Me on Star Trek -- Again!!

I've mentioned this here before a few times: Throughout my graduate school years, I produced a community-cable Star Trek parody series with my brother John. I uploaded a few of them to the Main Street Plaza channel, but -- now that my kids and I have a channel where we're allowed to upload videos longer than 15 minutes -- I'd kind of like to upload the whole series to our channel. (The episodes are each about 20 minutes long.)

It's the adventures of the USS Galois. In a nutshell, real Star Trek recounts the galaxy-changing exploits of the "flagship of the Federation." But everyone knows that there are also a whole lot of dinky little starships flying around the Star Trek universe doing -- who knows what...? Well, with this series, now you know!

As I've said a couple of times, we learned quite a lot on the job. So the sound quality, the production quality, the acting, the special effects -- basically everything -- improved dramatically over the course of the show. I hesitate to start at the beginning because the early episodes are sometimes hard to understand, and they look like they were filmed in someone's garage (because they were). By the end, they were actually pretty professional. But they build on each other, so to make logical sense of the series, you have to start from the beginning.

Here are the first three:

Also, I hope you like some of our other videos that we've made for our YouTube channel. Nico is continuing his "BfIM" series -- which he's been making entirely on his own, with no help from me! He's always thrilled when people vote on which characters he should eliminate.

YouTubin' is hard, BTW. I've found that I can spend hours editing together a silly little video of playing Minecraft, and then feel disappointed that maybe a handful of people watch it. I should encourage my kids to hit "Like" on more of the Minecraft videos they like, and maybe more YouTubers would come visit our channel...

Here's what has been sucking up my time lately...

I've got a big, cool (but slightly procrastinatable) project I'm working on, so, naturally, I spent the whole day Saturday going "Just a little more Minecraft... OK, just a leeeetle wee bit more Minecraft...."

One Minecraft challenge that I set for myself was to try to make an attractive building design, given the constraint that it has to be made of stacked cubes. I decided to avoid making any flat rectangular walls since I noticed that the scenery can be fairly attractive, and it's composed of surfaces that aren't flat.

Here's a video of me giving a tour of my palace:

I don't want to dismiss this as a total waste of time because it involves spending time with Leo, doing something he enjoys. I posted some of Nico's videos the other day; Here's Leo's video:

Baby's first YouTube video...

Life is pretty exciting here on the parenting frontier known as the Internet!! Today's challenge is what to do about kids who want to express their creativity by directing their own YouTube videos, based on YouTube videos they like to watch. And they don't want to set them to private because they want to get comments from viewers like the other kids who post stuff to YouTube...

Here's the philosophy I'm going with: I've told them that the #1 rule of posting anything to the open Internet (either on a blog or on YouTube) is not to give any identity information at all, ever. Don't say where you live, and pick a handle to use instead of your name. Does that seem reasonable? Any other ideas?

My son came up with the following two videos. As you can probably tell, he did them all by himself, with no help from me. (OK, well, I helped him a little bit to transfer his drawings from TuxPaint to iMovie.)

Not bad, huh?

He'd really like some votes for team captains on his "Battle for Idiotic Money" show, so if you have a YouTube account, and are willing to leave a nice comment, that would be great!! (Please don't write anything mean and make me turn his videos private.)

Battle for Dream Island!!!

As a parent, I end up having to watch a lot of low-quality kids' entertainment. My general strategy is (as long as it's not something actively offensive), just not to worry too hard about it, and let my kids learn and decide for themselves what they like. And when I find kids' programming that I think is clever, to recommend it:

Enter Battle for Dream Island, a cartoon series my kids found on YouTube.

I've gotten hooked on this series with them because I think it's clever and funny. But there's an additional, unusual aspect of it that impressed me:

The series started with twenty contestants (all of them anthropomorphized objects) with approximately an equal split between male and female characters. Yet -- even though it's a cartoon -- the female characters aren't given any of the typical signals to mark them as female (eg. big lips and eyelashes). The characters vary widely in personality, hence aren't gender-stereotyped. I know this shouldn't be exceptional, but I don't think I've ever seen any cartoon do this. And yet it works. It works great, in fact!

The series is almost over (after a run of a couple years), but I look forward to seeing what the artists do next. Go Leafy!!

