Fox Appropriates Family Dog, Cultural and Economic Debate Ensues

A family in Baltimore spotted a familiar face during a Fox football broadcast last month. It was their family dog, Truman, in a photo they had posted to Flickr that was apparently harvested by the television network and used to "holiday-up" their broadcast of a game between the Saints and the Eagles.

This prompted a blog post by dog-owner Tracey Gaughran-Perez and, many comments later, a call from the Washington Post which led to 1) some (moderately) contrite reaction from Fox, and, 2) a story in the paper (Hey, Isn't That . . .).

The Post story takes a larger look at the growing issue of copyright infringement in a culture that is on-line and connected and very, very open. People are starting to point to a basic hypocrisy in large corporations on the one hand zealously enforcing copyright against individuals while on the other hand violating individual copyrights with seeming impunity.

The story also makes an interesting point about how the culture of on-line, personal and real is leading advertisers and corporations away from the traditionally false and contrived material they have long used in advertising and corporate communications.

It's a byproduct of the user-generated world: the trustworthiness of YouTube, the realness of Facebook. Above all else, we believe ourselves. "People don't want to buy the fake from the phony anymore," Pine says. "They want to buy the real from the genuine."

This story caught my eye in part because I am an active flickr-er. I place a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative" copyright on my photos, which, in theory, protects them from unauthorized commercial use. I do the same, by the way, with content on this blog.

I have found unauthorized use of content from Mike's Musings in the past. I found a post from this blog pasted into an ad-spam blog. These are blogs that scrape content from bloggers to give their ad-sites something for google and other search sites to find. In that case, when I e-mailed the site's owners they apologized and took my content off their site.

I have not yet found any of my photos taken without permission. That doesn't mean it hasn't happened, though. There have been several cases where I have been asked for permission to use photos. I have given the travel guides site Schmap permission to use shots I have taken in the Florida Keys and at the Statue of Liberty. I have granted permission to the Cape Gazette to use a few shots in backgrounds on their site as well. And I have given permission for their use in a few publications; there was an economic development brochure for a small city in New York, and a set of state-themed poems published as postcards.

I have not yet tried to make any money of my work; I'm usually happy to help out local institutions or non-profit groups. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in making some small amount of cash, however, if Fox or CNN or MSNBC or someone wanted to use a photo of mine in their election coverage.

Thank You, Coach

Joe Gibbs resigned as head coach of the Washington Redskins football team yesterday. It was unexpected but not too much of a surprise, in retrospect. Joe Gibbs is a thoughtful and spiritual guy. He had been quoted lately as saying that the tragic death of Redskin Sean Taylor had reminded him of the importance of family and friends. It seems time now for Joe Gibbs to focus on more personal things.

I think sports columnist Mike Wise put it well in the Washington Post:

Smile. Feel good for a 67-year-old man who decided to spend more time with his grandchildren. A coach at Redskins Park went out on his own terms for the first time in 15 years. He got his life back.

I agree. To that I would also add a "thank you" to a coach who brought a team I have followed as a dedicated fan for the last 36 years back to respectability. I am a Redskin fan. I will root for my team whether they are world-beaters, almost-great, or doormats.

Joe Gibbs was not a perfect coach, but he reminds us that a football franchise need not be perfect all the time. It should conduct itself as a true team, however, and make an honest and dedicated effort to be the best team it can be. It should value people as people and not as machines filling positions. It should remember that the game is not the most important thing in this life, even as it strives to succeed.

Field Trip Needed: Mahaffey, PA

I need to make a visit to the Borough of Mahaffey, in western Pennsylvania, somewhat southeast of Punxsutawny. I'm adding it to my list of places to visit to learn more about family history.

View Larger Map

Mahaffey is the only populated place in the US that I know of that is named for a relative of mine. There is a small lake named Mahaffie created by the US Farm Service out in Oklahoma.

I had been aware for some time that there is a place called Mahaffey in Pennsylvania, but it is only recently that my genealogical wanderings led me to a reference to the person it was named for, Robert Mahaffey, who was the grandson of my great-great-great-great-grandfather's brother. That makes him my second cousin, four times removed. It's probably more useful to say he was second cousin to my great-grandfather, Doc Mahaffie.

Back around 1750, a group of Mahaffeys emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania, settling originally in Cumberland County. There were either two sets of two brothers who were cousins, or more likely there were four brothers. Records are sketchy; our best source is a family history from the early 20th century.

