“Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right
to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo’s shareholders are
provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our
proposal.”

Are the chills going up your spine? Flickr, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Pipes, heck half my universe would suddenly be run by the boys from Redmond, coders not particularly known for their Web 2.0 sleekness or social ingenuity.

It’s kind of interesting to look at the process by which new theologies are being added into Liberal Quakerism at an ever-increasing rate.

• Membership of individuals in meetings. There are hundreds of meetings in liberal Quakerism that range all over the theological map. Add to that the widespread agreement that theological unity with the meeting is not required and just about anyone believing anything could be admitted somewhere (or “grandfathered in” as a birthright member).
• A workshop at the Friends General Conference Gathering and especially a regular workshop at successive Gatherings. Yet as the very informed comments on a post a few years ago showed, theology is not something the planning workshop committee is allowed to look at and at least one proponent of a new theology has gotten themselves on the deciding committee. The Gathering is essentially built on the nondenominational Chautaqua model and FGC is perfectly happy to sponsor workshops that are in apparent conflict with its own mission statement.
• An article published in Friends Journal. When the the Quaker Sweat Lodge was struggling to claim legitimacy it all but changed its name to the “Quaker Sweat Lodge as featured in the February 2002 Friends Journal.” It’s a good magazine’s job to publish articles that make people think and a smart magazine will know that articles that provoke a little controversy is good for circulation. I very much doubt the editorial team at the Journal considers its agreement to publish to be an inoculation against critique.
• A website and listserv. Fifteen dollars at GoDaddy.com and you’ve got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.

There are probably other mechanisms of legitimacy. My point is not to give comprehensive guidelines to would-be campaigners. I simply want to note that none of the actors in these decisions is consciously thinking “hey, I think I’ll expand the definition of liberal Quaker theology today.” In fact I expect they’re mostly passing the buck, thinking “hey, who am I to decide anything like that.”

None of these decision-making processes are meant to serve as tools to dismiss opposition. The organizations involved are not handing out Imprimaturs and would be quite horrified if they realized their agreements were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a commenter on my last post, on this summer’s reunion and camp for the once-young members of Young Friends North America, had a very interesting comment:

I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those previously involved in YFNA have taken leadership with FGC … with both positive and negative results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the legacy we are creating: do we like it?

I have the feeling that the current generation of liberal Quaker leadership doesn’t quite believe it’s leading liberal Quakerism. By “leadership” I don’t mean the small skim of the professional Quaker bureaucracy (whose members can get _too_ self-inflated on the leadership issue) but the committees, clerks and volunteers that get most of the work done from the local to national levels. We are the inheritors of a proud and sometimes foolish tradition and our actions are shaping its future but I don’t think we really know that. I have no clever solution to the issues I’ve outlined here but I think becoming conscious that we’re creating our own legacy is an important first step.

Just Give Google the Content It Loves

In theory it’s easy to make Google, Yahoo, MSN and
the other big search engines happy: give potential visitors site
they’ll want to visit. Forget the tricks and spend your time putting
together an amazing site. Search engines like text, so write, write,
write.

I’m looking to join a web design house, which means I’ve been
interviewing with slick web developers lately and whenever they ask me
the best way to increase SEO for their
clients, I tell them to start a blog. They look at me like I’m an idiot
but it’s absolutely true: two blog posts a week will end up being over
100 pages of pure content. All of these sites full of Flash animation
get you nowhere with Google.

Just a note that any kind of text-rich web system can achieve many
of the same results–blogs are just the easiest way yet to get content
on your site.

Presenting What You Already Have: Blog your Water Cooler Chat

When I talk to people about starting a corporate blog they quickly
start telling me how much work it will be. Bah and Humbug–your
company’s life is probably already filled with bloggable material!

I used to work in a bookstore where I did most of the customer
service, much of it by email. About two or three times a week I’d get a
particularly intriguing query and would spend a little time researching
an answer (mostly by looking through the indexes of our books and
searching the arcane sites of our niche). This research didn’t always
pan out to a book sale, but it marked our bookstore as a place to get
answers and gave us a competitive advantage over Amazon and its ilk.
Each of my email answers could have easily been reformatted to become a
blog post. By the end of a year, I’m sure the volume coming from these
obscure searches would be quite high (see yesterday’s Long Tail Strategy
post on the HitTail blog for an account of how attention to search
engine’s one-hit-wonders helped achieve a widespread keyword dominance).

Whenever something new happens that breaks you out of your routine,
think about whether it’s bloggable. At the bookstore, a new book would
come in and we’d spend ten minutes talking about it. That conversation
reached half-a-dozen people at most. In that same ten minutes we could
have written up a blog post saying much the same thing.

