GENERAL STUFF: Fabulous beyond measure

I'm up on quotes today and watching Akeelah and the Bee. I like it. A lot.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -- Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

Jackie Danicki... I think we had a discussion about this very issue once.

There's always time for a personal mantra.

PS 700th post....

GENERAL STUFF: Old people sex

Thanks to Jacki Danicki for the heads up on Twitter for this one.

Interesting story: one of the groups experiencing the fastest rates of growth in STD infections? The elderly. No kidding.

Hell, yea, Viagra (bad joke, many older folks still have plenty of healthy sexuality left in them).

From the Salon.com article:

Bob's family was horrified at the idea that his relationship with Dorothy might have become sexual. At his age, they wouldn't have thought it possible. But when Bob's son walked in and saw his dad's 82-year-old girlfriend performing oral sex on his 95-year-old father last December, incredulity turned into full-blown panic. "I didn't know where this was going to end," said the manager of the assisted-living facility where Bob and Dorothy lived. "It was pretty volatile."

Because both Bob and Dorothy suffer from dementia, the son assumed that his father didn't fully understand what was going on. And his sputtering cell phone call reporting the scene he'd happened upon would have been funny, the manager said, if the consequences hadn't been so serious. "He was going, 'She had her mouth on my dad's penis! And it's not even clean!' " Bob's son became determined to keep the two apart and asked the facility's staff to ensure that they were never left alone together.

After that, Dorothy stopped eating. She lost 21 pounds, was treated for depression, and was hospitalized for dehydration. When Bob was finally moved out of the facility in January, she sat in the window for weeks waiting for him. She doesn't do that anymore, though: "Her Alzheimer's is protecting her at this point," says her doctor, who thinks the loss might have killed her if its memory hadn't faded so mercifully fast.

But should someone have protected the couple's right to privacy—their right to have a sex life?

"We were in uncharted territory," the facility manager said—and there's a reason for that. Even the More magazine-reading demographic that thinks midlife is forever (and is deeply sorry to see James Naughton doing Cialis ads) seems to believe that while sex isn't only for the young, exceptions are only for the exfoliated. We're squeamish about the sex lives of the elderly—and even more so when those elderly are senile and are our parents. But as the baby boom generation ages, there are going to be many more Dorothys and Bobs—who may no longer quite recall the Summer of Love but are unlikely to accept parietal rules in the nursing home. Gerontologists highly recommend sex for the elderly because it improves mood and even overall physical function, but the legal issues are enormously complicated, as Daniel Engber explored in his 2007 article "Naughty Nursing Homes": Can someone with dementia give informed consent? How do caregivers balance safety and privacy concerns? When families object to a demented person being sexually active, are nursing homes responsible for chaperoning? This one botched love affair shows the incredible intensity and human cost of an issue that, as Dorothy's doctor says, we can't afford to go on ignoring.

BLOGGING: I don't get it

I realized that I'm a little behind the times on a lot of things. I'm trying to find out how people go from 0-->8000 readers in little to no time. I'm sure many local bloggers are dealing with the same issues, but I don't understand this whole concept of "readership."

I don't know how to do it online, and I guess I'm a little confused. I tried to read technorati articles on it, but I thought I was pretty cool when I was set up over there. Now, apparently, I'm also a member of AtomFeed or something like that and I don't know what that does. AH! On top of that, I'm being told I should use RSS -- which I have yet to actually see in action -- and del.icio.us??? And there's something called social marketing or something silly like that... And then Jackie over there is going into Qik and Twitter ... I mean, jeez, I'm not even on flickr, nor do I understand how something like photo-sharing could ever make money (I'm still amazed a free service like Yahoo! or Google could be a multi-bllion dollar endeavor).

I have no freaking clue what any of you are talking about.

It's sad when, at 25, I look at this whole world of the blogosphere and think -- most of these "top blogs" are crap and I have no interest in them, so why are they getting thousands of viewers a day? I mean, really, who cares about technical gadget blogs? They all seem so esoteric to be of that wide of interest to anyone.

