Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina, has burst into mainstream media again. This time, it’s because of his 6-day disappearance and the revelation that he’d spent the time in Argentina (of all places) with his mistress.

Jeez, Louise. My first reaction to this was “Can’t Republicans keep it in their pants?” This was a knee-jerk reaction after learning recently that Republican Senator John Ensign had also had an affair. In his case, it was a bit more ironic — and hypocritical — given that he called upon Bill Clinton to resign after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. As summarized in Wikipedia, Ensign also supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, saying: “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded.” Yeah, right.

The problem with Sanford, however, goes beyond Ensign’s hypocrisy and their shared infidelity. Let’s look at the facts: Mark Sanford disappeared without telling any of his aides or the Lieutenant Governor where he was going. He left the country without leaving instructions regarding the chain of command in the event of an emergency. He basically abandoned his post.

To make things worse, he apparently deliberately misled his aides about his destination, hinting that he wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail. His staff passed this information on to the press, thus misleading the entire nation. (Imagine if he didn’t come back. We’d be combing hundreds of miles of mountainous wilderness, searching for him.)

This is not an issue of unfaithfulness to his wife and family, of abandoning his four sons on Father’s Day. It’s an issue of acting irresponsibly and lying to his constituency. If he lies about this, what else would he lie about? What else has he already lied about?

Is this the kind of many who should retain “leadership” of a state?

And I won’t even go into his political games, attempting to deny the people of his state Federal stimulus money to make a political point. I’m just glad for the people of South Carolina, that he didn’t get away with that.

My opinion: Mark Sanford should step down as Governor of South Carolina and move to Argentina. His family, his state, and our country don’t need people like him.

Update: The story is evolving. Apparently, Sanford also visited his South American sweetheart on the state’s dime, making it part of an official visit to the area. So now he’s guilty of misappropriating state funds for non-official “business.”

Yet an NPR caller today claims he’ll still support Sanford if he runs for president. Do these bible-belt conservatives understand the difference between right and wrong? Or are they just plain stupid?

About a month ago, before I left home for the summer, I stumbled upon the Distributed Proofreaders Web site. The best way to describe the site is to echo the text on its home page under Site Concept:

Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

Here’s how it works. Someone, somewhere scans printed book pages into a computer as images. OCR software is applied to translate the text into machine-readable text characters. Then volunteer proofreaders step in and compare the original scanned pages to the editable text. Proofreaders follow a set of proofing guidelines to ensure consistency as they modify the translated text. Each page passes through a series of steps that eventually turns all of a book’s pages into a single text document. That document is then released as a free ebook in a variety of formats via Project Gutenberg.

I became a volunteer. So far, I’ve proofed 14 pages. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot — and it’s not — but if 100 people each proofed 14 pages a week, 1,400 pages a week would be proofed. That’s what the “distributed” in Distributed Proofreading is all about.

The good part about being a proofreader — other that warm, fuzzy feeling you get from helping to make the world a better place — is that you get to read lots of old books about topics that interest you. The day I joined, I proofread two pages of a New York newspaper account of World War I. It was fascinating. Today, I proofread 12 pages of a biography of Benjamin Franklin, who I believe is the greatest American who ever lived. (There is a lot to be learned from Franklin’s life and writings.)

Why am I blogging about this? Well, I’m hoping that other folks will embrace this project and donate an hour or two a week (or a month) to proofreading pages. The more folks who work on this project, the more quickly these great old books and other pieces of literature will get into free digital format for readers and students to enjoy.

Want to help ebooks thrive? Give distributed proofreading a try.

Health care problems are in the news lately and I can’t help but think about the situation from my own very fortunate point of view. Fortunate because I have health insurance and the financial means to pay for care up to my $3,000 deductible. Too many people simply cannot afford either coverage or the deductibles, even when subsidized by an employer. I consider myself lucky.

I want to share three real life stories from my past to illustrate what I think is wrong with our health care system. Maybe you have similar examples. While I don’t know what the solution is, I know that something has to be done. Remember, I’m fortunate. People who don’t have my resources are basically screwed.

Knee Pain

Years ago, when I was still in my 20s, I fell while ice skating in Rockefeller Center. I vaguely remember the fall — I landed hard on my left knee. But I was young and I got up and kept skating.

A year or two went by. I began having problems with my left knee. A lot of pain when I sat with my legs crossed “indian style,” which I usually do, even while at my desk. I had a “real job” back then and insurance. I decided to see an orthopedic surgeon to see what was wrong with my knee. I had no idea whether it was connected to my ice skating mishap and still don’t. But it’s the only “injury” I can connect with it.

This began a multi-step process that completely tapped out my $1,000 deductible (at the time) and cost my insurance company many thousands of dollars. Here are the steps:

• Initial consultation. Tell the doctor what hurts and when it hurts.
• X-rays. Inconclusive — except to show that I was already showing signs of arthritis that was not likely causing this problem.
• MRI. This is the test that fulfilled my deductible. It was also inconclusive.
• Physical therapy. Twice a week, I drove to a physical therapy place about 15 miles from my home. I rode a bike, bounced on a ball, and fiddled around with some kind of resistance machine. I did this for two months. My insurance company paid $90 for each visit.

When my insurance “ran out” for the physical therapy, I went back to the doctor and asked if there was anything else he could do. He seemed not to believe I was in pain. He finally said that they could open it up orthoscopically and take a look. I’m not someone who wants surgery, but if that was the last resort, I was ready. I was tired of wasting time and money. If there was something wrong — and there certainly seemed to be — I wanted it fixed.

More steps:

• Hospital pre-admission. They basically sent me to the hospital to learn how to use crutches. What f*cking waste of time and money that was! Fortunately, I didn’t need to buy a pair; I could borrow them.
• Outpatient surgery. My doctor put two small holes in my knee area while I slept on a table in the O.R. He poked around in there and found I had a torn meniscus. It was torn in the shape of a triangle with a pointy tip that was evidently jabbing me when I crossed my legs. He cut off the torn part, and closed me. up. I don’t think it took him more than an hour to do everything.

