Sorry things have been a little slow lately here on Cobbsblog. I have been working pretty hard at the day job and on my "word warrior weekends."
Let me quickly explain: I have been blogging and tweeting and Facebooking on multiple fronts for the past few weeks:
1. Petitioning the FDA to ignore the lobbying of doctors who want to end Direct-To-Consumer genetic testing (i.e. the kind of testing that enables you to find out if you have hereditary hemochromatosis even if your doctor doesn't think you do). And I mean petition. Please read and sign the petition when you have a chance. That would be much appreciated. Bear in mind that this possible FDA action affects everyone in America, not just hemochromatosis patients.
2. Raising the alarm about the efforts of large telecommunications companies (telcos) such as Time Warner Cable to ban community broadband networks. Yes, your urban cable company may be taking some of your monthly payment and using it to pay lobbyists fighting to squash local efforts to install broadband in places where the big telcos have failed to do so. Read more here.
3. Continuing to battle ignorance about hemochromatosis, as evidenced by this report on the Facebook page: "Husband recently diagnosed. Saw a gastro doctor today about a possible liver biopsy. He knew almost nothing about hemochromatosis." And yet he, the doctor, probably makes over $200,000 a year.
I should also explain that's not me with the raised arm in the painting (a free Fighting Hemochromatosis mug to the first person--friends and family excepted--who comments with the name of the original painting and artist).
More updates from the front lines as time permits...
Yes, Time Warner IS Trying to Ban Community Networks
Some people found that hard to believe (some of them young people who still seem to think American corporations are all about free markets and level playing fields). So here is a dose of reality people, as reported by the terrific website that is the source of the sadly "too-true" cartoon you see here. The site is Stop the Cap:
Time Warner Cable’s custom-written bill banning community-owned broadband networks in North Carolina this afternoon received a favorable vote in the Public Utilities Committee... Read the full report here.Yes, you read that correctly. Time Warner Cable is trying to get a law passed to outlaw community-owned networks. This is the same company that told me, in writing, to take a hike when I ordered commercial-grade cable service from them. (Okay, they did not use those exact words, they just told me it would cost more than $100,000 to connect me, even though I am less than 5 miles from their nearest connection point and there are dozens of other willing customers between that point and me.)
So all of you out there enjoying Time Warner Cable Internet and Verizon FiOS just remember, your broadband provider is actively seeking to stop rural communities from helping themselves while simultaneously denying those communities the kind of broadband you enjoy.
And think of my neighbors, paying 5X what you pay for broadband and getting 1/20 of the service you get. Now think about this: If those companies can get away with treating those communities so badly, how long will it take them to start behaving equally badly toward you?
API Pop-Up Box Bug in Twitter Seems to be Fixed
Since I had complained so much, I felt it was only fair to let people know of this incremental improvement in Twitter. Not that all is well at Twitter, according to this Fortune magazine cover story. But one good sign might be this quote from Jack Dorsey, cofounder and former CEO of Twitter, is now back on baord as Executive Chairman of product (development, improvement, completion, or whatever):
"We're just humans running these companies."
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance: An idea whose time has come?
Anyone who has spent time trying to get companies to bring broadband to their rural community will know that it can be a lot like banging your head against a wall. The telcos are not interested. Legislators are either powerless or in the pocket of the telcos.
And we are now hearing rumors that a lot of the rural broadband stimulus money went to "mapping studies" and "feasability projects" carried out by organizations fronting for telcos. Expect a series of reports in the next few years that declare "broadband access solved for most rural Americans" even as the decline of rural narrowband ghettos proceeds apace.
Yes, it's grim out there if you have no broadband in your community and for many people the answer is clearly not going to be the telcos or the stimulus program or even the recently announced wireless initiative. The answer may well lie in our own hands: local initiatives.
One organization that is helping folks head down that road is the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. They have a project called Community Broadband Networks. This project offers a lot of hope, some of it in the form of an impressive map of local broadband operations around the country.
That tells you these projects must be doing something right...and fiber to the home, in a small town? What better lifestyle could there be?
And we are now hearing rumors that a lot of the rural broadband stimulus money went to "mapping studies" and "feasability projects" carried out by organizations fronting for telcos. Expect a series of reports in the next few years that declare "broadband access solved for most rural Americans" even as the decline of rural narrowband ghettos proceeds apace.
