buckdata – news and views for an unquiet age

I peek at Twitter periodically, but haven’t done so steadily. In the last weeks, that’s changed. I’ve been glued to the Twitter feed on my iPod Touch since the democracy protests heated up in Egypt. Ironically, I first signed up for Twitter some years back because I had heard a tale about a journalist who [...]

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I have two pieces of information that I haven’t acted upon. A relative has indicated that she is now on Facebook. And so has a professional organization. I haven’t heard much from the relative lately. I suspect there are more frequent communications on her Facebook page. But I haven’t looked. Suppose I “friend” her? Will [...]

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Isn’t it time we figured out some alternatives to oil and coal? (For those of you suggesting nuclear plants as a substitute, I suggest you rent “China Syndrome” at the video store and watch it, or acquire some penpals living around Chernobyl and get their opinions. ) We can do better for ourselves and the [...]

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Why can’t health care be more like firefighting? Firefighters, you did great. California’s Lockheed Fire, which extended over more than 12 square miles,  is 100% contained.  It took the labor of thousands of you to battle back the blaze before it spread to homes, injured people, and destroyed farms. Although outbuildings and some seasonal cabins [...]

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Citizen journalism has taken leaps since last year. We are living in some smoke today, but safe. The big Santa Cruz County wildfire you have probably seen on the news remains  miles off and over the ridge.  I know, because I can see it on the Internet. I found this  link to a satellite  fire [...]

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In the age of instant messaging, trends in literature which have lain dormant since the telephone began to jangle are again awakened. Constrained by length limits of 140 characters, we turn for literary inspiration to the past–this time to the golden age of the telegraph–when users paid by the word and changed language by writing [...]

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Huffington Post does it. Raw Story does it. Obama does it, and so too, reportedly, do Republicans like Karl Rove. They all use Twitter. Twitter is software which allows a registered member to send out very brief messages to others, either from twitter.com’s website or from a cell phone. Recipients can get the messages either [...]

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