Google announced their Public Policy Blog yesterday, outlining the internet giant’s hopes and dreams of a future where we can communicate openly and freely, discuss with civility the issues that face our culture, save the children, help the poor, cure the common cold, end world hunger, etc. The big discussion going on right now is over the 700MHz auction by the FCC, though surprisingly enough, a lot of the blog is devoted to straight-up politics. In fact, it seems that Google has been essentially hosting their own talk show, with bigwigs from the company interviewing no less than five potential presidential candidates, posted on (what else) YouTube for you to view.

I wonder how long until Cable starts offering the Google Channel. I can see it now…

Just for the heck of it, I ran Google’s blog through the W3C validation service: “Failed validation, 167 errors.” Nice, Google. Niiice.

I’m not too in to internet memes, but I wanted to thank STLWorkingMom and Charlottesville Words
for thinking of me in handing out Thinking Blogger Awards. Careful, though, Marijean - I’m watching you, too… duh duh duhhhhhh…

Charlottesville High School’s class of 2008 has experienced many guest speakers over our past three years behind bars. One woman impersonated Zelda Fitzgerald (wife of the later author) for 90 minutes; another impersonated sperm that had been exposed to marijuana. Today, for the first time ever, we had someone talk to us as himself. Shawn Decker, author of the recent book My Pet Virus - about his experiences in living with HIV since he was a toddler.

Shawn was a wonderful speaker, and we were lucky to have him at our school. The passages he read from his book were some of the most humorous anecdotes I’ve heard in a long time, and as soon as I can drag myself to Barnes & Noble, I’ll definitely be picking up a copy.

He also said the most peculiar thing to me. As things were wrapping up, Shawn asked us if anyone was doing something interesting over the summer. I raised my hand and said I’d be attending Governor’s School (knowing that one of his first girlfriends had dumped him while at Governor’s School). I assured him, however, that I wouldn’t dump anyone while I was there. His response? That he was sure I wouldn’t do that to my girlfriend or boyfriend. Then he went on to talk about how interacting so much with the gay and lesbian community had taught him never to assume someone’s sexuality, and then some more about acceptance of homosexuals.

I thought to myself, “Is it that obvious that I’m gay…?” I mean, I had been thinking about where he bought his shirt (I’d kind of like one myself…), but it’s not like he could read my mind.

Coolest part about Shawn - he blogged about our class. Sweet.

I recently caught a glimpse of a topic on a blogging forum about whether people “are themselves” when they blog. It’s an interesting topic to think about - even those of us who blog under our own name don’t necessarily blog “as ourselves.” For example, I consider a post like this to be the real me: I talk this way in person, I talk about this type of topic… I try to blog as though I’m having a regular conversation with the reader. But at the same time, this isn’t a soapbox from which I can be completely, utterly honest. There are a lot of topics I’d like to blog about, but can’t for the simple reason that I don’t want everyone to know every detail of my life (especially considering that half of my family reads this thing…). Honestly, I find this a rather disturbing form of self-censorship.

Other bloggers don’t even write under their own names - they create an alias under which they can talk about whatever they want. Some do this to avoid the repercussions of someone they know finding their blog, others do so to avoid the sheer embarrassment they’d encounter writing about certain things. But whenever a bloggers goes anonymous, they’re suddenly able to blog about anything they wish, and thereby writing some of the most interesting posts.

So here’s my question to you about anonymous vs. signatured bloggers: which group is more honest?

I finally met Sean McCord last week at the Blogger Meetup, and just found out a few days ago that he is thinking about running for the Charlottesville School Board. Major kudos to him. If I were of voting age, slash actually lived in Charlottesville, I’d vote for him. Just wanted to show him some support in the early stages, and say that I for one hopes he goes through with it. Good luck, Sean!