Where's The Weed? Mapping L.A.'s Marijuana Dispensaries

It's green. It's herbal. It's organic. It's compassionate. It's healing. And it's nonprofit too.

This plethora of adjectives is not describing a gimmick to cash in on alternative energy or a new diet plan. No, it's L.A.'s latest retail craze: medical marijuana.

Those words, pulled from the Los Angeles city clerk's website, were the most common descriptors in the names of the 966 dispensaries registered in the city. A Times analysis of pot store names, however, showed that the most frequently occurring word was the socialist-tinged "collective," appearing in 199 of the names.

Whether that choice of words is merely merchandising double-speak or genuine cultural expression -- a point on which reasonable minds might differ -- may ultimately be of little consequence. But by plotting the addresses of the pot dispensaries, The Times has made another finding: At least 260 of them fall within 1,000 feet of a school, a library or a park. The distance is significant because it's the buffer in a proposed law the Los Angeles City Council has been kicking around for a couple of years.

The ordinance is still pending, with no vote yet scheduled, while council members figure out how to shield their constituents from too much underground pot culture without trampling the dispensaries' legal right to exist. The marijuana conundrum goes back to the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, passed by California voters. It legalized the use of marijuana for pain or illness. Then in 2003, state Senate Bill 420 (yes, the same number as the underground name for pot) authorized the attorney general to set possession limits and shielded physicians from prosecution.

Alarmed by the rate at which dispensaries were opening, the Los Angeles City Council in 2007 froze the number at the 186 already licensed. No new ones were supposed to open unless applicants received a hardship exemption. But the moratorium had the opposite effect as would-be pot impresarios rushed to reserve their licenses by filing applications. The city attorney opined that enforcement officials could not shut them down while their applications are pending.

By the time the city cut off the exemption loophole in June, 779 applications had been filed. That's not to say that every one of them is actually selling pot. Many of the registered businesses exist only on paper, apparently filed by entrepreneurs who hoped to get a foothold. Among them are the 58 registered at a single address in Northridge.

The City Council has recently begun crawling through the 779 hardship applications, deciding on a case-by-case basis which will be allowed. It has reviewed about 85 applications, and all of them were rejected or withdrawn.

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Source:

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-weed11-2009sep11,0,3123586.story?track=rss

Tags:

Medical Marijuana, Los Angeles City Council, Compassionate Use Act of 1996, legalized marijuana, marijuana for pain or illness, California Senate Bill 420, Global Best Practice,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Haruki Murakami: Always on the Side of the Egg

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.

The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing. This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.

It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.

He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.

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Source:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064909.html

Tags:

Haruki Murakami, Haaretz, The Jerusalem Prize, Palestine, Gaza, Literary prize, Literature, Japan, Japanese authors, acceptance speech, acceptance lecture, UN, Global Best Practice, China,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Abu Dhabi Firm Buys Stake in Tesla Motors

Tesla Motors has yet to turn a profit, but that isn't stopping an Abu Dhabi investment firm from buying a stake in the electric car maker from Daimler, the latest sign of interest in the San Carlos startup.

Daimler sold part of its 10 percent stake in the electric-car manufacturer to Aabar Investments, bringing its largest shareholder into a venture to develop alternative powering systems.

Aabar, which will own almost 4 percent Tesla, bought the stake under an agreement to increase cooperation with Daimler after the investment company acquired stock in the German carmaker in March, the companies said today in a joint statement. They didn't disclose a price.

Daimler, the world's second-largest maker of luxury cars, bought just under 10 percent of Tesla for a "double-digit million-euro" sum in May. The Stuttgart, Germany,-based manufacturer reiterated today that it plans to install Tesla's lithium-ion battery packs and charging equipment in 1,000 electric-powered versions of its Smart car.

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Tags:

Tesla motors, Aabar Investments, Daimler-Benz, Smart car, Stuttgart Germany, Auto industry, Electric cars, electric car makers, Global Development News, Global Best Practice,

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/businessupdate/ci_12827600?source=email&nclick_check=1

Posted via email from Global Business News

Blogger Sentenced For Leaking G N'R Album

A blogger who admitted to leaking part of the Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" was sentenced to a year of probation.

U.S. District Magistrate Judge Paul L. Abrams also ordered Kevin Cogill to serve two months of home confinement, subject his computers to government scrutiny and record a public service announcement for the RIAA.

