We're off up to the woods for a few days. Much thinking to do...

See you all on Monday.

By Bertrand Russell: New York American and other Hearst papers, December 28, 1932; reprinted in Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays 1931-1936.

If there are among my readers any young men or women who aspire to become leaders of thought in their generation, I hope they will avoid certain errors into which I fell in youth for want of good advice. When I wished to form an opinion upon a subject, I used to study it, weigh the arguments on different sides, and attempt to reach a balanced conclusion. I have since discovered that this is not the way to do things. A man of genius knows it all without the need of study; his opinions are pontifical and depend for their persuasiveness upon literary style rather than argument. It is necessary to be one-sided, since this facilitates the vehemence that is considered a proof of strength. It is essential to appeal to prejudices and passions of which men have begun to feel ashamed and to do this in the name of some new ineffable ethic. It is well to decry the slow and pettifogging minds which require evidence in order to reach conclusions. Above all, whatever is most ancient should be dished up as the very latest thing.

There is no novelty in this recipe for genius; it was practised by Carlyle in the time of our grandfathers, and by Nietzsche in the time of our fathers, and it has been practised in our own time by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence is considered by his disciples to have enunciated all sorts of new wisdom about the relations of men and women; in actual fact he has gone back to advocating the domination of the male which one associates with the cave dwellers. Woman exists, in his philosophy, only as something soft and fat to rest the hero when he returns from his labours. Civilised societies have been learning to see something more than this in women; Lawrence will have nothing of civilisation. He scours the world for what is ancient and dark and loves the traces of Aztec cruelty in Mexico. Young men, who had been learning to behave, naturally read him with delight and go round practising cave-man stuff so far as the usages of polite society will permit.

One of the most important elements of success in becoming a man of genius is to learn the art of denunciation. You must always denounce in such a way that your reader thinks that it is the other fellow who is being denounced and not himself; in that case he will be impressed by your noble scorn, whereas if he thinks that it is himself that you are denouncing, he will consider that you are guilty of ill-bred peevishness. Carlyle remarked: ``The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.'' Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark. You must not denounce well-defined classes, such as persons with more than a certain income, inhabitants of a certain area, or believers in some definite creed; for if you do this, some readers will know that your invective is directed against them. You must denounce persons whose emotions are atrophied, persons to whom only plodding study can reveal the truth, for we all know that these are other people, and we shall therefore view with sympathy your powerful diagnosis of the evils of the age.

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

George W. Bush: "Do we have the capacity and the desire to spread peace by confronting these terrorists and supporting those who want to live in liberty? That's the question. And my answer to that question is: We must. We owe it to future generations to do so."

Tacitus: "...the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and they call it peace."

[Hat tip to my brother, Gerard, for the Tacitus quote]

In addition to terrific videos like the one below, one of the other things that brought me into MySpace recently was finding out that my wonderful nephew Tom is with a new band, currently gigging and cutting demos in London.

Tom, and the rest of the family - my oldest brother Eamonn, wife Susan, and daughter Jenny - visited us for a few days last week. Had a great time hanging out, taking in a Blue Jays game, and just generally enjoying the good company of family.

Tom's a huge music fan, with a broad and eclectic taste - much like the rest of us in the family. Finding out that he's playing cello in an indie band was a hoot. Of course, like a dutiful uncle, I my polite comments about the few snatches demo tracks Tom played me while he was here.

Now I'm way past duty though - I'm kicking myself that I didn't get to hear more. I've had a proper chance to listen to the scant few tracks up on their MySpace page, and although these are only hints of what Lightspeed Champion can do, they're bloody brilliant! I've been digging around online, turning up a few other snippets elsewhere. Check out "Tell Me What It's Worth" (on last.fm) or the rough, ragged, but right demo of "Dry Lips" on the MySpace page.

Devonte Hynez, the frontman of the band, was previously one of the driving forces behind UK indie darlings Test Icicles, who got to do all sorts of real rockstar stuff like release Top 40 records, play Reading Festival, and get raved about in the NME. Will Lightspeed Champion be next?

Something tells me Joey 'Accordion Guy' deVilla would approve of this outstanding acoustic cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya" (if you've ever had the pleasure of Joey serenading you with an accordion-acoustic version of an AC/DC song, you'll know what I mean :-).

