So, since the blog is so significant to our class, I thought this might be of interest to some of you in the class. I was listening to NPR yesterday and the topic of military blogs was discussed. Basically, a lot of members of the military post blogs as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, as well as using the blog as a way of speaking out about their experiences, kind of like keeping a journal. Many people see this as a positive way for the general public to stay connected with our military and the war in general. Well, the government is of course, worried about security. The potential risk of bloggers leaking information about the military strategies has made the military begin to restrict the blogging rights of the troops to prevent potential leaking on blogs. So, basically we trust our troops with guns and defending democracy, but not with a computer and a mouse. I thought this was interesting. The military is censoring the blogs because they feel the troops could let out information that could harm them or the goals of the U.S. in general. Is the military simply trying to protect the troops? Should the military officers be allowed to control what is on the internet for the safety of our military strategies and troops? Should blogs in general be censored??

I don't really do the whole RPG thing, it's never really appealed to me, but there's a gamer contingent among my friends and I have it on good authority that studies have shown that in games which offer a broad variety of species, genders, appearances, etc to their players women and minorities tend to experiment broadly with in-game identities and their gender and race/ethnicity are not generally good predictors of their character's identity/appearance while white males and especially straight white males, with great statistical significance, tended toward the character/identity that was the closest approximation of white human male.

I may say more about this later. Right now I'm just too pissed off to say anything coherent.

Does this offend anyone else or am I alone in thinking this is in *really* poor taste?
I actually want to know what other people's responses to this are. I will probably talk more about my own feelings on it in the comments.

For now, just check it out:
http://www.drinkcocaine.com/mainindex.php

I have to admit finding two things to talk about every week, beyond the readings, that are interesting to us, that nevertheless have to do with authorship seems a little daunting to me. I don't even update my personal blog this often and I can say whatever I want there (in fact my personal blog is suffering greatly at the hands of this blog. I don't think I've updated since the class started).

However I do have something I want to direct all your attention to becasue I feel like everyone needs to be made aware, and I've been really dissappointed by the responses I've been getting from other people when I try to draw their attention to this. They all tell me that they're just doing their job and how can I criticize someone when my criticism basically comes down to "they're doing their job too well". I'm talking about PSYOP. This, my friends is the Board of Shadowy FIgures behind the Evil Empire.

Becoming a "blogger" myself has forced me to pay more attention to the wonderful wide world of online authorship, and the latest story/controversy sure is a good one. lonelygirl15 was a screenname attached to a teenage girl named "Bree" who used myspace and youtube to display diary entries predominantly in video form. Though there are tons of similar diaries and videos, Bree's attracted a huge and devoted audience eager to know everything about her. They became skeptical that she was actually a 15-year old from suburban America and started sleuthing. This week the identities of the true creators was revealed to be three twenty-something male filmmakers who hired a 19 year old actress to "play" Bree.