Academician, heal thyself

If there actually is concern among academics that there is political interference in the hiring of a new president at Memorial University, then doesn't having a cabinet minister speaking about the issue - instead of the chairman of the university board of regent's hiring committee - tend to confirm the interference?

Just an observation.

Update: Interference confirmed.

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Speaking of deer in the headlights

Boo!

Fall election.

The Connies must be a runnin' skeerd.

Oddly enough, we're talking Canadian Connies frightened of an American Democrat named Obama.

Maybe it's the fear from their American cousins seeping across the border. Maybe it's the fear that if there's a fall federal election in Canada, then somehow the voodoo vibes from the Obama campaign will infect voters in Canada who will dutiful trudge off to the polls and voter for the Liberals.

Anyway, there is the smell of fear in the Connie camp.

But, c'mon, Kate.

Seriously?

A Rush Limbaugh youtube vid is evidence of something other than your need to get out more?

Count the number of posts attacking Obama.

Talk about a "tell".

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BlogHer Nation

The New York Times carried a feature over the weekend on the fourth annual BlogHer conference.

Yep.

Since 2005, women who write blogs have been coming together for a couple of days of seminars and networking.

A study conducted by BlogHer and Compass Partners last year found that 36 million women participate in the blogosphere each week, and 15 million of them have their own blogs. (BlogHer, which was founded by Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins, has itself grown into a mini empire that includes a Web site that helps publicize women’s blogs, and an advertising network to help women generate revenue for the site.)

As with men bloggers, some women have found financial success through blogging. Belle de Jour, a London call girl, managed to parley her blog into a book deal and now a television series. Read it. You'll be surprised and then you'll see why Belle has been as successful as she has been.

One of the presenters at BlogHer was Kyran Pittman, whose blog Notes to self is a well written, visually appealing collection of posts on whatever strikes her. She's also met with some financial success.

As Geoff Meeker wrote a couple of weeks ago, Kyran pitched a couple of posts to Good Housekeeping. her real success came in the August edition, currently on newsstands:

“The pitch came from feeling frustrated with yet another women’s magazine article on Wardrobe "Essentials" that added up to thousands of dollars,” Kyran wrote on her flickr page. “I challenged Good Housekeeping to let a real mom find out just how essential "investment" clothes are in real life. They went for it in a wonderful way.”

The result was a four-day assignment in New York City, complete with photographer, art director, makeup artist and her own trailer (with bagels and coffee inside). Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Kyran has the looks of a model, but she’s self-effacing about this – and is a gifted writer, by any measure.

According to the Times, one of the workshop sessions at BlogHer this year was the continuing struggle of women who write political blogs to get their work noticed. Outside of Ariana Huffington, political blogging in the United States is dominated at the national level by men. That isn't quite the same in Canada. One of the leading Conservative blogs - small dead animals - is written by Catherine McMillan.

What's most striking about BlogHer, though, is what can be seen if you look past the chromosomal structure of the authors. There's an eclectic mix of writing by people from different backgrounds on topics as diverse as the authors themselves.

And the challenges of blogging discussed at the San Francisco conference by women bloggers? As with Kyran's posts, the topics are things we can all appreciate because we've been there.

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Connecting sources with reporters: killing bad pitches

Over the past couple of months two new web sites have sprung up - one Canadian and the other American - aimed at connecting reporters with potential sources for stories.

HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out. Consider it a sort of match-making service.

If you are a potential source of information, sign up at the HARO site and you'll receive an e-mail up to three times a day containing a short description of what reporters might be looking for.

If you are a journalist, there's another page consisting almost entirely of a form to enter your contact information and the background on what you are looking for.

HARO is the brainchild of Peter Shankman, a marketing public relations consultant in New York City. As Shankman describes it,

I built this list because a lot of my friends are reporters, and they call me all the time for sources. Rather than go through my contact lists each time, I figured I could push the requests out to people who actually have something to say.

These requests only come from reporters directly to me. I never take queries from that other service, I never SPAM, and I'm not going to do anything with your email other than send you these reporter requests when they arrive in my in-box.

Many of us in the business get the same sort of calls from time to time. Shankman just decided to do something with a broader reach.

