#Microsoft tries social media again with #Skype sharing and Sway #Blogging #

Microsoft tries social media again with Skype sharing and Sway blogging Microsoft has failed at social media so far, but its latest attempt has some potential. Instead of creating its own platform, Microsoft will use existing services like Skype as social mechanisms. Microsoft said Wednesday that it's adding a sharing button ... read moreTomorrow's Advance Man When it has a product that early adopters like—or when it's run through its seed-round money—it tries to raise an A round ... fifty million dollars to buy three per cent of Skype. Two years later, Microsoft bought Skype, and the investment returned ... read more

Will social networking sites ever make money? Social media is based on the internet model ... from the investment community - the purchase of a 5% stake by Microsoft in 2007 valued the company at $15bn, although more recent share sales suggest $5bn is closer. And yet in its more established ... read moreMicrosoft weaves around Office bloat complaints with Sway authoring tool Sway has been designed to let users easily post their creations online and share them via social media ... especially as Microsoft toils on the touch-first version of the suite for tablets, in the sense that it tries to simplify the user experience ... read moreMicrosoft to preinstall more apps on Android with Dell partnership Microsoft just sharpened its software sword against Google on the search giant's own platform. Windows productivity and collaboration apps, like its Skype messaging service, will now be found on the home screen when people buy some Dell devices running ... read moreUS Intelligence Community Keys in on the Russian 'Troll Army' Manipulating Social Media But intelligence officials know that, increasingly, autocracies are deploying "trolls" – robotic feeds or paid commentators – to sway social media trends ... "Coupled to that is the issue of Ukraine, and again sentiment analysis -- what are the ... read moreE3 poll: Xbox One vs. PS4, plus 5 things to know in the console wars Game sharing ... media services such as Redbox Instant and Flixster, as well as original programming, but has not gone into detail on the latter. Sony has not disclosed whether the PS4 will feature cable and TV integration. Microsoft aims to make the Xbox ... read moreWhat Microsoft's online outage says about its cloud strategy One questioned why I should "waste time ripping on Google, when Microsoft (your apparent reason for blogging) gets a pass from you from ... But those packages are intended for workers who share a terminal and typically spend only 5-10% of their time ... read moreMicrosoft Shows Windows 10, HoloLens, Surface Hub – Recap Microsoft is holding ... a slow reveal of Windows 10, the next version of its flagship operating system. (If you keep track of numbers, Microsoft is skipping version 9.) We jotted down some burning questions and are live-blogging the announcement, which ... read moreFor those left in Syria, life among the ruins takes on a ghostly air He tries to put up a brave ... strive to maintain some shreds of social cohesion amid an overriding sense of insecurity and uncertainty about the future. Daily conversations on Skype, WhatsApp and other social media applications help people stay in touch ... read more

Buy AutoTrafficRSS script now for $27 only!

We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.
Source: #Microsoft tries social media again with #Skype sharing and Sway #Blogging #

The booms and busts of financial blogging

The Reformed Broker turns seven years old today.

In blog years, this site is now eating dinner at 4pm and voting down the school budget. In human years, however, both the blog and its chief blogger have a long ways to go. I've written over 10,200 posts here on this site (a few of them were pretty good) and probably two hundred posts and articles elsewhere since November 2008. That's a lot, but in my mind, I'm just getting warmed up.

Joshua BrownTools of the trade – this is what I've carried with me every single day, everywhere I've gone, over all these years.

On today's anniversary, I wanted to touch on the state of financial blogging in general, to give you some context about how I look at the success of TRB over the years.

This weekend I spent some time pruning my Feedly account. For the uninitiated, Feedly has replaced the now defunt Google Reader as the primary way in which bloggers can keep up with the RSS feeds of the sites they regularly check. Doing this sort of aggregation and curation by visiting home pages is too time consuming and using Twitter to keep track of content is like sipping from a firehose.

Anyway, I haven't cleaned things up in my RSS garden in at least four years. By the time I finished, it was a massacre, an absolute bloodbath of unsubscribed-to sites that I used to read every day. There were literally hundreds of blogs to unfollow.