Yes, it's grim out there if you have no broadband in your community and for many people the answer is clearly not going to be the telcos or the stimulus program or even the recently announced wireless initiative. The answer may well lie in our own hands: local initiatives.
This is the first map to comprehensively show the broadband networks that are structurally designed to meet community needs first. Most of the networks are owned by local governments, but nonprofit networks will also be incorporated over time.Take a look. It is encouraging. I looked at one pin on the map as an example, a small town in Pennsylvania called Kurtztown that installed Fiber to the Home (FTTH) in 2002. This is a good example because it shows what happens when you go down this road: The telcos try to stop you!
That tells you these projects must be doing something right...and fiber to the home, in a small town? What better lifestyle could there be?
Spring-ing Forward Misses DST point: Mythic origins of Deus Tea overlooked
About this time every year there is a lot of chatter about Daylight Saving Time, clocks, farmers, planting, sunlight, safety, business impact, the environment, and so on. You read these words in blogs and you hear them all over the cable news networks where talking heads explain the annual sixty minute shift in time.
All of which obscures the history behind this practice and its origins in ancient myth and legend. No longer do we tell our children about the epic struggle between the Sun god Ra, the Sea god Poseidon, and Zunga the flying lizard. I mean, how many children today know the story of how Zunga and Ra put aside their own feud to conspire against Poseidon, tricking him into arriving one horus [hour] late to their ritual Sun-day duel?
[caption id="attachment_1218" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Old text-book illustration showing Sumerian stone carving believed to depict Zunga the Flying Lizard"]
[/caption]
With all the education cutbacks and test-focused learning in America today it is perhaps no surprise that most of our kids have never even heard of the pageant of Deus Tea [literally: Deus Starticus Tardicum] let alone participated in one of these colorful celebrations.
Even that most American of Spring traditions, the Vernal Equinox [literally The Equinox of Vern] is mentioned merely in passing these days. How many children could, if asked, recount its origins on the shores of the Great Salt Lake--back before Utah was even called the Utah Territory--when the young pioneer Vern Smith used 24 egg-timers and 100 candles to accurately determine the equal length of both day and night?
Well, here at Cobbsblog we plan to do something about this parlous ignorance. At some point between now and the first of April [literally "the first pril" or prilostoria, from the Greek for short sword or possibly story] we will be posting the original DST origin myth in full, in the hopes of keeping this important piece of of shared heritage alive.
In the meantime, we would all do well to take a moment and ask ourselves the question immortalized in the ancient ballad of the Chicago Transit Authority: Does anybody really know what time it is?
All of which obscures the history behind this practice and its origins in ancient myth and legend. No longer do we tell our children about the epic struggle between the Sun god Ra, the Sea god Poseidon, and Zunga the flying lizard. I mean, how many children today know the story of how Zunga and Ra put aside their own feud to conspire against Poseidon, tricking him into arriving one horus [hour] late to their ritual Sun-day duel?
[caption id="attachment_1218" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Old text-book illustration showing Sumerian stone carving believed to depict Zunga the Flying Lizard"]
[/caption]With all the education cutbacks and test-focused learning in America today it is perhaps no surprise that most of our kids have never even heard of the pageant of Deus Tea [literally: Deus Starticus Tardicum] let alone participated in one of these colorful celebrations.
Even that most American of Spring traditions, the Vernal Equinox [literally The Equinox of Vern] is mentioned merely in passing these days. How many children could, if asked, recount its origins on the shores of the Great Salt Lake--back before Utah was even called the Utah Territory--when the young pioneer Vern Smith used 24 egg-timers and 100 candles to accurately determine the equal length of both day and night?
Well, here at Cobbsblog we plan to do something about this parlous ignorance. At some point between now and the first of April [literally "the first pril" or prilostoria, from the Greek for short sword or possibly story] we will be posting the original DST origin myth in full, in the hopes of keeping this important piece of of shared heritage alive.
In the meantime, we would all do well to take a moment and ask ourselves the question immortalized in the ancient ballad of the Chicago Transit Authority: Does anybody really know what time it is?
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