Meanwhile, three Canadians have started a similar concept north of the border. Journalistsource.ca is newer and will likely take a while to get rolling. Your humble e-scribbler signed up a couple of days ago and so far there's been one e-mail looking for a connection. Two public relations professionals and a journalist are behind the site.

Occasionally a journalist will want to remain anonymous, so in this case, we ask that you email us your response to the request, and we’ll send it on to the journalist on your behalf.

What do we ask in return? That’s simple too - When you see a journalist’s request that you think you/your organization is capable of fulfilling, please be SURE your response fits the request before replying. Why? Because one of JournalistSource.ca’s main goals is to eliminate PR Spam.

That last hyperlink is in the original text. It will take you to one of several sites that have cropped up detailing some of the horrible pitches arriving in newsrooms from marketers and PR consultants looking to place stories with a news organization.

It's a legitimate part of the business but when it's done poorly, everyone suffers. Other sites try to combat the bad pitch.

HARO and Journalist.ca are two new efforts to get past the bad pitch and connect people with stories to tell to the people who are looking to tell a story.

Oh. If you think this will just make a handy list for you to spam from, be warned. It gets back quickly and thus far Shankman hasn't been shy in his circulars in outing the spam artists.

Death to bad pitches.

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A buzz around the university

From the inadvertent humour category, provincial New Democratic Party leader Lorraine Michael told CBC this afternoon she'd like to see someone as president of Memorial University who could create a buzz.

For those of a certain age, the words "buzz" and "university" are synonymous, but likely not for the same reasons the NDP leader had in mind. Now if Ms. Michael wants to harken back to the salad days of many a young man and woman from the province, then we might be able to add a few new names to the list of possible presidents.

The only thing is we'll have to check and see if some are coming up for parole.

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First gold pour at Pine Cove

Three bars as part of the ramp up for full production of an estimated 16,000 ounces per year from Anaconda's Pine Cove operation, near Baie Verte.

The company issued a news release on 23 July.

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Hebron announcement this week?

In June, we had the CBC orgy of speculation on a Hebron deal right before the NOIA annual conference.

Nothing happened.

In his otherwise generic opening remarks, the Premier did say he hoped that everyone's patience would be rewarded well before Regatta Day.

Well, Regatta Day is next Wednesday and true to form, there's scuttlebutt - not solid enough to qualify even as a rumour -  that the final Hebron deal will be unveiled this week, possibly  Thursday, July 31 and Friday, August 1 in St. John's.

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Darren will lose his mind

Prototype Boba Fett figure, circa 1979, on original card mock-up.

Missile firing version, never mass produced.

eBay asking price: US$100,000.

Status: unsold

h/t Kris Abel at CTV.

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Crushed!

The most ambitious single media project in history.

Turns out it had nothing to do with the Independent at all.

Here in the Happiest Far Eastern Province, the punters had been told for years that the six part balance sheet of Confederation put together by Ryan and his merry band had been the most ambitious single media project in history.

It's NBC's Olympics coverage.

Another illusion shattered, hopelessly.

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Globe runs MUN president story

The Globe is reporting what has been rumoured for months, namely that the Premier nixed the nominee to replace Axel Meisen as president of Memorial University.

There are denials - sort of - from the powers that be.

Elizabeth Matthews, who is Mr. Williams's director of communications, said provincial legislation allows the Premier to have the opportunity for input, and the government doesn't apologize for having an interest in who takes on the job. “It would definitely be fair to say that he would ultimately have an interest when the names are brought forward,” she told The Globe earlier this week.

She also denied suggestions that the Premier has interfered in the process. “He can't have interfered because no names have been brought forward yet,” she said.

One minor problem with that bit: it's not correct. The Memorial University Act gives certain power to the Lieutenant Governor in Council - that is the entire cabinet - not just to the Premier.

51. There shall be a president of the university who shall be appointed by the board in consultation with the senate and with the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

As for the rest, it's a bit of verbal gymnastics that doesn't get to the point one way or the other. Any of a number of people on the senate could have, informally and unofficially, notified the Premier's Office of the name or names under consideration, there by giving plenty of opportunity for the Premier to have his say even though "no names have been brought forward yet" officially.

All deniable.

