Well it took me long enough, but as promised, I've donated $1 USD for every comment in that thread ($1.50 for comments with a secret).
I opted to donate to the Iraqi Humanitarian Response of the Red Crescent.
Thank you to everyone who commented!
Steven: : when did you wanna come to the gym? thursday or saturday?
Nick: Not sure, depends if I'm feeling awesome on Thursday.
Steven: : You? Awesome? Guess I should give up any hope of ever seeing you there then.
Steven: : ohhhh... [...] snap.
Nick: ...It's good to have you back.
Steven: : summer's almost here
Steven: : you know what that means
Steven: : ...
Nick: Yep, you coming?
Steven: : where?
Nick: Europe
Steven: : Europe?!?!? Why the deuce would I want to go there? i was talking about something much more important: basketball.
I'd always been rather proud of the fact that in my 26 27 years here, I'd never touched a firearm. Heck, I'd barely ever seen one that wasn't in a police officer's holster (or hands, if you're in Mexico or Cuba). I don't like guns. I never have, and I probably never will. The American obsession with them, however, fascinates me... the whole idea that gun ownership is a right is something that I'll never quite wrap my head around. What's more, is that a gun is a pretty lame way to kill somebody. Although I don't think I'd ever have the will to actually take someone's life, if it came down to it, the least I could do is to use something a bit more classy, like a throwing axe. Or a poison dart.
Anyhow, I've been known to be a pretty serious PC gamer in the past, mostly with "First-person shooter" type games where you and some squad members walk around and hunt down the other team. But how similar is firing a gun in a computer game to firing one in real life?
So, last week in Las Vegas, I was a little hesitant when my cousins Rami and Ramon asked me told me we're going to a shooting range. I decided to go along with it though. I'd be popping my gun-virginity cherry, to be sure - I was hoping to save that for someone special. But the way I figured, is that I'd never really fully understand the mind of your average gun-happy American until I became your average gun-happy American. I guess I agreed to fire a gun for much the same reason that I occasionally read right-wing blogs: because I hate myself it's easier to make a case for what you're saying when you've seen both sides of the coin.
The National Conference for Media Reform was really fun. Perhaps not so much the conference itself, but hanging with the awesome crowd that showed up. I can't explain how nice it felt to finally meet so many people I've only had contact with online. Putting faces to names of people from Ethos or the AMC made it all worthwhile on its own.
Our panel, Owning Our Own Media Infrastructure, is going to start soon.
Running parallel to the FCC commissioners session and the Citizen Journalism session with Dan Gillmor, I'm reminded that one of the suckiest things about this conference is how many sessions are run in parallel - I would've loved to go to both of those.
"I am...".
When asked to define ourselves, we tend to start our self-descriptions that way, going over lists and concepts which seem to fit in with the conceptions we have of ourselves. "I am tall, I am thin, I am a hockey player, I am a good kisser".