In any case, one of those original American Mahaffeys was Charles, whose son Andrew changed his name's spelling to Mahaffie and produced JB, who produced Doc, whose son Charles was my grandfather. The elder Charles Mahaffey's brother Thomas, meanwhile, fathered William, who fathered Robert Mahaffey, who appears to have founded the settlement that now bears his name.

I had already shown Robert Mahaffie (1815 - 1900) in my family tree, but it wasn't until I found an extract from Twentieth Century History of Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, and Representative Citizens, by Roland D. Swoope, Jr. (published by Richmond-Arnold Publishing of Chicago in 1911), that I had a reference to a founder of Mahaffie:

Robert Mahaffey equaled his father in enterprise. He engaged also in lumbering and later cleared up a large farm in Bell township and also conducted a general store and in addition, operated a mill. His various enterprises prospered and each one assisted in the developing of the other and ere long many settlers had been attracted to his neighborhood, a village resulted and in his honor was named for the man of energy and progress, who had had the foresight to select this certain section of the wilderness as his place of investment.

Today Mahaffey is something of an also-ran among the many municipalities and boroughs of Pennsylvania. I couldn't find a town government in my Google-searching. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania doesn't link to one. And I couldn't find anything via the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities or the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs.

The 2000 US Census found 402 residents; all of them white with a median age of between 39 and 40 years. According to the Bell Township/Mahaffey Borough Joint Comprehensive Plan (found via the PA County Planning e-Library) prepared in 2000, population at Mahaffey reached a peak of 801 in 1920. A lack of economic opportunities, likely tied to the shift away from an agrarian economy in the eastern US, led to high levels of out-migration.

But Mahaffey looks like an interesting place. It sits among the hills and along a mid-sized stream. There are some recreation areas nearby and a Mahaffey Camp, "A Christian Center for Spiritual Growth," up the road.

I think I may need to take a field trip to see the place for myself.

Even More Delaware Blogs

Almost as soon as I posted my "really big list" of new (or new to me) Delaware blogs, I've been finding even more. This is a catch-up list.

• Rolfe Photography is the blog of Judy Rolfe, a professional photographer in Lewes. This one could also have been added to the Delaware Photo Blogs post.
  
• Wilmington Family Blog is by "a wife, mom, and dog owner in DE, ... also a high school teacher..."
• Don't Eat Baby is the blog of a stay-at-home mom.
• Behind The Mike is an internet radio show.
• Life in the Slow Lane is the "everyday ramblings of an aspiring economist, a stay-at-home mommy, and a one-year-old..."
• Follow His Leading is by "an Assistant Church Planter in Lower Delaware."
• Jecilyn and Treavor's Mom is by the Mother of two....
• The Day and Life of MissyMiss who is a wife and mom.
  
• And the Ramblings of "a Massachusetts native living in Delaware; a Patriots and Red Sox fan."

RIP (and Thank You) George Macdonald Fraser

I was saddened to learn of the death yesterday of the author George Macdonald Fraser. Fraser, a Scot, created the Flashman series of novels, which have given me a great deal of pleasure over the years. He was 82. The cause of death was cancer.

Fraser had served in India during World War and worked as a journalist in Glasgow before becoming an author and screenwriter. The original Flashman novel started that portion of his career in the late 1960's. In it, he took a minor character in 19th century literature and imagined him into one of the greatest cads in English fiction. His novels are great fun and feature well-researched and accurate historical people, places, and actions.

He also wrote a wonderful memoir of his military service (Quartered Safe Out Here), and a series of short-stories inspired by that period of his life (the "McAuslan" stories). He wrote a parody of pirate books (The Pyrates) and a handful of novels set in Victorian and Elizabethan England. His screenplays included several "musketeers" movies and Force Ten from Navarone.

George Macdonald Fraser was a fine writer. He has left us an impressive body of work. Thank you, sir.

Election Fun #3

In an admission of an intent to announce something later that won't be surprising because no one was really taken unawares by today's admission, Jud Bennett has 'fessed-up: he'll make another run at Lynn Rogers for his Sussex County Council seat.

Last time, Jud lost the race by three votes. In the intervening years, he's been keeping a steady, if jaundiced, watch on County Council. There's never really been any doubt that Jud would run again. He'll make the race about growth and development and land-use controls. It should be exciting.

Interestingly, I had a blog-visitor today from New York City who found one of my post-election posts from fall of 2004 via a google search for "Lynn Rogers Sussex county council member campaign donations."