The Globe makes an increasingly common comparison, one that seems to be finding favour with the 8th:

The current situation harks back to former days in Newfoundland when politics did play a direct role in the leadership of Memorial, which gained university status in 1950 and has long been regarded as a key institution for the province. In 1966, Premier Joey Smallwood picked Lord Stephen Taylor to lead the university. Changes to the university's governance structure in the 1970s eliminated such direct appointments, but still require that the selection of the president be approved by the lieutenant-governor-in-council – essentially the premier and cabinet.

Those who have taken part in recent presidential searches say that approval has been a formality. “The recommendation was not questioned,” said Chris Sharpe, a geography professor who was a member of the committee that chose the last president.

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Accountants question government budget reporting

The Certified General Accountants Association of Canada said on Friday it is time for greater transparency around the budget process in Canada.

“The entire budget process needs to be more transparent. It’s become far too difficult for Canadians to make sense of the practice and to fully understand how their tax dollars are being spent,” said CGAAC president and chief executive officer Anthony Ariganello in a news release.

The CGA association questioned whether the surprise surpluses were actual surprises or part of a deliberate political strategy.

“You have to wonder whether these surpluses have allowed governments to be much less disciplined in their budgetary spending,” Ariganello noted. “The use of any federal surplus should be decided within the budgetary process, not as a consequence of poor planning.”

While Ariganello was referring specifically to the federal government, successive provincial budgets in Newfoundland and Labrador have followed the pattern to which the CGA president referred.

In the most recent budget news releases and comments by the finance minister referred to a projected surplus, but the budget documents tabled in the legislature forecast a $1.2 billion shortfall.  As well, the financial results for 2007 have been presented as yielding a surplus while the government actually borrowed $88 million to cover all financial transactions. 

That was the second straight year of provincial deficits, despite public claims of surpluses. Even Bond Papers was fooled (note the reference to record surpluses), until a thorough check of the documents revealed the real picture.

The chart shows total borrowing requirements from provincial government budgets between 2004 and 2008.

At the same time public sector spending has grown at a rate well beyond the annual rate of inflation.

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Humber Valley Resorts - new business plan

Flip to Crazy about Newfoundland and you'll find some interesting information on Humber Valley Resorts, the high-end real estate development started by former Indy publisher Brian Dobbin.

A major reorganization and refinancing effort has been underway since late last year. This is the first hint of the new initiatives aimed at stemming losses reported in the last two fiscal years and becoming profitable.

The post comes - apparently - from an e-mail sent to owners of existing chalets by the new Newfound NV chief executive officer Jayne McGivern following her first visit to the property.

Key initial points
* Newfound wants to retain the operation of the resort within the company
* The primary focus will be to build high-end chalets
* Tennis courts will be added [Update: Dan from Crazy advises by e-mail he made an error on the swimming pool mentioned in the original. He's adjusted his own post accordingly]
* Focus on completion of the road system, cycle paths and verge landscaping
* Reduce the property sales activity - to create a more controlled build plan

There are some other interesting developments, though, including this:

As a postscript - Jayne McGiven [sic] also met Tom Marshall the provisional [sic] finance minister and local MHA representative [sic], and apparently made it clear that the company would not continue to fund the only tourism flights from Europe, and reinforced that if tourism is to succeed the provisional government [sic] needs to take a much more active role. I also hear that her suggested solution is the resumption of the London to St Johns route. (Not that great for Western Newfoundland in my opinion). [Emphasis added]

There were hints of this publicly already. The Telegram reported in early June on Newfound NV's annual report for 2007.

Since late 2007, the company has reorganized, reduced losses and introduced a new management team to further develop properties in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, estimated in the company annual report to have a value of US$227 million.

The annual report describes the efforts made at turning around the company's fortunes:

As mentioned in my statement last year, we have been addressing the construction issues and although some still remain we did achieve our aim of accelerating the construction program during 2007 and we are making healthy margins on new build.

During the year, we carried out significant construction work on over 60 chalets resulting in an increase in revenue in local currency from construction and furnishings of 66% to US$ 21.3 million. We have nearly completed the construction backlog inherited at the time of the Newfound acquisition in 2006 and, subject to suitable funding being in place, it is hoped that all of the remaining outstanding contracts will be started during 2008.

In 2007, the first full year of operation of the 18 hole golf course, we won four prestigious awards including Golf Magazine (golf.com) Best New International Course 2007 and ScoreGolf Magazine's Best Canadian New Golf Course 2007. The credit for this must go to our Golf manager and his team.