Cogill pleaded guilty earlier this year to one misdemeanor count of copyright infringement for posting nine tracks from the long-awaited Guns 'N Roses album last year. Cogill apologized for his actions in court Tuesday and said he didn't mean any harm by posting the tracks online.

"I never intended to hurt the artist," Cogill told Abrams. "I intended to promote the artist because I'm a fan." Abrams noted that Cogill is an artist, and should have known better.

A federal prosecutor pushed for a short prison term to act as a deterrent to others. "This is the type of case where I believe the court needs to send a strong message," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian. Too many people think of posting copyrighted work online as a "victimless crime," he said.

Cogill's attorney argued against a prison term, saying his client realized his wrongdoing and had suffered serious repercussions already. "He did lose his job as a result of this case," defense attorney David Kaloyanides said.

Missakian said after the hearing that while prosecutors hoped Cogill would be incarcerated, the case should serve as a warning to others that the government takes copyright infringement violations seriously. Abrams said he thought Cogill had learned his lesson, and did not think he would repeat his mistake.

As part of his plea deal, Cogill will have to allow authorities to search or seize his computers. He will not have to pay any fines or restitution, although authorities at one point calculated the losses from his actions at more than $371,000.

Kaloyanides said after the hearing that arriving at any damage amount was difficult and that sending Cogill to prison could have created a backlash. "It doesn't help to educate the public of the importance of respecting copyright law when you become too heavy-handed with punishment," Kaloyanides said.

Cogill will have some input into the public service announcement he records for the RIAA, which has used lawsuits to pursue people it suspects of illegally downloading music. Kaloyanides said he hoped the ads would target fans who upload and download copyrighted works by explaining to them that they're really hurting their favorite bands.

"You need to reach the fans," he said. "He (Cogill) speaks their language."

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Source:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090714/ap_on_re_us/us_blogger_arrested

Tags:

RIAA, Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy", Kevin Cogill, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian, Global Best Practice, David Kaloyanides, blogs, blogger, blogging, copyright, intellectual property,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Merger of Middle East Real Estate Giants

The deal is so big and so unprecedented; none of the parties involved knows the estimated value of the transaction at this date. One thing they do know is that the debt load of the combined entities will be huge - about $3.65 billion, U.S. (13.4 billion dirhams)

Emaar Properties, one of the world's largest commercial real estate companies, wants to merge with three real estate units of Dubai Holdings -- Sama, Tatweer and Dubai Properties. Dubai Holdings is a 100 percent state-controlled entity, while the government of Dubai owns a 32 percent stake in Emaar.

The parties expect to complete the deal valuation by August 2009. The Economic Times of Dubai reports the merger is expected to take about four months and could be completed in October 2009, pending the approval of shareholders and regulators.

The entities' total assets will be 194 billion dirhams, Emaar said in a statement to the Dubai Financial Market. The total debt is about 7 cent of the company's total assets. As of March 2009, Emaar's own external debt obligation was 10 billion dirhams, the newspaper reports. The real estate major had about 68 billion dirhams in book value of assets.

"As for Dubai Holdings, we believe the 126 billion dirhams in assets quoted in the press release consists mostly of land, which could be potentially valued much lower given the current market conditions," according to an Emaar spokesperson.

"We currently have no idea as to what Dubai Holdings' cash position is and what is owed to its contractors and suppliers," the Emaar spokesperson told the Dubai Financial Market.

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Tags:

Dubai Holdings, Emaar Properties, world's largest commercial real estate companies, dirhams, Sama, Tatweer, Dubai Financial Market, Global Best Practice,

Source:

http://www.realestatechannel.com/international-markets/residential-real-estate/emaar-properties-dubai-holdings-sama-tatweer-dubai-properties-middle-east-commercial-real-estate-giants-alex-finkelstein-1012.php

Schwarzenegger For Open Source Digital Textbooks

The Calif. Gov. Wants to Save Money by Dumping Printed Books for Online Texts; Is it Feasible?

Read more:

http://globalitnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/schwarzenegger-for-open-source-digital.html

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Tags: open source, open source textbooks, California budget crisis, governor Schwarzenegger, McGraw-Hill Education, Global Best Practice, OpenContent.org, education, k-12, David Wiley, Brigham Young University, Neeru Khosla,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Dispute Finder: Intel Program Finds Dubious Online Claims

Intel has launched software that sniffs out questionable claims at websites.

