Reflections on a year of Blogging.

Learning from Dogs would not be anything without you, dear reader.  So what follows is an accolade to you.  This Blog first saw the light of day on July 15th, 2009.

By the end of 2009 there had been a total of 15,800 viewers.

In comparison, by the end of 2010 there had been a total of 85,200 viewers, a growth of 439%!

Today, the last day of 2011, the total number of viewers for the year will be in excess of 243,000, a breathtaking increase over 2010 of nearly 158,000 viewers (184%).

So from Pharaoh and me, thank you all so very, very much and a Very Happy New Year to you all.

Happy New Year everyone!

When it’s written without integrity!

Wow, this seems an odd-ball topic for Learning from Dogs.  But, as all you regular readers know, Learning from Dogs is about understanding the importance, the critical importance of integrity, and having dogs, who are integrous, act as an example and metaphor for humankind.

OK, to the point of the article.

Somewhere (probably Naked Capitalism but not sure) I came across a link to a piece in PC Mag entitled, Are Amazon Reviews Corrupt?  Here’s a flavour of the article written by John Dvorak.

It’s a known fact that PR agencies and corporations have been burrowing into the community of online, “public” reviewers and obscure bloggers and easily corrupting them with trinkets. It’s like a lost tribe being bribed with a pretty necklace of cheap polished rocks. Now there is some proof that there is a problem.

I received a press release titled, “Buyer beware: study reveals hidden motives behind Amazon reviews.” Here is the gist in a nutshell:

In the first academic study of its kind, Trevor Pinch, Cornell University professor of sociology and of science and technology studies, independently surveyed 166 of Amazon’s top 1,000 reviewers, examining everything from demographics to motives. What he discovered was 85 percent of those surveyed had been approached with free merchandise from authors, agents or publishers.

Pinch, who also found the median age range of the reviewers he surveyed was 51 to 60, a surprise said Pinch, because the image of the internet is more of a young person’s thing. Amazon is encouraging reviewers to receive free products through Amazon Vine, an invitation-only program in which the top 1,000 reviewers are offered a catalog of free products to review.

John later linked to the website set up by Trevor Pinch, called Freelunch, where the full details of what is going on are contained in a report, available for all to download and read.  The web page from where the report may be downloaded is here, and below is what you will read if you go to that weblink.

They tell us what to buy, but who are Amazon’s elite product reviewers and why do they do it?

They are the familiar faces of the world’s largest online retailer, the voices of reason we rely upon to make sense of everything from Shakespeare to sleeping bags.

But who are Amazon’s top reviewers, why do they invest the massive effort required to review tens of thousands of products, and how are changes at Amazon changing the way these reviewers help us decide what to buy?

In the first academic study of its kind, we examine the elite class of top-thousand Amazon reviewers by conducting a detailed survey with a subset of 166 of these top reviewers. The study, examines everything from age, gender and education (typically middle-aged, male and master’s degree), to the motives and concerns of this volunteer corps who’ve helped drive Amazon’s growth from quaint virtual bookstore to the planet’s most valuable retail brand.

The study was carried out just as Amazon introduced a new way of ranking its reviewers causing much consternation as some fell dramatically in the rankings. We ask why it is that Amazon has changed its ranking system at this time and we elicit the top reviewers responses to this change.

Our study holds an assumption and asks a question: the assumption is that there are no free lunches. So how come Amazon has managed to persuade so many people to give them the morsels from which they have built one of the biggest free lunches ever? That is the question.

Speaking as someone who probably spends a couple of hundred dollars a year with Amazon, particular on books, and who does get tipped into buying an unknown book by the reviews, this report is not without consequence.

Hyman Minsky

Indeed, as you read this there will be winging it’s way to me two books ordered last week.  The first was Hyman Minsky’s book, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, cost $21.14 and a book that I had no doubts about wanting to read.

But the second, The Great Disruption by Paul Gilding, was bought a) to take me over $25 and provide me with free shipping and b) because it looked like a book I would enjoy and all six reviews were strong recommendations!

Well done PC Mag and all concerned.

H’mm, another lesson from the school of life!

“Life is not a success-only journey. Even the best-laid plans sometimes must be altered and changed. Be open to input and consider any potentially viable alternative. Be willing to be wrong and be willing to start over.“ Dr. Phil.

Kathryn Schulz

I am indebted to Daniela Caride of The Daily Tail for passing me details of Kathryn Schulz someone, I must admit, that I had not heard of before.  But Kathryn is the author of the book, Being Wrong.  Here’s how she is described on the TED Talks website,

Kathryn Schulz is a journalist, author, and public speaker with a credible (if not necessarily enviable) claim to being the world’s leading wrongologist.  Her freelance writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, TIME Magazine, the Boston Globe, the “Freakonomics” blog of The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She is the former editor of the online environmental magazine Grist, and a former reporter and editor for The Santiago Times, of Santiago, Chile, where she covered environmental, labor, and human rights issues. She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism (now the International Reporting Project), and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan, and, most recently, the Middle East. A graduate of Brown University and a former Ohioan, Oregonian and Brooklynite, she currently lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Her website is here and her Blogsite here.