We have recently signed an agreement with Monarch Airlines to run a weekly Boeing 757 from Gatwick to Deer Lake to cover both the summer and winter seasons, thus supporting the expected increase in vacation traffic. Although the charter at present makes a financial loss until such time as vacation numbers increase, it is an important part of both the operations at Humber Valley Resort and its future development.

Notice that there is no reference in the annual report to finding financial subsidies for the charter flights. In fact, the last statement suggests the current losses will be rectified once vacation numbers increase.

The idea of government paying for or subsidizing flights was first hinted at publicly by Brian Dobbin in his farewell column in the last issue of the Indy.

Humber Valley Resort showed a lot of people how good our tourism product can be to international markets, but it is now controlled by a mostly non-Newfoundland group of shareholders who see it only as an asset amongst others. While a private company we invested over $15 million just in marketing our tourism product internationally and providing air service from Europe. I know of no other international developer in the world who paid for weekly overseas flights for four years. Although I remain a shareholder in the company, I don’t expect our board will accept that kind of capital expenditure in the future on something they rightfully see as the province’s job. [Emphasis added]

Commercial air service, including international service, is available to Newfoundland and Labrador from London via several carriers. Air Canada discontinued year-round service between St. John's (YYT) and Gatwick in 2006 due to reportedly low traffic volume. It announced at the time it planned to introduce summer-only service in 2007.

Following the Air Canada announcement, Newfound's charter carrier at the time - Astraeus - began competing with Air Canada on the summer service run in 2007.

Both carriers subsequently withdrew from the St. John's to Gatwick run, although the provincial government only attacked Air Canada. The provincial transportation minister John Hickey offered a convoluted - and often incorrect - version of events.

The idea of the province having some financial involvement in the flights is a new twist though. In comments made to CBC in December, Newfound Group president Jeremy White referred to a request for the provincial government to lobby Air Canada to restore the direct Gatwick-St. John's flight. He also said government had offered to help defray some of the marketing costs for Humber Valley.

No representative from Newfound NV is listed in the provincial lobbyist register, as of 25 July 2008.

Humber Valley general manager Paul Shelley is a former provincial tourism minister. [Update: Dan from Crazy reports by e-mail that Paul Shelley is "long gone" from Humber Valley. He's now in St. John's but still with Newfound NV.]

Brian Dobbin, still the major shareholder in Newfound NV according to the 2007 annual report, sits on the provincially-appointed Ireland business partnership board.

Between 2006 and 2008, the provincial government was the "anchor advertiser" at the Independent, Dobbin's weekly newspaper, according to comments by editor Ryan Cleary.

In summer 2007, the Indy featured a front page story on Astraeus and its weekly service. The piece attracted considerable criticism:

This week, Cleary himself has shown the folly behind this thinking; has demonstrated that independent ownership does not guarantee editorial independence. The main story on page one of this week’s Independent (July 20) is what journalists indelicately call a “suck piece”. It takes up more than a third of page one, then turns to a massive two page spread inside. And nowhere in the article does Cleary disclose to whom he is sucking up.

In other words, there is a blatant hidden agenda.

Cleary and photographer Paul Daly took a round trip to London, thanks to free tickets from Astraeus Airlines. In return, Cleary lectures us that the flight was less than one-third full, and that the airline does not have a “bottomless pit of money.” The headlines exhorts us to “Use it or lose it.”

Actually, Cleary didn’t need to accept the free tickets to write this piece. He could have secured the essential information from a face-to-face or phone interview. But no matter – I don’t begrudge a reporter a freebie here and there, as long as there is full disclosure.

Nowhere in the body of the article does Cleary bring himself to say the tickets were free. You have to read the photo caption to discover that “the airline provided the paper with two round trip tickets.”

Update: 'ullo, 'ullo. What's all this then? An eagle-eyed reader has noted that the provincial government's tourism statistics report for 2007 claims there's been an increase in commercial airline travel by the infamous "non-resident" visitor to the province and that air capacity has gone up likewise.

The number of non-resident air visitors reached an estimated 81,100 to
the end of April 2008, an increase of 5.0% over the same period last
year.

...

