Advertising: Good, Bad, Creepy

When I went out leafleting last weekend, I saw three kinds of outdoor advertising: good, bad, and creepy.

When it comes to elections and Hallowe’en, it pays to advertise.  Hence, many lawns were decorated with pumpkins, skeletons, tombstones and political yard signs.

As to the election, “my” side, opposing selling New Providence’s largest park to Union County for $1, got the yard signs and the votes out early.  Somehow a “vote yes” sign appeared next to my “no county park” sign the day after the elections.  I suppose that was from someone sore that New Providence rejected the sale 2:1.

As to Hallowe’en, our house failed to advertise this year.  Advertising is very important.  Even though trick or treat day fell on a Sunday, only two children showed up to claim their treats.  This was not entirely bad; we got to eat all the chocolate ourselves.

The creepy advertisement was the house with the newspapers in the driveway, three FedEx stickers on the door and the door hanger from the week before on the knob.

If the owners had merely moved away, they must have been so sinister and unfriendly they couldn’t convince anyone to take care of their entrance.  As it was, the entire front of their house was an invitation to burglars to swoop in off the highway, break a window and help themselves.

On the other hand, maybe the owners were dead and mouldering inside.  That would have been appropriate for Hallowe’en. 

I decided not to leave my bright green brochure at the door to further advertise the vacancy within.  In fact, I picked up the newspapers in the driveway, too.  But, come on, neighbor.  If you advertise the fact that your house is ripe for a break-in, you put mine at risk, too.

Hallowe’en advertising, great.  Political advertising, great, even if you don’t agree with me.  “Nobody home” advertising, reprehensible and creepy.

Darn weatherstripping

Nothing says "Your neighbors hope you'll vote on this issue" like a hand-folded leaflet delivered to your door by a neighbor.

The problem is the darn weatherstripping.

Most of us know that it's illegal to put anything that's not US mail into a mailbox. So there I stand at your stoop, trying to figure out how to leave the leaflet so that it won't blow away.

The problem is that your weatherstripping is so tight that I can't wedge my important flyer between your jamb and your door. I'm all in favor of energy conservation, but I wish I could leave my message for you, confident that it won't take off in the next gust of wind.

Norfolk latches, attached to the door at two points, allow me to fold the flyer and leave it under the latch. Unfortunately, I only found a couple of those.

To the people with the jalousie storm door: I hope it's okay that I wedged the flyer between two of your louvers.

After delivering to 4 1/2 streets yesterday, I have new respect for letter carriers.

Thoughts for election day

I don't usually pass along those chain emails, but I liked this one so much I sent it on to my friends and family.

My 20 People

You're part of my 20 people, hoping you will send this on to your 20 so we get this out before election day.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message.

It is time.

FIX CONGRESS!!!!!
**********************************

Congressional Reform Act of 2010

1. Term Limits.

12 years only, one of the possible options below.
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension.

A Congressional rep collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when
out of office.

3. Congress (past, present and future) participates in Social Security.

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congressional reps can purchase their own retirement plans, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of Consumer Price Index or 3%.

6. Congress loses its current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressional reps are void effective
1/1/11:
The American people did not negotiate these contracts with their representatives.
The representatives made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators who would serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

Please feel free to cut and paste this message into your own emails. And please vote on November 2.

Oakwood Park Youtube Video

Thanks to Maria Ludwig for keeping New Providence residents informed about the upcoming referendum over whether the borough should sell Oakwood Park to Union County for $1.

Today she forwarded the link to this video about the potential sale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFp9C55h8Gs

Our own Brian Flanagan is running for Union County freeholder. I encourage Union County residents to vote for him.

PS Have you noticed the brick outside the New Providence Library inscribed "No County Park 2009"? I wonder where that came from... kh

Whose Snow Is It, Anyway?

Here in New Jersey's suburbs, where we get about 50" of precipitation a year, we don't think much about riparian rights. We leave it to people west of the Rockies to rival each other in taking more water out of the Colorado River.

After a large blizzard, though, we do think about who owns the snow. At least I do.

