Dopp Juice

BlogWorld Expo is coming up this week in Las Vegas. Being a blogosphere devotee myself, I’m intrigued by blogging conferences and I like to see what’s going on. So I took a browse through their site and landed on the “sneak preview” speaker list:

(Click for full view.)And without even stopping to read the names, one insulting fact jumped out and slapped me in the face: These are all men! No wait. There’s one woman. Down there in the bottom left hand corner.

Contrast this with the SXSW Interactive flyer I just received in the mail yesterday, which has a very similar tiled-thumbnail promotional sampling of speakers. (Please forgive the crappy Treo650 photo quality…)

(Click for full view.)Hey, lookie there… Four men and four women. What do you know? One of the most prestigious tech conferences in the country has a completely equal representation of men and women on their conference promotional materials. How fascinating… Maybe they’re trying to reach their audience?

Now, I’m not (yet) accusing BlogWorld Expo of sexist advertising (or even of having a sexist lineup of keynote speakers… which, it appears, is 100% men). I’m all about strategic marketing and accurate representation of demographics, and maybe they have good reason for their choices. Maybe they’re only interested in targeting men.

Because maybe all of the important bloggers out there (who would be interested in a conference) are men.

And maybe, let’s face it, maybe the only good public speakers they could find were men.

Because, really, let’s get to the point here, women have nothing of value to say in this arena.

That’s it. Of course.

I know it doesn’t always travel in writing, so let me make absolutely clear that the above four statements were said with angry sarcasm. Because they’re prominent assumptions in the tech industry, and they’ve all been proven wrong over the last few years by many organizations, not the least has been BlogHer — an annual bloggers’ conference that features only female speakers. And according to June 2007 statistics, it’s the largest bloggers’ conference on earth. Period.

To pre-empt another counterargument, yes, many of those women blog about “serious” issues, like world news, economics, technology, politics, and finance. And some of them have even become absurdly famous through their blogs, bearing a massive fan base asset that would boost ticket sales just as much (if not more) than any man on the lineup.

And to address the matter of public speaker quality… (SXSW, I love you for your flyer and I mean you no harm, so please forgive what I’m about to say…) BlogHer’s panels, on the whole, were far better than those at the much-acclaimed SXSW. They carried a consistent quality that I haven’t seen at any other conference. Every single one was well-curated with tested speakers who gave the audience what they were looking for.

We’re no longer buying the notion that women bloggers don’t have an intelligent voice, a valuable presence, and a hunger for conferences. Not representing them in keynote lineups and conference promotional materials is both irresponsible and insulting.

(Okay, now somebody else please pick up on the fact that all the speakers on that page appear to be white and take it from here…)

This news article is giving me nightmares. In China, they are treating Internet addiction like drug addiction, and addressing it with mental health instititions and electric shock therapy. From a syndicated Washington Post article (this stuff quoted from the Boston Globe)…

‘The Chinese government in recent months has joined South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam in taking measures to limit the time teens spend online. It has passed regulations banning youths from Internet cafes and has implemented control programs that kick teens off networked games after five hours.’There’s a global controversy over whether heavy Internet use should be defined as a mental disorder, with some psychologists, including a handful in the United States, arguing that it should be. Backers of the idea say the addiction can be crippling, leading people to neglect work, school, and their social lives.’But no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction. To skeptics, the campaign dovetails a bit too nicely with China’s broader effort to control what its citizens can see on the Internet. The Communist government runs a massive program that limits Web access, censors sites, and seeks to control online political dissent. Internet companies like Google have come under heavy criticism abroad for going along with China’s demands.’In the Internet-addiction campaign, the government is helping to fund eight in-patient rehabilitation clinics across the country.’

And then, looking at one of the clinics…

‘Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis, and mild electric shocks.’

I’m sure there are some really thoughtful responses to this article somewhere deep in my brain, but for right now… I have no words. Well, I have a few. But I try to keep this a family-friendly site.

