huge adjustment for them.  But, they have bloated cost structures that don’t transfer well to the online world.

Newspapers will have to make serious and lasting changes to their reporting, editing, media, and distribution operations.  Perfect opportunity for online only operations, right?  Not exactly.  In Long Island, there’s a second online paper, called the Long Island Press. Now, it’s pretty impressive for a free online paper, but it’s not knocking Newsday.com out of the water.  The LIP is the 32,000th most popular US website, while Newsday.com is the 5,000th.  Those things could change pretty quickly, but the LIP isn’t eating anyone’s breakfast.

Here in Beaufort, there’s an online newspaper that’s going on a year in business.  It has the pageviews, over 400K a month and rising.  They’ve broken quite a few good stories. On Sunday, the editor appealed to the readers to encourage local businesses to support the paper by purchasing ads.  Not the worst idea; get your readers involved and loving your online paper, then explain the economics of the thing to your readers and send them out to do your advertising sales.  The only problem is that The Beaufort Tribune didn’t just ask their readers to go out and recruit advertisers, they stopped publishing.  I don’t know if it’s a good idea for a business to go on strike, I can’t imaging a dry cleaner going on strike so their customers would spread the word about their great service.  But I can understand the financial demands of running a website, so I’m trying not to be overly critical.

Metered Content:

The Financial Times does it.  The New York Times launched an updated version of Times Reader.  This is the NY Times’ second time at content monetization.  The first time was a huge flop; placing some of the most sought after content behind the firewall.  Not a good idea for the folks who love Kristof or Friedman.

The Financial Times is successful because they have very niche content.  Ditto The Economist. According to the ABC, The Economist’s subscription numbers are actually going up in the US.  The Times Reader 2.0 thing will probably make a bit of money.  It’s only a few bucks a week, it’s got a sleek Adobe AIR interface, and it provides value beyond the standard newspaper content.  You get weekly archives, etc.  Most importantly, the NY Times isn’t going to block off their entire site, or even a huge portion of it.  The FT allows visitors to read a handful of articles per month, allows registered free users to access 30 articles per month, and then charges on top of that.

The key to making metered or freemium models work is making sure you have niche content.  The cost of entry into the online news business is so low that you simply can’t republish widely available content and expect people to pay.  The NY Times has plenty of niche content that they can sell.  The Financial Times also has plenty of niche content that people are willing to pay for.  The Wall Street Journal is also successful in metering content and convincing folks to pay a few hundred bucks a year to access special content.

What’s The Solution:

If you’re in the niche content business, charge for your content.  Be realistic, but charge.  People don’t mind paying for something that provides value in their lives.  Books cost money, cable television costs money, board games cost money, golf costs money, shopping costs money.  People are willing to pay for entertainment.

I belong to numerous paid websites.  Most are collections of people with similar interests.  One of the most popular is a webmaster, blogging, and online monetization forum.  I pay a small monthly fee to access the content, conversations, and advice.  It cost me less than $50 a year for this site and I get more than my money’s worth.  Niche.

If you’re not in the niche content business, get there.  If you are running a local newspaper, you’re niche already.  If you’re in a specific industry, finance, for example, you’re niche.  If you’re a national newspaper, better start laying people off.  There’s room for just a few national newspapers.  Those papers are going to be, more or less, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and, possibly, The Los Angeles Times.  These are papers that do local, regional, national, and international news.  If you’re a local paper that simply republishes wire content and doesn’t produce lots of very local news, you’re not going to be long for the world.

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The other day, I published a short series of pictures, not very well done in my opinion, about the Presbyterian Church on Edisto Island.  The pictures were mostly taken with my cell phone, the lighting was pretty wrong, the angles and composition were all wrong.  But they were popular.  Maybe it was just the Edisto Island crew enjoying the pictures.  Maybe there were a lot of Scots or Presbyterians hanging out in the interwebs.  No matter, the post was the third most popular in the history of my site.  And I didn’t have to say something insane or offensive to get people to visit the site.

I didn’t think the post would be very popular.  But I’m clearly not an expert.  So, how about you let me know what you want to read about on my site.  More local history?  More Edisto Island?  More graveyards?  More Beaufort County?  Leave me a comment, below, or shoot me an email.  Don’t get crazy here, your ideas need to be realistic for someone who has a job, a few projects, triathlon training, and a wife.  But, I’d love your input.  Thanks,

Eric

I traveled to Edisto Island this morning to see Heather preach at the Presbyterian Church on Edisto Island.  The current head pastor at Sea Island Presbyterian, Steve Keeler, served the congregation at Edisto for 6 years in the early to mid 1980’s.

The Presbyterian Church on Edisto Island was founded in 1685, making it one of the oldest in the nation.  It’s not often that you see donations to a church in South Carolina denominated in pounds sterling, or for that matter, in slaves:

I really enjoyed the detail on some fences surrounding individual family plots in the oldest part of the cemetery:

There were two especially interesting parts of the cemetery.  First, there was a small mausoleum directly behind the church. 

Unlike any other mausoleum, this one didn’t have a door.

Why, you may ask, is there no door?  I was told that a young child was accidentally buried alive in the mausoleum.  Doors have been installed and they never last more than 24 hours.  It seems that the young child doesn’t like doors.  Three headstones are visible and the one of the far right belongs to a boy that died at age 6.  Could this be the restless child that won’t allow a door to be installed?

