Some clips of Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans show have been cited on BoingBoing via Digg. I’m not a huge fan of the show just because the belittling becomes tiresome after a time. However, I think the generalization that Canadians know more about Americans than Americans know about Canadians is true mostly because of our relative sizes and cultural influence.

It’s easy for us Canadians to know a fair amount about America. We have been exposed to American media and culture all our lives. I grew up watching PBS and ABC almost as much as CBC. I think Americans are more inward looking than Canadians (and that is NOT a good thing) partly because they are surrounded by their own self-generated culture, insulated from the effects of other nations. I think that American producers could find similarly witless Canadians. Although they’d have to look a lot harder to find them, and nobody in their target viewing market would really care.

On a lighter note:

Rick Mercer (who has his own blog) was formerly a part of a CBC satirical news show called "This Hour Has 22 Minutes ". It’s focused primarily on politics and current events. One of the all time greatest segments was when they sent recurring character Marg Delahunty to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s office in Ottawa:

After some comedic conversation (also involving Marg sitting on the arm of Chretien’s chair while he was sitting in it), she managed to get the Prime Minister to help her practice her golf swing.

So there he is, the leader of our country, standing in his office with his arms around Marg, helping her hold the club - y’know like 2 spoons in a drawer. Overcome by being cradled by the Prime Minister, Marg mocks a faint and collapses to the floor at the prime minister’s feet. Just before they cut to commercial, Jean Chretien, our then-current leader, raises the club high over his head giving the indication that he’s going to club her like a baby seal.

I remember thinking two things to myself: 1) How the hell did they convince him to do this on national television? and 2) I’m so proud that he’s got such a great sense of humour.

Where have all the great personalities in politics gone?

Two things worth commenting on (or rather complaining about) this morning:

Item 1:
Scoble posts a picture of a sign at LinuxWorld stating that those under 18 are not admitted. Smart move? Dunno. It depends on the purpose of the conference holders. But what struck me about Robert’s post was his opening line:

“Ahh, when the Open Source folks wonder why using Linux isn’t “cool” you have no further to look than this sign for the reason…”

Ok. So exactly which open source folks are wondering why using Linux isn’t “cool” ? And maybe Robert is missing the point on Linux and the open source community - that can happen when you’re working inside enemy lines for so long If the viability and success of Linux and open-source depends on conferences we are all in trouble. It’s being powered by a community. Most of which never attend conferences.

Robert goes on to write:

“…any conference where I can’t take my son and walk around is just something that’s going to have a hard time impressing me (hint: we both went to MacWorld with Dave Winer and then walked across the street and bought a Mac): ”

For me, it’s up to the organizers. If under-18’s would benefit from attending but are not allowed then it’s clearly the conference organizer’s loss - but extending that loss to open-source and Linux in general is.. well, dumb. And btw, you don’t have to buy proprietary hardware across the street from this conference. Those pc’s you’ve currently got running Windows will do just fine for Linux

Item 2:
I’ve heard Mike Arrington mention his feelings that the blogosphere seems to be more vindictive, mean and uncaring lately (just listen to the session he led at this past Bloggercon). He also points out that Nick Carr is someone who fuels this. Do I agree with Mike? Yes. And I’m not sure it’s limited to the blogosphere either. But that is another story for another time.

Now, this morning I see a post on Mike’s weblog that says simply:

Shel Israel to Dick Carr: “just sit down and shut up”

Hello? Mike? You’re lowering your standards and losing principled readers like me in the process. Take the higher road. When I read posts like this I’m inclined to unsubscribe. It’s name-calling, and not even funny name-calling. Grow up. This is exactly what you rallied against in your session at Bloggercon.

Sheesh.

From this thread about U.S./Canada relations on the zefrank forums:

On why the US & Canada aren’t the best of friends anymore…
Canada and the US used to be great friends. We got into all sorts of trouble together growing up, chasing girls, crushing fascism, drinking beers, redefining socioeconomic norms for the entire world. Then one day the US suggests we go rob a liquor store. Canada bailed and reconnected with its old friends in Europe who were busy raising families.

Interesting and funny on many levels.

Just as a little side note to my previous post about the struggle for attention:

I don’t share Seth Finklestein’s view of it: "…It’s painful to admit that you’ve wasted so much time and effort and pretty much nobody is listening…" (see the comments to Kent’s post from a week and a half ago for his full comments). Rather, I have a much more naive view…

My bloglines reader shows 7 subscribers to my blog. And 1 of those 7 is me - so I don’t count. Let’s say it’s 6. Now I have no other stats to go by, and maybe there are others who are subscribed via other means, but for the sake of argument, let’s say there are 6.

The way I look at it is that there are exactly 600% more people reading what I write than if I never blogged in the first place. Mission successful.