The cover linked to here is by Mat Weddle of the group Obadiah Parker. After someone sent me the link, I had to go and check out their MySpace page - I love this stuff. Love MySpace - hopping from link to link, finding all kinds of great music.

[UPDATE]: The excellent Blake Winton, in the comments, points to another cover of the same song - this time (yeah!) played on accordion. The sound and video quality are crummy, but highly entertaining nonetheless.

Fah. I'm sorry, Blogger - I've been loyal to you guys since way back when there was just a handful of you - long before Google showered you in cash and you started promising all sorts of new hotness that never materialised. I still feel comfortable in the Blogger UI, for all its many quirks, although I'm growing increasingly fond of Qumana as an editor. But I think it may be time to think seriously about moving off the Blogger platform, and porting myself over to Marqui.

I'm more than a little conflicted here, I know. I've been a fan and reasonably heavy user of Blogger since March 2001. I've played with other blogging tools, and used them for some of my other blog projects, but I've always come back to Blogger. Looking at my Blogger "dashboard", it lists fourteen different Blogger-based blogs I either own or contribute to - 2,171 posts (not all of them by me, of course). That's a lot of Bloggerage.

(Thinks: there used to be a "stats" widget on your Blogger profile that would tell you how many words you'd written. What the hell happened to that? I remember being all tickled when it topped over 66,000 more than three years ago. Heh. Must be at least twice that now. Feature attrition. Sucks.)

So then, coming up on a year ago I joined the wonderful people at Marqui, software developers who also happen to produce a blogging tool of some note - and one which I love using for our own corporate blog. I've been thinking for a while I really ought to be eating our own dogfood, but I guess I've just been set in my ways here.

Still - I was getting all ready to switch, when all of a sudden this new Blogger upgrade gets announced, with considerable foofaraw. "Ooooh - shiny newness!" I think, getting all giddy at the prospect of some of that Google money finally getting poured into my ol' faithful tool.

Feh. And also Bleh. They just gave me another bloody good reason to move to Marqui and resolve my feeling of conflictedness once and for all.

For the record, here's what happens when a long-time, faithful user of the old Blogger signs in to his account these days.

First, the sign in screen recognizes that I'm already signed into my Google account, which is kinda cool and useful - you'd think:

Yeah, you'd think. But if you can read that text in my squished up image, it's a bit odd. It acknowledges that I'm already signed in, but instead of offering direct and obvious access to my blogs, the only options are to either "Switch now" or "Create your blog now".

Hmmm...

I click on "Switch now", hoping for shiny new hotness, but get this:


OK, so I'm teased and tantalised by the prospect of the new Blogger, so I accept the ToS and click "Continue", only to receive this:


Gah!

First of all - as you already know who I am because I'm already signed in with my Google account - why even bother to offer me a beta I'm not allowed to have?! And, excuse me, but why the hell not? I've stuck with you guys through the outages, the oddities, the scandals, and silliness. I've been plugging away with this thing since your user count was numbered in the low thousands. I'm not typically one to [fluff] like this, but hello? If punters like me don't get the beta, then who exactly does? I'm sorry if I'm not sufficiently A-List for you guys.

Would it help if I tried signing in again wearing my pre-Google Blogger t-shirt and my Blogger hoodie - both of which you gave me for being a loyal early user?

OK, I'm being all twisty and more than a tad childish, I know, but ffs.

I tried taking the other path, btw - tried going through the first step above and then picking "I don't want to switch right now". Guess what? Here's the screen you get if you do that:


...that's the Blogger front page again - with a helpful option at the top to "Sign in to Blogger".

And just take a wild guess what screen you get to if you click that link. Go on, guess.

All together now:

GAH!

So, I guess I'll be talking to the lovely support chaps at Marqui tomorrow after all.

Now this is interesting.

I've been a bit of a secret fan of Text 100 for a while now. Never had the opportunity to work with them, and I don't know anyone there (although I have a couple of friends who've spoken very highly of their interactions with CEO Aedhmar Hynes in the past), but they have always struck me as a smart agency with a pretty sound idea of what they need to do to keep their business and that of their clients just ahead of the curve.

Bloody exciting to read this announcement that they're setting up shop within the quite astonishing virtual world of Second Life (SL). As their CEO puts it: "I don't think any of us can be sure where this revolution is going to take communications but I do know that I want Text 100 to participate in that change."