The next interesting part of the cemetery is a unique plot in the back corner.  A mostly demolished simple iron fence surrounds three plain markers.

I’m not an expert, but it appears that the fence is original, dating from 1865 based on the headstones.  The stones, three basic stones, only reveal the names of the dead.

James Blake.  Died Christmas 1865.

Messrs. James P. Blake, and James H. Crosby went to South Carolina to seek for themselves a field of usefulness, under General Saxton’s directions.

They arrived at South Carolina about the time of the capture of Savannah. Mr. Blake has been actively engaged in distributing supplies to the freedmen who followed Sherman’s army, and in the effort to organize schools for their instruction on Edisto Island.

–The Freedman’s Record, April 1865

Beside Mr. Blake, you’ll find Mira Stanton, died 25 December 1865.

Finally, there’s Ellen S. Kempton, from New Bedford, Mass.

Have you put it all together yet?  Mr. Blake was the superintendent of the Freedmen’s schools on Edisto Island.  Myra and Ellen were teachers.  And Christmas 1865 was just another Christmas, with another Christmas Party.  Returning to their home, their small boat capsized in St. Pierre’s Creek and all three drowned.

What’s interesting and, just maybe, a bit humorous, is that they were buried in the far corner of the cemetery.  Because, you know, you couldn’t bury the Yankees in the regular cemetery…

From the Freedmen’s Record, February 1866:

IN MEMORIAM.

” They were lovely and pleasant in their lives,
And in death they were not divided.”

The stern, curt telegram announcing, with its painful but unavoidable brevity, the death, by drowning, of our three valued friends, was received too late for any other notice than of the shortest form in the January number of the “Freedmen’s Record.” None but those who know the strong and tender relation of sympathy which exists between the Committee on Teachers and most of those teachers whom they select and supervise, can appreciate the shock it caused in this office: not to a soulless Committee, intent only on business; but to those who hold themselves as guardians and friends of the many noble and self-sacrificing young women and young men whom they send forth, with joy and pity, to the deep satisfactions and the many privations and trials of this great work, — hardships from which no care at home can shield them; but the brave endurance of which, by the greater number of them, wins and secures our loving reverence.

ELLEN S. KEMPTON and ELMIRA B. STANTON have been unfalteringly faithful to the high and holy purpose under whose impulse they left the endearments and protection and delights of home, a single-hearted, pure re­solve to consecrate their time, their talents, and their superior position to the benefit of a long-injured race. With that sweet piety which recognizes a child of the Universal Father in every lowliest human being, they both entered on their work : no difficulties discouraged, no privations fretted them; but their latest letters to us are filled with the same glad enthusiasm which they manifested in the beginning.

JAMES P. BLAKE had also served under this Society in South Carolina, and lately established himself as a lawyer in Charleston, believing he might in that way largely benefit the oppressed freedmen, whose sufferings have called out his indignant pity and earnest activity. His eloquent and pathetic appeals to the North in behalf of the thousands of men, women, and children who, following in the wake of Sherman’s resistless course through Georgia, were cast adrift in those winter days among the Sea Islands, almost naked, famished, and frozen, aroused the pity, and secured the aid, which saved innumerable lives.

Christmas, 1865, was a fair and genial day over the creek of St. Pierre in Edisto Island: the guiding moon silvered the placid waters, while the small, insecure boat, too heavily laden, bore the three friends homeward from the neighboring plantation. An anxious listener on the bank heard the sound of their mirthful voices, marked the interruption of a sentence, the pause, and then the sounds of anguish: the Father’s last Angel had folded all beneath his protecting wing, and borne them to the beautiful home, and to the “Well done, good and faithful servants.” No dirge sounding amid cathedral walls from grand-toned organ could have been so impressive and fitting as the plaintive native songs of their loving, weeping pupils, moving in a funeral train, almost as simple in all its arrangements as the Puritan obsequies on Plymouth Rock in 1621.

Tenderest sympathy for the bereaved homes whose deep loss is keenly felt by us; sweet, enduring memories of the faithful teachers, the beloved friends, — these fill our hearts. That life is not to be reckoned short which has borne fruit so beautiful; nor that death untimely which calls the faithful soul to higher duties.

Hello everyone,

I’m pleased to announce that my partner and I have have launched a new website that’s been a few months in the work.  At a meeting in November, Kenan and I sketched out a plan for a new site that would fill a huge need.  We’re pleased to launch FitEgg.com, a triathlon website.  FitEgg is mostly a review site, focused on evaluating products and items that are useful to triathletes, swimmers, cyclists, and runners.  No need to be a triathlete to take advantage of this site.  We’re also publishing training, nutrition, and gear tips.

You’ll notice that I’ll be updating here a bit less and the focus will probably shift a bit.  Head over to FitEgg and let me know what you think about the new site.  We just got the logos and the overall design should be finalized soon.  Happy to have any feedback from my readers here.  Thanks,

Eric

Not exactly a great article here:

CNNMoney.com has an article about 100+ year old businesses that closed in 2009.  We all know that 2009 was challenging, but this article brings it all home.  Not that Lipsitz closed because of the economy, but it’s still not the kind of article that you like seeing.