What you get when my brain crashes…

“Little Brother”

Go here and download this free e-book and read it as soon as you can. Be sure to set aside a lot of time for it; if you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to put it down. You may not even want to break to go to the bathroom - that’s how good this is.

Once you’ve done that, get someone else to read it. Or talk about it with people who won’t read it or can’t read it. Anything.

This book is just so fantastically important I can’t even put it into words. But I can say that 10 years ago, it would have been science fiction. In another 10 years, it might be true - or it might have been prevented.

This book will open your eyes about a lot of things, about security, about politics, about terrorism, about databases, about privacy, about liberty, and all that sort of stuff that, frankly, we take for granted far too often.

It’s a free e-book, but if you really like it - as I did - feel free to buy it from the author, or buy some of his other books, or just send him a donation.

Peace out, yo.

Priorities

Some very good points were made in response to my previous post that I didn’t think of - basically, that things like “copyright cops” and so forth are wasting our limited energies. That things like “copyright cops” and other useless endeavors (I’d argue for “war on drugs” and probably the “war on terror” to be added to the category of “useless endeavors” too, but that’s just me). We’re taking resources (read: money) away from things that are IMPORTANT… like, oh, I don’t know:

• Climate change
• Our decaying highway infrastructure (think: bridges collapsing? Major traffic problems around big cities?)
• Our poor educational system
• Major diseases (cancer, AIDS, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc.)
• Space exploration

The list goes on and on.

So what sort of things would YOU add to the list of “useless endeavors?” And what would be on YOUR list of important things?

Vote

The next time you get upset about the state of the world, or the next time you cringe at the gas pump at how much it costs to fill up, or when you can’t pay your bills because the economy is going down the tubes - make yourself a promise.

Promise that in this upcoming election, you will vote. If you were already going to vote, then promise that you’ll vote for someone different. Maybe it’ll be the “other party” from the one you normally vote for. Or maybe it’ll be a 3rd party candidate (may I recommend voting Libertarian?). Whatever it is, just do it.

Whatever excuse you’re coming up with right now to justify why your vote doesn’t matter, or how you don’t have time - well, you can take your excuse and stuff it, because it isn’t good enough. And it’s still not good enough - you can keep trying all you want, I’m not going to let up. You made a promise to yourself!

Once you’ve made this promise, you can try passing on this advice to someone else, the next time you hear them complain about things in the world (gas prices, economy, war, security, politics, etc.).

Just make sure you don’t go back on your promise - you may regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

After all - the biggest changes in the world can still be started by just one person.

Blogging is HARD

Blogging is HARD.

No, seriously, it is.

Now, before you brush me off, thinking that “you just write a few paragraphs every so often and that’s it,” let me assure you - there is quite a bit more to it than that (or rather, there has to be more to it than that if you want your blog to be at all successful).

Unless you’re just writing a blog as you would a journal or diary (that is, for no one to read but you and maybe your best friends), then you are right - blogging is easy. Just write about what you did at the mall today or how mean your teacher was to you in 3rd period English, and you’re all set.

Now, if you want to write seriously and maybe even get random strangers to read your blog and (presumably) enjoy it, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

The biggest hurdle for new bloggers is just getting something to write about, and actually writing. Constantly - or at least regularly. If you only post once per month, nobody’s going to come back, and you’ll be doomed to only be read by the occasional person who got lost while searching Google.

Once you commit yourself to writing on some sort of regular schedule (doesn’t matter what it is really, as long as you stick to it), you’ve got to… well, actually WRITE. And if you think back to your English or Creative Writing or Essay classes or whatever you took in school, you might remember that it’s often very hard to write about something - everyone gets “writer’s block” at one time or another. And blogging is no different than a weekly essay assignment - except that you won’t flunk a class for not blogging, and without that strong impetus to write, you may be tempted to slack off. (Even with the strong impetus, you might still slack off - I know I did in college!)

So blogging is hard because you have to write, and write often. But of course that’s not it, either, because you have to write, and write often, about things that you feel strongly about (and hopefully that other people want to read about). And believe it or not, that’s not always easy, either.

At first, if you’re dedicated, you might find it somewhat easy - just spout out a rant here and there on a regular schedule - while you have your morning coffee or whatever - and you’re all set, right? Well, sort of.

It’s easy at first because you don’t know any better. Like anything, practice makes perfect. As you blog more and more (and presumably read other people’s blogs at the same time) you’ll become a better writer. And part of being a better writer is that difficult stage where you’re good enough to see the flaws in your own writing, but not quite good enough (or perhaps confident enough) to make the changes you need to rectify the flaws.

In point of fact, I’m sort of at that stage myself. I’ve started using the “drafts” feature of WordPress quite a bit to work on … well, drafts of posts. When I first write them, they are often horrible - full of grammar problems, ideas that just wander all over the map with no cohesive vision to link them together - basically, a mess. But over a few days (or sometimes weeks) I work them into something that “works.” And some days, my writing muse is working overtime and I manage to write a few good posts all at once.

In the old days I would have posted them all immediately. Now, though, I’m taking a cue from Raymond Chen and using the “scheduled post” feature of WordPress to schedule any extra “good” posts for later - that saves me from having to work like a dog, trying to come up with stuff to write about to keep to my schedule.

So blogging really is hard - and that’s fine, things that are hard are often worth the effort. In the case of blogging, the pay off is two fold: you get to participate in a new communications medium that is sweeping the Internet, and by writing often, you will become a better writer - and that can have “real world” benefits.

So by saying “blogging is hard,” I’m not trying to dissuade you from blogging - far from it. I’m saying that blogging is hard because that’s my excuse for not posting anything for a few days. Wait, no, that’s not right. I’m saying that blogging is hard because that’s how you know it’s worth doing.

So give it a try - there’s no excuse not to. You can get a free blog just about anywhere these days, so there’s no cost to start, except for your time. And the time and effort you put into it will pay off someday. Who knows? You might even become such a good writer that you’ll get offered a book deal. Hey, stranger things have happened!

(Image credits to mathowie and andyp uk for their Creative Commons licensed pictures.)

Xenophobia

I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend lately - people are becoming more and more xenophobic. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at all the anti-immigrant sentiments floating around these days. And in case you weren’t sure, the definition of xenophobic is:

1. An exaggerated or abnormal fear of strangers or foreigners.
2. A strong antipathy or aversion to strangers or foreigners.

Don’t think that this describes society today? Think again:

• Italy cracks down on immigration
• Anti-Immigrant Sentiments Overwhelm Italy
• The Globalization of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

I hope you will notice that this is not confined to just the United States, either.

This is more than a little bit troubling.An awful lot of post-apocolyptic sci-fi stuff that shows nations with very strong anti-immigration laws - off the top of my head I can name V for Vendetta and Children of Men.

I’m not saying that one necessarily follows the other (correlation does not imply causation, after all) - but still, it is very… troubling.

What is perhaps even more troubling is that this is not new. Anti-immigrant sentiment seems to come and go in cycles - looking back through history shows periods of very strong anti-immigrant sentiments in just about every country at one point or another in their history, and often multiple times. Here in the United States, even people like Ben Franklin voiced what would today be seen as very vocal anti-immigrant views.

Of course, that was over 200 years ago - you’d think we’d have made some sort of progress along the way, right?

Or is this another case of “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” or something?

Whatever happened to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free?”

Something to think about before you head to the voting booth this year. (Assuming your vote gets recorded correctly; but that’s another blog post entirely.)