Curious.Judith

In 2006 I had a very frustrating battle with politicalsystems.net trying to get myself off their mailing lists. I had very little political sympathy for the the office holders, never lived in their districts, and, while i had lived in Pennsylvania, it had been six years before.

It’s been quiet for a while, leading me to believe that the third request to the owner of the domain name, Gregory Hildebrand, might have finally had an effect. (”Unsubscribe” had failed miserably.) That was June 14, 2006.

Today, i got mail again. Well, *i* didn’t, Rose Savchak with my [old address]@grey-cat.com as the recipient.

I can’t believe it. Well, maybe i can. People have given up on spam, politicians probably don’t ask questions about how a company like http://www.constituentsdirect.com gets its mailing lists, and they probably are susceptible to a sounds-good looks-good sales job, but don’t have anyone on staff with any technical expertise.

It’s quite possible that Gregory Hildebrand, the person who received my requests in 2006, is simply a competent systems administrator on the team that supports the back end. He may have no contact with whomever feels the pressure to acquire email addresses.

Zain Khan is the Chief Executive Officer of Constituents Direct. He’s registered with American Association of Political Consultants. He’s possibly the one saying “We need more addresses!” but maybe he doesn’t understand how to buy ethically collected email addresses and profiles. This honorable mention might help another political consultant think that this organization is worth doing business with. I wonder if they consider them against the “competitor” http://iconstituent.com/. No competitor — the domain name is owned by Gregory Hildebrand. How did i find this company? Well, Constituent Direct Project Manager Michael Kinne has a Linked In page listing him as “Current
National Account Representative at iConstituent, LLC” in the Harrisburg, PA area. There’s the PA connection — and checking out the DNS of the website makes it highly probable that he’s the same Michael Kinne as the project manager of Constituent Direct.

One continues to wonder if this multinamed organization really is the leading provider of services to politicians. If the best is scrounging email addresses and spamming, what do the other organizations do?

Update: 2008-08-01 Today’s spam is from State Representative Marguerite Quinn of marguerite at repquinn.net, addressed to Barbara Karr [old address]@grey-cat.com.

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First, a link to an older story about a Zeppelin possibly making use of Moffett Field. To my uninformed eye, that looks like a delightful co-use of the space, and my steampunk sensibilities prompt me to wonder if the bay area needs lots of zeppelins for disaster relief. About the time i ran across that article I found Steve Williams‘ site. He is “a pilot and aircraft owner from Mountain View. [His] goal for [his] web site is to record news and opinions about public use of Moffett Field, and especially civil aviation use.” He is such a well measured correspondent and his site provides such a useful service, i hope that civil aviation use can be found to have no negative effect on the wildlife refuge. He’s provided an update on the Hanger One report from the Navy, delayed until January.

In other news, the SF Chronicle ran an article about the release of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project report with this supportive blog entry from a hiker. I wish i could have taken more time off from work to be involved in the report development, and wonder if i should volunteer to be on the Alviso Ponds & Santa Clara County Working Group. There seem to be no surprises. The Chron reports that, “Today’s plan favors converting 90 percent of the former ponds to tidal marsh,” and mentions the concept of adaptive management (explained in a KQED segment) and how that may change that target date as observations are made about the effects of the early changes. I’m personally delighted to hear that, “A 2 1/2-mile segment of the Bay Trail will open between Mountain View’s Stevens Creek and Sunnyvale for hiking, biking and watching wildlife.” The December Newsletter reports, “Next year should be particularly exciting as we plan to … open the segment of Bay Trail adjacent to Moffett Field.” I’m not patient enough to dig out an exact date, but i think the work i’ve been observing has been of trail development. I hope it’s soon. When i walk out to the bay on the trail beside the creek, i really enjoy the sense of being so far away from sub/urban life and the changing views of the Moffett Field buildings. I think this will be an exciting addition. I do hope that in opening it up to public use that the public can respect the wildlife habitat and that i don’t have any more encounters with runners with their dogs off leash. (Dogs are not allowed in the Don Edwards section of the Stevens Creek Trail.)

Just as as side note, as i look at the maps being put out as part of the restoration planning, i note the well marked Hetch Hetcy aqueduct and ponder again whether Santa Clara parcel data has grounds for not responding to freedom of information requests for data on the grounds of a threat to homeland security. Hrmph.
Hangar One, Don Edwards NWR,South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project,salt ponds

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Keynote: “Sorting and Classifying the Open Access Issues for Digital Libraries: Issues Technical, Economic, Philosophic, and Principled” John Willinsky, University of British Columbia (But, as announced, very soon to be Stanford)

John Willinsky’s talk, an acknowledged “preaching to the converted,” was lovely and inspiring. It was not just his enthusiasm for the mission of libraries, access and preservation, but also his faith in the result of democratic access, his faith in humanity to — in general — do the right thing. He’s involved with The Public Knowledge Project.

