Digg This: Hijacked No More

Back in the summer of 2010, there was a tempest in a teapot about a group of conservative Diggers who were supposedly "censoring" Digg.

A group of about 100 Diggers calling themselves the Digg Patriots were apparently using the "bury" feature to regularly bury liberal stories. This shocking discovery was made by Alternet, a blog that may actually be farther to the left than I was when I was young and stupid. I will not dignify the articles by posting links to them here.

The alternet article must be written by the same people who think the mainstream media is too conservative. Other articles currently featured on this blog have titles like

"What Happened When Fundamentalist Christians Tried to "Cure" Me of Homosexuality"

"Why Are Believers So Hostile Toward Atheists?"

"Brave Woman Who Grabbed Clip from Shooter Blames Right-Wing Media and Rhetoric ... In Fox News Interview"

Really?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

On what planet is Digg in danger of being snatched away from the many thousands of pornified, pro-marijuana, pro-gay, pro-abortion, anti-gun, anti-Israel, anti-Christian Digg users by a group of 100 conservatives?  When I first got on Digg in 2006 or 2007 conservative stories on the front page or anywhere else were nearly nonexistent. Just because there are more than there used to be doesn't mean there isn't still a gross imbalance in favor of left leaning articles.

I have actually learned to love these guys, even the ones with whom there are no words to describe how vehemently I disagree. I have been where they are, and believed what they believe with equal fervor. Maybe they will change their minds one day, maybe not. I did, but it did not render me unable to have a conversation, or to "agree to disagree."

I don't happen to care for burying stories, even ones I don't like. I feel very strongly that having to hear speech I don't like is a reasonable price of a free society. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean other people shouldn't have the right to read it, though I will bury comments that are blasphemous, racist, or just plain evil.  If I don't like something, I don't digg it.  On the other side of that coin, I have often dugg stories that I did not agree with because they made me think, or I found them otherwise worthy of recognition. My liberal Digg friends know that I am willing to digg all kinds of stories.

Winston Churchill is said to have observed, “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”  The youth of most of the Diggers I know accounts for most of their opinions. But Churchill also said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” This is where many of the progressive Diggers fall short. They shout and name-call, but do not actually listen to opposing views, preferring to bury them instead. Perhaps the Digg Patriots felt that organized burying was the only way to balance the coverage.

I can remember once submitting an article about Barbara Bush recovering from a heart attack, just because I thought it was newsworthy. That was before I understood the anti-Bush vitriol on Digg that prevented any serious consideration of any article that even mentioned the name. The story was buried in the first couple of minutes. It wasn't a political story, just acknowledgment of a serious health issue experienced by a former First Lady that would have been newsworthy had it been about Hillary Clinton.

One of the charges leveled at the Digg Patriots is that they had multiple accounts, and when some of them were "banned for life" they came back in another incarnation.

Please. This happened every day of the week. Where was the outrage when liberals did this?

Anyway, that was before the unveiling of the publisher-heavy Digg 2.0, or 3.0 or whatever they are calling it. As far as I am concerned, that was the final demise of the "social" part of Digg that started when they took away the shout feature.

There is still a lot of interesting news on Digg, but it is no longer a daily, obsessive destination for me. I digg intermittently, and I am still in touch with a lot of the people I met there. I still follow a lot of the interesting blogs and sites I would never have known about if not for Digg. It is a great place to find out what the OtherSide is thinking.  But there are other social bookmarking/voting sites that have more appeal for me these days.

Glad to have my life back.

Photo credit: tutorial-net.blogspot.com

Ames's Window Optical Illusion Will Blow Your Mind

Ames's Window Optical Illusion Will Blow Your Mind

Shared via AddThis

Utterly Off Topic Wednesday: 10 Publicity Stunts That Attracted Thousands of People

Bra-banded band, pimpthisbum.com and Time standing still in New York’s Grand Central Station are amongst the list of the publicity stunts that got the attention of thousands of people. I would have to say that the omission of the Where in the World is Matt? campaign that got people dancing all over the world is glaring.But if you have a chance to check out the original videos of these events, they will make you smile.

