Honesty On Teh Internets

Drugs are bad, mmmmkay?

I've occasionally been told by people that I'm "incredibly brave" for doing something so revolutionary as talking about my thoughts and feelings online, about not watering down or hiding when there's a point to be made. (Or even sometimes when there isn't but I just need a good opportunity to vent and then come back and look at it from another angle.)

I think it's sad that this should be seen as brave. There's a lot I could say about this mentality, that we should all just roll over, shut up, and be dead inside because down the line someone - an employer, say - might see it online.

Check out this atrocity (via Boing Boing):

Bfarn sez, "I don't know if you've been following the Los Angeles Unified School District's witch hunt, but they've been trying to lay off their entire staff of librarians. They've been conducting McCarthy-esque trials, forcing teacher-librarians to defend both their personal worth and their district-defined credentials. One brave teacher has been blogging about the experience (as retweeted by Neil Gaiman!) and was singled out by LAUSD lawyers for her efforts. They won, and lost their best teacher in the process."

I don't know what the solution to this particular problem is at this point short of within our immediate surroundings creating our own libraries, our own schools and bastions against the forces of corporate barbarism.

But to the larger issue here, I think it was said best on xkcd:

MYTHOS MEDIA