A quick catalog of the now-unfollowed sites from my list:

Blogs where the owner simply stopped publishing sometime in 2013 or 2014 (a fairly common timeframe among those who had given up)

Blogs where the writing moved away from finance and toward some sort of bizarre political hinterland

Blogs where the author was so incredibly wrong about how the recovery period would play out that there was no chance of me being able to read their stuff with a straight face

Blogs that had converted into a paid newsletter product or shoved a tip jar or donation link toward the top of the page

Blogs that had been abandoned, and then restarted, and then abandoned again (this was very common – no one said this was easy)

Blogs where the writer was now employed elsewhere (remember Rortybomb? Weisenthal's feed at Business Insider? CNBC Net Net with John Carney? Felix Salmon's Reuters column?)

Blogs that had become a parody of themselves and had failed to change with the times (perma-doom content, poorly plotted charts, endless links back to the writer's previous posts, etc)

For these reasons and others, I took an axe to the thicket of .blogspots and .wordpresses and .tumblrs and got my follow list down to a much more manageable and focused slate. It was long overdue.

But one question lingered on – why did so many interesting and promising financial blogs die?

There are many cases where, for personal or business reasons, the writer had to devote more of their time elsewhere because there just wasn't a lot of synergy between what they were saying and what they were doing in real life. This is especially the case among the subculture of anonymously penned blogs – we're talking about an asymmetric equation in which career risk is never quite balanced out by the accolades from strangers on the web.

Additionally, the ad model probably didn't work for a majority of DIY bloggers. Firms like Business Insider began producing so much content that CPM click rates dropped through the floor and then kept on dropping. I know the biggest and most widely-read bloggers in the industry – believe me when I tell you that none of them can earn a living from banner ads anymore.

But there are other reasons for the rapidly shrinking population of independent financial bloggers.

Here are a few:

*Mainstream media figured out how to get their journalists blogging and they're better at it (see the WSJ's MoneyBeat for the example par excellence). It's hard to compete with professional journalists and trained writers backed by superior resources.

*They ran out of stuff to say or lost their edge. One of the most common things I've seen is that a new blogger begins as though they were shot out of a cannon, with weeks worth of incredible material. And then, when they've written the 10 or 20 posts that had been bursting to come out for years, they're spent. Like a bumble bee that dies minutes after stinging something with all its might. These expended bloggers typically end up dispensing the rest of their wisdom on Twitter once they've run dry of original material.

*"Writing for exposure" used to be a thing people did, even when they couldn't put their finger on exactly what all that exposure would mean for them once they had it. Forbes turned their website into a platform based on the concept and the Huffington Post built a sell-able business model from it. But for most writers, the exposure never materialized or, if it did, it never amounted to much in the way of actual success.

Shutterstock

*A job change – especially within finance – almost always means a rethinking of one's public commentary. Especially if the writer goes from a small firm to a larger one. The large financial industry firms already have people doing PR, thought leadership or research for public consumption. The last thing they're interested in is a freelance opinion-haver from within the ranks proffering an "off-message" take on a given subject.

*Mainstream media writers stopped linking to outside blogs as much as they used to. Instead, they compose linkfests that are almost entirely self-referential and geared toward sending clicks to "house product" rather than to outside sites (see MarketWatch, Bloomberg, WSJ). Without this source of traffic, a lot of bloggers that used to enjoy visits from outbound links at big media sites found themselves shouting into an abyss with no one listening.

*In the early days of the recovery period, when markets remained volatile and everyone was convinced that buy-and-hold was a dead strategy (good call), the financial web was inundated with "trading teachers". You didn't really need any credentials to set yourself up as a trading tutor, just an online chat room and a URL. Many of those blogs went away when the phenomenon ran its course and the good ones mostly became paid services instead. It's hard to teach people to trade in real life because the typical student isn't born with the right temperament to begin with. It's expensive to learn this about ourselves.

*A lot of the blogs that sprouted up during the crisis found themselves rudderless when the the chain reaction of economic explosions finally stopped. In the absence of a major disaster unfolding, the authors realized that they didn't have much to say about the status quo, especially as volatility dropped to a below-trend level and stayed there for years on end. After Lehman, AIG and TARP, covering Greece for another 48 months probably seemed more than a little pointless to this group, so they walked away.

*Lastly, there were lots of one-trick ponies or blogs based on a narrow premise that didn't really have the leeway to evolve. Remember LOLFed, a site based on memes using pictures of FOMC members? It was really fun.

