Links for 2006-04-04

Posted April 4, 2006 1:17 AM.

Atom vs. RSS - Atom wins! It seems to me that as far as the world is concerned Atom is RSS anyway.
You Tube has the footage of Danah Boyd on The O'Reilly Factor Weird piece of video - Danah comes off extremely well and presents a reasonable case for what's happening on MySpace. It's difficult to tell whether O'Reilly is satisfied with the piece or whether he was hoping for something ... else
YouTube has a trailor for The Simpsons Movie - apparently coming out sometime in 2007 Hm. As Homer says so eloquently in the trailer, "Uh oh, We'd better get started...."
Birth rates in the European Union are falling fast as many people simply choose not to have children This stuff is fascinating to me - I've already really wanted children, but simply can't conceive of a way in which I'd be able to do it (even excluding the gay thing). It's not a shock to me that other people of my generation feel similarly.
Singing might have helped social cohesian in early humans and may even predate language "Because music has grammar-like qualities such as recursion, it might have served an even greater function. With music in the brain, early humans had the neural foundation for ... symbolic thought and language."

Comments

Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.

Raising children is really hard. That, plus the fact that people don't feel very secure in their jobs and careers anymore.

Life for the average European middle class person has gotten both very insecure and expensive. Not exactly a winning combo for breeding.

→ Posted by: hugh macleod at April 4, 2006 7:11 AM

My tin-foil-hat-wearing self says that O'Reilly went relatively easy on Danah (sorry Danah) because MySpace is owned by Murdoch, just like Fox News. He just didn't seem his combative self - and something like this would usually generate way more heat.

→ Posted by: bobbie at April 4, 2006 8:54 AM

Im a gayer too, and I would also love to have children one day, but I feel it would be cruel to raise children due to the abuse they would receive from having a gay dad

→ Posted by: stuart at April 4, 2006 9:20 AM

I don't really buy that argument - or at least I think it's only one of the factors that you have to consider. Obviously if you're a gay man thinking of children, I think you have to think more carefully than normal about how you'd handle things and whether you're up to the challenge. But I think if you've looked at the situation soberly and come to some conclusions, then the specific challenges you might face are just things you have to deal with and wouldn't be insurmountable.

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at April 4, 2006 10:23 AM

Well, having kids is hard. Having kids changes your life. Having kids drastically reduces your personal space, personal time & other personal resources - not permanently, just until you're old and grey.

It's still the best thing I've ever done.

Having a gay dad - or two dads - may be hard; it's certainly unusual, which is probably enough to make it hard, at least when the kid gets older. But 'different' is nowhere near as hard as 'cruel', 'cold', 'drunk' or 'absent', to name but a few. Besides, kids with cruel/cold/drunk/absent fathers still grow up to be functioning adults. Being a kid is hard. (Life is pain, Highness...)

If you want kids, you will have them. Life's like that.

→ Posted by: Phil at April 4, 2006 11:20 AM

I thought Danah did a fine job of representing what MySpace means to kids. She was dead on in her comment that kids aren't allowed to ride their bikes outside any more because of fear...media-fueled fear generated by cranks like O'Reilly. Crossing over to the other post about procreating, is it any wonder people are hesitating to have kids when everything looks so dire?

→ Posted by: Neil at April 4, 2006 5:51 PM

If you haven't read it, can I recommend "The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant" by Dan Savage? A lovely book which also makes the point that the obstacles to gay parenting are surmountable.

→ Posted by: jim at April 5, 2006 12:01 AM

Has anyone been tracking whether the usual suspects on Faux News -- not O'Reilly, but more likely Greta Van Obsessed With Missing White Women -- have been covering MySpace with a light touch? As Private Eye has shown, cross-promotion of Murdoch properties is pretty common in the UK, and while the moral outrage of the cablenewsers doesn't fit the tabloid reality shows and risqué comedy on the FOX network, I wouldn't be surprised if 'The Memo' suggests a lighter touch on Teh Evils of Teh Internets.

→ Posted by: nick s at April 5, 2006 1:08 AM

thanks for the link to danah boyd. she rocks.

→ Posted by: leahpeah at April 5, 2006 8:05 AM

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