Livemocha and language learning.

Posted on February 5, 2012

If you’ve hung around this blog any amount of time, you probably know I’m into languages. I don’t know what the fascination is or where it comes from, yet I have it. Since this blog started, I’ve taken classes in Japanese, French, and Mandarin Chinese, plus a bunch of classes relating to linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Prior to blogging, nearly lost to the mists of time, I took Russian at Pikes Peak Community College in the 1990′s and Spanish during sixth grade (the only non-English class I failed, FWIW).

A few weeks ago I went to Norway for vacation, and for all practical purposes, I didn’t know a word. I planned the trip last summer, and picked up some ‘Learn Norwegian’ type books during the fall, but never really got into them. They were work, and I wasn’t that interested. Instead, it seemed like an interesting idea to go to a country where I knew no one, and where I didn’t know the language. How far would I get only knowing English? Pretty far, actually. It was a complete waste of time (just kidding, Norway ;-). As mentioned in a previous post, English seems to be a very common second language in Norway. Still, I picked up a few Norwegian words and phrases while visiting, which sort of gave me the impetus to learn more. I’m hoping to go back to Norway for TIFF again next year, so I’m planning on preparing.

I thought about learning Norwegian, and thought about the problems of learning a ‘foreign’ language in general. Language is a ‘brittle’ sort of knowledge. If it isn’t used, it falls apart. It is most definitely not like riding a bike. I’ve taken language classes and done very well in them, but the language doesn’t really stick. Language classes are good if you want to learn on a schedule. The homework is usually useful in helping to understand a language, and the classes themselves are good because the teacher can help with pronunciations. The problem is that aside from homework and classes, there isn’t much opportunity to use (practice) the language. Thus it doesn’t stick.

‘Learn X language’ type books, CD’s, DVD’s, and software are cheaper than taking classes, and you can learn at your own pace, but as hinted at above, motivation is a factor. If a person is prone to procrastination, as I am, then learning a language this way is pretty futile. If a person takes the time to actually do the work, there are still problems. While you can say the words, there is no one who can judge if you are saying them correctly. As I’ve found in French and Norwegian, even though they use the same alphabet as English, the pronunciations are often different. Someone learning a language this way might do a book full of exercises and feel pretty confident about their ability, but when they go to a country where the language is actually spoken, they are likely to be dismayed.

IU doesn’t offer Norwegian language classes at the IUPUI campus (let alone any other Scandinavian language), and I’m too cheap/poor to hire a tutor. Back to pondering. While in Norway, I looked on the web and found a possible solution: Livemocha (a name after my own heart).

Livemocha offers free lessons in over 30 languages and is (slowly) adding more. It’s a bit like a game. You create an account and start taking an online class (i.e. Basic Norwegian (Bokmal)). Each class has units, which are subdivided into lessons. Each lesson starts with a “learning” segment: a series of words, phrases, or sentences, along with appropriate images, the English translation, and audio of a native speaker. Finishing the “learning” segment, the lesson is 50% complete. After this is the “review” segment, which is a bit like a free-form quiz. They supply an audio clip or some text, and you choose the most appropriate image. The “review” section also has a “magnet” exercise, where they supply the image and the English phrase, along with a bunch of words in the chosen language, and you have to assemble the right words in the right order. This is probably the best type of exercise in the “review” section because it actually causes you to think. Finish this section and the lesson is done, but they also have some “skill builder exercises” for reading, listening, and a quiz. They aren’t required, but they are helpful. By finishing lessons, you earn points, which is where the game part comes in.

Another way to earn points is to help others learn English (or any other language you happen to know). Some classes, such as English, are more advanced and they offer students the opportunity to submit writing and speaking exercises to native speakers. These members can correct and/or encourage the students. They can submit text or audio comments. As someone who studied TESOL, it’s also pretty satisfying. By reviewing lessons, you earn points (bonus points if you are the first reviewer). The students can also rate whether you are helpful or very helpful. Sadly, they don’t offer these exercises for Norwegian. Not yet, at least.

