“Being a mom could be a 6-figure job”

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Salary.com got some deserved buzz last week for their report on the valuation of mother’s work. According to the report, the work a stay at home mom would be valued at, if earning a paycheck, could be well into six figures.

Give their salary wizard a try. It says the median paycheck that Richelle would earn in our area is $143,754. If that seems high to you, then you have no idea the hard, complex, or challenging, the work a stay at home mom performs, day in and day out.

Here’s the thing – though it’s nice to see some hard dollars and cents as a way to recognize what stay at home moms do, there seems something sad that Salary.com’s wizard got so much coverage. In a real way it continues to confirm just how much we take them for granted. In the end, there is no way I could put a price tag on what Richelle does. Even though I am a full partner here, priceless wouldn’t be an adequate word to describe it. And single mom’s like my mom? I have no idea, no idea, how they do it.

I don’t think there are many men that think this way anymore, but if you’re a “man” with a wife who works her ass off all day and you don’t contribute at home, not only are you missing out, you deserve your ass kicked. And if you’re a man, who like me, may help but sometimes doesn’t say thanks enough, well just keep in mind that Mother’s day should be every day.

Maybe Doc’s Right?

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I have a line in one of my songs that laments that “I learned about life at the age of 3, had it all their on my TV screen” so I can attest what happens when you expose a kid to too much media too soon – that’s me as an early teen on the right btw.

But the web is far more empowering. Not like passive media at all. If MySpace was available when I was a teenager – I would have been all over it. I probably would have found new outlets for expression. I probably wouldn’t have felt so lonely.

But maybe I’m lucky it wasn’t?

The great many things I know I fucked up while learning to be a man, aren’t all over the web, to be findable and usable forever by those that want to do so.

I didn’t have responsible and knowing parenting that would have educated me to the consequences of living life so in the open with so many. And I haven’t grown so old as to forget that my teenage years were messy, confusing, and sometimes downright ugly. I’m happy to have lived them – I wouldn’t change them – they made me who I am – but thank the Lord it’s difficult to exploit them. They are difficult to exploit because because they weren’t public, cached, searchable and available for all to see in perpetuity.

Maybe my childhood is an example of an edge case. But I feel a responsibility to ask if is not.

Back on April 5th I wrote a small piece in response to the concern Doc Searls posted over media consumption and children, including the net. I pretty much agreed with him, but wondered aloud how he would handle it when his son ventures onto MySpace. He came by and replied in a comment:

Ya’ll missed some modifiers. I said,

“I think letting *small* children watch TV is like giving them Quaaludes. I also think kids in their *most *formative years*…”

So I’m talking about young kids here: from 1 to 6 years old; or, to stretch it a bit, through age 9 or 10.

Thirteen year olds are another matter. I wasn’t talking about them, and I’ll gladly defer to the expertise of Danah and others on what MySpace and Xanga and Second Life and World of Warcraft might mean for them.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a 9-year-old kid who still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and who loves to swim and play basketball and read books. From what I can tell so far, the stories and lessons he’s getting from those books, and from his Waldorf School (where none of his peers, for what it’s worth, watch much TV or use computers… yet), will help equip him to be a discerning and independent soul in the Connected World where he and his peers will spend plenty of time in their teenage years and beyond.

I definitely missed the modifiers. Read his post again. He did make a distinction between being a teenager and not.

More behind the scenes tech

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Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us: “Things to look out for when building a large application”

NASA: Object Oriented Data Technology: is a project run at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. OODT makes data discovery, query optimization, information correlation, and format conversion a snap.. Interesting presentation to watch: Better Web App Development – Django, Rails, Turbo Gears, Zope and J2EE.

Database War Stories #6: O’Reilly Research, previously Second Life, Bloglines and Memeorandum, Flickr, NASA World Wind, and Craigslist.

In September 1985: Frank Zappa’s Letter to His Fan Club

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In 1985 Frank Zappa sent a letter to his fan club to warn them about the “Wives of Big Brother” – the PMRC.

