From kindergarten to high school and college to book clubs, people in today’s society like to belong even when they don’t really participate. With online groups like Facebook, MySpace, and now even Twitter, you can experience the thrill of being “accepted” and listed as a “top friend” without really committing to anything at all. The general complaint that these people aren’t really your friends is moot; either you choose to associate with them or you don’t.

One way to look at this phenomenon is the celebrity aspect; if enough people think that you’re important or a VIP, then you are. While some people seek out this celebrity status on their own and aspire to it, others are happy on the sidelines just being close to it, whether they’re riding the coattails of celebrity or just feel more important brushing up against it.

Normally, celebrity is the opposite of anonymity (and all that that implies), meaning that you may be recognized anywhere and at any time. Online celebrity, however, has the benefit of being someone without being anyone and only on your terms, a comfortable place to be accepted before slipping out to the store “unnoticed and unrecognized.”

Back when there was only instant messaging on AOL, there was a sort of comfort seeing an actual friend or relative suddenly appear on your buddy list. Even if you weren’t talking to them, you knew that they existed, were still around, and was obviously doing something meaningful online (or not). In a lonely room or house far away, it’s instant companionship sans interaction through the miracle of electronic voyeurism (that is what you signed up for, right?)

Now that IMs are being replaced with micro-blogging apps like Twitter, thoughts go out at 140 characters at a time. Not only are your “friends” there but you know what they’re thinking, doing, and in many cases advertising. The bad news is that Twittering, like any social network, can be abused like anything else or turned into yet another corporate mouthpiece selling energy drinks, but the good news is that you don’t have to subscribe to anyone you don’t want to (and can cancel at anytime).

So, who wants to be my friend? I promise to only spam you when I’m selling something or have have something deeply profound to say.

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Orignal From: Joining Another Social Network; Be My Friend?

Have you heard about the 14-year old New Jersey girl who photographed herself nude and posted the images to a website, presumably to entice a boy to look in her direction? According to Megan’s Law, the girl herself is now being threatened to have to register herself as a sex offender for posting her own images as a minor.

Of course, Disney “High School Musical” starlet Vanessa Hudgens practically did the same thing just after turning eighteen (and sent the images via cell phone), so the idea isn’t new. Would they have made HER register if she were still seventeen? And what’s next? Teen-aged boys who have to register themselves if they get caught by their parents playing with themselves in the bathroom? Thirty days in jail will teach you to stop having wet dreams, young man!

Fix the language of these so-called child protection laws, please. It’s bad enough that schools teach abstinence-based sex education as if gender and child bearing didn’t exist, but as soon as anyone suddenly becomes aware of their own sexuality, anything they do is assumed to be deviant behavior. It’s not like these kids have an valid instruction manual or, you know, responsible parents.

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Orignal From: Poorly-Worded Laws & Underaged Sex Offenders

Anyone listening to talk radio has been getting an earful of what’s starting to crop up into the news: Republicans vs. Democrats and their plans within plans. Republicans just want to be rich and keep the poor where they are, while Democrats are transforming the United States into a Socialist and destroy Capitalism in all its forms.

Only slightly more sinister would be an over plan to create a truly globalized economy, one where almost seven billion buy, sell, and trade with one currency. Of course, for that to happen, we’d need everyone using a similar style of government and, ideally, the same currency, right?

Not so long ago, there was talk about a portion of a global highway, one that theoretically could span six of seven continents. One leg of it would connect Mexico, the United States, and Canada that could move goods across borders unhindered throughout North America… and there were budgets provided to build that road. No walls, no checkpoints, no borders, and no sovereignty.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that what happens in one economic market is now affecting all of them. If the United States economy collapses, a global economic crisis would be the result, not just 300 million former capitalists lamenting over losing the good life. Even now, China, Russia, and other countries are starting to realize that the US dollar is no longer the safest currency to have their assets in.

Perhaps a new currency is needed that isn’t directly wired to the fate of the US, a new international currency. Yep, it’s been suggested. You know, the kind that every government trades with, or perhaps the currency that the one future world government will trade with.

So, still worried about conspiracies involving Elephants and Donkeys? One currency to rule them all!

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Orignal From: An International Currency for a New World Order

I’ve admitted it before, but here it is again: I’ve seen every episode of “Sex in the City.” It wasn’t my choice, but in the interest of keeping the peace in a prior relationship, it was on the tube, and after a while I started paying attention.

In a vain attempt to keep my man card from being revoked, I’ve also watched a number of “The Man Show” episodes which, generally speaking, most women I’ve spoken with found sexist and misogynistic (no, really!) As the result of a recent conversation, it suddenly hit me that these two programs are actually opposite sides of the same coin: a gender-biased view of their skewed microcosm.

