Reality Me

I’m having one of those days where it would be best to simply hide in the covers until LOST comes on.

For one who generally publishes multiple times a day, going nearly two weeks without a post is odd. Do bloggers fade away into social media and microblogging sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Posterous? It would be easy to draw that conclusion as many "bloggers" do give up and move to these other mediums. Content creation is challenging, particularly if you stop practicing. Like anything, the more you practice, the easier writing becomes. I am out of practice. Just writing these first few sentences, I’ve had to make some cereal, discuss Pink Panther’s muscles, let the dogs in after having a discussion with a child about why they didn’t need to go out in the first place, and read several Chris Brogan posts in looking for the practice link above. Environment certainly plays into the ability to produce quality content which returns me to the question above. I usually work remotely from my basement office which allows me to take blogging breaks; I don’t smoke and blogging is healthier. I make a policy to avoid blogging from a client site and that’s the crux of my blogging absence. For the first time, in nearly a decade, I’m on a contract which requires my presence at a client’s office.

Where does this put me? I have been enjoying Qik, and Audioboo because I can safely use these services on the drive to the client’s office. I’m a long time user of Twitter and continue to Tweet several times a day. Despite my early disdain for Facebook, I put a lot of brief content on Facebook and use it a bit like an aggregator (see also). Soon, Reality Me is going to be redesigned to aggregate more of these third party services.

Wait! I thought you hated 3rd party services! I have preached over the years that you should own your content. Despite that, I started my blogging on Blogger.com. As a result, I almost lost an enormous amount of writing a research when Blogger decided to simply disable my account. In those early days, I also used Haloscan for comments. Haloscan recently shutdown due to hardware failures that made continuing the service prohibitive. I don’t hate these third party services. Using them comes with risks such as loss of ownership of content, or loss of content altogether. Maybe the third party decides to use your works with their own creative changes; the terms of service may permit that…you read the TOS right? The caveat is that the barrier for entry to using these services is so low that content creation is fun and almost like a game. The positive side of using these services is that they act like free or inexpensive CDNs and bear the brunt of the load when you find yourself on the front page of Digg. Be sure to backup the content you want to own.

Why aren’t you blogging when you get home? My evenings have been consumed with family duties, paper work and client support. This is the time of year that I spend evenings rechartering the scout troop, filing taxes, filling out various long forms to support my work, etc. I have so much due at the same time around this time of year that my head is so cluttered that even with Jott (affiliate link) chiming off reminders, I feel like I’m letting some things slip through the cracks. Fortunately, I believe this weekend my plate clears and then I can begin to fill it again.

What liberals are saying	What conservatives think it means
Capitalism is a good system that works very well in cases where demand for a particular product is elastic, and the barriers for entry into the market are low. It fails in cases of monopolies or highly inelastic demand (such as health care), because offering a better product at a lower price isn’t always the best way to accomplish the ultimate goal, namely maximization of profit. In these cases, it makes sense for the government to step in and regulate heavily or provide the product or service itself.	WE HATE CAPITALISM! SOCIALISM FOR EVERYONE!
While we understand that in some cases a higher tax burden can reduce investments in new business, we also know that providing services to the poor often causes money to "bubble up", as the poor spend almost all of their income, whereas rich people tend to accumulate mroe money. "Redistributive" policies such as the New Deal and its ilk have been shown time after time to help us recover from serious economic trouble. This is evidenced by the coorelation of economic expansion with said "redistributive" policies.	WE WANT TO TAKE EVERY PENNY AWAY FROM THE UPPER MIDDLE CLASS AND GIVE IT TO THE POOR PEOPLE!
A three to five percent tax increase on the wealthiest ten percent of the country would go a long way toward funding a universal health care system.	WE WANT TO TAX RICH PEOPLE 100% OF THEIR MONEY AND USE IT TO HAVE THE GOVERNMENT CONTROL EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES!
While there is certainly dishonesty in science, it is notable that the scientific process resulted in virtually all of the conveniences that we enjoy today. While it’s possible (and frankly unsurprising) that a few researchers out of the many thousand investigating climate change altered their data to fit their conclusions, these isolated cases don’t disprove global warming. Furthermore, moving away from fossil fuels would not only mitigate the very real problems of global warming and ocean acidification, it would also free the United States from its economic dependance on foreign (and often hostile) countries. Additionally, fossil fuels are a limited resource, and it makes a lot more sense to move away from them now and endure a little pain than go through the inevitable, massive crash when they run out completely.	WE HATE BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY AND WANT TO MAKE THE U.S. FAIL!
We live in a world community, and it’s not our place as a nation to step in and take things that rightfully belong to others. That being said, we strongly believe that America remains the greatest nation on earth, even when we disagree with the wrong-headed foreign policy that causes other countries to hate us. The United States should be leading the world by setting an example, not by bullying other countries.	WE HATE AMERICA AND WANT OUR COUNTRY TO FAIL!
One of the main notions of the founders of this country was the idea that people are entitled to certain inalienable human rights, regardless of their citizenship or religion. Among these rights is that of a trial by jury. When government officials are able to freely label anyone an "enemy combatant" and deny them said human rights, we are violating one of the core principals on which this great country was founded. Our court system is time-tested, and is quite capable of dealing justice to the guilty, including terrorists. Allowing the executive branch to serve this function in lieu of the courts is a dangerous breach of the separation of powers, and can lead to further erosions of civil rights.	WE LOVE TERRORISTS AND HATE AMERICA!
Source: http://i.imgur.com/UfxoF.jpg