In Some Ways Better, In Some Ways Worse

Went climbing with the Climbing Meetup Group today, which I hadn't yet had the chance to do: ( Courses )

I left my jacket at the gym and hadn't noticed until after taking the last shuttle to the T. But someone else had left a backpack and gone back with the shuttle to retrieve it, so I called the gym and had them send my jacket back to the T station with that person. Good thing, too, the night had gotten cold. It seems the trees are still mostly green, but fallen leaves are already starting to crunch underfoot.

I bought train tickets home for Thanksgiving. I really need to get that sort of travel figured out several months in advance, things start to sell out by October.

There's more I want to write about, but I really need to get some sleep.

If You Want a Public Option, Oppose Baucus-Grassley

From cos, a post explaining why the Baucus-Grassley proposal is bad and arguing that the best bet for those who want healthcare reform is to have it killed in committee. The summary version:

1. The bill doesn't include a public option, the more traction it gets, the easier it will be for the Blue Dogs to preempt a bill that did have a strong public option.
2. The bill has a lot of concessions that are simply bad ideas and won't win any bipartisan support anyways.
3. The "free rider" provisions in the bill will encourage employers to avoid employing those who need employment the most (low-income people, especially those with families).
4. A majority of both the House and Senate are willing to support a public option.
5. Including the Senate Majority Leader.
6. Thank the representatives who demand a public option.
7. If one of your senators is on the Finance Committee, call them and tell them to vote no on the Baucus-Grassley bill. In particular, the Democrats on the committee who voted for Schumer's public option amendment:
   • Massachusetts: John Kerry - 202-224-2742
   • New York: Chuck Schumer - 202-224-6542
   • New Jersey: Robert Menendez - 202-224-4744
   • Delaware: Tom Carper - 202-224-2441
   • Michigan: Debbie Stabenow - 202-224-4822
   • West Virginia: John D Rockefeller - 202-224-6472
   • New Mexico: Jeff Bingaman - 202-224-5521
   • Florida: Bill Nelson - 202-224-5274
   • Washington: Maria Cantwell - 202-224-3441
   • Oregon: Ron Wyden - 202-224-5244

I Received a Free ANGRY BLOG POST From THE INTERNET

In response to this post from solarbird:

The FTC evidently has a new version of their policy on endorsements in advertising, revised to account for product reviews online. The meat of the controversial bit is as follows (for the whole policy in question, read p. 75-81, examples 7-9 are the ones relevant to "new media"):

When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed.

So, if your audience doesn't expect that you received a certain sort of compensation (including review copies of a product), and there's a reasonable chance that will affect how they react, you should disclose that.* The company giving you the compensation should ask you to disclose that and complain if you neglect to.

This is a simple, common-sense regulation. And this is great for bloggers, since it means that the FTC will be going after deceptive astroturf campaigns, which are a bane to the credibility of honest reviewers.

The regulations in question don't make a distinction between forms of media, except in how that affects the expectations of the audience. If people expect newspaper reviewers to receive review units but not bloggers, than non-disclosure in the latter case may really be deceptive in the way the former isn't.

Thus, while I now have a low opinion of Richard Cleland's being-interviewed skills, I think these regulations are good, and I don't expect a collapse in the sending-free-stuff-to-people-for-review industry as a result. Worst case, review units will more often come with notes along the lines of "please mention you received this for free if you review it" and more reviews will start with "I received a free [product] from [company]".

* Alternately, you could forgo compensation... but disclosing that you were compensated is probably much, much easier (and more beneficial for you).