Lorelle VanFossen has just written a great blog post about using blogging as a communications tool during natural disasters–particularly relevant given the recent landfall of Hurricane Gustav. Her blog post is a bit long, but certainly worth reading, so I won’t take the time to summarize what she wrote. She does, however, point out some of the many ways that blogs were used both in Gustav and in Katrina back during 2005 to provide local information about the storms, to provide communication to others about the local situations there, as well as providing other kinds of vital communication. (And, this year with Gustav, Twitter also played a major role in that as well.)

However, a lot of this ties into what I really think is going to become more and more commonplace as the internet continues to evolve and mature, and quite frankly, this really is what blogging is about. In my opinion, one of the biggest aspects of blogging is that it provides a medium through which independent people can become journalists in their own right. If you were to just watch the news media to see the latest on Gustav or any other local disaster, you’d only get to see what the news media would want you to see. But go onto Technorati or Google Blog Search and start searching the blogs, and then you get to start getting reactions from actual people, many of whom were actually there and can give their own unique perspective. And that really is one of the ways that blogging is helping to rejuvenate the First Amendment here in our country: it’s allowing ordinary people to provide resources and information and opinion and other kinds of things that the national media wouldn’t be able to give us.

This is one of the many things that blogging is all about.

Tags: article, Blogging, disasters, Gustav, hurricane, Lorelle VanFossen

I’ve been meaning to write a full blog post on this blog for quite a few days now, because with the conventions, McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin for his VP, and now with the approach of Hurricane Gustav, there have been so many thoughts going through my mind. If you’ve been watching my Twitter this past week, you’d get an idea of what I’m talking about.

However, it’s clear that Hurricane Gustav is set to repeat history, making landfall in almost the exact same place at almost the exact same time and with almost the exact same strength as Hurricane Katrina did three years ago. There are many things that fascinate me, and hurricane seasons are one of those things. I’ve been spending this weekend tracking and watching Hurricane Gustav’s progress as much as I spent lots of time in 2005 tracking its record-breaking storms. There are so many things ironic about this storm that I’m just flabbergasted to thing about it.

But I’ll leave that to another blog post. I’m not a so-called “live blogger,” I prefer to wait until events have progressed and I’ve had the ability to digest all of the information. There are a lot of thoughts from this past week (and likely more coming up this week) that I want to blog about and I’ll be doing that later this week.

However, the important thing right now is that Hurricane Gustav is now just hours away from making landfall near New Orleans, and it looks to be a disastrous storm that even Mayor Ray Nagin is saying will be worse than Katrina. All I can say is that I hope that most people have managed to evacuate in time. For those who chose to stay, and for those who have left their belongings behind, my sympathies, hope, and prayers go out to you in the hopes that you will be safe. Here’s also hoping that the aftermath of this storm is not the kind of chaotic disaster that the country witnessed three years ago, and that it is not used for political purposes during the revving-up political season.

In short: be safe, and here’s hoping that this storm will strike as lightly and as quickly as possible so that all of you can rebuild your lives. Our thoughts are with you.

Tags: Gulf coast, Gustav, hurricane, Katrina, Louisiana, message, New Orleans, prayers, storm, sympathy

George W. Bush goes head to head with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on this really funny parody of everyone’s favorite game show that aired on Jay Leno. Thanks to Chris24 for tweeting about this video!

Tags: Barack Obama, funny, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Jay Leno, Jeopardy, parody, The Tonight Show, Video, YouTube

Don’t ask me why the guys at JibJab are so awesome, but they are, and the latest proof comes in the form of their latest video: “Time For Some Campaignin’,” which beautifully sums up the entire 2008 election in two minutes. This is simply awesome.

Tags: Barack Obama, campaign, election, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, JibJab, John McCain, Video, YouTube

Twitter is down (so what’s new?), so I guess that means that I’m going to have to blog my outrage to the news that a judge ordered YouTube to give its user data to Viacom. All this in the midst of the $1 billion lawsuit that forced Stephen Colbert off of the ‘Tube, made Google wish it had never thought of acquiring the video sharing service, sparked one of the major reasons for the recent writer’s strike, and now led into yet the latest infringement of internet privacy.

First off, what is Viacom’s problem? Why can’t they just do what the other major networks have done and partner up with YouTube! For Pete’s sake, I can already watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report IN FULL on their own website with almost no ads, why are they making such a big deal over YouTube?

But what really makes no sense is why Viacom even needs to see the complete records of every single video ever watched on YouTube, complete with username, IP address, and time watched (which must be millions of pages long, I would imagine), along with copies of every video ever removed from YouTube. That’s not copyright infringement, that’s privacy infringement. It shouldn’t be any of Viacom’s business how many times I watch three guys sing about their missing legwarmers or a tomato and a cucumber sing about the difference between a monkey and an ape.

But while those examples may be somewhat humorous and intentionally revealing, internet privacy is quite serious and has affected lives. The article I linked to gave an example of someone who was sent to a concentration camp because Yahoo! was forced to give up information to the Chinese government.

The judge at this case dismissed Google’s concerns over privacy as “speculative.” Well, I may not be a lawyer, and I’m certainly not one to gamble, I’d be more than willing to speculate that this is going to set a very, very bad precedent for the privacy of the internet as we’ve come to know it. I do hope that someone rules this to be illegal, and if not, then there had better be some sort of internet outcry, because this is just wrong and immoral.

