Posts made in April, 2009

Two days ago, a court in Sweden found the four men who created the internet file sharing site “The Pirate Bay” guilty of copyright infringement and of aiding and abetting the piracy of copyrighted material. The men were each sentenced to a year in jail and a fine of 30 million Swedish Kroner (about $3.6 million USD). The reaction in the media and in cyberspace was swift; much of the commentary came down on the side of The Pirate Bay founders, blaming the entertainment and software industries for causing the need for such sites in the first place through years of unfair pricing of music, video and software, as well as the draconian steps these companies have taken to stop piracy in recent years. Others are of the opinion that the Pirate Bay creators got what...

I love America. Seriously, despite all of the horrible, idiotic, racist, arrogant things the U.S. has done since it’s founding, I LOVE America. I love it because of it’s promise; it’s still a work in progress. Most of all I love America because it every once in a while shows the ability to correct itself when it starts to stray off of it’s path. This is evident with the election of Barack Obama. The problem is, many Americans don’t want the pendulum to swing, and they’re pulling out all the stops in their quest to halt the inevitable.  Admittedly, I’m a leftie. Better said; I’m a progressive / liberal, so it is with great amusement that I watch the current meltdown of the right-wing in America. However, with that...

So, I’m preparing breakfast for the kids this morning (my daughter is 12 and my son is 10; my son had a friend sleep over last night), when a rather interesting conversation took place. I was explaining to the kids why I was watching a news show (Countdown with Keith Olbermann) on my iPhone at the breakfast table, when the conversation then turned to President Obama. The kids are very smart and, as many german kids do, know a little about history, so it came as a total shock to them when I said to them that there are some Americans who compare Obama to Hitler, calling him a fascist, sozialist and a Nazi. They of course wanted to know why these people compare Obama to the greatest mass murderer in the history of man, so I explained a few of the reasons; fear...

Here it is: yet another site redesign for this year! Over the past few months, I’ve been learning about the very cool WordPress content management system, and have decided to transform my site into a full-fledged blog. The advantage of doing this is simple; it will allow me to update the site more frequently, and not have to spend hours messing around in Dreamweaver just to get my thoughts out to you. Furthermore, it will allow me to update the site not only using my laptop, but also using my favorite gadget since July of ’08, my iPhone. how cool is that?! I’ll be testing the site while I’m busy doing other stuff, so it should be completely done in a few days. In the meantime, give me some feedback on what you’ve seen so far.