Still around

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a variety of reasons.

For a long time it seems that all the readers were trolls from Russia or Italy.  Today the bulk of the readers were from the United States.

An indicator of usage seems to have stuck and wasn’t increasing at all.

I spent more of my time posting comments to articles on the New York Times, the Washington Post, and some times on the Star Tribune and Duluth News Tribune.  The Post is wide open, posts immediately, and rarely deletes a comment.  The Times reviews comments before posting them.  The Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune have much less space and might edit beyond all recognition.  I’ve just about given up on the Duluth News Tribune.

Maybe lots of my readers are “Trump weary” and get enough of him via TV and daily newspapers.

I’ll try to post a wider range of articles.  If you ore a relative or a friend, send me your thoughts.

More on erratic behavior of online newspapers

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, using a MacBook Air, early 2015, macOS Sierra, version 10.12.6.
I was able to access and sign in to startribune.com.  I then clicked on e Access or whatever and asked to log in.  I didn’t keep track of the details but was told my account didn’t have access to that version.  I went back to the web version and clicked on eEdition.  Voila! and no intrusive overlay ads.  And I have access to the “Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee”.

Now the question is would I get the same result using my iPhone as a hot spot to my AT&T account.

I don’t feel like checking right now.  I would rather read the funnies.

And I read the Star Tribune and after that I accessed the Duluth News Tribune.  I forget the details on what I did, but I am almost done reading the opinion page.  Strange that I couldn’t access the DNT at all from home but I can from a coffee shop.

Erratic behavior of online newspapers

I sent the following email to the publishers and editors of the Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune.

Good afternoon,

If this email is upsetting the end of your day, I’m sorry.  But the erratic behavior of the online versions of your newspapers has been upsetting my month and many months before.

In the case of the Star Tribune, it has unwanted pop-up ads that are difficult, if not impossible to delete. Several days earlier in the week it occurred almost every day and I was ready to cancel my subscription.  The telephone chain to do so was ridiculous.  Yesterday, the eEdition worked fine, and I relented on cancelling my subscription.  Today the pop-up ads were back.

Jon of Feedback was very patient and supportive, but one piece of advice I should never have followed: resetting my iPad.  That wound up clearing all my saved passwords.  Now I have to look these up for my next visit to any of a number of password-protected sites.  And the problem of unwanted pop-ups is back.

In the case of the Duluth News Tribune, it may or may not come up with the eEdition.  On my iPad it was going in a circle of getting halfway to the eEdition and then wanting me to put in my password again.

At the moment, the eEditions are working on my MacBook Air, but I would rather eat breakfast with an iPad by my side: it takes up much less space on the table.

See my blog entry: "A newspaper’s takeover of subscribers’ computers"

http://magree.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-newspapers-takeover-of-subscribers.html

I am not alone in enduring these, but I wonder how many of your users have the knowledge and patience to work through this annoyance.  I know my wife who has over twenty years of computer experience wouldn’t and she is growing very impatient with my repeated complaints.  I know that I no longer wish to be an unpaid debugger of your software.

So, please cancel my subscriptions to the Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune.  I’ll renew them when you have fixed this problem.

Oh, yes!  I will post this email to my blog.

Quote of the day: Trump and John Wilkes Booth

“Donald Trump is the John Wilkes Booth of the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln.” - Paul A. Fleming, “With so much stupidity, question everything”, Letters to the Editor, Duluth News Tribune, 2018-01-04

Corporate efficiency?

Olive is software to put facsimiles of the newspaper print editions on line.  By clicking on an article, a reader can see a more screen friendly copy of an article.  Both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune have Olive editions.  I subscribe to both, partly to get the comics rather than the text of some of the articles.

But for years the Olive edition has had a major flaw; a flaw that still exists in the current version rolled out last year.  I don't know where they get o• writing about people like Je•rey.

The Olive edition of the 2017-04-17 Duluth News Tribune converted a USA Today article about North Korea to:

"The secretive state also showed o• a submarine-launched missile that it successfully fired last year.
"Analysts said that the weapons on display raised new questions about North Korea’s capacities going forward. Je•rey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., called the show 'a bewildering array of new missile-related hardware.'"

