NEW YORK – A broad survey about the technology people have, how they use it, and what they think about it shatters assumptions and reveals where companies might be able to expand their audiences.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that adult Americans are broadly divided into three groups: 31 percent are elite technology users, 20 percent are moderate users and the remainder have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones. [Yahoo! News]

Want to take the quiz and find out where you hang on the tech ladder? It’s interesting and quick. I am, it seems, an omnivore.

I had a lot of ideas for a new blog name. I tired dozens, many based on obscure and arcane terms of art, literature and science. And it wouldn’t have bothered me to find that they were all taken and being used by other bloggers. Fair is fair.

What I found is that most of them were taken by people who haven’t made a post in years. Many by folks who never blogged at all; they just nailed down the address, made a first post which was blank or said something like “hello world.” Then nothing, for one to three years. I tried many for which there was no blog at all, just the blogger bar across the top, and a blank page. Still, the server wouldn’t let me use the address.

I’ve started several misbegotten blogs, then abandoned them for various reasons. But I always delete the blog from my account. Why hog the blog if I’m not using it? The URL based on my last name is being held by a girl with a similar first name, but no relationship with my last name, who set up her blog in December 2004 and never posted once. Hmm. Think maybe she just screwed up when she registered? Probably.

Of course, there are other blogging sites. And most internet services – for example Yahoo Groups message boards – will delete your stuff if you don’t use it in 90 or 180 days. But Blogger is just letting these things sit out there, and I think that sucks blog.

I suppose you’re wondering about the change of address for the blog. I’m applying for jobs. My politics tend to tilt to one side, which may not be … efficacious to my intentions. So having a politically leaning blog with my full name in the URL seems ill-advised. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. We’re just going to keep thrashing the shrubbery. Or titling into the wind, or something.

By the way, if you’ve missed the illumination of my new blog title, scroll all the way down to the footer.

For those newer to the jargon of the Web , URL stands for Universal Resource Locator – it’s the specific address of something on the internet.

BELTSVILLE, Md. – Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Two posts back, I wrote "What congress needs to do is grow a brain and a conscience, and override the veto." The funny is that I don't remember writing that. I need to get my overgrown brain to bed earlier.

When we mention routers these days, I guess we usually think of the kind made by Cisco/Linksys – the little valves in the tubes of the internets. But that’s not what I’m on about today. I refer to stone routers, used by artisans to inscribe text in the monuments of our cities of the living and cities of the dead. You see, they’re adding more names to the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington DC. Forty years later, and that memorial isn’t finished yet. There are over 58,000 names on the wall … and counting.

When do you suppose they’ll start designing and building the memorial for casualties of the Iraq and Afghan Wars of the Bush Administrations? Would anyone care to venture an estimate of the number of names?

Today, Tuesday 5/1/07, is the 4th anniversary of George Bush’s infamous Mission Accomplished speech, on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier of the US Navy. Today, a 124 Billion dollar funding bill will be put before the president, for his veto. And he will veto it, because in his mind the war is justified and must go on.

And now …

A top US congressional Democrat has raised the possibility of George W. Bush’s impeachment in a bid to force the president to accept a compromise that would place conditions on continued US military involvement in Iraq.Representative John Murtha, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Defense and is close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, made the comment Sunday in response to repeated threats by the president to veto legislation that calls for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by the end of next March.

That’s nice, but essentially passive-agressive. Like a massive dog, barking and snarling, then running up to put his forepaws on his shoulders, licking your face and pissing on your leg. What congress needs to do is grow a brain and a conscience, and override the veto.

Bush's "delusion":  a psychiatrist's perspective

On Daily Kos, and thanks to JG.

The problem is that we don’t even know if we’ll ever see this stuff again. We don’t know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

 

the office of special counsel is going to investigate Karl Rove and the mendacious machinations of his white house. Says the LA Times:

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.