I went home the same day. My knee was swollen. I think they gave me painkillers; I don’t remember much pain. I used the crutches the next day, one crutch the day after that, and a cane the day after that. Then I was pretty much back to normal. I don’t even have scars.

This was my first experience with the health care system’s ability to diagnose and fix a relatively minor but annoying health problem. I realized that a cure wasn’t possible until as many part of the health care system could get a piece of the pie as possible:

• Doctor – Several consultations and surgery.
• Physical therapy – don’t even get me started on that.
• Hospital – X-ray, MRI, crutch lessons (that still pisses me off), and outpatient surgery services.
• Support staff for surgery – nurses, anesthesiologist, etc.

But I was “cured.” I was happy.

Back Pain

Fast forward to the summer of 2008. I picked up something heavy while seated at my desk. This “threw out” my back. The pain didn’t begin immediately, but it began in earnest a day or two later. It became unbearable on a flight from Phoenix to Seattle with my husband. So bad that I found clinic in the Seattle area and was able to get in to see a doctor within 30 minutes of arrival.

The doctor started out skeptical. I think a lot of people must go to clinics to get drugs. Although I wanted something to stop the pain, I had to fly my helicopter to Arizona over the next two days. I couldn’t take painkillers. I wanted to know what was wrong and what I could do to fix it.

The doctor was good. After hitting my knees with a hammer and surprising me with the results, she had me perform several movements while seated and while standing. She told me I probably had a herniated disc and that I should ask my doctor for an MRI when I got home. She gave me some muscle relaxers and told me not to take them while I was flying.

I was impressed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going home. I was going to Page, AZ. I figured I’d find a doctor there and follow her advice.

The flight to Arizona was painful, but not unbearable. It wasn’t until I was settled into my camper in a Page campground that the pain became more than I could bear. If I sat at my table for more than 10 minutes, when I got up I could barely walk. I was miserable.

I’d got the number of a local doctor from my health insurance company. But when I called, I was told that the earliest appointment was more than two weeks away. I set up the appointment, not seeing that I had any other choice. The pain got worse by the day. The only relief was when I lay flat on my back, and even that wasn’t making things better. I had to work. I couldn’t just lie around, waiting for a doctor’s appointment that might or might not resolve my problem.

One day, I simply couldn’t take the pain any longer. I found a clinic in Page and went. I signed in. Although the clinic was on my insurance, they wouldn’t accept my insurance. They wanted me to pay up front. There were at least a dozen people waiting in front of me to see a doctor. The wait would be at least two hours. The only seating was aggravating my condition. I was in so much pain that I was crying on and off. No one seemed to care. The other people waiting tried to avoid eye contact.

Finally, I got up and went across the street to the hospital emergency room.

Write this down: Page Banner Hospital. Now, under no circumstances, allow yourself to be taken to this place or any facility associated with it in Page, AZ.

There was no one waiting ahead of me, but I still had to wait 20 minutes to get help. I followed someone down a long hallway, struggling to keep up, since I could barely walk. A doctor came and asked what the problem was. I told him. He did a cursory examination — nothing at all like the doctor in the Seattle clinic had done — and found nothing. He thought I was there for drugs. I told him I wasn’t. I asked him to do a test — something that might shed light on what was wrong. I told him what the doctor in Seattle had said. He wasn’t interested. He sent me with a radiologist for an x-ray.

I was waiting back in the examining room, sitting on a metal chair instead of the examining table, trying not to cry, when I heard the doctor and another emergency room employee at the nurse’s station, chatting and laughing. The doctor told his companion how he liked to use some kind of drug to knock out unruly kids brought to the emergency room. They had a good laugh over that. It was as if I didn’t exist or I couldn’t hear them. They obviously didn’t care about me.

When I’d sat there long enough, the doctor came back in. He said he’d looked at the x-rays and there was nothing on them. He told me to go home and take aspirin.

This “service” cost me over $500. If I didn’t have insurance to negotiate the rates, it would have cost two or thee times that.

A few days later, I tried the clinic again. Ironically, I got to see the doctor I had an appointment for the following week. I gave her my story. She didn’t examine me thoroughly either. Instead, she signed me up for physical therapy.

I made two visits. The first one featured a piss-poor massage. I could have done better for about half the money at a good spa. On the second visit, they had me lie on my stomach and hooked me up to some kind of machine that put electric pulses through my body. Then they just left me alone in a room. After about 10 minutes, I started feeling sick. Five minutes later, I called for help. No one came. A bell rang and the machine shut off a few minutes after that. A few minutes later, someone came in to unhook me from the machine. I told her I didn’t feel well. She said it was because I’d been lying down. Then she left me to leave on my own. I got as far as the appointment desk before I had to sit down. If my back still hurt, I didn’t know it. It was all in my head — dizzy, lightheadedness — I can’t describe it. I asked someone to take my blood pressure. You think I’d asked them to give up their first born! They made me walk to an examining room where they hooked me up to a machine. I was at 180/110. So wonder I felt so bad! But did anyone there seem to care? No. The person who took my blood pressure simply said, “You should get that checked.”

I didn’t show up for the next visit. When they called, I told them they were making me worse. I nearly dropped dead the following month when I saw the bill for the two visits: over $500.

I started dosing up on ibuprofen. Three and four at a time. It kept me functional. I switched from megadoses of ibuprofen to tylenol and back. At night, if I knew I didn’t have to fly the next day, I’d take the muscle relaxants I’d gotten from the doctor in Seattle. The only time I didn’t have painkillers in my system was when I had to fly. But as soon as I was done, I’d dose up again.

This went on for about three weeks. Then, one day, the pain was a lot less than usual. And within a few days, the pain was gone.

Did I have a herniated disc? Had I somehow “fixed” it myself through normal movement? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

All I know is that I spent a lot of money for absolutely no assistance from about a half dozen medical professionals. I spent about a month in serious pain, frustrated that I was unable to get help.

