Segacs's World I Know

Archive for the ‘Science and technology’ Category

A few things that have been on my mind lately:

1. Idiots are their own worst PR nightmare. Let ‘em talk long enough, they’ll shoot themselves in the foot. No need to do it for them.

2. Laziness is an addition, just like alcoholism. And it has enablers. Don’t be one. Next time someone asks you a question instead of looking it up themselves, send them this link: http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com.

3. It seems to me that people are much less shutter-happy than they were a few years ago, and are more likely to put away the camera. Has the novelty of digital allowing us to take thousands of photos worn off? Do we have photo fatigue?

4. Food really does taste better on pretty new dishes.

5. I used to think that writers were just being hyperbolic when they talked about sirens “screaming”. Now I know better. They mean it literally.

6. Summer’s not over yet. There’s still almost a month to go until NHL Preseason begins.

A new Israeli study suggests that smokers have lower IQs than nonsmokers:

According to the researchers, 28 percent of the study participants smoked at least one cigarette a day, around 3 percent said they were ex-smokers, and 68 percent had never smoked.

The smokers had significantly lower intelligence test scores than non-smokers, and this remained true even after the researchers accounted for socioeconomic status measured by how many years of formal education a recruit’s father had completed.

The average IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before entering the military.

IQ steadily dropped as the number of cigarettes smoked increased, from 98 for people who smoked one to five cigarettes daily to 90 for those who smoked more than a pack a day.

The size and scale of this study, as well as its provocative findings, are sure to generate discussion and debate among the scientific community.

I have no basis to evaluate the scientific claims, and I’m not going to try. But I’m very sceptical, for one reason: Does anyone really find it believable that 68% of Israeli teenagers have never smoked?

The study that had initially claimed a link between childhood vaccination and autism and had long since been essentially debunked as having no supporting evidence, has been formally retracted by the Lancet:

The Lancet published the controversial paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in 1998. British parents abandoned the vaccine in droves, leading to a resurgence of measles. Subsequent studies found no proof the vaccine is connected to autism.

Ten of the study’s 13 authors renounced the study’s conclusions, and The Lancet has previously said it should never have published the research. “We fully retract this paper from the published record,” its editors said in a statement on Tuesday.

Predictably, the Jenny McCarthy conspiracy theorists are dismissing this as a… you guessed it… conspiracy theory.

But, crackpots aside, hopefully this will finally parents who just want what’s best for their kids that getting them vaccinated against disease is the responsible thing to do.

Big. Huge. Potentially game-changing.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Ian Paul doesn’t think that Google will actually pull out of China. But whatever ends up happening, the implications of this statement could be huge – both for Google as a business, and for China. Stay tuned.

Why rely on information when conspiracy theories are just so much more fun?

THE swine flu scare was a “false pandemic” led by drugs companies that stood to make billions from vaccines, a leading health expert said.

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claimed major firms organized a “campaign of panic” to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic, UK tabloid The Sun reports.

He believes it is, “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century”, and has called for an inquiry.

Maybe Wodarg should go hang out with Jenny McCarthy. I bet they have loads in common.

Here’s an explanation for the unusually cold weather in parts of North America and Europe lately:

The folks who run the National Center for Atmospheric Research have a great rundown of the details of the AO Oscillation. In short, high pressure in the Arctic forces the jet stream south, and it drags cold air with it, chilling North American and northern Eurasia. In its opposite mode, those same regions tend to be much warmer. Right now, we’re in such an extreme high-pressure event that the readings have run off the scale of NOAA’s AO index. Fortunately for those hoping to warm up a bit, the AO is a weather event—it often changes states multiple times within a single season, and there’s no clear evidence linking its behavior to climate trends.

(Hat tip: Sera).

The death of opposition cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri has sparked more protests - which never really died down, despite strong-arm efforts from Ahmedinijad to stamp out dissent:

Montazeri’s death pushed Iranian authorities into a difficult spot. They were obliged to pay respects to one of the patriarchs of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the one-time heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But officials also worried that Montazeri’s memorials could become new rallying points for opposition demonstrations. The ayatollah broke with Iran’s clerical leadership and became a vehement critic, denouncing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling the postelection crackdown the work of a dictatorship.

