Newark’s spot in cyberspace

Mark Spearman is a local computer guy who observed on his web site the difference in severity of punishment for David Ball, who got 17 years in prison on 10 counts of home invasion, and Joseph C. McClain, who got five years in prison for 25 counts of grand theft. Ball likely netted pocket change; according to Spearman’s essay, McClain took $475,000 from 40 people. Read it here: When stealing, please be real nice about it

Beyond that accurate observation about local justice in action, Mark continues to expand his web sites in helpful ways. Particularly recommended is Newark Ohio links Here you’ll find a directory of links indexed by area of interest, a section of which under Newark Ohio News Feeds, includes Craig’s List postings germane to Newark.

There is also an extensive list of local bloggers and community web sites, with a little description of each.

This service is particularly appreciated for anyone interested in staying current with as many Internet postings by local people as possible. As one who’s been in it a long time, writing in cyberspace is like dropping a shoe in the ocean and hoping someone will find it who cares. Now Mark has at least begun an index of shoe-droppers, and anyone who’s not listed there should make contact with Mark and let him know.

Another thing Mark inadvertently alerted me to is a list of local folks who publish on Twitter. When he began “following” me at this time-wasting site, I checked the others he “follows” and found a decent roster of fellow Tweeters wasting time on Twitter. You can go to Mark’s Twitter page at this link and get a list of who he’s following, and you can also check out the local people I follow at this link.

Anyway, hats off to Mark for the work he’s doing to list and index a broad range of people and things. I hope someday he will bring all his sites and publications under one supreme index page because the only criticism I have is that they are not easily found.

There is also another extensive list of local links on the web site nerk.com The takeoff point for this broad index is now tied to blogspot at this address.

On-line comments by the handicapped

Impolite kids and cowards hiding behind anonymity are today’s Number One threat to ideas and debates of intelligent on-line commenters.

Lots of folks used to contribute serious comments and blog entries to the Advocate’s web site. Their numbers have dwindled considerably because too many abrasive and uninformed people attack others from behind “user names.”

These days you can tune into almost any string of comments that follows on-line news reports or blog entries and observe what appears to be the intellectually disadvantaged at work, most of whom are impolite without provocation.

Comments sections have become showrooms for what these people think is wit, rather than a discussion about the news report or bloggers’ subjects. These snipers are trying to boost their self-esteem by bullying the more intelligent and more peaceable readers. They’ll never have to look their victims in the eye, and that’s the ultimate shield for cowards.

The level of their writing ability often indicates they are very young people - from grade school to teenagers. Prolific, too, are sophomore-level pseudo-intellectuals, some of them apparently up in years.

Normal people can survive and enjoy it if they will recognize these youngsters and bullies and know-it-alls for what they are. Remember the source of their courage and they won’t seem threatening.

You don’t have to respond, or defend yourself, from the little people bent on trying to get you embarrassed or angry. It isn’t personal and shouldn’t be perceived as such. Be gentle because likely your adversary is a seventh-grader or some hillbilly who’s slammed back four beers. Keep your balance and you’ll enjoy the humor in on-line comments by the handicapped.

Newark’s mayor certifies power of bloggers

The mayor of Newark felt compelled to defend himself against the influence of local bloggers, meaning he has officially recognized them as being politically influential.

Mayor Diebold, in his Advocate essay “Pay attention to the facts,” felt it necessary to preach to his constituency on the unreliability of bloggers.

That’s a public certification of blogger power. It didn’t come as a result of bloggers being unreliable; just the opposite, in fact.

What traditional media can’t or won’t report will not necessarily go unreported these days, thus ending forever instances of cronyism between local politicians and local reporters. That must be a worrisome spot for bureaucrats and shyster office-holders.

The Internet has opened power to the people like never before. I think that, more than unreliability of bloggers, is what worries the mayor.

Remove the tools for inappropriate behavior

It may have been only inappropriate behavior, but the student who recently distributed nude photos of herself via cell phone has called into question the Ohio law under which she was threatened as a sex predator, which is a good thing.

Still, what she did - and what lots of other kids are probably doing - is inappropriate behavior made possible by having access to the right tools.

So why are today's children permitted to have cell phones anyway? Particularly, why do they have them at school?

But if cell phones open doors to inappropriate behavior, what about home computers? How do you solve that one?

Well, what you do is put the kid's home computer in the living room or kitchen with the monitor in plain view to the rest of the family.

Another major facilitator of inappropriate behavior is the automobile. I had three children and the oldest one taught me about that at age 16. The second two did not get licenses until they were almost 18, proving it can be done.

Parents who know what their kids are doing - and with which tools - can head off much of their inappropriate behavior, even if it requires constant attention and lots of effort.

Government mind control showcased by county prosecutor

The extent to which government has gone in its attempt to control the thoughts of citizens is showcased in today's Advocate by the report headlined Girl, 15, accused of sending nude photos over phone.

It's about the local court's prosecution of a kid who sent nude photos of herself via cell phone to some other kids. Charged with two felonies, she could be labeled a sex offender and put under government behavior control for 20 years.

