Eric, ALL

The Odessa American website has a free translation service which can translate sentences that you type, or contents of a web address Portuguese to English, Spanish to ENGLISH, ENGLISH TO PORTUGUESE, ENGLISH TO SPANISH, DUTCH, NORWEGIAN,FRENCH, and a few other languages.

In the case of this Portuguese, just type its address in that TRANSLATION BOX AT RIGHT BOTTOM OF FIRST PAGE OF THE ODESSA AMERICAN, http://www.oaoa.com

You can also have your comments translated into Portuguese.

If you know how to have our english comments automatically translated and posted in Portuguese without us having to retype the Portuguese translation, maybe you can teach us how to do it.

Recently, I added translation links to one of my sites, using

http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

You can put a URL in the translation box, choose your language and poof! instant Babel.

I use the resulting translated page in the link on Missouri 3D. So I have links to four romance languages, with possibilities for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Russian is beyond it's grasp, as are Arabic, Polish, Hebrew, Farsi, etc.

However, when I tried to use the service on one of my favorite Bible verses, the result was humorous, but not useful:

As the deer pants for
Streams of water, so my soul
Pants for you, O God

Came out with "pantaloons" in two places, for more than one language. Didn't know deer wore pants. I think "soul pants" has some possibilities, though.

More about CUB, below.

When I replied to your blogger ethics post I had not envisioned the "Coalition of Unpaid Bloggers." I applaud its debut.

There are the paid, and there are the unpaid, and, as we have seen in the discussions here and elsewhere, gradations. There also needs to be an "organization," a community, among those who are remunerated, who subscribe to a code of ethics, a Coalition of Paid Bloggers (CPB).

You can see where I'm going, which goes back to my original comment. CUB and CPB are the two arms of a "Coalition of Ethical Bloggers."

Those who disclose their affiliations, formal and informal, paid and unpaid, give the grateful reader as sense of "where they are coming from," the directional orientation of the perspective expressed in their views.

If you're Republican, say so, independent, say so, Democrat, say so, undecided, say so. Christian, Pentecostal, Lutheran, straight, gay, rasta, paid, unpaid, tipped, whatever. Come out and tell me. Just don't try to deceive me; I won't come back if I've been tricked and find out. If I'm particulary upset I may even be assertive about exposing the trick in the community.

And if someone is paying you to be a mouthpiece, even if they gave you the independence to express either a favorable or unfavorable opinion, I'd like to know. Don't forget that marketers believe that any publicity is good publicity; "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

Even if they just gave you a T-shirt or a baseball cap, let me form my own opinion of your perspective in the light of day. You don't have any obligation to make any such disclosure, but I'd appreciate it. You'd be using mature ethical judgment to do so. You'd also earn my respect.

Am I advocating a compulsory confession of every brand name that inhabits your pantry, entertainment center, computer workstation, garage, and clothes closet? Let's avoid extrapolation from the reasonable to the extreme, as we sometimes enjoy in order to condemn another's view. Unfortunately, it happens all the time. Some people work at it. It is a flaw of logic so old it has a Latin name. No.

Eric, I finally put together a couple of pieces to a puzzle, as I learned more about you and FireAnt. I thought it intriguing that you would do an occasional piece about the US Postal service like the photo-stamps piece and the kiosk piece. Why would you care? Then I remembered Lance Armstrong's team is sponsored by the USPS, and you are a rider and a fan. So naturally. But you didn't have to "confess" any of that in an ethical sense; it's just part of your perspective and experience. It was fun to figure out on my own, over time.

Ethical bloggers need to figure out, among themselves, how they want to represent themselves, and come to some rough consensus.

Keep the discussion going. We're following it closely, with much interest. No one (I hope) wants to see the blogosphere devolve in the direction of becoming the tabloid news-rag of the digital age.

Your turn.