Thing 12

More from Paris. While walking through the Louvre my son and I heard some folks talking (in English) about the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. We both took a couple of steps and then turned around to see who was talking about one of our favorite museums from a city we called home for a long time. Were we surprised! It was Derek Jeter from the New York Yankees and some of his friends. We decided we just had to go meet him and say hello. He was wonderful, and thanked us for the time. I wonder what other museums he visited while in Paris?

Meanwhile, back to Thing 12. Something struck me almost immediately as I was looking at a number of the suggested sites: there's a lot of garbage out there. I really don't care if someone just unearthed a 16mm film of Marilyn Monroe performing a sex act, nor any other details. So I'm looking for a site that might not give me "everything" but just the stuff I want to see. Newsvine was something like I might be looking for. But then I find myself asking if I'm going to be overwhelmed. I've already got RSS feeds coming to me from the new sources I'm most interested in. So the key seems to be on mediation (or lack thereof) and voting for favorites.

I'm beginning to wonder who all is out there casting these votes. I'm reminded of an episode of West Wing in which Josh discovers there's a web site out there "for all things Josh" When he makes the mistake of posting something to this site and then starts to read the responding posts, he wonders "who are these people." His assistant, Donna, tells him that many of them hadn't taken their meds that day. Later, when it goes from bad to worse for Josh, there's this reaction from C.J.: "Let me explain something to you, this is sort of my field. The people on these sites: they're the cast of 'One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest.' . . . I'm telling you to open the ward room window and climb on out before they give you a pre-frontal lobotomy and I have to smother you with a pillow. . . . I'm assigning an intern from the press office to that website. They're going to check it every night before they go home. If they discover you've been there, I'm going to shove a motherboard so far up your..."