A sexual offender? And the other kids who got the photos? The report indicated that even they could be charged. Doesn't it make you feel good to have government looking over your shoulder, protecting your morals and guiding your thoughts?

This likely is a kid who, when opening her e-mail is drowning in spam that wants to know if she'd like to buy pills to increase the size of her penis, salves to make her lover more sensitive, and any other slimy crap that can be imagined by basement-level pervs throughout the world.

Why doesn't government get that stuff off everyone's computer instead of regulating what citizens say (in words and pictures) in private over their private phones and computers?

As I understand government's mind-control capability, you can be charged as a perv for downloading photos and written materials that don't meet standards set by high-thinking moralists who oversee state and federal governments. Yet the perverted spam rolls on like a river. Don't tell me government couldn't stop it. But better headlines for government are to be had in local grunts coming after local citizens. What a crock.

I'm not saying the girl should have done what she did, but I know at age 15 if I had a cell phone and I knew a girl who had a cell phone I would surely have encouraged her to be a bit naughty with it. More than a bit, in fact.

Back then, though, our phones were on party lines with live operators. So my chances of naughtiness, phone-wise, would have been slim to none.

Complicating such an endeavor would have been my parents and her parents who likely would thrash all unclean thoughts out of us if we got caught.

Which points to the differences of then and now. Parents took care of their kids' morals and behavior and local government wouldn't have dared to poke around in our private activities or thoughts. Back then, such notions were still merely sci-fi.

All of which makes this a good time to review The Price of Freedom.

Sites for sore eyes

If you like to look at photos, or if you study photo-editing techniques, the very best of the best galleries are, in my opinion, those at the Washington Post site. From this web page you can link to various galleries. The "Day in Photos" gallery is a place I visit daily.

What sets these galleries apart from almost all other photo displays you see on the web or in print is the selection of interesting photos that are well-composed and cropped to perfection. This is a textbook photo site produced with uncommon expertise.

Also, for web-site-building expertise, and for editing copy for web readership, visit the site of The Week Magazine.

This one has broken free of the box in which other news sites seem confined because they can't quit copying one another - and they invariably are difficult to read and navigate. The Week site should be on copy writers' editors' and web designers' must-read list.

You'll find an amazing and visually riveting photo display at Jumping Boy web site. I mentioned this site a couple years ago when this young fellow was being photographed by his dad in a series of 365 jumping poses - one each day.

You'd think that project would have worn him out, but he kept on jumping and his web site has grown even more interesting. Likely if you visit, you'll get hooked too.

Time Warner: What else is available to Newark customers?

When Time Warner cable company acquired Adelphia it also acquired Adelphia's contract for cable television service to Newark. When that contract comes up for re-negotiation city government needs to be ready.

We should begin now to ask whether we're stuck with Time Warner forever, only because that company has morphed, from one little original cable provider - in one acquisition and/or merger after the other - until Newark has this giant conglomerate ensconced as ruler of our cable system.

A Consumer Reports study has placed Time Warner 13th in a field of 22 for internet service; 11th out of 14 for television service; 10th out of 17 for long-distance phone service; and 8th out of 10 in average score among the largest providers of the three services.

Moreover, Time Warner is changing the way it sets fees, basing them on how much each customer uses the internet. Likely this little quirk is going to come up in the Time Warner contract demands, or maybe that company will just go ahead and do it anyway.

The Business Week report tells a bit about how this might work.

Community cable service is no longer simply a television thing; now it's about TV, Internet, and telephone service. So are we going to be stuck with the middling-at-best services of Time Warner, or are we going to shop around for the best company with the best service and the best rates?

Nerk.com is an important community asset

Take another look at nerk.com if you haven't been there in a while. It's a community resource that for about 10 years has been educating and helping folks find their way, all the while getting better.

Far more than just a list of links to other web sites, it speaks in words and pictures to visitors about Licking County's breadth and depth and importance. Creator and curator, Jeff Freas, has made it, as he intended, the "Yahoo" of Licking County.

If you're an Internet visitor looking for facts about Newark and/or Licking County, go here first. If you live here, it's a good place to bookmark and revisit often.

It's only e-mail, so blow off

E-mail has not only changed the method by which we talk to each other; it has also changed the attitude with which we communicate - or choose not to.

You expect folks at least to acknowledge a serious communication, but often as not that doesn't happen, not even if you're writing to public employees or customer service people or elected officials.

And how about certain relatives and close friends? Damn.

That it is only e-mail seems to mark its importance. Likely as not, that mark is zero to negative.

Worse, this e-mail syndrome has infiltrated the way we think about communication with strangers, no matter what the subject or the purpose: Impoliteness and inconsideration prevail.

Blow off, bub. I don't know you, I don't care what you think, and anyway it's only e-mail so I don't have to take the time to be civil.

Finally, e-mail gives recipients a perfect excuse for being snotty: They can always blame their spam filters.

Rest easy Bunky, the FTC is watching Google

The Federal Trade Commission is poking around in Google's affairs on the fear that this company may be cornering the market on personal data collection. It's called an "anti-trust review" in a news article today. So have no fear.

