CT Politics TV Hit With Joe Aguiar

My hour-long Feb. 8 appearance on CTPoliticsTV with Joe Aguiar. We talk state police, garbage, marijuana in Connecticut, wine in grocery stores and a bevy of national issues as well. Always fun.

Screenshot below. Link to video is here. You must be logged in to your LinkedIn account to view it.

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Musk Deletes Every Twitter Account but His

Hah! "In an official statement, Musk said that he deleted everyone else’s accounts to address "the No. 1 problem plaguing Twitter: the relentless flood of voices inferior to mine." https://t.co/1qoXgIqOWG

— Terry D. Cowgill (@terrycowgill) April 26, 2022

Is Blogging a Dying Medium?

Update: Colin McEnroe's take on blogs: "They will have fewer readers. But the readers will be highly committed."

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A NYT article today suggests that it is, at least among younger audiences. And surely that's not good news for the future of this little craft:

According to the NYT, "The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs."

And even among 18-to-33-years-olds, the percentage of Internet users who blog has dropped two percentage points over the last couple of years. What gives? The culprit seems to be — hold your breath — social networking: Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter.

I suppose I shouldn't complain. Ten years ago, there were plenty of people who lamented the rise of blogging itself. They complained that it was too informal, that it dumbed down the concept of essay- and column-writing, for example.

The problem I have with Facebook for opinion or analysis is that it has significant limitations, whereas blogging online expanded the print writer's horizons through links, comment enabling and the potential for a wider audience. Typically, Facebook only allows you to post a link and a paragraph or so of text. Facebook is blogging lite — very lite. And Twitter, with its 140-character tweet limit, is Facebook lite.

Plus, I'm finding that if I put up a link on Facebook to my one of my blog posts, invariably I get more comments about the post on Facebook than I do on the blog itself. Talk about the young eating its mother ...

"Blogging can be a very lonely occupation," a spokesperson for LiveJournal told the NYT. "You write out into the abyss."

That's surely be an exaggeration. Blogging is still fun, but it ain't what it used to be.

What Is The Internet?

Update: I just learned that an NBC production assistant was fired for posting this video to YouTube.

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This is pretty amusing. Today Show hosts Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel trying to figure out what cyberspace is back in January 1994. "What is the Internet anyway?" he asks.

As someone who has been plugged in since 1989, first on AOL, then with a dial-up account on Lakeville Internet, I find it almost shocking that, even at that relatively early date, some high-profile journos needed to ask the question: "What does the @ sign mean?"

Didn't NBC have email back then?

Wiki Crimes? No Laughing Matter ...

Update 6 a.m. Tuesday: CNN is reporting that Assange has been arrested in London on sex crimes charges.

But leave it to SNL to try anyway.

I've held off commenting on the WikiLeaks scandal, mostly because it's so complex that I'm not sure I could do it justice with the little time I have available for blogging. But I'll try anyway.

Julian Assange has developed quite a following and no doubt fancies himself a hero for releasing secret U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic documents into the public domain. Two of my friends, for example, have urged their friends on Facebook to join pro-WikiLeaks groups or donate money to the organization. I respect both of these people, but fail to see how the release of these documents helps the case for what Time magazine calls "WikiLeaks' war on secrecy."

As a former reporter and freedom-of-information advocate, I support the idea that we should err on the side of the sunshine. But you do reach a point where the sunshine, in the case of the WikiLeaks Afghanistan document dump, irreparably harms U.S. interests by exposing the identities of valuable intelligence operatives who could be killed in reprisal.

Or, in the case of the recently released diplomatic cables, it will likely inhibit candid communication among diplomats for fear that their frank assessments will end up on the front page of The New York Times. How could anyone think that exposing our intelligence sources to death, or putting a chilling effect on the exchange of ideas, is a good thing?

I tend to agree with the those who say that Assange should be brought up on criminal charges. But the problem is that laws on publishing classified material are murky. Moreover, Assange is not a U.S. citizen and does not reside here. And persuading a sovereign nation to extradite him is highly problematic, especially if the alleged crimes are considered political in nature.