I did change the quote marks to match the standard for quoting material that includes quotes.

Given all the product recalls, the unfriendly skies of the airlines, and much more, I would say the only efficiency in far too many corporations is move as much revenue as possible to the CEOs and board members.  Gosh, I wish I could get $250,000 or more for showing up for six board meetings a year.  And many of these people, including the CEO's are on the boards of several companies.

Corporate efficiency?

Forum Communications (owners of the Duluth News Tribune) implemented a new “improved” version of the Olive Edition.  This is a program that allows readers to toggle between a facsimile of the printed paper and individual articles.  I sent the following to the person who responded to my help message:

"I do find the new version a lot harder to use.  I prefer the way the Star Tribune is set up.  For example, the Strib version has a section icon at the top left.  Much easier than using the arrows to go back or forth page by page.  Also, when I first opened it, it didn’t automatically set the page to my screen size.  It took a bit of fumbling before had the page size adjusted properly.

"Olive still can’t translate the text correctly.  Most of the articles that I looked at still drop the first letter of a story.”

That paragon of efficiency, Netflix, sent me email that my next DVD would be arriving three days ago!!  Which it had!  Maybe their email system went down.  And that system was most likely set up by some corporation.

I downloaded Stitcher because iTunes was just getting too difficult to use.  I was finding it being less responsive to downloading and playing podcasts.  Even Stitcher has lots of hidden things that don’t work easily and clearly. Many of the operations don’t work as described in the help articles. I think I finally have my podcasts organized that I can download new episodes and can play them offline without a problem.

I’ve been at two different groceries this week where the register system did not work properly.  Fortunately, each had it come on line quickly or had a workaround.

Good old Apple!  I’m never sure what it will take to get a hotspot from my phone working.  Sometimes our iPads or laptops will recognize the hotspot immediately.  Sometimes it will take several minutes and multiple times turning the hotspot off and on again.  As somebody in a coffee shop loudly proclaimed months ago about gas prices: “It makes no sense!”

In defense of the oil companies and all the corporate and locally-owned stations, it does make sense.  Gas is an auction commodity.  Demand goes up, the price goes up.  Demand goes down, the price goes down.  Of course, there is also the seasonal switching of blends that decreases supply, causing the price to go up.

And those much maligned government agencies.  Working as planned.

Our social security checks are always posted to our bank on time.  (The bank does mark the payments as available immediately, but may take many hours to post them to our “ledger”)

If we order a book or DVD from the Duluth Public Library (either from the system or from MNLink*), they send us email within an hour or two of items being available at our branch.

*MNLink is a consortium of the local government libraries that make their collections available to other libraries in the system.  Often an item is delivered to the requesting library within two days of its being returned by the previous borrower.

And snowplowing has gotten better.  Our local streets are plowed several times after a storm and getting around may be a hassle for awhile and driveways may be blocked.  One thing that has improved is that a sidewalk plow generally comes around a day or two after a major storm.  It even makes up for those residents who rarely shovel their sidewalks.

Finally, the Duluth Transit Authority buses are fairly close to on-time even when the streets are not in the best condition.  And oh, yes, those friendly and courteous drivers are Teamsters.

Governor Walker's addiction?

The Duluth News Tribune, Saturday, January 07, 2017, had a misleading headline about an initiative of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

"Walker takes action to combat addiction."

My immediate reaction was whose addiction?  His?  I didn't think so.  It was an initiative to reduce heroin and even prescription opiates.  For the third year in a row, opiate deaths have been greater than traffic deaths in Wisconsin.

Left-handed-ness

Jim Heffernan, a former Duluth News Tribune editor, posted in his blog about being left-handed.
See http://www.jimheffernan.org/2009/02/left-handed-commentary.html

I sent the the following email to him.

I’m belated catching up on your blog.  The left-handed entry really caught my interest: I too am an overhanded left-handed writer.

