May | 2010 | Laurel L. Russwurm

Archive for May 2010

Robin’s Nest #1

[Working on !mynovel, but the front porch drama is just too important to miss out on.]

profile of the nest wedged between the porch lamp and the wall

When we saw an enterprising robin building a nest on our front porch we thought it wasn’t a very good idea. Granted, as more and more natural land falls under bulldozers, the wild life has to become bolder to survive. To discourage them from this spot (if our cats escape, it could be a serious problem) my husband removed the finished nest to the compost.

Except we had to be away the next day and when came back there was a second nest in its place.

A super strong reinforced nest. The Robins must have thought the first one blew away or something. Thick walls of clay marked this one as a very sturdy structure. We didn’t have the heart to move this one since clearly the Robins were sold on the location. The porch roof would keep the babies protected in inclement weather.

My biggest fear is marauding people. Particularly after a Facebook friend’s robin’s was nest knocked down, certainly by humans, most likely “for fun”. This nest is above the lamp which is above the mailbox. Certainly at least the letter carrier is aware of it. But I thought the robins would give it up once they realized this was a high traffic zone.

Except one day there were eggs.

We unscrewed the lightbulb so that we wouldn’t accidentally hard boil the eggs by putting on the light. (After ten years we still mix up the light switches.) Instead of using the front door, so as not to scare Mamma Robin away we began using the side door exclusively. We can get a glimpse of Mamma when she comes to turn the eggs.

I spy on Mamma on the nest by peeking through the cedar trees.

I’ll keep you posted.

(Just so you know, I can’t tell Mamma and Pappa robin apart, so I am assuming it’s always Mamma. As I understand it Mamma and Pappa will share the work of feeding the young.)

Forward to Robin’s Nest #2

Written by Laurel L. Russwurm

May 31, 2010 at 11:49 am

Posted in Birds, Environment, urban wildlife

Tagged with eggs, robin's nest, Robins

YES to Fair Copyright

@lessig postscript

with one comment

Probably what bothered me most, and prompted my earlier post @lessig: unfollow? was what I perceived to be a summary order issued by Lawrence Lessig to those of us who subscribe to his Identi.ca feed or follow him on Twitter. It seems I’m not the only one to become upset with his microblog comment. But he really didn’t mean it in the way it sounded, and today @lessig let some of us noisier microbloggers know that he’d meant no offense.

follow-up micro blog

Lawrence Lessig is an Internet luminary. He’s a legendary copyfighter, one of the founders of Creative Commons as well as founding Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society . He’s on the board of The Software Freedom Law Center as well as a former Electronic Frontier Foundation board member.

And Lessig has done a great deal already to make the world a better place for me and my family, and you and yours, with his iwork on copyright and Internet governance. He didn’t have to justify himself to us, but he cleared the air just the same. If anything I’m more impressed with Mr. Lessig than ever for taking the time to correct a total stranger’s misunderstanding. After all, some of my radical copyright notions have been informed by reading or listening to his words. So I’m glad I was wrong.

Of course, this doesn’t stop me from having issues around the “Pledge” promo, particularly with respect of privacy but also with the Paramount promo and profit from the film.

@lessig took the time to explain that he is not happy with the very same privacy issue, but his goal is to get the film made and out there. And Paramount can provide wide distribution to do it.

So I think I understand where he’s coming from, but I continue to be concerned. So I will reiterate my main concerns here:

Privacy

To make the pledge, you must surrender your email address, your zip code and your Date of Birth…. Hmmm… Isn’t it the EFF that cautions people about giving out personal identifiers, because it only takes three identifiers and it’s hasta la vista privacy?

The personal Information submitted there will be shared by Paramount Pictures, Participant Media, TakePart and Walden Media

You agree to the TakePart website’s terms of use and TakePart Privacy Policy , and if you have any stamina left you can see the Paramount Pictures Privacy Policy and the Walden Media Privacy Policy to know what you are agreeing to.

There are three, count them THREE privacy policies as well as a website “Terms of Use” agreement that you are committing to if you make the pledge. You pretty much need a lawyer to protect yourself before signing this thing. What is this? Data mining?

education funding?

Fund raising for Paramount Pictures is a backward way of funding education.

People in the documentary business don’t get rich. I don’t know what a major movie studio like Paramount budgets for a feature film documentary but if it’s a million dollars I’d be very surprised. Even before digital cameras and Internet distribution brought the costs down enormously, I suspect that $100,000 would have been considered big budget for most documentaries.

