If you read my last Weekly version of ASCII, you may remember WeLiveInPublic.com – a highly annoying Silicon Alley couple who put cameras in their loft for the Web to peruse freely. Want to see how bad an idea that was for them? Gads, nothing like a public knock-down-drag-out. Or is it all part of the show…?

Speaking of last survivors passing (see Titanic mention below), I see in the LA Times that Rose Freedman, the last survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, has passed away at the age of 107 (!). An extraordinary woman who lived in the proverbial Interesting Times.

Missing your ASCII fix? Until I get my mailing list up and running (yes, quite ironic that someone who’s written a book forward on them is having trouble, thanks so much for noticing 🙂 ), you can check out the latest on AlterNet.

I woke up this morning singing “A Soldier’s Things” and now we’re bombing Bagdhad. Curious.

Riddle time: What’s the difference between Internet access and a gas-guzzling luxury car? Nothing, according to the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. In a story in today’s Wall Street Journal (you know things are bad when even the WSJ is more progressive than the current administration), FCC chair Michael Powell says that the digital divide is like “a Mercedes divide — I want one, I can’t afford one.” WELL! You nasty poor folk trying to reach your utility or phone company, you lazy-ass middle-class folk trying to stretch your budgets by doing price comparisons on purchases, you rotten juvenile delinquents who suck up education funds that could be used for private-school vouchers, aren’t you ashamed of yourselves now?

Dubya is God’s vengeance on us for not butting out of Bill Clinton’s sex life. Honestly.

A semi-random observation: The last male survivor of the Titanic passed away in January. History is never so ancient as we think.

The blogs are multiplying like… bloggy rabbits! Along with new items for the newsletter and my current-articles page, I have something for the ethics folk passing through. Comments are welcome, either on the blogs themselves (four blogs? is that an ethical use of resources?) or on the quandary-in-progress linked from Ethblog.

Good heavens, could this be a SITE REDESIGN in progress?! Yes. Dust and paint chips all over. Patience please.

The year is shaping up, and all I had to do was quit my job. (Don’t worry, LOTS of freelance work on my plate — if you want me to write for you great but I won’t be starving .) That whole getting-pushed-out thing became a lot easier when I realized I was not just ready but absolutely frothing to go. And something curious turned up: The guy who’ll be editing the section has a wife who spent serious (and recent) time at RealNetworks. One of his main writers has a husband at Microsoft. An Amazon spouse would complete the whole conflict-of-interest set, and that’s when I decided to hang it up for real. After all, all that a journalist has in this world is her credibility. That and sharp pencils. Wish me luck and tune in for the rebirth, resurrection and downright FRESH START of the mailing list. Now that they’re got me babbling once a week, I have to take all this energy somewhere.