Here we are on the cusp of of the year 2010. Most of the notable social prejudices of the 20th Century have been outlawed or at the least are in a back pedal motion as the majority of society sees the err or their ways. Almost all groups that is except for a minority (a more prevalent minority than any of us realizes): Atheists.

Religious freedom apparently isn’t truly free in Asheville North Carolina where Cecil Bothwell was asked to step down from his publicly elected office because he does not believe in the Almighty.

I have to laugh or else I’ll cry because I live in a sci-fi world of the Dark Ages. I thought Religious Freedom was one of the mandates upon which the United States of America was founded.

I said to a friend yesterday:
“I’m so confused about one of the Constitutional rights… what does ‘Freedom of Religion’ mean?”

And he responded saying:
“It means freedom for the dominant religion to decide what freedom means.”

This case will likely go in favor of Bothwell, but I think it could make for a very interesting legal direction if the case goes towards allowing religious faith to become a privacy matter. Akin to medical knowledge of a person.

It may become unconstitutional to compel someone to publicly announce their religious faith (or lack thereof). In a certain sense it would be the best way to protect people from faith based discrimination. There are faith haters out there for every type of faith there is: Buddhists hated, Hindus, Evangelical Christians, the list goes on and on for those hated for their beliefs. In fact, every religion has haters. Even those people who have no religion.

In our sci-fi accelerated society of pocket computers, women that vote, gays that marry, it seems off putting to say the least that we have such a Dark Ages rule lingering in as many as 7 of our states’ constitutions…

Source: http://bit.ly/atheist-leave
“Critics of Cecil Bothwell cite N.C. bar to atheists” by Jordan Schrader • December 8, 2009

So I finally got an iPhone. It took two years for me to decide. In that time a lot has changed. iPhone has evolved, and so too has the world around it.

“A computer in my pocket.”

That’s been the best description of the iPhone I’ve ever heard. And now that I have one, it has become even more so.

This post is, of course, provided by my iPhone!

This is the hardest post I’ve ever written. My cat of the past 10 years, Tiamat, passed away yesterday. He was the smartest cat I’ve ever met. He was my first cat. Tiatmat was a heavy set fellow, alright, he was overweight. But he seemed quite comfortable in it, and wore it well. He was all black save a few white hairs on his chest. He played fetch with me when he was young, followed me, played chase with me. He was in the witchy sense, my familiar.

I noticed he wasn’t feeling well. He started throwing up, then he became incontinent. I contracted a serious flu on Saturday, today is Friday. So maybe there were more tale-tale signs, but I was bedridden. We noticed he wasn’t eating, and we were getting worried. So we brought him down to be with us in the bedroom where I was laid up. He stopped being able to walk on his own the day before yesterday, and we noticed blood in his urine. He also started mewling for me. I felt horrid, I was in so much pain from the flu I was shivering constantly, sweating, feverish. I laid on the floor with him and stroked his fur. Occasionally he would purr, and if I crawled back into bed he would mewl for me again.

We took him to West Market Veterinary Hospital http://westmarketvets.com/. Now I was hopeful when we took him in, but I also knew I had limited means and medical problems can often become quite expensive. Dr. Elizabeth Murray was our attending veterinarian. She was very considerate, very kind, and very clear. Tiamat’s temperature had dropped so far it wouldn’t even register on the thermometer. The decision was either let him suffer or give him peace. I elected to put my friend to sleep and ease his suffering. He seemed very peaceful in the end.

I also want to recommend West Market Veterinary Hospital to everyone in Greensboro, NC. This vet was the best one I have ever dealt with. They are now our regular vet. Please keep this local business in mind if you have pets that need care. They also offer boarding.

My life will be an adjustment. I will miss him, my familiar. I love you Tiamat. Thank you for all the years of comfort you brought me.

In my humble opinion:

The Kindle is grossly overpriced and their digital books are overpriced as well. I can buy a netbook for the cost of a Kindle, and the netbook contains much more processing potential and power. With the advent of new, cheaper to produce technologies am I really so out of line to expect lower pricing? EBooks are not much less than the paper versions. Yet, delivery of the content costs a fraction of the price conventional books cost. And, this one is the kicker: there is no inventory issue attached. You deliver the ebooks as they are purchased, no unsold inventory to worry about.

The Kindle is an early adopter’s toy. But it is not a sustainable, long term solution. The profit model worries me because it does not deliver enough value added to the end consumer. Especially considering Amazon.com reached into hundreds of Kindle owners’ machines and removed their purchase of the ebook 1984. I understand the copyright of the book was in dispute, but what it showed is the books purchased are ultimately “loaned”, not owned.