Last Spring a controversial article appeared in the local newspaper
that tangentially involved my employer. That morning my workmates
gathered together in the reception area for the better part of an hour
trading opinions and wisecracks. After about five minutes of this, I
slipped back to my office and wrote my opinions and wisecracks down
into my blog. I hit post and came back to the reception area–to find my
workmates still blathering on, natch. My post reached hundreds and took
no more time out of the work day than the reception pontifications.

Humans are social animals. We’re always blogging. It’s just that
most of the time we’re doing it verbally around the water cooler with
three other people. Learn to type it in and you’ve got yourself a
high-volume blog that will add invaluable content and SEO magic to your site.

Mix up your content: Tag Your Site

Lastly, a point to webmasters: it usually pays to think about ways
to re-package your content. My most recently experience of this was
tagifying my personal blog over at “QuakerRanter.org.” Every time I
post there a Movable Type plugin fishes out the key words in the
article and lists them afterwards as tags. These tags are all linked in
such a way that results send the term through the site’s search engine
to give back an on-the-fly index page of all the posts where I’ve used
that term.

Tags are like categories except they pick up everything we talk
about (when we use them aggressively at least, and especially when we
automate them). We don’t necessarily know the categories that our
potential audience might be searching for and tagifying our sites
increases our keyword outreach exponentially. My personal blog has 239
entries but 3,860 pages according to Google.
It’s the parsed out and re-packaged content that accounts for all of
this extra volume. This doesn’t increase traffic by that nearly that
much, but last month about 30% of my Google visits came from these tag
indexes. More on the mechanics of this on my post about the tagging.

The first thing to do is to “download the latest Firefox browser”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. It’s a smallish download and it works great “right out of the box.” But to get the fun stuff, you need to download “extensions,” which consists of clicking the download button and restarting the browser.
*Extensions*
* “Bookmarks Synchronizer”:http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=14&vid=15&category=Bookmarks : If you use more than one computer in your life (work and home, say), this will allow you to have the same bookmarks (“favorites” in Internet Explorer) on all your machines. I find I actually use bookmarks more
* “All-in-One Gestures”:http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=12&vid=13 : I can never convince people that mouse gestures are really cool. I think you just have to try them. With this installed, you can hold down the right mouse key, slide the mouse to the left and go “Back” a document. Not really exciting, I know. But once you get used to this you’ll start trying to use gestures on all your programs and thus discover just how addictive they are.
* “Chromedit”:http://cdn.mozdev.org/chromedit/ : This makes it easy to change certain configuration files. There are two that are worth making. One is the “Speed Up Page Rendering”:http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html#oth_rendering (which is noticable) and the “Ad Blocking”:http://texturizer.net/firefox/adblock.html. You don’t need to know anything technical about making these changes: you just cut-and-paste the code from the website tricks page into Chromedit.
* “Googlebar”:http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=33&vid=34 : Like its equivalent in Internet Explorer.
* “Jesse’s bookmarklet”:http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/ site has dozens of handy bookmarklets–little pieces of javascript that can be saved as buttons in your bookmarks or toolbar.
* “Adblock 0.5”:http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=10&vid=11 : As the name says, it blocks ads. Once you’ve installed it and restarted your browser, click on the options (on the Firefox toolbar, click “Tools” then “Extensions,” find “Adblock’ and click on the options icon). Go to Help and select “Load default filters from web.”
* Like most other Firefox users, I’ve used “Tab Browser Extension”:http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_tabextensions.html.en, which has all sorts of tools to fully utiltize “tabbed browsing,” the mode where new windows are shown as tabs in a single window. Clear? Well, it’s hard to explain, but it makes juggling open web pages much easier. Unfortunately “Tab Browser Extensions” or “TBE” is a buggy extension which causes more problems than it’s worth. Here’s a “list of alternatives to TBE that will give you the functionality without the bugs”:http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Firefox_:_Tips_:_Extensions_That_Replace_TBE
h4. Other things to look at:
* On the upper righthand corner of Firefox there’s a search box. Pull on the little icon and you’ll see that you can use it to search not only the page you’re on but also Google. There are hundreds of other searches you can add to by pulling down the icon and click on “Add engines” (you can also go to the “Search Plugins Homepage”:http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html. Just to give you an idea, I have searches for IMDB, Bookfinder, Wikipedia, Yahoo on there.
There’s been a bit of controversy over the new look of Firefox. I won’t get into it except to say that I think that “Qute, the old default theme,”:http://update.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=7&vid=8 looks better than the new one. Luckily, it’s easy to switch back.
Finally, if anyone’s wondering why I’m obession so much as to give you my detailed list: I’ve installed this on a few machines already and want my own list of favorite extensions.…

This group is for Christians interested in discussing issues of religious plain and modest dress. It is not necessary to have grown up in a plain or modestly dressing group. We are especially interested in the experiences of those who have come to this point as a sort of conversion or a “recovery” of tradition that has been lost. Traditional Catholics, Anabaptists, conservative Quakers, and other Christians welcome here. Theological points and demoninational differences are open for discussion (not argument), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Discussion of headcovering is also allowed here, as are gender distinctions in dress. We may also share prayers for one another, as well as the challenges we face in trying to live in obedience to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to discuss the validity of Christianity–no blaspheming allowed.

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy witness. It forces us to deal with issues of submission and humility on a daily basis–just try to go to a convenience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explaining this new ‘style’ to one’s more worldly friends can be quite a challenge. These are eternal issues for those adopting plain dress and I laugh with comradeship when I read old Quaker journal accounts of going plain.
Even so, I have a bit of trepidation about a newsgroup on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talking about it too much. The point shouldn’t be to formulate some sort of ‘uniform of the righteous,’ and adoption of this testimony shouldn’t be motivated by peer pressure or ambition, but by a calling from the Holy Spirit–this is the crux of what I understand Margaret Fell to have been saying when she called pressured plainness a “silly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an identifying uniform, which is fine, just not necessarily the Quaker rationale).
But like any outward form or testimony (peace, Quaker process, etc.), taking up plain dress can be a fruitful course in religious education. I think back to being seventeen and bucking my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Academy–my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be acted out in my life. It became a useful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “consume” clothing and how I relate to mass marketing and the global clothing industry. It’s also kept me from ducking out on my faith, as I wear an identification of my beliefs.
So join the plain dress discussion or take a look at the ever-growing section of the site called Resources on Quaker Plain Dress, which includes “My Experiments with Plainness”, my early story about going plain.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen were in Columbus to gain popular support for the war and to build the myth of a national consensus for a U.S. attack on Iraq. They were both surprised and embarrassed by the jeers and tough questions they received from audience members. Some audience members held up signs and chanted “We Don’t Want Your Racist War” while one questioner asked why the U.S. wasn’t considering force against other countries violating human rights such as Indonesia in it’s slaughter of East Timorese (when Albright started hemming and hawing, her accuser shot back “You’re not answering my question, Madame Albright.”)

The Columbus dissenters are the top story in the major newspapers and media pundits are starting to publicly doubt polls showing overwhelming support for military action.

Sample Letter to Media

To the Editors,

With today’s story about an Ohio audience jeering Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, it’s time for MS-NBC to give some coverage to the groundswell of grassroots opposition to another Gulf War. If you had been monitoring the “Iraq Crisis Antiwar Homepage,” the events in Columbus would not have been a surprise. In fact, 82 other demonstrations are currently listed here.

In addition to events listings, the Antiwar Homepage has analysis, action alerts, ideas for organizing and links to major nonviolence groups. A project of the Nonviolence Web, home to dozens of U.S.-based peace groups, it is a central source for antiwar organizing.

Please consider profiling all the great work being done around the country to stop another senseless war.

In peace,
Martin Kelley
Nonviolence Web

Reporters visiting the “Iraq Crisis Antiwar Homepage” would not have been surprised by the turnout in Columbus. A huge grassroots antiwar movement has grown in the past month. The Nonviolence Web’s email box is being flooded with great statements, letters to Clinton, action ideas and just plain worry about another war. The Antiwar Homepage’s list of upcoming protests spans the world, listing the Columbus event along with over seventy others.

But little of this organizing has gotten the national media. Most of the online media have put together sections promising “complete coverage,” and sporting bravura titles like “Showdown with Saddam.” But look at the coverage and you’ll see only fluff pieces about the brave boys on the aircraft carriers or furrow-browed analysis of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s doomed search for a diplomatic settlement.

fter Ohio, the national media will have to start recognizing the widespread dissent among Americans. Some progress is being made. YAHOO, the most popular site on the net, has listed the Antiwar Homepage in its list of Iraq Crisis resources. And a top news organization is working on a profile of the Nonviolence Web to appear within a few days (keeping looking for an announcement).

But we must all do more. Write and email the national media to include coverage of antiwar actions. Demand that a link to the Iraq Crisis Antiwar Homepage be included in their “Complete Coverage” of the crisis. A sample letter to MS-NBC is included here, but please write your own and show them that dissent has spread past the Columbus auditorium and is following them across the internet!