Freshly Brewed

Denying physics won’t save the video stars | Cory Doctorow - Times Online

2009-10-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Denying physics won’t save the video stars | Cory Doctorow - Times Online

Natalie Portman: Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan

2009-10-29T06:51:00.001-07:00

Natalie Portman: Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan

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2009-10-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

danah blog wrote an awesome blog posting today:

Some thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates
The functional act of constructing a tweet or a status update is very similar. Produce text in roughly 140 characters or less inside a single line text box and click a button. Voila! Even the stream based ways in which the text gets consumed look awfully similar. Yet, the more I talk with people engaged in practices around Twitter and Facebook, the more I'm convinced these two things are not actually the same practice. Why? Audience.
There are two critical structural differences between Facebook and Twitter that are essential to understand before discussing the practices: 1) social graph directionality; 2) conversational mechanisms.
Facebook's social graph is undirected. What this means is that if I want to be Friends with you on Facebook, you have to agree that we are indeed Friends. Reciprocity is an essential cultural practice in Facebook (although they are trying to rip out the functional requirement as it relates to status updates, arguably to compete with Twitter). Twitter, on the other hand, is fundamentally set up to support directionality. I can follow you without you following me. Sure, I can't DM you in this case, but I'm still consuming your updates. Yes, yes, yes, privacy settings complicate both of these statements. But for the majority of users of each site, this is the way it goes. Stemming from this are a whole lot of social norms about who's following who and who's consuming who's content. It's pretty clear that the Celebrity will get followed without reciprocating on Twitter, but there's also a tremendous opportunity for everyday individuals to develop a following. It's not just the Celebrities who are following different people than the people who follow them; it's nearly everyone (except for those who think that auto-follow bots relieve social tensions).
On Facebook, status updates are placed on one's Wall. This allows anyone else (among those with permission) to comment on the update. This creates a conversational space as it is quite common for people to leave comments on updates. Conversely, on Twitter, to reply to someone's tweet, one produces an at-reply on their own stream. Sure, the interlocutor can read it in their stream of at-replies, but it doesn't actually get seen or produced on their own page. Thus, a person's Twitter page is truly the product of their self-representation, not the amalgamation of them and their cohort.
So, practices.. how does this affect practices?
Those using Facebook are primarily concerned with connecting with those that they know (or knew in high school). The status updates are an invitation to conversation, a way of maintaining social peripheral awareness among friends and acquaintances. They're about revealing life as it happens so as to be part of a "keeping up" community.
Arguably, Twitter began this way, if only because the geeks and bloggers who were among the early adopters were a socially cohesive group. Yet, as the site has matured, the practices have changed (and I've watched a whole lot of early adopters who weren't part of the professional cohort leave). For the most visible, Twitter is a way of producing identity in a public setting. This is where you see personal branding as central to the identity production going on there. It's still about living in public, but these folks are aware of being seen, of having an audience if you will. Twitter also enables a modern incarnation of parasocial relations. Sure, there are one-sided relationships on Facebook too, but they are far more the norm on Twitter. I can follow the details of a Celebrity's life without them ever knowing I exist. At the same time, there's the remote possibility of them responding which is what complicates traditional parasocial constructs. Angelina Jolie could never see me reading about her in the gossip mags and commenting on her latest escapades, but, if she were on Twitter, she could sense my watching her and see my discussion of her. That's part of what is so delightfully tempting for Celebs.
In short, the difference between the two has to do with the brokering of status. With Facebook, the dominant norm is about people at a similar level of status interacting. On Twitter, there's all sorts of complicated ways in which status is brokered. People are following others that they respect or worship and there's a kind of fandom at all levels. This is what Terri Senft has long called "micro-celebrity." Alice Marwick has been extending Terri's ideas to think about how audience is brokered on Twitter (paper coming soon). But I think that they're really critical. What makes Twitter work differently than Facebook has to do with the ways in which people can navigate status and power, follow people who don't follow them, at-reply strangers and begin conversations that are fundamentally about two individuals owning their outreach as part of who they are. It's not about entering another's more private sphere (e.g., their Facebook profile). It's about speaking in public with a targeted audience explicitly stated.
As you can see, I'm not quite there with my words on this just yet, but I feel the need to push back against the tendency to collapse both practices into one. How audience and status is brokered really matters and differentiates these two sites and the way people see and navigate this.
One way to really see this is when people on Twitter auto-update their Facebook (guilty as charged). The experiences and feedback on Twitter feel very different than the experiences and feedback on Facebook. On Twitter, I feel like I'm part of an ocean of people, catching certain waves and creating my own. Things whirl past and I add stuff to the mix. When I post the same messages to Facebook, I'm consistently shocked by the people who take the time to leave comments about them, to favorite them, to ask questions in response, to start a conversation. (Note: I'm terrible about using social media for conversation and so I'm a terrible respondent on Facebook.) Many of the people following me are the same, but the entire experience is different.
Over the last few years, I've watched a bunch of self-sorting. Folks who started out updating on Twitter and moved to Facebook and vice versa. The voices they take on don't change that much, but they tend to find one medium or the other more appropriate for the kinds of messaging they're doing. One or the other just "fits" better. When I ask them why, they can't really tell me. Sometimes, they talk about people; sometimes they talk about privacy issues. But most of the time, one just clicks better for reasons they can't fully articulate.
Different social media spaces have different norms. You may not be able to describe them, but you sure can feel them. Finding the space the clicks with you is often tricky, just as finding a voice in a new setting can be. This is not to say that one space is better than the other. I don't believe that at all. But I do believe that Facebook and Twitter are actually quite culturally distinct and that trying to create features to bridge them won't actually resolve the cultural differences. And boy is it fun to watch these spaces evolve.

