frontline: is wal-mart good for america?

Tomorrow night frontline investigates wal-mart’s far reaching effects at home and across the world. Yeah, the show the other night didn’t connect the dots the way I had wished, but I’m sure it was an eye opener for many. This is bound to be the same.

A related blog I’d like you to see is Northeast Pennsylvania Whirl-Mart. It’s a great example of how a focused weblog can be a useful activism tool. Too many of us blog just to hear our own voices in the echo chamber.

Damn near the perfect RSS reader solution for the newbie

Finding and subscribing to RSS feeds is a bit of a hurdle for some folks. This solution makes it easy:

1. Use Firefox as your browser.
2. Use bloglines as your news aggregator.
3. Install the Livelines browser extension and configure it to add RSS feeds to Bloglines.
4. Whenever you are browsing a site that has an associated RSS feed (if its site maintainer has followed standard practices for publishing RSS feeds), you will see in Firefox’s lower right hand corner a Live Bookmarks icon. Click and choose the latest version of the feed that that site is publishing.
5. Bloglines will then ask you how you want the feed organized on your personalized page there.

Bingo – all done. No more “find RSS URI and copy, go to some form and paste, process.

Rule of Law is an American Value

But apparently it’s not for President Bush’s choice to replace Ashcroft – Alberto R. Gonzales.

Write your representatives and let them know that the former counsel of Enron isn’t fit for the post. We want a law enforcer. Not someone who writes the law as he goes along.

I like the theme. I’m going to continue it.

We’re re-connecting, but marketers have been working against it for the longest time

Tonight on frontline will be a documentary I hope you’ll take the time to see. Rushkoff, the author of the documentary (Wired) gives voice to a concern I’ve probably chatted the ear off of one too many people – that marketer’s slicing us into smaller and smaller sellable demographics is bad for our health, and he recognizes a truth that I believe in my heart – we have a need to connect to other people.

Should be an interesting show.