Trends via TrendHunter.com.

I promise I will be getting back to the topic of home business, with an emphasis on using social media. Unless you have been living under a rock, you are probably familar at least with the names of the sites MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Digg. You have already seen some prior posts that reference one or more of these sites. I'll get back to that in another article. But count me out for the rest of the week as I go on vacation to celebrate my 24th wedding anniversary!

read more | digg story

Digg This: The Hijacking of a Life Part 1

Maybe you have wondered where I have been, maybe you haven't.

After posting daily since July 2008, I suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. I only posted a few times in February, and only one of those was not a repost of TGIF or some other article written by someone else.

I have been hanging out on Digg.

For the Christian homeschooler, the world of Digg is, well, another galaxy far, far away. You can count on seeing plenty of profanity, blasphemy, obscenity, tirades against "fundies", and the parroting of every pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, socialist platitude that young, liberated wannabes have been spouting for a hundred years. Oh, there are other conservatives, and other Christians, and I have found some of them. But for the most part, I have been wandering in the lion's den.

Populated largely by twenty-something techies, gamer guys, atheists, and liberals of every stripe, it doesn't sound like a place that would even be a little attractive to someone like me - a fifty-something, conservative Christian homeschooling mom.

And at first, it wasn't. But there was something strangely familiar about it...it has taken me this long to figure out what it was.

What it is.

It is a window back in time --back to the pre-video game, pre-pc, pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-ATM, pre-calculator time when I was a college student spouting the same tirades against "fundies", pro-marijuana, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, marxist egalitarian platitudes and reading Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, and liberation theology.

Back to recession. The Oil Crisis and gas rationing. Stagflation. The Dow under 600. (Not 6,000 - 600.) Unemployment.

To Iranian students marching fifteen abreast down Peachtree Street shouting "The Shah is a US Puppet, Down with the Shah!" To posters depicting Rev. Sun Myung Moon that declared "October 30 Could Be Your Re-Birthday!" To Skylab and Spiro Agnew. Siddhartha. USSR. Abortion still illegal.

To Kent State, the Symbianese Liberation Army, Wounded Knee, Nixon in China, the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, M*A*S*H, the legalization of abortion, Watergate, and those newfangled devices - VCR's and calculators.

Let's fast forward that old VCR - where are we now?

US offering to cancel an important defense project in exchange for Russia's cooperation in blocking Iranian missile plans. Reverend Wright.

Hillary in China, an African American president, $40,000 per year college educations, Hamas in Gaza, legalization of medical marijuana, rising worldwide hatred of Israel, 50,000,000 abortions performed and counting, Octo-mom, Blackwater, Gitmo, waterboarding.

Bush and Cheney, legalization of medical marijuana, reality TV, and technology advancing at breakneck speed.

Recession, bailout, stimulus, unemployment. The Dow threatening to go below 6,000.

Profanity, blasphemy, obscenity, tirades against "fundies." And college students spouting pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, marxist egalitarian platitudes and reading Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, and liberation theology. Same song, second verse.

A really important question, then, is why is it so addictive?

Photo credit: tutorial-net.blogspot.com

Home schooled athletes face obstacles to play basketball

Photo: Washington Times

Rebecca Reifsnider is a 5-10 junior, a top rebounder and scorer among girls high school basketball players in Frederick County. She wants to play in college, and her coach believes she is good enough.Yet Reifsnider does not attend high school, public or private. She plays for the Frederick Warriors, a team of home-schooled students.

read more | digg story

Backdrop: I submitted this story on Digg because as a homeschooler I found it interesting. I was astonished when it went to the Digg front page and attracted no end of comments, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Homeschoolers, if your kids play sports, either on a homeschool team, a travel team, at a public or charter school, you will want to contribute your perspective to the lively debate.