The annual Weblog Awards are now open. Maybe you would like to vote for the Best Parenting Blog?

What if you were a racist? How would you know it? Let's do a little introspection to see what's going on in there.

Yesterday, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) issued an advisory opinion that finds that Fired Up America should qualify for 'press exemption status' to federal campaign finance laws. Congress defined the press exemption status to ensure that "the unfettered right of the newspapers, TV networks, and other media to cover and comment on political campaigns."

Recently, acts that had been considered protected by "free speech" laws are now seen as illegal. For example, there is currently a case in court regarding a Florida professor (who has been fired). The crime: the professor donated money. Well, he donated money to Palestinians. You can read about the story here and here. Depending on how you think of it, he either is "funding terrorism" or he is "making a choice to support his beliefs". Either way, his involvement with any crime is indirect.

Today, two ex-washingtonians from opposite parties show that money can bring the two sides together. They have written an op-ed in The Wahington Times attacking Google. Their article, Reining in Google, is not a careful examiniation of Google's proposal to scan the world's books, but a call to arms to create new laws that prevent them from doing just that.

Until recently, I believed, like most people probably do, that all journalists were more beholden to higher standards than regular people. I believed that "bloggers" were less credible, just because they were regular people. Journalists have special protection under the law, and I thought that they deserved it. They got paid to be the best that they can be, right? I don't believe any of that anymore. It's not that I trust average people more. But I have seen bad journalists try to wield their influence over average people and it makes me sick. The democracy of blogging seems to be the lesser of two evils and I choose it over so-called "professional" journalists. Below I provide some evidence for these conclusions.

Jon Kleinberg recently won one of the so-called MacArthur Genius Awards from the MacArthur Foundation. The award was announced in September, but I didn't notice that Kleinberg was a winner until just now.

You may remember Kleinberg from Six Degrees or from David Liben-Nowell's recent talk. I see that the Wikipedia has a nice entry on the Six degrees of separation.

The principal of Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, NJ has told the students there to quit blogging or face suspension (note that the "real" journalist got the name of the school wrong, but this "just a" blogger checks the facts). He claims that he is doing it for their own protection ("please, think of the children!") but looks more like a freedom of speech issue to me.

For the first time ever I downloaded a movie from the Internet. Maybe you have done this before, but have you ever done it without breaking any laws? As far as I know, this was the first, full-length motion picture, complete with special effects, made to be released on the Internet for free. Below, you'll find a review, and I'll tell you want you need in order to get the movie.

Currently there is a dispute raging in Massachusetts over something that may seem overly technical, but it is really quite simple, and gives a good view into Microsoft's evil ways and shows how money can buy spin. I actually don't hate Microsoft's software, but I won't use software from a company that bullies people and companies in illegal ways. Therefore, I don't use any program (or hardware) from Microsoft. No XBox. No Windows. No Word.

Help! I'm working with some friends in developing a new website to help people get items that they need from others that are willing to donate them. This site will specialize in one group helping out another group. For example, imagine that a school in Africa needs pencils and paper, and a school in Iowa would like to help. Or, a church in New Orleans needs to be rebuilt, and a college group would like to offer some assistance.

Well, it just goes to show that we all need to double-check those tidbits of information that we hear about over the watercooler. You see, Steve Burns is alive! I was recently told by a large group of bloggers that Steve from "Blues Clues" had died. I was shocked. "Don't tell my daughter," I said. Well, according to Steve, he isn't dead at all. And his mother is glad to hear that too!

According to an article at eMarketer.com, most of us blog for ourselves. The article, Blogging for One shows that about half of all of the bloggers surveyed do it for therapy (warning: the article will disappear at the end of this month). Do you find blogging therapeutic? Why would writing in public be significantly different than writing in your private diary?

Women are vastly underrepresented in computer science, much more so than in other male-dominated fields, such as engineering. Why is that? Here at BMC, we have a hypothesis that subtle sexism permeates the field. And so we explore alternate assignments, curricula, and other ideas (also available as PostScript).

Tech Goddess and I put these "rules of thumb" together to help provide some guidance in composing effective and influential blog posts. You should always follow these laws, especially #10 :)

1. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's post, but link to it. Every post should include at least one link.
2. Thou shalt write to a world audience.
3. Thou shalt not use the word "interesting". Everything that we read will be interesting. Why do you think it is? Dig!
4. Thou shalt not use a word processor (such as Microsoft Word). We want you to be able to write without a crutch, and Word can slow you down.

If you want to be a part of the blog community, then you will want to link to others, and want to have them link to you. But how do you do that in your posts and comments? Easy! You just surround the word or phrase that you would like to turn into a link with an HTML <a> tag. For example, if you wanted to point people over to Apathy's blog, you could type this:

<a href="http://woi.brynmawr.edu/apathy">Apathy's blog</a>

If you wanted to make a link that refered to a particular post of Apathy's, first go to that page, copy the URL (the address of that page) and paste it into the href part of the a tag, like so:

Here is a list of all of the individual bloggers at this groupblog. Notice the web address for each blogger. For example, you can go directly to Abstract Water's blog with the URL http://woi.brynmawr.edu/abstractwater

• Abstract Water
• Annushka
• Anyone 4 Tennis
• Apathy
• BMCBlogger
• City
• Constant Rambles
• CurlyQ
• Drunk Like Socrates

When I was in highschool, I belonged to two very different groups. On the one hand I was in the rowdiest group in the school: the percussionists. They had a list of vices, and they were working their way down the list.

On the other hand, I also went to church. In fact, I was the president of the youth group for awhile. At first, I believed that I had to have a personality for each group, and it was driving me nuts. I think if I had tried to keep that up, I would have developed a split personality. But you did. No I didn't.

No, instead of trying to be two different people, I tried to "be myself" with both groups, but at that age I didn't know who I was. So, I developed a personality that fit both groups. I discovered that humor could be used with the rowdy group, and with the church-going crowd. That kept me sane, and I was able to develop a "self" that was stable across these two communities. Too bad you weren't funny. I was too!

We're setting up the site. We hope you like it.