Recently, during a five week trip to Africa, I got the opportunity to visit a school and a hospital in Mayange, a rural town in Rwanda. Mayange is a beneficiary of both the UN’s Millennium Villages Project and the One Laptop Per Child program. The Millennium Villages Project is an effort to eliminate poverty in which the [...]

Michale Arrington unleashed a fury of attacks – pro-women, anti-women, pro-Arrington, anti-Arrington – this week with his post “Too few women in tech? Stop blaming the men. Or at least stop blaming me.”  The assumption, of course, is that you should blame the women. The gist of Arrington’s post is this: Stop blaming us for [...]

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that schools cannot strip search students, with Clarence Thomas as the lone dissenter. In the case, a 13 year old was accused of having ibuprofen by an ex-friend. Though the school never searched her locker or desk, they strip searched the girl. For ibuprofen. Redding says she was then asked [...]

In an upsetting – but expected ruling – the CA Supreme Court voted to uphold Proposition 8, which reads: Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Wording like this would have been torn to shreds by my high school debate team (which once, rather infamously, defined Huckleberry Finn, in [...]

Mike Galanos wrote an opinion piece for the CNN asserting that Plan B is risky for 17 year olds. His argument, however, doesn’t hold water. Let’s take a look at it, bit by bit: Think of a 17-year-old girl. Most of the time she’s a high school senior, still living at home with Mom and [...]

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started outsourcing. A lot. Most of the outsourcing goes to an (awesome) assistant in the Philippines, who does everything from online research to document editing. She’s great, and she’s quite literally changed my approach to working. Although most people are merely intrigued by my hiring a remote assistant, a surprising [...]

I often debate as to whether this blog should be strictly tech-based, but then I read these articles that, well, get to me. To change the statistic that 25% of women are sexually assaulted, people need to start talking about it. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument on a case where a 13 year old [...]

I’m banned for hate speech on WyldRyde. Yup. My name, you see, has the word “gay” in it, and thus “gayle” is hate speech. This happens fairly often as it turns out. I’ve hit this issue on AOL, Microsoft’s theSpoke.com, planes with games on their lcd screens, etc. I have to wonder though. Suppose my [...]

Racism is rampant. Maybe this election has made people less racist, maybe it hasn’t. At the very least, I hope that it has made people realize that, yes, racism is still very much alive. As a quick illustration, check out the top 10 Google search suggestions for Obama: 30% are race-related issues: “birth certificate”, “muslim” [...]

I usually don’t cross-post Seattle Anti-Freeze events, but this one’s for a good cause… Drink for the Cure / Bid for the Cure – Charity AuctionOct 1, 2008 at 8pm (Location TBD – Belltown / Downtown) Every three minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. One out of every eight [...]