interesting post

I keep seeing things like this, Rachel, and trying to ignore them, and it becomes more and more apparent you can't.  It makes me tired.  In my advanced old age it makes me want 2 leave the country.  But i've been thru my own wars, and i've seen things, man, many of which i am writing about now, trying 2 write the poison out of my system.  But you see things like this and u know they're just not gonna quit.  And there's no avoiding it.  Like someone said in an old X-Files, there's no middle of nowhere anymore.

This is unrelated; i hope you won't mind me bitching a little anyway.  When i got back to the phone about noon i saw two calls on the caller ID that were from the county.  Now that can mean anything or nothing, but it turned to be the child enforcement office of child support.  I don't have kids, my wife doesn't have them, and obviously our number, which we've had 2 pay 2 have changed twice because of bill collectors and cops going after someone else, sometimes calls in the middle of the night for someone who happened to have had this phone number before.  After we changed the number the second time it has stopped.  Until now.

After thinking this thru i call Monroe county child support enforcement and say 2 the person that answers, do u have my number there on caller ID?  I know this is an unusual question and there is a pause and she says yes and i say well there ain't no kids here, we dont have no kids never did and i understand times are hard and you got a big caseload, but just because someone else had this number once or because someone there entered the wrong digit on a computer i don't want more calls 'cause either it's somebody else u want or they don't even exist.  Please correct your records before this assumes a life of its own and grows exponentially nightmarish.  (Translation: call here again and i may have five ambulance chasers suing your ass for harrassment, defamation of character, and slander, so lay off.)  And i say all this in a nice way.  When my wife sees this she'll have a bird and call there raising hell unless i can tell her i handled it.

Sorry i got really carried away.  I shouldnt presume 2 do this on your blog, but you do seem like someone who would sympathize with this.  Thanks for your time.

Great piece!  Yeah, the judge thinks it's lawful and just to keep the links from happening?  (he's probably one of those people writing bills for congress daily) 

Where would you be MFW...  without links?  I'd say links were a necessary part of blogs.  Nearly essential.  

Severing the Internet links = less access, less real objectivism, less intercommunication, less regular "buzz", and more control from the same folks bringing us tripe daily on mainstream news.  

I posted a couple months back about AP talking about enforcing that people who quote from them were paying the wire fee.

Two weeks after that I subscribed to AP on you tube and have cut way down on linking their printed material which as you note in the long run hurts them. If anything they should be doing the reverse, going after non-linked content for non- attributation

@Loonsounds - thanks.

@desotoinquest - Oh no, it's quite fine! I made this blog for the discussion of things that need remarking upon, and while your story is somewhat unrelated to this post...I think it is just as worthwhile to discuss. Definitely, the system always claims to have perfect authority...but really they're not even close...they're never as organized, as fair-minded as they need to be to BE close to the kind of authority they want to claim. Meanwhile, people seem to HAVE to be tough in order not to get hurt by the "authority"\'s own flaws and bullheadedness about their own power. But I don't thgink you're alone -- I think that those of us who don't ignore the things we see (and the best of us can't) all feel tired by it, and for those of us who aren't elderly occasionally feel oldened by the heavy responsibility of remarking upon it. Anyways, I don't embarass easy and; feel free to post any somewhat-unrelated-but-still-worth-discussion comments as you like, Des. ^_^ I can promise that I will always read them, even if I can't always respond in a timely fashion.

@woodrowwilson - I agree, I think blogs do complement the mainstream a nice amount when they do a good job (and, occasionally, when they do an awful one). Like they say; "No publicity is bad publicity!" But the only time I think blogs're ever a threat is when they do so dreadfully that people choose to use blogs to replace them...and it should be noted that people have gradually been doing that. I hope you're right though...I hope this doesn't fly.

@saturnnights - In a world of hurt, probably. It'd take me way more than three-five hoursto provide the same amount of quality of information as I do now. I can't imagine where you, Red, and Radical might be either. I'm sure we'd manage anyhow, but it would make what we do harder for us. Like you said, links are almost essential.
More control; never good.

@ProvokingThought - Wonderful point! If the judge really wanted to see what would happen if we stopped linking, he should get some data run on the publicity/viewership lost by lack of traffic. Yeah...the AP threatening to fee folks to death for quotes was stupid. Your suggestion is one of the maaaany things they could be doing to regain any ground they may think they've lost.

@ProvokingThought - 

It's an interesting process at least -- and again you hit on another lovely point...rarely are things ever so simple as "helpful versus non-helpful"...usually it's a mixture of factors. And I think you laid out the picture the factors for this form, perfectly. Blogs do force the mainstream's hands. In some ways it is a sort of symbiosis, but in others blogs and the mainstream are very much at odds...and other times it's niether of those things, completely indifferent, and in others it's a mixture of everything.

I can't really bring myself to see it as a negative thing, though. I think it has been a long time coming and I think that if anything might bring us to become slightly more informed, informed "enough" at least -- this might just do it, given proper mauneveuring.