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Sunday, November 23, 2003
Spying on Americans
This is what it's come to: the FBI spying on people who attend anti-war rallies. Lawful anti-war rallies. At least they were the last time I checked.
Does John Ashcroft seriously think that terrorists are using protest organizations as fronts? I feel like, in the last two years, our civil liberties have been seriously diminished.
Posted at 09:48 AM
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Friday, November 21, 2003
An Adweek for New Media
For whatever reason, I get Adweek in the mail every week. I have never worked for a traditional advertising agency in my life, and yet I always find myself reading it cover to cover. And I think to myself, why isn't there one of these, this good, for my industry? Certainly there's enough money in it, even in lean times. Certainly there's enough product to review, people to profile, and new ideas to explore. Adweek covers its industry pretty well (or so it seems from the outside).
Sure, I know there was a slew of new media magazines--web week, information week, internet week, business 2.0, wired, etc.--a handful of which are even still publishing, but nothing that was as useful as Adweek is. It's chatty, gossipy, talks a lot about creative work and creative people. It tracks people as they move from job to job. It has job listings. It talks about money in a serious way. It reviews ads. It really covers the industry well.
It would be nice to see something similar once the tech sector rebounds.
Posted at 07:06 PM
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Monday, November 10, 2003
Expressive Smilies
Anyone who has ever IMed for any length of time knows that while those smilies and frownies are really useful in conveying tone, they aren't complete. Something like this would work better, with some tweaking. You'd still need the defaults, for speed alone. But it would be neat to have a wider range of expressions.
Posted at 08:35 AM
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Tuesday, November 4, 2003
Destroy Them!
I really like this idea: striking back at the spammers to destroy their servers and websites and generally annoy them. I practice this on a small-scale occasionally myself, replying to those emails from (insert name here) Ngana M'bana from Nigeria that needs my help securing cash. Then if they respond (which 99 times out of 100 they never do), string them along. I get ~200 spam mails a day and it's really annoying.
Posted at 10:51 AM
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Sunday, November 2, 2003
Big Questions
My daughter is at an age when she starts asking some really big questions. Here's a sample dialog from our house: The problems is I don't really have answers for any of these things myself. While I try not to lie to her, it's hard to present a traditional view of heaven and God when I have my serious doubts about them myself. But the complexities and paradoxes of my own beliefs are way too complicated and ambiguous to present to a three year old. I can't exactly remain silent, as I want to, and as the Buddha did, when asked if there was a God. It is very hard to put your personal cosmology into terms that a toddler can understand.Fiona: Are there beds in heaven?
Rachael: Yes, there are and you can jump on them all your want.
Fiona: Will Roni [a neighbor girl] die soon?
Me: No, no. People don't die until they are grown up.
Fiona: So when I grow up, I'll die?
Me: No! Well, not until you are old.
Fiona: Why do people pray?
Me: Because it 's the only way we can talk to God. No, scratch that. There's lots of ways we can talk to God. Or a higher power.
Fiona: What's God?
Etc.
Posted at 11:16 PM
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