Censorship in a Free America?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/04/craigslist.censored/index.html?hpt=T2

I am fuming about this. Did anyone ever shut down the AOL chatrooms that "promoted" child porn swapping? No. Law enforcement agents created chatroom decoys to engage the people who were doing the swaps and then traced their locations and arrested them/confiscated their computers. Everyone got their way. The chats c...ontinued running and law enforcement got their criminals and everyone else got to keep their freedom of speech. Instead of taking away sex workers' rights and ruining any leads they have on traffickers, they should take advantage of the trafficking ads running on CL that give them a chance to actually trace some of the persons involved in this otherwise untraceable, underground market -- and LEAVE THE PROSTITUTES ALONE.

Looks like another Arizona TKO. . .

http://cbs2.com/local/Los.Angeles.City.2.1689109.html

And they won't be the last city to boycott AZ. . . Oakland, San Diego, and San Francisco will be following suit :)

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/05/_workers_1946-1964_workers_tre.html

What a perfect day to put a fair Bracero program into effect. Hopefully it's something that Obama will also consider mentioning when he meets with Orrin Hatch and Jon Kyl this morning to talk about immigration legislation.

So, women are blaming BlackBerrys and iPhones for their poor sex lives. . .

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7672392/Women-blame-BlackBerrys-and-iPhones-for-poor-sex-life.html

and I'm blaming them and most other communication technologies for poor human relationships in general!

Emoticons will never makeup for that which we get from nonverbal, face-to-face communication.
I hate the fact that I must bite the bullet and maintain a Facebook account in order to connect with others. I hate the fact that I have become like everyone else. . . so addicted to reading status messages, so addicted to comparing everyone's accomplishments to my own, so deceived into thinking that I am so much more intimately connected to all of the 444 people on my "friends list" than I really am.

If the Christians are right and there really is a devil who cunningly claims to be a fan of man but is really anti-man, it is the people behind Facebook and other communication technologies. They were crafty enough to take the most vulnerable human need and market it to look like the real thing -- but it isn't real intimacy, it is faux intimacy, and everyone is buying into it and wondering why they feel so unfulfilled at the end of the day.

That is true, evil genius.

You'd think each generation has a longer life-expectancy than its predecessor. . . . . . right?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/28/fast.food.toys.california/index.html

Not if you keep rewarding your kids for eating slop: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/health/17obese.html

I think Santa Clara county's plan of banning toys from some fast food kids' meals is a wonderful excuse for politicians to meddle in our personal affairs.

Now, we just gotta get parents to to stop using the "we'll go to McDonalds if you. . ." line so kids will stop connecting that grease sensor on their tongues with the reward center in their little brains. De-Pavlov their little behinds, I say!

Oh, and I've thrown in a link that'll take you to an excerpt from the book, Fast Food Nation, just for good measure: http://www.rense.com/general7/whyy.htm

So now they're legalizing the racial profiling of Latinos

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/23/obama.immigration/index.html?hpt=T1

This makes me SO furious. I can't wait to show my disapproval at the CATA march and rally for immigrant workers' rights in Kennett on May 1st. Contact me if you'd like more information about the location and time.

So, they've found more physical evidence of what makes us human

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627565.600-empathetic-mirror-neurons-found-in-humans-at-last.html

So, two things came to mind when I read this article. . .

First, I immediately thought of Symbolic Interactionism and how cool it is that we now have physical evidence of one of its major components. If only Mead, Cooley, Goffman, and Blumer were alive today to see this. . . :)

Secondly, I thought about Asperger's Syndrome. Instead of wasting time finding a way to block these precious neurons (because I honestly can't think of a circumstance where we'd want a person to have less of these. . .unless you're one of those transhumanist activists who wants to see Huxley's work become a reality), I think it would behoove researchers to see if there are diminished and/or non-existent levels of these neurons in persons with AS and other empathy-lacking conditions, and if so, how we can increase the amount in their brains.