(see also this post for contrast)

"Your opinion is so humble that we can just do whatever we want"

So, apparently, my kids haven't learned Internet-speak yet.

I told them that covering their entire floor with Legos and puzzles so that it is impossible to walk in their room was very silly of them in my humble opinion -- and Nico responded with the above.

In other news, some of the videos (produced by teenagers) on YouTube discuss the comments (i.e. they invite people to comment on various points). My kids like to make videos, and they've been insisting that they want to be able to post videos to YouTube so that other people can comment on them.

We're not allowing them a YouTube account yet, but I'm sure that at some point they'll figure out how to post things to the Internet. For the moment we're trying to come up with a safe and appropriate pacing for easing into it. The step we're at now is: Make up invented names for yourselves, and practice making videos where you only use your invented names and don't mention your real names at all.

Helpful fly-by critics

One amusing thing about Main Street Plaza it the number of fly-by critics we get. By "fly-by" critics, I don't mean people who are intentionally trolling. I mean people who take one look at the site and are incensed -- incensed! -- that non-believers would be discussing Mormonism. We get so many of them that that's our one FAQ.

For a while, I assumed that this is simply because Mormons are taught in church that "apostates" are bitter and hateful. Hence -- if Mormons see any "apostates" on the Internet -- they sometimes post a "Why are you so mean and bitter?" comment without making any attempt to determine whether that criticism applies. I imagined that -- if it weren't for prejudice against former-believers -- they'd have the common courtesy to read the welcome page before criticizing.

The more I thought about it, though, (over the years, as these fly-bys have flown by), the more I asked myself: Is this supposed 'common courtesy' really so common? Do people really read the welcome page and FAQ on other types of sites before posting comments like "I can't believe you people are wasting your time discussing this topic!"

I certainly got my share of that in my few posts on the Hathor Legacy (eg. helpful fly-by: "Why are you wasting your time analyzing a kids' movie? It's just a movie!" me: "Um, because I find the topic interesting. If you don't, then I agree that one of us is wasting time by participating in this discussion. But it's not me.")

Then I thought: Maybe these helpful fly-bys only appear on blogs about touchy topics like feminism or religion -- topics where some people feel threatened by the mere existence of discussions they disagree with. Maybe blogs on topics that really are frivolous [royal wedding watchers, Edward Cullen's hair-care tips] don't get as many "This site is so stoopid, you all need to get a life!" comments.

But what do I know? I'm starting to think that all websites get these. My kids have been watching some (rather ridiculous) YouTube videos reviewing various Lego sets. And even there, one of them spent a good three minutes complaining about all of the negative comments. His advice? "If you don't like these videos, don't watch them." Makes sense to me.

The thing is that the Internet is full of people discussing every topic you could possibly imagine (and plenty of other topics that you would never have thought of in a million years). There are so many interesting discussions to read -- plus an uncountable number of discussions that you personally won't find interesting (but someone else, apparently, does find interesting). That's what I find perplexing. Given the infinite selection and finite amount of time -- why take the time to read the ones you find uninteresting and post comments telling them how uninteresting you find them?

But that what I love about the Internet -- you're exposed to so many new mysteries of human nature to contemplate!! My personal motto is a variant of a famous quote by Spinoza: "I strive not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them."

Kids and the Internet: update!

Remember when I asked for advice on letting my kids explore the Internet? Because Nico had discovered a conspiracy theory movie on YouTube?

Well, I've just put up a new post on Rational Moms explaining how we've handled it and where we've gone from there. (Hint: more science movies!)

As a bonus, I also wrote them a post about how much we love Tux Paint (fun, educational, and free!), and don't forget to check out (((Billy(')s))) Carnival of the Godless!

I told you to "get over it" and move on???

Wow, I really need to work on my writing skills, especially clarity!

I was perusing my blog log this morning and discovered that the folks of RfM had linked to my ex-Mormon vs. post-Mormon vs. DAMU post. Here's their conversation (note: this link will be dead in two weeks). That's fine -- people are heartily encouraged to link to my blog! -- but the disconcerting part is that they seem to believe that in that post I was telling them that they need to "get over it" and move on!