The Reformed Broker

Does anyone remember Ultimi Barbarorum? It was a markets and investing blog ostensibly written by a latter-day Baruch Spinoza, how's this for an About page:

"Hi, thanks for looking at our blog. There are 2 of us running it, but we both prefer to stay anonymous. This is the only live Spinozist blog on the internet we know of. We love Spinoza, and wish more people did too.

The name of our website comes from an important event in Spinoza's life. Johan and Cornelius de Witt were the political leaders who oversaw the great Golden Age of the Holland of Rembrandt, of Vermeer, of the great scientific and commercial achievements of the Dutch Republic. They were lynched by a mob in The Hague in 1672, and literally torn to bits."

If you're asking yourself "WTF?" I'd just say that you had to be there.

I think it's cool that these blogs came along, tore it up for awhile, and then went away before running too thin. Not that there's anything wrong with sticking around; I'll gladly accept the two posts a year from Long or Short Capital if that's all they're able to get around to. Better than nothing.

And then there's a much smaller list of financial blogs that have kept the fire burning. There's Eddy and Tadas and Barry and Epicurean Dealmaker and Howard Lindzon and Yves Smith and Bess Levin, people whose sites predate the financial crisis and are still delivering each day.

There are the sites that were born in the crisis, like mine and Zero Hedge – both of which started the same month (just a coincidence).

There are also the 2.0 financial blogs – the ones that were born recently and have had the opportunity to build on everything that had come before. Sure, lots of times they're saying things that have already been said, but most readers don't care. As long as they're seeing the information presented in a fresh, interesting way, the readers will click and share. There's no shame in revisiting these well-worn paths. The award-winning and highly regarded investing writer Jason Zweig describes his gig at the Wall Street Journal like this:

"My job is to write the exact same thing between 50 and 100 times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will ever think I am repeating myself.

That's because good advice rarely changes, while markets change constantly. The temptation to pander is almost irresistible. And while people need good advice, what they want is advice that sounds good."

That's about right, and that's why there's still room for more blog posts on things like diversification, the impact of investment costs, the benefits of discipline, the difference between tactics and strategy, etc. An up and coming blogger can still do canonical stuff with a topic that's already been covered because brand new investors are arriving every year.

Which brings me to today.

Five years ago, people used to ask me "How do you have so much time to blog?" Nobody asks me that anymore. They get it.

My partners and I built a financial advisory practice around our blogs, based on the premise that smart people wanted to understand the process by which an advisor was investing their capital. We put it all out in the open and did so in real-time, seven days a week. Then that small practice became a firm and that firm grew to include several advisors, two CFAs doing research, two CFPs working directly with clients, four of the top ten investment blogs in the country, etc.

Flickr/Christian Gonzalez

The writing and thinking we do is not a sideshow. It's the main event. We say what we mean, we do what we say and we eat our own cooking. We're out there managing money for real people in live markets. Writing frankly about the ideas we have and the challenges we encounter has been hugely beneficial for us. It's forced us to become better at our jobs.

All of the money managers we respect, from Jeremy Grantham to Howard Marks to Warren Buffett to Rob Arnott to Cliff Asness to Meb Faber, have done much the same thing. They've been incredibly open about their philosophy and process in print – whether through white papers or books or investor letters or widely circulated memos.

We like to think we're following the same path, only our primary medium is blogging and tweeting – apropos of the times we live in.

Writing this blog every day for seven years and having an amazing reader base to share my thoughts with has quite literally changed my life. I never could have dreamed that my free wordpress account would open up so many doors. This blog has directly led to thousands of events, connections, relationships and friendships that would have been unimaginable without it. If you've been with me since the beginning and have stuck around through it all, then you've been a big part of that and I can never truly repay you or thank you enough.

But I can try.

And so I'll end here with a commitment to you, all of you, that I will always do my best to keep you informed about the markets and the economy as I see them. I'll continue to link out to the most crucial and entertaining articles and posts, as they come spilling in over the transom each day. I'll attempt to be fair about the subjects I cover, even when fairness isn't deserved. I'll keep my opinions informed at all times and I'll always consider the other side of an argument before I dismiss it.