Meanwhile, the National Farmers Union reports that four beef packers dominate 83.5 percent of that business, four pork packers control 66 percent of that market, and the top four poultry companies process 58.5 percent of this country's broilers. Also, five companies control 48 percent of U.S. food retailing, compared to 25 percent a decade ago.

But where the FTC really shines forth in true colors is in its attention to the oil industry.

A letter to the FTC by Senators Feingold and Feinstein in October 2005 criticized regulators who permit consolidation of oil refineries, such as Valero Energy and Premcor, giving it a 13-percent market share.

"In 1993, the five largest oil companies operating in the U.S. controlled 34.5 percent of domestic oil refinery capacity; the top ten companies controlled 55.6 percent," the letter said. "By 2004, the top five controlled 56.3 percent and the top ten refiners controlled 83 percent. As a result of the FTC’s policies, the largest five oil refiners today control more capacity than the largest ten did a decade ago. ... We request that the FTC explain how the mergers the agency has allowed have not harmed consumers, and, contrary to GAO findings, have not decreased competition."

That, apparently, ended the senators' responsibility to American consumers. This fine display of PR news-making notwithstanding, we are still getting screwed at the gas pump, the grocery store, the meat market, and everywhere else government regulators permit unbridled non-competitive business practices.

Rest easy, Bunky. The FTC is right on Google's case for hoarding information. That'll help.

The Newark Tea Party's great mystery

Why so many folks from other parts of the U.S. and the world read the Newark Tea Party and Newark Ohio Observations has always been a mystery to me.

I hoped Liza Martin of the Advocate staff might give me some answers when she was kind enough to write about this and other local web sites and blogs in a Sunday feature article.

There are only a few others by folks living nearby that are not business, institutional, religious, or educational - and only one other which, like the Tea Party, dwells on local problems. That would be nerkaggrivate.com.

The article offered no clue about who my readers are, or how they find the Tea Party, or why they keep coming back.

As Liza wrote, I am "self-taught" at webmastering, and that correctly implies that I don't know much about it, including how to get a grip on readership. I am measuring with three different tools, all of them providing vastly different numbers and various smokey clues about my readers. But I have no solid notion of what goes on once I put my stuff out in cyber space.

All I know is the Advocate article gave it an upward bump, for which I am grateful. I suppose in view of that I should be nice, but that's asking a lot.

The Magic Nanny will save your kids

Rest easy, parent. The U.S. Attorney General will speak today in Cincinnati about how best to protect your children when they connect to the internet.

The Magic Nanny rides again.

This is a very difficult matter. Of course we need government to save us.

Or we could log on to ProtectKids.com where you'll be taught to teach your kids about predators, find and install protective software, and most of all just to know what your kids are doing and supervise them as you should anyway.

There are many similar educational sites, lots of software, and tons of advice. It's all there for any parent who cares enough to do his or her job.

But there will always be parents who want the government to do it for them. Without folks like that the Magic Nanny wouldn't survive.

Where to get answers

As with most of my "discoveries" probably I'm way late. But yesterday two things occurred that the world should know about.

One: My wife got an e-mail that claimed to be a reproduction of a column by Paul Harvey entitled "Wake Up America" and/or "Conveniently Forgotten Facts." It supposedly reports how Sen. Clinton defended Black Panthers many years ago.

That same day I also stumbled on a little desktop application called 1-Click Answers from Answers.com. Once installed (yes, it works on a Mac too) you can highlight any words on your screen and with a combination of simultaneous keystrokes bring up facts and references to those words.

So I typed "Black Panthers and Hilary Clinton" in a word processor, highlighted them, and hit the magic keys. Bang! A whole page full of links to articles about this as an urban legend of wide distribution.

The message from Newark Ohio then is to get 1-Click Answers and to ignore the fake Harvey column. Also, Answers.com offers a question box to web masters that you can try out at the Newark Tea Party site.

A level field is bad news for newspapers

The Internet is the one way in which little guys can meaningfully influence their own destinies, even in the face of mainstream media such as the Gannett Company, "serving" Newark Ohio.

As more little guys get Internet savvy, so do advertisers. Bad news for big newspapers, even though the net profit margin for Gannett Company in 2005 was 16.4% on revenues of $7.6 billion.Read the whole financial report here.

The New York Times publisher has acknowledged that in five years there may no longer be a newspaper by that name; its remains may be strictly Internet-based. This is a trend Editor & Publisher magazine has been reporting for months - on its web site.

Meanwhile, the local Gannett-owned newspaper has been doing the exact opposite of what is normally preached to advertisers: if business is down, spend more to get it back. Instead, Gannett in Newark has killed off its daily television schedule and TV column. It has all but dismantled entirely its weekly "Booster," a once-beloved paper whose history goes way back before Gannett bought its way into Central Ohio. The Advocate is skinnied down, some days, to newsletter size.

Gannett is getting beat. Gannett is getting beat because it is a corporation headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. In spite of its 46% gross margin in 2005, it can't afford pretense at full news coverage.

Gannett is getting beat because its real interests are in a far-off corporation and not this or any other particular community. It gets no allegiance because it gives none.