Does Jud have an election consultant from New York?

Election Fun #2

The News Journal held an on-line straw poll today in preparation for the Iowa Caucuses.

On the Democratic side, Barack Obama edged-out Delaware's own Joe Biden by two votes. They were followed closely by Ms. Clinton and more distantly by John Edwards and a few other fellows.

On the Republican side, Ron Paul scored what looks like a decisive victory over Rudy Guiliani, followed by John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Mitt Romney was in fifth place. The Ron Paul win may be tainted by (very slight) hints of astro-turfing; someone posted the poll to Digg with the following note:

The Wilmington News Journal is sponsoring a virtual caucus for the state of Delaware. Ron Paul is trailing Rudy... let's make it happen!!

In the comments that followed, several supporters posted information on Delaware ZIP codes, which might have been useful in fooling the News Journal's polling system. Of course, this may only have been an attempt to get Delaware e-voters involved, and there's nothing to say that other candidates' supporters did or didn't try the same thing. But it looks a bit funny.

And let's not forget that there were only 4,696 votes cast. We probably shouldn't take this very seriously.

Election Fun #1

I was (only a little) surprised to find out today that there is a link to this blog from an unofficial "Mike Huckabee President 2008" blog. The Feedjit traffic feed widget I installed recently showed a click-through today from a post on that blog listing Other Bloggers on Mike Huckabee. That post is from last February. I had included some praise for Huckabee back then in a brief collection of some things I liked about some politicians.

I wonder if readers who've come here from there have had a look around the rest of the site and been horrified to find that I am, indeed, a left-wing, progressive liberal? I am, you know.

I did like what little I had heard from Huckabee at that point; he sounded like a reasonable fellow. There was never more than the slimmest possibility that I would have voted for him, though. And as the race among the Republicans has heated up, his rhetoric and positions have become more traditionally right-wing and evangelical. So...

But I do like him on a personal level.

2007 on Mike's Musings

2007 was the first full year for which I tracked traffic on this blog using Google Analytics. Well, most of the year. There were two brief periods, totaling about a week, when I had made template changes and forgot to re-install the Analytics code. But I think I have enough data to take a look at activity for the year.

There were 8,103 unique visitors, who stopped by 14,773 times and viewed 29,576 different pages. My busiest day for the year was September 14, with September 13 a close second. Based partly on data about individual page-views and Google search terms, I think that those dates were busiest because of several posts in the first part of September:

• Fifty Years Ago Today, in which I looked back at desegregation;
• Looks Like I'll Have to Make Friends With a Lawyer/Author from California, one of several posts this past year about lighthouses being sold;
• At The 29th Annual Bethany Beach Boardwalk Arts Festival, which featured the works of at least one popular artisan and touched on the contentious Delaware off-shore wind-farm proposal; and,
• We Have Met the Enemy and He is Those People, in which I took my own neighbors to task for their desire to wall-off our subdivision from a new one next door.

There was a lot going on just then.

Over the full year, a large majority of readers simply came to the blog's front page and read what-ever was newest. But there were a number of pages, some from several years ago, that continued to attract readers. Here are the top five:

• Pimping My Prius, from September of 2005, is about installing a Sirius Satellite Radio receiver in the Prius. This page was viewed 918 times in 2007. It has long been the most-viewed archive page.
• A Restaurant Recommendation Chain-Post, from May of 2007, is one of the few "memes" I have ever taken part in. By design, this meme carries links back to all participants and that chain of posts garnered 166 page-views in 2007.
• Hey! A Gravity-Monument Photo!, from May of 2005, also had 166 page-views in 2007. Anyone who has ever run across one of these puzzlers is bound to do a bit of Googling and that can lead to this page. There's also a link to it from TutorGig.Com's page on the Gravity Research Foundation.
• An Albino Deer? Or An Echo From the Distant Past?, from January of 2007, is about a white deer I spotted at Cape Henlopen State Park but also mentions a legend about a white deer from the Lenape people who once lived in this area. I've noticed lots of "white deer" searches over the years. This page had 147 page-views in 2007.
• Now, Here's a Surprise, from August of 2005, concerns my experience with a blood clot hat summer. This one gets many visits from folks searching for information on blood clots. I hope it helps people who stop by; it had 144 visits in 2007.
  

Search engines generated many visitors to Mike's Musings in 2007, but not the majority. Almost 53% percent of visits came through links from other sites, including Delaware On-line, Blogger (likely the risky "next-blog" link), several other Delaware bloggers (Delaware Liberal, TommyWonk, WGMD, and Down With Absolutes top that list), and (interestingly) via the link in my e-mail signature line.