Most importantly, I will remain open-minded and willing to change when the facts no longer support a long-held belief. Even if it means I'll have to admit to being wrong – especially then. I like to think you come here because I keep it real, not because I think I'm always right (believe me, I'm not).

The intent of this blog was always about discovery and learning, for both readers and myself. Continuing on that mission is the least I can do to say thank you for an amazing seven year run.

Cheers and thanks!

Read the original article on The Reformed Broker. Copyright 2015.

More from The Reformed Broker:

This Week on TRB

Epic Icahn Interview

After the Gold Rush

SEE ALSO: If you're too young to remember the financial crisis, then read Marc Andreessen's tweetstorm NOW WATCH: Why '5+5+5=15' is wrong under Common Core Please enable Javascript to watch this video
Source: The booms and busts of financial blogging

How to Bring in Work as a #Blogging #Lawyer: Webinar Recording and Examples #

How to Bring in Work as a Blogging Lawyer: Webinar Recording and Examples As I mentioned on the webinar itself, we could talk about this stuff all day—and we almost did, as questions kept coming in at the end of the webinar. But again, thanks to everyone who was able to join us and, for those who didn't, you can view the ... read moreOdyssey Online Writing Classes and Webinar The webinar format allows you maximum flexibility. You can attend live and interact with the instructor, or you can view the video recording ... content and examples. If you've taken the course before and want to take it again to work on a new novel ... read more

Bring Your Own Device To Work Programs: Regulatory and Legal Risks and How To Minimize Them As such, there are serious compliance risks to consider and mitigate when allowing personal mobile device use for work purposes, or a bring your own device (BYOD) program, especially in a healthcare setting. Despite the known risks, current research shows ... read moreHow to Find a Skilled, Professional Manager to Guide Your Music Career… In many cases, managers are responsible for procuring artist's record and publishing deals, songs to record, shows, producers to work with, and other career ... If your potential manager is a 75-year-old disbarred lawyer, who claims to have worked ... read moreTHE GREAT ANALYTICS RANKINGS Originally a lawyer, he introduced sabermetrics to the Oakland ... believer in ballpark effects," challenges his analytics staffers to bring him useful information, and cites their work when they've helped him make a move. The evidence shows up between ... read morePersonas That Drive Our Big Data Needs | @BigDataExpo #BigData #Microservices We work with information every day and ... I can go on with all sorts of examples. Point is no matter what type of company you are and what size you are, you have access to key data. Your data. This information is invaluable and you cause it to make ... read moreAre You Being Bullied at Work? Here's What to Do (Photo Credit: David Castillo Dominici/freedigitalphotos.net) In a nationwide survey commissioned by CareerBuilder earlier this year, 28 percent of workers reported they have felt bullied at work -- nearly one in five (19 percent) of these workers left ... read moreSocial Media and the Law Now, I'm no lawyer; but as an entrepreneur the law ... For example: 'concerted protected activity' (such as discussing work conditions with co-workers) may in fact extend to Facebook and other social media activity if it qualifies as such. read moreOffice 365 as an educational LMS? Microsoft video demos how it works Podio was our work order and time entry system. GoToMeeting was our webinar ... Office 365 Fit Into Education? The Microsoft blog post that peaked my interest on this topic launched January 2 of this year, and went relatively under the radar. The LMS ... read more1099-C In the Mail? How to Avoid Taxes on Canceled Debt Creditors who forgive $600 or more are required to file Form 1099-C with the IRS. Nearly 2.7 million of these forms were processed by the IRS in 2009 and that number is expected to increase for the 2010 tax year. The potentially tricky part is figuring ... read more

Buy AutoTrafficRSS script now for $27 only!

We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.
Source: How to Bring in Work as a #Blogging #Lawyer: Webinar Recording and Examples #

Shah Rukh Khan reaches 16M followers, leaving behind Narendra Modi with 15.9M followers

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan has reached a milestone of 16 million fan following on Twitter, becoming the second Indian to have the maximum admirers on the micro-blogging site, after megastar Amitabh Bachchan.

With this feat, the actor, who recently turned 50, has zoomed past Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has 15.8 million followers on the micro-blogging site.

The actor joined Twitter on January 3, 2010, and since then has known to be one of the most active users on the platform, regularly tweeting special family photos, favourite film memories, poetry and philosophical quotes. The superstar is known to engage with his fans across the globe very closely with interactive chats.