So although I don’t have numbers or contracts, I do know that no matter how good this film is, the cost to make it will not come anywhere close to what a feature film would cost. If Paramount was making this documentary as a good deed, after costs are recouped all of the income from it should rightly go to help the cause: the failing American education system. But I doubt very much that Paramount has any intention to walk away without also making a profit.

In which case Paramount Pictures stands to gain from the plight of the American school children in this film.

Particularly at a time when the MPAA, which certainly includes Paramount in its membership, is spending vast amounts of industry funding lobbying for A.C.T.A. around the world. In fact, right now many Canadians are anxiously waiting to find out of our government is going to try to foist a Canadian DMCA on our legislature.

If the only a fraction of what the MPAA spends lobbying for A.C.T.A. was spent on schools, every American public school could be a charter school.

I’m not sure how it works in the United States, but a lot of the erosion in Canadian public services– like education– over the past few decades seems a direct result of the fact that these days big businesses pays little or no tax.

Maybe we should be challenging the way education is financed rather than fund raising for the MPAA.

Written by Laurel L. Russwurm

May 26, 2010 at 5:54 pm

@lessig: unfollow?

with 2 comments

One way I keep up with interesting stuff and learning more about important issues is through the microblogging services Identi.ca and Twitter. I subscribe to feeds from people who can keep me up to date on what’s happening in the world.

Having blogged a bit about Mr. Lessig’s LIVE! Wireside Chat on Twitter in February I am aware of his advocacy for government reform. So naturally when I found @lessig on Twitter and Identi.ca I subscribed to his feeds.

But today on Identi.ca I was surprised to see @lessig posting this:

So I thought I’d check into it. After all, if it’s something Lawrence Lessig thinks is important it’s probably worth checking out, right?

So what is this “pledge”?

When I looked, what read like four different links in @lessig’s Identi.ca posts all take you to the same place which is actually a movie promotion website.

The site’s opening screen gives you a multiple choice question, most commonly one like this:

What percentage of students in Alaska will not graduate in four years?

a. 30%

b. 34%

c. 12%

d. 25%”

And the answer is:

In Alaska, 34% of students will not graduate
from high school with a regular diploma in
4 years. Dropouts from the class of 2008
alone will cost Alaska almost $1 billion in
lost wages over their lifetimes.”

Every pledge counts and together we can save our schools.

—Waiting For Superman

If you refresh the screen, you’ll usually get the same question about another state. Once in a while it is some other appalling statistic, like:

Since 1983 over 10 million Americans have reached 12th grade without learning to read at a basic level”

—Waiting For Superman

Each School Day 7000 students in the US drop out ”

—Waiting For Superman

It wasn’t difficult to figure out that the multiple choice question with the highest percentage is always the correct answer.

I refreshed it a bunch of times and came up with this partial list:

In Virginia 31% of students will not graduate from high school with a regular diploma….
22% of students in Pennsylvania
35% in Texas
44% in New Mexico
28% in West Virginia
23% in South Dakota
28% in Utah
34% in Delaware
24% in Massachusetts
26% in Indiana
38% in Louisiana
28% in Arkansas
24% in Maine
27% in Colorado
23% in Idaho
34% in South Carolina
37% in North Carolina
26% in Ohio
30% in Tennessee
36% in Hawaii
28% in Kentucky
32% in California
21% in Nebraska
32% in New York
44% in Georgia
18% in New Jersey
53% from Nevada
42% in Florida
21% in North Dakota
21% in Connecticut
26% in Maryland
19% in Iowa
38% in Washington
28% in Kentucky
26% in Missouri

If I was an American parent, I’d be seriously looking at moving to New Jersey. Their 18 percent looks especially good coming right before Nevada’s 53%

Clearly the American education system needs some help. It’s in pretty bad shape if these statistics are to be believed.

Waiting for Superman is a feature length documentary, apparently an exposeé of the American public education system made by Oscar Winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim, most famous for his 2006 film made An Inconvenient Truth.

In Canada…

Red Maple Leaf graphic
Education is managed provincially. In my early years of PTA membership fundraising and all authority over education was wrested from individual school boards by the provincial government, supposedly to ensure all schools got the same funding. In spite of tremendous protest against this sweeping change the law passed because we had a majority government.

The Government did tell the truth: all Ontario schools now get the same funding. Of course they didn’t increase funding for poorer schools, but rather decreased funding for richer schools, who are still ahead of the game thanks to fund raising.

Before that, education used to be funded according to the need, now it’s funded according to the funding formula. All the tax dollars, which used to be kept separate, now disappear into the provincial coffers. Poorer schools are probably worse off since the introduction of province wide testing gives bonus funding to the schools that do well on the tests. I’ve spent many years in the education trenches as a parent volunteer, a PTA member, and a fundraiser. I do understand how important education is for our kids.