Livemocha also offers the opportunity to chat with others around the world, so you can practice with them or help them learn. I haven’t done that yet, because my Norwegian is still very poor, and I’ve been having microphone problems. When I fix the latter next week, I’ll start chatting. The nice thing about the chatting is that it doesn’t limit you to only those who know the language you’re learning. You can chat with anyone on there.

This week I really got into Livemocha and learned quite a bit of Norwegian, though still very basic. When I left Norway, about all I could say was tusen takk and lufthavn. Now I can write Jeg heter Michael og jeg kommer fra Indianapolis. Jeg sitter ved bordet og skriver.

As with other methods of language learning, Livemocha has it’s drawbacks. The quality of the audio clips in the lessons varies widely. It sounds like most of them are done by native speakers on their home computers. That’s not a huge problem, but I wish there was a way for learners to flag the ones with poor audio.

While Livemocha isn’t learning by rote, it’s pretty close. For every four samples during the review and skill building, they use the same set of four pictures, asking you to choose the best one. If you know one or two words in a sentence, it’s possible to eliminate most of the wrong images. Also, by the fourth question, you know which image will be the correct one, regardless of whether you know the words. It’s gaming the system. It would be better if the images and language samples were more randomized.

They don’t teach the rules of a language. I’ve finished two units/eleven lessons, and I haven’t seen any explanation of when to use en, ei, or et in Norwegian. I assume it has something to do with masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, but it hasn’t been explained. This makes me think Livemocha isn’t the be-all/end-all of language learning, but that it should be an adjunct to other forms of language learning.

The writing and speaking exercises are only for a small portion of the languages they teach. I understand. Only a few languages on Livemocha have large numbers of native speakers who are members, and they probably need a certain amount who are willing to help people who want to learn them by reviewing submissions. It’s understandable, but still a bit frustrating.

Vacation: Day 2

Posted on January 17, 2012

Food: There is a restaurant called Egon attached to the hotel, which is where the free breakfast is served. The breakfast was sort of setup like a continental breakfast found at some hotels in the US, but some of the food choices are differnt. No pastries in sight, but there were several loaves of fresh baked bread, which the customer slices themselves. The bread was so fresh that it was still warm. Coffee, juice, tea, and milk were available, as were different types of fruit. Strangely, they had a selection of cold cuts and cheese on the buffet table. They had three different egg preparations, and some sausages, but not the breakfast sausage found in the US. These were sort of like Vienna sausages or mini hot dogs.

I went to the same place for lunch, but it was a different experience because I had to pay this time. I grabbed a menu and sat down, then waited for a waitress. After a few passed by me without asking for my order, I began to think I did something wrong (for Norway). After watching some other customers, I found out that you have to go to the cash register to order, and you pay when ordering. I guess it cuts down on people skipping out on the bill. I had a chicken BLT, but it came with mayonnaise, even though I said “no mayonnaise” when ordering. It was tasty despite that (they didn’t go overboard with the mayo). It came with a couple slices of melon, but I can’t figure out what type. The rind was reminiscent of a cantalope, but the flesh was pale green; paler than a honeydew melon. I have to admit I can’t tell much of a difference between the taste of a honeydew and a cantalope, and this melon tasted much like them, though maybe a bit more bland.

Since I noticed they had pizza on the menu, I went back to Egon’s for dinner. They have a variety of pizzas available in 30 cm and 40 cm sizes. Sadly, I lacked a frame of reference for the sizes. I know that one inch is 2.54 cm, but I’m not so good at math to quickly apply the conversion. I could have Googled it, but I didn’t bring my smartphone to the restaurant. For your benefit, 30 cm is about 12″ and 40 cm is about 16″.

References: I’m learning that it’s important to have frames of reference for different things. Money, for example. There’re about 5 – 7 krone to the US dollar, so when I see a price in krone, I divide it by five to come up with an approximate cost in dollars. Still, I sometimes wonder if I’m getting it right. Instead of doing conversions for everything, it’s probably better to just remember the approximate conversions for the krone denominations. One krone is about 15 cents (15 is easier to remember than 16.7); ten krone is about a buck fifty; 20 kr is about three dollars; 100 nok is about 15 dollars (at this point, it’s easier for me to remember 100 nok is about $20); 200 krone is about 40 bucks; 500 kr is about $80; 1000 kr is about $160, 2000 kr is about $320. Aside from those references, anything else I need to know, I just look online. It’s a good thing to keep the figure in mind. I forgot about them when I spent 25 kr for a Pepsi in a vending machine; 25 kr is about 4 bucks! It makes the three dollars I spent on a Coke at O’Hare seem reasonable, and the $1.50 for a Coke on the IUPUI campus seem downright cheap.