But writing is almost the only thing I do exclusively with my left hand, except scratch my right arm:)  I use tools with my right hand.  If fact I can hardly pound a nail straight or saw a straight line with me left hand.

I have a hypothesis on why left-handers write over-hand.

It's how we imitate others.  If we learn something side-by-side, we will imitate our teacher’s handed-ness.  If we learn something face-to-face we might mirror our teacher’s handed-ness.   If we watch somebody write across from us, we will place the pen in the mirror hand.  But then it breaks down because we place the paper in the same direction.  It is very awkward to write left-hand and underhand with the paper slanted “counter-clock-wise”.

I have noticed that fewer people say “Oh, you’re left-handed!”  My inclinations is to say “But when people say that I punch them in the nose with my right hand!”

Fox guarding the EPA chicken coop?

See "Trump names climate change skeptic, oil industry ally to lead EPA  in Duluth News Tribune, 2016-12-08.

This definitely is having the fox guard the chicken coop!

Shouldn't a "populist" be in favor of the people being free to breathe rather than the corporations being free to pollute?

See also "China to become the leader of the free-breathing world".

An op-ed on the too short history of Pakistan's religious tolerance

My friend M. Imran Hayee wrote a op-Ed in the Duluth News Tribune, 2016-12-04 warning about a slide to religious intolerance under a Trump government.  He notes how intolerant religionists destroyed Pakistan's thriving, tolerant democracy.

See http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/local-view/4171646-local-view-america-must-cling-its-founding-principles-freedom-and.

Corporate slip-up

David McGrath wrote a local view, “A few ‘no thanks' are in order today".

I sent him a note of thanks, but when I sent it, I realized that the address was wrong.  The first four characters of his address were not included.  In the Olive Edition of the DNT the email address was split.  (Olive is software that displays the printed edition as is and then will open up single articles.  It has many of its own problems.)

I thought it might be that the opinion editor was being careless.  That would be ironic because he always seems to find something to change in almost all of my letters or commentaries.  So much so that I have given up sending anything to the DNT.

I looked at the DNT on my iPad this morning, but I am using my MacBook Air to write this blog entry.  The Olive Edition opens with an error on this computer, and nobody has fixed the problem yet.  So, I looked at the web edition, and surprise! The email address is correct at the bottom of the article.

That means that the opinion editor probably never saw the result once it left his computer to the automated process to be put in all the various formats.

And probably nobody double checks all of these errors because the owners won’t provide enough resources to check and correct all of these irritating errors.

More on the Electoral College

For a different view than I gave in “Why we have our electoral mess”, see J. Craig Scherf,  "Electoral College maintains one of Constitution’s checks and balances" Duluth News Tribune, 2106-11-15.

Times have changed since the Constitution was written.  Then the voters were male property owners.  Their interests were in protecting their property, whether it was real estate or slaves.  They felt that they could best protect their property by state laws, not federal laws.

But the interests of the states as property protectors has diminished in several ways.

Many of us are not fixed or even interested in our states as defenders of all of our interests.

Those of us who are property owners might change property for a variety of reasons.  We might want a bigger or smaller residence.  We might want to move from a rural area to a city or vice versa.  Or we might move out of state, something that seems to happening more frequently as people change jobs within a company or get a job in a different company.

I have lived in three states and three foreign countries.

I grew up in Cleveland OH and in surrounding areas.  I have not lived in Ohio for 53 years.  When the Cleveland Indians were in the World Series, I could care less!

I have lived in Minnesota for 42 years.  Do I know what the state song is?  What the state flag looks like?  I probably know more U.S. and world history than I do Minnesota history.

Our state lives get even more complicated.  How many people live in one state but work in another?  Duluth-Superior?  New York City with commuters from three states: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut?  Philadelphia with Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.  I myself commuted from an exurb west of Philadelphia, through Philadelphia, and on to Cherry Hill NJ.  Chicago also has commuters from three states: Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

And don’t forget that there are many reverse commuters who go from the central city to jobs outside the city, especially as more and more companies build facilities outside the central city.