There is very much I agree with Democratic party on, but whenever some of its leaders find common cause with social conservatives, most likely in pursuit of middle America, it drives me to a place where I find both parties bereft of principal and unworthy of my vote. The 90s seemed to be a time we were past such things, even if I know people who didn’t vote for Al Gore because of Tipper Gore’s involvement in the PMRC. But the echoes in Hillary Clinton’s Family Entertainment Protection Act are too strong to ignore. The legislation Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Evan Bayh is sponsoring would fine the sale of labeled games – it does not propose labeling. No one would argue over the constitutionality of labeling these days. Our view of our constitutional rights has grown far narrower.

Following is Frank Zappa on Crossfire in 1986, debating censorship and rock music. It’s an eye opener. He called himself a conservative. Do you think he still would consider himself one since the fundamentalist wing of the Republican party holds so much sway? Since the non-invasive government, balanced budget, rule-of-law conservative is effectively extinct (they’re Democrats now)? For humor, the exchange between Washington Times columnist John Lofton and Frank Zappa over the “obscenity” of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” is priceless. Or then again, you could find it depressing.

The exchange from 08:45 in the video to 11:40 is as timely today as it was in 1986. Zappa said that America was on a march toward a “fascist theocracy”. Well what do you think?


link

This exchange should speak to many locally involved folks I know:

Q: What would you tell a kid he aught to hope for now a-days Frank?

A: What I tell kids and what I’ve been telling kids for quite some time is first, register to vote, and second as soon as you’re old enough, run for something.

Damn straight. And that’s just what is taking place. Look out establishment.

More at Metafilter. Read the testimony committee testimony on record labeling from back in September 19, 1985.

Alice Cooper for Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame

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Rock n’ Roll shouldn’t have a hall of fame. It just shouldn’t. Official ‘recognition’ of Rock artists devalues and degrades the core of what Rock is all about. Now getting past that, since there is a “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”, the fact that Alice Cooper isn’t in it, just goes to show just how broken it is.

Bob Lefsetz: This Week�s Podcast – Alice Cooper

A VC: Nuggets

Kent Newsome: Another Vote for Alice

Stephen Colbert White House Correspondents Dinner BitTorrent

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Download a high quality version here. Colbert’s piece begins at 0:52:10. 625 Seeders and 1677 Leechers so far. Wow. This will be remembered for a long, long time.

My thoughts: the negative reaction coming from many on the pro-Bush bandwagon is, unfortunately, par for the course these days�as is the celebration of Bush�s �bravery,� especially when there are no real consequences for engaging in meanspirited political humor other than, say, being thought a dick.

Politically, I think it�s fair to observe that we�ve reached that point of partisan purity wherein a certain activist segment of the American Right has decided, en masse, to pretend to believe a whole number of things that are objectively false (including, in this case, Bush�s genius)�and they have decided to do so in order to build consensus and then use groupthink as a political bludgeon, even it comes at the expense of their integrity and intellectual honesty.

Ends justify the means, man. Ends justify the means�

And yes, these three paragraphs are a complete reversal of Jeff Goldstein‘s words, simply replacing “fawning” for “negative”, “Bush” for “Colbert” and “Right” for “Left’.

I need to write a bookmarklet that anyone can use on any blog post by those that follow their party no matter where it goes, even if it’s off a cliff, fighting to defend its brand over facing reality.

Philly Future news and a lawsuit you should know about

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I’m happy to announce that my membership to the Media Bloggers Association, for Philly Future, was approved. See Philly Future for the details. Congrats to all the new members, which I see includes Seth 🙂

Also on Philly Future, we are helping spread word about Maine Web Report and the multi-million dollar federal lawsuit it has been hit with.

MBA will be helping defend Lance Dutson who blogs for Maine Web Report. Maine Web Report is a service very much in the spirit of Philly Future, and what Lance Dutson is dealing with is illustrative of the threats we face. Scratch that – the threats you face.

Whenever you speak truth to power you take a massive risk. A risk where those with more resources then you can crush you and your family thru the legal system. Newspapers have numerous measures of defense that enable them to do the work that they do, but bloggers, by and large, operate without a net (no pun intended). Make sure you read the EFF’s legal guide for bloggers if you have not done so.

“the more it starts to look like real life”

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Slate: Paul Boutin: A grand unified theory of YouTube and MySpace:

When trying to rope in the movie and TV studios, YouTube should point to MySpace, where A-listers like Eminem peddle their wares alongside unsigned bands and lip syncers. MySpace makes it easy for musicians, kids, and grandparents to post their own pages by removing the technical hurdles. I created a profile page in three minutes, complete with an auto-play jingle. I’d planned to upload an MP3 of a band I used to play in, until I found they already have their own MySpace page. Clicking “Add” instantly copied the song from their page onto mine. Another one-click tool imported my Gmail and Hotmail address books so I could mass-invite everyone to join me.

MySpace isn’t that much easier to use than Friendster, or than other shared-user-content sites like Flickr (photo sharing), del.icio.us (bookmarks), or Digg (tech news). But it mixes multiple publishing models–blogs, photos, music, videos, friend networks–into one personal space. Most important, it doesn’t presume to know what your goals are. The site’s management ditched their early focus as a home for musicians when they realized Margaret Cho and my crazy friend Kenny wanted spaces of their own. Next, MySpace may let marketers set up profiles for brands. That’s a great idea–the same people who’ll bitch about Snickers having a page will add Wikipedia as their friend.

I think MySpace’s popularity has to do with its puppylike accessibility. A typical page looks like something a Web-enthralled high schooler might have put up in 1996, but with more pics and a soundtrack. I agree with design guru Jesse James Garrett, who says the site’s untrained layout sends a “we’re just like you” message to newcomers. That encourages them to experiment with content genres the site’s designers didn’t build into templates. If tech builders want to hand the controls over to their users, shouldn’t they presume they haven’t thought of everything? Apple’s iWeb publishing system is easy to use and way more attractive than MySpace, but we’d have gotten old waiting for Apple to invent a Lip Sync Video template.

The secret to success is to make everything one-button easy, then get out of the way. If you think collaborative architecture matters more, click the charts: The same Alexa plots that show MySpace and YouTube obliterating top sites reveal that Flickr, Digg and del.icio.us have plateaued with audiences barely bigger than Slate’s. Photos, news, and other people’s bookmarks just aren’t as interesting as bootleg TV and checking out the hotties. The easier it gets to use, the less geeky the Net becomes, and the more it starts to look like real life (emphasis mine – Karl).

“Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey”

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I can’t wait for Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen’s anthropological look at Heavy Metal to be released on DVD later this month. Yahoo! had a writeup about the film earlier in the week.

Check out “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey”‘s trailer.

From a Chicago Tribune review:

Unlike the current youth movement Emo, metal was never “a way to understand your loneliness,” says music writer and pop-culture sensei Chuck Klosterman, “but it’s a way to feel a part of something larger than yourself.” So Dunn travels to Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival to mosh with 40,000 other metalheads and experience that larger-than-life adrenaline rush that makes otherwise intelligent kids thrash their heads toward permanent brain damage.

Touching on sex, religion and violence, Dunn zooms through the history of metal (the genre is rooted in blues and, more obviously, classical), rattling off a mind-blowing list of musical subgenres, from heavy to punk to British to black to speed to death to hair –to name a few.

From Ruthless Reviews:

…this wonderfully entertaining movie doesn’t pit bands against each other, or foolishly attempt to argue in favor of Megadeth’s importance while picking on “lesser” bands like Motley Crue and Poison. From glam to progressive, black metal to thrash, it’s all the same silly, loveable music. It made us laugh, helped us accept a solitary prom night, and allowed us to feel superior to those burdened by the bad taste of associating with Duran Duran or Wham. Metal is a dying giant to be sure, and is rarely discussed without some sort of VH1 “Where are They Now?” detachment, but fans remain; scattered and low key, perhaps, but still in love with a style of music that always managed to piss somebody off. It was about rebellion, arrogance, and hate, yes, but also the true spirit of the form — being an individual. Sure, we always exaggerated the impact, and more often than not the lyrics were nothing more than the umpteenth derivation of fucking a slut in the back of the tour bus, but we could read between the lines, even then. All we knew was that our parents hated it, Congress sought to act against it, and for the time it took to finish a cassette or LP, we felt like gods. Zit-ridden, painfully shy, and inept on all fronts, but gods nonetheless.

My kinda movie.