Monday, July 25, 2005

Aforementioned changes ...

... are en-route. This script still clings to life, hydra-like. But to let you know what's up:

- I'll be splitting the sidebar up, with different slots for pro writers and not-quite-yet pro writers. So you can meet up, commiserate, and at the very least steal David Anaxagoras' progress bars for your blog.

-- Now that traffic's levelled out again, we'll be putting some fundraising buttons over to the right. I have absolutely no desire to soak you for cash for my own gain, but I will request that if you find something useful or amusing, you drop a coin in the tip jar for a better cause. It may actually wind up being a simple Paypal button and I'll announce what we're supporting for that week or two.

To start, we'll be rotating through some Veteran's Administration and Soldier's Aid sites at first, in honor of Phil Carter over at Intel Dump. I started reading Phil back in 2003, one of the first blogs I found. He served in the MP's (I want to say with 4th Mechanized, check his bio), came out, went to law school, and at the time was doing a great service in translating the DoD press releases on IraqWarII from "bullshit" to "this is what they mean when they say that." Phil passed the bar recently, and the deadly combo of military experience with legal training allowed him to craft one of the smartest, most relevant commentaries on the political and military world today. His site's been an every-day read for me. In the few e-mail exchanges we've had, he's been both encouraging and remarkable helpful.

Phil's also just been called back up. He's in transit now,with the 101st on his way to the Party That Never Ends. He asked that if we appreciate his work we help out with these causes, and so they'll be the first to go up once the code's done.

Seeing as the folks who are actually sending soldiers off to war can't seem to be bothered to armor them properly, give them the proper vehicles, and have voted down increased funding for their medical care THREE GODDAM TIMES, we'll do what little we can to pick up some slack and help out.

4 comments:

Reg said...

John, the David Anaxagoras link does not seem to work.

Unknown said...

His Blogtronic provider seems to be down. Check later.

Anonymous said...

Can you find something other than PayPal? Because PayPal parent eBay have said they will quite happily roll over on their customers to the Feds if they just ask nicely--no court order required.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&s=engle

Unknown said...

That I could. Don't worry. my records are the one that'll be flipped, and I promise not to skim any funds to make donations to my cousin who runs the madrass in Uzbekistan.