I remember first accessing the internet. If you wanted to know something you’d hit up a chatroom via one of the crappy browser chatrooms or IRC. Doing this you’d meet a ton of people. You’d break the ice by them helping you with your problem, or you helping them with theirs. You’d solve your problem and when you came back, you could discuss your solution. Heck, that’s all it took to meet a friend.

Read the rest…

Yesterday however, I ended up writing a very lengthy comment in response to Will Taft’s blog post Why Obama Might Be Our Next President over at Healthy Living For People and Planet Earth. The comment was so lengthy that Will, with my permission has posted the comment as a guest post.

I took a rather contrary and bearish position in regards to his main premise that the media is making the economy sound worse off than it is in order to stir up opposition to another Republican president. I took the position that the economy is actually in far worse shape than the mainstream media portrays it. The guest post turned out to be very pessimistic and doesn’t offer anything in the way of ideas for a solution or even a way to mitigate the worst of the problems.

I did, of course, make reference to my pet theory that the GOP wants to throw this election and my reasons for believing that.

If you’d like to read the post, it can be found at Is The Media Downplaying Economic Trouble?.

Suddenly, when all your friends have been reduced to teensy avatars, canned quotations, and endless ‘favourites’ lists, they don’t seem quite as special as you may have once remembered them.

I really liked this quote from a blog post on the problems with the big social networking sites.   Don’t get me wrong, social networking sites that are targets can be great.  I really enjoy the discussions on BlogCatalog and I use LinkedIn to keep in contact with people in my professional life.  I just find places like Facebook and MySpace a bit creepy.

I’d recommend that people go and read the original post on Phil’s Proof to get the full context of that quote.  I just came across that blog by accident and I really like the writing style and sense of humor that Phil displays there.

I’m sucking up to Alan over at The Thin Red Line because at work today (he works at a library) he snagged himself some Encyclopedia Brown books on my recommendation.  He is going to read them and do a feature on them.  I am cunningly starting a very low level movement to get a new generation of kids exposed to Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown and his tough-girl bodyguard, Sally Kimball .  I’ve already started at work by loaning my copies to a coworker for her son.

From Wikipedia:

The enduring popularity of the Encyclopedia Brown books stems, at least partially, from the author’s refusal to talk down to his young audience. Many adult readers also find the mysteries challenging. In 1975, the Mystery Writers of America honored Sobol and his Encyclopedia Brown series with a Special Edgar Award.

After noticing it on exquizzme, I decided to give the BlogRush widget a try.  That’s it on the right above the Library Stuff booknails.  It is supposed to only do targeted links so I will be keeping an eye on it.  If I see too much crap appearing there I will definitely be removing it.

Talking To My Son About Consent My son was starting to get interested in girls. We’d already had the talks about the birds and the bees. We had also had talks about the objectification of women, pornography, love, respect, and equality. But I had missed something.

The above link takes you to Just One Sheep, a blog by Christian mother who in the post above shares her views on consent with her teenage son and gets to eventually see the seeds planted by that chat bring forth fruit when he gets a little older.

At least according to Technorati, in its April State of the Live Web report, the language with the most frequent blog posts in Japanese, with 37%, followed by English with 36% and then Chinese at 8%.

If I had to guess I would have thought that English was indeed the language in which most blog posts were composed.  I would have been wrong.

Home Internet access is still highest in the English speaking world, but native Japanese speakers edge out English speakers when it comes to the sheer number of posts.  I think this is very encouraging since blogging is increasing in places like China and Iran.

Even though only 1% of blog posts are in Farsi, I am willing to bet that many Iranian bloggers who want to reach an audience outside of their country are blogging in English.   People in countries with repressive regimes and state controlled news outlets can use blogging as a way to try to get information out past government censors.

If any readers know any blogs of the sort I described, please let me know via a comment.  I’ll like to give them a place to live in a sidebar so more people can see them.

The second point worthy of discussion is the act that Sen. Craig was accused of. He was caught in a men’s bathroom trying to solicit sex from another man. The man happened to be a police vice squad detective. Craig was entrapped, and sexual entrapment is a violation of fairness and an abuse of power.

This all brings me back to a conversation I had last weekend over dinner with friends.  With all the sex scandals and odd behavior coming out of congress lately I think there is only one solution to the problem.  The US Congress must implement a Congressional Mothers program.   Trying to separate right from wrong while juggling the interests of their big donors has created the cognitive equivalent to a denial of service attack on their poor little consciences.  Each politician and their entourage needs to be assigned a person to fulfill the role of the politician’s conscience.  In much the same way that the Secret Service protects the bodies of certain US politicians, the Congressional Mothers would protect the reputation and ‘soul’ of their charges.

 Most American’s who were in Scouts or just a public elementary classroom understands the concept of a Den Mother or Room Mother (are there Room Fathers now?).   These were the the kind of no nonsense American women that kept the peace and made sure that each kid in their care got at least one of the cupcakes or Rice Krispy treats that they had brought in to celebrate a holiday.  It’s become clear that many politicans have forgotten the basic rules they learned in kindergarten regarding sharing and not touching. 

With a Congressional Mother, selected from that politicians own district, sitting in on all meetings and sitting at the congressman’s side during voting sessions I would be able to go about my day  without worrying what kind of mischief my representative is getting up to in Washington.   I’d be fine with Congress Mom’s rotating their duty.  I’d love to see a vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage take place with a PFLAG mom sitting next to each elected official as he casts his or her vote.

How long would it take to get No Child Left Behind fully funded with a Congressional Mom from Watts or North Philadelphia staring down the budget committees?  If one of the moms from Military Families Speak Out moonlighted as a Congressional Mom do you think congress would keep rolling over for Bush?  I think if Pat Tillman’s mom was taking a turn we would see a lot more transparency in government. 

My mental image for one of these keepers of the national standards is my partner Brian’s mom, Dawn.  She is a smart, funny, and steady handed homemaker who raised three smart and talented sons on her husband’s factory by growing and canning a good portion of the food they ate every year.  She knows what it’s like to have her well first get polluted, and then essentially go dry due to chemical fertilizer run off from farms and suburban sprawl creeping inexorably closer to her rural village.  She is sweet and softspoken, but I doubt even her former Senator Rick Santorum could have handled voting to benefit his contributors instead of his constituents with her watching.

Richard Gere urges Olympics boycott Actor Richard Gere chases a fugitive Bosnian war criminal in his latest movie role, but in real life the devout Buddhist is pursuing China on human rights abuses and says a boycott of the Beijing Olympics could help. Gere, chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, told Reuters the 2008 Beijing Olympics were a good opportunity to encourage China to end human rights abuses in Tibet and allow the Himalayan region to decide its future.

I am getting really sick and tired of people with extremely high incomes suggesting boycotts.

If there was indeed a massive boycott of the Beijing Olympics it is not the government that would suffer.  An event like the Olympics brings income to everyone in the area.  There is more work for cab drives, for hotel maids, for restaurateurs and pretty much everyone else.  Anything that keeps people in poverty will just extend the power the government has over the population.  It’s only when people start rising out of poverty that they start having the time and resources to actually fight for their rights.

When a population has fewer economic opportunities, they have a lot more to lose by rocking the boat.  Only after someone gains a little financial independence can they step back and decide how much they will tolerate in terms of government violations of his rights. 

Americans, even lower middle class Americans, can afford to take a stand and let their feelings be known.  Just look at the number of people attending some of our domestic protest marches and you can see that.  When people are living hand to mouth they do not have that luxury.