“We have not yet begun to plumb the depth of public interest in research”

Why are Open Journals, Open Data important? JW provides three rights which open access supports, the principles on which we should rest our support.

(1) The Right to Know, a human right included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Open publishing online makes information available to everyone. He describes a discussion with policy researchers in Ottowa: what resources had they used in the past? They’d call the faculty members they had in the past — research by cronyism is how JW referred to it. (And i suggest that there’s evidence that journalists essentially have their network of folks they call.) Now though, the Ottowa policy researchers search on-line finding the open access research. Building on a poster from last night, he refers to the “fingerprints” of ideas (as opposed to citation “impact”) and notes as motivation to researchers that if they wish to leave their fingerprints on the future they improve the possibility by publishing openl.

(2) The Right to Participate, more journals filling out the spectrum of authority and audience opens the possibility for more participants in scholarly discourse. It’s hard for me to pull out particular issues here — i am such a convert to the value and process of open participation. Influenced by my thoughts about the participation of women in physics, from the value open software development has brought to me, to the education and pleasure reading openly published blogs, novels, graphic novels, articles, movies…. I do what i can to give back in that economy.

I can’t say JW added to my understanding much here, but there was a tangential comment about the use of the open journal technology: he hopes that the efficiencies such a tool would bring would support editors nurturing authors, going beyond the right to participate to improving the quality of that participation.

Personally, i find a little nudge here — should i be participating in scholarly discourse? (An appeal in my mind for more time, more energy, a longer life….)

(3) Academic Freedom, there are several aspects here. Part of it is the mechanics of the open journal software which keeps workflow records. JW never quite spells it out, but i believe that the unstated point here is that one can challenge a journal on biased acceptances and rejections. The story JW tells is of a Canadian medical journal and the run of events where the journal published an examination of how Plan B prescriptions were handled by pharmacists (somewhat critical review), the protest from the professional association of pharmacists, the medical association’s firing of the editors. JW notes, who would have thought that one would need to have academic freedom protected from an academic society?

I thought of that in the evening at the very sparsely attended community meeting. (I’ve been trained by attending Meeting for Business as a Friend, i suppose.) Someone spoke up about the proceedings — they should be open. Oh, ACM and IEEE would never allow it. Well, ACM (IEEE?) authors can publish papers on their own sites.So, tell us where your paper is and we can link to it from the meeting website.

Not — we *are* the ACM (or IEEE). We need to carry Willinsky’s call back to our professional societies. We need to take on that model he offered, where libraries support journals (not purchase them) and have our societies work to transition to a different publishing model.

I suppose i should write a letter.

Related: Directory of Open Access Journals and Public Library of Science.
JCDL, JCDL2007, open access, open publishing, open journals

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[this languished -- i'm not sure what date it should have had]

Northern Parula in the alders along the west side of the lower trail.

Egret high in evergreen.

Sandbags, pump still in use at 101 fishladder. Creek not barracaded. Mallards 11 in the concrete upstream 101.

Many more egrets in trees. High tide, turbid, no stop on bridge

“Tues”
Weeds. Mockingbird in elderberry. Great egret flying past the moon. More mowing. Clear, tide out. Flooded yesterday evening far past willow cut-through.

2006-09-28 9:40 am
Overcast and grey morning, as it was the day before, cool. The work continues at 101. As i approach i can hear the sound of heavy equipment. A ditch digger on the top of the bank, a bob cat in the channel. Looks like the new concrete is up, sandbagged at the base. A worker is pumping out water that looks milky and possibly contaminated by the concrete.

The trees lining the trail at the Microsoft parking lot (heart shaped leaves) are turning yellow as is a walnut tree. Considering the spatters of yellow in the trees across the creek: it’s definitely an autumn morning.

A cluster of white egrets are just upstream of the La Avenida braids. I can’t quite make them out: i think they’re snowys, four of them. In the high grasses of the braids, a drake mallard stands tall, his iridescent green gleaming in the dull and yellowing plants. A call from a mocking bird. A flock of mallards are in the creek near the last eucalyptus.

At Duck rocks, the water’s low, rocks are visible. At Crittendon bridge it appears the water is still flowing out, a bit turbid. The banks are visible. A few tracks are visible, but not many. The crab habitat is high and dry.

Much surveying and marking on the Crittenden Lane ramp up to the levee.

2006-09-28 6:15 pm

At Crittenden Bridge, the tide has come back in, high, and flowing down stream and turbid. The breeze out of the north ripples the creek against the current. A crescent moon hangs in the sky to the south. Nothing of the bank, the mitten crab habitat to be seen.

Snowy upstream from the eucalyptus and one across from the RV parking. I stop to help several folks who are moving a tiny snake (the woman says a gopher snake) from the trail. He’s tiny and only barely manages to contract against my fingers as i move him. I took several photos. Presumably he was warming himself on the trail.

Many ducks downstream of 101. Upstream, it looks like much of the dirt has been removed from the channel. The water is still very silty, lots of lime or concrete tainted water at the base of the new wall.

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