On his 50th birthday earlier this week, fans took to Twitter to celebrate this occasion with celebratory tweets, photos and videos of their on-screen idol, showcasing their love and sending birthday wishes to the superstar. Shah Rukh will be next seen in Rohit Shetty's "Dilwale" alongside Kajol, Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon. The film will release on December 18

Source: Shah Rukh Khan reaches 16M followers, leaving behind Narendra Modi with 15.9M followers

Cleaning Up Your #Blogging Act #

Cleaning Up Your Blogging Act When I started blogging a few years ago I was a wild child. I ran through the internet writing about everything and anything with reckless abandon. I wrote short stories, recipes, advice columns, trip blogs, health pieces, you name it and I tried to write it. read moreTake a healthy break so your boyfriend can clean up his act: Ellie He needs to clean up his act, for himself — not just you ... Step back from feeling responsible for trying to change his habits. Your relationship is also unhealthy — ultimatums from you, begging from him, no meaningful progress. read more

Clean up your Droid's act for free with the first-rate Droid Optimizer Go back to the Clean Up window and tap the Auto Start Manager. You will see a listing of apps that are running at boot. This is a good chance to see anything that might have slipped under your radar (as you see in Figure E). Tap to select the apps you want ... read moreFav-stars Are Now Like-hearts, Deal With It (And Maybe Clean Up) Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP In the above blog post, Twitter explained ... iPhone through the sharing menu, or edit and clean up Android's sharing menu to make it easy to ... read moreGoogle wants to clean up Blogger's act, bans sexually explicit content You have three choices before that date, according to Google: If your blog was created before March 23, 2015, and contains content that violates our new policy, you have a few options for changing your blog before the new policy starts: Remove sexually ... read moreSenate blocks legislation to undercut EPA clean water rules, for now Recommended: Climate change: Is your opinion informed ... been working to clear up some misconceptions, like some critics' assertions that average backyard puddles would be regulated. Current exemptions from the Clean Water Act for farming practices ... read moreCan polluters block Obama's Clean Power Plan in court? "I can't recall a Clean Air Act rule, or other EPA rule ... That's because states are already starting to draw up compliance plans, and by January 2017, they will be even further along in that process, if not done. But if the court does issue ... read moreDodgers' Kike Hernandez has brief procedure to clean up right shoulder The team said the 30-minute procedure done Wednesday by Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles was to clean up ... to act or tells you something you didn't know, mark it high. If you thought it was well written, do the same. If it doesn't meet your ... read moreGoogle wants to clean up Blogger's act, bans sexually explicit content Do you have a Blogger blog with content some would consider sexually ... You have three choices before that date, according to Google: If your blog was created before March 23, 2015, and contains content that violates our new policy, you have a few options ... read more3 simple ways to prepare your garden for winter Cleaning up your ... weeds that might spring up during the warm snaps that often occur in February. "The great thing about that is then you can just rake those leaves right onto your pathways in the springtime and they act as a natural mulch, so they ... read more

Buy AutoTrafficRSS script now for $27 only!

We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.
Source: Cleaning Up Your #Blogging Act #

A sad day for public science advocacy

I've been at this blogging thing for more than a decade now. Looking back on those years, I find it incredible that I've lasted this long. For one thing, I still marvel that there are apparently thousands of people out there who still like to read my nearly daily musings (or, as George Carlin would call them, brain droppings) after all these years. More importantly, being a public advocate for science is a rough business, as I've documented over the years. Back when I first started out, I was completely pseudonymous and anonymous. I kept my real name relatively secret. It was less than five months after I started blogging that the doxxing began, starting with a man named William O'Neill of the quack group the Canadian Cancer Research Group, who sent e-mails threatening to sue to my department chair, division chief, cancer center director, and, of course, me. I admit that it freaked me out and almost ended my blogging career right then and there. Fortunately, my chair, the late great Steve Lowry (who is missed) thought nothing of it and supported me. Since then, every so often someone, be it an antivaccine activist (most commonly) or a cancer quack (less commonly) or an HIV/AIDS denialist (only once) has tried to make trouble for me at work or elsewhere. I've gotten used to it.

