Did you know that Austin has 10 sister cities (4 in Asia, 2 in Africa, 1 in Europe, 1 in South America, 1 in Mexico and 1 in Austrailia)? Neither did I. Apparently, some even have their own website. Not only that, but ten sisters isn’t enough for us and we’re wooing a city in Turkey this summer.
Has anybody ever travelled to one of these other cities as part of the sister city program?
I saw a blurb on Defamer several months ago that Michael Eisner is hosting a talk show on CNBC (Channel 50 or 360 on Time Warner Austin, depending if you’re analog or digital), an interesting choice for a channel that’s essentially a glorified stock ticker. Anyway, the episode that airs tonight has Eisner laying the smackdown on Pat Robertson. Suicidegirls has the details. It’ll be worth checking out as a lead-in for the Mavs to prove that they pwn the Heat.
Go Mavs!
[tags]cnbc, michaeleisner, patrobertson, suicidegirls[/tags]
I suppose it was bound to happen after the media hype earlier this year. Nevermind the voices of reason. If you’ve failed in your duty as a parent, then it must be someone else’s fault. A 14-year-old girl and her mother are suing MySpace because she was sexually assaulted by a guy she met on MySpace.
The girl is 14. The guy who assaulted her is 19. He contacted her through her profile and said he was a high school senior. After trading e-mails and phone calls, he picked her up at school, took her to a movie and out to eat and then sexually assaulted her. I’m guessing that the mother had no idea this was going on? If she did, why would she allow it? If she didn’t and the girl was stupid enough to meet a guy on the Internet regardless of what site or method she used without telling her parents the situation, then who’s fault is that? I guess they couldn’t sue the Internet.
I registered as a 14 year old on MySpace. From what I can tell, your profile is set to private when you register. It’s also appears that the “Send Message” and “Instant Message” options are disabled. I’m not sure if these features have been added since April when the assault took place. General searches on MySpace only go down to 16 years old, not lower. Of course, a search on google restricted to the myspace.com domain for “14 years old” will get you some hits. I didn’t try too hard to circumvent the restrictions I found in the first few minutes, but they appear to be making some effort. Their service would suffer if it required a drivers license or credit card. I don’t think it’s fair to put the burden on them just because you’re a shitty parent. $30 million, eh? That’ll be a nice paycheck for Mr. Loewy. This just screams money grubbing lawsuit.
And, yes, I’m a parent of two kids, a girl and a boy. I’m concerned with their safety, especially since one is starting to show interest in the Internet. What am I going to do? Restrict the hell out of him. Keep tabs on what he’s doing and ask him on a regular basis. Yes, this includes monitoring and logging where he’s going and what he’s doing. It also includes talking to him about smart behavior online, exactly what some of the guidelines on MySpace advise. The same goes for my daughter when she starts to venture out into cyberspace. Do I know that’s not what this mother did? No. If I’m doing that and my kid decides to do something stupid on a social networking site, will I blame the provider? No, but the mf’er who would take advantage had better watch out.
Perhaps Mr. Loewy would like to take on the NSA? Sounds like they’re up to something on MySpace. And watch out for those guys from Buda.
I ran across three sites with either a photo or a social component today that I’ve flagged for further investigation:
[tags]mog, zooomr, pandora, vox, riya, web2.0, socialnetworking, photos, music[/tags]
We took the kids to see Cars yesterday at the greatest movie chain on the planet. Marrit’s review pretty much nailed it. I’d rank it the lowest of the Pixar films to date. I haven’t seen The Incredibles, but I’m guessing that’s better. Monsters Inc. held that spot until this one. My three-and-a-half-year-old couldn’t make it through the whole thing either. The seven-year-old managed to make it through, but also deemed it sub-par. Finding Nemo’s probably the best, although I’m partial to Bug’s Life and Toy Story as well. They showed a preview for Ratatouille before Cars. It looks more promising.
[tags]pixar, cars, ratatouille, findingnemo, monstersinc, alamodrafthouse[/tags]
I watched the Tonight Show last night. The sparks I anticipated didn’t appear. Carlin did a long riff when he came out. It was impressive, but ultimately unsatisfying. He made a few references to religion, bombs and a slightly incorrect version of the old european heaven and hell joke. Coulter followed him and, other than a lame joke about the first time he’d moved to the right, he and Jay both let her spout her usual crap. She made a comment about how no one who had edited or proofread the book had any problem with the 9/11 widows section or any other part for that matter.
Crooks and Liars has some post-appearance commentary and Rude Pundit is claiming that Coulters book is full of unattributed borrowing. Pharyngula has a flurry of posts on Coulter, echoing some of the bits in Crooks and Liars, mentioning the plagiarism and countering her views on evolution.
[tags]anncoulter, pharyngula, plagiarism, evolution, georgecarlin, tonightshow, jayleno[/tags]