Vacation: Day 1

Posted on January 16, 2012

Sunday January 15, 2012

Impressions of Tromsø, Norway on the first day

Light: When the plane arrived around noon local time, it was still sort of light out. Not bright and sunny, because it’s too far North, but light enough that it could easily be mistaken for any other rainy town.

Town: Technically, Tromsø is a city, because of it’s population (over 60,000 people) but it feels like a town, so that’s probably the term I’ll keep using.

Weather: Despite being over 200 miles north of the Arctic circle, Tromsø isn’t that cold. Right now, it is about 36ºF, while it is 31ºF in Indianapolis. It’s raining here at the moment, but not badly. Lots of sidewalks and streets have compacted ice on them. Like Indianapolis (or many other cities that get snow), not everyone seems to take the time to remove snow from their sidewalks, so it gets compacted, melts some, then freezes, becoming icy.

They don’t use salt on the roads or sidewalks here. They use some sort small gravel to provide traction for walking or driving. Interestingly, I saw (I heard it before seeing it) a city bus with tire chains. If the city were level, they probably wouldn’t be needed, but this town is very hilly (reminds me of Manitou Springs at the foot of Pike’s Peak).

Because it’s raining, that means clouds, which means I can’t see the Aurora Borealis :-(. That’s one of my main reasons for coming here, so I hope it clears soon. As an aside, I saw a lighting and furniture store called Northern Lighting a few blocks from the hotel ;-)

n00b: This is my first time travelling overseas. I’ve been to Canada before, but that was years ago, and it was enough like the US that I didn’t appreciate many differences. The differences in Norway (and presumably the rest of the world) are quite pronounced.

The elevator in this hotel (The Thon Polar) is tiny, about 1m x 1m (and I thought the elevator in my apartment building was small), but the most surprising thing is that it says it can hold six people. I wouldn’t think you could fit four people in the elevator, let alone six. The elevator door is pretty weird, too. It’s like a normal door with hinges. You open the door, step into the elevator, press the button for the floor you want to go to, then a set of sliding doors automatically closes off the elevator and it starts moving. Still, it’s faster than the elevator in my apartment building.

The hotel room has a card key lock, which isn’t unusual for hotel, but in order to turn on any lights in the room, you have to put the card key on a special holder near the door. No card, no light. Since you have to take the card with you when you leave the room, I’m guessing this is an energy efficiancy thing, but I don’t know for sure.

The hotel room is small. Maybe it’s a space-efficiancy or energy-efficiency issue, but it’s probably half the size of typical moetl room in the US. I don’t mean to denigrate this hotel. I think in the US, many hotel rooms are probably too big for the occupants. That said, I have a single room, and doubles are available, so maybe the size has more to do with the room you stay in.

The hotel has free wifi (Yes!), and there is a computer in the lobby for people to use in case they didn’t bring a laptop or lost their luggage.

Oddly, there’s no alarm clock. Good thing my smartphone has one (and is set to the local time zone).

Hardwood floors in the hotel room itself. The bed is very comfortable, though it was sort of difficult for me to sleep since I’m used to the white-noise of the central air/heat of my apartment. Air conditioning isn’t needed here, and the heat comes from a radiator. As a bonus, the radiator has a rack on it, presumably for drying wet clothes.

As with the rest of the room, the bathroom is also small. I was hoping to take a bath but this room only has a shower. Despite this, the bathroom has a heated floor, which is awesome.

Free coffee and tea in the lobby and free breakfast in the morning (nice amenities). None of the ubquitous ice buckets found in the US though. I haven’t seen an ice machine, either.