A "Dispute Finder" crafted by Intel researchers in Berkeley, California, for Firefox web browsers alerts Internet surfers to contentions that are contradicted by information elsewhere online.

"The reason this is important is that very often you'll read a website and not realize this is only one side of the story," Intel research scientist Robert Ennals said in an online video.

Dispute Finder automatically highlights text containing contested claims and then links to boxes summarizing points and counter-points. The data base is designed to grow and evolve with user input.

Votes regarding the reliability of information are used to filter dubious data. Researchers reportedly envision a version of the software that will scan caption information in television programs for specious claims and a mobile device capable of "listening" for questionable comments in conversations.

The mini-program, which works with Firefox web browsers, became available Thursday online at disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu.

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Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090619/tc_afp/usitinternetsoftware

Tags: Intel Labs, DisputeFinder, Firefox, Berkeley, Dubious data, Rober ennals, Global IT News, Global Best Practice, contested claims, competing claims, opinion comparison,

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The Pervasive Nature of Corruption

In common usage, corruption is often used to refer to all types of immoral or harmful behaviour by public officials. But in the social sciences and policy discussions, corruption refers specifically to the illegal use of power by politicians or bureaucrats for their own benefit. The important point is that this definition does not presume that corruption is damaging, though it may be.

How damaging it is has to be established by theory and evidence, and here there is considerable debate. Corruption involves two related activities. First, public power has to be acquired or purchased. Resources are therefore spent in bribes or in efforts to directly capture political power. These activities can waste resources which could have been more productively invested.

Public power

Secondly, public power is then used to create benefits for public officials, or those who have bribed them, or create obstacles for others. The benefits are beneficial for those who get them, but can be damaging for society.

For instance, public power can be used to create monopolies to import goods, or to grant contracts at inflated prices. In extreme cases of predation, public officials and their friends can simply loot resources. Public officials can also create obstacles that citizens have to pay to avoid, like red tape and unnecessary restrictions.

The economic effect of the second set of activities can therefore also be negative and the total effect of corruption is then clearly negative. International agencies like the World Bank and the IMF assume that corruption does have negative effects and also that it can be removed by reforms. Therefore, they use their influence to persuade developing countries to spend time, effort and money to reduce corruption.

In this, they are often supported by civil society organisations and NGOs who are also against corruption for obvious reasons. The policies they recommend include greater transparency and accountability, stricter prosecutions and punishments, and liberalisation to reduce the amount of discretion that public officials have to create privileges or allocate resources. But much investment in these policies has generally not achieved significant reductions in corruption.

Political corruption

No one can be in favour of corruption. The question really is that, if corruption is so bad, why is it so pervasive? Why does every developing country suffer so greatly from corruption? And why have all the resources spent on fighting corruption achieved so little in terms of sustained and lasting reductions in corruption, and what should we be doing about it? To answer these questions we need to look at what the simple analysis of corruption is missing out.

First, it misses the fact that much of the corruption in developing countries is political corruption driven by the fact that political power is often based on the ability of politicians to deliver resources or privileges to their clients that they cannot offer through the budget. Here the significant difference with advanced countries is that in the latter, the budget is big enough to allow competing parties to offer credible spending plans to voters that can potentially win one of them a majority.

In developing countries this is very difficult because the small budget cannot offer much to voters. Rather, power is constructed through political networks where powerful faction leaders are rewarded with privileges to maintain political stability, mobilize voters and enable the state to function.

Social cost

This is also corruption because resources are being spent, sometimes illegally, to construct these networks and the privileges created for the political organisers are often illegal as well. But the problem is that in the absence of a fiscal base to allow social democratic politics, it is difficult to imagine how else politics can be organised. In these contexts, the only feasible solution is to make politics more stable and developmental so that the budget can grow over time. But attempts to immediately root out all corruption typically fail.

A second problem with the simplistic analysis is that what public officials ‘deliver’ varies greatly. It is not always a monopoly or an obstacle. Sometimes citizens have to pay to get resources to which they are legally entitled and which are socially desirable, such as food grains for poor people.

Here corruption has a social cost, but it may be less than the cost of not having the programme at all. Another example is when states make resources available for investment in new or risky areas. If the state has the capacity to ensure that these resources are not entirely wasted, economic development can take place even in the presence of corruption. The corruption associated with support for industrial policy is often observed in East Asian countries. In these cases the bribe is a bit like an illegal tax, which has a cost, but the net effect of intervention can be growth-enhancing for the economy.

