It's been around thirty two years since I graduated, lots has changed, all very surreal.
Looking at graduating students, I'd say they're getting admitted at fourteen. Youth is wasted on the young.
(Insert "get off my lawn" reference here.)
I feel a certain sadness and nostalgia, particularly seeing the Hessler Street fair, which I kinda recall...
We occupied the stage with great precision, and were greeted as liberators.
Fortunately, we have an exit strategy.
Credit: university president Barbara Snyder
Hey, here's the only serious review I found, from someone who was listening.
I just hope the jokes were good enough.
One: I told my fellow human males that we're never as funny as we think we are.
Otherwise:
Refusing to be hidebound by convention, Craig eschewed the safety of coming with a written speech and just talked from the cuff. While it might have been a bit rambling in parts, this crowd were willing to indulge him.But the theme was constant. "Go out and change the world," he implored. A big ask for sure but nonetheless one that was in everybody's grasp to achieve he said.
Under searing heat on the stage of the Greek Theatre, Craig stressed that it was the boring stuff that was important and that this was the road to success for such a lauded goal.
"This is a big year in human history. We have an historic election this year coming up. If you want to do something big and boring then vote."
That simple.
Hey, this is another really good effort from Sunlight Foundation.
You can check out links like the following:
Senator Ted Stevens, currently the subject of corruption investigation.
Senator Mitch McConnell caught suppressing new Senate rules for transparency and accountability.
Senator Barbara Boxer, whose net worth actually has decreased.
Interesting, ain't it?
Hey, it's time to really support troops, and the new GI bill is about providing serious educational benefits for them.
Here's the update:
This afternoon, the House of Representatives made history. By an overwhelming margin, lawmakers passed the landmark new GI Bill which will make college affordable to the more than 1.6 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.As President Roosevelt said when he signed the original GI Bill for veterans of World War II:"[The GI Bill] gives emphatic notice to the men and women in our armed forces that the American people do not intend to let them down."
Remember, Obama's for this, McCain against.
Well, thirty years ago, I had my big ballet accident. Mostly, it's a story of dumb things a 25 year old guy will do to meet interesting women.
It only put me in the hospital twice, leaving me with only a few scars and prosthetics.
More importantly, around the same time, the the real Craig Newmark got married. (Congratulations!)
It was fun leaving the announcement around for my (coincidentally visiting) mother to find.
Hey, I met Erik Luchs, a guy on his way to Victoria Falls. Here's what he has to say:
There is an epidemic in Africa called HIV/AIDS. In some areas over 40% of the population is HIV positive and women between the ages of 18 and 24, 4 out of 5 can be positive. This means people (generations) are being wiped out and children are left homeless and without anyone to take care of them. Medicine can be made available at approx. $300 per person per year. We can save lives, build an orphanage and a school. We would like to build protective villages where people can be administered to, and if one village can be created, many other villages can follow. We are starting in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and will spread from there. A US $ goes a long way in this part of the world but we also need volunteers and will have facilities for people to stay and come and see for themselves at both the intense beauty and the awful suffering this still one of the seven wonders of the world.
You can email him at erik.luchs@comcast.net.
The scene of the crime:
Some guy with the WristStrong wrist band I gave him, photo shown on the show:
UPDATE: here it is, on the show itself:
Hey, folks like the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are pushing a bill to get real educational benefits to the troops. Barack's behind this, and Bush/McCain's against.
The real bill, the "Webb/Hagel" bill, covers the cost of a four-year public school college education anywhere in the country.
It includes National Guardsmen and Reservists.
It's linked to the actual cost of college, which addresses inflation.
The fake bill is the "McCain/Graham/Burr" bill, doesn't address this big issues.
The real bill's supported by all the real veterans' service organizations, and by more than half the Senate and also the House.
There's a difference between saying one supports the troops, and actually doing it.
(papparazzi at Time thing)
mmmm! suet sure is tasty!
Hey, returning veterans get very little in the way of educational benefits, but the new GI Bill addresses that.
Please support the bill by checking out this link from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Barack's behind this bill, but Bush and McCain support the troops by denying them higher education.
Nice people.
I love the almond brioche toast from Amy's Bread
Hey, there was a DonorsChoose.org contest, where people could contribute to classrooms in a way that voted for Obama or Clinton.
