Tag archive for ‘election’
Watching and tweeting the debate tonight(1)
Now that John McCain is back on board for the debate tonight, it’s time to start making plans for watching. Some folks may gather with friends for debate parties, which is great.
But if you’re looking for alternative ways to gather with folks virtually, consider watching the debates at Current TV, either on your cable system or online here.
Current TV has teamed up with Twitter to create a stream of tweets that will appear on the screen throughout the debate. If you’re familiar with Twitter, all you need to do is include the #current hash tag in your tweet to get it into the Current TV stream.
During the conventions, I had Twitter running on my laptop and really enjoyed the interactivity and running commentary throughout the evening keynotes. Since real interactive TV appears to be years away, I found this to be a great substitute. So I’ll be watching tonight and posting my thoughts on Twitter. If you want me to see your tweets, also include @sjcobrien in your tweets.
McCain and Obama respond to Sciencedebate2008 questions(1)
It appears unlikely that we’ll get a full fledged debate focused on Science and Technology. That’s too bad. But fortunately, the folks behind Sciencedebate2008 have received responses from both major presidential campaigns to a list of 14 science questions. By way of background, Sciencedebate2008 sought to have a debate among candidates, first in the primaries, and then the general election, on science and technology issues.
Along the way, the group garnered support from hundreds of academic, industry and scientific leaders, both individuals and institutions. When it became clear that a debate was not in the cards, the group drew up the list of 14 questions from 3,400 that were submitted online. The questions cover climate change (both agree that exists and is problem); science education; global competitiveness; pandemics (Hell, Avian Flu); genetic research; and stem cells.
This last one represents perhaps the biggest contract between the two candidates, and that’s no surprise.
Of stem cell research, Obama writes:
“I strongly support expanding research on stem cells. I believe that the restrictions that President Bush has placed on funding of human embryonic stem cell research have handcuffed our scientists and hindered our ability to compete with other nations. As president, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight.”
And McCain writes:
“I oppose the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes and I voted to ban the practice of “fetal farming,” making it a federal crime for researchers to use cells or fetal tissue from an embryo created for research purposes.”
You can find the full list of questions and the candidates’ responses here.
Some other resources:
The McCain campaign technology policy is here.
And if you’re really interested in this area, then reading techPresident is a must.
Did Daily Kos ban the “babygate” blogger?(2)
(The page where the “babygate” posts originally appeared before being scrubbed.)
Over the weekend, I watched in fascination as an anonymous blogger at Daily Kos traced the potentially explosive allegations that McCain’s vice presidential pick Sarah Palin may have faked her most recent pregnancy to cover up for the fact that it was daughter who was pregnant. It looks like that’s not true, and as everyone knows now, the McCain campaign announced on Monday that her daughter, Bristol, 17, is five months pregnant.
Still, this all left me wondering how the folks behind Daily Kos handled these postings. If Daily Kos is one model for the newsroom of the future, how do they balance the freewheeling nature of a group blog with the need to maintain their reputation? What are the ethics behind this?
On Tuesday, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz posted an interview with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. Kurtz writes:
When Markos Moulitsas saw that one of the contributors to his liberal blog was accusing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of lying about her 4-month-old baby, he was a bit skeptical.
“I feel a little weird about the questions being asked,” he says. “But I also feel a little weird about saying, ‘Shut up, people.’ It takes a lot for me to step in and squash what’s on Daily Kos.”In less than 48 hours, the allegations by a Kos diarist known as ArcXIX ricocheted into the mainstream media, when John McCain’s designated running mate announced Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the father.
But it appears by Tuesday, Moulitsas and the Daily Kos community had a change of heart. All entries related to “babygate” had been taken down.
I’ve sent a note to Moulitsas in the hopes he’ll chat about all this. We’ll see. But Steve Outing had an interesting post related to the tricky ethics for traditional news outlets faced in deciding whether to cover it:
What should mainstream news organizations do with this? I think they have a responsibility to investigate it and discover the truth, and report it, whichever way this turns out. (If Palin were lying about this, it should disqualify her from holding the VP’s office, at least to my mind.)
The battle over Sarah Palin moves from the campaign trail to Wikipedia(0)
Like most folks, I had never heard of Sarah Palin until this morning when Sen. John McCain announced that she would be his running mate. So after seeing the headline on CNN.com this morning, I decided I wanted more information on the relatively obscure governor of Alaska. So I wandered on over to Wikipedia. And it was there that I stumbled across a fierce, digital battle over her Wikipedia entry.
As of the writing of this post at 1:18 p.m. West Coast time, there had already been more than 500 edits made on her entry.
Update: Many did get the Obama message, but what did they give up in return?(0)
So the Obama text message experiment at first glance fell on its face. Many people, like me, never got it. And those who did, got it in the middle of the night. Disaster, right?
Actually, no. I say that having read Matthew Stannard’s story in The San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday. Stannard notes that the real goal of the plan may have getting millions of people to voluntarily submit their cell phone numbers to Obama’s database. Read the rest of this entry »
McCain’s technology policy surfaces at last(0)
Still catching up from my week in the wilderness. But apparently last week, John McCain released an extended statement on what his technology policy would be. The release comes as polls show the race tightening between Barack Obama and McCain.
I’m still digging into it, but a few items caught my eye as being sure to excite valley tech policy wonks: Read the rest of this entry »
What tech issues should the presidential candidates be addressing?(0)
My column this Sunday will ask that question. I’ve got a few ideas of my own. But I’d like to hear yours. Please post them below and I’ll use them in a future column.
In the meantime, there was a lot of focus this week on the candidates and Silicon Valley. Read the rest of this entry »
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