Blogging

Quicktime Movie of the Daily Show's coverage of the blog.

(via David Weinberger)

I recently dropped out of college. Now, I know what many of you might be thinking: "wow, that was dumb!" My response to that judgement is, "well, no... what was dumb was not taking high school seriously." You see, I graduated in the top 85 percent of my class (or bottom 15 percent if you want to be an ass-hole about it). Though I did well on my SATs, the sad fact is that I burned my bridges to decent higher learning when I was 18. So today, here I am, 22 years old, with a little bit more than a Freshman year under my belt. My choices in colleges are limited to Austin Community College (which will unfortunatly probably be the last educational institution I will ever attend), or a private college for slackers with money (which, I suppose at this point, no longer seems worth the price to me). Neither of those choices interests me.

Its not talked about very often, but I think its quite a serious issue. Our academic institutions arrogantly assume that everyone learns the same way. And, I feel, had I been given a chance, I could have thrived at college. However, again, I never got an opprotunity to attend a college where teachers and students were actually interested in anything more than getting and giving the grades, and getting out of class on time. Frankly, its disgusting to me how uninterested some people seem to be in our world, and ability to percieve it. Rants aside, at least I can remind myself that Karl Rove never finished his degree. Besides, there appears to be only one place that is offering courses in the subjects that interest me. And, you might see the problem with that. Bygones...

I'm in the process of building a new, and significant addition to this site. Basically, its an index of some of the best resources on the web. For the record, it aims at quality, not quantity. I'm not creating some crappy yahoo index here. You can browse it by category from the "browse Resources" list on the left sidebar. Anyhow, check it out.

Also note that I will rarely include a resource on my blog's frontpage; the best way to keep track of new additions will be to subscribe to its RSS feed.

Steve Safran at lost remote writes on how to save blogs from ourselves. I suggest you get your little butt over there and take a read:

It only seems fair. I've written How to Save CNN and How to Save MSNBC. Time for a little hair of the dog. Following Cory's lead, here's how we can save weblogs from the creeping suspicions that are starting to hurt us all. [Link] >

Today, I renamed a month old post that jokingly accused Rebecca Mackinnon of kitten eating. While I was checking referred logs today, I suddenly realized that the satirical post, titled "Rebecca Mackinnon: Kitten Eater (and she's rumored to hate both America and Jesus, too. She's also a rapper.)", was in fact appearing near the top of any google search for "Rebecca Mackinnon". Rebecca never mentioned the post to me, and I think she would have thought it was funny. Nevertheless, it just seemed wrong to allow "hates America and Jesus" to appear at the top of the search -- regardless of the fact that it is an obvious joke (apparently, there is a large segment of the population that doesn’t understand the concept of joking). Rebecca is a woman of robust moral fiber, and doesn't hate America or Jesus (though the jury is still out on the kitten eating though).

Then again, I may have just had too much coffee today... The new headline is "Anonymous Whistleblower Accuses Berkman Fellows of Ceremonially Feasting Upon Live Kittens"

Anonymoses Hyperlincoln, Blogollageier

The Center for America Progress is now publishing a new blog called Think Progress. I'm Impressed. Listed below is their explanation of "what we're all about":

What We're Fighting For:

• Social and Economic Justice
• Healthy Communities
• Global Leadership
• A Secure America

What We're Fighting Against:

• Corrupt Establishment
• Incompetent Establishment
• Braindead Media
• Radical Right-Wing Agenda

Randy Baseler, the vice president of marketing for Boeing aircraft has started a "journal, or blog, or whatever you want to call it". Hmmmmm, me thinks the page would be a lot more interesting if it allowed comments. Other than that though, looky here, I have become a pawn in Boeings marketing plan!

Urban Dictionary is my favorite new site. It allows users to make their own definitions for words, and other users can either give their definition a thumbs up or thumbs down. The highest rated definition always appears on top. Anyhow, here is how they define the word blog: