Candleblog

Nobody tell Emily!
Actually, it’s not so much of a crush as a recognition of this woman’s talent and likability. Jenny Slate got on my radar just last week with the season premiere of SNL. She did a hilarious “biker chick” character who hosts a Wayne’s World-esque TV show in her basement with her frickin’ best [...]

It’s Banned Books Week and the Vermont ACLU is recognizing the occasion by hosting “a celebration of literature that features noted Vermont writers reading from works of literature that have been subjected to bans, or whose authors were barred from the U.S. because of their political viewpoints.”
The event is free and open to the public [...]

I had an op-ed piece in the Burlington Free Press today in which I defended the rights of anonymous internet trolls to be, well, trollish. I’m hoping the piece gets hounded by trolls so I can tell them how much they suck while defending their right to suck. Check it out.

I spent all day last Monday at the Windjammer conference center in South Burlington with a TV crew recording a conference put on by the ACLU of Vermont called Thought and Expression in a Changing World. It brought together a bunch of lawyers who specialize in civil liberties case law to talk about how our [...]

VCAM is at the Vermont ACLU conference (Thought and Expression in a Changing World) today at the Windjammer in South Burlington, covering it with our cameras. My co-worker Seth decided on a whim to try and stream it online. We did no real planning for this, he just brought along a laptop and we figured [...]

So I’m at the Alliance for Community Media Northeast Regional conference at Champlain College today hanging with my PEG access peers from around the region. We’re actively trying to encourage community media folks, most of whom have been active in user-generated content for many years (since way before YouTube), to embrace social media as a [...]

I’ve been thinking about this “war on Christmas” garbage today. I think there are a couple of things going on that are resulting in this stupidity and I’d like to throw these thoughts out there for you to consider this holiday season…
First, there is an actual fight that is being waged, though it’s not against [...]

Ars Technica has a post up today regarding a recent report out from the Parent’s Television Council (the group largely responsible for getting the nation in a lather over Janet Jackson’s boob in 2004) entitled, The “New” Tube: A Content Analysis of YouTube—the Most Popular Online Video Destination. The report finds, not surprisingly, that there [...]

[Full disclosure: I am on the board of the Vermont ACLU, but my remarks on this blog do not necessarily represent the views of the Vermont ACLU or it's membership -- these are my own, personal thoughts on these matters.]
When I was on the VCAM board of directors, we spent a great deal of time [...]

Tomorrow morning I will attend my first Vermont ACLU meeting as a member of the Board of Directors. That’s right, I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU and I’m on their board. So far, this has benefited me by being a really good excuse to give the ACLU donation-seekers: “um, I already volunteer my time [...]