January 5, 2010

  • Delivery

    How to be a boor on an international forum:

    "Thank you to our soldiers who are giving others the chance to have freedom. Happy Holidays."

    How to be internationally mindful when posting to an international forum:

    "America thanks its soldiers for giving us freedom.  Happy Holidays."

    Discuss.

January 4, 2010

  • Awkward

    Do you find your family terribly awkward at the holidays?  It probably could be worse:

    A German woman is suing a foster agency, after her teenage foster son ruined valuable naked photos of her - by comitting an act of self-love all over them.

    Ouch.

January 3, 2010

  • Talk is cheap

    Elective abortions happen for economic reasons. Eliminating the economic pressure is essential if people actually want to eliminate elective abortions.

    But it's easier to yell at people than it is to create an environment in which there isn't pressure to have an abortion.

January 2, 2010

January 1, 2010

  • Resolution

    The past year saw me act like a saint, and also (in very limited circumstances) like an asshole.

    Next year, well . . . I do need feedback.

December 31, 2009

  • 2009: Year of Communication

    Remember this?

    It seems a patent absurdity that Twitter could be used for anything productive, but there it was, being used to thwart a tyrannical regime and let the world know that the people of Iran were not free.  All around the world, others took note - and even as the citizens of democracies rallied to try to find some way to help, their governments looked uneasy.  Elliot Madison was arrested for twittering, not in some foreign land, but in New York, in the supposed heart of the American democracy.  On the flip side, James Roppo was arrested for refusing to twitter when a policeman ordered him to.  You can't win.

    Taken together, these cases demonstrate the love-hate relationship that all governments have with mass communication - they both crave and fear its power.  And they realize that this power does not truly belong to them.  It belongs to the Elliot Madisons, to the James Roppos, to the Neda Agha-Soltans.  It belongs to the people.

December 30, 2009

  • What Women Want

    moritheil Hey, maybe you should post about how to sweep you off your feet.
    moritheil Get the info into general circulation so it percolates through the public. Payoff comes years later.
    ifonearth  Awww, but where's the fun if he doesn't have to struggle to figure that out himself?
    moritheil You're not helping your cause

December 29, 2009

  • Your Candy-fu is weak

    From The Sacramento Bee and BoingBoing:

    When a drunken neighbor came over and threatened his Thanksgiving guests with a kitchen knife, one Del Paso Heights man allegedly took matters - and a plastic candy cane - into his own hands.

    In what police said was self-defense, the man used the two-foot plastic lawn decoration to beat 49-year-old Donald Kercell until police could take Kercell into custody, said Sacramento Police spokesman Sgt. Norm Leong.

    I can see this as a movie: elves with nunchucks, Santa as an old master of the martial arts . . .

December 28, 2009

December 27, 2009