New Rule: No More "Where's the Outrage?"

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"Where's the outrage?!" seems to be the new rallying cry on many blogs, message boards, mailing lists and community sites. Pissed-off folks post information about their government officials and policies and then, as if expecting that taking five minutes to post about an issue on an Internet site will be received by the world as the ultimate in self-sacrifice, ask the rhetorical question "Where's the outrage?" It's getting old.

How about some of these people expending a bit more effort than what it takes to post something to their favorite community? How about moving out from behind the computer, getting off one's ass and spending a couple hours a week doing something?

The "Where's the outrage?" thing is starting to become obnoxious. It's almost like the people who ask this rhetorical question either...

1) Think enough of their writing skills that they think their words are going to spark protests and rioting the world over, which sadly is only the case in the rarest of circumstances, or

2) Think words are enough. They expect everyone else to get up off their collective asses and go organize the protests, write the angry letters to congressmen, show up at rallies and form interest-based organizations. Because. Their. Words. Mean. So. Much.

How about this? The next time you feel like writing "Where's the outrage?" take an hour out of your day instead. Draw up a petition and circulate it. Form a Meetup group around an issue and organize a meeting. Plan a fundraiser for your candidate of choice. Just DO SOMETHING rather than sitting there waiting for everyone else's outrage to boil over so that they can do all the hard work for you.

New Revelation in Oil For Food: U.S. Worse than French, Russians

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Here's the link.

In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.

Doesn't change my view that people need to go down for this. Kofi Annan needs to go. Treasury Department officials who didn't help UN investigators and the State Department look into Bayoil's transactions need to go. Military and State Department officials who greenlighted the shipments need to go.

What a mess! Probably the biggest misappropriation scandal in history.

Damn You, AOL Welcome Screen!

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Is there ever a link from the AOL Welcome Screen that delivers the payoff? I've kept an AOL account for many years (my whole family uses it) and from time to time, I log onto it to use Instant Messenger. Yes, I know I could download IM separately, but I'd rather not have that piece of nagware on my system, thankyouverymuch.

Every once in a while, when I log in, I find something on the Welcome Screen that might interest me. Usually it's a content feature, like today's "Is Sith Not The End? Lucas Reveals The Future." But AOL never deep-links to the content. Clicking on that story, I might expect to be delivered to an interview with Lucas in which he hints at more movies after Episode III. Instead, I end up in some generic Star Wars content area on Moviefone and have to search around for what attracted me there in the first place.

This happens almost every time I click on a Welcome Screen link, and now I have the expectation that I'm going to have to do a significant amount of digging to find what was originally touted.

Makes me wonder how much of AOL's traffic consists of pageviews from people stumbling around their content trying to find stuff that was touted on the Welcome Screen...