Check it out here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/10/25/some_thoughts_o_2.html

PowerShifting in Ottawa

2009-10-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

On a cold miserable day in Ottawa, a few hundred (maybe?) people, mainly youth, showed up on Parliament Hill for 2 hours for 350.org's International Day of Action. With various mascots running around asking us to sign petitions, protesters carrying signs and figures such as Elizabeth May, Oxfam and the WWF speaking, it was definitely a public event. Asking anyone with a Twitter-enabled phone to tweet messages to @pmharper and issuing the number of his office to promote a "phone jam" (similar to the Global WakeUp Call, I imagine?), social media was definitely a major part of this campaign.

Participants have been asked to contribute photos and videos to Flickr and YouTube accounts, follow progress of powershift 09 on twitter, use the hashtag #fillthehill and #powershift09 and use their mobile phones to call elected officials. One thing I am not sure people are aware of is how easy it is to use Twitter on any cell phone through SMS. If one goes through their settings and enters their mobile phone number, twitter then sends users a code to text to the Twitter shortcode 21212. Once this is confirmed, users simply need to send messages to 21212 to have it post on their accounts.

this is a snapshot of my Twitter account (http://twitter.com/maggiemacaulay) where I decided to tweet observations instead of writing down field notes. It was an interesting experience.

Pros:
-providing a livestream of information
- using hashtags helped aggregate posts so that #fillthehill may have received higher ranking on trending topics (although I am not sure something as local as "fill the hill" would have hit on a global scale. Maybe it would have been better for each 350 group to just adopt one hashtag? Power of crowds might have helped.
-helped me see what its like for activists to communicate via twitter
-gets you pretty excited about taking notes
-rapid pace forsure leads to excitement
-chance to participate in newer forms of action
-tweeting enables my audience to also understand the demonstration (aka my supervisor knows that I was actually outside collecting observations and not at home eating bon bons and watching Steel Magnolias, which is what my inner self was totally doing)
-phoning the PM and actually getting through was pretty fun. Although we probably just pissed people off wanting to phone the PM for other reasons. And because he has a secretary, it probably didn't make her day great either.

Cons:
-I have a crappy cell phone and can barely use T9 so my texts were a bit frustrating and sometimes I didn't know how to do it "right"
-It was raining and I was nervous that my cellphone would get wet (umbrellas are not conducive to texting unless you have one of those head umbrellas)

-There was no WiFi on Parliament Hill (eugh) and if it wasn't for my dear friend L.T and her Blackberry, I'd have no web access at all to setup my Twitterphone. Thats another thing. If you don't have a smart phone, things are a heck of a lot more annoying and slow.
-Because I have no interwebs I couldn't see what was going on in the blogosphere during this whole thing. So no instant feedback. Lame.

