Intersession this semester has been incredibly busy. In addition to all of the regular updating I usually do, I've been helping with the departmental server and on top of everything they did an asbestos abatement project in the BCRC and my office. They did a good job that was minimally disruptive, but it still sucked away about 4 days of effort (packing stuff up, not being able to get into my office for a full day, cleaning, unpacking, etc). Now my office is like some kind of post-industrial loft, which I'm told is very trendy nowadays. Or, as Esme would say, "very In".
My initial presentation of the guerilla marketing idea to the ELNA mailing list went over like a lead balloon -- a handful of people made minor changes to the document in the wiki, but there wasn't a single comment in the mailing list. I followed up myself after a week to provide a little rationale into what I was thinking and there have been a flurry of comments since.
The discussion has sensitized me to a couple of other items in the news that I might otherwise not have noticed. One was this 
teddy bear issue, where it just goes to show that no matter what you do, or how well intentioned you are, someone can find something to complain about. The other was an article today about the death of environmentalism that describes how, in spite of huge efforts and expenditures, the environmental movement hasn't been very effective at getting it's agenda adopted. (The Esperanto movement has been much more efficient, I might point out, accomplishing the same ends with little or no expenditures.) The parallels are not just in failure, though. I think the problem is that people have trouble "thinking globally". People can get excited about their particular local issues and then may be able to see those in a global context. But they have a much harder time beginning with the global picture.
StevenBrewer