Many of these commuters have no real property, they rent their living spaces.  So, where do their local loyalties lie: where they live or where they work.  They only get input into the laws that affect where they work is through federal law, not state laws.  The only way they have input into the affairs of the state in which they work is through personal contact with acquaintances who are residents of their work state or letters to the editor of the regional newspaper.

The electoral college could give our co-workers more or less clout in an election than we have.  The Delaware resident who works in Philadelphia had a greater weighted Electoral College vote than his or her colleagues who live in Pennsylvania!  It’s almost like saying that short people have more votes than tall people!

"Would we truly want large regional majorities from the two coasts to alone choose our president? The system of checks and balances left to us by the Founders is the surest guarantee of protecting minority rights that we have.” - J. Craig Scherf

But do we want small regional electoral majorities to take away the rights of the majority of the whole nation?

Quotes of the Day, misdirected politics

 “It’s just more about getting the other people than worrying about the American people.” Christine Etima, quoted in "Immersed in the election, but unable to vote", Duluth News Tribune, 2016-11-05

"But not making a choice — sitting out the election — is to turn our fate over to others."  Ann McFeatters, Duluth News Tribune, 2016-11-06

Quote on voting

"And those not planning to vote, heed the lyrics of the old Rush song: 'If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.'”
Dale Harris, Judge in 6th Judicial District of Minnesota, Duluth News Tribune, 2016-07-11

Judge Harris was writing about not ignoring the judicial candidates in the August primaries, but his words apply to any election: from president to city councilor.

I hope you will pass on my voting mantra:

The only way
You throw your vote away
Is to stay away.

The few don’t represent ‘the people’

Despite a claim to the contrary in the May 11 letter, “Flood of letters makes the answer clear on Central’s fate,” the “people” have not spoken about the fate of Duluth’s Central High property. A large number of letter writers have made their opinions known, but they are only a small minority of all the people of Duluth.

This is like saying the people have spoken because of a large turnout at a hearing on an ATV trail or on clean water.

This is worse than saying a politician won in a landslide with a turnout of less than 60 percent. Even if the vote for the politician was 60 percent, that means 64 percent of the voters either voted for someone else or didn’t make the effort to show up

At least in an election, all the people have the opportunity to show up. In a hearing or in letters to the editor, only a few [can] participate. The few, no matter the view, do not represent “the people.”

Letter to the Editor, published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2016-05-17

P. S.  I didn't think to include "the people have spoken" is about as bad as the "People's Republic of ..."

Free opinion vs. free speech

The Duluth News Tribune ran a Pro/Con about free speech and climate change.  The Con was an article by H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute.  He claimed that climate change deniers should be protected by the First Amendment: the right of free speech.  I think he seriously misreads the Constitution and established law.

According to him, we should all be free to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater.  According to him, there should be no libel laws to prosecute those who slander another.

He somehow conflates opinion with lying.

I could say H. Sterling Burnett is a jerk, and all he could do would be to refute my statement.  He could not take me to court for my statement.  On the other hand, if I said that H. Sterling Burnett embezzled the Heartland Institute of $100,000 when he did not, then he has every right to deny me my “free speech rights” and take me to court for slander.

Check out what Wikipedia has to say about The Heartland Institute.  Among other nefarious activities they worked with " Philip Morris to question or deny the health risks of secondhand smoke and to lobby against smoking bans”.  So, if an organization denies the dangers of smoking, should we believe them when they claim there is no climate change?  They are not stating an opinion; they are lying to the public for the benefit of their paymasters.

His article was only published by two newspapers that I could find.

http://www.thegleaner.com/opinion/deniers-have-a-right-to-voice-their-opinions-3011c156-e057-4103-e053-0100007f3587-375715371.html
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/national-view/4017028-procon-should-climate-change-deniers-be-prosecuted

I hope most other papers had the common sense not to do so.

The climate scientists are the fire marshals telling theater owners there should be no smoking in their theaters.  The climate change deniers are the owners who insist their free speech rights are being denied if they can’t tell their customers there is no problem.  Guess who will be successfully prosecuted when one of those crowded theaters catches fire?