In my honest opinion, the number one reason people should avoid moving to Page, AZ is the absolutely dismal health care available there. If the medical professionals there know what they’re doing — which I doubt — they definitely don’t care.

Maybe I should have given up and gone home to get help. Even if I couldn’t have gotten help in Wickenburg, I could have gone to Phoenix. But I wonder — how many doctors and hospitals and physical therapists would I have to have seen to have the problem diagnosed? How long would I have been in pain — and how much money would I have had to spend?

Chest Pain

Late last year, I began having mild chest pains. The pain would manifest itself in the middle of my chest, at the bottom of my sternum, when or right after I lifted something heavy. At night, I’d sometimes suffer from heartburn or acid reflux, which would wake me with nausea.

I’m in my 40s now and am starting to think seriously about my health. A minor health problem that I would have ignored 20 years ago is now something I should look into. So I started seeking help.

I began with a digestive specialist down in Phoenix. She asked for my symptoms and I told her. She told me to take an over-the-counter remedy for heartburn. Then she listened to my heart with her stethoscope, made some notes on a fancy tablet computer, and left me. I wrote a check for $119.80 against my now $3,000 deductible.

I don’t believe in treating symptoms. I believe in finding causes and treating them. I believe in curing a health problem, not hiding it with medicine.

So I began seeing a local family practitioner, figuring I could start with a basic doctor and work my way up to specialists if I needed to. I told her my symptoms and what I thought it might be: a hiatal hernia. But she zeroed in on the phrase “chest pain” and, after changing my blood pressure medicine, began ordering a bunch of tests:

• Blood tests (3 of them)
• Chest x-ray
• Electrocardiogram
• Sonogram
• Echocardiogram

One of these tests showed a tiny abnormality. That sent me to a cardiologist who set me up for a stress test. I passed the stress test with flying colors. There’s nothing wrong with my heart.

I never thought there was.

I still have the same problem I started investigating in January of this year. It’s now June. I’m in Washington now, away from my doctor. I avoid the problem by simply not lifting anything heavy. When the acid reflux flares up, I take Tums.

I’m not done with this. When I get home, I’ll keep pushing. Maybe some medical professional will take a real interest in my real problem and help me find out what’s causing it. I don’t think I’ve found that person yet. Maybe I’ll get the test I need to determine whether I have a hiatal hernia. I don’t care if the answer is yes or no: I just want to know the answer so I can move forward.

I should mention here that the tests I’ve taken for this “chest pain” problem have completely wiped out my $3,000 deductible. That’s three grand out of my pocket — and the problem is not resolved. All I know is that I have a healthy heart. I guess that’s worth something.

But what of the people without health insurance or an extra $3K in a medical savings plan? How would they have shouldered this burden? Would they be convinced they were on the verge of a heart attack?

This is Wrong

Health care shouldn’t be like this. Doctors should listen to symptoms and do what they can during initial consultations to find out what the problem could be. Of all the details I listed here, there’s only one doctor who seemed to have a clue — the clinic doctor in Seattle. No one else was interested in listening to my symptoms or finding the cause of my pain.

Too many doctors assumed I was just seeing them to get drugs. The truth of the matter is that I have enough old bottles of Percocet and Vicodin at home to last a month. I don’t want or need painkillers. I just want to be heathy and feel that way.

One of the current complaints about the health care system is that doctors order too many tests. I can concur with that. Not only are they ordering too many tests, but they’re apparently not ordering the right tests. Tests that can provide conclusive results. An x-ray is not going to show a herniated disc. An EKG is not going to show a hiatal hernia.

Do doctors come into a conversation with a patient with preconceived notions about what a problem could be and then test for that? If a patient has five of the seven symptoms for a problem, do they not test for the problem because two symptoms are missing? Do they choose tests based on how easy they are to get, how much they cost, or what they can reveal?

The health care system in this country is definitely broken. I’d like to see it fixed in my lifetime.

I should start out by saying that I’m not a political activist or analyst. I’m just a relatively well-educated and thoughtful American citizen.

I’ve been following what’s going on in Iran more closely than most Americans. I’m stuck in a 22-foot travel trailer in a golf course RV park in Quincy, WA. I don’t have a television, but I do have a radio tuned in to NPR (National Public Radio, for those of you who don’t know) and Internet access. I spent a good — probably unhealthy — portion of the past three days listening to news and analysis from NPR and reading Web content linked to from Twitter, as well as on blogs by Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times. My few attempts to find “real” news on MSNBC and CNN Web sites failed miserably; more on that in a moment.

While I’m not ready to believe everything I read on the Web, it’s quite clear that the Iranian people are in some kind of revolutionary mode. While I side with the young people protesting against what appears to be an ultra-conservative dictatorship masquerading as a democracy, I cannot assume that the majority of Iranians feel as these young people do. None of us can.

Andrew Sullivan summarized yesterday’s activity in his post, “What Happened Today?“:

What’s going on in Iran is very hard to understand from the distance we are at. And interpretations of the dizzying events of the last few weeks have varied widely – and still do. In fact, it’s hard to remember an event like this on which there is still such a debate. Some today have argued that Ahmadinejad won and that what we are seeing is some sore losers. Others have seen this as a turning point in the history of Iran. Others still think it may be somewhere in between. And the truth is: we do not know. At this point in time, I do not know. We may be misjudging this, over-reading it, misunderstanding it. All we can do is assemble as many facts and test as many theses as possible in real time.

It is not the job of the United States to step in and take sides on this matter. Rather, we should be part of a concerned global community making objective conclusions based on observations.

President Obama is taking a wait and see approach. His comments yesterday (embedded here) made it clear that he has no intention of stepping in.

Obama is a smart man and I think he’s doing the right thing. The United States is too often seen as an imperialistic power. We’ve messed around in Iran’s politics before — remember the Shah of Iran and how that ended up? We have no right messing around in the politics of other sovereign nations, applying our views and values to their people. We have enough trouble here in the U.S., with crises in health care, education, and the economy. We’re already practically bankrupt from money poured into unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think it’s far more important for the global community, as a team, to see the extent of any election wrongdoing in Iran before they step forward with any assistance for the wronged. I think it’s more important to side with the legitimate leader of Iran — even if it’s Ahmadinejad — than to help the Iranian people with a new revolution that might or might not benefit us in the future.