Buying influence

These sorts of reasons explain why corruption can be associated with collapsing economies but also with some of the most dynamic economies in the developing world. Clearly developing countries have different mixes of corruption. In poorly performing economies predatory types of corruption dominate as well as corruption that creates obstacles for investors.

In high-growth developing countries corruption is more like profit-sharing between business and public officials in a context where public officials facilitate and enable businesses to grow. If we cannot get rid of all corruption immediately, we should certainly try to attack predatory behaviour and looting and try to create incentives for public officials to behave in developmental ways.

This is a very different strategy from the moralistic approach of much of global anti-corruption policies today. And it has to be remembered that in advanced countries the rich do buy influence, but because of higher levels of institutionalisation, they usually buy influence legally, through lobbying, contributions to political parties, contributions to think-tanks and universities, and by employing ex-politicians on their boards. This is another reason why corruption gradually disappears as a country becomes richer. But if we are concerned about justice and democracy, we should be just as concerned with the legal forms of influence-buying in advanced countries.

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/06/200962632221819406.html

Tags: Corruption, Lobbying, Political Corruption, East Asia, bribery, developing countries, IMF, World Bank, Al Jazeera, Public Power, Political influence, NGO, NGO’s, Global Best Practice,

Posted via email from Global Business News

Ballmer: All Traditional Content Will Be Digital In 10 Years

Steve Ballmer said Wednesday that the global advertising economy has been permanently “reset” at a lower level, warning that media companies should not plan for revenues to bounce back to pre-recession levels.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Ballmer argued that traditional broadcast and print media would have to plan business models around a smaller share of the advertising market, as revenues continue to move to digital outlets. “I don’t think we are in a recession, I think we have reset,” he said. “A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don’t think we will. We have reset and won’t rebound and re-grow.”

Ballmer, named media person of the year at this year’s festival, also painted a bleak picture for the future of traditional media, arguing that newspaper publishers have failed to generate new revenues from the digital opportunity. He said that within 10 years all traditional content will be digital and yet, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) aside, publishers are failing to generate serious digital revenues.

“All content consumed will be digital, we can [only] debate if that may be in one, two, five or 10 years,” added Ballmer. “There won’t be [only traditional] newspapers, magazines and TV programmes. There won’t be [only] personal, social communications offline and separate. In 10 years it will all be online. Static content won’t cut it in the future,” he added.

“Some say that the ad-funded model has not led to profitability. Google’s search site makes money but past Google is there a publisher with an ad-funded or fee-based model that has made lots of money? No.”

For media businesses to successfully evolve they must provide the right combination of context and relevance to make a compelling online proposition for consumers, according to Ballmer. “There are problems with digital advertising. Start with content and the website environment and [ask] is it suitable for advertising. [That] question is somewhat in the balance as we move forward,” he said. The old approach of simply trying to replicate a print newspaper online is doomed to fail, Ballmer added.

During a question and answer session after his speech, Ballmer was also asked about Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Yahoo.“We have no interest in acquiring Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). What we have said is that we will continue to remain open to a partnership with Yahoo,” he responded.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-microsofts-ballmer-all-traditional-content-will-be-digital-in-10-years

Tags: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, Technology Prediction, Digital content, Analog content, google, Yahoo, Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Ad-funded model, Global Best Practice, Print media,

Posted via email from Global Business News

UK Spy Chief Exposed On Facebook

The wife of the designated head of Britain's premier spy agency posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on Facebook, the popular internet networking site, causing shock among security experts and calls for an enquiry.

Sir John Sawers was chosen last month to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, the agency popularly known as MI6, in November. The agency has adopted a more public image in recent years, but its employees are still bound by strict secrecy rules.

In what the Mail on Sunday weekly called an "extraordinary lapse" in judgement, the new spy chief's wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and details of where they live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are. The published details, accessible by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world, were immediately removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper's enquiries.

Security breach denied

David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, made light of the incident and denied there has been a security breach, giving Sawers his full support. "It's not a state secret that he wears speedo swimming trunks," Miliband said. "For goodness' sake, let's grow up!" Miliband told the BBC. But security experts remained shocked.

"It is a most distressing and unfortunate security lapse that will take a great deal of money to put right," Professor Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said. Glees said that the children may now require an additional security detail and that the family may need to move to a new home.

The incident is one of a series of security blunders that have embarrassed the government of Gordon Brown, coming less than two weeks after the British prime minister launched Britain's first national cyber security strategy.

