Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Category: Egoism in Action (page 28 of 30)
Dave Barnes, may the gods cherish his every atom, offers up this observation in a comment to another post:
Ardell wrote (on another blog): “Greg blacklists and deletes comments when anyone chooses to argue a point on BHB. You can’t have a conversation there or call them out there. That’s the joke of the whole “let us teach you about WEB 2.0″ thing. AS IF!”
Is this true?
Do you blacklist and delete?
Oh, you bet! We have to.
We don’t blacklist. In all of our thousands of pages, there is no black-bordered list of unpersons. But our comments policy is carefully defined and elaborately documented:
Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: When you’re done, you’re done. Anyone can make a mistake, but if your behavior is palpably malicious, you will be banned from BloodhoundBlog forever.
I think I’ve probably told you this before, but I have a great respect for you, Dave. I’ve always found you to be open minded, and I don’t think you are one to be swayed by what one might call political considerations — looking good (or bad) in someone else’s eyes. I don’t think this was intended to be a softball question, but, who, practically speaking, tolerates intolerable behavior on his or her own property?
Even so, Brian Brady and I are each playing our own variations of a game we call What would David Gibbons do?, so I am going to take some pains to answer every Read more
Defining disingenuousness: Am I beating a dead horse? Or am I staring down a headless high-horseman?
This is a comment I just posted to Dustin Luther’s weblog. I’m putting it up here, too, so that people can see it (without the typos I found after I posted my 4Realz comment) and so that I can include links without getting shunted into moderation.
To be honest, I hate this kind of ugliness. But one of the reasons I am married to Greg is because I learned the hard way, a long time before I met Greg, that if you are not willing to stand up for what’s right, you are surrendering to evil.
This is my comment:
Dustin,
Disingenuous? From Dictionary.com: “lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere.” You believe that anything here is descriptive of me?
And let’s look at your entire concluding paragraph:
“And finally, Cathleen, I’ve been avoiding responding to comments on this thread because there is a small group of people (dare I call it a “pack”) who seem to be searching for any opportunity to defend Greg by criticizing people who were offended by Greg’s comments (seeing as how we’re in the midst of a political season, it seems appropriate to call it “negative campaigning”). I don’t assume you, or anyone else, was offended by Greg’s post, but it certainly seems disingenuous for you to insinuate that those of us who were offended must have an ulterior motive.”
How is that not a personal attack? You are smearing the integrity of people who have disagreed with you as a means of undermining their arguments without addressing them. How is this not an ad hominum attack? Or, do you claim to be righteous in offending Teri, Mike, Brian, Russell, Geno and me (the only six from, excluding Greg, twenty-two BHB contributors who have commented on this thread) because you’re Dustin Luther? And, by the way, isn’t your blanket statement that the BHB contributor’s comments “search for any opportunity to defend Greg by criticizing people…” a straw man argument? I certainly didn’t read the kind of defense you describe into either Teri’s or Geno’s comments. So that leaves Russell, Brian, Mike and me. Have you ever seen any Read more
A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story
The very first thing she said to me was, “I’m Anastasia.”
She had pronounced the name ‘Anna-stay-juh’ but I took care to be more formal. I nodded gravely and said, “‘Ah-nah-STAH-ziuh’. I’m honored.”
She giggled delightedly. “Why’d you say it that way?”
“To lilt, to laugh, to dance, to dream. To fly, to sigh, to sing, to speak. To embroider the air, to perfect it with the perfect sound: ‘Ah-nah-STAH-ziuh’.”
She giggled again and that was answer enough.
She was four-and-a-half on the day we met. Not awfully, terribly short, but at no risk of scraping her head on anything. She had a round little face that had borrowed too much mischief to be cherubic but was angelic nevertheless. Her hair was brown and it was almost always almost everywhere; it was obviously brushed and tied and obviously instantly disarrayed by her mischievous wanderings. She was a beautiful child, beautiful inside and out, but her eyes were the crowning glory of her nobility. They were bluer than blue, deep and dark and purple, as purple as the crest of a dynasty. They were clearer than any gemstone, and they seemed not to reap the light but to sow it. For all the days I knew her, I could never see enough of those purple gemstone eyes.
“What’re you doing there?” she asked. I was sitting in the shade of a little olive grove reading a book. She was standing on something behind the block wall of the property next door, just her head and shoulders above the wall.
“House-sitting. You know what that means?” She shook her head and her hair flew into a more advanced state of disarray. “It’s like baby-sitting only easier.”
“Why’re you doing it?”
I shrugged. “The official answer is, I’m helping out a friend. The unofficial answer is, TV, refrigerator, hot and cold running everything. Does that make any sense to you?”
