Black Life

With the information age, I wonder why the only online resources for a some people are the BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics and all federal agency statistics. In the news, on the blogs, reports from think tanks and sometimes in conversation, statistics are quoted about what percentages of blacks are doing such and such. Our daily lives have become a mash of statistics. With millions of people online, in forums, writing diaries and blogs, many who are black; it would seem to me, that to get an idea about black life, you would read what they have written. The picture shows the American Political Blogosphere with few links between, does this follow in all of the blogosphere?

Black people do not always write of blackness, but write about their children, grandchildren, families, health, cooking, art, music, gardening, sports, comics and many other interests. Our lives intersect with all aspects of American life. You would read about black men who are not thugs, have families, active in the community and are responsible fathers. Our people are concerned with the state of America not only with race, but the war, what the candidates have to say, their neighborhoods, taxes and how the government should work. Nothing unusual, no surprises; unless you have believed that every statistic categorizes every black person, perhaps with the exception of the few you know.

I noticed when I first looked at blog communities there were clusters of links, with only a thin link between them, some never touched. Now looking at the mapping of links it would appear that more people would be interconnected and there would be more knowledge of each other; so they would be in the position to question the statistics and their stereotypes. Internet technology has given us opportunities to explore many cultures and our own with extreme ease. Even if the voracity of every blog is questioned, the underling trends can be knowable. It just requires that we do a little more work and check a few more sources. There is a wealth of knowledge to be found about all Americans, if only we would explore more.

Curious Stat Finding

Can someone tell me how does one reach my blog this way?
images.google.com/imgres?imqurl='image url'='my url'
How does the search start? These images are on my blog.
This may be very simple, but it eludes me.

When did "nigger" get in the dictionary?

When I was young, when you were called that, we would say "that's not a word." We never found the word in any of our dictionaries, but there may have been some dictionary that had defined the word. In fifty years, nigger has become a word. As my Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines; it is a noun, offensive, a black person. I was surprised and found other derogatory terms for ethnic groups; and their definitions begin noun, offensive, whatever group. Is offensive the strongest word the editors could think of?

I guess that being in the dictionary now, caused the software of a Chinese furniture manufacturer to translate a color brown from Chinese to "nigger brown" in English. A glitch we're told.

H/T Black Looks

Another move away from geekdom

It takes a grocery retailer to see a computer as an appliance.

Computer as Toaster

I like technology. I like most gadgets and tools. I like things that work. I like software that does what it is supposed to do. I like computers that don’t crash.

I am not a geek. I do not have to know something about everything and all the jargon or every piece of technology since the nineteenth century. I am a technical person, who uses tools and knows a fair amount about what I do. I do not expect everyone to know what I know and I do not feel they are idiots if they don’t.

What is it about people who work in the computer industry, that think everyone should know what they know? Do they know that some people want to look at computer use as easily as putting bread in a toaster? I do. I do not want to know every acronym, so that I may find software the fits my needs, or do I want to have to learn programming, so that I can do simple things on my blog. I don’t want to have to join user groups, support groups or join group therapy to be able to use computer technology. Oh! One other thing, I don’t want to be thought of as an idiot because I don’t want to do any of these things.