The Mail on Sunday, which published the story on its front page and pictures on a double-page spread, said the information "could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists."

Several government officials called on the government to launch an inquiry into the matter and have since questioned whether Sawers was the right man for the job.

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/07/200975152453161326.html

Tags: Facebook, Sir John Sawers, Lady Sawers, Gordon Bown, David Milibrand, Anthony Glees, UK, M16, Secret Intelligence Service, Speedo, Spy agency, Global Best Practice,

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Twitter Best Practices

It's been almost eight weeks since I gave in and started using Twitter. I had a rapid change of heart from my initial skepticism. For those who've never heard of Twitter, you may just have arrived here from some planet extraterrestrial. For those who have simply refused to give it a shot, I can list a few quick reasons why it might be worth it.

I've used it to rekindle old, lost friendships.

I've used it to promote my personal brand.

I've used it to develop a number of new, fruitful interactions in my field.

I've enjoyed the simple, lighthearted smalltalk and banter that it fosters.

It's nice to get to know people I've known for years on a more personal, human level, catching quick, concise glimpses of their thoughts.

It's also been fascinating to get an interior dialogue of some heroes/mentors/idols. Yes, I follow some "famous" folks. They don't seem to mind. And it's not entirely because of ego. Most of the ones I interact with simply seem to want to share the lessons they've learned--and are in the process of learning--so that others can be successful as well. Now THAT is selflessness. They don't need to do this!

Others have already gone before me and done a fine job of extrapolating more developed reasons to be on Twitter. I won't repeat entire prosaic tomes, but I'll point you to my favorite, Michael Hyatt's "12 reasons to start twittering."

That being said, Twitter can be a nightmare. Twitter is suffering measurable growing pains as it emerges as a trendy tool and a collection of pointless, verbal spew. It's ripe for being abused by spammers (who apparently now prefer the term "viral marketers," a category that apparently also includes...me, which may force me to write an explanatory and apologetic article later). In fact, they've already started abusing it. And the line between victim and culprit is a bit blurred. Like any social networking technology, it's remarkably addictive. And, unmanaged, your own connections can grow into something ugly and uncontrollable. We can accidentally contribute to the problem!

So, I think it's time we pitch some "best practices" for using Twitter. To bring you up to speed on what "best practices" means, keep in mind that emerging technology is based on open source and established standards. Violate the standard, and people probably won't trust what you're doing. It doesn't mean it's not a good idea. It means that you need to lobby to get the standard rewritten to accommodate your invention. But it takes time to get a standards board to revise a document. In the meantime, you want to establish market presence (even for a free product), so an interim document is often offered, a list of "best practices." Put simply, it's good things to do when nobody really knows for sure what to do.

So allow me to assume that if you're reading this you'll probably want to base your practices on the following fundamental assumptions:

We want to avoid receiving spam.

We want to avoid inadvertently contributing to the distribution of spam.

We want to avoid maliciousness.

We want to avoid intentionally or unintentionally facilitating maliciousness.

We want to be relevant.

We want to maximize and capitalize on our awareness of the relevance of others.

It is possible to use Twitter without being a twit. Here's how to do that: Control your follows and followers.

Set up your account appropriately

Here's why we need best practices. Twitter has two basic account settings: public and private. If you set up your account to be private, you protect yourself real well from receiving unwanted followers. Nobody can find you. But this sorta violates the premise of being able to establish, build, maintain, and develop an interactive relevance with others. "Best practices" recognizes that the most effective thing to do may not be the most useful thing to do. So, a "best practice" in the development of online relationships requires us to make those relationships public. That means we now have some subsequent work to do.

When someone adds you, you have three choices on how to respond.

You can do nothing. They will continue to be able to read your account information and any new tweets that you post. You can reciprocate the follow. That will allow you to engage in dialogue and conversation with them. Their followers will see their half of the conversation. Your followers will see yours. Mutual followers will observe the entire conversation. You can block them. They will then be unable to see your contributions, to send you private messages, or to view your profile.

Not everyone who adds you is really a friend.