When will we learn? The Muslim world simply does not like us. Let’s not become guilty of the meddling they so often accuse us of.

I realize that this is an unpopular point of view. I’ve read reactions to Obama’s comments on The Daily Dish and most folks — including Andrew Sullivan, its author — seem to think we should seize the moment to help the Iranian people in their efforts to “become free.” But I believe that Noah Millman has the right idea in his post on The American Scene titled “How Do You Say “Tiananmen Square” In Farsi?“:

If the regime survives by brute force, it will be revealed to be relatively weak in terms of popular support and will be less credible globally than it was before. If the regime simply waits the protests out, then very little will have changed at all. If the regime survives by abandoning Ahmadinejad, then it will be focused on maintaining its credibility internally, and Mousavi will not be in a position to go off the reservation much if at all – so negotiations with America, if they happen will not really go anywhere. If the regime does not survive, it will be because the military turns on it decisively (which I would be really surprised by), and whatever regime emerges to replace it will have to establish its own credibility as a patriotic guardian of the Iranian people. That means no dramatic rapprochement with America, whatever happens behind the scenes.

All of which means that America should be playing it pretty cool right now. There are states that could plausibly bring pressure to bear in support of proper democratic procedures and against stealing elections or shooting protestors, but they would have to be states with real credibility both as democracies and as friends of Iran – i.e., places like Germany or India, not us. But it’s not obvious to me why Germans or Indians would want to interfere like that. We, unfortunately, can’t do much more than watch.

Now, about the mainstream media (MSM). While I realize that I must take anything written in a blog or on Twitter with a grain of salt, there is a huge disparity between what’s being reported on respected weblogs (like the ones listed above) and the MSM. I also find differences in what I read on US MSM sites and other countries’ MSM sites, such as BBC’s. I find this horrifying. Who do we believe?

But that’s really just fodder for another post.

I learned this morning that the Creation Museum’s attendance exceeds expectations. I find this factoid distressing.

If you haven’t heard of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum, consider yourself lucky. This bible-story-gone-wild uses exhibits to illustrate biblical explanations of the natural world. In doing so, it’s attracting thousands of Christian school students on field trips. From the Courier-Journal article:

Inside, the students learned from displays that, contrary to mainstream textbooks, science supports the Bible’s accounts of the Earth’s creation in six days; that the Grand Canyon was created suddenly in Noah’s flood; that dinosaurs and humans lived together; and that animal poison did not exist before Adam’s original sin.

This, as a “supplement” to science lessons.

My first exposure to the Creation Museum came from a John Scalzi photographic tour titled “A Visit to the Creation Museum, 11/10/07.” I clearly remember viewing the photos and great captions Scalzi put on Flickr; I was stuck at the FBO at Las Vegas McCarren Airport, waiting for a helicopter mechanic to replace my alternator belt, feet up, surfing on my laptop. It was the highlight of the day. Also quite enjoyable was Scalzi’s blog post, “Your Creation Museum Report.” It really got to the meat of the matter. I recall reading it, wondering how long it would be until the “museum” was laughed out of existence.

And then this report about its popularity, complete with stories of visits by school children as part of their science lessons. Those school groups make up 20 to 30 percent of the attendance.

Ouch.

Now my question is this: Of the 70 to 80 percent of other visitors, how many of them are visiting, like Scalzi did, to take in this spectacle of ignorance and close mindedness? How many of them want to see irrationally designed models and dioramas depicting impossible scenes from natural history? How many of them just go for a good laugh?

I hope that most of them do. The alternative — that people actually believe this crap — is too frightening to consider.

It’s bad enough that they’re exposing our children to it.

I’m in Quincy, WA, right now, living in my camper while I work four cherry drying contracts. I live in my camper because it’s cheaper than living in a motel. A lot cheaper. And since I can cook my own meals, I save a ton of money over the cost of a motel.

One of my contracts is for an orchard down by the Columbia River. There’s a campground literally across the street from it. The campground is also right on the river. I thought it might be nice to stay there for the duration.

I called. They wanted $42 per night for a hookup that included water and power, but no sewer. They weren’t interested in giving a discount for long-term stays. In fact, they didn’t seem to want long-term guests. I figured it was because they were so busy they didn’t need the business.

I knew I could camp at the Colockum Golf Course (formerly the Quincy Golf Course) for $300/month. The site included electricity, water, and sewer. High-speed, reliable WiFi was also available for an additional $35/month. There’s even a restaurant on the premises.

I couldn’t justify the additional $30+ per night for a campsite with fewer amenities. I parked at Quincy, where I’ll likely spend the next seven weeks.

Yesterday evening, I drove down to the orchard to refresh my memory about the setup. I needed to know where the powerlines were and whether there was a fan in the block. While I was down there, I drove through the $42/night campground.

Every single spot was empty.

So explain this to me: wouldn’t it be more beneficial to get someone in there for $20/night ($600/month) rather than no one in there for $42/night?

A perfect example of how greed can be stupid.

The other day, there was an update in my tweet stream from MrTweet. It said:

New Posting: Twitter & the Law of Reciprocity (Why you should be a generous Twitterer, and how to!) http://bit.ly/Ni5tb

MrTweet is the Twitter account name for an online service that supposedly helps you find Twitter users who are like you. I joined up a while back, interested in adding a few people that I might connect with to the list of people I follow. I don’t know what MrTweet’s algorithms are like, but it didn’t come up with any matches. Still, there were few incoming tweets on that account, so I kept following it. That’s how I received the above tweet.

I followed the link. The blog post that appeared, “Twitter & the Law of Reciprocity,” included the author’s opinion of Twitter: “People may not like it, but Twitter is as old-fashioned a popularity game as high school is…”

WTF?

Is that what people think? Or, more likely, is that what people have turned Twitter into?