It might have or it might not, but we’ll never know, because she changed the subject. “I have a kitten. His name is ‘Sputin.”
I said, “Rasputin. Somebody likes Russian names. Say it: ‘Ra-spyoo-tin’.”
“Why?”
“Just say it. ‘Ra-spyoo-tin’.”
She said, “‘Ra-spyoo-tin’.” Her voice Read more
I thought that post title would get your attention. I’m not a regular lawyer. But it does seem odd that no one has even dared to ask the obvious question, “Is 
Marc Davison a Little Nebbish”? Please understand, I am not saying that he is a little nebbish. But if Greg calling Marc a little nebbish is what got this whole mess going, I think it is a valid question. Why the big fuss over Greg calling Marc a little nebbish? Of all the things Greg has said and done it seems a bit odd that it is now important to unsubscribe to BHB and or stop posting here. I guess advocating the end of the NAR or all state licensing laws or all mandatory continuing education or the end of dual agency, not to mention the separation of the buyer agent commission from the seller – each and every one a common and typical and startling, in your face, post from Greg Swann. Lets see, this is the guy who went from just starting his blog to one of the most highly read real estate blogs in existence in less than a year – and this little faction of the real estate community is just now announcing, “I’ve unsubscribed”.
Yes. I found it interesting, thought provoking reading this past year but now that he has called Marc a little nebbish – hell, that is going too far. I will never read it again. Never. I’ve unsubscribed. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Yes, I am also one of the original thought people who just now decided that this was simply too much. Too far. No more Greg Swann or anything on his blog. I will never read it again and will get the existing writers there to also leave him. That will teach him. All 50 or 60 of us are G – O – N – E. Gone. Forever. Never again.
Wow.
Wow. Also, I don’t believe the never again part. Each person who Read more
Oh, good grief.
Normally, when the RE.net goes through one of these public breast-beating episodes, I just stay out of it. I don’t read the posts, first because they’re stupid and comical, and second because there’s nothing that I’m going to say that’s not going to fan the flames. The arguments always turn on the Fallacies Tu Quoque and Two Wrongs Make a Right, as do all appeals to the mob, and people running in mobs are just an embarrassment to the idea of being a human being.
This is unintentionally hilarious, though, so I thought I’d quote it. If you don’t know what’s going on, I promise you it does not matter.
I’m going to leave my opinions out of the discussion in order to leave more space for these people to see the error of their ways, apologize profusely, and re-enter our community in a constructive manner.
Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Greg Swann, founder of BloodhoundBlog, which is justifiably famous for telling the straight truth, and this seems like an apposite moment to remind you that the theme song for the upcoming BloodhoundBlog Unchained Social Media Marketing Conference is “I won’t back down” by Tom Petty.
Here are the Heartbreakers performing that song at the Super Bowl:
If you’re looking for buddies — kindly folks who will forgive all your short-comings, at least until it becomes expedient to turn on you — this is probably not the place for you. If your plan is to commit egregious acts of cupidity or stupidity and somehow escape withering criticism — change the channel. If you entertain a Romper-Room-like dream of playing placidly with all the other special kids on the short bus — you’re on the wrong bus.
If, on the other hand, you want to learn how to organize your working life so that you never again have to take shit from morons, you’ve come to the right place. We are all about the ninety-and-nine here, and we are all about the work — deploying better ideas to do our work better, faster and more profitably. I don’t go out of my way Read more
I don’t think it is right to attack people who have a social personality. All harsh attacks should be reserved for those to 
exhibit anti-social traits. Whatever is necessary to expose them and render those people impotent is not only alright, it is vital for the survival of society. But to attack the personality of someone because they hold a different viewpoint or propose ideas that one does not agree with is an attack on the social fabric that binds groups together and therefore the group itself. The fact that someone is more intelligent than another (and would therefore have superior powers of observation) is seldom (never?) a reason to treat the other person with rudeness. We are all here together. It is good that we have differing views. That is what makes communication interesting.
The blogosphere is a community. It is a group.
Via Coyote Blog and Radley Balko, the Philadelphia Inquirer brings us a nice illustration of why occupational licensing laws really exist: Not to protect the consumer, but to protect the licensees from free-market competition:
Mary Jo Pletz was really, really good at eBay. But now the former stay-at-home mother and gonzo Internet retailer fears a maximum $10 million fine for selling 10,000 toys, antiques, videos, sports memorabilia, books, tools and infant clothes on eBay without an auctioneer’s license.
An official from the Department of State knocked on Pletz’s white-brick ranch here north of Allentown in late December 2006 and said her Internet business, D&J Virtual Consignment, was being investigated for violating state laws.