There is a television, but it only has seven channels. One of them is the BBC, which may be included to prevent total culture shock of the guests. Lots of non-Norwegian language programming on Norwegian channels (i.e. 60 Minutes, House, Top Gear). Also, they apparently don’t have a problem with full-frontal male or female nudity, but it is late at night (night being a relative term this far north of the Arctic Circle). It’s a Swedish show, but it’s on NRK1, which is broadcast TV, not cable. (at the moment, I’m watching some Norwegian guys launching a mannequin attached to some sort of homemade rocket. The show’s title translates as “Don’t Try This At Home”)

Something unexpected is that the floors are numbered similar to how they’re numbered in the US. In some countries, the first floor is the second story, with the first story being called the main floor (or something similar). Here, the first floor is the first floor.

Brands: While there are lots of small shops here, there are some familar brands as well. I’ve seen a 7/Eleven, a Burger King, and a Shell gas station. Most of the cars on the road are the same manufacturers as seen in the US, but some of the models are different. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen any American car models or brands, but I haven’t been paying atention that much.

In stores, many of the brands are ones that can be found in the US. A few blocks away is an independent Apple retailer.

Language: Despite not speaking any Norwegian, I haven’t had a very hard time making myself understood in English. I wonder what sort of English language education the people of Norway have. It might be that I’m just lucky, or because there is a linguistics institute at the University here. Or maybe the people here have a fair amount of English language education. Or maybe it’s because of the Norwegian-subtitled, English language TV shows.

Money: Norway’s currency is the krone, and the exchange rate usually runs between five to seven krone to the US dollar. Simplfying things, the krone is the smallest unit of currency; there is no krone equivalent of cents, so everything is priced as whole krone [edit: they do have a 50 øre coin, but it's being withdrawn from circulation later in 2012]. Paper currency is for 50 kr or larger, while lower denominations are in coins. Unlike US bills, different denominations of paper currency are different sizes. It must be handy for people who are blind or visually impaired.

Electric: Around the world there are different standards for electricity and electrical outlets. I planned ahead and got a world travel kit from Apple. However, I didn’t plan well enough because I don’t have an adapter for the battery charger for my camera. I have an extra battery, which is charged, but I don’t know if both will last for the week.

Sadly, because the power requires the card key, I can only charge devices when I’m in the room.

Geography: Tromsø is very hilly. The area where I am is an island, but parts of Tromsø are on the mainland(?). The surrounding area is hilly/mountainous. To give you an idea how hilly it is, the taxi took a tunnel to get from the airport to the hotel, even though they’re both on the same island (the driver gave the option of taking the long way, a literal scenic route, but said the tunnel was the quicker route). If you have to take a tunnel to get from one part of town to another, you’re probably in a very mountainous (or watery) area.

I’ve heard of fjords (see Slartibartfast), but never seen one in person. The water surrounding this island reminds me more of a bay or harbor, but with very large hills in the surrounding area. In US terms, I think it may be like the Pacific Northwest area; mountains and water. There is even a ski area on the other side of the bay/harbor/fjord/whatever.

Time: Business hours are posted using the 24 hour clock, instead of the usual (for an American) 12-hour am/pm clocks. At least one piece of military training will come in handy.

Speaking of military, I saw a Norwegian soldier sitting outside a hotel earlier. I wonder if there is a military base nearby. I haven’t seen any police or police cars yet.

Business: I’ve only seen a small part of Tromsø, so while I’ve seen lots of shops, it’s hard to get an idea about what businesses drive the local economy.

There is a university, and univerities in general help support local economies by attracting students and faculty. They bring in people, who bring in money.

There are quite a few boats in the water, so the town has a maritime industry (fishing, tours, etc). I think there is also a connection with the North Sea oil rigs, but I might be mistaken.

Down the street is the Mack Brewery (the northernmost brewery in the world). It’s a pretty big brewery, so they must make a lot of money.
Slight aside…

Someone should compare the supply and demand of homegrown entertainment/culture (movies, TV, etc) with the US and other countries. So far, in watching the TV, I’ve seen a lot of English language programming, a Swedish TV show and Norwegian news.

In the US, there is a surplus of English language programming to meet the needs of the US population. In the US, there is also a fair amount of non-English language programming, though I don’t know if it’s sufficient for the population they are trying to reach (how do you measure this?)

