Wow, blogging sure is fun and educational. Now I see why it’s catching on SO FAST. Sure helps not to have a regular job. More on that later…

I’ve linked to my favorite blogs: Jeremy Zawodny is a Yahoo Engineer, blogger extraordinaire, and all around great guy. Matt Cutts is also a fine guy and one of Google’s top search Engineers. He’s been called the “Mick Jagger of Search” but I think he’s cooler than Mick, who is a spooky guy! John Battelle is a professor at Berkeley considered by many to be one of the top technology watchers in the world. Recently authored “The Search”. Rob Spooner is my pal and business partner in Online Highways LLC. Mathematician, computer programmer, publisher, and a proverbial font of provocative notions.

Some seem to feel that this type of publishing represents the cornerstone of the “new” internet. I love the fact that blogging is fundamentally democratic and has virtually no barriers to entry other than a moderate level of literacy and enthusiasm. Yet I also worry that a lot of intellect and time is getting squandered in favor of self absorbed nonsense. BUT NONE OF THAT HERE FOLKS….

By the way did I mention I just bought a new shirt?

Wow, setting up the blog was HARD work

Well, not all that hard …

I had to review my entire life for the profile, record duck talk, and find a good picture to post.
It is a neat picture though. Me and Dr. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. I actually wrote his office to ask permission to post it but they never replied so I figure it’s OK.

So, why am I hanging with the CEO of the most interesting technology company ever? More on that later.

P.S. Actually started setting this blog up months ago but now it’s time to start blogging like everybody else – daily rants and raves and irrelevant insights into my silly concerns.

Wow, I’m finally contributing to the collective effort to publish every thought everybody ever had.

Certainly it’s a finite number of thoughts, and when enough of them are online the internet becomes conscious … right?

I wonder what it will do then?

ONE BIG important thing and a ONE little crappy thing that bugs me about we of the primate persuasion.

BIG THING:
The number of people who died today from (mostly easily preventable) infectious and parasitic diseases: 41,000. Most think issues of clean water and poverty are “complex”, but that’s a copout and largely untrue. Certainly resources now put to questionable uses could do far more good combating global poverty. Contrary to what some think, higher living standards lead to LOWER birth rates and LESS population pressure, thus it’s in everybody’s interest to address extreme poverty far more proactively.

Liberals are mired in mostly exaggerated concerns about environmental collapse and the luxury rights of those living in capitalist democracies. Meanwhile, conservatives exaggerate the importance of military dominance and only seem to talk about reckless Government spending when it’s in the social sectors. Where are the founders when you need them?

LITTLE THING:
Fox News. It’s not so much the conservative bias, it’s that they rarely cover anything of substance and when they do it’s often from a perspective so steeped in patriotic nonsense that the story is effectively lost. An interesting exception was the reporting “on the scene” during Hurricane Katrina. It was conspicuously critical of the government, poignant in it’s representations of the poor, and courageous. Even Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity were sounding like journalists!

It’s certainly true that I can talk like a duck, but there’s more to my life than that.

For those bored enough to continue I’ll share some details of a life … partly examined….and somewhat disorganized by design….