I’m willing to bet that if you spoke to most people working in PR today, the name Avinash Kaushik would mean nothing to them. Even amongst the PR 2.0 digeratti, I suspect he is largely unknown. At best they might be aware he is Google’s Analytics evangelist. Those who have read his 400+ page book on Web Analytics could, I’m sure, be counted on one hand.

Well, I’m now one of them. And what a revelation. This book works on so many levels. First, it is easily the most practical and informative book on the subject of web analytics. Which would make it valuable in its own right. But perhaps more than that, he outlines a practical blueprint for a data driven, outcome based approach to business generally. Which by definition includes PR

Well there you go…

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A federal indictment accuses Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Missouri, of using the social networking Web site MySpace.com to pose as a 16-year-old boy and feign romantic interest in the girl.

The girl, Megan Meier, committed suicide after her online love interest spurned her, according to prosecutors, telling her the world would be a better place without her.

Megan Meier was 13. She hung herself with a belt.

If you want to wander through the global village, you don’t get to wear a mask.

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Even though marriage becomes open to everyone with this decision, the majority did leave open “whether the name ‘marriage’ is invariably a core element of the state constitutional right to marry so that the state would violate a couple’s constitutional right even if — perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage — the state were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the formal family relationship for all couples.”

That was the wiggle room I had hoped for in my post earlier today, allowing the Legislature to compromise if it wants and call the institution some other name — “civil unions” or “civil partnerships” — if the pushback on “marriage” is too strong.

This is where, it seems increasingly obvious to me, the chain of reasoning leads, as I wrote yesterday:

I still think that the word “marriage” should disappear from the statute books altogether, whether applied to hetero or same-sex couples. Let churches or other private institutions confer the distinction “marriage” and sanctify a relationship. The State simply shouldn’t be in the business of bestowing or withholding dignity rooted in the symbolic and cultural power of a word. Let the relationships be considered equal before the law, in name as well as subtance. But you can’t simply wish away the fact that changing the definition of the m-word is an innovation that society, not the State, is competent to make, much less four justices of the California Supreme Court.

(more…)

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By a one-vote majority, the California Supreme Court has struck down the state’s marriage law, to take effect in 30 days. Read on for some analysis and what’s likely to happen in the effort to overturn it this November… (more…)

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In a speech presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is to give gave today in Columbus, Ohio, sketching out his fantasy first term (via Marc Ambinder), he offers a litany of promises about setting “a new standard for transparency and accountability”. Among the most intriguing:

I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.

When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them.

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Per Sinéad’s request….

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The Washington Post columnist Marie Cocco shares the aftertaste some feminists (though not, apparently, Naral) are feeling about Hillary Clinton’s all-but-failed presidential bid (John Edwards turned up at the end of the party to turn out the lights; roundup of effects from the blogger who had the scoop hours early), including this choice tidbit:

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won’t miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item….

I won’t miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: “Obama did great in February, and that’s because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary’s doing much better ’cause it’s White Bitch Month, right?” Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won’t miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie “Fatal Attraction.” In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man’s blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.

Now hold on a minute. I heard Justine McCarthy tell Pat Kenny not last week that Hillary reminded her of Glenn Close’s Fatal Attraction character. In a good way. Bunny-boiler as positive role model. Ah well.

To Justine, Fiona Looney, Una, and especially Suzie, my sympathies. But Hillary was always a flawed vessel for the hope of the first female American president. The good news is that there’s a whole generation of women who’ve broken into the front rank of American politics - Gov Kathleen Sebelius, Gov Janet Napolitano, Speaker Pelosi - who are far worthier champions for the cause. And one of those first two, I’m betting, will lead a national ticket in the not-too-distant future.

UPDATE: pic moved to new post

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The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And now the transition:

The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

And now the epiphany:

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

It’s a little death when someone gets there first. Agnosticism or even a non-systematic Buddhism are rational. Militant atheism is as cracked as Snake-Handling-West Virginia Creationists for Clinton. If I didn’t think the Hitchens and O’Dohertys were hewing to that line for attention I’d feel sorry for them.

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When I last spent the night in London there were a couple of Starbucks - I had to make a special trip to Holborn if I wanted the triple lowfat venti mocha no whip - no vanilla scones please, that’d be too much.

Now there are so many Starbucks in Greater London that you can be in leafy Richmond and it’s possible to say ‘meet me at Starbucks’ and end up at the wrong place, because there are more than one.

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