Here's what I meant to say with that post: "Many people believe that to 'recover' from Mormonism means to forget about it (especially stop being angry) and move on. However, I disagree with that position. Even though I don't read or post angry rants myself, I don't want to judge people for being angry. Ex-Mormon, post-Mormon, DAMU -- we're all part of the same community, and shouldn't let labels divide us."

Does that come through in the original post, or did my double-negatives do me in? ;^)

p.s. I thank RfM for linking to me on their blog list. I only get a couple hits a week from that link, but almost all of them stick around to read part or all of Exmormon.

Local/seasonal foods personalized recipe service!

OK, folks, I'm going to let you in on my million-dollar idea, mostly because I can't figure out why this service doesn't already exist. (If it's already out there and I've somehow missed it, please leave a link in the comments.)

Here's the deal: Recipes are big business. It's fun to page through cookbooks and cooking magazines to see the delicious-looking pictures and get ideas for new dishes that you might (theoretically) prepare at home. And there are billions and billions of recipes on the Internet! If you know what you want to cook, the procedure for finding the recipe is pretty much instantaneous. But the Internet hasn't really improved the procedure for getting recipe ideas. You still pick whichever recipe sites you like, and you get to see whichever recipes they've decided to post and feature that week. There's no advantage over just getting a subscription to a cooking magazine (except, perhaps, conserving paper).

So my dream service is the following: A little widget (that can go on a homepage or facebook page or whatever) that randomly finds me a recipe -- with a picture -- every day, according to my personalized parameters. For my personalized parameters, I'd like be able to enter a range of criteria, for example vegetarian or kosher, or, say, no strawberries (for people who are allergic to strawberries), or no broccoli (for people who hate broccoli), etc. And I'd like to be able to enter general preferences like the fact that I'm more interested in appetizers than desserts, I like Greek but not Thai, I prefer recipes that are easy, etc.


I'm illustrating this post with the pictures from the one-and-only recipe I've ever posted: delicious stuffed grape leaves!

And -- as a bonus -- I want it to use my locality information to pick recipes that feature foods that are in season in my area. Because, like every city-slicker liberal, I'd like to favor local, seasonal foods, but how the hell do I know what's in season? Sure, I can look around, and when I see that every grocery store has a million bunches of asparagus, all on sale, then that's a clue. But I'd like some more detail, and especially ideas for items that may not be familiar to me. I don't have that info, but I know there are databases that do!

Now, I'm sure there's a business model in there somewhere, for example a deal with some existing recipe databases to bring people to their site. Logically, the widget would just show the photo, the title, and the beginning of the recipe, and you have to click through to the real site for the rest.

What do you think? Does this exist already? If not, why not?? (I've done a number of searches, and I can't find it...)

Kids and the Internet!

My kids (ages 7 and 5) have a computer in their room that's hooked up to the Internet. And they're now capable of navigating around the Internet on their own -- on Wikipedia, Google image search, and YouTube.

On the one hand, I think it's amazingly cool that they can take the initiative when exploring subjects that interest them. For example, Nico is really interested in astronomy, and he found some cool videos that we had fun watching together, such as the song Poor Pluto (which we're now singing all the time at our house), and another great video that gives a fun and clear explanation of the history of why Pluto isn't a planet anymore. On the other hand, there's a lot of PG+ stuff on the Internet, including (as I talked about here on Rational Moms) a weird conspiracy theory movie that Nico found all on his own and thought was a real science movie.

My personal inclination is to continue to let them explore on their own, and just check on them periodically, take an interest in what they're interested in, and offer advice/instruction based on what they discover. I know the Mormons advise keeping any computer with the Internet in a "high traffic area" of the house. Well, we have a small enough apartment that their room actually is a high traffic area.

Any other parents out there have opinions on this, or stories of what you've done with your kids? Is it irresponsible to let such small kids explore the Internet? We're the first generation of parents to even deal with this question, and I'm not sure if there's any consensus on it...

Well, now I know what I'm missing...

Here's another Internet miracle for you skeptics out there!

Since I've moved to Europe, it's not as easy to go "home for the holidays" as it once was. And Thanksgiving somehow doesn't quite make the cut of holidays that warrant a transatlantic voyage.

