Sunday, January 21, 2001
It's interesting and powerful and it really works. It allows large groups of minds to get together and interact in a way they could never do before, in any other medium. ... The first generation of the Web was individual interactivity. And now, after a period of distraction, it's getting back to the roots of the idea of interactivity.
—
Steven Johnson,
a vice president of Automatic Media, talking about the user-rating models used at
Plastic.com,
Slashdot.org and
The Vines Network among other places. Users rate submissions and other users' comments, making the best content easier to find for other users.
Posted: 4:21 PM
permanent place
Saturday, January 20, 2001
Transfer of Power
• The Inauguration of the 43rd President
The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise: that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born. ... And though our nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course.
In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise. And whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault. Abandonment and abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love. And the proliferation of prisons, however necessary, is no substitute for hope and order in our souls. Where there is suffering, there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers, they are citizens; not problems, but priorities; and all of us are diminished when any are hopeless.
I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort, to defend needed reforms against easy attacks, to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not spectators.
Posted: 9:46 PM
permanent place
The expansion of trade hasn't fully closed the gap between those of us who live on the cutting edge of the global economy and the billions around the world who live on the knife's edge of survival. This global gap requires more than compassion. It requires action. Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference.
Posted: 9:24 PM
permanent place
Thursday, January 04, 2001
I know people aren't going to like it. It will make people mad, but that's OK, because that's what a paper is supposed to do sometimes.
—
Jenny Harrington, an 18-year-old assistant news editor at The Lion, the student newspaper at
Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Ill., on some of the editors' decisions about a story on stealing in the cafeteria. The Lion recently was named the best student paper of its size in the country for the third consecutive year. It also won a
Pacemaker -- the Pulitzer Prize of high school journalism.
Posted: 11:27 PM
permanent place
