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Blog Action Day
aroberts writes "Today is Blog Action Day which means that lots of bloggers will be writing on one general topic for one day in an attempt to see what might be achieved through coordinated posting, and I am one of them so my humble contribution amongst the hundreds of thousands is entitled individual action is not enough. The topic for this year's blog action day is the environment." You can almost hear the sound of the vacuum created by bloggers thinking that their words matter when the people with control don't even know how to read the tubes. Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.
Take your Blog and Shove It ! I ain't reading here no more !!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Tumbleweed drifts past....
Oh arse
that's why the founding fathers were waisting their time writing all those pamphlets. i doubt the king or the parliament read those. so what value did they hold?
most blogs are day journals and have very low readership - but there are a number of blogs that directly impact the thinking and actions of thousands of readers. in aggregate there are millions influenced - and if those millions act in a coordinated fashion, they become the ones in control.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Have you been outside recently? IT'S HOT! Or Raining! Also there are bears.
Today for blog action day, all bloggers will report that it is blog action day!
Yes, but that also leaves traces of DNA...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
its about making PEOPLE notice. because PEOPLE is the power.
remember that the fight for net neutrality was conducted that way, and billion buck worth megacorp lobbying was thwarted.
Read radical news here
Aren't titles supposed to be quoted and capitalised? How do the bloggers hope to get anywhere without basic grammar like that?
Oh, I forgot, it is teh interwebs so you don't have to write properly to think you have a point. In fact there may even be an inverse correlation between grammar and blogger's perceived importance of blog post.
And yet Josh Marshall and his blog Talking Points Memo managed to break the U.S. attorney firing scandal -- a scandal that ultimately led to the removal of the Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer in the U.S. This despite the fact that the AG's boss hardly knows how to read, much less to read the "tubes".
I'm not saying that all blogs can have this kind of impact. TPM succeeded because they did the hard work of unearthing the story and keeping it alive when nobody else cared about it; most bloggers do it for fun and don't have that level of commitment. But it's silly to make sweeping generalizations dismissing the impact blogs can have when the evidence to the contrary is all around us.
Read my blog.
Hey, that's a Nobel Prize winner you're talking about. Mock not the mighty Gore, for all humanity depends on his benevolent leadership to survive!
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Blogs are like any other kind of media. You have your large, successful, commercial entities that command a lot of power in people's mindspace.
Then you have all the other entities whose purposes are varied, and appeal either to a select audience, some sort of niche; and you have entities that essentially appeal to the author's vanity.
It's important to remember that, much like a crowd, blogs don't have a unified voice. And their voices are harder to find. Blogging does leave an impression on people, but let's not pretend it's this world-shaking thing that we've never had before. It's just another method of publishing and social interaction rolled into one.
[ think ]
I wonder if the planet would benefit more from a bunch of whiney bloggers posting, or from that same group of bloggers simply turning off their computers.
Look. If you're going to propogate the meme, here's the format. Everyone, let's get coordinated here:
I for one, welcome our new [adjective FTFS][, [additional adjective or gerund form of verb FTFS]
So, let's try it, shall we?
I for one, welcome our new coordinated, environmentally-conscious blogging overlords!
My blog
"Blog Action" an oxymoron?
I am NOT an environmentalist. I will NOT sacrifice my lifestyle for "the greater good." I am focused on my family first, idealism is a WAY distant second. However, some wise environmentalists are starting to make the programs reasonable. Our power company, no doubt as part of the deal with the government, ran a program for insulation. They inspected the insulation for free, gave a credit for insulation, and brought a list of contractors for us to choose from AND set up the install. I just had to sit at home and have a check ready when they showed up, sealed my ducts, and blew in insulation. Because of the credit, in four months I've recovered half the cost of the insulation, making it a no brainer, and the environment wins.
My roof is coming up due for replacement. The technology of panels on the roof was expensive, didn't save money in the time frame that most people own their houses, and was extremely ugly. However, the new technology of "panel roofs," where you have tile-like installations on the roof was starting to be feasible, as the labor to install on the roof was about the same, but the electrical hookups were costly. The new systems come in "sheets" so they are easier to install than roof tiles, integrate with the roof, and should, in time, cost about the same to install as a normal new roof. As the costs (after tax breaks) comes down, more people will use them. Demanding ugly roofs on people's homes with a "boo hoo" will not get you buy in, but come up with a series of tax incentives and let the free market develop solutions that people want and you can actually get progress.
