About a year ago the coverage of the Howard Dean scream points out an important question for all journalists (those writing for traditional media and those writing for blogs and other media outlets). A journalist should always ask themselves if they are accurately representing the situation. The coverage of Dean was part of the truth, but not an accurate representation of the situation. The microphone singled out Dean's voice and did not show it accurately in context. WIth more unedited reporting in blogs and podcasts it is important to remember that a single point of view in a situation, or a single microphone in a room, may not accurately reflect what is really happening.

We had our 9 mm qualification today. It was a really cold day to be out on the range so, by the time I got to shoot I was shivering pretty hard. The army issues 9 mm Barettas to officers, referred to in military parlance as the M-9.

The range consists of pop-up targets at various distances. They are pretty close because the M-9 is definately a close range weapon. My first attempt did not go well but I believe there was something wrong with the targets. I knew that I was hitting some of them but they were not going down.

Range control told me that I failed to qualify and had to go again. This was frustrating because I was getting cold and it seemed like it should have been easy. It made it worse when the Sergeant in charge of the range began to talk to me like a slow child, explaining how to aim the gun.

Luckily I redeemed myself. I shot at different targets and they all seemed to be working properly. I scored "expert", the highest possible and better than just about everyone else. No pop-up target is safe with me around.

Take care,

I haven't found the right time yet to write about what Kevin Maney wrote a good article about in the USA Today. Blogs share a lot in common with their first-cousin pamphleteering. Over the past many centuries we've seen the advance of so many technologies making sharing information easier and cheaper. The printing press made getting a lot of copies of information out much cheaper than it had ever been before.

The argument is made that freedom of the press is only afforded to those who own one. Certainly blogging has made inroads in this area by continuing to cut the costs. The changes bear a strong resemblance to the advent of the laser printer dramatically cut the prices of sharing ideas and communicating information. Blogging makes it possible to link to other's information in ways that were previously not thought of.

Abundance Read more about Pamphleteering

Rogers Cadenhead hits the nail on the head with his post about the doomed "nofollow" attribute. My prediction is a little different. Within about nine months Google and others will quietly determine that it has done more to hurt their databases and will quietly stop using it.

The problem is that the nofollow attribute won't stop the spam bots from polluting websites aplenty. There are plenty of ways to increase search engine placement that aren't comment spam. On the other hand nofollow will provide ways to prevent your link to a site from casting a popularity "vote" for the site but it won't stop the spam.

Nofollow was put together quickly with a few bloggers and software companies being given advanced notice but there was not a vetting that allowed developers to put their heads together and hash it out. Many people are frustrated by the process because they have to deal with attitudes that really are not helpful and their frustration is understandable but closing the process to outsiders is not the answer.