In Norway, (based on what I see on the TV in one hotel, in one city), it seems like there probably isn’t enough Norwegian language programming to meet the needs of the population, given the amount of prgramming from other countries. Maybe this could be measured by the amount of subtitled (not close-captioned) content.

How to measure the demand of programming in a specific language? By the number of requests or complaints to networks or TV channels? Ask the people at the networks (i.e. NRK) why they don’t air more Norwegian programming? Ask them if there is a demand for Norwegian programming?

What about Ireland? How much Irish language vs English language programming do they air? Is there more demand for English language programming or Irish language programming? Is there a regional difference?

How do you identify a surplus of content vs. a deficit of content? One way to identify a deficit or a surplus is to look at what type of programming the have late at night or early in the morning. If a TV station goes off the air at a certain time, it might indicate they think the number of potential viewers isn’t worth spending money acquiring or developing content.

Fluidinfo and social tagging

Posted on April 3, 2011

For the past few weeks, I’ve been messing around with Fluidinfo as a result of the O’Reilly Fluidinfo Writable API Competition. My entry to the competition can be found tucked away over here. Fluidinfo was started in 2009, so it’s still early in what it plans to do, but I think the competition is one way for it to get the word out and raise its profile.

What is Fluidinfo? It’s sort of hard to describe, because it’s potentially different things to different people. One of the obvious comparisons is to Wikipedia, so I’ll use that as a starting point. Where Wikipedia has articles, Fluidinfo has objects…

Wikipedia has an article on George Orwell’s 1984. The article describes the background of the book, has information on the principal characters, the book’s themes and so on. The article is informative and people who read the article also have a chance to edit it, but that’s probably the extent of their interaction with the article.

Fluidinfo has an object on the same book. On this object, users can add tags they think are relevant, such as whether they read it or whether they thought it was any good. The object in Fluidinfo doesn’t have a synopsis of the book or information on the characters, but there’s nothing to stop someone from tagging the object with this information.

Fluidinfo is more or less built on the idea of shared data. Most companies build their own databases, which are walled gardens. These databases are their intellectual property and they can decide who has access to the data and what sort of limits they want to place on it. But with Fluidinfo, a bookstore might tag the 1984 object with how many copies they have in stock and have another tag that show which shelf it’s on. They could extract this data from Fluidinfo and send it to their website, making it useful for their customers. They could also extract the data to their inventory system, making it useful for their employees. They could also tag the object with the name of their supplier, making it more useful still. It’s not a walled garden because anyone can read the tags placed by other users. Someone browsing Fluidinfo can find out which users thought 1984 was a good book versus those who didn’t think highly of it, or they can find out if their local bookstore has copies of it.

While Fluidinfo’s objects are very different from Wikipedia’s articles, there are some other differences as well. The first difference is the scale or scope. Wikipedia has been around for years and has millions of articles. Fluidinfo has been around a couple of years and has nowhere near the number of objects (thousands, maybe tens of thousands). This is probably also tied to the number of users. Wikipedia has a very large and active user base and thousands of new articles are created every day. If I had to guess, I think the Fluidinfo user base might be a few dozen people at the moment – I don’t have this information, so I’m basing it one the number of usernames (namespaces) I’ve seen when browsing objects. Still, every venture starts small. Even Amazon and Google probably had a few dozen users at some point.

Another big difference between Wikipedia and Fluidinfo right now is how difficult it is to find things in Fluidinfo. Objects are actually identified by an alphanumeric sequence. What makes them easier to find is the about tag. When I was looking for the object for 1984 earlier, I did a query in the Fluidinfo Explorer, which was fluiddb/about matches “orwell”. It would have been easier if I could have just typed orwell or 1984. This is due to Fluidinfo’s alpha status. In their faq’s, they note that text matching isn’t available yet, but should be in the future.

Every object in Fluidinfo has an about tag. This is basically the “name” of the object. Fluidinfo will still identify objects by the alphanumeric sequence, but people (users) will undoubtedly use the about tag to find things. As an example, Fluidinfo identifies the 1984 object as a78d77ce-a055-40e3-97a9-de4223858bd8, while the about tag is much easier to understand: book:nineteen eighty four (george orwell).