So we'll probably just have to live with this fellow unless we want to dispatch an assassin to put a bullet between his eyes. Oh, I forgot. That option is no longer available, thanks to the Ford administration.

Aim At The Real Culprit

Great article in Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller today. By now, you've probably heard that the federal government is considering introducing technology into new cars that would disable cell phones when used in a running automobile?

Now, while the increase in road deaths caused by mindless cell phone drivers is indeed troubling, what do you think is the number-one cause of distracted driving? Alcohol? Unruly children? Falling asleep at the wheel? A dropped cigarette? Stinging insects in your front seat?

Nope, according to a 2009 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study, eating and/or drinking in the car causes 80% of all car accidents. Not just 80% of distracted driving accidents, but 80% of all auto accidents. That's right, the worst offenders on the highway have just emerged from the drive-thru at Dunkin Donuts and Taco Bell, not happy hour at Applebee's.

I point this out to ask the obvious question: Why the intense focus on electronic gadgets when the elephant in the room is right in front of us? Why don't we make eating/drinking in the car illegal? Oh, right. Many of the people who want to ban phone use in the car are the same people who like to pull on their beloved Starbucks on the way to the office.

Lawmakers are great at rationalizing, but it would take a verbal contortionist to explain this one away.

Telegraphing Your Absence

The headline on the WMUR-TV website sounded clear enough: "Police: Thieves Robbed Homes Based On Facebook Posts."

What is left unexplained is whether the victims in Nashua, N.H., had lax security settings on Facebook or whether the thieves were able to hack into their accounts to view the "I'm-not-home" status updates or take a peak at their Foursquare check-ins. From the looks of the burly suspects, I suspect the former.

I often wondered about this as I was posting FB updates and photos while in South Korea in July (click here and here to read the columns I wrote for The Lakeville Journal about that experience).

Could a thief view my page and then waltz into my home and rob me blind, secure in the knowledge that I was 8,000 miles away? Fortunately, my neighbor was happy to watch my house closely while we were away — and I do the same for her when she takes one of her frequent trips.

Perhaps one of my web-monkey friends (Fred Shakeshaft or James Clark?) is reading this and can tell me the answer. If indeed it is a security flaw, then FB had better fix it quickly.

Probably the Wisest Thing This Guy Ever Said

A tweet from Iranian President @M_Ahmadinejad:


I like to retaliate by burning a book that you Americans hold dear, but the only book you care about is Facebook.

No Earthly Objection

It has come to my attention that Google Earth — the now ubiquitous tool for mapping and geographic information — is being used in ways that are troublesome to civil liberties advocates.

Facing a fiscal crisis so profound that even ours pales in comparison, the nation of Greece, where cheating on taxes is the order of the day, has used Google Earth to locate fancy homes with swimming pools that were built illegally and are therefore off the tax rolls.

Officials in Riverhead, N.Y., on Long Island, have used satellite imagery to locate homeowners with swimming pools that failed to comply with safety regulations, such as proper fencing. Unlike Greece, however, Riverhead officials insist their motivation was public safety — not filling the town's treasury.

Be that as it may, should we be concerned about public officials using such technology to find violations that are not in plain sight from the street? Is the practice a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures? Do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our back yard?

In the two cases cited above, I would have to say no. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy on any place on your property that does not have a roof. If you disagree with me, then you'd have to ask yourself if we should also ban the practice of allowing authorities to hire aircraft to take aerial photographs of properties within municipal borders — a practice that has existed for decades.

So what is the objection? The fact that Google Earth makes it so easy to capture recent aerial and street-view images? I'd say if it can be see from the air, then it is pretty much in the public domain. But civil libertarians disagree:

The New York Civil Liberties Union's Donna Lieberman said there are ways to enforce requirements "without this sort of engaging in Big Brother on high. Technically, it may be lawful, but in the gut it does not feel like a free society kind of operation."

"In the gut?" Is that what we should basing our public policy on? Gut feelings? Show me a plausible way in which this practice can be abused and then I would be open to opposing it. Right now, I can think of none.