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 !

Take your Blog and Shove It ! I ain't reading here no more !!

Isn't...

"Blog Action" an oxymoron?

Re:Take your Blog and Shove It !

I'm reminded of Deep Thoughts Comment to Vroomfondle and Majikthise - "And Who Will That Inconvenience?"

That Sucking Sound

This reminds me of a quote I heard on the difference between blogging and flogging

The difference between blogging and flogging, is that flogging actually leaves an impression on people.

Blogs are like any other kind of media.

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 sor

Fixed.

You can almost hear the sound of the vacuum created by bloggers thinking that their words matter.

Fixed that for you...

Such an impact

Tumbleweed drifts past....

right

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.

Re:right

that's why the founding fathers were waisting their time writing all those pamphlets.

From the paintings, I seem to remember Ben Franklin having a rather big waistline.

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It will happen. Of course you'll never be forgiven by the nit-pickers, but many of us can read and wrtie fluent typo.

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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

But you can't get more

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I'm not saying the bloggers will be in control. They may be able to motivate people to take control. I do think they can have a lot of influence. Sure there are varying opinions, but it seems to me this idea is about trying to get on the same general pa

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The purpose of the pamphlets was to get people out into the streets - to march and protest Britain's injustices. This movement says that blogging is an end in itself; that writing about some injustice on the Internet will somehow magically make the injust

Lick a stamp or march?????

Have you been outside recently? IT'S HOT! Or Raining! Also there are bears.

Re:Lick a stamp or march?????

Don't forget raptors [xkcd.com].

Vacuum

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.

I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't even know

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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. I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't even kno

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MySpace

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I write my blog in the tube [tfl.gov.uk] quite often (and then post it when I get to an internet connection.) I'm sure some of the important bloggers do the same...

apparently it's blog action day

Today for blog action day, all bloggers will report that it is blog action day!

DNA

Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.

Yes, but that also leaves traces of DNA...

Ebay?

And here I thought you said "Blog Auction Day". A day where all bloggers will shill for money.

Ok, to be fair, not all of them do, but at least it would get it all out in the open for all the astroturfers out there..

The Environment?

Why not pick a topic that effects everyone now? Perhaps, politicians who flip flop (almost all of them), unjust wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, maybe Iran soon), dollar devaluation and the fed who prints money and causes inflation, spend time blogging about poli

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Why not pick a topic that effects everyone now?

This way they get to have a group wank. If they picked a cause rather than an effect they might actually have to get off their arses and change something.

 

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dollar devaluation and the fed who prints money and causes inflation

Printing money doesn't necessarily cause inflation. Allowing that printed money to rapidly expand the money supply does. But there are many other ways to expand the money supply without ac

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This damned global warming [meteo.lcd.lu] has almost prevented me from putting a jacket on today. I recently read that the ozone holes near the north pole are getting smaller [theozonehole.com].

For every environmentalist bullhorning about the environment, there are just as many with the o

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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 conditi

Re:The Environment?

Again with "effects" instead of "affects"?

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.

aroberts you totally missed the point

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.

its not about making the people with control hear it. they wouldnt "hear" you if you were to play a drum frantically in their front door yelling your petition, because they dont care.

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.

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People are sheep, people dont want to be bothered, people cant be expected to miss the latest episode of lost because of a city council meeting.

All the lip service the environment has going for it and nobody is still willing to do anything about it. Many

Stop the anti-people ideology and you'll succeed

All the lip service the environment has going for it and nobody is still willing to do anything about it. Many recycling programs fail because people do not want to bother with separating their trash. Free or subsidized insulation programs for the inner city poor fail fast because nobody cares to donate. Nobody fights city hall to remove laws restricting alternative power. boo hoo that you dont want to look at solar panels on my roof. Being a selfish ass does not help the environment.

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.

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I think a lot of people out there would care, and would like to be more informed, it's just hard to do. You want to blame Lost and pop-culture, and while that's a big part of it, there's also a lot of hardworking people out there who just don't have the ti

no

im seeing many, even some dogged, zealotly conservative people taking up on some ideas.

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People need to stop singing to the Choir and figure out how to make the average sheep pay attention

Sheep pay attention when there is a wolf or a sheepdog in their midst.

Most USians will start paying attention when their quality of life is affected by envi

The difference between blogging and news...

The difference between blogging and news is that the mainstream media who make the news know about grammar.

...my humble contribution amongst the hundreds of thousands is entitled individual action is not enough.

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.

O RLY?

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.

And yet Josh Marshall and his blog Talking Points Memo [talkingpointsmemo.com] managed to break the U.S. attorney firing scandal [time-blog.com] -- a scandal that ultimately led to the removal of the Attorney General [nytimes.com], 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.

Lick a stamp?

All the ones I buy are self-adhesive.

We are all individuals!

BRIAN: Good morning.
FOLLOWERS: A blessing! A blessing! A blessing!...
BRIAN: No. No, please! Please! Please listen. I've got one or two things to say.
FOLLOWERS: Tell us. Tell us both of them.
BRIAN: Look. You've got it all wrong. Y

I Beg to Differ

Lick a stamp or march - that's harder to ignore.

Tee hee, yeah, for sure..... that's why there's no war happening in Iraq right now.

Real change doesn't happen at the end of a picket sign, it happens at the end of a six figure check written to a polit

Power consumption

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.

The environment?

Why not Portal? The environment gets so much attention anyway. I'll be writing about Portal, Valve's new and wonderful game.

Actually, my writing is actually done and I'm just waiting until 4:30 to post it.

Post an e-mail

Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.

Actually, sending e-mail is still better than snail-mail, since the anthrax scare continues to wreak havoc with mail to Reps and Senators. I've gotten several response directly from my Rep when I've brought u

Collective responsibility

Wait, so we've all got to apologise to Ursula K Le Guin now?

Damn you Doctorow!

Blogging has a tertiary effect at best

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.

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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!

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Woah, someone got out of the humour bypass machine on the wrong side!

For what it's worth, Mr AC, if you search my posting history you will find plenty of specific, serious posts challenging the science of Gore and his film. This just wasn't one of them.

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The two-party system and strong executive of the U.S. basically ensures that no suitable candidate can be found, one will simply be voting for the lesser of two evils. I gave up on U.S. politics a long time ago (though moving abroad made that much easier).

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So, in other words, make change by starting a special interest group for politicans to pander towards.

It's sad, perhaps, that special interest groups are the only way to get noticed by the bigshots (instead of getting back a form letter).

Corporations learn

No, no, no...

Wish to greet our coordinated blogging overlords!

You've got it all wrong!

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] ...], [gerund form of verb FTFS] overlords!

So, let's try it, shall we?

I for one, welcome our new coordinated, environmentally-conscious blogging overlords!

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The irony is that it effectively makes this article a blog post by Taco about the submitter's statement.