Carl Setzer

Recently I've heard Chinese officials (and before that, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and others) complain about the US "preaching", particularly about labor and environmental practices. A key piece of that, "why are you denying us the same benefit you had". This one saddens me deeply. We saw the destructive nature of our actions and seek to purge that from our psyche. No, this isn't an attempt to rob you of advantage, it's an attempt to help you avoid our costly mistakes. The US is still healing from the environmental degradations of our history. Still coming to terms the destruction from the dishonest and ill-treatment of our indigenous people, or slavery.  The goal, for me, at least, isn't to maximize our grain. Really, it should be about avoiding the same costly mistakes we made in our development. The available mistakes to make are manifold, probably unknowable. Learn from us. If we're wise, we'll learn how to learn from the rest of the ...

Not your typical flash-mob in style or structure, but glorious nonetheless.

Re: " An Infection, Unnoticed, Turns Unstoppable " Brief summation: boy gets infection via a superficial seeming injury. Multiple medical professionals fail to catch it as it escalates, eventually killing the boy.  Reading this piece in the NYTimes is painful. As a parent, these stories rattle your paranoia. Parenthood seems to be that thing which shakes us from a "it can't happen to me" attitude. Yet my parental paranoia wasn't the only issue raised. I left wondering what could've been done differently, or, more specifically, how could technology help to prevent such tragedy. Some key data were missed in the process, in particular several key elevated levels ("His bands were 53% (normal high is 15%); absolute neutrophils were 13.5 (normal high is 8.5); absolute bands were 7.8 (normal high, 4.2). On the other hand, a blood value associated with viral infection was low. His lymphocytes were 3% (normal low, 28%).") were, for whatever reason...

My inbox is out of control. I know others feel this, too. This blizzard of information, inboxes, tweets, Facebook, texts, calls, news-sites...on and in it goes. We've gone far past data saturation. I's wondered lately where we go from here. How do we cope with this? Tools are being developed, but most seem to focus on new ways to deliver. Perhaps different packaging, clever design; but the problem isn't readability, it's volume. How do we filter? Our culture has never faced this before. Never has information been so commoditized. Never have we had all the world's assembled knowledge sitting in our pockets. Most of us filter by ignoring, where it's views we don't like, voices we find annoying, or just deleting this one email "this one time". Yet, for me at least, that's unsatisfying. I value discussion. Value getting new voices heard, new ideas expressed. Yet, without finding away to increase our absorption rate, it seems we're faced...

Perhaps you've heard this trending story about Brian Presley (an actor) & Melissa (a model). (if not, here's a brief summation here ) via Huffington Post Just read David Amerland's piece, When Melissa Met Brian: A Lesson in Social Media Ethics over at Social Media Today. So, my take. Melissa started with the assumption that Brian was attempting to cheat on his wife with her and ran with that. In analysis, this seems an act of arrogance on her part. (The man in the seat next to you is talking to you. The only reason is he wants sleep with you?) Be that as it may, she unleashed the mindless reactivity of the internet. It's amazing how quickly that can get launched and how nearly impossible it is to put that "genie back in the bottle". Sure, it's important for us social media users to think before we post, but we should also consider thinking before acting on something we read. Always remember there are two sides to a story. (Mea cupla: I sa...

Edmonds Arts Festival 2012 , a set on Flickr. A few shots to answer "what I did this weekend". Hope all of you had a great Father's Day weekend.

Earlier this week I read an article lambasting the advertising revenue model. I can't find it right now, but the basic critique was "it never worked and is even worse no"w. Now, most newspaper revenues, in the recent past at least, came from advertising. Subscriptions didn't cover a fraction of expenses. Advertising covered the rest and provided profit. Clearly that model is now damaged, but is it dead? It once worked. Can a business either lower expenses enough, or engage enough advertising to be profitable? Clearly, businesses still see value in advertising. They still heavily invest in ads. I think part of the challenge for tge advertiser lies in the expanding advertising market. They need to spread the same dollars further. Then there's the moral issue: everyone hates advertising. What do we do with that? Anyway, my rambling early AM thoughts did a Friday. Cheers, everyone!