Technology making children safer.. in a way

After all the articles I see about how the internet makes for a dangerous world for children, this one was a nice change of pace. Not necessarily the internet, but some advancements in technology, webcams, specifically, are becoming tools that can make children safer when their parents aren't around.

You can read about it here

Change.org

This article was posted on the front page of MSN.com. It was written by Newsweek columnist Brian Braiker and it is talking about the social network Change.org, which is a site that has approximately 120,000 members and deals with issues like ethnic cleansing, climate change, and immigration. They are currently changing their site to become a hub for latest news major issues and how to get involved. They are changing their platform to 13 individual blogs that tackle different issues and are hoping to educate people on the issues and connect them with ways to make a change for the better.

Harry Potter IP Court Case

In a publishing class I took last year I remember my teacher mentioning something about a Harry Potter fan-based website that created a lexicon (basically a reference book with information on all characters, locations, animals, etc. in the Harry Potter books) and was now trying to have it published. JK Rowling, who in the past had visited the site and praised it, decided to sue the author before he could publish it, for causing her creative grief. The case was decided this September and the judge banned the Harry Potter Lexicon from ever being published.

Read the article here. There are also more links about this story at the bottom of the article.

Thundercats

This is for everyone that hasn't seen Thundercats. I used to watch it was i was growing up and I turned out o.k. 

Social Networking Questions

For those of you who missed class, for Tuesday please do an informal survey of at least 4 friends or acquaintances about their social networking practices and habits. Here are the questions generated by the class today.

How do you choose what sites to use?
How many profiles do you have?
Why did you join at all?
If you are not a member of a SN site, why not?
How much time do you send SNing?
Who are you interacting with?
What activities are you willing to give up to spend time on a SN site? (for example sleep, paying attention in class.)

God i love south park

ok so i know where supose to put like informational stuff up here and what not but i was watching south park last night and this episode was on and it totally made me think of class and the second life thing so it kind of goes along with that.

Evangelicals' thoughts on Harry Potter

This article talks about how many Evangelicals feel that Harry Potter is pure evil because it encourages the practice of witchcraft. My favorite part of this whole article was this quote, "It is the duty of Christian parents to oppose Harry Potter and to aviod every kind of evil". What strikes me as funny is that many of these Evangelicals haven't even read the series. How can you decide what a book encourages or doesn't encourage kids to do if you haven't even read one of the books?