“The Man Show” started very tongue in cheek, more or less suggesting that, if two average guys could go through life and didn’t have to answer to wives or girlfriends for their actions, this is how they’d do it (the lazy man inventions were the best). This was even made more absurd with the ready and willing cheerleader-like “Juggies,” ladies happily serving seedy audience members mugs of beer who then afterward spent the credits jumping on trampolines in their underwear. It was so unbelievably tacky and over the top that no one reasonably intelligent could take it seriously, but as the show stretched on, they couldn’t keep the level of absurdity above the actual “degradation of women” line and the show seemed to naturally die out on its own.

“Sex in the City,” on the other hand, was originally a spoof of the NY singles culture that ended up carrying the torch instead of showing how often it was dropped. Men were the trophies, picked and passed over by four empowered women often torn between conquest and cohabitation. The first couple seasons actually brought up some serious relationship issues as well as pointing out how ridiculous the things that people concerned themselves with or placed value upon really were. By the third season, the mirror held up to single society was transparent, replaced with a rom-com that happened to feature the original players as part of a how-to guide. To do that, however, the characters evolved past their one-dimensional footnotes and headed into long-term relationship territory, as if that were the only choice for empowered women once they turned forty and were considered too old for the single’s party scene.

I guess the real question is what actual influence either show actually had on our culture at all. Is there a rural Midwestern town somewhere where a couple of guys watching reruns of “The Man Show” are thinking “Where can we order one of those?” while the women huddle around “Sex in the City” and wonder if their local bartender knows how to make a Cosmopolitan?

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Orignal From: “The Man Show” vs. “Sex in the City”

There’s an article on Wired.com entitled Design Under Constraint: How Limits Boost Creativity. It cites the economy as a reason to think “inside the box,” maximizing what you can do within the limits of what you have or are given.

I LOVE this concept. I have practically devoted my life to it.

Like Doctor Who’s TARDIS (which, for the uninitiated, is bigger on the inside than on the outside), thinking like MacGyver or the Professor on “Gillgan’s Island” is an exercise in maximizing your limited space and doing the best you have with exactly what you’ve got. Anyone who has served in the US Navy learns very quickly how much two lockers or a coffin rack can hold… if you’re clever.

Whether it’s staying within the lines of a box on a page or making a film on a slim budget, there’s one thing more that these limitations provide: a sense of when to stop. Is there anything more to do? Not right now? Whew… all done! Sure, we may come back again and rearrange everything one last time, but l digress.

Maybe that’s the meaning of life. Why do things have to die? Why does time pass? What are we here for? Perhaps we exist to define the limitations and the rules of reality, and when our understanding can no longer be contained, we push through to the next boundary. After all, if you had all of eternity to fill up an infinite space, what would you do to keep from going insane?

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Orignal From: Thinking (Smarter) Inside the Box

As of today, anything left in any Circuit City store still unsold is getting chucked or sold off in a single lot. The chain is now officially closed after taking a beating from Best Buy, the economy, and some well-documented foolish business moves (like replacing higher-paid, well-informed sales people with minimum-wage pod people and failing to make competitive deals with manufacturers to keep their prices low).

In spite of all of this, I still felt more welcome in Circuit City if only because they didn’t have that “It doesn’t matter how we treat you because you’re just going to buy it from us anyway,” attitude of non-help from anyone staffing Best Buy. And I’ll add this: if Northeast Florida can lure a couple of Fry’s stores out here, I’ll never have to set foot in Beast Bye again.

Then yesterday I was reminded of something I’d forgotten; Radio Shack still exists. If anything, Radio Shack seems to survive by jumping into the next big thing (remember Tandy computers? TRS-80s?) and quickly getting rid of whatever stops selling. You still see them lurking around malls and hovering near the large chain anchor stores peddling 101 project kits and bargain-basement amplifiers, but how often do you see anyone making a purchase there other than button batteries or a microphone cover?

C’mon Fry’s. There’s lotsa retail space out here on the East Coast of Florida. Help a techie out?

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Orignal From: Radio Shack Still Exists, But I Prefer Fry’s

Now that the country is on the hook for trillions in money that doesn’t exist to provide jobs that may only last until the money runs out, where’s the incentive to buy anything? To invest? To watch a nest egg grow?

Truth be told, I have no nest egg, just a handful of credit cards I’m trying to eliminate. Any recent chance of having such a thing was destroyed trying to hold a marriage together where money was spent like the government does: buying things now and letting someone else worry about how to pay it back. So while people I’ve always thought of as financially secure are freaking out as their years of hard work are dwindling to levels less than what was originally put in, I’ve personally become very good at stretching a dollar…

… and there’s the problem. There’s no incentive to spend because everyone is desperately trying to hold onto whatever they can. The banks were given money but didn’t lend it. Almost everyone who has taken government money is still in trouble (exception: those already being run by the government). Sales at Walmart and McDonald’s are up. Donations to Goodwill and the Salvation Army are down.

Now here’s the REAL danger. There’s money in those banks… YOUR money. When no one spends and the people stop working, more money will be needed. If the banks all wind up being government owned, you won’t mind if they take a little to help everyone out, right? Not from one account, EVERY account, including yours.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. At least shotguns and canned foods are starting to look like good investments, right?

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Orignal From: Why Buy?