back yet again?

So my wife, the proprietor at The Dolli Mama's Vintage Warehouse was showing me her 'stats' and it was kind of inspiring to see how many people and countries have dropped by to check out her recipes. Don't blame them, it's good eatin'.

For my part, I've been busy trying to find enough WD 40 to move my project YourBeerNetwork along before every possible bit of craft beer/food programming has been developed, pitched, sold, produced, archived, and moved into late night cable re-runland. That would be three different internet elements, all reachable (such as they may be) by going to www.yourbeernetwork.com

The one thing I find about facebook is the suggestion, just by the mere architecture of it, to be brief, something as you may know, I've never been very good at. So as the stats for this site tell me that no one has yet visited from Mozambique, and just basic sense tells me not everyone is on facebook, let me leave a little something here for anyone who might drop by. This is from a thread I started on facebook based on the kid who recently got cyber-pushed off the GW Bridge:

I sent a letter to my Senator last night asking about new laws, or reinterpretations of existing ones and the approaches to enforcement concerning this world of cyber assault, one that operates on all sorts of levels, with a potential that's growing exponentially. At a loss to really say how I'd frame any change, I suggested that parents be held more responsible for their kids' actions in cyberspace. If they break a streetlight, a parent has to pay. if they taunt a kid to death, well... consequence is a great motivator to teach and control. Won't change the dark components of what makes us human, but how they are allowed to manifest themselves amongst others needs to be tended to in this new arena.

Social networks and the internet in general are game changers. Perhaps laws need to be passed that DO limit our freedoms a bit. Totally against my grain, and certainly the ACLU's and maybe even the Constitution, depending on who's sitting, but the internet is NOT an exclusively American enterprise. It is an entire world unto itself that lives throughout our existing world. Maybe some international law/regulation could allow us to protect ourselves without feeling we're setting 'local' precedent that would have ramifications elsewhere where we don't want it.

And last... maybe we can legislate Fox News out the door while we're at it.

After, a pal wrote: "WOW! I agree with you, Harv! Could we be getting more conservative in our old age or just a bit wiser?"

I just think we are simply recognizing that, in so many ways, Marshall McLuhan was right about how manifest the changes were going to be when this kind of technological environment took off, growing and accelerating at Einsteinian proportions. Call it his 'Global Nervous Breakdown' if you will. I mean, it's not even Science FICTION, it simply is what it is, and we're getting outpaced by it. It's like handing an automatic weapon to a really angry monkey.

First, there is evil. There's no arguing it. It exists. This applies to everyone, old and young.
Second, youth, specifically, gives us boundless energy, raging hormones, a weird sense of immortality and invulnerability in a cocktail with a sense of doom and TOTAL emotional vulnerability. Youth is where so many great things come from as we see much less consequence to our actions.
But experience isn't there, all the modifiers and equalizers that the experiences of life bring haven't been rolled out yet. A blessing and a curse. Many don't wish to do harm, but don't have the tools to see ahead or around the corner enough to understand the idea of avoiding doing harm.
"We didn't mean to drive him to suicide." True, but what you didn't do was anticipate how damaging this might be and AVOID creating such an environment.
The difference today is in the weaponry, both in the zeros and ones, and recent generations living in a couple worlds now... and when it comes to actual GUNS, a line got crossed a while back, a chilling one changing the relationship so many have with death. It REALLY is a different time and needs to be recognized as such.
A friend once observed that there was conscious evil and unconscious evil, he far preferring to be face to face with the conscious kind. Of course this makes sense and this is why we need to deal with this problem specifically and, as a culture, need to REALLY get our arms wrapped around what is an amazingly different Operating System we're living in from as recently as 5 years ago, destined to be unrecognizable 5 years from now... as well as we can manage.

And... legislate Fox News Net off the air.

From another friend: 47 states have laws similar to Ohio's (links below), there are also Federal laws regarding cyberstalking, etc.

ORC 2903.211(A)(2) et al http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2903.211

ORC 2917.21 regarding telecommunications harassment - scroll down for the post 9/13/2010 version http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2917.21

Links to other states' laws can be found here: http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=13495

Thanks for these to Susan Mueller Baranoff.

So.... I'm just shivering a little at the landscape I think we're seeing clearly here. Gay assaults, hetero-assaults, economic fraud, even the capacity to drop a worm into Iran's nuclear control system, all paint the picture of a Deadwood with no borders, no limits, growing like an insane cancer, with such little oversight. Brave New World, indeed.