Can corporations lie?

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We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country’s altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.

— President Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864

Nearly one hundred and forty years ago, towards the end of the Civil War, Pres. Lincoln foresaw the rising power of the corporations that had grown the most due to wartime industries, and penned the above quotation in a letter to Colonel William F. Elkins. Now, in a case heading for the U.S. Supreme Court, the corporate world may be fighting to hold onto everything that Pres. Lincoln feared, and that has come all too true.

While Nike was conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up its subcontractors’ sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued the multi-billion-dollar corporation.

Instead of refuting Kasky’s charge by proving in court that they didn’t lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that corporations should enjoy the same “free speech” right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. If people have the constitutionally protected right to say, “The check is in the mail,” or, “That looks great on you,” then, Nike’s reasoning goes, a corporation should have the same right to say whatever they want in their corporate PR campaigns.

They took this argument all the way to the California Supreme Court, where they lost. The next stop may be the U.S. Supreme Court in early January, and the battle lines are already forming.

The article contains some very interesting commentary on just how corporations have gotten the amount of power that they now hold, including their status as legal “persons” — a status never actually legally declared except through tacit acceptance of a headnote to a court decision, without any legal precedence to support it, added by court reporter (and reporter, former railroad president) J.C. Bancroft Davis in 1886.

More information can be found at Reclaim Democracy’s Kasky vs. Nike page.

(Via Jason Kottke)

I wish…

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I’m not too sure how they stumbled across me, but I just got notification today that I’ve been added to the list of birthdays at I Wish, You Wish. They’re working on collecting links of bloggers that have their Amazon Wishlists posted, and listing them alongside their birthdays. A pretty cool little idea, I think.

A tweak here, a tweak there

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Finally! I’d noticed a week or so ago that after an upgrade to the W3C’s Validation tool that made it a bit more strict, my site wasn’t validating properly anymore. After a few minutes work tweaking the code, though, I can now honestly state that my site uses valid XHTML 1.0 (Transitional) and valid CSS.

At least, it does on this page. I’ll do a page-by-page (ugh) check at some other date. That’ll be fun….

The ‘Recent Tunes’ list is no longer an automatically updating frame. It was fun to play with, but a simple list that loads with the page will do fine, and produce less uneccesary overhead in bandwidth.

I’ve also removed the links to ‘featured posts’, along with the link to my NaNoWriMo blog, as it’s been residing in a state resembling suspended animation for a while now. However, fear not, gentle readers — in the words of Monty Python, it’s “not dead yet!” and will resurface in the (near?) future, along with some other ideas I have for that side of my site.

Further changes (including some of the ideas that have been tossed at me in the comments to my last post) will appear as I get around to them. In other words, it could be tomorrow, and it could be sometime in 2007. Around here, you just never know.

Everything old is new again

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I’ve finally managed to finish up what’s been something of an ongoing “whenever I’m bored” project for the past few months — re-entering all my old posts (two years worth, approximately 700 or so?) that disappeared when my old webserver died in August. They’re finally all back in, so with the exception of a two and a half week period in mid-August that I didn’t have a backup for, every post I’ve written since November of 2000 is back online!

Just in case you’re really bored and want to read everything I’ve ever written, from start to finish. Um…sure. That’ll happen. ;)

Now, time to backup.

Wireless in the classroom

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In response to this article about the pros and cons of wireless ‘net access on campus, Robert Scoble presents a list of suggests as to how teachers can adapt. Rather than panicking and denying all ‘net access across the board, why not come up with ways to involve use of the ‘net in class?

So, teachers, why not turn it around? Why not see [wireless internet] as a fact of life, both in school, in your community, and in the work world, and see if you can use it to make your (and your students’) experiences better? Here’s some ideas:

Top ten web design mistakes

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Usability guru Jakob Nielsen posted his list of the year’s top ten web design mistakes, and while it’s aimed more at commercial sites, I thought I’d take a quick gander and see if there are any that I should worry about.

  1. No prices: Hrm. Well, in general, I’d say that this one doesn’t apply. However, let it be said for the record that I’m often fairly cheap. Even free, given the right circumstances!
  2. Inflexible search engines: Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about this one. The search page for my site is nice and powerful, but I’m not enough of a coder to tell it how to correct for spelling errors. Bummer, too — that’s a nice feature.
  3. Horizontal scrolling: I try to avoid this one, however on a smaller screen or resolution, my archives page might need scrolling. Right now, I like the format I’m using, though, and until I find a better one, this will work. Anyone have any suggestions for a different design?
  4. Fixed font size: Yay! I got away from this one during my last site redesign. Something I don’t have to make cute comments or excuses for! :D
  5. Blocks of text: Guilty. Very guilty, in fact. Given the fact that I tend to ramble, I’m not sure how to approach this one, aside from spending some time going through Jacob’s articles on writing for the web, which I should do soon.
  6. Javascript in links: Lightly guilty here — while I’ve excised most of the JS links on my site, the ‘Show Smileys’ links in post comment forms still use it. I need to find a good way around that, I suppose (probably either displaying a small set of smileys and leaving the rest hidden, or just removing the smiley code entirely). Again, any suggestions? I’m leaning towards removing the code — they’ll still be available, but they’re used so infrequently, I might as well get rid of them in the comment form.
  7. Infrequently asked questions in FAQ: Not having a FAQ, this one doesn’t really apply. I’ve never gotten enough questions to warrant a FAQ, actually.
  8. Collecting e-mail addresses without a privacy policy: Well, again, this doesn’t really apply. While there’s a spot for e-mail addresses in my comment forms, they’re optional, and I don’t do anything with them. They just sit there.
  9. URL’s greater than 75 characters: I’m pretty sure I’m safe here. Some of my posts with obnoxiously long titles probably break this one, but they’re relatively few and far between. I’ve also been trying to keep my post titles shorter since I moved to an archiving system that names the files by the post title, rather than using generic numbers for names (such as 000735.php, for instance).
  10. Mailto links in unexpected locations: I think I’m good here. Every page has a fairly clearly marked “Email me” link at the bottom, and that’s it. Not hidden, available at all times, and not overly intrusive.

Not too bad, all in all, I’d say.

However, this does bring to mind a question. For those of you that visit my site from time to time — is there anything I’ve done here that bugs you? Or even if it doesn’t bug you, is there anything that you think might be worth my investigating? I’m starting to get into a mood to play with code and clean up some small areas that are bugging me, and I’m always open to suggestions. Feel free to let me know!

Happy New Year!

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Welcome to 2003, everyone! Here’s a toast I learned from Casey years ago…

Here’s to you,
here’s to me,
friends shall we ever be.
Should we ever disagree…
…fuck you, and here’s to me!

A little crass, sure, but amusing. Hope the new year goes well for all of you.

Exhausted

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Ugh…this sucks. I was supposed to be at work early today, so I could leave early (all that New Years stuff), so I set my alarm for 8:30am and went to bed.

Then I didn’t fall asleep until sometime after 7:30am due to a really, really nasty bout of insomnia.

Now it’s 11:45am, and if I leave the house immediately, I’ll get off work all of a half hour early. Dammit.