Blogs

A friend of mine sent me a devastating article today:

"Internet giant Yahoo has been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of a journalist for 'divulging state secrets'.

Update on relief work in Live Oak, FL.

First of all, thank you to everyone for passing along info on the camp we set up in Northern Florida. This ended up being a weekend of grief and confusion in Live Oak, FL for many reasons.

When donating to disaster relief, many of us want to make sure our donations are in tune with our values by donating to organizations with direct connections to local communities that will be able to provide relief efficiently and effectively, while also donating in such a way that builds local capacity to resist oppression and create grassroots democracy. The Hurricane Katrina aftermath vividly reminds us that those who bear the brunt of everyday social injustice and oppression are also those who fare the harshest in times of disaster.

Irving Kristol once said something to the effect that there are no ethical problems that a Great Depression wouldn't cure...

Not many people are aware as much as Margo Kingston that taking a stand is not without its cost. But as Arundhati Roy has said: ‘A thing, once seen, cannot be unseen, and when you have seen a great moral crime, to remain silent is as much a political act as is to speak against it.’

We finally got a worm farm started this weekend. We've been apartment dwellers for five years now, but we do have a lovely array of herbs and vegetables growing on our balcony. What better way to feed them than with worm castings? Our local council provides lots of information about getting started through the Watershed Sustainability Centre.

"Libraries, if they are truly used, require the active participation of readers to inform themselves and others. A reader is the essential and equal partner to the library, which makes the current management trend of turning readers into customers such a menace. Customers merely consume and are powerless and dependent; readers read, an activity that is both productive and cooperative. And, with luck, the motivated library reader may also become the writer and so continue in the provision of free thought."

Margo Kingston today closed her Webdiary at Fairfax and hang her shingle up at a new site. Media is filled with many preachers and academics, but it is rare to find inspiring practitioners. Margo Kingston does as she says: Personal opening statement to Webdiarists

Here's another great use for Google Maps - GhostCycle mapping locations in Seattle, USA where cyclists have been injured or killed via BikeBlog.

For more on this story, check out Free Govt Information.

One of the most blogger protective website The Electronic Frontier Foundation is hoping to cause an avalanche with a bottom-up project. The grassroot initiative aims to expose printers which have embed trackable information on printed pages. Apparently, several companies embed tracking data in their printers to help prevent counterfeiting, which is a good thing. As the EFF notes, ‘manufacturers and the Secret Service claim that the marking technology was developed to deter counterfeiting activities using color machines. While they may actually use it for legitimate anticounterfeiting purposes, currently no law prevents them from exploiting the technology in ways that could infringe on the privacy and anonymity of Americans.’ In an age when governments want to track and prevent dissent, this is rather worrying situation Investigating Machine Identification Code Technology Color Laser Printers