February 2005 Archives

While the interface and functionality leaves a lot to be desired, Google is heading in an interesting and more appealling direction with their http://maps.google.com/ than yahoo was in their early days, but oh yea, yahoo already kind of kicks ass at maps already, http://maps.yahoo.com/, but they have visual ads. That my friend is why I use Google more often than Yahoo. Although here in New York, Yahoo Local smokes Google Local in a blind taste test.

Either way, maps at Google, all I can say is ahhhh. About damn time.

When I was a kid, my uncle and I used to drive around town and in the course of fulfilling the goals of our various errands and everyday missions we listened to the radio. Some of those errands might include getting more coffee in my uncle's "Whataburger" mug, picking up the stacks of "San Antonio Light" newspapers for delivery the next morning, buying a 5 foot by 3 foot by 2 foot deep Styrofoam ice chest full of "Fresh Gulf Shrimp", buying another chain for the chain saw, buying some more Grey Poupon to replace the one that got overly heated in the glove box of his "ol' blue" Ford pickup when we forgot to remove it after we pretended we were in that commercial, ordinary chores for an unusual duo. On many occasions we'd listen to the oftentimes unbelievable news stories and commentary of Paul Harvey.

My uncle is a pretty amazing tall storyteller himself, so I never thought that programs like Paul Harvey and my uncle's own "True Stories" were anything special. Then I got older and those times revealed themselves as something special.

This article on openDemocracy.net, hits a lot of nails on the head towards furthering our great need to seal off and bury our coffin of un-manicured and ineffective dissent, debate, and criticism of the past four years and year of presidential campaigns.

I think we all could learn a lot from the nuggets of truth in this essay. While I've been very critical of the current administration's policies and response to the attacks of 9/11, I've also been very dissatisfied with the innate hypocrisy in anti-American sentiment.

How does one justify lashing out at American values and ideals when one has the freedom to do exactly that?

We should dissent and we should pay attention to what OUR government and elected officials are doing. When we disagree we should ask our government to stop doing whatever it is doing, or is not doing; however, we cannot be against the ideals of America for it strikes me that it is those very ideals that allow us to stand against our ideals. American ideals and America is not one frame of mind or understanding, they and it is ever-evolving. Malleability lies at the very nature of the greatness of our pursuit.

Anyways, this essay, if not my foggy regurgitation, is very thought provoking and I hope you'll humor me and read it through. I'd love to hear your feedback.