YouTube - Ravi & Anoushka Shankar - Raga Anandi Kalyan

YouTube - Ravi Shankar with daughter Anoushka Shankar and...

Anoushka is Ravi's daughter, and half sister to American singer Norah Jones, who was fathered by Ravi in 1979 while in a relationship with Sue Jones, a concert producer.

This video is from their performance In Santa Cruz in 2007.

Obama seeks to track visits to .gov websites

Planned lifting of ban on 'cookies' called '1984'-style spying effort

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WASHINGTON – The Barack Obama administration has announced plans to lift a government ban on tracking visitors to government websites, and potentially, collect their personal data through the use of "cookies" – an effort some suspect may already be in place on White House sites.

A ban on such tracking by the federal government on Internet

users has been in place since 2000, however, the White House Office of Management and Budget now wants to lift the ban citing a "compelling need."

In fact, according to the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, federal agencies have already negotiated agreements and contracts with social networking sites like Google, YouTube, SlideShare,Facebook

, AddThis, Blist, Flickr and VIMEO to collect information on visitors for federal web sites. All of these private companies are known to have agreements with federal agencies, but the public has never seen them.

In public comments submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, EPIC notes it has obtained documents that show federal agencies have negotiated these contracts with the private sector in violation of "existing statutory privacy rights." Those agencies include: Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, and the National Security Agency.

A two-week public comment period ended Monday on a proposal by the White House Office of Management and Budget to end a ban on federal Internet sites using such technologies and replace it with other privacy safeguards. The current prohibition, in place since 2000, can be waived if an agency head cites a "compelling need."

Supporters of a change say social networking and similar services, which often take advantage of the tracking technologies, have transformed how people communicate over the Internet, and Obama's aides say those services can make government more transparent and increase public involvement.

Some privacy groups say the proposal amounts to a "massive" and unexplained shift in government policy.

In a statement Monday, American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Michael Macleod-Ball said the move could "allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government website."

My question is why? Why does a alleged proponent to open and transparent government want to lift a ban on covert spying on citizens? To improve government services?

YouTube - Mudcrutch - Scare Easy

I mentioned to my daughter that I liked this movie, Appaloosa, and that in watching it again I really like some of the music, this song in particular. When I told her it was by Tom Petty in his band Mudcrutch, she says, "Oh, I saw them..."

Obama Clarifies his message on Health Care

From Hulu (originally broadcast on Conan O'Brien)

Letting the whole world know how you feel...its therapy?

From SoloMother:

See, i knew it was a good thing to do..Apparently, we do ourselves a world of good when we write about the things that are bugging us. Writing is good therapy. I stumbled across an old article on CNN, about writing for therapy. Dr. Pennebaker’s studies have proven that writing is good for what ails you. Or to quote Shrek, ‘Better out than in, I always say’:

Pennebaker’s interest in the potential of writing therapy was sparked by conversations with government polygraph operators. A criminal’s heart rate and breathing, he learned, is much slower immediately after a confession than before. Since then, he’s spent much of his career proving that we can all feel better after confronting the past through writing.One of his studies, published in the “Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology” in April 1988, found that college students had more active T-lymphocyte cells, an indication of immune system stimulation, six weeks after writing about stressful events. Other studies have found that people tend to take fewer trips to the doctor, function better in day-to-day tasks, and score higher on tests of psychological well being after such writing exercises, he says.

I knew it.

Spilling your guts in a blog has always made me feel better about things, even when it made other maybe uncomfortable. I have written about pretty much my whole life in this blog, which has migrated from one place to another...all several hundred entries.

I wrote about going to Germany out of college, meeting someone, coming back to the US, finding the love of my life cheating on me, thinking i would never recover and then meeting honey.

I have written about things in my job, etc...which is pretty boring most of the time. What I have not written about are my online friends...not the ones here, or Yahoo or Imeem, or Google, or AOL or even way back on Prodigy.  Especially not the ones who have hurt my feelings, because really, friends don't do that. Not to say I have not screwed up every once and awhile, and really made someone go off...I have. But really, whats the point of getting all worked into a lather over some misunderstanding with a person i have never met,  and  likely never will.

After a friend dumps you and you apologize, and they still are not willing to talk, well my real life friends say that's just SOS. (Stuck on Stupid) - The End.

So my job sucks, and i have a reprieve from the daily grind since, well, most of my work is in limbo. I manage projects, installing technology products...actually reviewing business need, recommending solutions, negotiating w vendors, obtaining the financing, then implementing the solution, etc, etc. Only thing is, with the economy so bad, all my projects came to a stop as business fell off....and they are waiting until something says its going to be OK again. Problem is in california, who knows. High unemployment, a state that is probably going to be in a budget crisis (again) in a few months...well, I have been looking for maybe a place to go work, in or out of California...Honey could care, only works part time now anyway. We would have to sell or rent the house, which means likely renting it out, since the value is half what it was a couple of years ago.

Try to find something to smile about everyday, I do

 

Not just any youths...

HeraldSun (Australia)

(Photo is labelled Marseilles)

Which “young people” are we yet again talking about?

About 40 rioters in a Paris suburb hurled Molotov cocktails at police and firefighters, torched cars and one person fired a handgun during a rampage prompted by the death of a teen pizza deliverer fleeing police… The scenario - the death of a youth with police directly or indirectly involved - mirrors other incidents that have triggered unrest. Tensions between young people and police have long simmered in housing projects in France’s suburbs, feeding on poverty, unemployment and anger over discrimination against minorities.

This AP copy in the Sydney Morning Herald won’t give a clue to the ethnic makeup of the rioters, although it does note at the end that four years ago there was a riot by “young Arab and black men”.

Radio France, though, gives one hint that it’s the same story all over again:

French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux called for calm on Monday after Yacou Sanago, an 18-year-old boy, died when he hit a metal barrier when trying to flee a police cordon...

The problem with this kind of non-reporting is that it so easily permits the illectually dishonest to heap all the responsibility for this anarchic violence on the French state, by leading reporters (in this case) to then say that such violence is “feeding on poverty, unemployment and anger over discrimination against minorities”.

If we actually - and accurately - note that this violence tends to come from one particular religious minority, we might then better see that there is potentially another influence feeding not just the violence, but the poverty and unemployability, too.