Very smart indeed. I've already had a number of conversations "in world" with owners of both Second Life and real-life businesses, looking to get some marketing and PR assistance to publicize and promote their SL interests. There's absolutely a market opportunity in there, and it takes a visionary CEO such as Ms. Hynes to seize on it.

Second Life is growing at a terrific rate. There are close to 400,000 residents already, and Linden Lab, the creators of SL, claim a 12% monthly growth rate (with zero marketing budget). The stats posted on the Second Life front page typically show around $250,000 (in real US dollars) being spent in world every day.

Good news for Text 100, and good news for SL businesses in need of innovative, professional PR expertise.

[UPDATE]: 'course, I only went and checked for other coverage of this announcement after I'd posted me own thingy. Duh. Call these "bonus links" then:

Text 100's Georg Kolb blogs his own comments on the announcement.

Darren Barefoot (who I like and respect) offers a less enthusiastic take than mine.

Many others chime in.

Closing thought (for now): Second Life already has a thriving and fast-growing media community, with a number of successful in-world magazines and newspapers (the widest-read example probably being the Metaverse Messenger). Seems inevitable and entirely reasonable for the symbiotic community of communications professionals to get in there and start exploring areas of need or opportunity too.

Tags: Second Life, Linden Lab, Text 100, PR, public relations

As usual, Tom Matrullo has one of the simplest and best expressed observations to contribute to the blogosphere debate du jour. In this case, the nattering surrounding Nicholas Lemann's now-infamous New Yorker piece.

Quick précis, in case you've been up at the cottage for the last few weeks: Lemann, the Dean of Columbia Journalism School, wrote a thing in the New Yorker, headlined "AMATEUR HOUR. Journalism without journalists".

The piece did little more than warm over many of the threadbare and well-rehearsed points in the seemingly immortal "professional journalism vs. blogging" debate. It was (IMHO, of course) a disappointing, ill-conceived, lazily argued article - all the more disappointing because of its provenance. Had it appeared in some minor regional rag, penned by a mid-rank ink-stained wretch, perhaps one wouldn't have been surprised to encounter such moth-eaten piffle. But coming from the Dean of such a well-respected school, it's really rather discouraging.

Many voices of dissent have already been raised, but we can always depend on Tom to find the most apposite quotation to illustrate the contrast between the old media mindset and the new -- from Plato's Phaedrus:

I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

As Tom adds: "...blogs are the speaking voice, alive and self-present. Lemann's article belongs to the world of print..."

Yes. I think I've already said, on a number of occasions, just about all I really care to say on this ongoing "journalism vs. blogging" issue. It's a non-issue. Most of the time, I just can't buy into it simply because the "vs." part is just so fundamentally wrong. It's AND logic, again. Not OR or NOT.

Tom's right, in that the old school mindset which informs Lemann's piece is worrying mainly because it ignores the idea of evolution (of either old or new media modes) - it's the established, rigid establishment vs. the fuzzy, flexible future. But again, the debate is essentially unnecessary. AND not OR: now move on.

I know Tom gets that, implicitly -- and he makes some very important points about the notional independence of the "professional" media. The depressing thing here is that we're having to attack the same bloody strawman all over again. Feh.

Tags: tom matrullo, New Yorker, journalism, blogging, AND logic

The original SFM has now morphed into a rather loftier, McSweeney's-like literary publishing venture. It's terrific, of course - well worth a read. Yet at the same time it's also a bit sad to see the old SFM gone.

For a while back there, the site's rubric "Where Wit Lives" was right on the money - it was the best place to find dry, intelligent, and utterly hilarious writing all gathered together in one place (how the hell my contribution ever made it in, I'm buggered if I know -- *cough*, mumble mumble, obligatory self-deprecating comments...).

I wonder what became of Matt Herlihy, the creative force behind the original site. Maybe he'll ego surf one day and find this piece. Drop us a note Matt, let's catch up...

The new owners of Sweet Fancy Moses evidently changed course and overhauled the site some time ago. Unfortunately, the site redesign broke a lot of the old links, including the old link I had on my sidebar to that one meagre contribution of mine.

I've had to wrestle with wholesale link breaking nightmares in the past, when I first moved this site from the old Blogspot host into its own domain. Ugh. I know there are still 404s scattered throughout my archives here, but this one broken link in particular has been bugging me more than any of them. Not least because I hadn't kept a copy of the original piece anwyhere, which was a shame - I kind of liked it.

