I’ve been thinking about social web stuff a lot today. The good folks at Nemo Designs were good enough to have a long chat with anners and me about their social interweb. But that’s just the setup, I’m not really going to go into that…it was interesting though.

What I wanted to hit on is the kids and their lack of email! Which is something that’s come up in conversation, and it came up sometime after the aforementioned meeting, but not during. So the argument that I hear goes something like this:

– Email is going away.

– Why?

– Because kids don’t use email.

– Huh?

– Yeah, they’ve studied kids and they use facebook and twitter and stuff and they don’t even have email accounts.

So, my response is…So what? I mean, did you have a mailing address as a kid? I don’t recall getting much mail. And most of it was highly temporal, non-transactional information. Birthday cards, Ranger Rick, um, I think that’s about it. I was way ahead of my time and couldn’t stand sending letters because the transit time was ridiculous and I didn’t want to pay for a stamp.

Okay, last email here. Hopefully I can make it count. The topic for today is what are you afraid of? I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who “don’t like either candidate” but are voting for McCain. My question for them is — Why? What’s wrong with Barack Obama? Sometimes you don’t trust him, sometimes he’s not experienced enough, sometimes, you can’t really express it. What has Obama ever done to break your trust?

Sent: 10/22/2008 It appears that internally, at least, al-qaeda and other terrorist organizations support McCain’s candidacy. Makes sense, considering how successfully the war in Iraq has divided the country, emptied our coffers, exhausted our military, and alienated our allies. “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush.

Sent: 10/15/2008 Okay, I just can’t resist commenting on this, because it is such an absolutely clear illustration of Sarah Palin and her in-your-face lies. Sarah said: “The report that came out also was very clear in that there was no unethical or unlawful behavior on my part,” Palin told a local CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh, adding, “No abuse of power there at all.” Actually she said things like that multiple times.

Date: 10/19/2008 Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for president (of the United States). Personally, I think this is huge. A Republican who has always provided a steady, well-reasoned approach, he is widely respected on both sides of the aisle. But this is more than “a rightie supports Obama.” This is support from a figure broadly and recently well-regarded in national defense. “As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it,” Mr.

Tired of all the right-wing emails I’d receive, and especially the fact (yes, fact) that most of them contain gross inaccuracies or straightout lies, I began writing and sending my own emails. I am trying to keep them as factual as possible, and while they highlight issues more popular on the left than on the right, I am trying to present facts in a “think about it” approach, rather than an editorial.