The government clears the snow off the public roadways with large and powerful snow plows. The private citizen, on the other hand, removes snow from his or her driveway and walkways by shovel, blower or plow.

Here's what goes through the mind of the private citizen: "I have just shoveled/blown/plowed my driveway and along comes the public snow plow, depositing an enormous berm at the end of my driveway. Phooey!

"Also, removing snow from my car and driveway is a lot of work. If I remove it from my car, it falls in my driveway, where I have to remove it again. On the other hand, if I leave it atop my car I can drive out into the public roadway. Then it blows off and the next snow plow pushes it into a ditch, or makes a berm at someone else's driveway. That is so much easier. Besides, I can't reach the top of my SUV to push off the snow anyway."

The state of New Jersey is two steps ahead of that average driver, outlawing driving around with a snow cover on the vehicle. Clearly, this is a safety measure to prevent sheets of ice from flying off flatbed trucks and breaking someone's windshield. But the net effect is that the government is telling people to keep snow on their private property, not on the public roads.

When the government then pushes more (public roadway) snow onto (private) driveways, you can see how the citizenry might be irritated. Citizenry with clout fight back by engaging snow plows. The plows shove the snow out of the private driveways and into the public roadways, neatly destroying berms and making the private snow the responsibility of the public plows.

The rest of us sigh and throw our backs out.

If you're thinking that the answer is to close up your house and fly to Arizona for the winter and fret about how to supplement your 11" of annual rainfall with water from the Colorado, check your insurance policy. Does it require you to plow your driveway, even if you're not there, in case emergency vehicles need to get to your house? Gotcha.

Finally, aren't sidewalks a good example of the tension between public and private snow?

Once I had a blind roommate. I know how vital clear walkways are to independent living.

And many times I have been the muscle behind the snow shovel. I know I would rather remain inside on a snowy day than trudge outside and clear a pathway for other people's benefit.

Shoveling my driveway benefits me, in that it allows me to move my car. Shoveling the sidewalk really doesn't, and yet, if I have one, the government obliges me to clear it--under threat of a fine.

That's part of the protest against adding sidewalks along Woodland Avenue in Summit.

If there were an easy answer, I would include it here. I don't think there is.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Just finished reading Junk Science Judo: Self-defense against Health Scares and Scams by Stephen J. Milloy. Milloy seems to assume that poor science makes headlines because scientists, peer reviewers and editors do not understand the scientific method, and that if he just explained it, the scientific community and the media would see the error of their ways. They would refuse to report on inconclusive but alarming results.

How touching. Milloy does not know that there is an entire marketing technique abbreviated as FUD. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt--deliberate dissemination of disinformation about a product or service in order to confuse consumers and dissuade them from supporting the competition.

Blogs make FUD easier than ever. If I wanted to, I could say disturbing things about my competition here on this blog, and encourage my friends to leave similar comments to boost the PageRank. I could moderate any ripostes from the maligned competition. And if I were truly devious, I could have other websites pick up my posting--websites that do not allow comments. No peer review, just my slanderous word out there in the blogosphere forever.

It's hard to get other people's blog posts taken down, even if they are blatantly inaccurate. Another blogspot blogger took some of my press releases last winter and ran them through a blender, but left my name and telephone number intact. They looked like real press releases, albeit written on hallucinogens. The purpose of those postings was to create links back to an Internet pharmacy site. See the "report abuse" choice at the top of this page? I complained to Google, which owns blogspot. I filled out their online form (the only way they allow complaints) but I when they requested it I did not send a scan of my driver's license because they did not offer me an encrypted transmission. Because I did not send it, Google has not acted. Stalemate.

Fortunately, the bogus press releases do not spread FUD, except on the question of whether I might be blogging while intoxicated. But I give this example to show how easy it is to post misinformation, and how hard it is to remove bad information. Who needs the New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the American Medical Association if they can start a free and anonymous blog and say whatever they want?

Do I believe everything Milloy writes about the inappropriate reporting of scientific studies? I don't know. And I find his web site, JunkScience.com, more strident and abrasive than the book. But I do think that as long as people are out there perpetrating FUD, we all need to be aware of it lest we wind up, as Milloy quotes Carl Sagan's foreboding

of an America in my children's generation or my grandchildren's generation...when clutching our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.