I have to hang my head in shame here. I didn’t find out about the Lonelygirl15 story until a few weeks ago (at the Web 2.2 Conference), and I didn’t actually watch any of it until today. Yes, I’ve been living under a rock. But maybe I’m not the only one. So if you, too, have been living under a rock as far as hip internet obsessions go, let me get you up to speed. There’s a popular website called YouTube, where people can post videos. Some people use it to blog via video. Some video blogs become popular and have lots of readers. Still with me? Good. This is where it gets interesting. A couple of creative filmmakers staged a fictional video blog about a 16-year-old homeschooled girl with strict parents who are involved in a strange religion. The blog follows her relationship with a guy, her rebellion against her parents, and a strange turn of events that leaves her homeless. And because having the video blog is part of her rebellion, the millions of youtube viewers are intimately involved in her dramatic story. And they think it’s real, because no one called it fiction. Well, not for awhile at least. Eventually rumors leaked out and the creators and actors were exposed. Her community felt enraged and betrayed. The rest of the web was fascinated. At the Web 2.2 Conference we had a facilitated discussion on the topic of trust on the web. Were Lonelygirl15′s creators wrong to do this? Yes and no. They did knowingly betray the trust of an audience. But video blogging is also a new medium, and its standards are still in their early evolution. If it had been a specifically art or creative performance website, there wouldn’t have been a problem. If you say “this is true” in a known fiction setting, there’s an understanding of ambiguity, and no one will hate you if it turns out to be fiction. What are our responsibilities to people’s assumptions? Where is it okay to push known boundaries? Is it okay to mess with people for the sake of art? What about for the sake of advertising (which lonelygirl15 was thankfully not)? Does this example open the door for more blatant challenges of our assumptions, or did it cross too far over the line?The outrage from this “scandal” exposes a weak spot in our internet culture — we want to believe we know what’s going on, even though this is all new territory with lots of unexplored areas. We fear ambiguity, and we fear being exposed for our ignorance, even though both are unavoidable. So if you, like me, missed the boat on the Lonelygirl15 obsession, I encourage you to check it out now and draw your own conclusions about the controversy. You can also learn a lot by reading the comments below each post, and watching how they evolved from trust to accusation.

• The First Video Blog Post
• The Whole List of Blog Posts (jump to the end and work backwards to view them in order)
• Wikipedia Coverage including a plot synopsis and overview of what actually happened.

Personally? I think the whole thing is pretty neat.

I would like to announce two things:

1. Despite the tone of my last post, I was actually starting to look forward to jury duty. I thought, at the very least, it would be a really interesting story to tell (after the fact, of course). And at best, it would educate and interest me in our government systems.
2. Thursday was an 8-hour day in the courtroom, listening to other people get interviewed. I was at the bottom of the randomly generated list, and they found a suitable jury before they reached my name. Therefore, I will not be serving. And given how god-awful boring the jury selection was, I’m once again opposed to spending time in that courtroom, and all kinds of crazy glad that I’m off the hook. At least for this year.

Self_Censored writes:

you know how coldstone has three sizes?well they’re “like it”, “love it”, “gotta have it”my proposal is that we rename them: “oh crap now i can’t eat for the rest of the day”, “i have a great personality”, and “fuck you, buddy, the majority of america is overweight so you can wipe that smirk off your trim face”

Amen, sister. Amen.

My cousin, Katie is in Ecuador this year. She writes:

I couldn’t leave Quito this past weekend because of blockades on all roads leading to the capital. I also couldn’t walk to work because I have to walk past the presidential palace, which was completely guarded by tanks, soldiers, and lots of big GUNS! There were protests in high schools, many of which got out of hand and suppressed by the police with gas. It’s REALLY big news here. One of my students told me today that he wanted to start a huelga de los estudiantes (a student strike). He then chanted,”Viva el paro!” (paro=strike) He’s in 3rd grade. It would be a lot different to grow up in an unstable place with lots of political activity. They are learning from a very young age.Here are the articles about what’s going on…Ecuador Quells Indian Trade ProtestOffer Made to Settle Ecuador Oil Dispute

In the first article, the New York Times tells us:

Police fired tear gas at dozens of Indian demonstrators trying to reach the government palace Monday to protest free-trade talks with Washington this week that are expected to draw thousands of opponents to the capital.

And Katie adds:

ALSO,It’s not “Indians”; it’s “indigenous”.They’ve asked to be referred to as this and here that’s all people say…so we should probably start referring to them that way.

