Googled again

By now most know that Google has googled up blogger.com as an appetizer to it's voracious feeding frenzy. This has all come as a surprise to me. Yep, a surprise. I recall the early days of Yahoo and Google. When I found Yahoo and they offered to supply all the news and weather "right here in one place" and even an email account, all for free, I wondered, "Now why would I want to do that? I already have a "nerdmail" account and know where the news is." On top of that, I know what the origin of the word "yahoo" is (from Johnathon Swift in "Gullivers Travels") and the name isn't referring to any thing nice (a sub-human animal)." However, little by little they became more attractive, adding maps, groups, a larger email box, good web presence, lots of news sources, and variety, variety, variety. Soon, it became the place my web surfing began and I really had a "personalized" site to check news, sports, weather, and much more.

Then, Google came along and there wasn't much reason to use it. After all, there were lots of search engines and another was pretty redundant (do you still remember the one named "dogpile?" But, then, Google got really good at finding any site I put up. If I looked for a search, Google always found my sites. Just try that with dogpile. Or many of the others that have faded away. Soon, google became an important place to go to search and to make sure your web pages were listed. Now, their "have all your news and weather in one place" is even better than Yahoo and it's my surfing start page. Add their docs and spreadsheets, calendar, maps, and so much more, and now blogger; and the web is gradually becoming "googlized." Makes me wonder just what little nerdy site promising odd stuff is wriggling into our lives in such a way that we will be surprised again when we suddenly find it wrapped around our surfing.

Any ideas on this? If you (any of you) have seen the next generation of surfing "can't do without" sites, please comment and let us know. Maybe this time I won't be surprised.

Quid Pro Quo

So much talk about legal and especially illegal immigration and immigrants in the United States. What do we do, what to do, when to do it, how to respond. It all seems simple to me. Treat all immigrants equally according to the manner in which their "home" country treats citizens of the United States. Thus, we in America treat Mexicans in the same manner and rule of law that their home country of Mexico treats (by rule of law and exercise of custom) those citizens of the United States who visit legally or illegally. We would do the same with citizens of Saudi Arabia, France, South Africa, Dubai, Russia, and so on.

Thus, all visiting citizens of foreign countries would know well in advance just what kind of treatment they would be honored with upon visiting the US. All they'd have to do is look around at how Americans are treated, what kind of laws their country has concerning American visitors of all kinds, just how the average citizen honors these laws, and how the visitors are treated by the citizens of their own country. No education required by the United States. No new laws required, we just follow their laws. All we need to do is show our citizens the laws and custom of treatment of the visitors countries and our citizens and law enforcement groups will easily take on the task of showing our visitors just what Quid Pro Quo means and what it means to be treated in return as we are treated. Could be that a few years of this treatment and a lot of laws would be changed in a lot of countries. Might even improve our image quite a bit when other countries find we don't put up with unequal treatment. Right now, everyone sees the American as an arrogant patsy. A target for punishment and mistreatment. Time for a change. Let's be humble and allow the other peoples of our world to tell us how to treat them.