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It’s called PerFormancing and it’s a blogging editor that opens up right in FF, rich-text editing, HTML editing, post preview, posts directly to Wordpress, MovableType, Blogger, etc. In fact this is my first test of it right now. It took me about a minute to set up my blog account (only because I can’t remember passwords anymore since I have them automatically stored). Now instead of using my WordPress login when I want to post something, I’ll hit F8 and the editor comes up in the window. It helps to be able to see the window with the info. that I originally wanted to post, no more switching between tabs.
I’m sure I’ll have more comments on this extension once I use it some more, for now just wanted to get the word out about it. Thanks to Barb Dybwad from the Social Software Weblog for sharing this great find!
..but you turn right over to the T.V. page.
-Crowded House
I totally forgot to mention my random phone call the other day… I was sitting at my desk and glanced down at my cell phone and saw that I missed a call from 202-226-9928. I had no idea who it was, I don’t know anyone who’d be calling me from the Washington, D.C. area. I Googled it and found out it’s a number for the U.S. House of Representatives! Why in the world would they be calling me?? I tried calling back but a recording said the number didn’t take incoming calls. So I’m baffled. Anybody have any insight? Should I be worried about getting tapped by the NSA and hauled off to Guantanamo because of my un-patriot-like activities and opinions?
I’m a little behind on my articles so I’m just gonna post some links to some blog entries I want to highlight:
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From Defense Watch: Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits
By Nathaniel R. Helms
Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle’s Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.
The soldiers asked for anonymity because they are concerned they will face retaliation for going public with the Army’s apparently new directive. At the sources’ requests DefenseWatch has also agreed not to reveal the unit at which the incident occured for operational security reasons.
On Saturday morning a soldier affected by the order reported to DefenseWatch that the directive specified that “all” commercially available body armor was prohibited. The soldier said the order came down Friday morning from Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command (HQ, USSOCOM), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. It arrived unexpectedly while his unit was preparing to deploy on combat operations. The soldier said the order was deeply disturbing to many of the men who had used their own money to purchase Dragon Skin because it will affect both their mobility and ballistic protection.
“We have to be able to move. It (Dragon Skin) is heavy, but it is made so we have mobility and the best ballistic protection out there. This is crazy. And they are threatening us with our benefits if we don’t comply.” he said.
The soldier reiterated Friday’s reports that any soldier who refused to comply with the order and was subsequently killed in action “could” be denied the $400,000 death benefit provided by their SGLI life insurance policy as well as face disciplinary action.
Continue reading ‘Army warns soldiers that if they are killed wearing body armor they purchased themselves their next of kin may not receive death benefits’
The Columbus community, with members of City Year and their Young Heroes program, marched from City Hall to Veteran’s Memorial yesterday.
Various community groups were present outside Veteran’s Memorial, promoting their cause and handing out materials.
What could I possibly write that would be better than reading the actual words and hearing the speeches of Dr. King? So here is some reading and viewing material from Moving Ideas.org:
- Working Class Hero: William P. Jones, writing for The Nation, chronicles the fight for the MLK holiday where mostly African American union workers risked their jobs for a day that many people take for granted.
- CodePink’s flash movie in which King’s words are animated by images of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and uplifting images of people rising up.
And some great audio links from Music for America:
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“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death… America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.”
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“Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.”
- On Equality:
“And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
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Looking at peacechicken.com’s most recent visitor stats, I see that only 42% of visitors to this site use Internet Explorer. That means 54% of visitors to this site use Firefox, with 38% using the latest version, 1.5! Way to go, I have some tech-savvy readers!
For some frame of reference, 54% is definitely not the average right now. Using Browser News, a source found on the W3C site, it looks like IE users currently make up an average of 82% of internet users.
Wow, it’s Monday, where to start? Of course it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which I plan to devote a seperate post to later today. First I want to post some exciting news:
What exactly is a run-off election anyway? Perhaps it’s my political ignorance, but it seems like this makes far more sense than our ridiculous and antiquated electoral college voting system. Of course if something makes sense and would actually mean a fair election process, chances are we won’t be seeing it in this lifetime. Diebold won’t be having that.
But I don’t want to end on a cynical note, so I will say congrats to the world’s newest female leaders, may they be successful in cleaning up all the messes the men-folk have made.
