I’m already having a great time at the NTC and it has barely started. The vendor exhibit, they call it the “Science Fair,” was much bigger and more interesting than I had expected. I met some nice people and got some good schwag. I met the director of the Public Interest Registry, they are responsible for policy oversight of all .ORG domain names!
Continue reading “Fun @ the Science Fair”
Author: Ruby Sinreich
Headed to the windy city
Unfortunately I will be missing this week’s Chapel Hill Blogger meetup. Those gatherings have been consistently fun and stimulating. I think I will be even more stimulated, though…
I’m headed to the National Technology Conference where we will be graced by none other than Mena Trott & Esther Dyson, two innovating women web publishers, as well as some of my favorite colleagues from nonprofits around the country.
And it will be fun, too. I was asked to host “poker night” for some conference participants. I hope they know Texas Held ‘Em. 😉
The only thing I’m not looking forward to is the weather in Chicago.
But even that has a bright side – I can stay in and work on my current passion: NPOblogs.net. And it do need some work!
Gotta go now, my flight’s about to start boarding. Expect some conference blogging here for the rest of the week.
Mommy, make Congress stop touching me!
‘We’re not doctors. We just play them on C-SPAN.”
– Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) about Congress meddling in the Shiavo case.
This is yet another disgusting example of the religious right trying to control our bodies and apply their twisted “morality” to innocent people of other faiths than their own. The media circus is sure to get out our minds of off Iraq, the deficit, etc. for quite some time.
UPDATE: Corrected typos. Thanks, Ross.
The “official” best…
It’s time again for the Independent Weekly’s Best of the Triangle contest. Last year OrangePolitics won Best Blog without my even knowing the contest was going on. This year my senses are heightened for some reason. 😉
It’s in the paper this week, and there’s a link to it on The Indy’s website. Vote for whoever you want but please do fill it out. There are a lot of interesting categories like: Best Jukebox, Best Thrift Store, Best Place to Hear Weird Music, Best Gallery, Best Mechanic, and of course my favorite: Best Blog.
The South Says NO to War
I’m sending this from Rowan Park in Fayetteville, NC. There are about a thousand soldiers, veterans, military families, and lovers of peace in Fayetteville, NC
And another thing
Another thing that I have been wanting to blog about is how all these dudes have been going around saying that women don’t blog, or don’t blog about things that matter, or some crap like that. Their horseshit is so transparent that it may be redundant for me to point out that perhaps women don’t blog about things of interest to pompous men. And of course that’s just fine.
Some women are getting riled up about this on-going slap in the face. Now there’s this list of political women bloggers and people are talking about Bloghercon (Google asks “Did you mean: bloggercon?” No!). Of course Dave is giving them a hard time, for which I plan to give him a hard time, when I have time…
Now I’m off to Fayettevile to bring our troops home now!
No time
Someone blogged recently that the more you have to write about, the less time you have to write about it. No kidding! I hope to catch up on many of these topics, but in case I don’t here is what is swirling around in my head right now:
- Peace march in Fayetteville tomorrow!
- Brian was featured in a story about podcasting on Voice of America television. I’ve been itching to write about this, you should really check it out.
- Bush’s latest appointment for Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy indicates that he still continues to confuse the definitions of “diplomacy” and “snow job.” Nominee Karen Hughes is one of the biggest PR hacks of all time. She’s the one who compared 1 million pro-choice demonstrators to terrorists. Unlikely that she understands diplomacy as anything other than a giant bullhorn.
This is just another ‘up is down’ appointments from the Bush administration (torturers to protect justice, UN-haters at the UN, warmongerers at the World Bank, etc.).
- Network-centric advocacy. I’ve been invited to do a presentation explain this concept to an emerging networking of organizations working to change U.S. global engagement (see above).
- I’m going to the National Technology Conference in Chicago next week. This is the place to be for anyone in my profession, plus there will be tons of smart and cool people there, plus it’s in Chicago. Woo!
- My friends are about to have a baby any second now and my step-dad is soldiering on against colon cancer.
Local(ish) director makes the big time on the small screen
So I was just watching the Daily Show with a friend and this lo fi commercial comes on. I remarked that this looked like the kind of movie folks in Chapel Hill make (thinking of the wonderful Flicker film festival/series).
At the end of the commercial, it says it was made by Steve Daniels. Well shit! I have seen this guy’s stuff at Flicker many times. He’s from South Carolina and drives up to Chapel Hill for our Flicker shows. If you have seen it, you will never forget the film “Just The Kiss Of The Hops” about two men’s feud about the superiority of PBR versus High Life. I think he also made a short film about people who race lawnmowers.
Apparently Steve’s film was selected in a contest by the company (great way to get good ideas for cheap). Congrats Steve! Don’t forget us little people when you’re a big hollywood director, y’hear?
Where in the world am I?
For my friends who have trouble keeping up with my whereabouts, I have established a new feature called ‘Where’s Ruby.’ You can see it in the top-right corner of this page.
For the mice who think you’ll be playing while the cat’s away, I still have Internet access…
Nothing is real
This weekend, my dad and boyfriend and I sat down to watch Yellow Submarine. I think they showed this annually at the student union when I was in college. Even though I usually fell asleep at some point or other, it still had a pretty formative effect on me. 
Imagine my surprise when my dad (a certified baby boomer and rock & roller) told me that he barely even bothered to see Yellow Submarine when it came out in 1968. It turns out the Beatles don’t even play themselves in the film! He and his friends saw it as a commercialization of the Beatles, who had already been immortalized in a crappy TV cartoon by the same guys making Yellow Sub.
Well they were right, and the Beatles themselves saw it that way as well… until they saw the final product. Turns out they liked it so much that they all appeared in a live-action “epilogue” to the film.
I never really thought much about Yellow Submarine, but in retrospect this makes tons of sense to me. The animation in this movie is stunning, creative, and ground-breaking – especially considering they didn’t have all the fancy computers we have now. If you haven’t seen it lately, do check it out. Fun for kids too!