Writing to editors, authors, and other public figures

This article was "triggered" in part because of a letter I recently received and in part by the email conversation I mentioned last week with Michael Mann, author of "The Hockey Stick".

I have an unopened letter sitting on my desk.  It has no return address and the envelope is covered with a diatribe against Obama.  I generally put these unopened into the recycle bin.  Maybe I kept it as a fodder for this column.  I assure you that I will eventually put it unopened into the recycle bin.

My brief conversation with Michael Mann began with appreciation for his book and a quote that Adam Smith warned about "the denial machine" Mann mentioned.  I was surprised that the conversation went on so long; I should consider that he has many more things to think about than the wandering thoughts of an old man in Duluth.

After I finished a series of fantasy novels, I sent the author a letter of appreciation through her website.  She emailed a nice reply, but I didn’t follow up except possibly with a thank you.  I think these were all through her website because I have no copy in my mail box.

I had read a book or two by an author of military-political affairs, and I sent him an email thanking him for them.  He replied with a thank you and a suggestion for another of his books.  Then he came to Duluth and I got to meet him briefly.  I didn’t say anything significant; I’m a writer not a speaker.

And sometimes an email to an author leads to a long-standing friendship.  Some time ago I sent an appreciative email to a regular "Local View" contributor to the Duluth News Tribune.  We have some major differences of opinion, but our common ground is a basis for lunch every month or so.

Another local writer had a website that invited conversation.  I had had many email or face to face conversations with this writer.  I was surprised when he cut me off that he had more to do than have email conversations with me.  I wonder if I had written something he found offensive or if he really was very busy.  I hope he is very busy with many lucrative projects.

Over the years I've submitted many a letter to the editor or even an opinion piece.  Some of them were published; probably many more were assigned to the circular file.  But basically your letter or article should be timely, concise, and based on "facts".  I put "facts" in quotes because “facts” are too often some group's talking points rather than some observable set of information.  The hard part is that a fact in one situation is not a fact in a similar situation.  But be forewarned, many editors rewrite letters to conform to the publication's guidelines.  In doing so, they can "flip" your meaning to just the opposite from what you intended.  It has happened to me at least twice in two different publications.  If you are lucky, the editor will send you a copy of his or her revision for your approval.

I have all but stopped writing to politicians.  Almost all of them have staff send a position paper.  Too often these position papers are barely related to the subject of the letter or website comment.

Probably with electronic communication, even their staffs are overwhelmed.  Count opinion for or against.  Find position paper that seems to address issue.  Send it out with politician's automatic signature.

I miss Rudy Boschwitz's replies.  Whether he agreed with my letter or not, he would send it back with a one-sentence germane comment and a smily face.  I wonder if I have any of these in my very disorganized files.

Two letters from famous people that I thought I had kept I have not been able to find in several years of trying.

One was to Alex Haley, author of Roots.  I was sysop of the Genealogy Roundtable on GEnie, GE's competitor to CompuServe.  I invited him to attend one of our weekly online chat sessions.  He responded with a kind letter declining the invitation.  I think his reason was that he was a typewriter guy and hadn't really moved to use of computers.

The other was to a well-known movie actor.  I was going to write that you should note my middle initial.  But it isn't in my byline.  It is "D".  If you are under sixty I'm sure you will have no clue to what D stands for.  Your clue is the movie Being There Shirley McLaine, Peter Sellers, and ...

I wrote to this actor posing this same question.  He wrote a delightful reply.  Again, I can't find it in my messed up files.

What’s the point of all this bragging of hobnobbing with famous people?  Well, my original title was How to write to editors, authors, and other public figures.  With my catalog of correspondents this article became longer and longer, and it had only a nod about how to write a letter to the editor or an opinion piece.

So, here is my brief advice on corresponding with a famous person.

If you have something important or interesting to write, don’t hesitate to do so.  Many appreciate comments from their readers, customers, or constituents.  For many famous people, you can easily find an email address or website that takes comments. You only need three guidelines: be polite, be factual, and be brief.