Tags: court, Google, judge, privacy, ruling, Viacom, Videos, YouTube

I was at a rally in Sacramento (California’s state capitol) today with the California State PTA, who was there protesting the proposed budget cuts to public education. They have a press release detailing the event. I was one of the speakers of the rally, and thought that I’d share what I said here.
Continue reading »

Tags: budget, California State PTA, capitol, event, governor, protest, PTA, Schwarzenegger, speech

I don’t frequently talk about politics on this blog, but it seems like pretty much the whole internet agrees that last weeks’ ABC debate between Clinton and Obama, run by “Gibsonopoulos,” was a complete joke and an insult to the point of even having debates. Absolutely insane.

This particular blog did a good parody of this by showing what the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 might have been like had they been moderated by Gibson and Stephanopoulos, and it’s absolutely hilarious. You’ll want to take a look at this. Props to the guy that did this because it’s very well done.

Tags: ABC, Clinton, craziness, debate, Douglas, Gibson, Lincoln, Obama, parody, Stephanopoulos

This past week, my own San Mateo County (along with a small portion of neighboring San Francisco) held a special election on April 8th to vote for a successor to the late Tom Lantos, who had been our representative in Congress. Well, despite a very low turnout for this very small and under-advertised election, Democrat Jackie Speier (whom I have met on a few occasions) was elected with 75% of the vote, thus eliminating the need for a runoff election in June and making her our Congresswoman for the rest of this term (until January 2009).

Below you can see her being sworn in yesterday. Her initial comments were wonderfully provocative, and I sure couldn’t imagine seeing Tom Lantos saying some of the things that she said.

Anyway, congratulations, Jackie! Hope to see some good things from you up there in Capitol Hill.

Tags: comments, Congress, election, Jackie Speier, special, swearing in, Tom Lantos, Video, YouTube

This is an interesting movement that is taking place today, where many residents and cities around the world, including my native San Francisco, is agreeing to turn the lights off for one hour starting tonight at 8 PM. It seems like an interesting movement. If you are able to, consider doing your part for the movement, and help conserve energy usage by turning your lights off for an hour tonight.

Tags: climate change, Earth Hour, global warming, movement, San Francisco, Video, YouTube

If there’s anyone that could write the answer to that joke, it would be my very own San Mateo County.

I live within California’s Twelfth Congressional District (out of the fifty-three that California has–I know, it’s huge!), which covers most of San Mateo County and a small part of southern San Francisco. Our district has been represented for the last 27 years by Democrat Tom Lantos, who recently passed away due to cancer on February 11th. He was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress. While I haven’t necessarily been a fan of some of his policies, he’s definitely been very respected in our community to pull off as many elections as he has.

But now he’s passed away, and everyone’s now trying to figure out what’s going to happen next.

He had announced in early January that he would not be seeking reelection due to his cancer, and so a number of other locals have been stepping up to run for the 2009-2011 term, including our local former state senator Jackie Speier, as well as some others who are running. The primary election for the 2009-2011 term is supposed to take place on June 3rd, and the general election on November 4th.

Now, I’ve already ranted on here about the craziness of having three elections (February 5th, June 3rd, and November 4th) in a calendar year, all because California wanted to move their primaries up and then half of the country decided to follow suit. But now, courtesy of Lantos’ death, we’ve got a fourth election up our sleeve.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, as a Californian, I have to know how to spell that correctly) has essentially ordered our county to hold a special primary election on April 8 that will have us vote on who will be Lantos’ replacement up until the end of the term on January 3, 2009. In other words, “Who wants to wear the dead guy’s shoes for six or seven months?” So, yes, if you’re counting, this means a fourth election in a seven-month time span: November 6 (2007), February 5, April 8, and June 3. Can you imagine how hard that must be on poll workers and on voters? Not to mention how expensive elections are to put on? And this April 8 election is just for one race to see who gets to be Congressman for a few months.

For this reason, our county wanted to make the April 8 special election an all-mail election, which would have cut the estimated $1 million cost down to about $650,000–noting, by the way, that 40% of our county is already vote-by-mail and special elections usually have a less than 30% turnout rate. Oh, and all of this at a time when California is facing a $16 billion budget deficit. Pretty much all that’s involved in the April 8th election is that three people have filed to run in the special election: Jackie Speier (Democrat), Mike Moloney (Republican), and Greg Conlon (Republican). If one of them gets a majority of the vote (more than 50%), they automatically win. If none of them gets a majority, then the leading Democrat (Jackie Speier) and the leading Republican are contested in the “special general election” on June 3rd. This obviously gets confusing because June 3rd is also the “normal” primary for the 2009-2011 term, which have the same people running, so it would be weird to have the special general election and the not-special open primary for the same congressional seat at the same time.

But essentially, the April 8th ballot is just for one Congressional district for one race with three names on it, and our county wanted to do it by mail. Just a single sheet of paper with three languages on it (our county is required by state to print all election materials in English, Spanish, and Chinese, based our our results from the 2000 census) to be sent back in and processed. Unfortunately, the needed legislation died in committee, and so our county is going to have to setup polling places, hire and train poll workers, and try to get our county to actually come out to those polls to vote, just for a little special election.

All I can say is it sure is a big waste of money at a time when California’s economy appears to be going to hell in a handbasket.

Update: I based my post on information from our County’s elections blog. They just posted an update to fix some inaccuracies on their part.

Tags: Congress, district, elections, House of Representatives, rant, San Mateo County, seat, term, Tom Lantos