Ideas for a 5-minute speech on blogging/the blogosphere

Hello, fellow Netizens!

I'll be giving a short speech on blogging and the blogosphere on Friday and I'd like to solicit comments / suggestions for how to introduce the subject to a class of young people!
I've got Hugh Hewitt's "Blog", Glenn Reynold's "An Army of Davids" and I'll be checking out Harvey's "Bad Example" http://www.badexample.mu.nu/ and "Basil's Blog" ( http://www.basilsblog.net/ or http://basilsblog.blogspot.com/ ) for some backgroud.
Comments are appreciated!

"LAOGAI" book + "Walk the Line" at the Heights Theatre

Picked up a copy of LAOGAI: The_Chinese Gulag by Hongda_Harry_Wu today at Cummings_Books in Dinkytown. I was following this issue more last year on the LAOGAI_Research_Foundation 's website.

Saw "Walk the Line" at the Heights_Theatre tonight. Damn fine movie. Don't know if I'll ever see "Brokeback Mountain", but surely a well done bio-pic of Johnny Cash should've been included in this year's Oscars...

the reverse psychology of watching Left-wing documentaries

Today I went to see the Lefty doc "Why We Fight" at the Lagoon Cinema which states that the US wages war to please our military contractors.
I suppose the doc was a bit more honest than Fahrenheit911 (as Left-wing docs go), though again you see some splicing and dicing of footage and you have a Left-wing vs. Right-wing commentator ratio of about 5 to 1.

Basically, I'm not usually more sure of my swing to the Right than when I watch such films or when I attend lectures by Left-wing professors at the U of M. They simply reinforce my newfound ideology...

About that "Chickenhawk" argument...

this is what the Left really thinks of people like Pat Tillman who join up and fight overseas:
http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2004/05/03/
...and this is what the Left thinks of those of us who don't qualify for military service, but still want to do our part:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001957.htm
(Daily Kos may still be down for maintenance)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/4/1/144156/3224

..and if you had any doubts as to whether the Left supports the troops, rest assured- they don't:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,4137172.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

that new Zogby poll on Iraq and the response of the blogosphere

I just learned of it myself via a comment by "Mr. Troop Supporter" on my
blog yesterday (if you're still reading, "Mr. T.S.", please provide a link the
next time you quote from something like, say, Stars and Stripes):
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34538&archive=true
:

John Zogby, CEO of the polling company, said the poll was funded through
Le Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies: http://www.lemoyne.edu/communications/Comm_Press.asp?id=233 [they would not corroborate this:
http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/02/the_zogby_poll_.html#trackback ], which received money for the project from an anonymous, anti-war activist,
but neither the activist nor the school had input on the content of the
poll.

Michael Medved http://www.michaelmedved.com/site mentioned on his show today some flaws he found with the poll- particularly the questions asked (can you say "push-polling"?).

Hugh Hewitt http://www.hughhewitt.com/ interviewed John Zogby himself (transcript and audio: http://www.radioblogger.com/#001431 and 03-02zogby.mp3 ) and has much more background info:
http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2006/02/26-week/index.php#a001523

including (but not limited to) links to:

"John Zogby's creative
polls": http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/1/mooney-c.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1588840/posts

This search has at least led me to a very interesting website that I may
add to my favorites:
Mystery Pollster
Demystifying the Science and Art of Political Polling - By Mark Blumenthal
http://www.mysterypollster.com/

...and now to bed after 6.5 hours of celebrating Tibetan New Year at the
St. Paul National Guard Armory.... ZZzzzz.......

(and thank goodness for Microsoft Word- once you start trying to deactivate the blockquotes on Blogger, your post has gone to sh*t unless you can copy and paste everything on to Word.....)

Actually, he should be suspended for not teaching Geography...

Another lazy "teacher":

Teacher Suspended After Comparing Bush To Hitler
http://www.wgal.com/education/7617928/detail.html?rss=lan&psp=nationalnews

Students
Protest After Teacher Suspended For Blasting Bush
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/7608274/detail.html?rss=den&psp=news

I'm not offended (or maybe no longer offended) when an instructor spews out this
kind of claptrap as long as it's within the parameters of the course material and is factually accurate.

So as this post's title indicates, Mr. Bennish should be suspended without pay for failing to teach his students GEOGRAPHY.

about those "Midwest Heroes"...+today's Bush=Hitler article from Huffington

I wasn't planning on posting on this topic, but my Human Communication teacher did bring up the recent http://midwestheroes.com/ pro-Iraq War commercials as an example of an unreliable/biased source to avoid when choosing a topic for our next speech.

Well I, though not a veteran myself, have recently signed up with http://familiesunitedmission.com/minnesota/ just to somehow lend my own support.

Of course, this was yet another example of professors abusing their authority and bringing in purely tangential topics into the classroom. It was certainly bad form, if not just pathetic.

...and today's Bush=Hitler article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/stephen-colbert-adolf-h_b_16582.html
You really have to love the "President Chimpy Looks-like-a-Monkey" comment and the "Blogging My Cat While He Poops On Bush: An Empirical Political Analysis of The Radical Right's Christofascist Agenda" book.

...which reminds me- I need to check the http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/ (A Psychoanalyst Attempts to Understand Our World) blog more often...