Also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-07-23 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/07/23/5661_writing_to_editors_authors_and_other_public

Software glitch gives ambiguous headline

The following is from the Olive edition of the Duluth News Tribune, 2014-12-19:

leaderskilledinairstrikes Three top Islamic State

This is the headline given when one asks for an expanded view of an article.

Just what does is mean?

“Leader skilled in air strikes”

or

“Three top Islamic State leaders killed in airstrikes”

This kind of headline frequently appears in the Olive Editions of both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune.  The Olive Edition is the newspaper as printed with the user benefit of expanding a page or a given article.  Really neat when it works.  But too often, a page is blank for several minutes.

The irony is that both the Duluth News Tribune and Star Tribune frequently have front page stories about problems that MNSure may be having.  Granted, this garbled headline problem is a minor nuisance compared to delays in accessing MNSure, but...

Back to the original Constitution? Be careful what you ask for!

In April, I submitted a letter to the Duluth News Tribune in response to a letter suggesting we should return to the original Constitution.  I think the complaint was all the various Supreme Court decisions.

My letter hadn’t been published and I assumed it was not going to be.  But then the Chuck Frederick, the opinion page editor, found some space, cleaned his desk, and published more than the usual number of letters on May 13.

Mine was:

A letter writer recently stated, “Maybe we should go back to the original Constitution and what it stood for.”  Be careful what you ask for.  There is plenty that was added that many would not like to see removed: Bill of Rights, abolition of slavery, and the vote for women.

Even those who were in politics at the time of the writing of the Constitution could not agree on its meaning.  Thomas Jefferson (in France during the Convention) and John Adams had a long falling out over its meaning.  Adams wanted a strong central government; Jefferson feared a strong central government.

I had thought of submitting a short additional paragraph, but never found a round tuit.  That paragraph is:

Could these views on the central government be influenced by the facts that Adam abhorred slavery and Jefferson was a slave “owner”?

Do these attitudes still persist?  In the South there is still lingering resentment against desegregation.  In  West there is resentment against restrictions on using public resources.

I am an Olive grinch

How readable do you think the following is?

Yet some parameters endure. Phi losopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Not precisely, perhaps, but human history, both personally and collec tively, is definitely thematic. And you didn’t record it, you either won’ recall it, or your memory of it will faulty. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, “The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree the primeval forest which fell with out being heard.” Perhaps that’s why launched the log — it made me seem more real. Or maybe the record is akin to scratches on the wall of a prisoner’ cell, tallying the days until release.

What kind of editor would let this text see print, what with dropped letters/punctuation and split words?  Other examples have bold subtitles moved into the text and many other distracting errors.

This is an example of “To err is human; to really screw up it takes a computer”.  The above is from “The snares and lairs of memory” by Peter M. Leschack in the Star Tribune, 4 May 2014, as displayed when expanding an article from the facsimile page of the Olive edition.

The actual printed text is:

Yet some parameters endure. Philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not precisely, perhaps, but human history, both personally and collectively, is definitely thematic. And if you didn’t record it, you either won’t recall it, or your memory of it will be faulty. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote, “The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.” Perhaps that’s why I launched the log — it made me seem more real. Or maybe the record is akin to scratches on the wall of a prisoner’s cell, tallying the days until release.

The human editor didn’t make any mistakes, but the computer editor really screwed up.  This happens all the time in the Olive edition of both the Duluth News Tribune and the Star Tribune.  The Olive edition displays a facsimile of the printed newspaper.  You can easily “flip” the pages or jump to a section.  You can click on an article to expand it.

The expanded view has the advantage of bringing together segments printed on different pages and of having larger text.  But all the “translation” errors are distracting.  Did the author really write that?  Why is that unrelated bold text doing in this section?  And on and on.

This computer-induced garble is present in both the iPad and the laptop/desktop versions of the software.

Isn’t this a wonderful example of “business efficiency”?

Oh, well!  It still beats going to the corner with the right change in all kinds of weather or calling up to cancel when we’re out of town.  And I can easily make clippings of things on which I want to base another one of these whining entries.