The Inflatable Soapbox

NYT Headline: 3 Detectives in Bell Shooting Acquitted

Why does this come as no surprise? The defendants waived their right to a jury trial, which many people thought was a risky move. What was risky about it? Instead of having twelve honest citizens decide their fate, they entrusted the decision to an agent of the corrupt, murderous, out-of-control mega-gang known generically as “the government”. It’s high time the people took matters into their own hands.

I’m so f#ck!ng  sick of hearing pseudo-intellectual @ssh0les debate the relative merits of the crapweasels running for office as if any of that matters! Do you really think that our civil liberties will be restored if Obama gets elected? Do you honestly believe the war will end, gas prices will drop, the government will stop screwing the poor and middle class? That the police will suddenly act like enlightened protectors of the innocent and not like the ignorant thugs that many (but not all) of them are? How freakin wonderful the bliss of that naivete must be! I wonder how much it matters to Sean Bell, his family, or his fiancee?

Now, I’m off to install Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 on a server and (hopefully) forget goddamn politics, news and people. Like an ostrich, I’ll sink my head into the sands of geektopia. But come the revolution, brotha…

Every now and then I read a post and smack myself in the head, saying “Why didn’t I think to blog that!” I’m sure we’ve all had that experience. Today, it was this post from Green Colibri.  I’ve been using Blackle as an eco-friendly alternative to the Google home page since last year. There were about 140,000 Watt hours savedat that time; as of this writing, it’s 479,622.172 Watt hours saved. I think I Twittered about it, but I never thought to blog it. So read the post by oyvind and use start using Blackle for searches. It’s good for the environment and it looks much cooler.

I’m enjoying this new site so much! Cre8Buzz! is a friendly network of talented people trying to spread the word of their projects while making friends and contacts. Because of the ranking system, and the communities, it is easy to quickly find talented people in many fields. Two things I noticed immediately: the warm welcome from the community and the lack of css themes. Both may be attributable to the relatively small size of the user group.

The Buzz, as some users call it, just launched recently. Many users keep the default theme, which is clean and functional. Some try using Myspace themes with predictably horrendous results. Some members use themes from khenny of Quartz Mountain Communications, a California-based web design studio. His themes are very good but limited in number. As some of you may know, I love to play with themes, changing them to suit my mood. So I’ve started saving them to themes.timbury.net where they are available to all. While the site is not “live” yet, the themes can be accessed now. I hope to get the site built up soon, with a snappier look and an upload facility so everyone can share. As always, feedback is welcome.

So come join in the fun, sign up on Cre8Buzz! and use my themes or create your own. Stop by my page and give a shout out to my friends Antman, RealWorldMom and piper of love. They all have great profiles and links to some really slamming blogs of their own. Peace.

I’ve only been on Twitter about one month. In that time, it has impressed me greatly with it’s potential for building relationships in such a simple way. I didn’t know Ashley but, as John Donne observed:

No man is an island… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The world is filled with pain and it’s easy to turn away. But we don’t have to solve all the problems to make a difference. If you’ll allow me one more quote, it’s so eloquently expressed by Loren Eisley in The Starfish Story:

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed
a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”

The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean.
The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish?
You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish,
and threw it back into the surf. Then, smiling at the man, he said…”
I made a difference for that one.”

Ashley Spencer Memorial Fund(click for more info)

You can make a difference. Give if you can.
Spread the word.
It works if we all stick together. Peace.