But.

The point of this website is to convince people to:

Make a Difference: Pledge to see the Film

When you go to the pledge page, you discover that the pledge is to see the movie.

exterior movie theatre

This is where they lost me.

And I can certainly understand the power of a good documentary, especially if the message can receive wide release. It’s a wonderful way to get a message out.

If 50,000 people make the pledge, the website promises 250,000 books will go to programs across the U.S.

From my fund raising days, I can tell you schools don’t just want any old books, they want the specific books needed to fill the holes in their curriculum that exist because of funding cuts. In fact, schools and school libraries get rid of books they don’t need or that are inappropriate or factually out of date.

So my question here is:

What books?

250,000 inappropriate books isn’t going to help anybody’s kids.

What programs?
It doesn’t specify public school programs. Maybe Private school programs? Literacy programs? YMCA programs? Weght loss programs? What? This is an incredibly vague promise.

The books might be great, or they might be useless. Certainly their value will be far less than the income Paramount makes from ticket sales.

The lowest rung on the pledge scale is for Paramount Pictures to get 50,000 bums in theatre seats for this movie.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to the movies, but lets say ten bucks a ticket, that could be $500,000 in ticket sales. The scale goes up to 1,000,000 pledges… $100,000,000 gross? Even if Paramount has to spend a few million on school books, that is still a heck of a return on a documentary. So we can see what Paramount is getting out of it.

But that’s not all.

Personally Identifiable

Law Degree Necessary

The personal Information submitted there will be shared by Paramount Pictures, Participant Media, TakePart and Walden Media

Has Lawrence Lessig’s Identi.ca account been hacked?

Lawrence Lessig has worked long and hard fighting for sane copyright reform. Creative Commons is an awesome accomplishment. He has helped many of us to understand some of the problems facing the future. He has worked long and hard to try to safeguard the Internet.

If the account hasn’t been hacked, if this is really Lawrence Lessig, why would he be making such a dubious suggestion.

Although I guess it wasn’t really a suggestion. It sounded more like an order actually.

@lessig said:
“totally seriously: don’t follow me if you’ve not taken the pledge”

If Lawrence Lessig wants the kind of “follower” that will blindly do whatever he says that lets me out since I’m in the habit of thinking for myself. I suspect “the pledge” wouldn’t work for me because I’m a Canadian, but of I was an American I wouldn’t sign it either.

But maybe I’ve interpreted this wrong.

So I haven’t clicked “unsubscribe” just yet. Perhaps I’m missing something. Perhaps it was a hack, or an error in judgement. Maybe he’ll respond to my identi.ca question, or this.

education funding?

Fund raising for Paramount Pictures is a backward way of funding education.

Paramount Gate

If the only a fraction of what the MPAA spends lobbying for A.C.T.A. was spent on schools, every American public school could be a charter school.

Maybe we should be challenging the way education is financed rather than fund raising for the MPAA.

Forward to @lessig postscript

[Photo Credits:
Flickr Photo by Marxchivist/Tom: A.M. Walzer Co. United States Inlay Puzzle

Laidlaw School bus (released into the public domain by Dori

Paramount Pictures photo by Smart Destinations

Written by Laurel L. Russwurm

May 26, 2010 at 4:32 am

#digicon

with one comment

was #copycon futile?

Last year the Canadian Government held a Copyright Consultation to ask Canadians what we thought was important for Canadian copyright law. More than 8,000 Canadians from all across Canada made #copycon submissions. We have yet to see if we were heard, although rumour has it that the legislature will be seeing a new Canadian Copyright bill soon… possibly for June 2010. Many of us have serious concerns about whether it was an exercise in futility or not.

No.

From my perspective, even if the government does not listen and learn from the #copycon, I know I have learned an enormous amount about copyright and how we think from other Canadians who made submissions. From things I’ve read and learned from the #copycon, if I were to make a copyright submission today it would be very different. But that’s another post.

Canadians are talking about copyright, and understanding the forces at play much better. The conversation is far from over, and we need to get a handle on things and come to a consensus about before law is made.

What was said by Canadians in the formal Copyright Consultation submissions has laid the foundation of a valuable resource for all Canadians. A reference primer of “What Canadians Want”.

we don’t want bad law

But the law may be made anyway. Rumours that the government will try to push through a Canadian DMCA (a Bill C61 clone) have many citizens worried. But sometimes that happens, bad laws get passed.