Here’s a flavour of this woman.

Just had a call from my son-in-law to let Jean and me know the fabulous news.

That around 8.30pm London time, just about an hour ago, a son, my first grandchild, was born to my daughter and her husband.  Baby Morten is fine. Morten’s Mum is recovering from a fairly tough labour but also is well.

Happy Birthday Morten!

Well done, Mum and Dad!

We have had a bit of a sad situation over the week-end, which I will write about tomorrow.

So please forgive me, dear reader, for keeping my head down this day.

Mixed emotions about those other worlds out there.

In recent times, Learning from Dogs has been reflecting on the magic, and fragility, of the planet we all live on.

There was the photograph of the Earthrise that attracted quite a few comments.  That was followed up by the amazing photograph of the Earth from Voyager 1 taken in 1990 from 3,762,136,324 miles away!  Then the lovely poem from Sue.

So it was interesting to note my mixed emotions to a piece on the BBC News website yesterday.  Here’s a flavour.

Worlds away

Astronomers have identified some 54 new planets where conditions may be suitable for life.

Five of the candidates are Earth-sized.

The announcement from the Kepler space telescope team brings the total number of exoplanet candidates they have identified to more than 1,200.

The data release also confirmed a unique sextet of planets around a single star and 170 further solar systems that include more than one planet circling far-flung stars.

Read the rest of the item here. (and there’s a fuller version on NetworkWorld)

So here are those mixed emotions.

• Man has been, and still continues to be, wonderfully curious to the point of spending huge sums of money on projects that appear to do nothing more than satisfy that curiosity. (The (Kepler) mission‘s life-cycle cost is estimated at US$600 million, including funding for 3.5 years of operation, from here.)  That’s a beautiful trait, in my humble opinion.
• Homo Sapiens is a wonderfully innovative and creative species, as so wonderfully presented by Alan Alda on a recent PBS Programme called The Human Spark.  (See the YouTube intro at the end of this Post.)
• Look at all the inventions and incredible advances to our species that are all around us – including the PC I am using and the World Wide Web that is aiding this message!
• For such an intelligent species as us, why is it that we are treating Planet Earth in such a suicidal manner through greed, pollution and over-consumption!
• As was reported yesterday, we could be on the verge of total and utter chaos in terms of food.  Then also yesterday was a small item about food prices reaching a new global record.
• It always struck me as absurd to conclude that this planet is the only habitable planet in the universe – ‘Astronomers estimate there are 10²¹ stars in the universe. With a conservative estimate of three planets per star (some could have many more, some would have none at all) this puts the estimated number of planets into millions of billions.‘ From here.
• So the data coming in from Kepler is truly astounding and, personally, underlines this era as a great time to be alive.
• But there simply is no choice in that for decades ahead, if not centuries ahead, Planet Earth is all there is for us.  So why do we do it so much harm!
• Our civilisation is likely to go to the very limits of survivability before the message that the existing ‘model’ is broken is picked up by every major political party in the world.  That is very, very scary to contemplate.
• So it looks as though, soon, mankind will face the ultimate decision of all time.  Give up and let the chaos overwhelm us all, or … or what?  In other words millions of us will have to live with the consequences of our greed.
• The ‘or what?’ can only be a faith that it will be OK.
• A faith that mankind will use the power of dreams, imagination and energy to create a new future that will, at long last, be a new dawn of democratic and just, integrous existence.
• And maybe, just maybe, that could be the Second Coming and maybe, just maybe, the world’s Churches and religions will be our saving grace.

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Matthew 24:36

Fascinating times – a Chinese proverb, ‘It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period.’

Finally, here’s that video of the series preview to The Human Spark.

I think is was Harold Macmillian who once said, “Events, dear boy, events.”

Well this week-end threw some events my direction and there is no post for today – apart from this!!

Just need to potter today and Sunday.

Have a great week-end.

Everything evolves in life!

Although how apt that thought is when applied to rather strange world of blogging is a little beyond me!

Anyway, this Blog is called Learning from Dogs because dogs are, in many ways, powerful examples of what we humans need reminding of, both literally and metaphorically.

However, the Home page, or Welcome page, of this Blog is in need of some revising so when you see it change over the next few days it’s because of that housekeeping.

Let me leave you with this thought.

“A dog is not ‘almost human,’ and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.“

John Holmes

Trust all Learning from Dogs readers and their families had a wonderful Christmas Day.

Here’s a little distraction, with a serious under-message, courtesy of CASSE.

Top 10 Songs for the Steady State