Off the Cuff

I am relying on my iPhone more and more to do many of the things I use to do with my MacBook. Yes I do use the MacBook, but using the iPhone has become much more convenient.

It just seems impossible that you can get any meaningful information when the stream of information far exceeds the ones capability to intelligently absorb it.

How Auto-Gathered Followers Hurt You There are services available that claim to increase your follower account automatically. These are a bad idea, however, because auto-gathering followers creates:

* Chaos and noise on your Twitter stream if part of the automated follower-building process you’ve adopted entails “auto-following back.” That reduces the value of your Twitter stream as a listening tool and information source.

* Followers who aren’t listening to what you have to say. That diminishes the value of marketing anything on Twitter and reduces the chance of being heard at all.

* Overinflated follower numbers, which are a turn-off for those looking to make meaningful connections. Many people use the “follow-to-follower ratio” as part of assessing someone’s “worth” on Twitter, as opposed to sheer number of followers. For example, if someone is following 48,895 people and has 46,975 followers, that looks suspiciously like they are fishing for followers rather than genuinely interested in interaction.

* Automated activity in your Twitter account that you don’t control.

* The possibility that your Twitter password gets into the hands of an untrusted third party

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Krugman has interesting peice in the NY Times:

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased. Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).

You can't make this stuff up!

Think Progress » O’Reilly Defends Gay Penguins: ‘God Made The Penguin That Way’.

O’REILLY: Number one, if the penguin’s gay, leave the penguin alone. God made the penguin that way and I agree — I mean, I’m not one of these guys who thinks you should be converting anybody to anything. If you’re that way, and you’re not hurting anybody, I think you and I agree, we’re libertarians. So who cares? … If they’re happy, they’re happy. That’s my philosophy.

I'm playing around with the Pingle app and thought I'd just do a post to one of my groups I have set up on Ping.fm.

Starting today I plan to post my all my Delicious bookmarks from the previous day. So here are Sunday's bookmarks:

Warren Buffett Buys More Wells Fargo (WFC, BRK, USB)

Was AIG Cooked Long Before Joe Cassano? (AIG)

 

AIG: "A Ponzi Scheme Plain And Simple" (AIG)

Porsche’s Merger With Volkswagen

Is Interrupted School Shows Students Dangers of Texting While Driving Using Mario Kart

Box Office: ‘Angels’ Squeaks by ‘Star Trek’

Was It the National Security Bureaucrats Who Forced Obama to Hold on to the Torture Photos?

 

Why the Press Is on Suicide Watch

XXX: Is the Porn Industry Doomed?

Yanks unconcerned about A-Rod Being A-Rod

Yes, It's True, The Stress Tests Were A Joke

The Washington Independent

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) made this point about Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) charges that the CIA misled Congress about torture:

“On that specific point I totally disagree. Over the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve been briefed constantly by the CIA, and I’d say they’ve told me the truth as they see it.”

It’s been my experience that any attempt to generalize about the CIA is wrong. It’s not an organization of liars and it’s not an organization of torturers and it’s not an organization of liberals and it’s not an organization of barbarians and it’s not an organization of brave truth-tellers and it’s not an organization of risk-averse bureaucrats and it’s not an organization of lawbreakers and it’s not an organization of whiz kids and it’s not an organization of mediocrities. But come on.

The greatest intelligence officer the CIA ever produced was convicted of lying to Congress. I regret that I don’t have my copy of Tim Weiner’s definitive “Legacy of Ashes” handy to document quickly how routinely the CIA lied to Congress through its history.

More evidence needs to be introduced before concluding that the CIA lied to Pelosi. But no additional evidence needs to be introduced to conclude that it wouldn’t.

Something I should subscribe to but have trouble doing.

19 Reasons You Should Blog And Not Just Tweet

Are you just using Twitter but not blogging? You’re missing out. Here’s why you should make a blog your home base and consider Twitter an outpost:

1. Blogging demonstrates true commitment and passion to your industry that you really can’t fake long-term. Most won’t be able to sustain it over long periods of time with frequency, but those who do so are rewarded in spades and stand out from the crowd.

2. Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines. Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.

3. Remember, you’re essentially contributing to someone else’s network on Twitter - certainly there are returns, but make no mistake they profit from your attention. I know you might not have a problem with that because you gain something too, but it’s good to be conscious of that fact.

4. A compelling link in a blog entry will be clicked; links in Twitter are noise that in aggregate make up signal, but the reality is links in your stream aren’t the same as a post with a compelling link.

5. Secret everyone knows: most of Twitter is just linking to blogs and content on the open web. Being the end product people are actually interested in and focus their attention on is where your ideas will be studied carefully, not in the cacophony of Twitter.

6. You own your work in a self-hosted blog and are in total control over how it is presented.

7. Twitter is in a sense social sticky notes, or the SMS of the Internet (however you want to consider it). It’s snack-sized content. Are you or your business interesting enough to provide the full course? It’s telling who engages deeper vs. those who simply choose to engage 140 characters at a time.

8. Cumulative results over time from blogging, each post incrementally adds value to your site as a whole. Not necessarily true on Twitter.

9. Full analytics with a blog.

10. Multiple touch points to readership and interaction (email, RSS, on-site, etc.).

11. Plugins let you add pretty much anything you want, can even integrate microblogging within your blog itself.

12. Flexibility with layout.

13. 140 characters is often more than necessary - but also it is often less than necessary.

14. Everyone on Twitter is looking for the next big thing or most interesting piece of content to link to. Wouldn’t you rather be the big thing than merely another person pointing at it?

15. These are all just tools to share content and ideas, no more, no less. You need a cohesive strategy for all of them to drive conversions in one spot. A blog is the perfect place for that if you want focused attention and to build an interested community. What if any one network you don’t control falls out of favor or changes the rules? At the end of the day, self-hosted blog owners control the vertical and the horizontal, whereas on Twitter or any external network you’re at the whim of someone else.

16. I don’t even know why some people consider for a second that Twitter and FriendFeed will kill blogging, these ideas are pure linkbait and show a lack of understanding of the motivation of people on the open web.

17. Careful of how much time you devote to Twitter instead of contributing to your own channel. Spend the most time nurturing that - time spent in Twitter comes at the opportunity cost of fresh content to your blog. You can use Twitter and other micro networks to draw subscribers and interest, but the premier value is in working on your own material in a unique space.

18. RSS is alive and well - Steve Gillmor and the TC gang know how to write a great piece of linkbait, but that’s pretty much all it is. Remember, they are in the business of generating buzz, links and pageviews through opinion pieces that ruffle the feathers of tech bloggers, and they’re good at it. It’s entertainment value but I wouldn’t put too much stake in anything one person or site says, always look at the situation and landscape objectively.

19. You are in control of when your blog goes into maintenance mode - not so with Twitter or really any free service.

I must be honest. The reason why I started a blog was to stimulate my writing muse.

Bush Flashback: “War Crimes Will Be Prosecuted…It Will Be No Defense To Say, ‘I Was Just Following Orders’”

Just before launching his invasion of Iraq, President Bush went on national television to issue an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, urging him to leave his country within 48 hours. Bush also had this message for “all Iraqi military and civilian personnel”:

War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”

Watch it:

George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley argues that this statement by Bush shows that “he and his administration knew that there is no ‘good faith defense’ in committing war crimes.”

Image via Wikipedia

 Poll: 71 percent believe that waterboarding is torture..

Greg Sargent notes that despite the media's reluctance to describe it as such, a new poll out today by the New York Times and CBS News found that 71 percent of Americans consider waterboarding to be "a form of torture"

However, discussing torture on CBS's Face the Nation today, McCain insisted, "We've got to move on" and ignore the Bush administration's torture program. Indeed, McCain refused to support the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee -- even as he acknowledged that Bybee had broken both U.S. and international law in authorizing torture:

MCCAIN: He falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting, fundamentally, what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions. Look, under President Reagan we signed an agreement against torture. We were in violation of that.