The results are here
Give in honor of Barack Obama
$159,347 2327 34446
Give in honor of Hillary Clinton
$29,220 327 10097
I guess there's over two thousand not scammed by the gas tax thing, and over thirty four thousand students helped by them.
Not a bad way to get hold of me, try twitter.com/craignewmark
Let's cut to the chase and get to one real big reason a vote for Obama's really a big deal. This is the short version, since I'm tired of hearing myself talk.
For a long, long time, Washington politics has been run by influence peddlers and predatory lobbyists. There are guys who want special privileges for their clients, like "no-bid contracts" and tax breaks. A few oil companies, military contractors, and phone companies have been real successful with this, and you pay the bill.
(Fairness says I gotta remind you that most lobbyists are just fine, they just look to get a break for their clients, and that's okay with me.)
There are two ways the good guys are fighting the predators. One is to make new rules to promote fairness, the other is to let you see how things work in Washington so you can see for yourself.
The new rules for fair play go under "ethics reform", and Congress has made a good start on this last year. Barack supports this wholeheartedly; Hillary, not so much. In fact, I was at an event recently where a noted Hillary surrogate openly disrepected ethics reform in a big way.
Another way to help fix things is get political stuff out where everyone can see it, and the fancy term for that is "transparency." That includes telling us stuff like how much money lobbyists contribute to what politicians and what they get in return. Barack's heavily behind that, it's a big part of his platform. Hillary's pretty much silent on this, maybe a little lip service.
So that's the deal. You want some "change" that's for real, this is it. Barrack is part of the team who wants to change politics by getting rid of a lot of the bad guys. Hillary, not so much.
I want things to get better. How about you?
No particular reason other than I miss my birds while traveling.
She worked at Reverie, my favorite coffee house in SF. Now she's at one of my NY faves, Joe's on Waverly.
There are already a few groups damaging the election process, but there are also good investigative reporters exposing these groups. Please take a look at these.
In a new, ongoing report, the Center for Public Integrity compares "Freedom's Watch", a White House front group, with MoveOn. (While I don't agree with everything they say, they're genuinely grassroots.)
The Center for Investigative Reporting just released "Group with Clinton Ties Behind Dubious Robocalls"
For more background, check out good reports from the Center for Media and Democracy, here and here.
Take a look!
Established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute has recorded nearly 52,000 video interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. The Institute’s archive, which contains over 120,000 hours of testimony, can be accessed at universities and other institutions on three continents.The Institute’s mission is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry—and the suffering they cause—through the educational use of its visual history testimonies. In the near future, the Institute will work
with the Rwandan organization IBUKA to collect the testimonies of survivors of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.
... quite a relief.
UPDATE: for where I'm coming from, check out Joe Klein: Time to Lock the Crazy Uncle in the Attic
Hey, you probably read about how the White House paid retired generals to deceive people.
Funny story... turns out that it sure looks illegal.
The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."
Ah, I'm not sure what it means, but he gets 43% to McCain 37%, reported by Mediabistro Fishbowl DC here.
Kinda fun to watch.
For best writers' salon?
Hearing lots from very committed people about serious investigative reporting while resources are shrinking.
Looks like very impressive work will come fro Propublica, Center for Investigative Reporting, Center for Public Integrity.
Also learning what I should've already known about talking directly to press vs. using s spokesman.
First panel includes Len Downie, Bill Keller.
as user "craignewmark".
However, I can see a bunch of people much more talented than me, doing lots of writing, like Ellen Miller, Dave Winer, Joe Trippi, many others.
Maybe she'll make more babies in our backyard.
Yes, that's Hebrew for nerd.
You should say it with the hard "ch" sound, an "h" with an edge, as in Hanukah or Chanukah.
More precisely, one should spray it, not just say it.
Well, Susan Mernit is one of those "traveling geek" bloggers who write much better than myself:
It's a weekend morning, in Tel Aviv and Craig Newmark, JD Lasica and I are meeting with the director and a group of student leaders from One Voice , a powerful, grassroots peace movement that has engaged Israelis, especially college students, from all over Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Gaza, as well as drawn in members from the US, the UK, Canada, and other parts of the world. The group is bright, committed, and right now, engaged in making sure this group of American bloggers and funders (Craig is on their board), understands how they work and what they have to offer.
Clay's book is very good, as previously described. In this clip, he talks about how the constraints of the printing press, like high cost of entry, helped create the professions of media.
