Doug Arellanes reports on a Czech Christmas tradition.

I played Pacman last night for the first time in 20 years. I haven’t gotten any better. After some shyness, my daughter played too and said, “I can see why you think that’s cool.” Then we watched “Cat in the Hat.” Great movie. Yes, Jeff, it’s safe for kids who believe in Santa. 🙂

This morning, we continued our family’s recent spate of church shopping. (Had visited University Presbyterian twice, but were put off by its triumphalist smugness… although my son liked the white columns.) Today, we went to the , recommended by some laid-back friends. The church has a worthy [url=http://www.mindspring.com/~c3h/C3HUUA_History/c3huua_history.html]history. Unconventional service, but you (ok, I) gotta love two middle-aged men rendering Joni Mitchell’s “River” as a Christmas song.

I also enjoyed the sermon, which pivoted on the point that the gospels have been translated twice — from Aramaic to Greek to English — and that lots of meanings have been lost and found in those translations. Read a couple of versions of a translated work and see there’s a lot of room for creativity in even a single round of translation.

To experiment a little, I ran the Lord’s Prayer through Babelfish translator from English to Spanish and back. Here’s the English outcome:

Our father, who the sky art sanctified is known kingdom, thy thy comes, thy will be done, in the Earth because he is in sky. East Dénos perdónenos day our daily bread and our infractions, as we pardoned to which violate against us. And condúzcanos not in the temptation, but entregúenos of badly. For thine it is the kingdom, and the energy, and the glory, for always and always. Love

My son doesn’t like the Community Church’s modernist architecture. Yes, the lack of windows is pretty idiotic, and could be easily fixed with a sledgehammer. (Sadly, I’m almost comforted by the concrete: I grew up spending Sunday mornings inside a sinfully ugly, windowless concrete chapel completed in 1971.)

To remind you why River is a great Christmas song, here’s the opening verse:

It’s coming on christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on…

Finally, I’m eager to know what Josh Marshall has up his sleave to report about “the never-truly-busted-open OpEd Payola scandal.”

PS Shannon Okey suggests everyone contribute to the knitbloggers’ “give farm animals to a poor village” drive.

Jeff Jarvis praises Dan Okrent, NYTimes’ new “public editor,” for hanging his biases out for all to see. Jarvis says: “Now that got me to wondering why every journalist shouldn’t have a public paragraph such as that. I was raised in this business in the belief that we never said such things; we wouldn’t reveal our votes or parties or belief or grudges because that would be bias; that wouldn’t be objectivity. But not revealing them is a lie of omission.” He adds: “In this new, transparent world, it is better to be transparent. I’ve been learning that even now, even here on this blog, where I’ve found it better to reveal more and let you judge what you think of what I think.”

I also think transparency is good for the business of journalism. Readers connect better with honest, three-dimensional journalists, aka human beings.

And advertisers can pick their audiences more easily. In the interest of transparency, I should mention that our company has a patent pending based on exactly this concept.

Dave Winer considers the agenda of CEO confab Davos:

“‘Will Mainstream Media Co-opt Blogs and the Internet?’ Giggle. They asked the question backwards. ‘Have blogs and the Internet already replaced Mainstream Media?’ For many, the answer is yes. Seems like the WEF is trying to tell their membership (large corps) what they want to hear. It’s up to you to not co-opt those cute little blogs. Heheh.”

My favorite publisher and blogger Jeff Jarvis nominates himself to speak. I second that nomination and nominate Josh Marshall and –why not? — myself. Marshall is an independent journalist using his blog to break news and make money. I’m helping advertisers bypass traditional media and connect with blog audiences — media’s most influential. Who else should go?

A couple of years ago, we paid $9 for a Gram Parsons double CD: GP and Grievous Angel. We’ve listened to it on and off. This morning again. Incredible: A song for you, Hearts on fire, $1000 wedding. His bio. The “$1000 wedding” song is weird, mysterious and gorgeous. “And he swore the fiercest beasts could all be put to sleep the same silly way, and wear the flowers for the girl, she only knew she loved the world, and why ain’t there one lonely, only one sad note to play, supposed to be a funeral, it’s been a bad bad day.” How does Parsons’ singing make this word-wreck so soul-grabbing? Call me a sap, but I darn near cry every time I hear it.

Now I can keep an eye on Biz and buddies.

Richard Luckett, who handles marketing for leftish vendor Agitproperties, has been one of our most creative advertisers, running a series of humorous ads on Atrios and now DailyKos. Richard called me up last night to rave about how well things are going. This morning he reprised his comments by e-mail:

Businesses and ad agencies that dismiss blogs and blog ads are nuts! Blogads are absolutely phenomenal. Compared with print ads we’ve run in the Village Voice, blogads target our exact demographic and give four times the ‘bang-for-buck.’ You are keeping our fulfillment guy extremely busy. Bloggers put us on the map and blogads are definitely keeping us there.

Advertisers should study Agitproperties’ strategy. Update your ad text and image often. Be cheeky. Be exhuberant. Use some html tags. Know your audience. Keep some pitches inside. And put your fulfillment guy on overtime.

