Tuesday, Oct. 11: 7-9 pm at Asahi newspaper

Wednesday, Oct. 12: 8-10 pm at Digital Hollywood (School of Media Art)

Thursday, Oct. 13: 2-4:30 pm at Digital Garage

Thursday, Oct. 13: 6:30-8:30 pm at Nikkei newspaper

Andrew Breitbart is incensed at a Twitter tweet I posted, pointing at a Little Green Footballs post that cited some ugly and grossly racist comments on Breitbart’s site. Given his history — especially in the Shirley Sherrod affair — I found myself sadly unsurprised that he’d provide a platform for such stuff, and expressed that opinion.

In a series of reply tweets, Breitbart said a) he provides an un-moderated platform; b) he loathes the racist stuff; and c) he doesn’t tolerate this at all. He also suggested — I’d love to see evidence for this — that left-wingers are using his open comment system to leave at least some of the hateful comments in question.  Meanwhle, his supporters, who are legion, demanded to know why I don’t denounce the comment garbage elsewhere. Well, I do and have; my special contempt is reserved for unmoderated anonymous comments where the purpose is to attack someone, which can turn threads are cesspools — and I am constantly surprised that big media sites, especially, allow their comment threads to be so putrid. This stuff is a pox on all of us. I don’t know why Breitbart allows it at all, given his expressions of disgust (which in fact makes it surprising, not unsurprising, that he does, even briefly) at the hateful stuff, but I will take him at his word that he doesn’t like or endorse it.

BUT: Whatever his policies may be, and however wrong I think he is to have unmoderated comments, Breitbart was absolutely right that I should have contacted him first before I pointed to the LGF posting, and asked him to respond. In not doing that, I wasn’t fair to him (and I’ve deleted my original tweet). He’s made it clear, moreover, that he does not share the beliefs of the hateful people who make those comments. I apologize.

It is Memorial Day in America, a Monday holiday that ends a three-day weekend — a holiday that has come to reflect so much of my nation’s culture.

Once, the day was about sacrifice: honoring the American men and women who gave their lives in military service. But it became mostly about pleasure: barbecue grills, shopping, entertainment and general relaxation.

On this Memorial Day, Americans are fighting in two semi-official wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and participants in a NATO mini-war in Libya. They are volunteers. They are dying and being crippled in significant numbers, and apart from their families and friends in the U.S. they are essentially an afterthought to most of their fellow Americans. They bear the brunt of our government’s penchant for empire. They sacrifice. We grill our burgers.

My generation, the Baby Boomers, rules in Washington these days, and we refuse to cover even the financial cost of their sacrifice. With few exceptions, we’ve chosen to borrow and spend, in mind-boggling amounts. President George W. Bush and Congress pushed the fiscal cost of the Iraq war off the official budget, pretending that we could just toss it on the pile of other debts they and earlier governments had incurred. Under President Obama, the accounting is somewhat more honest but the costs are still being pushed to future taxpayers.

American society has never fully shared the sacrifices its people have undertaken to build a great nation. But the disproportion has become grotesque, deeply wrong. Yes, the men and women of our Armed Forces have volunteered, and they have earned our respect and support. But there have been consequences we’ve rarely considered. Relatively few people shoulder this enormous burden, and the rest of us have let them drift far from our eyes and minds, especially since we’re not even shouldering a financial burden for these wars. Military and non-military families might as well live in different societies, a dangerous cultural divide.

Which is why, among other reasons, that I believe it’s time to restore the military draft. It’s why I believe a new draft should include (and maybe start with) me and my generation — and should be one of many shared sacrifices America undertakes to restore a prosperous and just society. And it’s why I will vote for any political candidate, of any party, who says these things out loud and promises to vote accordingly.

Granted, my cohort is too old for combat. No amount of training could put us in the kind of physical shape needed for that job. But we’re not too old to do many of the other jobs the military needs done. Military effectiveness is more than ever about brains than brawn. A good programmer or logistics expert serves differently, but those are enormously important skills.

There are millions of Boomers who could ably handle the rear-echelon tasks that the military spends vast energy and money to train 18-year-olds to do, and we could do them better. I wouldn’t like it, but if my number came up in a truly level draft — a draft that didn’t distinguish by age or financial station — I’d willingly go to Afghanistan to serve in any capacity that was useful, even if that was to write press releases.

The Boomer generation is loaded with talent. Consider all of the geniuses who operate Wall Street’s investment banks. Few of them have served, but surely the nation would be well served if we asked them to temporarily divert their energies to screwing our enemies instead of their clients and the American public. I’d be especially glad to see a draft that included hawkish commentators and members of Congress who are so proud to see other people’s children heading to war zones.

A draft would probably also save money. Today, taxpayers are borrowing countless billions to spend on highly paid “private security contractors” — the mercenary forces that fill the gaps we refuse to fill by not fielding fully equipped forces either in manpower or materiel. Sharing sacrifice would mean drafting men and women to serve at standard military wages.