So it was a neat experience. Although I don't have a smartphone for my conference (thus requiring me to switch between cameras, voice recorders, cell phones and my ipod....maybe I need a nerdy toolbelt. Or one of my old aprons from waitressing), I am really lucky that I am getting a relatively cheap cell phone in Copenhagen that will allow me to send SMS and talk without those horrendous roaming charges. Add to that that the Bella Centre (site of COP15) is definitely WiFi enabled and I'm good.

I actually missed the live flash mob but did see it on the news after. To be honest I think the turnout was a bit disappointing but media reports did make it seem bigger than it was. Is that good because people pay attention or do they figure that enough people "took care of it"? I'm not sure.

Youth definitely were the biggest group there- decked out in costumes, running around with petitions, marching with signs. I saw a few clusters of older people- likely Sierra Club members. People ages 25+ where you at? Let's call Ottawa "Notottawa". Yeah yeah I know it was raining, blah blah blah. But still. Isn't this the capital? Ben ouais.

I think it's a good start. I remember reading about the global day of action March 25 that didn't seem to garner much press. The Global WakeUp Call on September 21st? I only heard about it in retrospect on rabble and the CBC. "What do you mean you've never heard of Aavez?" I've been asked. TMI people. It's tough to keep up on everything all of the time. Between writing my thesis, stalking my exboyfriends and their new girlfriends on facebook, watching Real Housewives of New York City and going to step aerobics it's hard to keep up. OK ramble over. Back to thesis proposal.

ps. H.T merci for the lentil goodness. You inspire me to cook with white wine instead of drinking it. Or both. I will deliver your gift to your gros toutou soon.

Flash Mobs or Faux Mobs?

2009-10-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of PowerShift '09, Canada's weekend-long event for the 350.org international day of action. I trekked all the way from Montreal to Carleton to the Nepean Sportsplex to watch the rehearsal for the "Fill the Hill" flash mob dance occurring on Ottawa's Parliament Hill, tomorrow October 24, 2009.

I thought it was all a bit weird- the YouTube video instructing participants on the dance moves, the fact that a flash mob (which is technically defined by its use of mobile technologies and its spontenaeity) is rehearsed. In person.

Ok, so maybe it doesn't fit into the Rheingoldian notion of "smart mobs". But it helps address another issue in activism. The fact that many movements lack that collective identity that makes a group cohesive. After all, it's unlike the civil rights movement, the women's movement and the queer movement in that there is no "we" definining the movement.

What I realized is that these activities not only add enthusiasm and motivate people but also foster relationship-building, collaboration and a team spirit. People are bonded by this event and may form long-lasting friendships based on these loose tie connections.

Here they find people who are also interested in the environment, have a sense of humour and like to participate in public actions. Awesome. Will post a video of rehearsal after. Shows how groups need to work together as one unit.

Collecting Data via Mobile Phones

2009-10-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

An article I read here talks about how researchers are using the "right here right now" aspect of cell phones to collect sensitive data from patients. Right on.

Going to Ottawa this weekend for 350.org Day of Climate Change Action. Excited to see what happens

Six-Year-Old Sells Her Toys to Aid Local Police Dogs - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

2009-10-17T07:54:00.001-07:00

Six-Year-Old Sells Her Toys to Aid Local Police Dogs - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

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My regular phone call from my mother...

2009-10-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

Sarah Silverman's Take on World Hunger

2009-10-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

Ah Sarah Silverman. My slightly more normal female celeb obsession. How I love your dark sense of humour and your voice. You inspire me to find humour in everything. Here is Sarah Silverman promoting her solution for world hunger. Only Sarah Silverman would push a message to the Vatican using the term "pussy". So far two of my Facebook friends have shared it with their networks. Awesomeness. I expect to see more of them circulated in the next few days.

Sticky Fingers Lilo

2009-10-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so as some of you may know I have a celebrity obsession with Lindsay Lohan (aka Lindsanity). I used to think she was a major babe although I'm certain those days are over. Anyways in order to give my blog its "quirk", I will now regularly post stories about Lindsay for my web audience. Like or loathe her (and I LOVE her), get used to seeing these items regularly :)

Read the story of Lilo's jewelery-stealing adventures here!!

