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Repeat after me: Don’t discuss politics with friends.

I have far too many left-leaning friends with whom I have extremely strong differences of opinion to engage in political debate with them. They tend to all come at me at once, so that I feel like I’m being ganged up on by them and their (from my perspective) ill-informed views.

It’s not conducive to legitimate discussion, and I always wind up offended and frustrated, which usually results in me storming off in a huff.

Here are a few examples of ways good friends can force me to withdraw from a political discussion in sheer exasperation:

As we have said in previous post the power of the video have no limits. Just think about the images that we saw coming from the Beijing Olympics ceremony, or the images we saw coming from the quick war between Russia and Georgia.  But there are other important issues that go uncovered. There are heart-breaking stories that go unheard. What news networks tend to cover are the political side of the issues, but hardly the human side. The reason being that they think they are not news worthy.

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Google's Power Play in Politics via Google Reader ?

Here is the link :

http://www.google.com/powerreaders

In case you want individual power readers in politics -

Jeremy Heimans, founding director of Purpose Campaigns, tells us how www.getup.org.au" rel="nofollow">GetUp.org became the largest political organization in Australia and why I shouldn't be so cynical about the grassroots' ability to shape global discourse.

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Thanks to
idiocracy for the heads up. Though this poster is not yet “officially” endorsed by B.H.O.’s campaign, the art is being pushed as their own “symbol” by some off his strongest supporters. The poster itself remains really funny in either case.

One Nation, Under a New Obama Salute
If a Los Angeles creative agency gets its way, [...]

I thought I'd write a short entry about a new site that we've put up pretty quickly for the Democratic Convention. We're building a joint blogging platform that aggregates in the different bloggers who are covering the Democratic Convention.

It's a Drupal site that aggregates different bloggers. It filters the blogs by keywords, and automatically assigns appropriate tags to the blogs, and then builds different pages based on those taxonomies.

At the moment we have 31 of the 124 bloggers at the convention aggregating their streams (including me). We're also pulling in some pictures, videos, and other content from the Internet.

After the convention we intend to expand this model to cover political and placeblogger sites from around the country.

The 2008 presidential race has and continues to be good for america and the wider world, one of the things its proved is that you don't need to have deep pockets or connections to win, Barack Obama is proof of that, he defeated Hilary Clinton despite being a new comer.

It has also energised alot of young people to become active, it has made them realise they can make a difference. As for the rest of the world, It has given us something to dream about! 

This entry originally appeared in the Portland Oregonian on June 20, 2008 under the title "Climate Change's Other Inconvenience." 

By WeBuyItGreen:  promoting green living, fair trade and tap water

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Eric Odom talks to us about how the Sam Adams Alliance is using open source software to bring transparency to the corners of American democracy that often go overlooked.

Jed Sundwall: What is the stated mission of the Sam Adams Alliance?

Eric Odom: The Sam Adams Alliance has existed for a year and a half. It's a 501(c)3 that focuses and education and information and it also has 501(c)4 because of our work across the country with activists and leadership training.

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During the first NetSquared Conference (N2Y1), technology futurist, Paul Saffo, spoke with Lucy Bernholz and Howard Rheingold about "disruptive technologies" that cause significant changes in the way that individuals live, businesses operate, or society behaves during a session entitled, "Making the Most of Disruption." (Watch it on FORA.tv. Listen to it on the NetSquared Podcast).

Brian Dear, founder of Eventful, talks to us about how structuring event data is helping people find the events that matter to them and their communities.

What does Eventful do?

Eventful's mission is to help people discover, track, create, and share events. Basically, we want to provide worldwide comprehensive service to help people find events everywhere. We're trying to address a major need that the Internet hasn't met until now, which is basically a search engine dedicated to event discovery.

We're trying to exploit technology to the fullest to help people with one particular niche, albeit a very large niche. On any given day, probably 50 million events go on throughout the world.

"If you are a political hack who is dealing with life in a networked age, or a hacker who is into politics and wants to drive change forward, this is the place to be."--Micah Sifry

This year's 5th Annual Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) has been expanded to two days, June 23-24, and will be held in New York City at Rose Hall, the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

This is a phrase I’m growing tired of - quickly - during this presidential candidacy. I’m not sure who penned the original term but I’ve seen it used widely this season. Most recently, the governor of West Virginia used the term to discuss why Barack Obama lost West Virginia in a landslide to Hillary Clinton. He’s trying to defend the opposition view that West Virginia still has race issues and Obama lost it simply because he didn’t spend enough time pressing flesh, aka shaking hands.

As those of us in the United States settle into our extended weekend this Memorial Day, I think it’s important not to forget that it’s not just a day off from work.  It’s a time to remember those who’ve paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country.

Thank you to everyone who’s served, from the Revolution to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  You have my deepest respect and appreciation.

And a quick note to my colleagues at Mozilla (whether employees or contributors): have a good weekend, but be careful out there!