JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

To change to a more serious tone…

Foe Romeo warned of what could happen to kids in her post LiveJournal for under-13s

I was hugely disappointed, though, to see that while Six Apart and LiveJournal had implemented the required-by-law parental permission verification, they had done nothing to improve the safety and/or internet literacy of the children they were now allowing to sign up for a journal. So, there is absolutely no safety advice, and parents are exited from the set up process before the child fills in their personal information. And this form encourages users to share their personal information, asking all of the same questions it does of older users (e.g. location), and with all of the same careless defaults. Not only does it default to show your email address and IM details, it actually explains that you should keep this option enabled:

She also linked to this BBC piece : Blogging ‘a paedophile’s dream’

Amanda Witt remembered the anniversary of Auschwitz

Thursday marks the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (January 27, 1945). Sixty years was not so very long ago—it’s well within my parents’ memories. Yet we already have forgotten how it all began.

In concluding, she exhorted

Remember how it began, and then get up and do your part to prevent it from happening again.

Help those who are weak.

In a subsequent post, Silence, Amanda Witt linked to this poem, Inside Dachau by Alexie Sherman. During my sixteenth summer, I visited the German concentration camp. Back at school that fall, all I wanted to write in English class was to try to describe what it had been like to be at Dachau. Even a glance at Michael Hanscom’s flickr photo of the human barbed wire sculpture began to bring it back. I can’t forget. I hope I never will.

link should be fixed now – thanks Darren!