Mourners shouted “Death to the Dictator” and other slogans in displays of anger against Iran’s ruling establishment during the procession in Qom, a city of shrines and clerical seminaries about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Tehran, witnesses said.

The Iranian election and subsequent protests were named the top Twitter news event of 2009, with #iranelection the top trending news hashtag.

‘Tis the season to be… generous.

Of course, that’s a load of hogwash. Supporting worthy causes is important year-round, not just in December, when the idealists get all imbued with holiday spirit and the cynics think about tax receipts. But for a number of reasons – habit, practicality, what have you – millions of people write out cheques to their favourite charities at around this time of year.

Or, don’t write cheques, which is what this post is all about.

An article last spring in the Chronicle of Philanthropy pointed out that online giving growth slowed in the US in 2008, after steady increases in previous years. (Canadian statistics are probably somewhat better, given our relatively stronger economy and our relative technological advancement when it comes to donations). The picture it painted wasn’t bleak, but it wasn’t pretty, either. Among other findings:

• The median percentage of all donations raised online in 2008 was a measly 0.8%. Even if you consider the 80/20 (or, some say, 90/10) rule about major gifts, that’s still ridiculously low.
• Many charities, when they think of online giving, are just converting direct mail thinking into digital, focusing on email solicitation – which, on the whole, works not at all.
• Online giving, while still growing (compared to other channels), saw slower growth – a 28% median last year compared to 42% and 45% respectively the previous two years. Even when you factor in economic conditions, that’s still a significant drop in growth rate.

All of this tells me that there is a great opportunity that is being squandered by cash-strapped charities who are seeing their traditional funding sources wane. Nobody writes cheques to pay the groceries or the heating bills anymore, why are we still expected to do so with charitable gifts?

Now, my perspective when it comes to fundraising is hardly objective, having worked in the field for a number of years. But, from a donor’s point of view and not a marketer’s, I have a few words of advice for organisations seeking donations online:

1. Make sure your website works.
   This year alone, I’ve personally encountered one website that insisted that my perfectly-valid credit card number was invalid (it claimed to accept Amex but was validating for a Visa or MasterCard number format), another that simply returned a 404 error when I hit submit, a third that – despite being a Canadian organisation – did not accept a province or postal code in the address form, and a fourth that double-charged my credit card even though I only hit ’submit’ once; I was forced to phone the organisation to get the second charge reversed.

   And, yes, before you ask, these were all major, reputable charitable organisations, not little maw and paw shops.

   Now, since I’m such a nice person and I believe in the work that these fine organisations do, I took the extra step of donating anyway, even writing cheques and mailing them in a couple of cases. But think of all the people who won’t bother going to the trouble. Now multiply that by your average gift. Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.

2. Make sure your website is professional and secure.
   Yes, it costs money to have a professionally-designed website that reflects your organisation. And believe me, I understand that you would prefer to direct that money to the work you do, and not to what many people would consider “administration” or “overhead”.

   Having said that, you aren’t going to get people to trust online giving without making a few basic strides. Up-to-date security encryption is a bare minimum when asking people to enter their credit card details. A website that actually looks like it’s run by your organisation, and not by phishing scam #2012, helps too. And, would it kill you to post updates about the work you’re doing to give the people who support it something to read? The converted online brochure with blinking text is just not going to cut it, not in 2009.

3. Make online giving easy.
   Present various donation options clearly. Use easy-to-understand forms, user-friendly navigation, and clear language. Make sure your website is easy to find, ranks highly in search results, and has clear, present donation links from the homepage. Don’t make people have to work at it.

   Really, this is simple stuff – it’s the equivalent to a business reply envelope. The easier you make the process, the more donations you’ll get.

4. Eliminate redundancy.
   If I’m giving online, I’m not also giving by mail. Or by phone. Stop wasting your postage stamps and telemarketing dollars on me; you’ve got me already, and via the most cost-effective channel you’ve got.