As an aside, there’s a very good blog that’s largely about the about tag. It’s written by one of the earlier and most active users – he was responsible for entering the Guardian 1000 books into Fluidinfo. A lot of the posts, at least the ones that most interest me, are the ones that talk about the conventions of adding data to Fluidinfo. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time at Wikipedia probably knows about disambiguation pages and redirects. They solve a lot of the clutter and organizational issues – someone searching for Mercury might be looking for the element, the planet, a car brand, or the mythological character. The author of the About Tag blog has spent a lot of time on these ideas and his blog serves as sort of a style manual for the about tag.

I think Fluidinfo has a lot of promise, but there’s a lot of work to be done. For my part, I’ll probably be seeding it with some more new objects (books and movies, probably) and maybe writing an app or two to pull stuff out of Fluidinfo, just to show what can be done with it.

Egypt

Posted on February 3, 2011

Like many people, over the past week or so I’ve been following the events in Egypt via online news sites. It’s strange, because Egypt is so far away and I have no connections there, but it’s fascinating in the same way that watching the August coup attempt in the Soviet Union was fascinating.

As I said, I don’t have any connections over there, so I’ve sort of been ambivalent about it all. The protesters are fighting for democracy – that’s good. I can relate to that. But I also wondered if Hosni Mubarak is really that bad. Yes, he’s been in power for a long time – three decades, but each country has their political traditions, so who am I to judge. He supports Middle East Peace™, mostly plays nice with Israel, and supports the War on Terror™. He’s our guy in Egypt.

The largest opposition group in the Egyptian parliament is the Muslim Brotherhood, who would like to turn Egypt from a secular nation into an Islamic one, like Iran. Bad as Mubarak may be, I wonder what would happen if the Muslim Brotherhood came to power. Thinking about that unappealing prospect reminded me of the old saying “Better the Devil you know…”.

After a time, the protests seemed to have produced results. Egypt got its first vice-president in decades and Mubarak said he wouldn’t stand for re-election. However, the elections are scheduled for September and many protesters worry he won’t keep his word. Still, it seems like a good compromise. Is it too much to ask people to step back and wait for the elections?

Then I read this. (Hmph. His site is suspended now, so here’s a mirror of the article on Google Docs. I’ll post a mirror here if it continues to be a problem elsewhere).

For most of the article, (cheekily-named) Sandmonkey explains why they are protesting. They’re fighting for democracy and an end to corruption. It’s not about the Muslim Brotherhood, because they are still a minority and they’re sort of Johnnie-come-latelies to the whole thing. They fear if they leave now, the Mubarak supporters will eventually come for them.

The most powerful paragraph is the last. Sandmonkey wrote:

The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay “because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people”. This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.

Damn.

The passion with which they are fighting for democracy humbles me. They are my heroes.

Review Haiku – #amazonfail

Posted on April 12, 2009

What’s Amazon Rank?
Protect people from ‘bad’ books
Can’t read if can’t see

Amazon Rank at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

More info in my previous post here.

How Amazon failed authors and customers

Posted on April 12, 2009

Probably the best place to start is here, with Mark Probst’s description about how Amazon has treated LGBT books – by delisting them from sales ranks. He points out the books were lumped categorized as ‘adult’ even if they had nothing to do with erotica. Meta-writer has been collecting a list of the delisted books, showing that it includes non-fiction books dealing sexuality.

So the Twitterverse has sort of exploded in #amazonfail. Reactions range from regret, anger, and disbelief. Generally, I like Amazon, but this idea is as misguided as it is misapplied. Doing my own research shows the delisting is inconsistent – quite a few books have different editions, so some editions appear to be delisted, while others are not. Still, it’s hard to see how Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Story of O can be delisted, while Tropic of Cancer still has its sales rank. Even some editions of Brokeback Mountain have been delisted. What delisting means is that it doesn’t matter how well a book sells, Amazon will not list it if they think it is ‘adult’ themed. If a book is not listed, it won’t show up in a general search of a topic, or it will appear very low in the search rankings.