You know those late-night infomercials that catch you off-guard when you wake up at 3am and realize you left the TV on? In your half-conscious state, some slick, friendly, good-looking and persuasive individual hypnotizes you into picking up the phone. Next thing you know, UPS has delivered three years worth of diet pills. Or tupperware. Or a set of encyclopedias you don't need. Or a lava lamp with a built-in AM/FM radio and a companion garlic chopper and a set of knives that are yours free to keep even if you choose to return the garlic chopper and the lava lamp AM/FM radio which will never work anyway because there's no one in customer support picking up the phone to let you know what address to send the lava lamp radio and garlic chopper to so that you can get your refund. Something like that. Yeah, Twitter's the same way.

Not everyone who adds you is really a person.

Some are entities. Some are corporations, or marketing firms, or "bots" that farm account names for the purpose of spreading malware, or advertising, or phishing schemes to purloin your account information. Some of them make this pretty obvious. To be fair, there are some companies (that identify themselves as such) that I'm interested in following. News. New product releases. Interesting interactive opportunities. Relevant technological organizations. Sure. There are reasons why you might want to do this, on purpose, selectively. Some of them are nasty sneaky about it. We'll get to this in more detail right after the next point.

Sometimes, the owner of a company uses his or her company's name as his or her account name.

Ok, fine, you can do that. Nothing wrong with that. There are a few owners of recruiting firms that I follow. Some of them use their firm's name as their account name. And when I'm looking for work, it's important to maintain contact with them.

Do you know who this is?

When you receive a new follower on Twitter, decide very quickly, Do I know who this person is? If you do (and you trust him or her) by all means, reciprocate the follow. If you don't, consider instantly blocking them from your account. Yes, there's a several step process if you block someone and then change your mind. But the hassle might be worth the control you maintain up front. And yes, I have blocked someone accidentally and recovered from it. And yes, I have probably been blocked inadvertently (Frosene, if you're reading this...it's me!).

Sometimes, I don't know them, but they look interesting.

Ok, let's see how we can find out real quick if they're on the up-and-up. How many followers do they have? If someone is following 1000+ accounts, I'm going to initially suspect that they're on the verge of dispensing fluff. Is anybody (except Ashton Kutcher) really that popular? But seriously. I even dropped Ashton Kutcher (and Demi Moore, and Miley Cyrus) from my follows. Why? Because if I were writing a marketing bot, I'd write it to find accounts that have hundreds and thousands of people in their lists, and farm those account names to add to my own. So if YOUR name appears on the list of an account who's following 10,000 folks for no reason at all, you're probably being added to a whole bunch of internet mailing lists faster than you can say "Kaspersky-compliant spam filter." That being said, there are a few people I follow, selectively, who have well into the tens of thousands of followers. Why? Because I've perused their tweets and I want to be involved with these folks. They're important to me. So judge wisely.

What's their ratio of followers to follows?

After eight weeks on Twitter, I've accumulated a little over a hundred people following me, and a little over 200 people whose "tweets" I'm following. I've observed this 2-to-1 ratio to be relatively consistent amongst my crowd, give or take. So I'm using that as a norm. If someone is following 800 people and only 7 people are following their account, this might say something significant. Consider the prevailing wisdom as a sign. They're either a bot, or they think that they can fabricate popularity...and it's not working.

What's their account name?

It is generally a best practice to set your real name (or some revealing reference to it) as your account name. This is a nice thing to do. It is not essential, but it is remarkably polite. There are a few legitimate reasons not to do this. If their account name is unusual, annoying, offensive, or illegible, think twice. Especially if it's a collection of random characters. That's a tell-tale sign that this account was created by a machine, not a human being. A machine will have nothing interesting, relevant, timely, or practical to offer you. Block.

Check their profile.

No bio? If their bio is nonexistent, what are they hiding?

Internet marketer?

Does their bio contain the honest but death-wishing phrase "internet marketer?" At least they're admitting it up front. Are they promising the dream of a life of ease, sipping piña coladas on the beach while fortunes are deposited in their bank accounts for them? If you have no reason to want what they're pedaling (or if they don't identify it), I recommend you encourage them to pedal it elsewhere.

Funky web address?

If their URL is a shortened, redirecting, non-descript URL, again, what are they hiding? Don't click on it to find out. You might find yourself where some man has been before. Many times. Many, many times, to quote Blanche Devereaux.

Peruse their lists of follows and followers.

If it's not someone you know, but 40 of your friends are in common, it might be someone you'd like to know. Again, use your wise discretion and judgment.

Is it "Britney?"

If their account description starts with the word "Britney" and ends with the word "vids" and has a naughty word between, BLOCK THEM IMMEDIATELY!! Good Lord I hate that person, whoever it is. And I use the term "hate" lightly in this case.