A bit more than 32% of traffic to the site this past year came through search engines. Many were searching for "Mike Mahaffie" or for "Mike's Musings." Other popular searches were for combinations of sirius and prius and satellite, "how to get rid of a blood clot," and the Woods of Mahaffie.

About 15% of visitors were from "direct traffic," meaning people have bookmarked me (how nice) and checked back in (even nicer).

Most of my readers are from the United States though there were a good number of visitors from Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia and many non-English-speaking countries. Within the US, most visitors checked in from within Delaware and surrounding states. But I am pleased to see that I had visitors from every state, though only 3 from North Dakota.

I'll have to work up some North Dakota-specific content and try to target a Roughrider audience in 2007.

More Delaware Blogs

Today was gray and rainy and, aside from a run to the bank and the library and the normal kid-carting, perfect for some on-line loitering. I spent some time, therefore, poking around the web in search of more Delaware blogs to add to my ever-expanding list.

I use del.icio.us to track, categorize, and blog-roll a variety of blog-links over on the left side there. I keep a list of Delaware blogs in general, a list of (mostly Delaware) political blogs, and a list of other blogs I enjoy.

Sometimes I wonder why I've let myself get sucked into so obsessively tracking the blogs here in Delaware. The web is meant to be a global community, and much of what I do on-line aligns with my communities of interest -- geospatial data, music, the Dead, blogging itself. Yet I still like to track those blogs that focus here on the 2,000 square miles of the First State. It is where I live, I suppose, and these are the people I see most often.

So here are some Delaware blogs I found today (and a few days ago too). In no particular order. A few are just-started; an early New Year's resolution or a Christmas present to the self. Others are a months or more old and have been hiding in plain sight.

• Bring Me Up -- A series of music reviews.
• Frank's Ramblings!! -- Frank posts things he finds on his daily travels.
• Creative Rants from Nerissa -- She says it is "her page; her rants." But there's more than ranting here.
  
• Blog Avenue -- "Jen's City Blog." About life in Wilmington, I think.
  
• Clockwork Jalopy -- "...where I park my many ideas and weird views." We all need that.
  
• Bienvenue Chez Seals -- A transplanted Frenchwoman in upstate Delaware.
• Just Purge -- "Clear your mind. Cleanse your soul."
• On Transmigration -- "Gay, Happy, not quite Ecstatic, and moving on to a new life and responding well to therapy."
• Jenny Q -- A mom From Newark, Delaware. With a teen. Bless her.
• katielynn -- Newlywed woman in Delaware.
  
• Everyday Hustle and The Fine Print -- These appear to be two young friends upstate. They each have their own blog, but there are cross-references.
• Useless Entertainment -- Music reviews, from Milton, Delaware.
• Another Gun Blog -- "...a 22 year old law clerk / college student and a gun nut."
• Blue Hen Hash House Harriers -- "...announcements and write ups for the Blue Hen Hash House Harriers, a Delaware drinking club with a running (stumbling) problem."
• Object of Complacency -- A young man. I think a Delaware high school student.
• Shoreman -- Keeping an eye on the shore from the Delaware side of Delmar.
• It's All Greek To Me! -- A teacher at a (Delaware?) Greek charter school.
• along the way -- She is "a writer, a minister, a friend, a sister, a daughter, and a wanderer" who also "manage[s] a church camp and conference grounds" in Bethany Beach, Delaware.
• VibrantPolitics -- A young man in Newark closely following the Democratic primaries.
• Average Girl In Average World -- An average person. Who blogs.
• Delaware Venable -- Fairly tightly focused on religion. Right-leaning Christian variety. A retired state trooper.
  

You may notice that most of these are Blogger blogs. My cheat for today was to surf the "Delaware" tag in Blogger's profiles. I like to do that every once in a while. This time of year is usually a good time to find new blogs.

I will, of course, continue my practice of checking all of the blogs I link to each month to see if they are still active. Those with a month or more without new posts are moved out of the blog-roll and onto the inactives list. I do track their RSS feeds to try to catch them and re-add them when they come back to regular posting.

There are a small number of Delaware-based blogs that I find that I choose not to link to. These tend towards the virulently racist and anti-semetic. As a general rule, I don't link to blogs that feature collections of fascist iconography. Call me intolerant. It's my blog-roll.