Links

Things I run across that I find to be interesting, but might not have the time or inclination to craft a fuller post around it. Generally, short little “go here, look at this, isn’t it neat?” posts.

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.

Bye-bye Sen. Lott!

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While he stopped short of resigning from the Senate, Trent Lott has stepped down as Majority Leader.

Bowing to harsh criticism from fellow senators and the Bush White House, Trent Lott resigned as Senate Republican leader Friday after colleagues worried about the repercussions of his racially insensitive remarks openly lined up behind Sen. Bill Frist.

“In the interest of pursuing the best possible agenda for the future of our country, I will not seek to remain as majority leader of the United States Senate for the 108th Congress, effective Jan. 6, 2003,” said Lott, whose fall was historically unprecedented on Capitol Hill.

Own yourself

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An excellent article from Anil Dash on some of the side effects of Google’s ability to find anything — and anyone.

Every time there’s a resurgence in general-audience (non-techie) interest in Google, as after Newsweek’s recent Google fawning, the issue of privacy in a presence of a pervasive and permanent record rears its ugly head. People who aren’t technologically savvy don’t realize that statements don’t fade away or remain in confidence on the web; The things we say only get louder and more widely known, unless they’re completely trivial.

We’re all celebrities now, in a sense. Everything that we say or do is on the record. And everything that’s on the record is recorded for posterity, and indexed far better than any file photo or PR bio ever was. It used to be that only those who chose career paths that resulted in notoriety or celebrity would face having to censor themselves or be forced to consciously control the image that they project. But this faded as celebrity culture grew and as individuals are increasingly marketed as brands, even products.

Google’s ability to track people down often can be truly amazing, though admittedly, it does pretty much require you to have a somewhat unusual name or e-mail address to use for the search. For instance, Googling for ‘michael hanscom‘ does find me, but not until the sixth link, and even then it’s just my name buried within Phil‘s FOAF file. However, Googling for my online pseudonym of ‘djwudi‘ brings up link after link related to me, either posts here on my site, or comments I’ve left in various other places around the web.

What to do about this ability to be ‘found’ on the ‘net? Well, the best things to do may just be to accept that nothing you put on the web is truly private, and become active in taking control of what information is out there, as much as possible.

I own my name. I am the first, and definitive, source of information on me.

One of the biggest benefits of that reality is that I now have control. The information I choose to reveal on my site sets the biggest boundaries for my privacy on the web. Granted, I’ll never have total control. But look at most people, especially novice Internet users, who are concerned with privacy. They’re fighting a losing battle, trying to prevent their personal information from being available on the web at all. If you recognize that it’s going to happen, your best bet is to choose how, when, and where it shows up.

That’s the future. Own your name. Buy the domain name, get yourself linked to, and put up a page. Make it a blank page, if you want. Fill it with disinformation or gibberish. Plug in other random people’s names into Googlism and paste their realities into your own. Or, just reveal the parts of your life that you feel represent you most effectively on the web. Publish things that advance your career or your love life or that document your travels around the world. But if you care about your privacy, and you care about your identity, take the steps to control it now.

To that end, I think I’ll be picking up www.michaelhanscom.com soon, most likely pointing it here. Comments to other sites, where previously I’d use ‘djwudi’, I’ll probably start using my real name now. As long as I’m me, in a world where incredible amounts of information can be found with just a few clicks of a mouse, I might as well take control of who I am.

I’m Karl Barth

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“We reject the false doctrine that the church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day.”

You are Karl Barth!

You like your freedom, and are pretty stubborn against authority! You don’t care much for other people’s opinions either. You can come up with your own fun, and often enough you have too much fun. You are pretty popular because you let people have their way, even when you have things figured out better than them.

What theologian of the Christian Church are you?

(Via Doc Searls [who also came out as Karl Barth])

Psychoptrometry

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I think that the next time I need to get new glasses, I want to go to whoever Jonathan’s optomotrist is…

Halfway through the testing procedure, which took nearly 45 minutes, I commented on the fact that I felt a degree of performance anxiety, experienced as a strong desire to provide the “correct answer” to each of the optometrist’s questions about the relative sharpness of individual test charts. He told me that this was quite natural, since I had such a strong emotional investment in the process.

He said that he listened very carefully to a patient’s voice while conducting these tests, in many cases giving greater emphasis to the emotional resonance of their answers than to the choices they actually made. Why? To avoid the risk of prescribing a lens that is stronger than necessary. He also factored this “emotional coefficient” into his choice of one kind of spectacles over another.

…I went to the appointment expecting that he would recommend…progressive lenses, which would provide a smooth transition from intermediate to near. This was, in fact, his recommendation but out of curiosity I asked him about bifocals, segmented lenses with two distinct regions for — in my case — intermediate and near vision.

“I only prescribe bifocals for patients with rigid personalities,” he answered. “In other words, people who see the world in terms of black and white rather than shades of gray. Of course I wouldn’t be having this conversation with someone who needs bifocals.”

The optometrist as psychotherapist, I thought to myself, what an intriguing character.

It’s just snow, folks

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Maybe it’s just a side effect of having lived in Alaska for 26 years, but — it’s November, and it’s snowing in various places across the country. Am I the only person on the web somewhat _un_impressed with this?

No, I’m not really annoyed. Quite amused, though. Admittedly, though, this is not a type of post I’m immune to, so I probably shouldn’t talk. The trend in posts did catch my eye, though.

Meanwhile, here in Seattle, it’s gorgeous, clear and sunny, and 48 degrees. And apparently, Alaska is still without snow, though the forecast seems to think that rain and snow will be battling it out for the rest of the week. Ick!

Not a bad way to go, really

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Well, if you decided to choose how you were going to die — would you pick something different?

Rolf Eden, a Berlin property tycoon, former nightclub owner, and all-purpose celebrity, says he is offering $125,000 to any woman, from anywhere in the world, who can kill him with sex.

“My real desire is to die on a lady, while making love,” Eden said. “A lawyer has my will, and in my will I have $125,000 for this lady.”

Eden is known by many as the “Hugh Hefner” of Germany. He doesn’t publish a magazine, but he is a wealthy playboy.

Eden says that even at age 72 he is fit as a fiddle, and ready for love. He claims he will pay for an unspecified number of women to fly to Berlin from various parts of the world, for a couple of days of sexual activity, providing they fit his criteria.

Basically that seems to mean they must be young, attractive, healthy, and with a practical outlook on life. “If a lady will come here, she really has to work hard,” he said.

As for the obvious objections which women’s right groups would have, Eden is unrepentant. “If they’re outraged, the leader, if she’s young and beautiful, she should come here and I’ll change her mind very fast.”

Time for me to start saving. I’ll post when I have my own $125,000 ready to spend. ;)

Thanks to Karl for this one!

Recommended reading?

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This could be interesting — Mark Pilgrim has set up a Recommended Reading script that analyses your web page, and then suggests other sites that you might find worth reading. I ran it on The Long Letter, and came up with a an interesting list of sites to check. About half I already read, but I may need to add the other half to my newsreader.