But I might wonder -- as I'm preparing my kids their "lazy mom" dinner of PB&J and/or nutella on whole wheat with a fruit -- what I'm missing out on back home in Minnesota...

[Screen goes wavy as we cut to the imagination sequence, which you can experience too by clicking here!]

Yep, over on By Common Consent my brother posted a video of the Thanksgiving dinner I'm missing!! And -- as an added convenience for the busy blogger -- he sped it up to be only three minutes from table set to table cleared, and added some homey twangin' background music! It's (sorta) just like being there!!

The video is actually last year's Thanksgiving, but I'd be very surprised if this year's is any different.

(I wonder if they've set up a web cam, just in case...)

Happy Holidays!!!

Back among the T.V. watching hordes...

You may recall that I'm always on about how -- when I moved to France seven years ago -- I gave up dependence on the car. (If you missed it, see here and here.) Well, it's a lesser-known fact that in the same fit of bourgeois bohemian purity we also gave up the oh-so-twentieth-century habit of television in favor of the Internet and just watching DVDs on the computer.

Why?

Mostly because the Internet is my imaginary friend and to a lesser degree because of my theory that T.V. is the root of all evil whereas the Internet will save us all. (And if you somehow missed that one, it's here. Me and my wacky theories -- how did I forget to make a "my wacky theories" subject label?!) That and I don't like to have McDonald's marketing crap-disguised-as-food directly to my kids.

We were such purists! In fact, the last time we stayed in a hotel my 4-year-old Léo pointed at the T.V. and said "Mommy, can you put a movie on the computer?" That was cool. Sadly our freakishly T.V.-free lifestyle has come to an end.

Here in Zürich, we've temporarily moved into a furnished apartment, and no living room can properly be called "furnished" without a flat-screen T.V.!! (Not in Zürich anyway.) Note that our living room back in Bordeaux was not "furnished" in any reasonable sense of the word, even though Nico did help us decorate a bit:


Grandma drew the calendar and Nico provided the hand-penciled "Wiggles" logo.

Actually, back then I tried to avoid posting (or even taking) pictures of the inside of our house because it looked like this:


I like to call this one "We're trying not to raise him too close to godliness..."

But what the heck, now that we've used up that old house to the point where we had to abandon it and move, I guess I can post one more photo of it:



This is, of course, why we used to spend all out time outdoors:





But I digress.

Back to this crazy T.V. thing -- I have to admit it's much more entertaining here where all the programs are dubbed into German. Which I don't understand. (But I'm working on it!)

So, I admit it -- the other night my kids and I were basking in the warm glow of the boob tube, mouth-open-mesmerized trying to comprehend the Germanized version of "Hannah Montana." It was kind of interesting. It's simple enough that you can kind of figure out what's going on even without understanding the words, and I'm not sure I missed much. Given the loud and obtrusive laugh-track, I'm guessing they have to clue people in to which parts are funny because it wouldn't be obvious otherwise.

Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to watching "Bob der Baumeister." :D

How I got my name

The first Internet forum I ever got involved in was RfM.

I hardly knew what an Internet forum was in those days, but I read a bunch of the archived threads and wanted to join in the conversation. To do that, I needed a handle.

For a couple of seconds I thought about picking something Mormon-related. But that was the one constant shared by everyone on the board, and I figured it would be better to go with a name that highlighted something unique about me. So I decided to take my first name (Carol) and translate it into French. Thus chanson was born.

Over the next couple of years I as used this same handle on a bunch of different forums (fora?), I discovered a couple of amusing things: (1) not everyone speaks French, and (2) "chanson" -- as a username -- looks a lot like C. Hanson. I thought it was kind of funny that people made that assumption, so I figured "Hell, let's roll with it!"

In a lot of ways my novel grew out of my online adventures, so I decided to use my new identity as my pen-name. (Or nom de plume if I'm sticking with my snooty French-isms.) I threw in "L" as a middle initial partially because my real initials are C.L.H. and partially in honor of Lynn, the main character of my novel. It's fiction -- not autobiography -- but my pen-name is fictional as well, so maybe it's the real autobiography of the fictional author...?

