I saw this in a friend‘s sig file and just had to find the source. It’s an excerpt of a poem about a laptop by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Gelek Rinpoche.
…The light of the disk is endless
like the light of the disks in the sky, sun and moon.With a single push of our finger on a button
We pull up the shining gems of text…
Several people have sent me links to the Second Life parody GetAFirstLife.com. I think it’s very funny if you use SL, otherwise you might not appreciate the humor.
Apparently the parody site challenged SL to send a cease-and-desist letter, but instead they sent a letter declining to sue.
“Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody,” [Second Life’s attorney Ginsu] Yoon wrote. “Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.”
– Blogger gets ‘un-cease-and-desist’ note – Yahoo! News
Hee hee.
Wow, this is awesome! The New York Times has a new tool which you can search for any word or phrase and visualize how many times it was said each year, going back to Bush’s inaugural address in 2001: The State of the Union in Words. In addition, they show you the word as a red dot within a gray thumbnail of each speech which you can click to see the context of the sentence around it.
For example, I searched for the word speaker. It usually gets one mention in the opening of the speech, but this year it was said 4 times as the POTUS overred personal congratulations to Nancy Pelosi. In 2002, Bush said Afghanistan 13 times and Iraq twice. This year he said Iraw 34 times and Afghanistan 4 times.
And as already noted by Facing South, Bush mentioned Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans recovery not one time in his speech this year. And as far as I can tell the word “Katrina” didn’t even get a mention last year although “New Orleans” showed up twice.
“War” is an old standby, being mentioned 1, 13, 13, 12, 5, 2, and 11 times. This is a really great tool for lazy reporters, bloggers, and weak-stomached lefties like myself who can’t actually stand to watch the speech!
Link via: David Weinberger.
This weekend while hundreds of thousands are marching in the nation’s capital to end the long national nightmare known as the Iraq War, some of us will be virtually marching for peace.
The SL Netroots group in Second Life is sponsoring events and activities to coincide with the national March on Washington to End the War. Events may be spread around, but our space on Progressive Island will be the central place to find out what’s going on.
In support of the national march for peace in Washington, DC on January 27th, 2007, members of the SL Netroots are organizing in the following events.
Confirmed events:
* Posters for Peace. Gallery exhibition with free posters, on Progressive Island.* Party at Solidad Sugarbeet’s Conscious Lounge with DJ Doubledown Tardino. Time & day: TBD.
Come to our weekly meeting this Thursday at 3pm EST (noon SLT) to help make this effort a success! We need lots of support and want to see a lot of people come to Progressive Island on Saturday so please help spread the word.
David Weinberger proposes an interesting variation on the typical buzzword bingo for tonight’s State of the Union address. Fill your game card (or shot glass, whatever) with unlikely words and then cross them off if they are said.
The terms have to have some likelihood of showing up, so you don’t get credit for Bush not using the phrases “prolapsed anus” or “I’m sorry.”
– Joho the Blog: DOEP: Daily Open-Ended Puzzle: State of the Union Negative Bingo
This year’s topic is a simple one: tell us, and your readers, why you’re pro-choice.
Because I want to be a parent now, not when I’m 17 years old.
If it weren’t for access to safe abortions, I would be the mother of an adult by now. While I’m sure the child I didn’t have 18 years ago would have been the joy of my existence, I would have been a fraction of the parent she deserved. Now I have a good job, a loving partner, a stable home, and the maturity I needed to be the most excellent parent I can be. And hopefully I will have the opportunity to be one before too long.
Happy anniversary, Roe v. Wade!
As if I needed more reasons not to like her, Hillary Clinton’s campaign appears to have bought the domain name edwards08-dot-com and pointed it to hillaryclinton-dot-com. Actually, I’m not sure who registered it.
I heard about this story from a blogger I don’t know, and I looked up the domain and the WHOIS information is inconclusive. It’s possible that a “rogue” activist did this and not her campaign. The original registration date is 2/19/04. Anyone care to do additional detective work? And can someone write a press release because this is the kind of garbage that needs to be reported on.
Hello? Paging the MSM. Come in, please…
Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it ethical (as Clinton’s husband well knows). Doesn’t she have a better way to get her message out than by deceiving voters?
W00t! Go Tarheels. I was there…
I was actually really impressed by State. They players were garceful, and made a lot of great plays. Carolina’s defense simply shut them down in the second half.
Did you hear the bad news? Hillary is running. Many of us wonder who are these “Democrats” who keep telling pollsters they’d vote for her? I haven’t met any of them.
No-one would benefit more from her nomination than Republican organizers. She’s their public enemy #1, possibly a better bogeyman than Osama Bin Laden. Meanwhile most Democrats (base voters) response to her is something along the lines of… “eh.” If there are still Democratic party leaders that think they can win something by leaning to the right (as she does), I’d like to send them to re-education camp at the Rockridge Institute.
Much as I love the idea of a woman in the White House, I think that right now what we need is a progressive candidate with integrity and grassroots support. Most importantly, the Democratic nominee needs to be someone who can sincerely run on an anti-war platform. That does not spell H.R.C.
By the way, I can’t help but notice that her website looks very familiar…
I just read on Beth’s Blog and PDF that Convio have just bought GetActive. These are two of the biggest providers of web 1.0 engagement tools for nonprofits. I spent some years working for a very large customer of GetActive, in fact I was the resident GetActive “expert” on staff. While I always had suggestions for improvement, I shared my colleagues’ widely-held relief that at least we didn’t have to use Convio!
So while this may be good for GetActive, Inc. I’m not optimistic about the impact on the online advocacy space. Beth raises some excellent points about interoperability, and links to other blogger reactions.
Also more info and some useful thoughts by Michael Silberman at Echo Ditto: “Will this encourage more healthy competition from the other vendors and providers? (I hope so.) Or will Convio innovate less due to their massive new market share and potential perceived lack of competition? (I hope not.) And will this make open source solutions even more attractive to potential clients and users? (I think yes.)”