Here are the components of the ad Richard is running today:

Ho Ho Faux!

What better way to enjoy a cup of holiday cheer than in our 12 oz. FAUX NEWS coffee mug in “Hannity’s Heart” black?

See it, along with our infamous FOX-baiting O’REILLY YOUTH tee, our world-famous FAUX NEWS tee, our timely Got Allies? tee, way-cool TED RALL stuff and more at agitproperties.com – for the unrepentant Leftists on your gift list.

“Dear Mom, today I had a problem in school….” Unbelievable. Makes me want to vomit. (Via Volokh.)

Jeff Jarvis, vigorous blogger and president of Advance.net, writes “I’ll bet you’ll be seeing weblogs from The Times sooner than you think…. ”

Jeff is the smartest and best-wired publisher I know. But what the heck, I’ll take your bet Jeff, if you’ll accept some tweaking.

There are tremendous barriers, both psychic and fiscal, to NYT truly blogging.

NYT may allow journalists to publish some reverse-chronological, lite-edited, almost-real-time, time-stamped online news. But this is not really blogging and it won’t achieve the desired impact: more wattage and page impressions.

I’ll bet $20 that if or when NYT “blogs,” each new “blog” will omit at least five out of the following eight blog characteristics:

* strong opinions
* a sprinkle of personal details from the blogger’s life
* a blogroll
* an independent traffic counter
* a unique domain name
* the blogger’s photo
* some snark
* lots of links to other blogs and news sources

These are the ingredients that give blogs ten times more readers per keystroke than conventional journalism. Without the individualistic impulse that makes blogging great, NYT’s blogs will be Frankensteins… all the meat but none of the spirit.

OK, so those are the psychic barriers. Now the financial.

NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen says he’s “startled” to learn the NYT has more readers daily online than in print. He thinks this trend will impel NYT to start blogging.

Well, if Professor Rosen had been reading this very blog rather than the Times, he’d have learned about the traffic milestone in October of 2002. But, although other media repeated the news, the NYTimes still hasn’t written online or in print about the startling milestone or highlighted it to investors.

Like Professor Rosen, NYT shareholders will be startled too, I think. And concerned. Concerned that NYTimes.com reaches more people than the print journal, but, because of a vastly more competitive environment, achieves less than 3% of print’s revenues.

Which brings up the show-stopping question NYT shareholders will ask if management ever admits that 1/5 of a NYT journalist’s paid hours are devoted to blogging. “Why the h*ck are we dumping resources into such a low-margin business? How are we going to compete with passionate zero-overhead bloggers empowered by the blogosphere, the biggest traffic spinner since the cloverleaf?”

Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see the NYTimes trying to sell blog impressions to advertisers. It will further legitimate blogs and reinforce the startling fact that blog advertising, unencumbered by publishing’s traditional cost structure, is 95% cheaper. I just don’t think NYT shareholders can stomach watching their company wade into a link-quagmire to battle 10,000 infopreneurs.

Steve Lohr’s recent NYT overview of “markets as conversations” failed to mention Cluetrain, but did mention an interesting document that I pursued further this morning.

MIT professor Eric von Hippel researches the ways that technology users may form de facto peer networks to innovate new functionalities and invent new dimensions of commerce and design. Von Hippel surveys fields ranging from pipe-hanging to windsurfing to open-source-software to mountain-biking and examines the conditions under which users rather than traditional manufacturers can lead the way via horizontal collaboration.

User innovation networks can function entirely independently of manufacturers when (1) at least some users have sufficient incentive to innovate, (2) at least some users have an incentive to voluntarily reveal their innovations, and (3) diffusion of innovations by users is low cost and can compete with commercial production and distribution. When only the first two conditions hold, a pattern of user innovation and trial and improvement will occur within user networks, followed by commercial manufacture and distribution of innovations that prove to be of general interest.

…

These user innovation networks have a great advantage over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years: they enable each using entity, whether an individual or a corporation, to develop exactly what it wants rather than being restricted to available marketplace choices or relying on a specific manufacturer to act as its (often very imperfect) agent. Moreover, individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own: they can benefit from innovations developed by others and freely shared within and beyond the user network.

Cool stuff.

He’ll need to add blogging to his list of subjects to study. This whole view of horizontal user innovation networks becomes particularly interesting (and recursive) when you start to think about users innovating in the creation of technology that drives the networking/innovation process itself. Think about it this way:

Anonymous blogger Atrios is now selling clever t-shirts saying “I am Atrios.”

Rick Bruner explains what the holidays look like for someone unburdened by child or dog. Scroll down to the November 24 entry on this page.

Pleased with the results from the first go-round, John Kerry’s campaign has re-ordered ads on Talkingpointsmemo, Atrios, PoliticalWire and Agonist. New ads ordered on Oliver Willis, Talkleft, Pandagon and NathanNewman.

Having gone nine months without a cold, I spent the night with that grating feeling in my nose and throat. Ugg. I guess I’ll drive over to Raleigh Thursday to see Virginia Postrel speak. 12:00-2:00 pm, Speech, Brownstone Hotel 1707 Hillsborough Ave.