A funny side note is that that means my fictional pen-name in full should be "Carol Lynn Hanson." Of course that immediately calls to mind Carol Lynn Pearson, and you might think I did it on purpose. But you would be wrong: it's pure coincidence. I don't have any connection with Carol Lynn Pearson except the obvious (we're both women who write about Mormons from a Mormon perspective). She's also something of a mother-figure to the LDS gay community -- see Connell's fabulous story for a bit of what I'm talking about -- and sometimes I like to imagine myself in a similar role. (I don't know if any actual gay people think of me that way, but perhaps I'm sending them a subtle motherly vibe.)

My real name isn't much of a secret -- if you follow this blog, you've probably figured it out already. I don't post my real name here though because I use my real name professionally. I have a new Java book coming out in a little more than a month, and when my professional contacts google my name, I want my Java books and other professional writings to come up, not this... ;^)

Then there's the other part of my Internet name: my blog title "Letters from a Broad..." Peter Walters (who I met through exmo-social) came up with the name. For the first six months of this blog's life, it was a column in the (now-defunct) student paper the Utah Valley Monitor (which Peter founded).

I liked this name from the beginning because it reminded me of when I was a kid and the same ridiculous pun got me included in a boys' club (they wanted to be the "Traveler Society of America and Abroad" but for that of course they needed a broad...). I can't tell if it's feminist or anti-feminist of me to have decided to go with (and stick with) this blog name. Really, I don't mean anything by it, and it kind of weirdly seems to fit the theme of the blog, so I'm planning to stick with it.

Sometimes the names people use on the Internet seem more real than people's actual names. Your Internet handle is something you've made up for yourself, and it usually means something -- it's not just something chosen for you by earlier generations. On the other hand, it seems like most serious long-term internauts end up just using their real names eventually.

And you -- does your name have a story?

Spotlight on blogging, religion, and community

Today I'm gathering up my posts on blogging and how it relates to building a community.

Meta-blog: a blog entry about bloggin'

Also, just because a link appears here doesn't mean I necessarily endorse the site. Basically, in support of our fledgling exmo blog network, I gathered up all of the blog URLs that people posted to Exmo-Social and RfM, and I have not gone through all of the content carefully. That's why I put the disclaimer "follow at your own risk" above them. Then I put "follow at your own risk" over the other exmo links because Exmo-Social is full of "adult content", and RfM is full of "anti-Mormon content". Then I put "follow at your own risk" above my list of LDS blogs just because I didn't want them to feel left out. But really I've checked those out, and they're pretty tame and entertaining. Oh, I have to warn you though -- they're full of "LDS content".

If there's no solution, there's no problem.

A problem isn't just something that bothers/annoys/upsets you. A problem is something that you try to solve. If it is something that is by nature impossible for you to solve, then you stop trying to solve it. Then it is no longer a problem, it is rather something that you find a way to accept and deal with.

So I broke down and just alphabetized...

I would do that too, except that then it would take me friggin' forever to construct my sidebar. So instead I take more of an attitude of "Hey, you're on the Internet buddy!! If you don't want people reading your blog, then what the hell is it doing on the Internet?" That said, if anyone I've linked to objects to having a link from here to their blog, please comment below, and I'll be happy to remove it.

Exmo-Social is dead -- Long live Exmo-Social!!!

However, if there are any repectable people reading this post, I must warn you not to follow my sidebar link to Exmo-Social, and especially not to follow the sticky link to the old board!!! Please!!! I don't want to be liable for anyone's eyes popping out of their heads and exploding.

A visit from a celebrity exmo!!!

The picture I've posted is unfortunately the only picture I have of me with Rudi (taken by the waiter at the restaurant where we went to lunch). I say unfortunately because even though Rudi looks adorable, I look like crap (which is what really counts -- this is my blog after all dangit!), which is why I made the photo super, extra small. In hopes that it would be very difficult for you to see it.

Religion and getting along...

Here on the exmo blogs, I figure I can post whatever the hell I please as a comment (you guys have maybe picked up on this), but over there, I'm a little like the wicked witch of the West (or East?) -- outside of my realm I have to be careful that nobody drops a house on me. ;-)

Bloggernaclin' blues

That's why normally I try to avoid giving advice on the Bloggernacle. I assume most Bloggernaclers are open minded enough to consider my suggestions fairly, but I'd just as soon not cause confusion by making people ask themselves when I'm speaking as a person and when I'm speaking as an agent of Satan.