Probably one of the biggest exercises in lawmaking futility was the American 1919 Volstead Act which we know more familiarly as Prohibition. God fearing law abiding solid citizens— people who wouldn’t have so much as dreamt of jay walking before Prohibition— instantly transformed into criminals frequenting speakeasies when the American law outlawing alcoholic beverages went into effect. The roaring twenties came and went before Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

Because prohibition favored the goals of a special interest group over society’s mores it just couldn’t work. Aside from fostering near universal flagrant contempt for the law among citizens, a serious byproduct was the support this bad law gave to the growth of organized crime. Before American Prohibition, the mafia was just some petty disorganized criminals. After Prohibition gangsters became rock stars. How many books, articles, movies and even musicals have grown up out of the gangster mystique. Canada’s own gangster wannabes in The Boyd Gang seem to have hatched out of the gangster mythology. Folk heroes even.

Friar Tuck and Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, Robin In The Hood Festival

Hundreds of years later we still idolize Robin Hood

What I know of history has shown that when bad laws are passed the populace initially chafes and suffers. Although the government passing the bad law hopes that people will put up with it, one thing that they never seem to expect is that bad laws provide their opponents with points of commonality.

Often people who are ideologically incapable of co-operating are galvanized into finding a way to work together when a bad law is passed. The bad law itself becomes a visible rallying point, a specific dragon to slay.

But one of the most compelling things that any bad law provides to its detractors are the martyrs.

Although I talked about this story as an example of what to expect if the secret A.C.T.A. treaty is passed, it is a real life demonstration of what is happening right now in the US under the existing American DMCA. A young woman went to jail for the crime of recording her sister’s birthday party.

And although history shows that bad laws tend to be overturned in time, I still think it’s better not to have bad laws in the first place.

In the case of copyright, the people who will be most harmed by bad copyright law are the younger generation, many of whom have not attained voting age. As a mother, this special interest group is important to me, because I don’t want to see bad things happen to our best and brightest.

As a student of history I do know that there will very soon be a time when this generation will not only be able to vote but, may well be able to form a government. When I was a teenager we thought running for student council was a big deal. Today Canada’s newest political party has been formed largely by people barely old enough to vote.

Digital Economy Consultation

In the meantime the Canadian government has again asked us for our input.

This time it is for a Digital Economy Consultation. How the Canadian Government reacts to the changes caused by the digital world will have a huge impact on our future. Our economy.

A long time ago Canada had climbed to the forefront of the world of technology with the Avro Arrow. Yet an incredibly short sighted government pulled the plug on that and well and truly killed the project. Naturally it triggered a “brain drain”, as many of Canada’s best and brightest migrated to the United States to work at NASA. Surely we don’t want to go that route again.

Acryllic on Illustration board painting by Aviation Artist Lance Russwurm

Once Canada led the world in technology...

We certainly don’t want to end up in a legislative shambles the way the United Kingdom has. Their ill advised Digital Economy Bill (know to Twitterati as #DEBill) which was rushed through the legislative procedure without proper scrutiny resulted in a hung parliament and the fall of a Prime Minister. Surely Canada doesn’t want to go that route either.

All Canadians should try to participate…

…even if we say what we think and what we want, and they choose not to hear, the ideas will still be out there floating in the ether.

Judging by the quantity and passion of the comments I’ve been reading in online articles to do with weighty issues like UBB and copyright, many of us have thought about this and have a lot of good ideas. This is a good place to put them. And what better time to be heard than when we are lucky enough to have a minority government. At times like this, governments at least try to give the appearance of listening.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but as a mom I can tell you, when you ask your kid to pretend to go to sleep, before long he really is asleep. Maybe if our government starts out by appearing to listen to our submissions they will accidentally find themselves actually listening.

It’s worth a shot.

#digicon

I think that the #digicon will be just as valuable for Canadians as the #copycon was. The process isn’t quite the same as the earlier consultation. As I understand it, off topic comments (such as talking about copyright reform) are likely to be moderated out of the forums.

Read the #digicon Consultation Paper
Participate in the digicon forums – see what other people have to say
DENT about #digicon
tweet about #digicon.
Talk about it on your wall.
Then write your own submission.
**Note: They want a 250 – 500 word summary of the submission as well. I assume to make it easier to sort the piles.

the process

It seems that although the 40 page Submission Guidelines can be downloaded as a PDF, they are also available in clear HTML on the website. Yay! I love that they are asking for submissions in

“text-only format or as a document upload (e.g., Word, RTF or WordPerfect formats”

—http://de-en.gc.ca/submissions/

Sounds like they’d rather not get stuck in the PDF morass they had for copycon. Deconstructing all the PDF submissions is probably the chief reason why it took so long for all the submissions to be posted online.
(I hate PDFs!)

time limit

As of today, there are 49 days to make a submission. But there’s a lot to think about, so don’t leave it until the last minute (as so many of us did with #copycon)

Things you might say today may help someone else develop a brilliant strategy that would benefit us all. (Hint: that’s why re:mixing is such a good idea)

back-up

I read a comment yesterday from someone who was concerned that the comment or link they’d posted to the #digicon page had been subsequently removed (or moved somewhere else).