The post went on to provide tips for increasing the number of people who follow you, prefaced with this word of warning:

This isn’t a magic “popularity” ingredient, nor can I ensure you’ll get followers by the droves if you take my advice. This IS however, a philosophical theory that can bring you benefits if you understand it and are able to take advantage of it in your self-promotional efforts.

Among the pieces of advice were to reciprocate follows. That means if someone follows you, you should automatically follow back. It doesn’t matter who the person is, where he’s from, what he tweets, what his motives are, or how well you could possibly connect with him. Just follow him blindly.

This advice made me sick. It’s this attitude that’s turning Twitter into a meaningless waste of bandwidth, full of self-promotional links and blatant advertising.

Not long afterward, I caught wind of a new site called TweepMe. This is a pure piece of automated trash with just one goal in mind for the user: increase follower count. Here’s how it works: you sign up, providing both your Twitter user ID and password. You’re automatically followed by everyone else who signed up and you automatically follow all of them. So if TweepMe has 1,000 members, you automatically have 1000 followers. Ready for the punchline? The service is free to start out. Afterwards, you pay for your membership (and new followers).

Holy f*cking cow! What moron is so desperate for followers that he’d pay to get them? Oh, yeah. These morons.

Has everyone forgotten the original purpose of Twitter? It’s a social networking site, a way to connect with people you know. It’s “microblogging.”

If you’re a Twitter member, log out of your account on Twitter and go to http://www.twitter.com/. Here’s what you’ll find right on the Home page, under “What is Twitter?”:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

I don’t see anything in there about selfishly eating up bandwidth to create hundreds or thousands of meaningless connections to strangers whose only interest is to do the same.

Tell me something: are these thousands of strangers you’re collecting as followers your “friends, family, and co-workers”? Are they likely to ever fit into any of those categories? Do you even care about them?

Why the hell are you “collecting” them, like a kid collects pretty rocks at the beach?

Have you read Jennifer Leggio’s excellent post on ZDNet, “I am popular on Twitter. Here’s why this means nothing.“? She echoes my sentiments exactly.

While I’ve been watching the growth, use, and misuse of Twitter for some time now, the childishness of follower collectors has only been a source of amusement for me. Until now.

The increase in demand on Twitter’s systems and bandwidth may be causing service outages. While that was bad enough as Twitter went through its growing pains, it truly sucks if it’s caused by what one Twitter user, @pageoneresults, refers to as a “Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus.” While I don’t usually link to SEO sites (I don’t believe in messing with Google search results), Edward Lewis’s blog post, “TweepMe Twitter Application,” is more than just an angry rant. It provides a wealth of information about what TweepMe is, how it works, how it can be compared to trojans and viruses, and how the idiots who initially signed on can make a clean break with it. He also opines about TweepMe’s possible role in recent Twitter outages:

There appears to be a bit more with this TweepMe application that many have overlooked. The thing is growing exponentially. It is a Twitter Self Replicating Human Virus. If it continues at its current rate, it may even hamper the performance of the Twitter pipelines. Whale Watchers are claiming that TweepMe is behind the recent Fail Whale sightings on Twitter although none of us can be sure of that.

Personally, I’m saddened by what is happening to Twitter. Since becoming an active Twitter user two years ago, I’ve always thought of my Twitter friends as “water cooler buddies.” I work in a home-based office and spend most of my days alone. Having the 100 people I follow in the Twitterrific window on my computer’s desktop gives me the social interaction I need during the day to keep my sanity. While some of these people are friends — including folks I was very close to 20 or more years ago! — others are people I met through Twitter. I’ve made good, solid connections with quite a few of them. I’ve met several of them in person and can now consider them real friends.

To me, that’s what social networking is all about. Twitter makes it easy. It enhances my life.

So you can imagine my anger and frustration when I see blog posts and Web services created with the sole purpose of increasing follower count, wasting bandwidth, and undermining Twitter’s original purpose and goals.

This morning, while preparing to write a blog entry about the importance of creating a meaningful bio for your social networking presence, I came across a link in my Twitter stream:

jenniferwhitley Reading @cshirky: “We don’t need newspapers, we need journalism.” http://tinyurl.com/bpxulr

Easily distracted by any task at hand, I followed the link. I found myself on a plain vanilla — indeed, default WordPress template — blog page with a long column of full-justified text just large enough to read without putting on my cheaters. It was unbroken by advertising (including unattractive or animated ads featuring jiggling fat bodies), images (including meaningless stock photos, inserted as eye candy), or even subheadings (used by so many writers, including me, to help the reader skip head to the “important” parts). It was pure content with only a trio of centered asterisks to indicate a shift in the author’s thought.

And it was good.

The blog post, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” was by Clay Shirky. It summarized what has brought us to the middle of a revolution in publishing. Print publications are discovering that they can’t compete with the Internet for content delivery, no matter what they try. They’ve refused to see the reality of what’s going on. As a result, they’re not able to survive in the changing world of publishing.

Shirky compares what’s going on with the Internet and publishing today with the revolution of Gutenberg’s movable type and Aldus Manutius’s introduction of small “octavo” volumes that were less expensive to produce and easier to carry around. (I wonder…if Web publishing can be compared to movable type, can e-books and devices like the Kindle be compared to octavo volumes?) These innovation changed publishing. The brought about a revolution in how information was shared and who had access to it. This isn’t any different from today — information is more widely available than ever before.

My point here is not to summarize Clay Shirky’s excellent post. Instead, I urge to you read it. If you’re a journalist or serious blogger or any kind of writer at all, the history he summarizes and the points he brings up may be vital to your understanding of what’s going on in publishing. Indeed, I wish all of my publishers and editors would read it and begin to face the reality of what’s going on in our world. I believe that what he says applies not only to newspapers and journalism but to all publishing, including the kind of work I do.

My point is this: his finely articulated, well-researched, and extremely thoughtful piece is an example of why print publishing will ultimately go the way of hand-copied, “illuminated” texts. It’s quality content, easily accessible, for free, without advertising, on the Web.