   If the left hand is spending money trying to convert offline donors to online while the right hand is still sending out 6.2 letters a year to existing online donors, then invest in better database maintenance because you’re wasting money, not to mention trees.

5. Be open and transparent.
   Charities often come under attack for being less-than-honest about how their funds are allocated, or what their programming priorities are. Of course, all of this information is public record, and with a little digging, you can generally check up on your favourite charities and make sure that they’re above-board.

   But this is no longer simply about posting your annual report in PDF format and calling it a day. If you’re out there in the digital space, you can expect to be called out and taken to task about your campaigns, your programs, your work and your priorities. Are you going to run scared from it and look like you have something to hide? Or are you going to embrace it and look like you have everything to gain?

6. Communication is a two-way street.
   Giving to a cause is no longer just about writing a $25 cheque and forgetting about it all year. What works with commercial marketing works with charities, too. The simple fact is, the more engaged your donors are, the more they will support you – financially, by spreading the word, by volunteering, by getting involved in myriad ways. But only if you encourage them.

   As the rest of the world declares Web 2.0 so very passé, charities are still catching onto what was standard practice online a decade ago. Sure, most major charitable organisations have a Facebook fan page these days, but how many of them really have an active, engaged online community that is supported by the charity? That’s what I thought you’d say.

   A few smart charities get it. They’re the ones looking for innovative ways to reach out to donors, through social media and other channels, encouraging true two-way conversation. But most are still resorting to the opaque, sanitized, digital version of a fundraising letter – support our great work, blah blah blah, have a nice life.

   Well, that and a buck and a half will buy you a pack of gum. If you are a charitable organisation, the people who support you are a gold mine waiting to happen. They’ll wave the flag for you, spread the word, volunteer and organise and raise money for you – all you have to do is engage them and ask them and get them involved. If you’re still just broadcasting as opposed to communicating, you’re basically telling them that you don’t want their help.

Us Canadians tend to be fairly generous people. But we’re not the same as we were thirty years ago. We don’t think the same way, we don’t act the same way, and we don’t expect the same things.

If you’re a charitable organisation soliciting donations, then you’re also a marketer, and you may have noticed that marketing has evolved quite a bit. If you’re out in front, you’re likely reaping the benefits. If not, well, nobody knows as well as you do that competition is fierce for donor dollars. Lapse behind, and you’ll miss out.

Happy December, everyone. Give early, give often.

Is Vietnam the latest country to block access to Facebook?

Since last week, it seems that way. Even though the Vietnamese government is issuing denials.

Some Vietnamese Facebook users launched a Facebook group in protest of the blockage, but as of right now it appears to only have a handful of members. Hmmm, wonder why that could be?

Of course, as Barack Obama found out last week after giving a speech in China about internet freedom, protests against censorship have an above-average risk of, well, being censored.

So, how do you like the new look?

It’s the latest in the long list of changes that have been taking place around here. The first step was my move to my own hosting at segacs.com after Geocities closed. Now, the bigger news is that I have officially migrated from Blogger to Wordpress – a move that was long overdue.

Shiny! New! Features! include:

• Improved post navigation by calendar archive, keyword search, categories and tagging
• Inline commenting, including threaded comments
• Post pages – finally! – with proper permalinks (yeah, I know, that’s so 2005…)
• Improved RSS feeds
• Updated look and feel
• … and more still to come!

Needless to say, you’ll want to update any old permalinks that you still had lying around. Redirects from old segacs.com links should be working, but I can’t do anything about broken Geocities links, unfortunately. So please update them on your end.

The actual blog migration has been a real headache, and is the result of weeks of behind-the-scenes work. And I’m not quite done yet. You may still notice some broken links or images, and I’ll be rolling out a few new features and still tweaking the look and feel in the next little while. But, I’m up and running (and I am feeling quiet proud of that accomplishment, being something of a technical neophyte and all).

Got any feedback on the new look? Any Wordpress tips? Feel free to share suggestions and advice here.