I'm relatively small potatoes, though, and, as I have a demanding day job and can't go "all in" advocating science, I probably will remain so. When a science advocate's prominence rises, the attacks from the antiscience side become more relentless and frightening. Paul Offit knows this, having endured death threats from antivaccine activists. Michael Mann knows this, having endured a concerted effort by anthropogenic climate change denialists to discredit him professionally and personally. Edzard Ernst knows this, having been targeted by the Quacktitioner Royal himself. Indeed, he was just awarded the Maddox Prize—and deservedly so!—because of what he's endured standing up for science. Kevin Folta knows this, having been targeted by the "Food Babe Army," followers of Vani Hari, who has become the queen of food pseudoscience and fear mongering, for his tireless refutation of her fear mongering about "teh ebil chemicalz" in food and, of course, genetically mo dified organisms (GMOs).Unfortunately, the pressure has been so great that Folta made this announcement on his Facebook page yesterday afternoon (click to embiggen if the type is too small):

A sad day for public science advocacy: Kevin Folta announces that he is ceasing his public advocacy.

This is a depressing development. Yet another public advocate of science has been driven to give up the fight because of the harassment of anti-science forces. Kevin was one of the foremost voices countering anti-GMO pseudoscience, and now he is gone. I'm not criticizing him for his decision. I really can't blame him for deciding that his advocacy just wasn't worth the price he was paying. Consider the price. Besides having to deal with anti-GMO activists harassing him online, he had to deal with numerous complaints to his administration about his science advocacy. I've had but a taste of what I know Folta has been going through. Periodically, some antivaccine crank or cancer quack will "complain" to my department chair, dean, or cancer center director. At first, they'd ask me what it was about; now I don't even hear about them. Indeed, the last time the topic came up in a discussion with my department chair he confirmed that he periodically gets complaints from peopl e trying to make trouble for me at work.

The worst incident occurred five years ago, when Jake Crosby wrote a profoundly dishonest blog post accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest, in essence that I was in the pocket of Sanofi-Aventis and a shill. As a result, a lot of antivaxers wrote complaints to my dean and the board of governors of the university. Fortunately, my university supported me. My dean even called me to ask me if I felt threatened. I told her that I didn't feel physically threatened, but clearly I was being threatened with other harm. Since then, there hasn't been an attack at work that has caused me more than momentary annoyance, and the administration has learned that such complaints are usually nothing.

As I said, I'm small potatoes. Imagine having to endure what I endured five years ago, but on a much more frequent basis, along with a steady drip-drip-drip of other complaints. Imagine having to deal with being smeared on NaturalNews.com, the Food Babe's website, and basically all over the Internet as a shill for Monsanto. Imagine being the subject of an intentionally harassing fishing expedition in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request:

After receiving a FOIA request from US Right to Know—a nonprofit dedicated to exposing "the failures of the corporate food system"—the University of Florida notified Folta, a food and agricultural science professor at the university, that he would have to turn over all of his e-mails relating to correspondence with 14 different firms involved in agribusiness. His options: Submit all of his emails and allow lawyers to sift through them independently, or spend hours doing it himself alongside legal counsel.

The request is a response to public arguments by Folta that genetically modified foods are safe. Folta compares the strength of the scientific consensus on GM safety to the consensus on climate change and vaccines, and US Right to Know—or USRTK—believes the food and agricultural industries may be pressuring Folta and other scientists into voicing such arguments.

On January 28, US Right to Know sent out a FOIA request targeting 14 scientists at four universities, including Folta, requesting that they all turn over their email correspondence with industry representatives. Gary Ruskin, the executive director of USRTK, says the move is essential for uncovering the food industry's efforts to manipulate scientists into advancing pro-genetically-modified propaganda.

No, the move was "essential" for nothing of the sort. The only purpose of Ruskin's intellectually dishonest FOIA request was to harass the universities where scientists defending GMOs work, to chew up resources and the scientists' time, and, if Ruskin was lucky, to find something he could distort to make it look as though a scientist were in the pocket of Monsanto. Indeed, it's hard not to conclude that Ruskin was clearly lying through his teeth when he told Keith Kloor that the scientists targeted had been chosen for their involvement in GMO Answers, an industry sponsored website that posts answers to public questions about the safety of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. After it was pointed out that some of the scientists had never published articles for GMO Answers and had no relationship with the website, Ruskin changed his story and claimed that they were targeted for making public statements against California Proposition 37, which would have required the la beling of GMO-containing foods.