As most folks who follow me have discovered (if they’ve bothered to look), I don’t automatically reciprocate follows. I check out new followers before I follow them. I also attempt to keep the number of people I follow down to a manageable count of 100 or so. That’s because I actually read the tweets that the people I follow post. And I interact with them.

I take Twitter seriously and have been doing so for the past 2 years. And with all the media attention it’s been getting lately, it bugs the hell out of me that people are trying to use Twitter as a meaningless chat room where the only thing that matters is how many people follow them.

Sheesh.

So I’ve come up with my own list of reasons why I won’t follow people on Twitter. If you’ve recently started following me and I haven’t followed you back, here’s why.

• You’ve posted less than 5 tweets and/or your bio is incomplete. How am I supposed to get an idea of what you’re all about if I can’t see your tweet stream? And who are you? Unless I know a little more about you, I’m not likely to follow you.
• You’ve posted less than 10 tweets and more than half of them are links to your own content on the Web. You might think that Twitter is a good place to toot your own horn and it could be — if your content is worth reading. I’ll follow @NYTimes and @NPRNews, which consistently tweet just links to their own content. But unless your content is as good as theirs, don’t expect me to follow you.
• Your tweets add absolutely nothing of value to my day. Make me laugh or smile or see similarities between your life and mine. Teach me something. Show me something I’ve never seen. Give me a link to some content of real value. Help me understand the world. Be an engaging friend that can do more than use @replies to offer words of wisdom like “That’s cool!” or “Gr8!” or “LOL!”
• You follow more than five times the number of people who follow you. First of all, I don’t believe you actually read the tweets of all those people. Second, the only people who follow like crazy and get only a handful of reciprocal followers are either spammers or completely losers. Why would I follow either one?
• You consistently refuse to use standard spelling in short tweets. No, the letter b is not an acceptable alternative to the word be and the word sounds is not spelled sounz. Yes, I understand these are is txt message abbreviations, but I see no reason for it in a tweet shorter than 100 characters when there’s plenty of room to spell it out, in English. I don’t think it’s funny or cute. I think it’s immature and a sad statement on our education system.
• You end 75% or more of your tweets with an exclamation point. Are you really that excited about the sandwich you’re eating? Or the episode of Heroes/Lost/24/American Idol/fill-in-the-blank that you’re watching on television? If so, I’m sorry to hear that. There’s life beyond your tweet and the rest of us don’t find every one of your tweeted utterances exciting enough to warrant this particular type of punctuation. (See above comment re: education system.)
• You consistently tweet very long stories by posting 4 or more consecutive tweets, each ending in “…” to indicate that there’s more to come. Unless the story has immediate value to your followers, save it for your blog. Twitter is microblogging. That’s 140 characters.
• More than 50% of your tweets are about your follower count or tweet count or Twitter stats as calculated by yet another Twitter-based Web service. Does it really matter how many people follow you on Twitter? Do you really think all of them are actually reading every tweet you send out? Get a grip — and a life. And read this.
• You are apparently stalking me. That’s how it looks, anyway. You use @replies to make mindless comments about my tweets that really don’t start or add anything to a discussion. And you do it all the time. Stop it. It’s freaking me out. If you keep it up, I’ll likely block you.
• I’ve followed you and you’ve sent me an automated direct message or @reply. That’s an immediate unfollow in my book. It’ll also get you reported as a spammer to the folks who run Twitter.

Back in January, I linked to an article on Mashable titled, “FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter.” On reviewing the Mashable piece after I wrote the above, I realized that many of my gripes are the same as Atherton Bartelby’s. I’m just apparently a lot pickier and more sarcastic about the way I present them. Still, I hope you’ll go read his take on this when you’re finished here.

And one more thing…don’t be offended if I don’t follow you or if I stop following you. It’s [usually] nothing personal. I only have so many hours in a day and a lot of that is taken up with work. Remember, I can only follow around 100 or so Twitter users before being overwhelmed.

I want my Twitter experience to be high-quality. I want it to build relationships. I want to learn from it. Just because I don’t follow you doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means you’re not making the “Top 100″ on my Twitter user list. That doesn’t mean you’re not on the top of someone else’s Twitter user list. You’re just not on mine.

And let’s face it: does it really matter anyway?

I just received the following e-mail message from someone who had likely read one or more of my posts about flying helicopters or the helicopter job market:

Bare in mind that I have never flown a acraft of any type before…… I want to get into flying a turbine helicopter (of my owne) and I live in Mississippi. Everything I find online about schools is very, for lack of a better term eather full of crap and or confusing as all hell. and there are more schools than you can shake a stick at, but all have a list of requierments a mile long just to take a class. I ask you because you are already a pilot, and might atlaest be able to give me a guide line and rough idea with out all the bullcrap to confuse it. I need to know what I have to do to get a helicopter pilot licence, both for comercial and privet flying. where I can go to do so. and a high ball estimit of what it will cost me. could you please help me on this matter?

I did not edit the above. This is exactly how I received it, copied and pasted into my blog editing software.

Those of you who don’t see a problem with the above…I have one question: what the hell are you doing here? My writing must seem like Greek to you, since I tend to write at a Grade 8 level or higher.

While I don’t know anything about the age and background of the author of the above (other than the tell-tale Mississippi comment), I like to think that he’s in at least eighth grade. (And, for the record, although I live in Arizona, I didn’t go to school here.)

I had to read it three times to understand what he was getting at. I can see why he finds online information “confusing as hell” — his understanding of properly spelled words in the English language is likely minimal.

This is the kind of e-mail I get sometimes.

You know, I want to help people achieve their dreams. I really do. That’s one of the reasons I blog about the things I do. I can do these things, so it follows that other people can, too.

But I can’t tell people how to perform miracles.

