CivicActions

I've been wondering why Sarah Palin has been such a game changer as she's really a female McCain: anti-abortion, anti-environment, the list goes on. Why would people accept her, flock to her? Then I read this article by George Lakoff and it started to all fall into place. As with Bush, gut feelings are attracting people more than rational thought.

Google is announcing Friend Connect tonight, a service advertised to "help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors." Friend Connect employs OpenID and oAuth which is a good start, but how it puts them together is lacking vision and, disturbingly, may raise significant privacy concerns.

Last year when we moved to Pittsburgh, PA we never thought that Pennsylvania would be so crucial in this year's democratic nomination process. We're an "Obama" family, so we decided to do what we could to help. I created a blog MamasForObama.net for my wife the writer and she's been having a great time with it.

From The Huffington Post:

The recent senate votes against restoring habeas corpus and for the Lieberman-Kyl amendment (which provides an open back-door for military action against Iran) make it clear that even with a democratic majority, you just can't trust any of them.

The writ of Habeas Corpus has long been celebrated as the most efficient safeguard of the liberty of the subject (see, e.g. wikipedia and LectLaw). A brief history of its recent demise:

Day one at the Internet Identity Workshop, or IIW2007, began with Eugene Kim - Chairman-elect of Identity Commons ("2.0", now with rounded corners), asking those attending their first IIW to stand up - over two-thirds of the 150 or so people in the room stood up. This is a great trend - the word is getting out!

At the first CivicActions Offsite in Amsterdam, we created a vision for ourselves and for the world. As a new father and provider for my small family, and as someone who has unfortunately never broken into the real estate market, I was pleased that this item made the list with general consensus: "every member owns their home or has the ability to".

In the wake of having our mortgage approved (today - yea!) a friend (?) sent me a movie that graphically shows how we just contributed to the economy by putting ourselves in debt.

http://www.moneyasdebt.net/

Google video <- click here

There's nothing in this that is new, but it's frightening to see it presented so clearly. Some key concepts:

My five year old son just sent me this email:

Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 18:50:04 -0700
From: Steven Labalme 
To: Fen Labalme 
Subject: CA FROM STEVEN

CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA  CA CA CA
CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA

I asked him what it meant and he said:

"I want you to create more CivicActions, Dad. The world needs more CivicActions."

We rock.