မႀတ္တမ္းမႀတ္ရာ လုပ္ေဆာင္မႁ
Time to get down with your wild cyber-self
These days we can live at the end of the road and still sit smack in the middle of the dialogue heard ‘round the world. Just rev up the Internet and find a blog. You can view and contribute to blogs of your personal persuasion whether you’re politically left, right, or independent, or Texan, Japanese, a vampire, a Britney Spears groupie, a German nudist, a cat lover or born in the Year of the Pig.
Blogger Conference in Rangoon, Burma
By Nancy Jo Tubbs
Just a little background: “Blog,” is a fusion of the words ”Web log,” a site on the World Wide Web, where one can post writing, art, photos, videos and favorite links, and where others can respond. The first blogs, starting in 1994, were personal journals. The Internet search engine, Technorati, counts more than 112 million blogs in operation today.
I’m a novice at reading blogs, and so was fascinated to discover the burgeoning verbage about the phenomenon. A small sampling:
Bloggernacle: Blogs written for and by Mormons
Bloggies: The blog awards
Bloglet: A one-or-two sentence blog entry
Blogorrhea: Going on and on, often incoherently, on a blog
Blooger: What you call an uncouth blogger who figuratively picks his nose for all to read.
And leaving the B’s, we find the “gulog,” a downer blog, grim as a labor camp, and “troll,” one who attacks others’ ideas to incite a “flamewar” of incendiary debate.
The vocabulary alone is worth the price of admission—and then there are the blogs themselves.
In the humor section of the Yahoo blog directory I found the giggling white light of MasterYodasBlog. Its subtitle is, “Use the Force on You Do Not Make Me.” The entry called “Drunken Wookie” began, “Another drunk call from Chewbacca I got last night. Stop doing this he must. My sleep I need. Besides, nothing more pathetic than a drunk Wookie, there is.”
Amused by Chewbacca, Yoda was not, but I was.
The blog sites often sell stuff. At the Jedi Temple Gift Shop you can get a tee-shirt that says, “With Stupid I Am.”
On the serious side of the blogosphere, one can find organizations like Reporters Without Borders, which battles censorship and supports freedom of speech for bloggers and journalists around the world. It reports that in 2007, extreme media criticism resulted in 86 journalists killed and 887 arrested. In Iraq, 47 journalists were killed during the year, all but one were Iraqis who were murdered for working with local media outlets.
In countries like China, Burma and Syria, Internet communication is strongly censored. In the past year, more than 2,600 blogs and websites were shut down by governments around the world.
The Reporters Without Borders site says, “During the October 2007 demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Burma, the country’s military rulers tried to block the flow of news being e-mailed out of the country by cutting off Internet access. Censorship ranged from anti-government sites to all means of communication, including film cameras, ordinary cameras and mobile phones.”
Makes me feel downright happy to be an American protected by the Constitution, and especially the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Hear, hear!
That said, take a look at the lefty political sites recommended to me by a friend at the gym. One is Daily Kos, where you can get and give your political rants on last night’s debate and other national strangeness.
Another site takes a historical and progressive approach: OpenLeft’s Matt Stoller says, “We believe that there is a great movement of left-wing activism in America today, and we want to understand it.” Feeling lonely as a liberal or progressive? This site renews your pride about battles for unions, civil rights, consumer safety and economic justice.
Talking Points Memo is a center-left blog that isn’t shy about taking on foe or friend in the political arena, including the Dems. I recently peeked in to find an embarrassing video montage of former President Bill Clinton’s sly criticisms of Barak Obama. It was followed shortly by a video of Hillary Clinton’s defense of her husband, titled “All the Spouses Do It.”
Who knows, get started blogging and your cyber-neighbor may turn out to be from Tunisia, someone who shares or hates your opinions, or the guy who just needs to write about the cat pencil sharpener that meows when you insert the pencil. (We don’t want to know where.) Folks are out there waiting to hear from you. Friends, foes and goofballs—by their blogs shall you know them.