If you really want recycling efforts, then you need to make it easy for people, convenient, and ideally provide some incentive to them doing so. Just like some states offer deposits with refunds for recycling cans/bottles, why not have a scale in the curb-side pickup of recycled materials, and give people a credit on their garbage bill.
People aren't sheep, people are autonomous individuals. Their willingness to spend their free time on your pet projects instead of their families is pretty limited. I don't see you offering free babysitting services or transportation for their kids to after school events to free up time for people to do what you want. I don't hear that you're donating money, you just want other people to do so.
I must concede that you're correct. The environment does effect everyone. That doesn't change, however, the fact that it is of minimal consequence when compared to things like war. War effects people more directly.
Seriously, who cares if the air conditioner is set too low when the house is on fire?
There are plenty of studies showing that the global warming issue is caused by the sun getting hotter (look it up...I'll wait), and a recent study showing that the ozone holes at the north pole are getting smaller (did we do that? doubtful. Can a blogger get that kind of reaction, unlikely)
"Lame" - Galaxar
Wait, so we've all got to apologise to Ursula K Le Guin now?
Damn you Doctorow!
Blogging might influence dunderhead journalists who are too lazy to do any first-hand research or reporting to write a story, which might cause John Q. Public to write a letter to a politician, who might modify his behavior because of it.
But mostly it's masturbation. The schlubs at the blogs, for example, really think they're DOING SOMETHING. But at the end of the day they're just whining. If they're really lucky some politician might pretend to care, but politicians cater to those who have money and those who can deliver votes. That's it, and that's all.
It's no coincidence that most American politics revolve around the interests of corporations, the interests of powerful lobbies like AIPAC, and the interests of SEIU (the last and only effective union in America). If you're AIPAC, for example, and can deliver both money and votes, you're golden. They represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, but they vote and give money in lockstep. So hey presto! we're invading Iraq, even though the vast majority of Americans can't even point to that country on a map; They're also on the verge of pushing our government to attack Iran, though the vast majority of American voters want out of the first mess they created in Iraq.
So in reality, blogs are irrelevant. Are and always will be.
The key to results in democratic systems is to be able to execute swiftly and with near-unanimity. If, for example, Slashdot readers were able to initiate and execute a general strike to oppose, say, abuse at the USPTO, or the passage of the DMCA, you better believe the powers-that-be would sit up and take notice if their electronic trading systems handling billions of dollars went down. If you think about it, the sort of people who read Slashdot control the computer networks that are the nervous system of our modern world. They hold all the cards and could compel many changes in our world if they worked together.
But they don't, because Slashdot is really just a blog for geeks who post or vent and think they've done their bit. They take no actual action beyond that.
If they did, just imagine the possibilities.
Chew, and digest.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Syntax aside, while I understand your POV, I have to disagree. The house-on-fire would be the wars, yes. The destabilisation of our environment, on the other hand, is the raging forest-fire that is about to engulf your house and your town.
If the world's natural resources - fossil fuels AND agriculturally viable land-area - continue to deplete, the wars you're seeing now will someday be remembered fondly for their relative civility and restraint. When whole nations start competing aggressively for scarce resources in an effort to maintain their dominance or their way of life, the cracks in our currently-civilised facade will split right open.
Seriously, in the long run, it's a MUCH bigger issue.
Meta will eat itself
The irony is that it effectively makes this article a blog post by Taco about the submitter's statement.
"Everything else is just you complaining that you don't want to be bothered to make a sacrifice where there may not even be a payoff."
Fixed that to make it accurately reflect reality.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Amen.
There's a rebirth of social organization happening in this country. Unions like SEIU are finally throwing off the stale leadership of ineffective labor coalitions and are taking charge themselves. They're doing this by building leaders within their own ranks who are politically savvy and tuned into what power is really about.
And it's not just labor that is waking up. Faith-based community organizing is really taking off. Groups at the state level are engaging in serious power politics. And the right is taking notice. You know you're making an impact when an opposition group calls for a "<Name of your group> Watch."
This ain't your daddy's "Christian Right." The religious right is essentially a group of patsys co-opted to advance a conservative economic agenda. When you look at the actual issue campaigns of the religious right, almost none of the went anywhere. The only victory they might claim is a set of state constitutional amendments to ban equal unions for GLBT people. But even that was motivated by election politics, not the values underlying the issue itself. The religious right was and is being used by the conservatives. They're starting to wise up to that.
On the other hand, this new breed of faith activists is more than willing to take both sides of the aisle to task. There's a discipline to building public relationships with other people and especially with public officials. These groups and the new power-oriented unions understand what that is and that it is what is at the core of political power.
Interesting times, indeed.