What is Net Neutrality and why should I care

Today I’m at the OpenWest conference, but today is also a day that — if you noticed the pop up that appeared when you loaded this site — websites and organizations all over the world (including my employer, Human Made) are taking a stand in support of Net Neutrality. There’s a battle being waged but… Continue reading What is Net Neutrality and why should I care

Ryan Gosling’s snickers are another victory for rape culture

Mashable thought this was pretty funny: This seems like a pretty typical reading of an alien encounter and a live sketch where Ryan Gosling couldn’t keep it together. Hilarious, right? Except there’s one thing that is particularly disturbing. Why are we just okay with the narrative here? Taken at face value, we have three individuals… Continue reading Ryan Gosling’s snickers are another victory for rape culture

Last weekend, we found out that two friends of ours — mothers of our kids’ classmates — were involved in a domestic dispute that left the two of them in the hospital in critical condition from multiple gunshot wounds. Full news reports here and here.

What happened was horrid and devastating and both women not only had families but were teachers and educators; Jai was the librarian at the Open Classroom school and I worked closely with her to develop the Book Review Library plugin for the Open Classroom library. I can’t begin to imagine the repercussions of this experience, physical, emotional and financial. There are a pair of YouCaring pages up for both of them and it would be amazing if you were able to find it in your heart to help these fantastic women and their families out as they work on healing.

Keep your damn guns. Just stop using them to shoot people.

I’ll make a confession. I’m pretty anti-gun. I watched G.I. Joe and other violent TV shows as a kid and I’ve spent hours playing violent first person shooters, but I’ve never been in the military and guns in real life terrify me. I can honestly say that I have never touched a gun, never wanted… Continue reading Keep your damn guns. Just stop using them to shoot people.

First female employee

In this Wired article on Dropbox, the fact that Dropbox hired Facebook’s “first female employee” was mentioned. I’m not interested in how Dropbox is acquiring talent — though I happily use Dropbox and look forward to more app developers incorporating Dropbox into their platforms. Rather, I’m interested in this “first female employee” thing. Because a… Continue reading First female employee

On growing up and becoming jaded

When you’re creative and in college (and possibly even earlier than that), you’re filled with enthusiasm, optimism and ideas. Ideas that you believe to be the most important things in the world. At a certain point, the optimism fades, the enthusiasm fades, and what’s left is bitterness. We’re told that this is called “growing up”… Continue reading On growing up and becoming jaded

Google America

If you were to take a poll today of approval ratings for Barack Obama, I can guarantee that the number of supporters in this country of our President is far surpassed by the number of people who use Google services on a daily basis. How did this happen?  How did we become so complacent?  How… Continue reading Google America