To anticipate just a few of the objections to this idea, let me raise two obvious ones. First, the volunteer forces have been successes in many ways, especially the leg up they’ve given young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Military service has provided training, confidence and leadership skills to people who honor us and their nation by serving. The answer to this, of course, is a program of national service — a requirement that everyone spend a year or two in some capacity that America needs. (That’s a topic for another piece in this series.)

Another issue is what happens to older people’s income, not to mention their jobs, when they serve in a truly comprehensive military draft. We don’t want people heading off to Afghanistan and defaulting on their home mortgages. Asking a small business to preserve at least some income and positions would plainly require subsidies. But large companies already have enormous advantages; I’d require them to a) pay a portion of the difference between a military salary and what the employee was making; and b) to hold the position, or an equivalent one, open for the employee’s return. Sharing sacrifice, remember?

This argues, of course, for starting with the people who need subsidies the least, especially those who’ve inherited or made so much money already that even a 24-month major reduction in income would be barely noticeable. People whose incomes in recent years have been subsidized by the rest of us — such as Wall Street bankers — would be great candidates.

I know there are a thousand other problems with this suggestion. But I’m certain they are not show-stoppers. When Americans put their minds to creative problem-solving, we tend to find answers.

I honor our military men and women, people who have joined a tribe that the rest of us barely recognizes except on special days of the year and when they either make huge mistakes or claim big victories. But we dishonor them, and undermine our nation, with our unwillingness to face up to the true cost of war or to share the sacrifices more broadly; it’s easier to pursue war when we don’t bear the burden ourselves.

The majority of Americans who fear we are headed in the wrong direction are not stupid. They see a future entirely unlike the one they faced as young adults. The Boomers know in their guts that their children are likely to be worse off, not better off, than themselves. And they know who’s largely responsible: the generation that followed World War II’s “Greatest Generation,” a cohort that will someday be remembered as the Selfish Generation.

Unless. Unless we get honest with ourselves, at long last — and say the truth out loud as a society, and then act on it. Do we have leaders who will be honest with us?

The truth is, America is in clear and present danger, not just of decline but a frighteningly rapid descent into Second World status. We are in danger of turning this greatest experiment in self-governance into a corrupt, bankrupt, and violently polarized society.

So let’s reinstate the draft, as Step One in the generation of shared sacrifice Americans will have to make. (Step Two, perhaps: Raise taxes to pay for these wars as we fight them.) Something called the United States of America will survive even if we don’t. But that nation will not be the America most of us want.

Thanks for stopping by…

This is what I consider my “anchor site” on the Web. Think of it as a portal to (almost) everything I’m doing, online and offline.

My primary gig these days is running the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, a new project of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

I’m also involved in citizen-media efforts, and am a blogger, author, media investor and co-founder of several online businesses. More about all this on the About page.

Follow me on Twitter @dangillmor.

• About: More about me and my work
• Mediactive: My new book/online project
• We the Media: The official site of my previous book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
• Calendar: My whereabouts and speaking engagements
• Contact: How to get in touch with me

I’ve been a fan of Salon since the day it started, and a paying subscriber as long as the company has offered that option. If you visit Salon often, you already know why.

So I’m delighted to be bringing some of my blogging there, including many of the items I’d normally be posting here. My arrangement with Salon gives them exclusive access for one week to new posts, after which they’ll appear here — as always, under a Creative Commons license from this site.

Here’s my first post.

I usually aim it at something the United Way finds politically difficult to help directly, such as Planned Parenthood. My logic: I figured the umbrella group’s other recipients would do okay with the default selection by most folks.

This year, I’m sorry to say, the Valley of the Sun United Way (VSUW) in metropolitan Phoenix refused my directed gift, which I’d attempted to donate through Arizona State University, my employer.

At the end of many conversations, emails and research, VSUW said it wouldn’t pass along the money to the ACLU Foundation of Arizona. The reason? It wasn’t, in the opinion of VSUW, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization providing “health and human services” — the baseline requirement for a targeted donation. Instead, the VSUW told me, based on an employee’s check of the ACLU website, the ACLU is:

more of an advocacy group than a health and human legal aid organization. ACLU’s mission is more about protecting Constitutional rights and more about issues as opposed to serving individual people in need. The work is more driven by the issue or position than the need of the individual.

The VSUW contrasted this with an agency it does consider worthy under their guidelines:

Community Legal Services of Arizona, also known as The William E. Morris Institute for Justice qualifies as a “health and human service” agency.

The William E. Morris Institute for Justice is a private non-profit agency established in 1996 to provide services to the legal services community, to other community-based agency advocates, and to select low-income clients in Arizona. In 1997, the Institute added an attorney who provides Legal-Services-Corporation precluded legal representation to low-income clients on a variety of issues. The Institute conducts research, advocacy and training activities to enhance legal services provided to low-income households in Arizona.

If they’re right about Community Legal Services — definitely a worthy organization — they’re mistaken about the ACLU. I went beyond website PR and looked at the ACLU-Arizona IRS reporting forms, which to be fair I had to ask for from the organization.