Ahh, the joys of not being in the game….

With all the fighting about the neverending struggle for attention in the blogosphere, it was refreshing to hear something from Dave Winer on the issue. He points out to Scott Karp, Mike Arrington and Nick Carr and "others who believe that the number of people who read your blog means anything " that,  "I have reasons to believe that almost no one actually reads this stuff.". He goes on to describe how he feels that most people skim posts without reading them thoroughly and cites a few stories to back it up.

While I agree with Dave that a lot of people scan posts and respond too quickly (without reading, considering and evaluating the post) I’m not sure they are in the majority. Now Dave also comes from a viewpoint where he’s got lots of people skimming his posts and probably lots of people looking for ways to disagree with him. I would think that comes with a combination of a high traffic blog and outspokeness (I don’t know much about either). But from my perspective, the people who do comment on my blog posts (or write their own posts referencing them) usually have done a respectable job of actually reading my posts. I’ve rarely, if ever, been misunderstood. Maybe that could be put down to good writing, but more likely to an extremely small sample size.

Kent Newsome sides with Nick on this one and claims that, for Mike "..It’s easy to say money doesn’t matter when you just won the lottery.." . I guess  that’s true, but I tend to make a lot of my judgements based on past performance. And that would be bad news for Nick and good news for Mike.

In any case, I’m actually quite glad sometimes that I don’t rely on blogging (and blog traffic) to make any portion of my living. Not just because I’d have been in the poorhouse months and months ago (!), but because I don’t have that pressure to write for any reason other than my own selfish satisfaction.

As I’ve said before, many times I lose interest in things when they become "have-to’s" instead of "want-to’s". I like photography, blogging and programming because I want to do those things. If I had to do those things to earn my living, they would lose a lot of their appeal.

Finally it seems Blogger is showing signs of significant improvement! Looks like they’ve launched Blogger Beta with the intention to get categories and easier template editing among other things, up and running. Existing blogger blogs (like this one) will be able to transition over to the new format eventually (let’s hope that means ‘soon’).

To be honest, I really haven’t needed much in the way of new features, but then again needed and wanted are two different things. Being able to categorize my posts is probably the most important feature to me. But besides that, I’ve been pretty content with my blog platform. I haven’t really spent too much time seeing how much greener the grass is on other platforms. It’s likely just coming up to par with other platforms, but it’s clear that I don’t know what I’ve been missing.

In a recent post, Brad Kellett writes:

but I have been at a loss for anything to write about on a more personal note. It’s not that nothing has been happening to me, just that there is nothing that I have had the urge to blog.

Y’know, I don’t demand a lot in terms of sound quality of the podcasts I listen to. I generally have no problem with somebody recording a podcast with a Radioshack cassette recorder in their basement. If the content is good I can normally tolerate a great deal.

Take the Linux Link Tech Show for example. They run a live stream once a week, record it and make it available as a podcast. The sound quality is always challenging, but the hosts are engaging and the topics interest me, so I sit there and listen to whole interviews with 4 second lag times, echoes and silent pauses and it doesn’t bother me a bit. Actually it makes me chuckle sometimes. And Dave Winer’s ever rare Morning Coffee Notes podcasts have never ever been about sound quality, but the content more than makes up for it.

But I have to admit that the current Gillmor Gang recorded live from Gnomedex crossed the line from annoyingly poor sound quality to unlistenable. And it wasn’t just unlistenable in terms of sound quality but also in terms of content. Along with the usual crackle and lag of the call-in participants came a wharbling on-the-verge-of-feedback -its-not-hendrix-at-woodstock whistle that affected even the normally silken-voiced Doug Kaye. Just as I thought things would get better, Dan Farber or Doc Searls would interject with what sounded like walkie-talkie chatter from the bottom of a manhole somewhere. Ugh.

Now I was expecting better things after struggling through the previous multipart Gangfest which apparently culminated in the sharing of earbuds (ick) in order to get Hugh and Doc both involved aurally (!). But the Gnomedex gangfest (and a good deal of the previous multi-part gang) just sounded whiny, self-serving and unusually arrogant on all fronts. Hugh definitely did NOT feel the love on that one! I guess the ‘attention deficit’ in Attention Deficit Theatre is really meant to me mine.

I’m not going to complain and then threaten to unsubscribe (that would be too easy), I’ll just have to make a quick judgement after skipping the 5 minute front end ad block -btw thanks for cutting those down Steve - whether or not its going to be listenable for me. After all, if I unsubscribe I’d have nothing to complain about, Steve would have less to be grumpy about and the whole house of cards would flutter to the ground.

Do I wish the Gang would improve? Of course. Will it? Dunno. Maybe the experiment is really to see how far you can go before you actually lose subscribers. I’ll be trying to skew the results.