Food for Thought

2009-10-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Holy fatness Batman! This weekend was full of stories about fatness, making us all feel a little guilty about our holiday indulgences. A recent story about an overweight baby shows us that we still blame fat people for all of our ills and use it as a barometer of health. Skinny is sexy and apparently healthy in this story, who blames Karl Lagerfeld for anorexia in the fashion industry. Isn't he just saying what EVERY OTHER designer believes?

Finally, in case you don't have friends who post inappropriate items on Facebook (eg. ex-bashing or complaining about how miserable they are post-breakup), the press reminds us that celebrities are the ultimate idiots when it comes to communications tact: Read all about it here

Sing for your supper....

2009-10-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

This is a video of a friend of mine at her "farewell" show during her last few days in Montreal. She is now a student at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, training in singing. Totally lovely lady. I hope she becomes a big star one day so we can have fancy lunches and run away from the paps. Sigh.

planes planes planes

2009-10-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

New seating plans for planes here. Like getting up to use the restroom or fish something out of your bag isn't awkward enough already. Still- if it makes more economical sense and results in fewer planes, it might be worth it.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/10/step-up-lie-down-sit-sideways-airlines-explore-creative-seating/

Happy Thanksgiving to Us All + SSHRC + GRE + Thesis + UGH

2009-10-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

How do people have the time to blog? I guess like everything you just have to make time for it. After all, I have these conversations in my head and so might as well write it down.

So it's crunch time for the lowly grad student, who should have prepped a decent proposal in the summer while working away at the thesis. Eugh. We are constantly playing catchup. FML indeed.

I am now "in the game" of grad school, looking up programs, chatting up profs, trying to decide where to spend the next few years of my life. Would really love to be somewhere warmer and winterbird it down south. After 23 years in Winnipeg and nearly 2 between Ottawa/Montreal I think that's enough for me. Snowed in Winnipeg today. Oi vey. My poor mother. I am feeling kind of homesick this holiday season. Can't wait to come home for Christmas after doing crazy research in Copenhagen. Pretty sure the first few days back in Winnipeg will be comatose. Princess Aurora in the Prairies.

Had great chat with doctoral candidate in a potential program the other day. She was super enthusiastic and made me feel really good about possibly switching to Information Studies from Communications. I even felt smarter talking to her. Isn't it funny how we start to pick up these strange academic personas and almost speak in academic tongues? It feels like not myself...and yet it is. Always gets more and more strange going home. Who do I have conversations with? My doggies?

As someone interested in everything and anything to do with technology and communication (and people!), I find myself increasingly interdisciplinary, jumping from Communications to Sociology to Technology Studies. Maybe I will find home in a school of information. We'll see.

Really nervous about applying to schools in the U.S. Some of these grad students in the Master's program seem more accomplished than I could ever be. Ah well, remember Maggie Magoo, ithinkican ithinkican....putt putt putt up and over the hill.

Feeling ethical

2009-10-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

After a (really) horrible day of running around town to get a new passport in time for travel and feeling totally run down from the last couple weeks of painful thesis writing and trying to figure out the right PhD programs to apply to (and losing every left mitten I own), I received this email from the ethics committee:

"Dear Margaret,

Thank you for the revisions to your ethics application. The revisions have been accepted and approved. Your project has received ethics clearance. Your clearance is valid until May 31 2010.

I will prepare your clearance form and it may be picked up form my office located at 510B Tory. If you are unable to pick up the clearance form please let me know so alternative arrangements may be made"

About flippin' time! Yay!

A rant about a rant about population control and climate change

2009-09-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

I read a recent story by George Monbiot about climate change, population control and climate change. Talking about the "wally yachters", Monbiot goes on to say that if there was a serious meeting of ministers to discuss climate change and population control, the following scenario would take place: "Of course, to make a real splash I'll have to shell out on teak and mahogany fittings, carry a few jetskis and a mini-submarine, ferry my guests to the marina by private plane and helicopter, offer them bluefin tuna sushi and beluga caviar, and drive the beast so fast that I mash up half the marine life of the Mediterranean. As the owner of one of these yachts I'll do more damage to the biosphere in 10 minutes than most Africans inflict in a lifetime. Now we're burning, baby."