So, after a deep search through the online archives of the old SFM site, I present here for your next few seconds of mild entertainment, the fully restored piece in all its sepia-tinted, dawn-of-the-blogosphere glory.

(Note, this was originally written in April 2001, with the global economy grinding and shuddering through a US- and Japanese-led post-boom slowdown - hence the tone and subject matter.)

Bull & Bear

Mountains of newsprint and countless hours of broadcast tape have been consumed in recent weeks, chronicling the woes of a world economy on the brink of recession.

In particular, a great deal of attention has been focused on the impact of the current Bear Market on the investment community, corporate growth and the personal wealth of private investors the world over.

Actual Bear Markets are relatively short-lived phenomena – the average Bear Market lasts only around six to nine months. The longest and worst Bear Market recorded was the period from January 1973 to October 1974, during which the value of the S&P 500 fell by as much as 45%.

Yet even after the analysts have pronounced an end to a Bear Market, the global economy can still take many more months to fully recover. Not every Bear Market is accompanied by a recession, of course, but there is clearly a close correlation between the market climate and overall global economic health.

Bear Markets have the power to bring both the weak and the strong to their knees. Once proud companies suffer as sales contracts evaporate. Humbled CEOs stumble through layoff scandals. Loyal workers are cast aside like surplus inventory. Nobody likes living through a Bear Market.

I've watched the markets change from Bull to Bear and back again over the past 15 years. I've lived the IPO highs and negative equity lows, and I think I've figured something out.

Bear Markets are horribly hard on the global economy simply because nobody in their right mind wants to buy bears.

Now I don't have an MBA, or even any real financial qualifications as such, but it seems clear to me that Bull Markets are simply more economically viable all round. Bulls are precisely the kind of thing any right-thinking person would want to own. Bulls are useful, friendly, and easy to care for. Plus, they have that whole amiable moo-cow thing going on (in a totally woolly-bully, completely butch kind of way, of course).

Bears, on the other hand, are big scary bastards with loads of teeth.

Bulls give us things like steak, leather, fertilizer, glue, hat racks and brush bristles. Bulls keep hundreds of toreadors in gainful employment and support the thriving international red rag market.

Bears shit in the woods.

People will gleefully buy and sell bulls for considerable sums at livestock auctions. Try getting any bugger to cough up even pocket change for a bear. Ain't happening.

Seems obvious now, doesn't it? Bear markets don’t work because there’s just no market for bears.

As an aside -- there was once a reasonably buoyant Bear Market, but it unfortunately dried up when the construction industry stopped building new homes with fireplaces.

No fireplace: no bearskin rug: no one buying bears.

The Federal Reserve Bank should act immediately to cancel all future Bear Markets and turn all their attention to the Bull trade. No one wants Bears, so let's stop kidding ourselves and killing the economy by trying to sell them.

NEXT INSTALLMENT -- U.S. Economic Crisis: Enough with the Federal "Reserve", already – doesn't the U.S. government have an 'A' Team Bank?

Tags: humour, sweet fancy moses, bull markets, bear markets

...or perhaps an entire salt mine.

I'm tickled and simultaneously flattered to note that this blog has just been ranked at Number 4 in the list of "Top 10 CMO Blogs" put up by the MarketingProfs site.

Thanks guys!

Of course, it would be totally out of character for me to accept this completely at face value. To be honest, it's kind of hard to read it without blowing hot coffee out through my nose - but I don't want to be ungracious. It's just, well... I mean it's hardly scientific, is it?

I'm not even a CMO, for starters - although I've been one in the past, so I suppose it's kind of fair. And at least half of the other people on the list are not really CMOs either - not that we're really complaining or anything.

Candidly, I think the only reason I made it onto this list at all is a simple function of my blog being so old (relatively speaking). I have a pretty good Technorati rank, compared to the other big CMO blogs on the list, mainly just because I've been doing this thing since early 2001. Just goes to show what you get if you stick at something long enough.

Either way, thanks again Marketing Profs - my Mum will be very happy :-)

[EDIT]: Feeling a little guilty now, watching the traffic spike up with all the new visitors coming in from Marketing Profs.

I feel I ought to be churning out all sorts of juicy and salient nuggets of CMO wisdom to offer up to you all. Um... no, sorry - I'm fresh out.

Afraid I've got a ton of real work to do, so you'll just have to content yourself with the motley selection of random dronings below.