Of course, whenever you search through thousands of e-mails, you are virtually guaranteed to find something that you can use against your target. Ruskin knew this, and he did indeed find something after Folta complied with the request. It turns out that the University of Florida accepted a one-time unrestricted educational grant from Monsanto of $25,000. This is not an uncommon sort of grant from companies, be they pharmaceutical companies or other companies, and "unrestricted" means just that: The company giving the grant provides the funds for the the institution receiving them to use without preconditions. As Steve Novella has documented, this small grant was used to pay for "travel expenses, snacks, and other minor expenses associated with scientists outreach activities." The finding resulted in a hopelessly biased article in the New York Times by Eric Lipton in September. It was clearly a hatchet job designed to discredit him. In response, besides her usual nonsensica l bloviating, the Food Babe promised to file an FOIA of her own.

I can only guess how the harassment has escalated over the last couple of months. Having no "inside information," I can only speculate based on Folta's statement that he's "under a lot of pressure on many fronts" that perhaps his family is tired of the harassment. Another possibility, as unfortunate as it would be if that possibility were true, is that the University of Florida is pressuring him to shut up. Yes, universities generally support freedom of speech and academic freedom, but not all of them do so to the same extent, and when supporting a faculty member's academic freedom results in too much pushback, even the most dedicated university might have second thoughts. Pressure could be exerted in many ways, particularly given that Kevin Folta is the chairman of the Horticultural Science Department, which, believe it or not, probably makes him more, not less, vulnerable to pressure, because unlike tenured faculty, who are incredibly difficult to fire (and intenti onally so), department chairs generally serve at the pleasure of the dean. The university might not be able to get rid of Folta from the faculty, but it wouldn't be too difficult to threaten his position as chair, either subtly or not-so-subtly.

I'm not saying that this is what happened. I openly admit that I'm speculating about what might have happened based on how universities work. In fact, I really hope that this is not what happened. I hope that the University of Florida supported Folta completely, making his decision to withdraw from public advocacy unrelated to pressure from his administration. Again, I can't blame the guy for deciding to withdraw, knowing just a little of what he was facing and having had only a taste of it myself in comparison.

Over the years, I've noticed many traits that various antiscience cranks share in common, be they antivaccinationists, quacks, anthropogenic global climate change denialists, or anti-GMO activists, and that is an obsession with ad hominem attacks. They can't win on the science because science doesn't support them; so they attack the man—or woman. The tactics they use include online harassment, harassment of families, legal thuggery (as Steve Novella recently suffered), and, of course, harassing them at work by contacting their supervisors or administration. The idea behind this last tactic is to annoy the offending skeptic's boss to the point where he pressures the skeptic to knock it off. This tactic is depressingly effective when the skeptic works for a private company that can fire an employee at will, less so against academics. That's not to say that it never works against academics, but universities tend to value academic freedom and freedom of speech for faculty. Of course, if harassment of one kind doesn't work, maybe another type of harassment might. If harassment at a science communicator's day job doesn't work, maybe a bogus lawsuit or online public attacks might. Whatever the tactic, the idea is to intimidate the critic to silence, or at least to make speaking up so painful that the critic thinks twice about it. At the very least, other scientists who see what happened to, say, Dr. Folta might decide speaking up is just not worth the consequences. Again, that's the idea.

I wish Dr. Folta well and thank him for all that he's done in the service of science. I also hope that a day comes when he decides he can re-emerge and re-enter the conversation.

Source: A sad day for public science advocacy

#Blogging and tweeting, Dunwoody police chief becomes social media expert #AHSHotel

Blogging and tweeting, Dunwoody police chief becomes social media expert | AutoTraffic Blogging and tweeting, Dunwoody police chief becomes social media expert Dunwoody Police Chief Billy Grogan employs social media to extend the reach of the long arm of the law. "We started out using Twitter from Day One and quickly added Facebook and YouTube," Grogan said. As more police departments are recognizing the ... read more

Buy AutoTrafficRSS script now for $27 only!

We will send the script to your PayPal email within few hours,Please add FullContentRSS@gmail.com to your email contact.
Source: #Blogging and tweeting, Dunwoody police chief becomes social media expert #AHSHotel