Accurate Information. Please!

Accurate information is more appreciated than bogus information, so check out stories on your own before passing them along to others:

http://urbanlegends.about.com
www.thesmokinggun.com
www.quackwatch.org
www.straightdope.com

www.snopes.com
www.truthorfiction.com
www.museumofhoaxes.com
www.skeptic.com

Documenting Transgressions

Jennifer Saranow, writing in the Wall Street Journal, discusses how “bad parking, loud talking -- no transgression is too trivial to document online.” In some respects this can be socially beneficial, but too quickly, I fear, such postings represent the kind of over-information in which too many people are immersed. Moreover, where is the Breathing Space if everyone is a snoop?

Old Email Never Dies

AP business writer Christopher Rugaber, in a recent article, observes that “U.S. companies will need to know more about where they store e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees in the event they are sued, thanks to changes in federal rules that took effect Friday,” according to legal experts.

In other words: anything you ever email at work will be stored for evermore and may one day be used against you. “The changes, approved by the Supreme Court's administrative arm in April after a five-year review, require companies and other parties involved in federal litigation to produce ‘electronically stored information’ as part of discovery, the process by which both sides share evidence before a trial.”

A word to Breathing Space enthusiasts: if you write it and send it, your message will live on. So think twice before you hit “send.”

100 Million Websites

CNN.com: There were just 18,000 Web sites when Netcraft, based in Bath, England, began keeping track in August of 1995. It took until May of 2004 to reach the 50 million milestone; then only 30 more months to hit 100 million, late in the month of October 2006.

Three Blogs for You

If you have yet to visit my other two blogs, start Autumn off right by clicking below:

* for meeting planners: www.OpeningKeynote.com
* for the info-whelmed: www.CommunicationOverload.com

Too Many Choices: A Curse?

For too many people, an abundance of choices has become a curse, not a blessing. In the 1984 movie Moscow on the Hudson, Robin Williams portrays a Russian defector who settles in New York. He goes to the supermarket to buy some coffee. The markets he knew in Moscow were small and poorly lit. The Manhattan supermarket is dazzling. The coffee display overwhelms him – there is instant, freeze dried, dark brew, etc., in boxes, cans, and jars of different sizes and colors.

Confronted with all these choices, he has an anxiety attack, faints, falls forward, and knocks over the whole display. That scene got a big laugh, but it makes a point about our lives – too many choices. I suggests that you avoid engaging in low level decisions. If a toothbrush is available in red or green, and it's all the same to you, just grab the closest one or take the one that the sales clerk hands you.

Whenever you catch yourself making a low level decision, consider: does this really make a difference? Get in the habit of making only a few choices a day – the ones that count.

Population Woes

On a daily basis, the ever-increasing world population seemingly has little impact on our lives. After all, even though the world gains a million people every four days, what impact does it have on us if 99% of them are in India, or Asia or Africa? Yet, more people every day, in every society, all the time, in our fast-paced, high-tech society predictably yields higher levels of isolation, alienation, loss of identity, and even abhorrent behavior.

Population growth in a fast-paced world translates into more of everything in every direction. Allow me to explain: more brilliant students in school, more utterly hopeless students. More books, more plays, more movies, more philosophy, newer religions, cult groups and those at war with society. More noble thoughts, more deviant thoughts, more channel noise. A smorgasbord of information and entertainment, unprecedented in the history of the earth. Yet we each have a harder time focusing on reliable, verifiable information, and on high quality, socially redeeming, socially rewarding entertainment amidst the bland, the low brow, or the utterly vulgar.

As the U.S. population climbs to 300 million, from a benchmark 160 million in 1960, with it comes more roads, more buildings, more housing development, new zoning, new restrictions, more government, new ways to tax, and more bureaucracy. Everywhere you look, predictably more regulations, witness more forms signed by school children in order to participate in class, sports, extracurricular activities, field trips, and even volunteer opportunities.

More people on less land means predictable appreciation in real estate values. More chasing after the same economic goods. A rise in collectibles from the historic and magnificent to the recent and absurd. Greater levels of materialism and among many, the quest for greater spirituality.

The mathematics of population growth is unknown to most, spectacular to a few, and in most respects, a mystery to everyone. The Indonesian tsunami of December 26, 2004 ultimately claimed 150,000 to 160,000 lives. World population growth (live births - deaths) adds 150,000 to 160,000 people every 16 hours, in a day a quarter million people, and in a month more than seven million to the earth.

In two decades, at least six of the seven million born this month will be clamoring for jobs, some for enough to eat, some for higher education, and many for some the illusive and fleeting notion of cosmic or social justice.

For Bloggers Everywhere

Reid Goldsborough, a syndicated columnist of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway offers the following suggestions for bloggers everywhere. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com

You may quote short bits of what someone else has written, particularly if you’re providing commentary, without violating the person’s copyright.

You may report facts or ideas of others (though it’s considered plagiarism to couch them as your own).

You may use the trademarked name of a company (without the trademark symbol) unless you’re using it as the name of your own competing product or service or implying that the trademark holder endorses your content.

In criticizing another party, truth is an absolute defense against libel, but truth can be expensive to prove legally.

You can’t just stick an “In my opinion” in front of a verifiable statement for it to become opinion and protected against a libel charge.

If you don’t name a person you’re criticizing but the person is still identifiable through the context of what you say, you can still be exposed to a libel charge.

If you make up something about a company, such as finding a severed finger in the company’s chili, you can be liable for trade libel.

You may be liable for invasion of privacy if you publish private facts about another person if they’re offensive and not a matter of public concern.

If you get an unjustified cease-and-desist letter or e-mail message, consider exposing the party trying to squash your freedom of expression at the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

If you criticize your boss or company in your personal blog, even if you do so off-hours using your own computer and Internet service provider, you could be fired, legally, if you’re an “at will” employee.