Coty's Weblog

SoCon07

Responding to Haynie’s recent tag reminded me that I’ve neglected to promote an event that he has been working on and that I’m planning to attend: SoCon07.

SoCon07 is an unconference focused on social media, social networks, Web 2.0, and all that relatively loosely defined but arguably quite interesting stuff. It will be taking place on February 10th starting at 8am and continuing until 3:30pm in the first floor auditorium of the brand new Social Science Building at Kennesaw State University. There are other related events the evening before and the evening of the event. See the official schedule for details.

If you are here or near here and interested, then go sign up. It is free and open.

Hope to see you there.

It's Not You. It's Them.

Jon Swift is dead on in his post on Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year.

They have been all over they place this year. Threatening our heterosexual marriages. Invading our borders and taking our jobs. Not standing up so that we can stand down. Wanting to cut and run. Gays, Mexicans, Iraqis, Liberals, and so many others. Who else has had such an impact? I wish it had been you, or better yet, we, but it was definitely them.

10 Years

I don't really do much posting of a terribly personal nature here. However, I thought I would mention that today marks 10 years of marriage for me and my lovely wife. Given the homosexual assault on marriage that we've endured during that time, I think that is something.

Sure, it was nip and tuck when an activist judge thwarted the will of the majority and struck down a state amendment banning same sex marriage. (I mean, seriously, this is Atlanta. There is a lot of temptation here if that option is open.) Just in time, though, our Supreme Court overruled that judge and upheld the amendment.

Café Du Monde

Perhaps it was seeing Dr. John and The Neville Brothers the other night, but when I saw a can of Café Du Monde coffee and chicory at WholeFoods while I was getting lunch today, I had to get it.

New Orleans has different associations for different people. Eating beignets at the Cafe Du Monde is a strong one for me. I think I've probably been there at just about every time of day.

Can't wait to make it tomorrow morning.

Life, The Universe, and Jackie Robinson

Given the geeky tone of this weblog, it probably won't come as a surprise for me to reveal that I'm not much of a sports fan. What little awareness I have of current events in sports comes via NPR.

So, today I heard the end of a report on the anniversary tomorrow of Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier in baseball. The report mentioned that Jackie Robinson's number was being retired not only by his team but by every major league team. That number was 42. Being the geek I am, I couldn't help thinking of the other significance of that number.

BTW, though it isn't surprising, I didn't know until researching this a bit that Google's calculator knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Not much of Mardi Gras left, but we had a good one. Since we're pretty far from New Orleans and we're Episcopalians, it was really a Shrove Tuesday celebration at our church, but it was fun, nevertheless—particularly for the kids. Plus, I'm always up for pancakes for dinner.

We came home to find we had received a king cake from a good friend (and fellow Episcopalian) from Baton Rouge. We got home too late to eat any, so we'll have to extend Mardi Gras a bit into tomorrow.

Remembered Racism

As I noted in the earlier post, I grew up in the South, and though it was well after the end of segregation, there was still racism. (There still is, and American racism hardly confined to the South. That is where I grew up, though, and where this takes place.)

Anyway, sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, I remember a friend had a birthday party at a local swim club. One of our friends who was black was turned away because he was black. Now, this was just a neighborhood swim club. It was private—but nothing special. (Not that being some fancy club would have made it right. It is just that being what it was makes it seem even more petty somehow.) I don't know whether any of us knew about it at the time, and I don't really remember when my mother told me about it. I wish I could say we had all stood in solidarity with our friend and refused to go in without him. We didn't, though. The party went on, and sometime later I learned about it.

So, this isn't a story of even a minor stand against racism. Just a remembrance of some petty racism from not long enough ago. I guess the reason I put it here is probably because I told the story not long ago to someone only a bit younger than I, and he was truly shocked because he thought things like that were "history." He couldn't believe that it was a story from my childhood.

Selma

Forty years ago in Selma, Alabama, state troopers and "volunteer officers" attacked civil rights marchers on their way from the Brown's Chapel Methodist Church in Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.

I hope children in school today are learning much more about this atrocity than I did growing up in the South not that many years after the incident.

I thought NPR had good coverage in Remembering Alabama's 'Bloody Sunday' and Activists Mark 40th Anniversary of Selma March. I found this story on the state trooper whose shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson sparked the event was particularly compelling: Revisiting a Civil Rights-Era Shooting.

Much has changed since then, but not as much as should have.

The Kindness of Strangers

I’d like to thank everyone out there who has been digitizing The Daily Show and the new Battlestar Galactica. I’ve been downloading via BitTorrent some episodes that I’d missed to watch while I’m recuperating from knee surgery. (Arthroscopic—not a big deal.) We don’t have a TV in the bedroom, but I do have my PowerBook. If I had Windows machines at home, I could use TiVoToGo™, but I don’t, and I’m pretty sure that is not a job for VirtualPC. Since TiVo’s chairman is apparently a Mac fan, I hope I will have that option in the not too distant future.

The inboxes are back! The inboxes are back!

Like Liz, I'm ever so happy. I missed them terribly. mamamusings is one of the inputs to mine.

Jeff pointed out that I could have worked around their absence by subscribing to various del.icio.us feeds, but I just like browsing my inbox better.

Thanks, Josh!