This is in response to the cribnotes post about our culture’s “war on Christianity” this holiday season…Dear Stephen,I’m glad you started this post with examples. You make a strong argument, and that’s a refreshing change of pace these days. Personally, I tend to side with the left on this one: Christianity has been forced on too many people for too long, and an education in diversity is crucial for pulling our culture to a higher ground. But just as I believe a feminist is wrong to place herself above men, I agree that it’s destructive to cut Christmas out of that education in diversity. In some situations, it’s appropriate to argue that Christianity gets plenty of attention in the rest of our culture, so we need to emphasize the other traditions whenever we get the chance. But yeah, cutting a secular christmas carol from a concert while leaving in “O Hanukkah” is absurd.It’s not a war on Christianity, at least not compared to the scale of war Christianity has waged on other cultures throughout history. It’s not a war on Christmas either. You had it right with the first point. It’s political correctness run amok. Pendulums of influence swing back and forth until they come to a common ground. And we HAVE made a hell of a lot of progress over the years toward what I believe to be the ideal goal: tolerance, acceptance, and peaceful coexistance across the board. As for “Chrismakkuh,” if you have one Jewish parent and one Christian parent, it’s just a term for what you’ve always celebrated. Don’t forget that Christmas as we celebrate it today is a blend of multiple traditions and holidays–including pagan–that came about when different cultures needed to coexist. It’s fair to keep Christmas on the front lines of the holiday season, as long as there’s space for the other equally significant holidays on the front lines as well. But–to use your analogy–both sides keep taking things too far, shooting off their mouths too much, and knocking out each others’ teeth. It’s time for a little more “live and let live” if you ask me.Peace,Sarah

Wow, wow, wow. I was getting to the point where I didn’t think a site like this could possibly exist. But it does exist. So that must mean there’s adequate good things happening every day to fill its quota.HappyNews.comMy world just got a whole lot brighter.

Everywhere I walk on campus, I see signs saying “Save Stan ‘Tookie’ Williams!” Just from that bombardment, I’ve gathered three things:

• He’s about to be executed.
• He’s written books that people want to share.
• The campus Socialist organization is his biggest supporter.

So I ignored the signs, mostly because the campus Socialists are a little creepy. And if they weren’t going to spell out why he’s being executed, I wasn’t about to listen to why he shouldn’t be. Yeah, okay, I live under a rock. The SF Chronicle cleared it up for me, though. Here’s the deal with Tookie:Why he’s being executed: He started the Crips, an LA-based gang, 35 years ago. The Crips have killed a whole lot of people and destroyed the lives of many of their gang members. Tookie, himself, was responsible for many, many murders. Sounds like your typical death row case, as justified as you can get.Why he shouldn’t be executed: Since he’s been in jail, he turned his focus toward stopping gang violence. He’s written numerous books to that end (including children’s books), has negotiated truces between rival groups, and has generally been an avid opponent to gangs. Granted, he’s just trying to undo what he started, and with some futility at that, but if you kill him, he can’t be on your side anymore. That, and a big chunk of LA — both gang and anti-gang — will try to riot. And we all know what that’s like.My thoughts on the death penalty? Execution isn’t the problem. Cutting it out won’t change the fact that “hardened criminals” exist and need to be removed from society if we’re to live somewhat peacefully. The problem is a system that creates a need for “crime.” Psychologists have found that no one does anything without feeling like it’s justified at the time. If so many people feel justified in commiting crimes against society, isn’t it time we considered what kind of life circumstances would drive these people to such desperation that they could feel that way? And start there? We put the mentally insane in institutions to help take care of their minds. We put products of abuse and neglect behind bars to show them they’re horrible people. And then we get mad at them when they ban together to become angrier and more dangerous than before. Seriously, America, there must be a better way.As for Tookie, let the man speak. I’m with the Socialists on this one.

(I don’t take credit for writing this post, but I hope you will read it anyway.)A lot has been said about how to prevent rape.Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn’t have long hair and women shouldn’t wear short skirts. Women shouldn’t leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn’t dare to get drunk at all.Instead of that bullshit, how about:if a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.if a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.if a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.if a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.if a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.if a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.if a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.if a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.if a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.if a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.if a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.if a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.if a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.if your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.if your step-daughter is watching tv, don’t rape her.if you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.if your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.if your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.ifyour frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s anunconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call thepolice and tell the guy he’s a rapist.tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.don’t perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.If you agree, repost it. It’s that important.********************************************************