Republican Congressman Joe Wilson has already apologized for his lack of civility in last night's joint session of Congress, after shouting "you lie!" at President Barack Obama during Obama's speech about health care reform. Wilson is unsurprisingly being raked over the coals by fellow politicians, the media, and indignant bloggers and Twitter users, but I'm not sure we don't also owe him a word of thanks.
Continue reading "Why Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst was good for you"
Last night I got to experience Richmond as a kind of tourist, and I really enjoyed it. I was hosting cross-country cyclist Ben Lyon at my house through a Warmshowers.org connection, and he came into town ready to hang out and see some sights. We ended up gathered with Aaron, Mark and Thomas on my front porch to hear about Ben's trip so far, and then set out on our bikes for dinner. Continue reading "Velotraverse"
Because you come here every day looking for blogging goodness, you've probably noticed that I've been a little quiet lately on that front. This is in no small part due to the exciting adventure that has been moving my company's main office from the location we've occupied for ~9 years at 914 East Main Street in Richmond, to our new location at 710 East Main St, Suite 200 in Richmond.
The move brings with it a great expansion into a much more flexible and usable space, a whole new outlook on the world with natural light via second story windows, and a new beginning in the life of the company. One of the tag-lines in our marketing materials is "World Class Services Without Urban Overhead." Well, now we have a bit more urban overhead, and I thought I'd share a few notes and reflections on the move:
Continue reading "A Bit More Urban Overhead for Summersault"
Last summer, two generally swell guys in Indianapolis, Noah Coffey and Shawn Plew, decided to put together a conference for people in the area interested in blogging and social media, and it went quite well for a first-time effort - you can read my full reflections on Blog Indiana 2008 in a previous post. (I believe it also marked the beginning of my Twitter usage - gasp.)
The dynamic duo have teamed up to do it again for Blog Indiana 2009, which starts later this week. It looks to be an expanded and amplified version of the inaugural event - the conference will span three days with multiple tracks - blogging and social media, higher education, non-profit, etc. - and it sounds like there will be a lot more people there too (with great representation from Richmond). Summersault has returned as an event sponsor, and I'm also presenting again, this time with a session on "Using Social Media for Real-World Community Improvement" and as a panelist in a session about "technology."
I've apparently also been nominated for the award of "Best Hoosier Blogger" in the "2009 Blindy Awards," and while I'm not saying that I will give you significant amounts of cash just because you click on this link and vote for me, I'm not saying I won't do that either.
I'm looking forward to gathering with fellow bloggers and fans of technology, and sharing about how these tools can help us make life a little better for everyone. I hope to see some of you there!
I'm not sure that any version of a national health care system - existing, proposed by President Obama, or otherwise - is going to truly meet the needs of every U.S. citizen. As I've said about our approach to supporting the elderly in our culture, I think there are ways to approach true care for health and well being that focus on community and local/regional resources instead of nationally calibrated insurance premiums and risk formulas.
But if we accept for a moment that people in this country will probably continue to obtain medical services via some kind of national insurance system for the foreseeable future (and coldly put aside the many millions of people without even that benefit right now), then we need to talk about the practice of insurance rescission.
Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth is one of the most important books ever written about food and the sustainability of the human species. It is at once deeply personal, overwhelmingly provocative, and academically sound as it calls into question all of the stories we have ever been told about where food comes from, what kind of food we should eat (especially in the context of veganism and vegetarianism), and what impact our food choices make on our bodies and the world around us. And that's just the core themes; Keith deftly weaves together food politics with economics, religion, culture, misogyny, masculinity, feminism, media issues, peak oil, liberalism vs radicalism, and so much more.
In short, if you think about what you eat, how it got to you, and the issues of nutrition, morality, politics and spirituality come with it, it is paramount that you encounter what The Vegetarian Myth has to offer.
My full review continues:
It's almost, but not quite, embarrassing to admit how much time I spent as a kid playing "Radio DJ" in my room. I had a Fisher Price turntable along with a cassette deck hooked into a surprisingly advanced "be your own DJ" toy mixing device, and I would spin tunes for hours, paying particular attention the cross fades, the track notes announced in between songs, and faux news and weather reports to my non-existent listeners. You create art for yourself regardless of whether someone else gets to view/hear it, right?
When Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested on July 16th at his house in an apparently over-zealous and possibly racially charged police decision, everyone involved quickly fell into the usual pattern of conflict for these kinds of incidents. Statements were released, lawyers were hired, accusations and implications were flung, and everyone prepared for to defend themselves in battle. The media did its usual thing, egging on the conflict and brinksmanship, interpreting every action and word in the worst possible light, and the parties involved in the fight used those channels to communicate their anger with each other indirectly. When President Obama first got involved, he only escalated the situation by first admitting that he didn't have all the facts, and then proceeding anyway to say that one of the parties involved had acted "stupidly." Awful and disturbing, but pretty much what everyone expected.
But then something curious and possibly amazing happened.
One of my recurring summer jobs, in addition to filling and unfilling the tubes of the Internets, is to adjust the height of the small vertically-oriented plant life that densely covers the land surrounding my house.
Many people refer to this act as "cutting the grass."
Over the last few years I've tried quite a wide variety of approaches to and implements for "cutting the grass," and I'd like to share them with you now, because imparting unsolicited and only moderately useful information to a halfway-interested audience is what blogging is all about, no?
I've written before about how RSS feeds and website content syndication can make a big difference in how you take in content online. If you haven't played around with a feed reader service or tool (like Google Reader), you should really give it a try.
But now it's time to explore the darker side of RSS feeds (or, for those of you stuck in the 1990s, web browser bookmarks): despite making your continued content consumption more efficient, it's still too tempting to subscribe to too many of them, and once again have too much "clutter" in your electronic life.
My own feed reading list ranges between 100-200 feeds at any given time (thanks NetNewsWire for making this easy!), and I've had to be very intentional about keeping the list that "small." So, in hopes of helping you prevent RSS feed frenzy, and perhaps to learn about some of your techniques for the same, I present "5 reasons to ditch an RSS feed":
Continue reading "5 reasons to ditch an RSS feed subscription"
