I can’t believe I understood this correctly, but, here goes:

I have had a minimal AOL account for many years. Until wifi came around, I sometimes used it for dialing up when traveling. I haven’t used it for that for years now. But two of our kids have aol email accounts as their default, so I’ve kept it since it was just a few bucks a month.

This month, I got a bill for $68. The customer support person carefully explained to me that that was because I’ve been on AIM a lot this month. For every hour over my service plan, they charge me $2.50. But, she said, had I downloaded my AIM client from www.aim.com instead of www.aol.com, it would have been free.

So, let me get this straight. If all I use is AIM, I can pay AOL about $70/month or I can get it for free. Hmm, let me think…

Hey, kids, you’re about to get a great opportunity to make up new email addresses.

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Bill Koslosky wonders why the blogosphere isn’t jumping on the stem cell topic. ” The Republicans sitting on the fence are just waiting to hear the roar of grassroots activism.”

I haven’t much about it because I’ve got absolutely nothing interesting to say about it, where “interesting” = “something you are not certain to have come across somewhere else.” Further, I know people like Bill are doing an excellent job of tracking the issue and aggregating links.

Since I’m not the only thinking this way, it seems that blog numbers are particularly bad indicators of blog public opinion.

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From the Washington Post:

LOS ANGELES — Posters that depicted President Bush with a Groucho Marx-style mustache and cigar were ordered torn down at a high school after a student complained.

Theater students, who had created the posters to advertise a satirical play, countered with new posters with a First Amendment message.

Principal Kenny Lee ordered 100 posters removed from the campus of El Camino Real High School in the Woodland Hills area last week on grounds that they promoted smoking and “endorsing one ideology over another.”

“That’s our take on the student speech and conduct,” Lee said.

The school-funded posters advertised the students’ play, “The Complete History of America (Abridged),” which satirizes U.S. history.

I haven’t found a photo of the poster, so here’s my blind re-creation. (I’m sure the HS students have better PhotoShop skills than I do.)

“I wouldn’t join any high school that would accept me as a student.”

Feel free to supply your own captions. [Technorati tags: bush freedom groucho]

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InTrade, an online market where you get to put your money where your opinions are, reports that shares on MJ being found guilty have plummeted to their lowest point ever.

Meanwhile, shares in Zarqawi will be captured are up.

Anyone want to bid on shares in David will be fatuous? [Technorati tag: knowledge]

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Fast Company’s parent has put Fast Company up for sale. That makes me sad in multiple ways. And not so coincidentally, it’s a reminder that corporate parents really shouldn’t be called parents. (Thanks for the pointer, Halley.) [Technorati tag: media]

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And I expect something nice from y’all then.

This piece of superfluity comes via TimeAndDate.com. (Thanks to Marcia Blake for the link.)

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This afternoon I went to an acupuncturist for the first time. Interesting experience.

I went because I’ve been having shoulder pain that extendsdown to my wrist. Of course, it’s gotten considerably better since I made the appointment, but it still ranges from an ache to an intrusive shout of pain. Besides, I’ve never had acupuncture before.

The acupuncturist, trained in Shanghai, inserted about a dozen needles in my back, as well as attaching some suction cups (similar to what my people used to do with small cups and matches) and shining a heat lamp on me. I slept for 15 minutes. Then she had me flip over (well, she took the needles out first) and repeated the drill, so to speak. I slept again. Afterwards I was surprised to learn that the needles had been in a full inch; they felt more superficial than that.

At the moment, my shoulder is pain-free but my arm aches noticeably, pretty much the same as before the treatment. She wants me to come back twice more, a week apart. I will if only for the cat naps.

Besides, I believe the evidence that acupuncture works for some ills, even though I don’t pretend to understand the theory behind it. (Someone once told me that it’s not so much a theory as a mnemonic device. Don’t know if there’s any sense to that remark.)

A joke I hereby donate to Jay Leno:

“I went to an acupuncturist. She was very gentle. In fact, when she ran out of needles she switched to Post-It notes.”

Hey, I said it was for Leno so it doesn’t have to be funny!

[Technorati tag: acupuncture]

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David L Marcus, recounting how a brief article about “therapeutic schools” turned into a book:

As I wrote my nine-paragraph article for U.S. News, I knew I was missing the real story. It was an increasingly familiar feeling. The newspaper and magazine journalism I did seemed superficial, a caricature, a sketch that reflected some editor’s idea of an issue. This time the feeling obsessed me. I decided to write a book about teenagers who get themselves into jams… [p. 32, Brown Alumni Monthly, , "Close to Home," March/April 2005, pp. 30-45]

We’re seeing discourse assume a more “natural” shape now that the bonds of the physical have been loosened. Encyclopedias have 10x as many articles that tend to be shorter. Topics that cost too much newsprint get spun out at length in electrons. I find this fascinating. [Technorati tag: EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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From Jimmy Wales, on a mailing list, talking about someone criticizing Wikipedia because (they claim) students read it uncritically:

Wikipedia invites critical dialogue with the text in a way that Britannica never could. I mean this not only in the metaphorical sense of “dialogue” — in that you can review the history of a Wikipedia article, and the discussion page, and thus come to a more informed understanding of theeditorial choices that were made. But I also mean this in a literal sense: with Wikipedia, you can simply click to ask the authors aquestions, and they will actually answer you. You can leave a note on individual author pages, or on the talk page of the article, or you can even edit the article itself.

What encyclopedia in history ever supported the notion of critical analysis so thoroughly?

[Technorati tags: wikipedia EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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