The advocacy part of the ACLU operation is in the 501(c)(4) arm. The 501(c)(3) report clearly shows that the organization provides human services though legal representation and public education. I told this to the United Way and sent along the forms.

The United Way’s response: No again. They didn’t address the specifics beyond insisting that the ACLU did not, under their rules, qualify. (I probably hurt my case by asking if this was a political question more than anything else, given Arizona’s right-wing leanings. They furiously denied this had anything to do with it.)

So I’ve withdrawn my donation, which was a generous one, giving instead directly to the ACLU and (as I’ve already done) to one of the organizations the United Way does approve of. At this point, however, I’m not inclined to do anything with the United Way, or at least this branch of it.

Postscript: By the way, the Arizona ACLU was basically useless during this process. The organization made no attempt to intervene, as far as I can tell, with either the university or United Way. And afterward, when I suggested the ACLU work with ASU and UW to fix this problem so it could become a designated beneficiary for gifts, the response was essentially, “Hmmm, interesting idea.” I’ve seen no sign whatever that anyone bothered to pursue this. Who loses? The people who need the ACLU’s services the most. I hope the AZ ACLU’s legal services aren’t as dysfunctional as the fundraising.

The evidence is crystal clear that any potential risk from the vaccine is vanishingly small compared to the risks of not getting it.

Which is why I got my seasonal flu shot already, and will get an H1N1 vaccine when it’s available, because it’s selfish not to do so. This is not just about me: It’s about the people I might expose if I get the flu.

The Japanese Shinkansen “bullet train” runs at high speeds, but only when you see it up close do you realize how fast. This 16-car express train takes only a few seconds to whip through the Shin-Hanamaki station on its way from Tokyo to Hachinohe in northern Honshu island.

In explaining why Arizona State University (my employer) won’t award President Obama an honorary degree when he speaks at next month’s commencement, a university spokeswoman told the Associated Press:

“It’s our practice to recognize an individual for his body of work, somebody who’s been in their position for a long time… His body of work is yet to come. That’s why we’re not recognizing him with a degree at the beginning of his presidency.”

That is one of the more incredible — as in not credible — statements I’ve ever seen from a PR person. Period.

There’s surely more to this story than publicly known — even if it’s simply a matter of a cascading screw-up, which is entirely possible, as opposed to a more political situation. Some reporting by news organizations would be helpful.

Whatever led the university leaders to make this decision, they should realize that they’ve embarrassed themselves and their institution.

UPDATE: Looks like the university is reconsidering. Glad to hear it.

LATEST UPDATE: The school apologized, and is renaming a scholarship program after Obama, but is holding to the no-degree stance. Sigh.

This Flickr map has more than 120 photos, taken by me and some Arizona State University journalism students, at last week’s Phoenix “First Friday Art Walk” — a monthly, self-guided tour of a downtown-Phoenix district that contains a number of galleries and craft-oriented shops.

Putting this together was absurdly simple: We combined the capabilities of the Google/T-Mobile G1 smart-phones and services provided by the photo-sharing site Flickr. (Note: Google provided us with the phones and its carrier partner, T-Mobile, gave us airtime.)

The G1s are the first in a line of what Google hopes will be lots of devices using the Android operating system, which is considerably more open than Apple’s iPhone and has, in my view, roughly equal potential. The G1s contain, among many other capabilities, digital cameras and GPS (global satellite positioning radios that tell location within a few meters).

Each of us shot a dozen or so pictures at various places along the Art Walk streets. After snapping each picture, we sent it by email to a special address at Flickr, using the name of the gallery or other location as the subject line and adding some body text to describe what we were looking at.

Embedded in the JPEG photo files created by the G1s is a critically valuable bunch of zeroes and ones: the location as determined by the GPS. Flickr reads that location data as it imports the picture files, and then places the images autormatically on a map.

In other words, the map was being created in real time, as we walked the streets and snapped the photos.

Now, this is not a new idea by any means. And we could have done a much better display of the pictures with a bit more time; Flickr’s mapping display to the general public is very crude compared with what it could do (the image above, much better than the one you’ll see if you click this public link, is available to the account holder of the map, but not to other people) Moreover, sending pictures via email was a crude way to handle the images; there are applications for the iPhone and Nokia’s GPS-equipped phones that upload to Flickr much more efficiently than anything written so far for the G1.

Still, it was trivially simple to set this up and make it work, using tools that already exist and are, for the most part, easy to use. We’ll be doing much more with the G1s over time (including, I hope, creating applications that more fully explore the devices’ potential).

The point is that some events take place over time and space, and are made to order for this kind of treatment. Journalists are actually quite late to the party. Flickr and other sites are displaying crowd-sourced such events via user-created tags.

We’re planning to open up this page to others in the Phoenix community, so that over time people create a rich photo set of First Friday. We’ll help people sort by dates, not just location, so that we can see how the monthly event changes over time, too.

We are planning a series of other experiments with these phones (and others), and would be grateful for ideas on how we might take best advantage of these incredible devices. Our goal is simple: testing ideas that will help create valuable community information resources and services.