Consider why they added you.

Were they looking for you? That might be good. Were they looking for ANYONE AT ALL? Ok, not so good. If "number of followers" is your only metric for relevance, by all means, go ahead and add. But don't come crying to me when your inbox becomes clogged with emails asking if you want to see revealing videos of the aforementioned pop star. Best case scenario is this person is an emotional leech. Run. Fast.

Check their tweets.

Do they write in clear English? No, that does not apply if you're looking for friends who all speak Portuguese. I just mean that a random assortment of jargon and abbreviations every 5 to 10 minutes is not going to make for an enjoyable experience.

Was it something you said?

The other day, I retweeted something funny that David Pogue said about chess and kickboxing. Call me paranoid, but I was immediately followed by two chess playing bots. Like I said, I don't like bots with several thousand followers. Other bots are looking for that sort of information to use for "marketing." And Britney. I'm sure she plays chess. She's a semiconductor physicist, after all.

Yes, that link is safe. Yes, I'm pulling your leg.

Anyway, I blocked the chess bots. And I apologized to the friend who "re-tweeted" what I said (because it was funny) and probably received the same two immediate unwanted follows. Apparently, there are bots out there just waiting for you to mention certain terms. Say them, and immediately they figure you're an interested chap.

Same tweet, over and over and over and over and over and over and...

If someone's posting the same tweet (or at least the same hidden link) repeatedly, it's probably a machine just promoting itself at regular intervals. I'd rather hear from human beings.

Protect your identity!

This should be a no-brainer. It isn't. Spence Smith thought it was ok to register his account with a third-party site. Their disclaimer even admitted that they MIGHT occasionally change his status (that is, his most recent tweet). Mr. Smith didn't consider that they would change his status (and the status of the thousands of others who registered) frequently for the purpose of promoting their own choice of product or opinion. Spence changed his password and distanced himself from that service. When you're encouraged to register your account somewhere else, ponder why they would want this information and why you would want to give it to them.

How does a new follower act?

The aforementioned Spence Smith, a few days after his epiphany, tweeted this: "FYI, for [my] new followers: if the first private message I get from you is a marketing message, then I'm unfollowing you. Get to know me first." Wiser words are rarely spoken. Thanks, Spence!

Act urgently and responsibly.

If I don't clear out my new follows right away and block them if they're inappropriate, MY friends are gonna wind up on their lists. I don't want to subject my friends to that! The thing about best practices is that they're emergent and flexible. They're part of a conversation. So if anyone has any questions about these, suggestions, challenges, or additions, the whole community of Twitter users should be all ears. We'll probably never have a standard, really. I'm not sure we'd want an environment for open communications being limited by a rigid set of standards anyway. But let's iteratively make the best set of best practices we can, reform it as necessary, and apply good and wise judgment to make the best experience possible for everyone. Follow me, but you might want to drop me a quick email first so I know who you are. And please, if your first name is Britney, consider changing it.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-8005-SF-Eastern-Orthodoxy-Examiner~y2009m6d14-Managing-Twitter-social-networking-with-social-responsibility

Tags: Twitter best Practices, Twitter, Rules of Twitter, Tweets, Twitter Profiles, Bots, Twitter users, Follow me, Global Best practice, Global IT News, unfollowing, Twitter rules,

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Green Power Takes Root In The Chinese Desert

DUNHUANG, China — As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower.

Through a combination of carrots and sticks, Beijing is starting to change how this country generates energy. Although coal remains the biggest energy source and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases.

While the House of Representatives approved a requirement last week that American utilities generate more of their power from renewable sources of energy, and the Senate will consider similar proposals over the summer, China imposed such a requirement almost two years ago.

This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up.

This oasis town deep in the Gobi Desert along the famed Silk Road and the surrounding wilderness of beige sand dunes and vast gravel wastelands has become a center of China’s drive to lead the world in wind and solar energy.

A series of projects is under construction on the nearly lifeless plateau to the southeast of Dunhuang, including one of six immense wind power projects now being built around China, each with the capacity of more than 16 large coal-fired power plants.

Each of the six projects “totally dwarfs anything else, anywhere else in the world,” said Steve Sawyer, the secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry group in Brussels.

Some top Chinese regulators even worry that Beijing’s mandates are pushing companies too far too fast. The companies may be deliberately underbidding for the right to build new projects and then planning to go back to the government later and demand compensation once the projects lose money.