While it is no secret that much of the world's resources are consumed by wealthier members of society and that wealthier nations are mostly responsible for carbon emissions through our crazy lifestyles, what's most troubling is that Monbiot seems to adopt the position that the middle class aren't responsible when in fact we represent a bigger chunk of the population that therefore emits the most.

I'm not saying I entirely disagree with Monbiot. I think there is a bit of a Western-centric attitude imposed on other groups of socity in this discourse of "population control as climate change solution". After all, if less developed nations contribute very little anyways, even if there is overpopulation that does not really do much to our own awful practices. I was recently at a conference about sustainability issues in Canada. Population control was brought up as a subject and its something that we in the Western world take as a simple solution, especially since less and less of us are having many children- or even any at all. It's convenient for us, who often consider children to be a burden (oops did I say that?). See here and here

Anyways someone thought the solution would be to educate women. The feminist/sexual health keener in me said loudly, "why women?!" to which I got the response, "because they have the uterus". Ha. I got told apparently.

Or not. While others told me about the rates of women's education to population growth (a correlation I am not so convinced of anyway, to tell you the truth) which made me seem insensitive to the education of women in developing nations (of which i support very much, don't get me wrong). Women should be educated because education is a human right, not because they need to learn how to keep their legs shut, which this discourse about population is steeped with.

"Oh. Do women get pregnant by themselves?" I asked? To which I got no response. See, IMHO, if population growth was the root of the climate change problem (which is contestable, like everything else) and it was really the underdeveloped nations that are the "problem" (which is the overriding claim here) we would have to look at two issues specific to these communities:

1) People have large families for many reasons besides our Western vision of the nuclear family (and cute mommies in strollers)
- when you don't have a social system to support you in your old age (as a friend pointed out to me), you have children to take care of you. Thats why we did it in the old days and that's still the ~~mentality~~ need of many people across the world.

2) Many cultures have certain stigmas attached to the use of contraceptives
-eg. Catholics (who are of the Western world, non?)
- there are cultures who believe that use of contraceptives renders one infertile

3) gender roles
- women have babies and men go to work in some cultures; we would have to undo this idea first (ha!)
- men might be unwilling to use contraception for various reasons

in short, we would have to educate both. I am really tired of the message that as a cultural signifier of the body in society, the onus is on women to "take care of it" (helllllllo Gardasil and HPV...don't get me started).

Smokescreen the Game

2009-09-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

A new game from the UK called Smokescreen has been set up in another persuasive game designed to make teens aware of how much information they share online.

I played one version of the game to test it out....not only did it seem a little too complicated and unrealistic (tell me again how other users could get into everyone's accounts and change the details?) but also made lurking online for info seem kind of....fun?

Read story here

I would argue that it might be beneficial for people to post information about themselves in the event of an emergency. Heck, officials use social networking profiles to find whereabouts of criminals and bust those violating terms of parole, employers catch truant employees who have skipped out on a day of work and potential college deans use them to suss out students....sometimes social networking information can be the only available evidence so let's not get too crazy here.

Besides....most teens are actually vaguely familiar with all of this privacy/stranger danger rhetoric. A study by Hinduja and Patchin (2008) entitled "Personal information of adolescents on the Internet: A quantitative content analysis of MySpace"suggests that 40% of profiles studied were actually set to private anyways, questioning the assumption that the Internet is a wild terrain for youth to share every detail of their personal lives.

LifeCall Ads

2009-09-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

Currently working on grad school PhD project ideas....Seniors and eHealth, guest starring mobile phones. Here are some ads from the "Help I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up" LifeCall system. Kind of frightening, no?

Girl Throws Ball Back (VIDEO): Phillies Dad Heartbroken- Super Kawaii

2009-09-16T06:09:00.001-07:00

Oh man...cutest thing ever.

Jessie Spano Lives On

2009-09-15T21:21:00.000-07:00

FML.
I moved into my new place two weeks ago and have no furniture and my clothes are everywhere. Felt great handing in my MA thesis ethics proposal only to find I still need a thesis proposal ready by mid-October...BUT...

this is how I feel.

FAIL.

Debtors Revolt?

