If I Should Fall...

Monday night, we went to see the Pogues in concert!

It was a great, very high energy show. The original band was all together, including Shane. (For those who don't follow the Pogues - Shane was the original lead singer - they had a falling out some years back and he had released a couple of solo albums.)

They performed most of my favorite songs from their albums. The one exception was that they didn't play "Fairytale of New York" - but since they don't seem to have a female member of the band at the moment, that would have been difficult. :-)

Great show - well worth feeling a little groggy at work the next morning!

Internet Freedom

I've added a link (see the sidebar) to a website dedicated to preserving what is known as Net Neutrality.

There's a movement among Internet providers (such as Time Warner, Comcast, etc.) to charge content providers (such as ESPN, CNN, or me) to have access to the Net. Charges would determine how well a page would load, who might have access to it, or whether it would be part of the Internet at all.

The great utility of the Internet is the democratic access - the low barriers to both accessing and supplying information allow for a broad range of sites and viewpoints. While the current system isn't perfect (obviously excluding those without computers, for example), the proposed changes could dramatically alter the existing dynamic, allowing only the wealthy to have the ability to control what information is available over the Internet.

I encourage everyone reading this message to sign the petition on the linked site, and to encourage others to do the same. Let's keep the Internet open to (nearly) all comers!