Think Progress

-- "Fifty-eight percent approve of Obama's work on the economy."

-- "Obama leads the Republicans in Congress in trust to handle the economy by a garish 61-24 percent."

-- "A remarkable 90 percent say Obama is 'willing to listen to different points of view'; fewer than half said that about George W. Bush."

-- Seventy-seven "percent call Obama a strong leader, nearly matching Bush's best a few months after 9/11." From: Think Progress

Image via Wikipedia

Gov. Rick Perry today in a precautionary measure requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu. Currently, three cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Texas. From: Think Progress

I find it interesting that each service that allows you to cross post over a multiple number of social networks are in incomplete. They tend to miss one or more of the social networks.

Is it me or is there something sick about videotaping and photographing the torture of prisoners? Particularly since there was some question of the legality of torture.  

Image via CrunchBase

Checking out Zemanta for blogging. Finding it interesting and a useful tool.

Image by Renegade98 via Flickr

Tapped makes a great point about Rep. Hoekstra WSJ op-ed:

Hoekstra also eliminates the context of Blair's remarks in order to misrepresent them -- Blair concluded that "the bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security," which is a substantially different takeaway from the idea that torture was more valuable than the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA put together.

Hoekstra argues that "it was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002." He adds that "it appeared that Mr. Obama understood it would be unfair to prosecute U.S. government employees for carrying out a policy that had been fully vetted and approved by the executive branch and Congress." So Hoekstra believes the government is entitled to break the law in secret as long as it does so by committee.

Hoekstra never acknowledges that the "enhanced interrogations" constituted torture, because then he'd have to argue that government officials are above the law. But that's essentially what he's arguing anyway.

The stink of AIG just keeps getting worse.

All Joe Cassano Ever Wanted Was To Not Pay Taxes

And as breathtaking as the sum of taxpayer dollars AIG has managed to put down in its post-crisis nationalized afterlife, the zombie insurer might possibly have indirectly scammed the government out of more money back in its Triple-A days. Today the Wall Street Journal explores AIG's euphemistically-named "tax structuring" business in a story about an IRS battle with Hewlett-Packard over an offshore entity -- or what the IRS terms a "sham that lacked economic substance and a business purpose" -- that AIG set up for the company to collect $132 million in tax credits. AIG's tax business, is "even bigger than the credit-default swaps business that led to the company's meltdown," a person "familiar with the business" tells the Journal. But that might be compartmentalizing things: we are beginning to suspect the credit default swap business and the tax "structuring" business were the same thing -- not just because they served the same end.

New President Meets New Media

But the Gallup Organization's three-night tracking polls (with 1,500 interviews over three nights and 3-point error margin) suggest the White House need not be worried. Obama's job-approval rating in the Gallup poll had been at 62 percent, with 27 percent disapproval, through Thursday night, before his Leno appearance aired. But Gallup's Thursday-Saturday and Friday-Sunday samples showed Obama's approval at 65 percent, with 26 disapproving.

This is hardly significant movement, and I'm not necessarily arguing that his approval ratings increased because of those appearances. Nevertheless, his approval certainly didn't take a significant hit because he went on either. At this point, there was no other reason for his numbers to improve, what with the public being mostly preoccupied with wanting to tar and feather American International Group bonus recipients. At the very least it suggests that the administration didn't take an immediate hit over the bonuses.

Geithner's Five Big Misconceptions.

We think Geithner is suffering from five fundamental misconceptions about what is wrong with the economy. Here they are:

The trouble with the economy is that the banks aren't lending. The reality: The economy is in trouble because American consumers and businesses took on way too much debt and are now collapsing under the weight of it. As consumers retrench, companies that sell to them are retrenching, thus exacerbating the problem. The banks, meanwhile, are lending. They just aren't lending as much as they used to. Also the shadow banking system (securitization markets), which actually provided more funding to the economy than the banks, has collapsed.



The banks aren't lending because their balance sheets are loaded with "bad assets" that the market has temporarily mispriced. The reality: The banks aren't lending (much) because they have decided to stop making loans to people and companies who can't pay them back. And because the banks are scared that future writedowns on their old loans will lead to future losses that will wipe out their equity.