If you're really determined to find something actually about the world of marketing, here's a couple of older pieces that might merit a quick read:

Marketing Aforethought (the rant that started it all, from way back in April 2001)

What's the Story? (Same vintage; different spin)

OK, now I'm obsessing. Just checked the referrer logs again, and there are even more inbound searches for variations on the fixing Moen shower knobs theme.

As of 10:05am this Sunday morning, my blog is currently ranked #3 in a Google search for "fixing shower knobs" out of 430,000 hits. That's higher than any manufacturer of bathroom fixtures or fittings.

Reports that Armitage Shanks have been plotting a hostile takeover of this blog were dismissed by management as "baseless rumour-mongering".

It's a bleak, black day for the Net.

According to a report on the BBC website, the US House of Representatives just passed the Cope (Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement) Act, signaling an end to recent efforts to enshrine the notion of Net Neutrality in legislation.

Idiots.

Required reading, in case you're not already sure why this is such completely bloody awful news.

As an aside, I also happen to find it particularly annoying that the Beeb's web chappies felt the need to "spice up" their report on this by running an almost completely gratuitous photo of hottie Alyssa Milano at the top of the page. OK, so she's down with Net Neutrality and all that, but FFS.

There's a couple of worthy blogs I've been meaning to point to for a while.

First up is my cousin, Adam Maguire's blog. Adam's a great up-and-coming freelance journalist in Dublin. He's been blogging for over a year now, and I keep meaning to point to some of his stuff, but, well --->insert typical lame excuse/Weinberger Waiver here<---. He's a smart bloke and a thoroughly decent guy to be able to count as a family member. Well worth a read.

Also, a handful of months ago I offered a few scraps of advice to my friend Norman Wilner (formerly of the Toronto Star's Starweek DVD reviews column), as he set about getting his first blog up and running. Norman's an absolute natural. Terrific, funny writer - and a one-man IMDB. Can't wait to read Norman's review of Chris Locke's current favourite movie. Joe Bob says: check it out.

Alright, so I'm probably one of the four people on the Net who hadn't yet seen this, but it's just so utterly perfect I still couldn't resist pointing to it.

With the big Wikimania conference coming up this weekend in Boston, Stephen Colbert briliantly satirizes the Verifiable Truth camp's concerns about all things Wikipedia. His take on "wikiality" is now pretty much guaranteed to feed the buzz at and around the event. Superb.

The show's writers have just been on fire lately. Colbert's earlier piece deriding the U.S. morning "news" shows for laying into his program was an absolute triumph.

Meanwhile, I'm quietly lamenting the fact that I won't be in Boston for the Wikimania gig. They have a terrific schedule of speakers lined up. Would be great to be there just to hear my friend David Weinberger's speech on What's Happening to Knowledge (to which the obvious answer, of course, is "er... I don't know"). Ah well.

I've often thought, if I was going to take advertising on this blog, one of the obvious companies I'd accept an ad from would have to be Moen. But then, I probably send them enough traffic and business anyway without even having a sidebar clickthrough widget.

About four years ago, I wrote a lengthy piece about the pleasures of dealing with Moen's customer service staff when the handles on our two shower fittings both broke within a week of each other. The full piece is back here, if you're interested.

Whenever I check my site traffic stats, I'm always tickled to see how many people reach this blog through searches for strings like "moen shower tap" or "fixing moen faucet". Then just last week I had a nice comment on the blog and an email from a chap who, like me, had been having trouble repairing his shower handle. He was able to solve his problem after reading my original post and following the same fairly obvious step I eventually took (actually calling the manufacturer - doh!).

Spreading the Moen love even further, I've just posted a slightly revised version of my tale of customer service delight to the new Sutori beta - a collaborative site where people can voice their opinions of the service received from their most or least favourite companies. I hope the Moen guys get even more business from this - they deserve it.

Tags: Moen, shower, faucet, tap

Just found out through Leona about Glyder, the band my cousin-in-law Barry plays guitar in. Cool! I've ditched Pandora for tonight and I'm kicking back instead to some of the stuff off their debut album.

Looks and sounds like the boys are well on their way. They've already picked up great reviews from Hawkwind's Dave Anderson and even Phil Lynott's mum Philomena. Check out some of the stuff on their MySpace page.

"Prettty Useless People", "Stargazer", and "Neutral Coloured Life", in particular, are instant classics.

Not bad for a bunch of lads from Ballyknocken.