I look forward to Amazon correcting, or at least clarifying their position. It’s a PR mess, so I expect they’ll get on it soon.

In the meantime, while I’m not a big believer in boycotts, I’m beginning to think Amazon doesn’t want my money, because they apparently don’t value my taste in books. Twitter hasn’t failed, because the twitterers have offered many alternatives, such as:

• Amazon Bookstore – A feminist bookstore in Minnesota
• Powell’s Books – An independent bookstore in Oregon
• Tattered Cover – One of the biggest things I miss about Colorado *sniff*

Of course, there are many, many more alternatives. Just check your local phone book and see.

Can’t forget to mention Smart Bitches Trashy Books idea about Amazon Rank, and here is a direct link to the definition itself. You can spread the word by passing this URL http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/ to your friends.

Regulation Play

Posted on February 11, 2009

Been hearing and reading about the stimulus, recovery, and tax breaks lately, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything about regulations or oversight. Without them, the government is just pissing away the money. Attaching strings to bailout money is one thing – it’s a condition of the loan. But what about the other companies? They are free to exhibit the carelessness that got their competitors into trouble. Chronic greed and the opportunity for short-term profits might cause them to make bad decisions.

I would hope that government regulations can temper the greed or force a reality check, but they need to be enacted before they can do anything.

Pragmatism

Posted on January 18, 2009

In these days prior to the inauguration, it’s not surprising there are tons of articles about him. There are two articles worth noting, however.

Obama dominates ‘King Sunday’ at black churches – Monday the 19th is Martin Luther King Day and Tuesday, January 20th is Inauguration Day. In predominantly black churches, the article states, Sunday the 18th was as much a celebration of Barack Obama as it was of Martin Luther King, Jr. Four decades after MLK’s assassination we will witness a partial fulfillment of his dream. It seems poignant that the United States of America will swear in Pres. Obama a day after we celebrate the Rev. King.

As challenges mount, ardor for Obama cools abroad – The title is a little misleading, since the article isn’t about people disliking him. In the face of number of challenges facing the incoming President, people are becoming more realistic in their expectations. While many things written about Obama over the past year have bordered on hagiography, people are beginning to realize he won’t be able to fix everything. Put another way, the expectations were too many and too large. “The idealism has diminished,” said Samuel Solvit, who heads an Obama support network in France. “Everyone was dreaming a little. Now people are more realistic.”

In general, I’m optimistic about the future of our country, yet mindful that we have some serious challenges ahead that will take years to solve.

Captains of industry

Posted on December 22, 2008

The true test of a ship’s captain isn’t how well he handles the ship in calm seas. The real test of a captain is how well he handles a ship during a storm.

Thinking about the multimillionaire or billionaire CEO’s whose companies are seeking government handouts, it’s possible many of them aren’t very capable at the helm. They might look good on paper if their companies were prosperous during good times, but that’s because they were able to float on the currents of a buoyant economy. The storm has come and it’s time for the executives to show their value. Will they be able to navigate the perilous straits with their companies intact, or will they wind up on the rocks? Are they the rats who leave a sinking ship, knowing it’s in trouble, or are they the captains who go down with the ship, because they bound their fate to that of the ship?

Even good captains can have bad outcomes, but as leaders they are thoughtful enough to know their decisions can affect thousands of employees, customers, and vendors. They know the consequences of bad decisions, and will keep trying to right the ship, even if it’s a lost cause.

A rat, however, thinks only of itself and can’t be trusted. They keep working as long as the money’s good, and need bonuses as motivation to do their jobs. Maybe they don’t understand bonuses ? entitlements. If a CEO requires bonuses to stay on board, the company is probably better off with someone else at the helm.

If the CEO’s can guide their companies through the turbulent seas of the global economy until they reach calmer market conditions, then those CEO’s should be rewarded for their skill. Bonuses and perks should be given to those who’ve earned them, and merely occupying a chair (CEO, COO, etc) shouldn’t be enough to earn a bonus.

Given the current economy, success will be measured by survival, not by the bottom line.

Next Page »

© Copyright gottahavacuppamocha • Powered by Wordpress • Coffee Candy is based on the Eye Candy theme.