Rudi's version

I bought this wine a few times so I could take a picture of the bottle for my blog (so you can all see that I'm not just making this up), but I thought it would be prettier to photograph it while the bottle was still full, and the timing never really worked out on that.

So here's a picture of me playing with play-doh with my kids instead.

People from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,

Yes, after joking around about Estonia here and here, I finally got some feedback from a real Estonian!!! And not just an Estonian, but an Estonian exmo!!!

Recovery, Self-Discovery, Community

It's true that the first part -- "ex" -- is a negative, but the second part -- "Mormon" -- isn't. Many people who have been Mormon refuse to identify as anything that has anything to do with the word Mormon. So to identify as "exmormon" (or "exmo") is as much a way of saying "Mormonism has been a part of my life" as it is a way of saying "I am not Mormon".

Blogs that get songs stuck in my head

I read that blog and ten minutes later I catch my stupid brain singing to me Simon and Garfunkel strains of "Hello Waffles, my old friend... I've come to talk with you again..."

My friend, the Internet...

Now if it ever happens one day that there's nothing left of me but a disembodied brain in a jar hooked up to the Internet, then I'm sure I'll become a regular on several forums in addition to blogging. (Guys, please don't try to pretend that you never plan what you'll do if you're ever reduced to nothing but a disembodied brain in a jar.) But for the moment, my system is to focus on blogging only.

***

Update: On a related note, I just noticed I've been added to Mojoey's atheist blogroll, so I'll be adding those guys to my sidebar as soon as I figure out how to do it... :D

My friend, the Internet...

In a recent post I told you guys a bunch of abstract, idealistic reasons for why I love the Internet. But really, it's more than that -- it's personal.

Let's face it: making friends in real life typically requires planning and big blocks of free time either to go out or to clean up the house and invite people over. And if you have a job and/or kids (or even if you don't) you don't necessarily have oodles of free time to go out and socialize as much as you might like. Then you have the obstacle of finding someone else whose free time matches up with yours, who doesn't live too far away, and hopefully shares some sort of interests with you. Sheesh, it's a wonder people in tho olden days were able to make friends at all...

Today whenever you find yourself with ten minutes or an hour to spare, you can pull up your cup of coffee (or whatever refreshing beverage you enjoy with your friends) and see what all of your virtual amigos are up to on your favorite blogs and forums.

True it's not the same as going out for a drink with your friends for real. But I don't see it as a substitute for real life socializing as much as it is a supplement and a resource. I spend as much time on real-life socializing today as I did before I discovered the Internet. But back then (without all my cyberbuds) I just had that many fewer friends. Plus I've met people in person that I met first online, and my Internet antics have helped me reconnect and stay in touch with family members and old friends.

Now you're probably going "Yeah right, Chanson, fess up -- the real reason you love the Internet is because of all the porn!!"

But in truth I'm not really interested in the porn. What I really like is talking about porn!!! The porn itself is okay -- I can take it or leave it -- but I can discuss porn theory all day long. Seriously. Try me. I think a lot of other feminists are the same way.

Considering how much I love the Internet, you may be wondering why I've essentially given up posting on forums (despite my recent visits to The Foyer and NOMs). It's really just a question of time. Blogging alone occupies more time than I ought to be wasting on the Internet, and if I added regular participation in a forum or two on top of that, I wouldn't have time to do anything else at all.

Now if it ever happens one day that there's nothing left of me but a disembodied brain in a jar hooked up to the Internet, then I'm sure I'll become a regular on several forums in addition to blogging. (Guys, please don't try to pretend that you never plan what you'll do if you're ever reduced to nothing but a disembodied brain in a jar.) But for the moment, my system is to focus on blogging only.

The main reason I ultimately chose blogging over forums is because I feel like it's easier to expand my social network outside of the boundaries of one particular forum.

The way I see it, a forum is a little like a town square (hence the name) where everyone has a megaphone and they're all talking to each other at once. A blog is more like a backyard barbecue where you go because you like the host, and maybe you'll see other people you know there, but maybe not.

