Clark Community Network

Presidential candidate General Wesley Clark is establishing an Internet community network. Reportedly , the website is similar to Slashdot in concept:

At the heart of the Clark Community Network is a system of personal and group blogs. Upon signing up with the network, users get a personal blog with a forclark.com URL. They can also enroll in several online communities, each with a blog of its own. Someone might, for example, choose to participate in the Alaskan blog, the veterans blog and the physicians blog.
Users can submit their personal posts to the community blogs. Other users then rate the submissions on a one-to-five scale, and highly rated submissions can float up to the official Clark blog. Volunteer administrators tend the community blogs, deleting “problem” posts. Community editors can post content directly to the community blogs.

Such an approach is more “inclusive” than Howard Dean’s blog, where only designated people can post items.
This is a good move for Clark. Because of his late entry into the race, his campaign organization is clearly behind the curve. He needs to quickly bring together supporters, literally or electronically. I think this is a good tool for that objective.

“Free” Advertising

I guess this is Howard Dean day, with back-to-back Dean posts. I noticed that over at the campaign blog that Dean supporters have adopted a highway stretch for cleanup, entitling them to have a roadside sign reading “People for Howard Dean.”
A pretty cleaver idea, assuming they can keep the road clean. But how long are they going to keep picking up trash if Dean doesn’t win?

Campaign Spin

This weekend Howard Dean declared “independence from special interests.” What does that mean? It means that by not taking public financing Dean, will be able to spend as much as he wants campaigning.
I’m not necessarily criticizing this decision; it’s probably a smart campaign move. But it is another amusing example of the way campaigns spin things. Somehow a decision to spend as much money as it takes is “independence from special interests.”
Speaking of campaign funding, Atrios reproduces a chart breaking down the money given to each candidate by donor amount. All of the candidates have received at least 75% of their funding from $1,000+ donors except Braun, Clark, Dean, and Kucinich.

Afternoon Hike

Today I went to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and made the hike up to Alum Cave Bluffs (follow the link for a tiny picture). The air was cool but the skies were bright and sunny, affording great views of the surrounding mountains.
An interesting factoid regarding the bluff’s history from Hiking Trails of the Smokies:

During the Civil War, Confederate Colonel William Thomas, leading a group of soldiers composed mostly of Cherokees, built a road to Alum Cave Bluffs. Believing the minerals in the bluff, which include sulfides and salt-peter (substances essential to the manufacture of gunpowder), to be a vital strategic resource, he built a small stockade called Fort Harry near the Chimney Tops to protect his crude mine.

There apparently aren’t any records on how much was actually mined there. But had the course of history run just a little bit differently, we might be reading how a bloody showdown at Fort Harry was the pivotal turning point in the Civil War, rather than that little dust-up at Gettysburg.
Anyway, the hike up to Alum Cave Bluffs is a worthwhile one, earning a Resonance thumbs-up.

Decisions, Decisions

There are times when you feel you’re at a crossroads in life. This might be one of them:

“Lynch, Smart Duke It Out in Dueling TV Movies”
Couch potatoes with a yen for the inspiring tale of a pretty, young blond whose ordeal of abduction and rescue riveted America will face an impossible choice — two TV movies about two such heroines airing at the same time.
In what is arguably the biggest prime-time matchup of the November ratings “sweep,” CBS and NBC will go head to head Sunday night at 9 p.m. EST with rival docudramas about teenage kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart and Iraqi-captured U.S. Army private Jessica Lynch.

Two epics. One T.V. Truly an impossible choice.
Maybe I’ll watch neither.

Internet Explorer Woes

Several days ago I learned there was a Internet Explorer/css quirk which was causing a display problem in IE. Per this recommendation, I may have fixed that–at least it looks better in my IE test drive.
But now I notice that when I look at the comments using IE, the “Name,” “Email Address,” and “URL” fields under “Post a comment” don’t show up. (It looks fine in Mozilla).
Anyone got a tip on what’s causing this problem? I’d appreciate it if you would post it . . . if you can.