2009-09-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

Today I stumbled across a story on The Huffington Post about Ann Minch of Red Bluff, Calif, a Bank of America customer who is refusing to pay her credit card after the company raised her interest rates to 30% (egads!). You can read the story here or watch the video here:

If this is in fact a "real" video (which I suspect it isn't, not because of the script btw), I'm not really sure how I feel about this form of electronic "civil disobedience". Cheers to her for being smart enough to appeal to the Internet-savvy crew who read blogs and watch YouTube videos, making her protest go "viral". But what do we actually know about this person before we jump on the bandwagon? Do we know much about her credit history, her record of employment? I'm no Internet super sleuth but I can't seem to find a serious Internet record of her (I can even Google myself, for Chrissake)...so we'll see how this drama unfolds.

There is also the issue here- with lots of us debt-ridden slackers out there who sit at home and watch YouTube videos, could this video simply reinforce the lazy will (complete oxymoron?) of people who carry a balance because they can't manage their money responsibly? I'm not suggesting that Ms. Minch does not (after all, $5000 is not a massive amount of debt), but I think mismanagement of funds is a big theme in this recession, non? Isn't sticking it to debt by not paying something that, say, Bank of America would do? Is this the American way?

Am I the only one who thinks this is too contrived, too "middle-class" America? I'm not sure why....the display of model cars in the background of what appears to be the middle-class suburban family den, the "I heart -----" baseball tee...not sure. Maybe my faith in memes has been shattered by LonelyGirl15

and the hilarious-yet-disturbing World of Warcraft freakout:

I'm not convinced...yet. Let's see what happens

PETA Ad with Pink and Ricky Gervais

2009-09-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

Fur for thought....

If you have sex, you will get pregnant and die

2009-09-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

The Texas Freedom Network, a Texas-based group that counters the Conservative Right, has just released this not-so-hilarious spoof of abstinence-based edjumacation in some schools in America, full with report: Just Say Don't Know

Here's another blog post from them:

"Don’t Buy the Lie"

By TFN

From a message being circulated to a far-right e-mail list in Texas today:

“(T)he teen pregnancy rate is certainly not the fault of abstinence-only sex education programs but is instead the outgrowth of prolific contraceptive sex education programs.”

The facts say otherwise:

Texas has one of the highest teen birth rates in the country (and that rate is rising) and ranks first in multiple births to teens.
More than 9 in 10 Texas school districts teach abstinence-only when it comes to sex education. Just 2 percent teach medically accurate information about responsible pregnancy and disease prevention.
Texas has received more abstinence-only federal funding than any other state.

The same e-mail says the Obama administration and members of Congress “are trying to kill your children” because they support teaching not just the importance of abstinence, but also medically accurate information teens need to make important life decisions and protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Don’t buy the lie. Ignorance won’t protect our kids."

I have not yet read their report, but am sure it will serve as a reminder of all of the inefficiencies of prevention or abstinence-based campaigns. I suspect it will reaffirm the continuous popularity of scare tactics and myth-circulation that plagues many health promotion campaigns.
In the meantime, here's some Mean Girls to illustrate my point.

My fall project

2009-09-14T09:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.marcheduluth.com/

This is a local, Montréal farmer's market I am so happy to be a part of. Launched in June 2009 with the help of some super fantastic ladies and the community, Marché Duluth aims to provide residents of the Plateau with local, organic, pesticide-free goodies. Anyone in Montréal should come check us out Sundays from 10-4 until October 16th. We sell yummy baked goods and brew fresh Santropol coffee.

My Halloween 2009 Costume...

2009-09-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

Stunning, darling, stunning. Thanks to SJ for the inspiration :)

Ok, finally starting this thing.

2009-09-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

So I realize that I have been trying to start a blog for a year. Many false starts. Too much like a diary. I'm not much a fan of having to get into the habit of writing everyday- I probably have 20 diaries scattered all over my childhood home. "Dear Diary, I have a crush on this boy in my class...." etc.

But let's get srs here. Real blog. Mostly because I am afraid of alienating my friends with spam attacks of me finding stupid/funny things to read on Boing Boing, Huff Post, Wired, or any other geeky blog I read. So I'm going to start by posting funny/stupid things here and maybe it will evolve...hmmm.