Air capacity has increased significantly to Newfoundland and Labrador
for the summer of 2008 compared to the summer of 2007 with the
exception of international/overseas outbound direct. Not including the
Newfoundland to London, UK flights, there has been an overall increase
in air access of 6.9% flights (23 additional flights per week) and
14.3% or 3,353 seats per week

That "non-resident" visitor thing is such a joke. It's like you sleeping in another part of the house when the in-laws come to visit and then claiming that in addition to the endless string of visiors from out-of-province, your living room had a few "non-resident visitors.

Tourists are tourists. Visitors are visitors. The provincial government need to find another term for what they describe, and what is a legitimately business activity. But, they need to separate it from the real tourism statistics more clearly than they do. That way, the public can see - transparently - what kind of impact the tourism advertising budget is having on the market.

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Hat tip to Gary Kelly for the link to the Crazy post. Humber Valley has potential. It will be interesting to see how it grows, hopefully without public subsidies.

Sound advice, thus far ignored

Non-renewable resource revenue should be invested, at least in part, according to several economists and economic experts.

"You don't want extraction commodities to be the sole provider of prosperity," says Brett Gartner, an economist with the Canada West Foundation. "The risk is that when things are going well, the whole push to innovate and to diversify the economy gets forgotten, crowded out by all the money being made off resources."

The provincial government has thus far expressly refused to consider even a small investment fund of the type common in other places where non-renewable resources are a major or the major source of economic activity. 

In Norway and Alberta, a portion of government resource revenues is invested, thereby generating additional revenue for the future.

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Related:

Create wealth fund: OECD

Investing non-renewable revenues

Exports up. Dollar, oil, down: EDC forecast

Export Development Canada forecast Thursday at Canadian exports will rise by 4.2% based on high energy prices.

EDC is also predicting the Canadian dollar will drop to between US$0.94 and US$0.97 cents in early 2009.

“While EDC recognizes that global supply and demand for crude is tight, we sees signs that a large price correction is on the horizon”, Mr. Hall continued.  “On the demand front, growth expectations are likely to moderate as the global slowdown spreads and oil price subsidies in emerging markets are scaled back.  On the supply front, the Energy Information Administration is already forecasting a doubling of OPEC surplus capacity, to 4 million barrels per day in 2009, and non-OPEC supply gains of 1 million barrels per day.”

The forecasted correction:  crude below US$100 per barrel before the end of 2008 and averaging US$84 per barrel in 2009.

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End the gas price fraud

In the past week, crude oil prices have dropped roughly 15%, from US$147 per barrel to somewhere around US$125.

In St. John's today, gasoline prices dropped 6.5%.  That's after an increase last week.

Promoters of the scheme  - none of them economists evidently - will claim it has benefits.  It's hard to see how, considering that asa  result of government interfering in the marketplace, local consumers are being screwed.  "Regulation" is a sham the actually prevents the marketplace from working properly to deliver benefits to consumers. 

It's long overdue for government to end the fraud of "regulation".

Pay George Murphy to keep track of prices as useful information for consumers, if need be, but scrap the charade foisted on the province by people like Doc O'Keefe.

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So force feeding seals would be okay?

In response to a proposed European ban on seal products owing to the inhumane killing methods, Canadian sealers are considering penning the animals in cages and force feeding them boiled corn meal laced with fat, a practice to which EU legislators can turn a blind eye.

Relax.  They aren't. 

But they should given the Europeans' collective ability to wag their fingers at others while doing as they wish themselves.

Meanwhile, the French are leading a fight against fishing restrictions affecting EU countries.  Surprisingly, they'll be backed by the Spanish and Portugese.

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The price of freedom: Vimy + porn = one euro

A 30 something French couple was fined $500 euros after being found guilty of exhibitionism in France. 

They were also given a four month suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay one euro in compensation to the Canadian government.

The couple video recorded themselves having sex at the Vimy memorial to Canadian First World War dead and posted the video to an Internet site.

The memorial has become popular in France as a site for exhibitionism. Three cases were pending in January, 2008.

Samuel Cogez, a reporter with the local newspaper La Voix du Nord, told CBC that the memorial has been known "for years as a meeting place for all kinds of sexual encounters.

So the price of French freedom comes out to be about 15,000 Canadian lives in one war and a buck sixty Canadian 90 years later.

We'll have to keep that in mind the next time.

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Authentic: And he does snowploughs, too?