The trouble is that it's incredibly time-consuming to live in even two or three towns to the point where you feel like you know the people there and understand what's going on. Then you may have friends you'd like to stay in touch with who aren't interested in moving to your favorite town, but who might be willing to occasionally stop by your backyard barbecue instead. Similarly, since I have interests besides exmormonism (hard to believe, but true!), it's easy for me to swing by non-LDS-related mathematician or other topic blogs on my blog-visiting rounds.

Another advantage to blogs is that they seem somewhat less prone to fighting and feuds than forums are. In blog space, if two people hate each other, they can just avoid visiting each other's blogs. But if they're on the same forum, they can't help but be constantly in each other's faces. A classic example is that unfortunate perpetual feud over on RfM between the religious and non-religious. I don't want to blame any individuals involved -- I really think that it's just a case where they've spent too much time disagreeing in a space where it's very hard to tune each other out. Then it escalates and ends up giving occasional visitors an inaccurate negative impression of both Christian and atheist exmos...

One advantage of a forum over a blog is that you tend to get more back-and-forth discussion among the participants. Plus you get more of a sense of community because you know that everybody there knows everybody else. But that isn't quite enough to tip the scale in favor of forums over blogging, so I probably won't be more than an occasional forum visitor again until I magically get a whole lot more free time (hopefully not through having my brain disembodied, but if it comes down to that, we'll see...).

Of course it looks like a lot of people participate on multiple forums and blogs in the great network of cultural Mormons. Once you participate somewhere in this network, you're likely to run into people you know and who know each other wherever you go. So even if it's only virtual, it's kind of like a community. :D

Think for yourself, starring the Internet and you!

I try to be a little wary of the idea that progress is always good; that human history is a parade of advances and improvements. Really, some innovations are good and some are not so good.

When it comes to the Internet though, I just can't contain my optimism!!!

My love song for the Internet goes a little like this:

Tyranny thrives on ignorance; so do intolerance and hate and the violence they inspire. The antidote is education, and the Internet can distribute a good dose of it.

Some will argue that the Internet is as good at spreading ignorance as it is at fighting ignorance since people can (and do) post tons of things that are false and wrong. Even wikipedia is riddled with errors. Or if it isn't I've just posted a false statement myself right here. ;^)

But I think that the Internet is a huge boon to educating masses of ordinary people for two main reasons:

1. The Internet gives people access to a wide range of perspectives from outside their own social/comfort zone that they would not have access to otherwise.

2. The Internet trains people to think critically for themselves.

And as a bonus, we have #3: It's so much fun that you end up learning things without even trying to.

Why do I think the Internet encourages people to think for themselves?

Think about how mass media works. Whether it's television, radio, books, newspapers, magazines, etc., you are encouraged to absorb. Sure you might analyze the information you've absorbed, but there's no real motivation to do so. Mass media divides the population into the producers of knowledge and the consumers of it, and never the twain shall meet.

Traditional media encourages the belief that "if it's in print, it's true," or alternately "Accurate unbiased news comes from a few established sources and everything else is the wacky fringe." It costs money to produce and distribute books, TV programs, etc., so media companies typically have an interest in building a reputation for being accurate and unbiased in order to build an audience. That's a good thing, but it means that if you question every newscast -- complaining about how much they aren't telling you -- the average person will lump you in the same category with crackpot conspiracy theorists.

Really it's better to keep in mind that there's an ocean of stories out there that aren't covered by the trickle of the standard media stream. Traditional news sources deserve your respect inasmuch as they earn it with careful, thorough reporting. But even when reading the big stories from reputable sources, it's beneficial to see multiple perspectives side-by-side (as you get in response to a search query or see in the comments of a blog entry). It forces you to assess for yourself who is the most credible and whose arguments make the most sense. It trains you pick up on hints of bias in even largely unbiased sources.

What's more, if you participate in blogs and forums, you get immediate positive feedback for coming up with original, intelligent, and insightful comments. You also get immediate positive feedback for thinking your ideas through carefully so you can express them clearly and concisely. Rambling or regurgitating an undigested party line will get your comments ignored. The result is daily exercise for your critical thinking skills.