Your comments are most welcome, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and replies.

I’ve learned how to operate paper books while Twitter has been down… Now I understand why the web always refers to “pages”.

Twitter Stream:

> Beware of non-humans escaped from District 9. Call 866-666-6001 (toll free) to report them to MNU. via @MultiNationalU
> Great/hilarious marketing ad in the LA weekly for District 9 flick. Which looks great btw. http://twitpic.com/6mnmi via @surfindolphin7
> District-9 –> http://www.d-9.com/ Looks like a badass documentary on the aliens that landed in Africa. via @brandonpierce

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I was checking out Yahoo Movies when I can across this one. The 1-866 number is real, well, it’s a real message service owned and operated by Song Pictures. The documentary style of the movie translates into a “realism” echo. The toll-free narc line, the warning labels. This is Reality TV artificial at its finest. Best In Show, Blair Witch, Cloverdale, its not a totally unique idea, but the execution is impressive nonetheless.

I’m excited, I can’t wait to see what they do next. H.G. Wells would be proud… or is it Orwell that would eat this up?

SocialFresh is a marketing expo for social media.
http://socialfresh.com/
http://twitter.com/sofresh

@dhatfield first turned me on to SocialFresh with her tweet about them last week.

@dhatfield @socialfresh Getting my Social Fresh! http://bit.ly/1mINs1

I attended a morning siminar on social media this past week at the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship. StrategicGuru was a guest speaker for a talk that Phase3Communications hosted.

It was interesting to hear more perspective on this. We social-media-starlets are all of us pioneers in exploring what this new way of communicating and expressing will become. SocialFresh’s conference looks like a great way to extend the conversation.

Am I selling out by accepting their offer of 50% Off my registration for writing this BLOG? Yes, in a sense. Or you could say: I just got paid $100 an hour to write this, paid in trade for my time. $100 off my ticket in exchange for my efforts, that works for me.

Another reason I’m writing this: I think SocialFresh proves a point by offering this discount to those who write a BLOG post about the SocialFresh conference. Social media is a viral, organic, medium. SocialFresh’s offer will likely spread in a very viral way from one BLOG poster to another. I respect a conference on social media that embraces that in their marketing of the event.

Please comment below with a link to your SocialFresh BLOG post, I’m curious to see the contagion pattern on this…

Social Networking has begun to accelerate noticeably in the past few years. From ICARUS to Facebook, it’s a climb towards… well, what is it climbing towards? Total telepathic immersion?

I bet when you saw that title you thought this might be some sort of rambling, epic post. Or a deeper insight into something profound… Well, probably not. It’s more likely to be some meandering thought train that peters out sometime before it really even resolves.

Is the Singularity approaching? Will we suddenly have HoloDeck-like powers and morph and twist our surroundings into whatever we want? That’s not really part of this post either.

No, the sideways expressions are the strange language accents we now use in text based communications: emoticons.

It’s kind of like hand gesturing or eyebrow raising. It accents our instant-messaging, text-rich, communications. Without it we might not know someone was just poking fun.

And WTF is that expression of surprise, like LOL, it too accents. But, hell, if you are reading this you already know all that. I don’t have Followers that aren’t at least that initiated.

Live long and prosper.

Bush came to Greensboro to honor a local volunteer and mentoring program today. Which was very nice of him to do. However, I couldn’t help but notice how many police had to be involved for Bush’s visit. That’s a lot of tax payer dollars at work.

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to fly a group of the honored volunteers up to D.C in first class, with five star rating hotels to stay in, than have the entire Greensboro police force out there? They had to block every driveway, every intersection for the route the President took. Seems like a frivolous waste of taxpayer dollars in a time when our economy is sliding deeper into recession and corporate bailouts are the norm…

Why am I surprised George W. Bush would waste tax payer dollars?

These photos are were taken at the intersection of Benjamin Parkway and Westover Terrace:

Konarka Technologies, a startup based in Lowell, MA, has opened a mass production factory building solar power panels using organic polymers. Applied similarly to ink jet printers and photographic film, thus further lowering the cost of production.

This factory is part of our economy’s first steps towards a stable renewable energies sector. American jobs for Americans. It is anticipated the factory will produce yearly up to one gigawatt of power through the solar panels manufactured, the equivalent of one nuclear power plant.

Read the article now at TechnologyReview.com ->
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21574/

Learn more about Konarka Technologies ->
http://www.konarka.com/