This guy is doomed before he starts. I know that if I were hiring and someone sent me an e-mail or cover letter or (heaven forbid) resume with as many errors as the above message, I wouldn’t even bother to answer it. This guy’s failure to put together a single error-free sentence makes me wonder how he’ll fare when it’s time to study the POH (that’s Pilot Operating Handbook) for the turbine helicopter he wants to fly.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you cannot get anywhere in life without basic communication skills — including writing skills. These days, with spelling and grammar checkers built into half the writing software out there, there’s no reason to send out a communication like the one above.

You want a career as a pilot — or anything else? Learn how to communicate first.

And, for the record, it is not my intention to ridicule the author of the above. If I wanted to, I would have included his name and e-mail. (Even I’m not mean enough to do that.) I’m just using his communication as an example. I’m hoping that my e-mailed response to him — that it’ll cost $40K to $80K to get the ratings he needs to fly helicopters for a living — scares him into more reasonable aspirations.

Like getting his GED.

This afternoon, my sister called me to chat about some things. The topic of her ongoing job hunt came up and she told me about what we both think is a scam.

She’d applied for a bunch of jobs that were listed on Craig’s List. Later the same day, she got an e-mail message from someone identifying herself as “Sister Mary Joseph” who claimed that one of the people my sister had applied for a job with had forwarded her contact information. Sister Mary Joseph was supposedly a recruiter who had dozens of high-paying jobs waiting to be filled. She provided a partial list that was short on details. The problem was, my sister’s resume needed some work and Sister Mary Joseph’s company would have to revise it before they could apply for any of the jobs.

The fee for this service? $100.

Sister Mary Joseph offered to give my sister 90 days to pay the fee. All she had to do was give Sister Mary Joseph her PayPal information, and Sister Mary Joseph would deduct the money from my sister’s PayPal account when the time came.

All this was revealed in a series of e-mail messages between my sister and the oh-so-generous-and-helpful “Sister Mary Joseph” — one of which actually ended with the phrase, “God bless.” When my sister pointed out (truthfully) that her resume had just been redone for her by a professional, Sister Mary Joseph said that she’d shown the resume to a bunch of people and they were all critical. It definitely needed the work that Sister Mary Joseph’s company would provide.

At this point, my sister, who recognized this as a scam as soon as the $100 fee was mentioned, broke off communication. Baiting a scammer is fun, but after a while, it does become a waste of time.

My sister thinks that a number of too-good-to-be-true job ads in Craig’s List (New York) were posted by a person or company who uses them as bait for desperate job seekers. They con them into coughing up $100 for resume services they probably don’t need to get jobs that probably don’t exist. Or, for the really dumb ones, they get PayPal information so they can suck an account dry or go on a shopping spree. She’s reporting the scam to Craig’s list. With luck, they’ll act and remove these scammers before they con anyone else.

Because I’m sure they’ve already sucked money out of enough job seekers.

I’m not going to Macworld Expo this year. I used to go regularly and didn’t miss a show for about 10 years. Then I started skipping them. It just didn’t seem worth the time and expense. I went last year but am skipping this year.

I always watch the Apple keynote presentation, though. For a while, it was available as a live Webcast. Since then, it’s been available a day or two afterwards as a streamed QuickTime movie. That’s good enough for me.

Evidently, it isn’t good enough for some people. When I finally tracked down the date and time for this year’s Keynote address on the Macworld Expo Web site, I also stumbled upon some information for attendees wishing to see the presentation live. Here’s part of the instructions:

FOR PLATINUM PASS ATTENDEES:
As a Platinum Pass attendee, you have priority seating to view the Keynote in the main presentation room, based on availability. You may queue up on line any time beginning Monday evening, along 4th Street adjacent to the Moscone Center. We urge you to make every effort to be on line by 7:00am Tuesday morning to ensure your place in the queue, as we cannot guarantee seating late arrivals. Show management staff and security will be present to assist with any questions.

I should probably mention here that the folks who have “platinum passes” spent $1,695 to get them — if they bought them before December 1. If they waited, they paid $1,895.

I don’t know about you, but the thought of waiting on line in San Francisco overnight in January after paying nearly $2K for “priority seating” seems a little extreme. What kind of person would do this?

Now there’s a lot of hoopla over the fact that Steve Jobs is not doing this year’s keynote address. There’s even a bunch of whiners who claim they’re going to give Phil Schiller, who is doing the presentation, the cold (and silent) shoulder with each announcement. (These could be the same people who are willing to wait in line overnight to see a trade show keynote address.) So although I don’t expect a bunch of people to be standing out in the cold tonight on 4th Street (or Howard Street for the people who don’t have “platinum” passes), I do wonder how many people stood on line overnight in the past. Anyone have this info? Use the comments link or form for this post to share it.

Here’s a sad example of the mentality of some Mac users. The “Silent Keynote Campaign at Macworld Expo” is one way some people think they can send a message to Apple about how “mad” they are about Apple dropping out of future Macworld Expo. In reality, all they’re doing is exposing themselves as whining fanboys (or fangirls, perhaps).

If you’re attending the Macworld Expo keynote on Tuesday, Jan. 6, you can send a message to Apple by remaining silent during the 2009 keynote. While Phil Schiller is on the stage, let there be no applause, no whistling… just utter and complete silence.

Boo hoo. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this campaign is stupid and childish.

Get a grip, folks. This isn’t the end of the world.

I’m as big an Apple supporter as the next guy — probably even bigger, since I’ve been using them and writing about them since 1989. I have to admit that although the announcement saddens me because it marks the end of an era, it’s not going to have a major impact on how I buy and use computers and software.

I get better attention and support in an Apple store than I ever got in the Apple “booth” at Macworld Expo — and half the time I had a Press badge on at the show. Indeed, an Apple Store is like having a Macworld Expo Apple booth with attentive staff available almost every day of the year. And I’d rather see Apple cut back on its trade show budget than cut back on employees or development costs. Wouldn’t you?

As for the silent treatment aimed at Phil Schiller, that’s not only rude, but it’s inconsiderate and unbelievably childish. And think of the message that sends to the rest of the computing world about Apple users.

