Quadsville

I raced home from a meeting Wednesday night to watch the State of the Union address. I carried three State of the Union BINGO cards in crossed fingers, hoping the digital TV converter box would function properly for the entire speech. (It did.)
My 8-year-old got to stay up late to watch and was very excited to get the first BINGO. As she crossed out phrases like “tuition” and “middle class,” I wondered if the word “Web site” had ever been used in a State of the Union address before.
I asked Miss G afterward what stood out to her. She pointed at the word “Haiti” on her BINGO board. “He talked about that,” she said.
Ha. Well, they are raising money for Haiti at school and we’ve talked about that more often at home, I suppose, than about financial regulation or nuclear power.
It seemed to me that the speech contained a lot of good sentiments and ideas that both parties could get behind. Republicans did stand, after all, during some of the ovations. Then I read the comments online on Thursday and reviewed the transcript of the live chat hosted by Times reporter Ed Tibbetts during the address.
Are there separate dictionaries for Republicans and Democrats now? I really have a difficult time figuring out how people can interpret the same words so extremely differently, even allowing for differences on issues, in belief systems and in personal experience. For example, Obama’s reminder to members of Congress that they were sent to Washington “to solve problems, not serve ambitions,” sparked this interpretation: “In other words, he wants his own way. To heck with what is fiscally possible.”
I’m at a loss. What’s your take on the great divide in this nation? Does it seem better or worse than it was a year ago? Do you think our elected officials can get past politics to get things done? Or is Election 2010 going to send Washington into gridlock for the rest of the year?
Drop me a line in the comments below.

Yesterday, Gwen, Steve and I spent the last 90 minutes of daylight sledding at Lincoln Park in Rock Island. I haven't been sledding in years and those hills are doozies! But what a great time.

It was pretty good exercise, too. Our original plan for yesterday evening was to go to the YMCA, as we rededicate ourselves to exercising regularly. But Gwen lobbied for sledding, and with the warm weather melting the snow quickly, we figured tromping around in the white stuff would be a decent workout replacement.

It was. You think those hills are steep when you're flying down them, but wait till you're trying to get back to the top. "Did I just drop off a cliff?" comes to mind when you look up at those intimidating slopes. I decided to run up most times. I don't think there was a time where I wasn't breathing hard, either from the rush of flying down the hill or the effort of getting back up. Miraculously, I'm not sore today.

Have you been sledding this year? What are the other great sledding spots in the QC?

Don't mess with da Google.

That's the message the company is sending to China after it discovered one of the objectives of an attack on its servers originating in China was to try to access the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.

Google has now decided it will no longer censor search results on Google.cn. The censored search results had been controversial to begin with, but were a condition of operating in the country, which Google has done since 2006. It seems Google's philosophy was that it would get its foot in the door and as China's population continued to rise out of poverty, it would continue to push for less censorship and more freedom of expression.

Well, push has come to shove, and I am glad to see at least one company stand up to China on a human rights issue. It speaks volumes about where true power lies in the 21st century that Google is the one to threaten to pull its business out of China if it doesn't agree to allow freedom of speech, when hundreds of other companies and COUNTRIES have not even seriously considered sanctions to pressure China to amend human rights abuses.

Some people find Google's power to be a little scary and Big Brotherish in and of itself (anyone been following the crocs in 'Pearls Before Swine?'). But I'm rooting for Google on this.

What do you think?