So I’ve finally begun my search for some interesting black blogs. A brief Google turned up the 2007 winners at The Black Weblog Awards Blog. As usual I’m running a bit behind with my reaction post. Lord knows you can read plenty of dissent in the comments following the announcement of the winners. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my disappointment with the readers’ choice of Young, Black and Fabulous for Best Culture Blog. It’s truly sad when Hollywood and music gossip passes for culture of any shade, but that seems to be the gist of YBF’s content. Perhaps the last line of the “About” page sums it up best:

Filling the black hollywood [sic] gossip and entertainment void all day every day.

It’s a void best left unfilled in my opinion. Thankfully, there were two categories of winners: popular vote and judges’ vote. Some of the judges choices offered stark contrast to the readers’ preferences. One of the judges’ choices that I will be spending more time at is Clutch Magazine. It won Best Blog Design. I have to give them props for interviewing Rissi Palmer, a Country musician I’ve previously blogged about. Now that’s culture!

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to parse other black blogs, and will put a couple on the link list once I find one that hits the spot.

Several inventions have advanced the explosive growth of mass media. The printing press, teletype, radio and TV, and certainly not least, the Internet. Many private industries take advantage of these inventions to further the causes that make them money. PR, entertainment, health; these businesses have all benefited from the Orwellian reach of technology. Consequently, propaganda has become geometrically easier to spread using these media. But it’s much sadder when it’s your own government fertilizing the fields with disinformation.

However, with the invention of the Internet, concerned citizens worldwide have a shot at leveling the playing field. The multi-billion dollar food and health industries have some illustrative examples of people questioning the status quo via alternative media sources. While several instances come to mind, today’s short rant focuses on the “Soy Craze”.

Blessed by the Federal Death Administration (FDA to some), soybeans and their protein isolate derivatives have infiltrated nearly every level of food production. Non-breastfed infants, veggies/vegans, and the lactose intolerant are especially prone to the inevitability and seductive lure of this humble legume. Forget what you know for a moment, or rather what you’ve been told about soy’s high quality protein and cancer preventing qualities.

What if feeding soy to infants and children accelerated the onset of puberty? What if soy consumption depressed thyroid function and could be attributed to increased cases of Alzheimer’s in elderly Japanese-Americans? What if the use of soy protein in human foods was never actually granted the Generally Recognized As Safe designation by the FDA.

Doctors and others who argued for lengthier and better studies of the bean’s effects were overruled. Here’s where the Internet comes to the rescue. Many websites aim to tell the whole truth about soy. Two I’ve recently visited standout.

Dr. Mercola’s site shares a wealth of knowledge about myriad health issues. His page dedicated to the dangers of soy has numerous, in-depth links that unravel the fallacious web of half-truths, lies, and omissions perpetrated by the soybean industry and the FDA. Soy Online Service is a cross-continental affiliation of individuals whose aim is to educate the public about soy-related problems.

If you have any interest in health matters I urge you to visit these two websites. The FDA and the soybean cartel have made damn sure that mainstream media only present the (dubious) benefits of soy. It’s up to the public to research the whole truth and use it to make informed decisions about their health.

OK, I admit. I was trying to think of some ultra-clever post to describe how much I’ve missed blogging since I began writing my novel. I was going to set the lyrics to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”.

Scratch that.

Here’s a quickie (in keeping with the whole Marvin Gaye theme). For the ‘lite crowd who have been running Vista since it’s pre-alpha days, move along; this post will be old news. For the OS conservatives who’ve only recently upgraded, this may be of interest.

One of the more interesting aspects of Vista is ReadyBoost: its ability to use removable drives to speed up the caching of virtual memory files. Succinctly put, ReadyBoost improves Vista’s performance by using flash drives to perform small, random I/O file operations, instead of using the paging file of the (typically) slower harddrive. This is not a substitute for RAM, rather an inexpensive way to improve the speed of your computer without cracking the case and possibly voiding the warranty. There are limits and recommendations to ReadyBoost. They can be found at Tom Archer’s MSDN blog. There, Tom quotes Matt Ayers, a Microsoft Program Manager and owner of the ReadyBoost feature.

Enjoy. Now, back to procrastinating, I mean writing.

Word count: 5677

mood: bit frustrated, bit happy: dealin’ wit’ it

My antagonist told me he’s really not a bad guy, just the fall guy. I reluctantly had to agree. Now, I’m rewriting a bit of his backstory (which wasn’t exactly fleshed out to begin with). Overall, I feel like the writing is better than when I first started. It darn well should be, right? Isn’t this gift like any muscle that you exercise and watch grow stronger? Tough days ahead… but I’m really looking forward to introducing the protagonist’s hacker friend. I’m sorta saving him for a rainy day and slow word count.

peace to all Wrimos

Word count: 2877

mood: committed, slightly tense

Dialog time… not a happy fun time exactly, but necessary. Had a nasty but urgent matter to deal with Friday, and I had to work Saturday. Falling of pace is no fun, but the good news is the story feels like a story and I talk with my characters all day. That is good news, right?