St. John's-based Newfoundland & Labrador Tourism commissioned artist Cam Mahy to paint a calm-inducing Newfoundland nature scene to get Torontonians thinking about an eastern getaway.

Hmmm.

With all the visual artists - photography or paint, for example - in Newfoundland and Labrador, is this the guy who painted the Gardiner billboard?

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I am my own electoral grandpa, the latest version

nottawa says he isn't making this up.

How could he. The truth is always stranger than fiction.

And who ever heard of voting in an election that hasn't been called, anyway?

Meanwhile, Paul Wells blogged it.

How long before the rest of the national media take notice of this embarrassment?

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Authentic

No sweat to tell the difference between a public relations professional who knows how to use the tools to do the job compared with well, the opposite.

On the opposite side, we have this ham-fisted piece of nonsense from the company doing advertising for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Incidentally, the ham-fist is not the billboard on the Gardiner.

Then compare it to Joseph Thornley's personal pictures from a recent holiday in Prince Edward Island. Sure he used it as a means to talk about how easily he uploaded the great photos to his blog and to Flickr, but what he is telling is a simple story of someone who went to the Island, had a great time, took gorgeous pictures and then uploaded them to the Internet complete with geotags.

I uploaded about 100 pictures of the attractions and historic areas of Charlottetown, North Rustico Harbour (the epitome of a Canadian east coast village), the beaches and cliffs of Prince Edward Island Park (look for the picture of the fox that trotted right up to our car while holding a rabbit in its mouth) and, of course, Green Gables (if you’re the parent of a girl, you’ll know what that is.)

I uploaded photos from my flickr page directly to PlanetEye. It was simple. Took about 2 minutes for each batch of 20 to 25 pictures. And then the geotagging worked perfectly. I simply dragged and dropped my photos onto a map in the location where I’d taken them.

The difference between the two approaches is a simple word: authentic. Thornley's experience carries with it all the credibility of someone who has actually been there and done it. There's a story to be told here and the pictures are part of the whole thing.

Now theoretically, he could be working for the PEI tourism department or the software companies he mentions but nothing on the site would suggest he is. Ethically he'd be obliged to disclose such a connection and base don a number of factors, including the fact he doesn't comment on the issue, it's a reasonable assumption that he isn't. Note that one of Thornley's viewers chides him about the software developer.

Even after a suspicious mind has gone to that point and returned, you come back to the integrity and the sincerity of the post.

His last line, which will be seen by thousands in exactly the demographic Islanders are looking to hit, says it all:

If you’re interested in an unspoiled place for a summer vacation, take a look at Charlottetown on PlanetEye or at my Charlottetown photo set on Flickr .

A simple call to action - for you marketers out there - and the links are left in it so you can act, just as Thornley would have wanted.

Compare that to the other thing. There was a conventional media story in the billboard. The thing would have to be pitched and worked to get coverage.

A n Internet search turned up this story online, albeit in a media trade publication. There's another mention, again from a trade publication that focus es on the agency and not the client. The Telly had a picture on July 11. Notice this story appeared the very same day as the release, suggesting it was organized ahead of time.

There might be other stuff but it sure as heck isn't turning up online where the video and the story of the billboard had a chance to go truly viral.

If handled properly.

And that's the catch.

This was a potentially hot new media story, completely with daily blog posts about the development, complete with amateur video done by the creators as they were doing it. Three weeks worth of material is stuff most blogs would kill for, especially stuff as compelling as that. When you combine the story inherent in the billboard production with the authentic flavour of a local artist hired to complete the work you have a truly delightful tale that tells itself.

And seriously, except in a world where agency self-stroking is the goal, the trade pubs that showed up in the search are useless to accomplishing the client goal of boosting the number of people who don't usually come this way headed to the farthest eastern airports in the country.

It's not like the record on this over the past couple of years has been anything to write home about, although plenty has been written and spoken at home about it.

Throwing more cash into tourism advertising isn't necessarily the way to go in a highly competitive market at a time when it's tough to get people to travel.

Being genuinely creative in your approach - being authentic - sure can make a difference. As the great advertising persuader put it, authenticity helps break through the wall of cynicism about advertising generally.

It's easy to talk about authenticity, but sometimes it's pretty obvious that some people don't get what the word means.

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