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Naughty Pictures of Knox County Teacher Being Investigated

From the KNS:

School security chief Steve Griffin said this morning that his department scoured the web after they received information Friday relating to photographs of Inskip Elementary School teacher Melinda England.

Get ready for an onslaught of this. I predict that “nude teacher pictures” will be the new “doing it with the teacher” in 2008.

The fact is, lots of people have digital cameras, but not many people have common sense. Really, it’s bad enough to let someone else take and have pictures of you in compromising situations, but to post them yourself?

Forget about whether or not it is inappropriate–is this person smart enough to teach kids?

Some people don’t think it’s a big deal, and maybe they are right. But if you are going to be employed by the public (schools) you have expect that they (the public) are going to judge you by the community’s accepted standards–right or wrong doesn’t come into play.

Maybe people will eventually catch on that you can’t do stuff like this and expect that it is going to be copasetic, because chances are we are pretty far away from parents thinking this is ok.

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Blog Numbers and the General Public

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik has another great column today, this time about the numbers of Americans who are blog-aware. According to a survey (conducted online),

…80% of Americans know what a blog is, nearly half have visited one and 8% maintain their own blog.

I think these numbers may be off by quite a bit. I would guess that far fewer than 80% of Americans know what a blog is (the study didn’t give parameters, just asked a yes or no question). Seriously, how many times have you answered “yes” when someone asked you if you knew what something was, just because you didn’t want to admit to them that you didn’t know.

Also, I’d bet that more than half of internet users have visited a blog, but they may not know that they were visiting a blog. I have a few other blogs that I run, and based on the search engine terms that lead people there and their click behavior after they arrive, most of them aren’t very web savvy. Of course, that is all demographic dependent. Most visitors to this blog are pretty savvy.

So what are the real numbers? My initial guess is that these numbers are reversed. I would guess that around 50% know what a blog is, and 80% (or more) have visited one. 8%of Americans maintaining thier own? That one I have a tough time believing. Holding a wet finger in the air, I’d say that could be off by as much as a factor of ten.

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Barbie Fever is Sweeping Knoxville Blogs

So it’s not just me. Other bloggers in Knoxville are being bombarded with Barbie traffic as well.

Joe Powell :

An insatiable desire to find Hitleresque cat pics and porn doesn’t exactly boost my overall optimism in web-aware humans. It makes me wonder if there is some nefarious site of Hitler Porn which gathers billions of readers.)

I wouldn’t doubt it.  I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll end up saying it again…

Blogging is a lot like having a yard sale. The only thing more amazing that what people are completely uninterested in buying is what they are interested in buying.

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Ron Paul is the Only Candidate Making Sense

Becky C.’s post has me fired up.

I saw USA Today this morning and their poll listing the front runners.  They didn’t even have Ron Paul listed among the “also rans”.

If Hillary, Obama, McCain, Romney really do make more sense to the American public than Dr. Paul, we are in deep, deep trouble.  Honestly, I don’t think this is the case.   Ron Paul needs to stay in the debate, stay on topic, and eventually they’ll have to acknowledge him.

Crackpots don’t even register in polls, much less lead in them.

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Ron Paul up to #4 on Technorati

Ron Paul is currently the 4th most searched term at technorati.com.  He’s the only candidate in the top 10, and is *gasp* ranked higher than Paris Hilton.
I’m sure he’s a big fan of the internet right about now.   That’s the great thing about free speech and free markets–the best ideas and products really do win out.