“The problem is we have so many stupid enterprises,” said Li Junfeng, who is the deputy director general for energy research at China’s top economic planning agency and the secretary general of the government-run Renewable Energy Industries Association.

HSBC predicts that China will invest more money in renewable energy and nuclear power between now and 2020 than in coal-fired and oil-fired electricity. That does not mean that China will become a green giant overnight. For one thing, Chinese power consumption is expected to rise steadily over the next decade as 720 million rural Chinese begin acquiring the air-conditioners and other power-hungry amenities already common among China’s 606 million city dwellers.

As recently as the start of last year, the Chinese government’s target was to have 5,000 megawatts of wind power installed by the end of next year, or the equivalent of eight big coal-fired power plants, a tiny proportion of China’s energy usage and a pittance at a time when China was building close to two coal-fired plants a week.

But in March of last year, as power companies began accelerating construction of wind turbines, the government issued a forecast that 10,000 megawatts would actually be installed by the end of next year. And now, just 15 months later, with construction of coal-fired plants having slowed to one a week and still falling, it appears that China will have 30,000 megawatts of wind energy by the end of next year — which was previously the target for 2020, Mr. Li said.

A big impetus was the government’s requirement, issued in September 2007, that large power companies generate at least 3 percent of their electricity by the end of 2010 from renewable sources. The calculation excludes hydroelectric power, which already accounts for 21 percent of Chinese power, and nuclear power, which accounts for 1.1 percent.

Chinese companies must generate 8 percent of their power from renewable sources other than hydroelectric by the end of 2020. The House bill in the United States resembles China’s approach in imposing a renewable energy standard on large electricity providers. But the details make it hard to compare standards. The House bill requires large electricity providers in the United States to derive at least 15 percent of their energy by 2020 from a combination of energy savings and renewable energy — including hydroelectric dams built since 1992.

Chinese power companies are eager to invest in renewable energy not just because of the government’s mandates, but because they are flush with cash and state-owned banks are eager to lend them more money. And there are few regulatory hurdles.

At the same time, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has temporarily banned three of the country’s five main power companies from building more coal-fired power plants, punishment for their failure to comply with environmental regulations at existing coal-fired plants. China’s renewable energy frenzy has been accelerating recently, especially in solar energy.

Last winter, winning bidders for three projects agreed to sell power to the national power grid for about 59 cents a kilowatt hour. But this spring, when the government solicited offers to build and operate the 10-megawatt photovoltaic solar power plant here in Dunhuang, the lowest bid was just 10 cents a kilowatt hour — so low the government rejected it as likely to result in losses for whatever state-owned bank lent money to build it.

The winning bidder was China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company, an entirely state-owned business that bid 16 cents a kilowatt hour. (That was still far below last winter’s price, but a two-thirds drop in raw material costs because of the global financial crisis has started to drive down the cost of solar panels, the chief expense for the winning bidder.)

Zheng Shuangwei, the company’s general manager for northwest China, said that 22 or 23 cents would be more fair. The bid of 16 cents “is not a proper price,” he acknowledged. “It’s a bidding rate that is the result of competition.”

By comparison, the grid buys electricity from coal-fired power plants for 4 to 5 cents a kilowatt hour. Wind turbine rates have dropped to 7 cents from 10 cents over the last couple of years because of fierce competition and declining turbine costs.

The solar project still must go ahead, Mr. Zheng said, because China has limited coal reserves — 41 years at current rates of production — and the potential for hydroelectric power is leveling off as most eligible rivers have already been dammed. But technical obstacles to renewable energy are popping up. Sandstorms in Dunhuang in the spring, for instance, will cover solar panels and render them useless until they are cleaned after each storm by squads of workers using feather brushes to avoid scratching the panels, a process expected to take two days.

And wind turbines are being built faster here than the national grid can erect high-voltage power lines to carry the electricity to cities elsewhere. On the windiest days, only half the power generated can be transmitted, said Min Deqing, a local renewable energy consultant. Nonetheless, city officials are pushing for more projects.

“It’s the Gobi Desert,” said Wang Yu, the vice director of economic planning. “There’s not much other use for it.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/business/energy-environment/03renew.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Tags: China, wind power, Chinese desert, Global Best Practice, sandstorms, Dunhuang, Gobi desert, Wang Yu, Min Deqing, Silk road, wind turbines, Beijing, Global Wind Energy Council, Brussels, HSBC,

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