Bad assets are "bad" because the market doesn't understand how much they are really worth. The reality: The bad assets are bad because they are worth less than the banks say they are. House prices have dropped by nearly 30% nationwide. That has created something in the neighborhood of $5+ trillion of losses in residential real estate alone (off a peak market value of housing about $20+ trillion). The banks don't want to take their share of those losses because doing so will wipe them out. So they, and Geithner, are doing everything they can to pawn the losses off on the taxpayer.



Once we get the "bad assets" off bank balance sheets, the banks will start lending again. The reality: The banks will remain cautious about lending, because the housing market and economy are still deteriorating. So they'll sit there and say they are lending while waiting for the economy to bottom.



Once the banks start lending, the economy will recover. The reality: American consumers still have debt coming out of their ears, and they'll be working it off for years. House prices are still falling. Retirement savings have been crushed. Americans need to increase their savings rate from today's 5% (a vast improvement from the 0% rate of two years ago) to the 10% long-term average. Consumers don't have room to take on more debt, even if the banks are willing to give it to them.

The first rule of doing anything well is patience. It doesn't matter what it is. It is something I have always known but never put into practice very well.

For example when writing something such as this blog post. My desire is to finish it as quickly as possible and post it to my blog, rather then making sure I get the spelling correct or making sure I don't leave out words.

Being impatient leads to one getting frustrated when one runs up against an obstacle.

Being impatient leads to one missing important details.

Rushing to complete a task has always been my downfall. And my impatience is made greater the more I dislike the task that I have to complete. And in many instances it leads to procrastination, which inevitably wil leads to greater impatience.

Impatience leads to one overlooking the tools one has available to make the task less difficult, as mistake free possible and completed in a timely fashion.

The reason for my writing this post is that I have over the last several years felt incapable of blogging on a regular basis because each blog post seemed like an endless task and I was always in a rush post as quickly as possible. As a result the post would appear with a multitude of errors and aesthetically unpleasing.

Part of the problem was I never took the time to explore the tools available that would make writing a post easier and more satisfying. My impatience made me feel that these tools just consumed more time and prevented me from completing the post itself. But the time I saved only made the results worst.

In the past several days I have discovered that the few extra clicks it takes, spanning a few extra minutes leads to a result that is correct and satisfying.

I think U.S. CEO's can take a page from their Japanese counterparts.

Japanese CEOs escape ire

When US auto bosses were being lambasted recently for flying to Washington in private jets to plead for government aid, the head of Japan Airlines (JAL), Asia's biggest carrier, was taking the bus to work with regular commuters.

JAL president Haruka Nishimatsu cut his own pay and even lines up with other employees for lunch in the company cafeteria.

At Japanese computer chip maker Elpida Memory, group president Yukio Sakamoto voluntarily went without a salary for two months last year to help turn around the group's poor performance.

He is not the only one making sacrifices. According to a survey by the Nikkei business daily, the heads of more than 200 listed Japanese firms have cut their own pay since last April.

Toyota Motor, the world's biggest automaker, has scrapped executive bonuses this year.

The problem with lot of American CEO's, is that they don't realize that just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Well this figures!

Lawmaker says 13 bailout firms owe $220M in back taxes

At least 13 firms receiving billions of dollars in bailout money owe a total of more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes, a key lawmaker said Thursday. Rep. John Lewis, chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two firms owe more than $100 million apiece. "This is shameful. It is a disgrace," said Lewis (D-Ga.). "We are going to get to the bottom of what is going on here." The House Ways and Means subcommittee on oversight discovered the unpaid taxes in a review of tax records from 23 of the firms receiving the most money, Lewis said as he opened a hearing on the issue.

I really don't think they get it.

Goldman Sachs defends $13-billion payment from AIG

Goldman received $13 billion -- more than any other financial institution -- in payment for AIG investment guarantees after the federal government stepped in with bailout commitments that now total as much as $172 billion to keep the insurance giant from failing.