Related Posts:

• On the Edge, Looking In
• A Trip to Macworld Expo in San Francsico
• Macworld Expo, My History

Today, two thought-provoking articles that I read online came together in my brain. Here’s the meat of the matter.

Can You Read Me Now?

About three weeks ago, one of my Twitter friends, @BlankBaby, tweeted a link to an article on truthdig by Chris Hedges titled “America the Illiterate.” The article begins with a few statements I can’t help but agree with:

We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.

At no time did this become more evident than during our recent presidential campaign. Consider these points:

• Viral e-mail messages convinced a portion of the population of one America that a regular church-going presidential candidate is secretly Muslim. (Let’s not even talk about why that matters to these people.)
• A vice-presidential candidate who, during an interview, couldn’t name a single newspaper that she reads regularly, convinces a portion of the population of one America that a presidential candidate is “palling around with terrorists.”
• A portion of the population of one America supported a vice presidential candidate because she “had spunk,” despite the fact that she couldn’t name the three member countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), didn’t understand the First Amendment right of free speech, was found guilty of abusing her power as Governor of Alaska to get someone she didn’t like fired, and had more than a few other shortcomings.
• A man who gets a few minutes of time on camera with one Presidential candidate rises to celebrity status in support of the other presidential candidate and, even though his candidate loses, manages to get a book deal. (This, of course, is ironic because a good portion of his America can’t even read. Maybe they’ll wait for the movie — if they haven’t already forgotten him.)

Existing in a non-reality-based belief system? Unable to distinguish between lies and truth? Informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés? Yeah. I think so.

Mr. Hedges’ article goes into some detail about the problem of illiteracy in America. He has statistics — although I’m not sure where they’re from — that claim 42 million American adults, including 20% with high school diplomas, cannot read and 50 million read at an elementary school level. He claims — and, as a writer, I find this hard to believe — that “…42 percent of college graduates never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.”

There’s a lot more and it makes for fascinating reading. I agree with much of the opinion content, which is unfortunate because it paints such a bleak picture of Americans. But the following quote stuck with me when I read the piece and I actually clipped it out to write about it later:

In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty. We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both.

I’m reminded of thought-free flag-wavers who cry treason whenever someone uses their Constitutional right of free speech to question American policies at home and overseas. I’m reminded of Sarah Palin, claiming that these flag-wavers are the “real Americans” while the rest of us, in that other America — the people who know how to think critically — are unpatriotic.

A Canary Speaks Out

This morning, I followed up on another link sent out into the ether by a Twitter friend that turned out to be related — at least in my mind. @BWJones linked to an article by noted film critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times blog called “Death to Film Critics! Hail to the CelebCult!” In it, Mr. Ebert claims that “a newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine.” His piece was prompted by a 500-word limit imposed by the Associated Press (AP) for all articles by entertainment writers.

Worse, the AP wants its writers on the entertainment beat to focus more on the kind of brief celebrity items its clients apparently hunger for. The AP, long considered obligatory to the task of running a North American newspaper, has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been “seen with” somebody, who has been “spotted with” somebody, and “top ten” lists of the above. (Celebs “seen with” desire to be seen, celebs “spotted with” do not desire to be seen.)

He goes on to say:

The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement.

That’s the root of the matter right there. People are more interested in celebrity lives than just about anything else. They’d rather read about what a “hot” celebrity ate for lunch yesterday than the failing economy, war in Iraq or Afghanistan, energy problems and solutions, or the struggles of third-world nations against poverty, disease, and genocide.

Of course, they’d rather see video or pictures of what the celebrity ate for lunch. No reading required.

It’s a failure of critical thinking. Too many people living in a non-reality-based world. And the media is feeding it. Newspapers and television channels are selling out, providing this low-level content just to survive.

Mr. Ebert points out, “As the CelebCult triumphs, major newspapers have been firing experienced film critics. They want to devote less of their space to considered prose, and more to ignorant gawking.” He goes on to say:

Why do we need critics? A good friend of mine in a very big city was once told by his editor that the critic should “reflect the taste of the readers.” My friend said, “Does that mean the food critic should love McDonald’s?” The editor: “Absolutely.” I don’t believe readers buy a newspaper to read variations on the Ed McMahon line, “You are correct, sir!” A newspaper film critic should encourage critical thinking, introduce new developments, consider the local scene, look beyond the weekend fanboy specials, be a weatherman on social trends, bring in a larger context, teach, inform, amuse, inspire, be heartened, be outraged.

But his conclusion is what ties his piece in with the truthdig article I started this post with — at least for me:

The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

Think about it…if you can.

I had a heavy shock today in the Safeway Supermarket in Wickenburg, AZ when I witnessed the following exchange between a cashier/manager and the teenage clerk who was bagging groceries at her register.

Girl: Do I get a break today?

Cashier (after studying a break sheet): Yes. You have lunch at 3 o’clock.

Girl: What time is it now?

Cashier (pointing to the clock on the wall): Look at the clock.

Girl (laughing): I can’t tell time on that.

I looked at the clock. It was a typical wall clock — you know, the round kind with two hands and a bunch of numbers. It read 1:35 PM.

Me (to the girl): You can’t tell time on a regular clock?

Girl (still laughing): No.

Teenage Guy behind me on line: I can’t either.

Me (to the girl): And you think that’s funny? What school did you go to?

Girl (still laughing but now moved to the end of the next register; I think I was scaring her): Wickenburg.

We’ll cut the conversation here, mostly because I became outraged and had to be calmed by the cashier, who is about my age. I reminded her that I learned how to tell time when I was 5 and I’m sure she was about the same age.

The point of all this is the fact that today’s kids apparently lack basic skills that they need to get by in life. How can an 18-year-old girl not know how to tell time on a standard analog clock? What else does she not know how to do? Read? Write in full sentences? Spell the words that might appear on a job application?

How the hell does she expect to get anywhere in life? Or is her highest aspiration to be a bagger in a grocery store? No offense to folks with challenged kids, but mentally retarded people can do that.

Yet apparently, this kid can pass the tests she needs to graduate high school.

No child left behind? Sure.