“I was dumbfounded,” said Pletz, who led the dark-suited investigator to a side patio area, where he grilled her. “I told him I would just shut down,” she said.
Mary Jo’s violation? Auctioneering without a license. Sound familiar? It should. It parallels the dumb stunt the Sate of Arizona tried to pull on Zillow.com, which was accused of doing real estate appraisals without a license.
But there are consumers who need protecting, right? Oh, you bet:
D&J Virtual Consignment had 11,000 feedback comments on eBay and 14 were negative, Pletz said, giving her a 99.9 percent satisfaction rating.
Ebay is not just perfect Capitalism, it is Capitalism Perfected — everything that has always been implicit in free-market commercial transactions made utterly transparent by means of database management. If you are looking for the complete and irrefutable refutation of Das Kapital, you’ll find it not on but in the form of Ebay.com.
So where’s the beef?
Amoros, the state spokeswoman, said investigations were a “complaint-driven” process but those complaints are confidential.
Uh huh.
It is only possible to for you to defend occupational licensing laws by ignoring the palpable harm they do to actual consumers — higher prices for lower quality goods and services. But even then, don’t get downwind of yourself. This stuff stinks.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology
As you may know, the Canadian Human Rights Commission accidentally read George Orwell’s 1984 backwards. In consequence, it has set itself the task of persecuting Canadian publishers for the crime of having published. Most notably, international gadfly Mark Steyn — along with Macleans magazine — has a date with the Star Chamber.
Ezra Levant, while serving as publisher of the Western Standard in Alberta, published the now-infamous Mohammed cartoons in his magazine. Two fundamentalist Islamists brought a complaint to the Human Right Commission, arguing that Levant’s act of publication was essentially a “hate crime.”
In these videos, you will see portions of Levant’s arguments before the Human Rights Commission — a stirring and passionate defense of the principles undergirding the idea of a free press.
Hannah Arendt taught us all about the banality of evil, and the seeming lack of affect in the functionary who presumes to judge the content of Levant’s character is chilling. But Loudoun County Tax Assessor Todd Kaufman is an exponent of the same sort of banal evil: In preference to disputing words with words, Todd Kaufman chose to try to force Danilo Bogdanovic to retract what he had published by threatening his livelihood.
If you truly don’t understand the principles involved, it were well for you to correct that deficiency before you find yourself in Mr. Levant’s place. He at least has the consolation of knowing why he is in the right.
Much, much more at EzraLevant.com.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
This is an extended response to “concerned citizen,” who commented at length on my Loudoun County Tax Assessor Todd Kaufman has a friend post. The nom de poltroon “concerned citizen” may or may not be a sock puppet for Todd Kaufman himself, but it sure reads that way to me.
Does not Mr. Kaufman have the First Amendment right to complain to the Realtor board? And does not the Realtor board have the duty to investigate whether there are false facts published?
Don’t be absurd. You’re attempting to reframe the debate to portray Kaufman as the victim. What we have is a case of abuse of office, a government functionary attempting to abrogate the free speech rights of an innocent citizen. The Bill of Rights exists to protect citizens from government.
The price for Mr. Kaufman exercising his rights, even if misguided, should not be ridicule
To the contrary, this is the exact and perfect price, firmly established in the history of satire in America.
and exposure of personal information.
Straw Man Fallacy. Did not happen, at least not in anything posted on the RE.net.
It comes across not so much as openness as exposure for further personal attack by others by way of letters to his home, phone calls and the like.
Straw Man Fallacy again. We have done nothing of the sort. This may in fact be the Well-Poisoning Fallacy.
It also distracts from the issue, which is, I think, whether any false information was published to consumers.
The issue is Mr. Kaufman’s ham-handed attempt at censorship. Period. He made a bone-headed mistake, and he is paying the exact and perfect price for doing so. If you are his friend, you could help him find his way back to the light.
Arguments pro and con in this matter should be couched in terms of truth or falsity of the blogger’s work,
False. The right to free speech includes the right to be wrong. Your instant quibble will be to resort to libel or slander, but those are civil torts, to be adjudicated in a court of law. Absent proof of damage or malice, people in the United States are free to Read more
For inlookers: What’s all the fuss about? And: What happens if you bet wrong in the Brave New World of Web 2.0? Google doom…
More: Here come the big dogs:
Any citizen of the United States of America can, and should demand a “redress of grievance” from Government, when a “grievance” is apparent and applicable. The Western States Constitutionalist Alliance, will keep a close eye on this matter as it unfolds, and I can assure you that we are fully equipped to take appropriate actions when necessary to defend the United States Constitution, ask the City of San Diego, California.
