Are you ready to protest SOPA and PIPA?

In Protest of SOPA and PIPAFor the past few days I have been getting questions about my Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus avatar, why did I put a [CENSORED] bar over it?  It’s not a joke involving innuendo or anything like that, it’s a sign to protest two bills that they are trying to pass in the USA, dubbed SOPA and PIPA.  You also may have already noticed I censored this site a while ago to get people to write their congressmen and senators.  I’m an American, I live in Canada but I am still an American and a voter, more so my host is in the USA so this would effect my site in addition to my enjoyment of the internet.  The bills are written in such a way that would give the government (and private citizens and companies) the opportunity to harass innocent people and punish someone they think needs punishing when they can’t stop them with other legal means.  You’ve seen it before, the local guy who is noisy against his local government gets tickets for jaywalking when no one else gets tickets in that city[true story].

I wrote my congressman, Joe Courtney and my senators, my congressman actually sent me a letter back.  It’s a form letter telling me I don’t understand law and he is just trying to protect americans.  I highlighted the portions of the bill that I have problems with and explained why and told him if he voted for this bill then I would not be voting for him.  That was weeks ago, I don’t expect a reply.  I have not gotten a reply from either Blumenthal or Lieberman and I’m not holding my breath.  It saddens me that as a voter I’m basically told I don’t count, am too stupid to understand law and am just simply ignored.  This isn’t how the world works, people have a voice and we will make our voice heard.

How?  By blacking out the internet tomorrow.  Goodbye wikipedia, good by all those fun blogs you like to read.  The net is going dark… I’ll be fine, I have a lot of comics to read till it’s over.  What will you be doing?

  • What is SOPA and PIPA?  Why should I be against it?
    • http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa
  • How can you help?
    • http://americancensorship.org
  • Didn’t I read that Obama is going to promise to veto this?
    • Yeah because he promised to veto NDAA too, (even worse of a bill), oh wait, he signed that into law, didn’t he?
  • How do I blackout my website?

(I want to thank Tabitha Grace Smith and Mathew Wayne Selznick for helping me find tools to make blackout/strike easy for me, and everyone else trying to get the word out)

He had a dream….

You know you’ve been living in Canada when you wake up and only realize that it’s Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday because everyone is commenting about it on social media about it.  That is truly sad, and I feel a little shame about it.

Growing up in NY we all knew King’s legacy, he was a hero everyone could look up to.  Protesting, he did it right.  He showed the world that you can make a change and be clear about your principles and ideals without confusing the message.  He got progress because people worked together and were a team, they all wanted the same thing and they went after it in a way that made them mighty.  Civil disobedience, non violent protest, these were things that helped bring the civil rights movement to progress.  If you think spitting in a cop’s face is non violent protest, you’re wrong.  Look to Dr. King as your template whenever you hold up a protest sign or stand in a picket line.

In a large part of the USA Dr. King’s birthday is not a day off from school or work, I remember being surprised when my nieces moved to VA and had school on this day, it baffled me and that was my eye opener that not everyone sees this man as great, even today :(

Are things perfectly equal and civil today?  No, but we keep working, we keep trying and we continue to follow his message, we will get there.

Now I invited you to listen to the entirety of his “I have a dream” speech in it’s entirety, not just the section we are all familiar with.

Dude, like a real Tricorder would be so cooooool!

I know this has been discussed to death, but I wanted to assure everyone that we here at NIMLAS Studios would love it if one of our mixed nuts or nutcases won the latest XPrize.

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize

Introducing the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE.

Imagine a portable, wireless device in the palm of your hand that monitors and diagnoses your health conditions. That’s the technology envisioned by this competition, and it will allow unprecedented access to personal health metrics. The end result: Radical innovation in healthcare that will give individuals far greater choices in when, where, and how they receive care. Learn more about the competition

I used to have a toy one, I bought it for way more than I should have and I loved it till the batteries corroded and ruined it on me.  That toy had stickers in place of the instruments, but if it actually worked, well that would just be awesome.  Forge needing national healthcare, we could all have one of these in our homes and never have to worry about the little aches and pains, the tricorder would tell us if it was a tumor or not :) The only downside is kids couldn’t fake being too sick to go to school, sorry kids, better think of better ways to play hooky.