On a similar subject but from an entirely different section of the library, I also just finished reading How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond and Ian Spiegelman. Raymond is the former top GOP operative who served time in federal prison for jamming the Democratic call center phone lines during the 2002 New Hampshire Elections.

Raymond did not go to the pokey for his political FUD. Having actors portraying urban men calling conservative, potentially racist, households to urge them to vote for the Democratic candidate, in order to scare them into voting Republican is just business as usual, I guess. Ugh. Between shenanigans like that and Operation Bid Rig is it any wonder The Star-Ledger, the largest paper in New Jersey, endorsed independent candidate for governor Chris Daggett?

Adrenaline gets our attention. But we have to keep questioning the source of the information that makes our hearts race, lest we be frightened into acting against our own best interests by cynical purveyors of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Ups and Downs

Up: I did not want to speak at the public meeting last night about the proposed development of Oakwood Park. I felt I did not know enough about the subject.

I recalled that I had to appear at planning board meetings in the past. For those meetings a friend (an attorney, a gifted public speaker and reluctant political advocate) had advised me at those times that all I needed to do at the meeting was to state my name and residence, and that I opposed the proposal. That was sure a lot easier than mustering arguments and putting them to the elected officials.

Up: decided to research. Called the NJ DEP and spoke to someone in the Green Acres program. In case he was mistaken, I omit his name here. He said that according to Green Acres regulations, the property holders needed to inform the DEP 30 days before any public discussion about a transfer of title. He said that the DEP had not been notified.

This, I thought, was real information that I could proudly bring to the mic. Democracy in action.

Up: Called the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. Because I was too busy writing down my interlocutor's suggestions, I omit her name here. She gave me some great information about the ROSI (open space inventory), and about how to ask about impervious surface coverage.

Up: Looked up the New Providence Master Plan online. It was a productive lunch hour.

Down: Called my friend the attorney. He said my recollection was poor. He said that I could just mention that I opposed the action, but that it would be far better to muster the arguments.

Up: Attended the meeting. Even though I was not perfectly prepared, it was definitely better to be there in person than to learn about it after the fact and grouse about it in private.

Down: Sounded dumb at the mic. They were about to close the meeting because there appeared to be no more speakers from the floor. It was then or never so I approached the microphone.

I asked my three questions.

"What kind of synthetic turf?" and "Have you consulted your impervious surface coverage requirements?" got the "We don't know but maybe they will answer that at next week's meeting."

"Have you notified the DEP?" got "Of course we did. We have been discussing with" (did not have pen handy at the mic to write down his name). In the end my questions sounded random and not very pointed.

Up: Maybe the fact that I did not sound like the brightest crayon in the box encouraged some of the speakers who came after me to air their questions. Democracy is not just for those accustomed to microphones. It's for everyone.

Down: Many of the people who spoke after me sounded much more intelligent. Good thing that this was a public hearing and not a competition...

Up: I felt very web 2.0 blogging about the meeting as it happened.

Up: the meeting petered out around 9:30. Other meetings I have attended have lasted till midnight.

The mayor's public letter said that the borough council had discussed this issue at its December 08 meeting, which was televised. There was an article in the local paper at the time. The minutes of the meeting are online.

I could have checked any of those sources, instead of being gobsmacked last week learning about last night's discussion in the Independent Press. (Kudos to Mike Neavill!)

I definitely should be following my local government more closely. On the other hand, there are only 24 hours in a day. How many of them do I need to devote to the government?

I want to be able to trust that my government is going to pretty much do what I think they should do. I want to be able to trust that if the government is planning to do something really radical, the press will let me know.

Too bad eternal vigilance is so darned time-consuming, and, at times, humbling.

Brian Flanigan's Bons Mots

Brian Flanigan, Planning Board Member, says that he is concerned about the park.

"The problem is that the public hasn't had a voice on this project....it's of a scope and of an intensity that may not be appropriate for this site.....This is really in the heart of a residential neighborhood.....The uses that I'm afraid that this intensity of development will preclude" are the passive uses, the spontaneous uses.

