3/25/2004 11:37:00 AM|||Andrew|||Two interesting things I rounded up, and then I really had better get going to class and studying, etc.

An Oregon county has an interesting take on the gay marriage controversy. Basically, they're now refusing to hand out any marriage licenses at all, until something is resolved at the state level. Is this the way society is heading? While the gay rights movement is trying to make marriage out to be this really big deal, I feel like society in general has been marginalizing marriage more and more, shoving it aside as insignificant. Isn't it ironic that what what US society as a whole has shunned for so many years, the gay rights movement now grasps after with a vengeance?

Totally unrelated, I found out that Mark Cuban has a blog specifically dealing with the Mavericks. For those who don't know, Cuban is the owner of the team. That would be the Dallas Mavericks, a basketball team. A pretty good one too. Maybe it's a mark of how much blogging has caught on, but isn't there something nice about being able to read something so personal? Maybe that's the increasing trend we're going to see in communication over the next few years...away from the mass media and official press releases...to hearing things directly, personally, from famous, news-making individuals. I think it's something that people will increasingly come to demand. What would it be like, how much could it affect things, if say a major presidential candidate took up blogging? And I don't mean like Dean's usage of the system, which seems mostly to me a copying of other sources, but a candidate actually writing, personally, directly to the people. No longer the stump speech, the press release, the mass media buzz...back to a day of candidates interacting personally with supporters. Direct democracy indeed! But I've written way more on this than I intended...fascinating though, eh?|||108024343817725941|||