
Ah, the pleasures of Sunday evening! The weather here in New York has turned quite cold over the last several hours, as we hear of the possibility of a late season snowstorm hitting New York between late Sunday night and Tuesday morning.
New Blogger Interface Underscores Danger of "Cloud"
What you thought was yours isn't yours - whether it is facebook (timeline) or gmail (reader) or Blogger (blogspot) - this is what people don't "get" when it comes to "cloud computing." Example: if you have programs or apps on your computer, they are yours to rule, and if you disallow any automatic updates, you can keep a program you are happy and comfortable with. On the CLOUD, like a Communist Nation, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE, NO VOICE!
I'm buying a new laptop which I hope will last me for many years. It has all of the features, bells and whistles I want, and may be the last of its kind. The last that doesn't have to answer as a slave machine to some sort of greater computer in the "cloud".
One thing I have seen with the brouhaha over the new blogger iterface is that every blogger is passionate about his or her blog, and every blog is valuable, no matter what the niche, no matter who the author. Blogs are a great resource and citizen media at its very best. We must band together and support each other as bloggers and allow the medium to go forward.


Human Slavery is a fascinating topic. I personally believe that a lot of "missing" women across the USA have been spirited away into lives of slavery - who knows where - whether at the nads of individual "unsubs" acting alone - or organized criminal organisations.
Radovan Bránik highlights an instance of child abuse in his photo report, Slavery in the streets of Bratislava, 21st century [sk]. His photographs depict a Romanian girl who, instead of being at school, is playing accordion for money in Bratislava's Old Town. A few older kids stand nearby, watching out for any police presence and quickly taking the money earned by the girl. An adult woman, probably the kids' mother, is enjoying coffee and sandwiches, while the girl often has to run away from the police. A solution offered by the blog's readers: do not give them money.
Project Pen is a social media-powered initiative to promote short story writing by Arabs and “encourage a new generation of writers, creating new kinds of stories, for a new kind of readership”. By sharing stories and connecting writers with one other, Project Pen strives to bypass traditional publishing and take storytelling “back to a future when stories were carved out on cave walls, and spoken out over the camp fire”. You can find out more at the project's website (in Arabic and English), and on Facebook and Twitter.
The Nut Graph blog tackles the issue of academic freedom and religious freedom in a Muslim-dominated society like Malaysia. Work in Progress by Hwa Yue-Yi
"Old Favourite" Blogs of Mine ... include Aldon's Orient Lodge, Wendy's Xiaxue and Michelle Malkin... these three have been blogging for quite a spell... just about as long as me... the four of us have "been there, done that." One thing I notice, our blogs have a few things in common:
- We like feature-rich, diverse (as opposed to "niche") content.
- We sometime publish very personal posts.
- We also publish highly opinionated posts.
- We blog the way WE want to blog, and readers need to understand that!