Under separate cover we are enclosing a copy of the United States Constitution, read Amendment One…carefully. Ask Mr. Plowman, Commonwealth’s Attorney: the Constitution is the “Law of the Land”. We teach it and defend it!
Love it!
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Can Loudoun County Assessor Todd Kaufman Tell Me What to Say and Not Say? Sure he can. There is no law anywhere in America that says Todd Kaufman’s rules about what Realtors writing 
on a blog should not write have to be limited to Loudoun County residents (Realtors). Some people don’t even know who Todd Kaufman is and that is going to change. Fast. Todd
Kaufman (for those who just got off the banana boat) is the County Assessor for Loudoun County Virgina. Todd didn’t like what Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic wrote on his blog and attempted to shut Danilo up by making stupid threats about ethics complaints and possible legal action.
Near the end, Todd included the following in his Threat Letter to Danilo:
The Office of the County Attorney, the management team of your office, the Chairman of the NVAR, and the Chairman and CEO of the Dulles Area Association of Realtors are copied in this correspondence.
I like it. A lot. It puts Danilo on notice that Todd isn’t to be trifled with, not even a little bit. Todd had already fired this salvo:
I will address that issue through the process provided by the NAR if the misleading information is not immediately removed from your site.
Was what Danilo Bogdanovic posted on his blog about the amount of property tax that should be collected correct? I don’t know. I don’t care. If Danilo was in error then the right thing to do is to (with specifics, please) correct the error with factual information. Pretty simple, really. Not to Todd Kaufman. No, Todd starts off by making threats.
Good news for Todd Kaufman. I believe that if Todd Kaufman has the right (duty?) to keep Danilo in line, he owes that to me and the rest of you reading this, as well. If Todd is going to threaten Danilo and his broker with legal action or complaints to the NAR, I want him to threaten me that way too. In fact, I insist on it. He wants to accuse Danilo and his broker of being “unprofessional” per the NAR Code of Ethics – well how about Read more
I made two changes to our About page, both of them to clear up potential ambiguities.
The first grew out of a comment from Cheryl Johnson concerning the content of BloodhoundBlog and the possible consequences of Realtors or lenders emulating our outspokenness on their own weblogs:
Verbum sapienti: A word to the wise, that is. We are a real estate industry weblog, and much of our content concerns real estate marketing tools, technologies and techniques that real estate professionals might use in their own businesses. But: We are not appealing for business here. We are not selling real estate or loans or investments, and we are not walking on our tip-toes to avoid offending potential clients. If you are building or hope to build a lead-attracting real estate weblog, BloodhoundBlog is not a model for you to follow. Many of our contributors have client-focused weblogs, and those can be good models to work from. In addition, we wrote a book called Real Estate Weblogging 101 that explains how to build a successful real estate weblog. But BloodhoundBlog is written to be controversial, and we do not — and should not — care whose toes we might step on.
The second is an amendment to our comments policy to clarify what kind of conduct results in a comment being deleted or a commenter being banned from BloodhoundBlog. In this paragraph, the added language is underlined:
Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: Read more
I sincerely hope this proves that I have as much time to waste on nonsense as anyone else.
My eighth grade civics teacher was a big bear of a man named Russell Hazelton. He was a part-time preacher for a hard-line fundamentalist sect, and he was as dapper a dresser as a big man can get to be on two small salaries. The very first day of class he was deliberately about 90 seconds late. He wanted for everyone to be in the room and settled down so he could stalk into the classroom, turn, look us all over with the two ablative lasers he had for eyes and then bellow, “First impressions… are lasting!”
Was he wrong?
I remember every detail of my first impression of Mr. Hazelton to this very day, 35 years later. He knew exactly what he had to do to start his relationship right with our class, to put everyone on notice that he was in charge. He turned out to be a great teacher, smart, funny, engaging. But no one ever even thought about challenging him for dominance. First impressions are lasting.
Frédéric Bastiat was a French economist. One of his most popular arguments concerns the seen and the unseen. It is easy, of course, to notice what is seen, but you have to train your mind to take note of what could be seen, but isn’t.
Yesterday I stirred up a hornets nest, and I told you in advance what you should expect to see in response:
Regardless of what I say here or elsewhere, the incestuously cliquish part of the RE.net will insist that it is talking only to itself.
There were exceptions, thank goodness, but in the main the clique of big-name real estate webloggers behaved exactly as I expected them to, even though I deliberately built them a graceful exit:
If you find you’ve stepped in shit, admit it at once, clean up what you can and move on.
This is what is seen. What is unseen?
That post got 350 hard clicks yesterday, this in addition to the hundreds of people who would have seen it by RSS and email subscription. Amazingly enough, no one wrote in to say, “I like to be talked down to.” “I Read more