“Running your own blog” is a relative phrase. For most bloggers, the meaning doesn’t go beyond authoring the posts and monitoring the comments. Having the password to the admin page constitutes “running their own blog.” But if you’re hosting your blog with some vendor, such as blogspot or wordpress, that’s a bit like renting a cabin on a cruse ship and feeling like it’s your boat to command. If the crew decides they don’t like you, they just might lock you in your cabin. Perhaps even throw you overboard.

This looks to be what is happening to several pro-Hillary, anti-Obama blogs over at Google’s blogspot. Assuming some other explanation doesn’t emerge from these suspicious coincidences, it’s another showing of Google’s increasingly obvious political bias. Their anti-American bend has long been on display since they acquired YouTube – jihadist and US soldier snuff videos a-plenty, pro-American videos…not so much.

Stories such as this serve as a reminder as to why I accept the extra work required to run the server on which this blog is hosted. It’s my boat. And if some pouty elitists with a leash to a Google Goon get tied up in knots over the content, best they can do is sail on by…or break the law.

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2008.07.01

More on this from the New York Times which, oddly, has this in the “Technology” section.

Turns out Eric Scheie and I are fighting the same battle today. My efforts are far more modest than Eric’s, involving one puny schredder and a few garbage bags. Still, there is a lot of paper I HAVE to keep, mostly related to Janet’s psychotherapy practice. Stuff I can’t distroy for a few years yet due to some rather vague legal reason. Ack. Nonetheless, I toss what I can.

What’s interesting about the battle in Eric’s trench is he apperently gets far mor junk mail than I. He quotes from these folks:

“The amount of paper junk mail sent each year in the USA is staggering — some 4 million tons, nearly half of which is never opened.”

The most staggering thing about that statistic, assuming it’s true, is that of those 4 million tons, over half of it actually is opened.

Who are these people?

I’m not a believer in astrology, in the sense that I find it at all useful for solving problems. But it is entertaining and kinda fun. Stumbled upon this entry in Wikipedia this morning, actually captures the essence:

It’s the “factual accuracy” that is disputed. I’ve been wanting to ask an astrologist what happened to the art when Pluto was downgraded? Or what about the other planets that were discovered in the galaxy. And arn’t they neglecting the influence of other large objects moving about in vacuums like astroids and Michael Moore?

I’m just askin’…

Brilliant rays shine
Summer solstice marks the shift
Cold wind bites my cheek

Fierce and ferocious,
The sky pummels a thirsty road.
Flowers bloom with thanks.

I honestly don’t know what kind of flower this is, but is sure is bright and cheerful. Enjoy…

Times Square, actually.

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2008.06.15

The moon is in the upper left part of the image. That bright object in the upper right is a street light…or a UFO, I wasn’t really paying attention.

First of the season…

The only primates to be found were those crawling all over the streets at the foot of this majestic building.

…except when they’re not.

After some relaxing time spend mixing and pouring concrete (Seriously. It’s for a walkway in the back yard.), I was cleaning up the tools when I stopped and noticed a very strange light shining on me. The sun had already set and it was getting dark, or should have been. For a split second, I thought there was a search light pointed directly at me from up above. Turning around revealed a magnificent, brilliant thunderhead rising up in the East, high enough so the crown could catch the sun just beyond the horizon. The reflected light was nothing short of spectacular.

(Click on image for larger picture.)