Some people only like to frequent sites that cater to their own point of view. This encourages groupthink if the site succeeds in suppressing other viewpoints. However, on the Internet you're really never more than a click or two away from an opposing view, and many are tempted to make those few stray clicks. Additionally, even sites that cater to one viewpoint typically allow opposing comments: as a close-at-hand example, look at how the members of the Bloggernacle and of Outer Blogness cross-post on each other's blogs.

On the Internet, you're constantly presented with unfamiliar viewpoints even if you're not actively looking for them. Here's a typical example taken from my everyday blog reading. The permabloggers -- all with a similar background to each other -- were discussing violence in the Middle East with an understandable American "it's far away" attitude when they were confronted by someone with personal friends in the middle East urging them to remember that the "collateral damage" civilians are people too.

In blog-and-forum-space, you're encouraged to respond to unfamiliar viewpoints. That requires you to think about them and about your own position.

Now you might be saying "Chanson, you crazy optimist you -- most people are not discussing serious issues or current events at all online: they're exchanging pokemons and celebrity gossip!!!"

I contend that even reading and posting nothing but fluff to the Internet trains people to broaden their horizons.

Regardless of what everyone says about the deplorable spelling, grammar, and punctuation on the Internet, regular exercise at reading and writing improves one's composition skills.

More importantly -- even if your activities on the Internet are purely social -- you will almost certainly be socializing with people outside your usual real-life social boundaries. By that I mean you'll make friends people who are different from you in one or more of the following ways: economic class, education level, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, age, and other similar social barriers that make it unlikely you would have met your Internet friends in real life. And no matter how open and tolerant you are intellectually, it is nearly impossible to learn deep down that those outside your familiar group are just ordinary people like you unless you actually meet them. There's no substitute for it -- it's the true antidote for bigotry.

I'll bet your "think for yourself" reflex is kicking in right now. You disagree with me? Then you're planning your insightful objection in your mind, working out just the right way to phrase it. Then you'll post it and everyone can decide what they think of your position.

If you were reading this in a magazine, that wouldn't be the case.

Exmo-Social is dead -- Long live Exmo-Social!!!

Yep, on April 25, 2006, Benji Smith -- who had been operating Exmormondom's #1 party site since it spun off of RfM in January 2004 -- finally locked all the threads!!!

Exmo-Social is the board I credit with transforming me from an occasional user to a full-fledged Internet-addict!!! So of course I was sad to see the party house close its doors and lock up.

As of closing, I ranked #7 in total posts, after Kristen, chloejackson, Sharon C, Davey, Heather, and Rear Fender. Rounding out the top 20 after me were Feebee, antishock8, RONchee, bruniedog, zhu, Robear, Phil, lostatsea, TLC, TheBrewmeister, Nortinski, Joe, and Lilith.

But it's a lot of work keeping all of your customers satisfied -- even when you're providing a free service!!! And even with the fabulous help of two appointed admins (my brother John/Phil and later Sus), it's natural that Benji would eventually get tired of it. Thanks for all of your efforts!!!

Yet fear not party-lovers, exmo-socialites, and miscellaneous pervert-lurkers!!! Out of the ashes of the old Exmo-Social board, an all-new Exmo-Social is reborn!!!

In fact, those of you who are linking to Exmo-Social don't even have to update your links because the domain name has passed into the hands of the new management. Some of the regulars (led by Joe and Mateo) have been brave and foolhardy enough to install a brand-new forum at the old one's URL. And it's already starting to develop its own flavor, which is nice because it would be sad for it to just be an echo of the original.

The old board is still up and readable for archival purposes until May 22 -- you can find it by following a link in a sticky on the new board's "chit-chat" forum.

However, if there are any repectable people reading this post, I must warn you not to follow my sidebar link to Exmo-Social, and especially not to follow the sticky link to the old board!!! Please!!! I don't want to be liable for anyone's eyes popping out of their heads and exploding.

I'll just give you the usual Exmo-Social disclaimer, which is the following: Not all apostates are like those who frequent Exmo-Social. However, if you're looking for those few apostates who are massive party animals and/or unapologetic sex fiends, Exmo-Social is a good place to start.

And now for today's activity: the "where's chanson?" game!!! See if you can find my avatar in the above avatar collage made by my brother John. (Click on it for the full-sized image.)

As a hint, the avatar is just the head from this photo: