internet

Yeah, I know, I know. We can all think of several reasons to consider McCain a troll. But I mean this in a slightly different sense. As pointed out by the ever-fantastic Elizabeth of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, whose olfactory delights are an ongoing obsession fascination of mine:

On McCain's "Blog Interact" page, where the candidate's supporters can find recommended blogs of all ideological stripes, the campaign is actually awarding points for trolling.

Here's the text from said page:

Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain's policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the United States and we need you to tell others why.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center.

McCain's site helpfully points out a few sites his supporters might go troll, and lists talking points that are decidedly lacking in "points," i.e. the insipidly generic "John McCain will put the national interest ahead of partisanship, he will work with anyone who sincerely wants to get this country moving again."

This, my friends, is trolling. Running around posting your agenda without any intent of actually joining in the conversation? Purposefully posting to sites with a contradictory point of view without, again, any interest in discussion? Trolling. Which is unacceptable on several levels — not least because it suggests something deeply unpleasant about how McCain wants to engage with those who disagree with him: with blanket statements and talking points, without any regard for the conversational topics at hand or any interest in listening. Just pour it on until it sticks.

But hey. At least — as we all know by now — McCain is aware of the internet.

Is it better for global warming to read a newspaper online or in the dead tree edition?

Considering the electricity required to power computers on both ends of the internet, a Swedish study says it may be about the same.

"It should be noted that with a reading time of 30 minutes per day the environmental impact of the web based newspaper was often in the same range as the printed newspaper environmental impact, sometimes higher sometimes lower. The same result was presented by Hischier and Reichart (2001) in their comparison between printed newspaper, television and internet. Hischier and Reichart showed that using the Internet for around 25 minutes or watching the television for roughly 1.5 hours gave environmental impact of similar magnitude as a printed newspaper."

The 2007 report from the Centre for Sustainable Communications at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm does say that mass use of more energy efficient readers now in development could change the environmental equation in favor of the internet.

The Swedish report could be biased by the nation's large pulp industry. Of course newspapers also have a strong bias. They haven't figured out how to make much money on the internet and without the dead tree editions, they'd go bankrupt. That could save a lot of trees falling in the forest. But, then again, if no one was around to report on it, who would hear about it?