He is also concerned about turfing over the greensward. "If you're going to make that decision, it can't be made in a rush....If the only way out of this is to give Garwood the money, let's give it to Garwood.....Please, let's take more time with this and give more consideration to the intangible aspects of it."

Brian enjoyed two rounds of applause.

Chain Link Fence

Gee, the Mayor's glowing letter http://www.newprov.org/pdflibrary/OakwoodParkMayors%20Letter%20March2009.pdf

neglected to mention anything about 10-foot high fences around the park.

Someone Did His Homework

Whatever this guy's name is, he's asking good questions.

How long has the Union County Open Space Fund been in existence? 7 years
How much money is in the fund? 11.2 million

So there's a precedent where we could have received money and not have deeded it to the county, am I correct? No, said Devanney.
Should the renovation exceed the project 3.5 million, is there any liability on the part of the borough. No, said Devanney

He's from New Providence, but I couldn't hear his name. It's a shame that people here are allergic to microphones.

Oh, and the next guy asked another good one: why wouldn't the county use that money to acquire open space, instead of investing it in Oakwood Park which is clearly in no danger of development?

What Is Synthetic Turf?

Darn, I was really hoping that there would be hours of questions, that other people would ask all my questions and I would never have to go near the mike.

It is always a bad sign when people at these meetings profess ignorance of crucial details. Say the store next door is applying for a variance, including installing a dumpster. As them what time their garbage pickup will be. Their eyes will glaze over. "Oh, I don't know," as if such details were too petty for them to consider.

It makes a difference when the truck comes at 5 in the morning.

So I asked, "This synthetic turf. Is that the kind made out of ground up old rubber tires?"

"We, uh, don't know," was the response, but they were sure that that would be addressed in the April 2 meeting.

The future taxpayer sitting next to me was against rubber "turf," because coaches won't let athletes carry any foods on the turf. Unlike growing grass, the "turf" stains. Also unlike growing grass, "turf" can get up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Maybe I'm a snob, but I don't like the stuff.

Not Surprisingly

Freeholder Scanlon claims that Union County will "rehabilitate" Oakwood Park.

Frankly it does not need rehabilitation. "New Providence has the land; the trust fund has the money," she adds.

The borough had already designed the park before it went to the county for the grant? The county says it was "disappointed" about that. Obviously, this has been in the works already.

After the meeting started 15 minutes late there were 45 minutes of laudatory speeches by the mayor and freeholders. Before any public comment, they announced that the discussion of the Oakwood Park resolution was done and have now opened the floor to the public.

First speaker, Tom Getzendanner of Summit, here to praise the county's cooperation with Glenside Park, and apparently using the opportunity to ask the freeholders not to take a pension holiday.

Next speaker I am not familiar with, asking a question about the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. What, did they convince people to come here and filibuster?

I'm sure they announced that they were opening up the floor for comments about the agenda items, didn't they?

Are we having fun yet?

NJ Outsources to TX

I wanted a list of large companies in Morris, Essex and Union Counties. The Union County website list was 11 years old.

So I checked NJ.gov, where I did not find a list either. I found a link to "Q and A NJ live help," though . Not quite sure what that was, but ready to play along, I followed the link, which offered me a live chat with a librarian.

To my surprise, the librarian was not in New Jersey, but in a very large state in the south. I will call her "Texas Tillie."

Tillie asked me if I belonged to my local library (yes), and then she found its web site. After she scanned the online catalog she told me that the database she would have recommended (RefUSA) was not available at my library.

[Librarian 10:09:33]: RefUSA is the best I have found for creating list of businesses in the US by criteria.
[Librarian 10:10:01]: New Jersey may have directories that I am not familiar with.

Tillie said she would leave the question for follow-up by a New Jersey librarian.

I have two concerns about this
1) She was checking my local library for resources. What if I were not from a municipality that funds its library well? Would she only be able to give me "poor" answers because I came from a "poor" town?
2) Why is a librarian unfamiliar with New Jersey resources answering questions for a New Jersey resident via the official New Jersey state website? In short, why is New Jersey outsourcing to Texas? Don't we have enough librarians in New Jersey?