If you’re concerned that may happen to your comments or links, or if you’ve something you want to say about the Canadian Digital Economy Consultation that you feel may not survive their moderation, feel free to put it in the #digicon links & comments
My only rules: no spam, no personal attacks/hate mongering.

Similarly, if you have pertinent links you think may help answer questions or examine the issues, feel free to include them. If they start to pile up, when I have a minute I’ll list them under #digicon links in the sidebar.

insurance

Because some Canadians are a bit cynical, we not only submitted our formal #copycon submission to the government, we also posted it on our blogs or websites as (ahem) insurance.

As any emerging artist knows, the wider you can disseminate your art the more people will have the opportunity to become a fan. Or in this case, the more people who can see and read the argument, the more can understand the argument.

to blog or not to blog

If you don’t have one, you can get a free blog from various sources; personally I’d recommend WordPress.
If you don’t want a blog, but want to be heard, I’m willing to post submissions on the Oh! Canada blog as a guest post.

Consultation Questions

Innovation Using Digital Technologies

Should Canada focus on increasing innovation in some key sectors or focus on providing the foundation for innovation across the economy?
Which conditions best incent and promote adoption of ICT by Canadian business?
What would a successful digital strategy look like for your firm or sector? What are the barriers to implementation?
Once copyright, anti-spam and data breach/privacy amendments are in place, are their other legislative or policy changes needed to deal with emerging issues?
How can Canada use its regulatory and policy regime to promote Canada as a favourable environment for e-commerce?

Digital Infrastructure

What speeds and other service characteristics are needed by users (e.g., consumers, businesses, public sector bodies) and how should Canada set goals for next generation networks?
What steps must be taken to meet these goals? Are the current regulatory and legislative frameworks conducive to incenting investment and competition? What are the appropriate roles of stakeholders in the public and private sectors?
What steps should be taken to ensure there is sufficient radio spectrum available to support advanced infrastructure development?
How best can we ensure that rural and remote communities are not left behind in terms of access to advanced networks and what are the priority areas for attention in these regions?

Growing the ICT Industry

Do our current investments in R&D effectively lead to innovation, and the creation of new businesses, products and services? Should we promote investments in small start-ups to expand our innovation capacity?
What is needed to innovate and grow the size of the ICT industry including the number of large ICT firms headquartered in Canada?
What would best position Canada as a destination of choice for venture capital and investments in global research and development mandates?
What efforts are needed to address the talent needs in the coming years?

Canada’s Digital Content

What does creating Canada’s digital content advantage mean to you?
What elements do you want to see in Canada’s marketplace framework for digital media and content?
How do you see digital content contributing to Canada’s prosperity?
What kinds of infrastructure investments do you foresee making in the future? What kinds of infrastructure will you need in the future to be successful at home and abroad?
How can stakeholders encourage investment, particularly early stage investment, in the development of innovative digital media and content?

Building Digital Skills

What do you see as the most critical challenges in skills development for a digital economy?
What is the best way to address these challenges?
What can we do to ensure that labour market entrants have digital skills?
What is the best way to ensure the current workforce gets the continuous upskilling required to remain competitive in the digital economy? Are different tactics required for SMEs versus large enterprises?
How will the digital economy impact the learning system in Canada? How we teach? How we learn?
What strategies could be employed to address the digital divide?

Improving Canada’s Digital Advantage

Should we set targets for our made-in-Canada digital strategy? And if so, what should those targets be?
What should the timelines be to reach these targets?

a horizontal border of red graphic maple leaves

There are a lot of questions. After reading the material, listening and/or participating in the forum discussions, chatting with co-workers around the water cooler or the oil rig, or the kids in your youth group, or with your e-friends on Identi,ca, Twitter or Facebook…

Say what you think.

Our government is asking us for input. Let’s give it to them.

a horizontal border of red graphic maple leaves

[Digital Economy Simulpost: Since this will affect all Canadians, I'm posting the same post in all three of my blogs, Oh! Canada, StopUBB, and in the wind]