I wonder, sometimes, how this whole internet ... this Web 2.0 ... thing is working (the video is a really interesting one I found a little while ago that finally explained to me Web 2.0, although I think it leaves a big open question of whether or not we are in the throes of creating the first AI by teaching this theoretical "Machine" how the human mind works). First of all, is all this readership authentic? There are conservative and liberal bloggers who claim 10,000+ unique hits a day. I'm a pretty avid internet user, but it seems unusual that there are so many people out there using the internet as much, if not more than me. I mean, it seems almost bizarre, because 10,000+ unique hits a day assume a couple of things:

1) That there are that many people interested in your topic. (Ok, mildly believable)
2) That there are that many people interested in your topic who would search out the topic online. (Ok, I'm still with it)
3) That there are that many people interested in your topic who would search out the topic online and then land on your blog (Ok, it's getting a little colder)
4) That there are that many people interested in your topic who would search out the topic online and then land on your blog above and beyond the thousands of other blogs who also claim that many hits or more -- not including those blogs and sites that rake in the hundreds of thousands and millions of unique hits a day (Really cold)

AND THEN, some more almost unbelievable things...

5) That there are that many people interested in your topic that would then "RSS" or some other silliness your site
6) That there are that many people interested in your topic that understand the complexities of Web 2.0 but can't grasp basic supply/demand economics
7) That there are that many advertisers that don't give a shit about your topic but somehow are drawn to post on your site and pay you -- to the tune of thousands of dollars a month -- for the amount of unique hits you have, believe somehow that that many people actually go to the site and consume the information rather than just glance over it.

I mean, I just don't get it. And then you add not only the layer of e-commerce on top of it -- GEEZ! I mean, I get places like Amazon.com who gain money through sales of something definitive. But exactly where are the billions coming from for Google -- which, btw, is a really empty site and, I don't know about anyone else, I ignore all the advertising, and especially the "yellow linked" sites at the top of a search? Or Yahoo! -- same situation? Or something less used and maybe a little more complicated like photbucket or flickr or qik?

Am I missing something here? I think there is a great separation in my head from understanding what exactly an "economy of ideas" means -- as I just don't understand where the money is coming from? Where has this all happened and who is making money and how?

But, back to my blog... I think I'm going to continue to try to build readership the old fashioned-way. That is, writing pretty decently about subjects people may or may not be interested in, building relationships with other bloggers (who, I've noticed, read blogs more than anyone else), and hope for the best. I think this is a lot like my whole decision to be a nurse -- if something awful happens with the world and this giant secret of "shhh, no one can actually put their hands on the billions that Google owns because ... sh... it doesn't really exist" gets out, I want to be sure I have something solid to base my life on, rather than living in the cyber-reality that I think peolpe are getting sucked into.

Like on facebook, I find myself my best reader, because at least I like what I'm writing :-).

However:

BLOGGING: A slight adjustment

Comparing the media release from the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce with the Joe Wessels article in this morning's Post (RIP the Post), there seems to be somewhat of a difference in information. I don't know where Wessels got the blogs he listed, but apparently there was a whole setup to this announcement that I missed.

So, with that in mind, here are the ones he listed the morning:

CincyNewsAche
Critical Inquiry into the sometimes shoddy reporting and conservatism of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Cincinnati, As I See It
A photo blog. It's quite nice, really.

Jackie Danicki
I like this gal. She's awfully purty; but mostly, I like her take on stuff. Do I think it's a little egotistical to have a website made out of your name? Sure, but I'm down with the idea.

Cincinnati Blog
No really, just a blog about Cincinnati -- if you didn't get that from the title.

Building Cincinnati
More about the architecture and built space in Cincinnati. My dear friend MC woudl absolutely adore this little page.

Two others listed that I haven't really looked into:
The Daily Bellwether
Nasty, Brutish, and Short

And on the national scale, for any who are interested, one of my favorite blogs ever:

Neat-o-rama -- No really, you, too, should become a devotee.