I know, I know. I've been horrible at keeping up these news items. I keep meaning to do better, but there are so many demands on time. I'm thinking maybe I should take out the "What's New" section and put in a real blog like Serendipity (which I think fits into existing sites better than Wordpress). Thoughts?

This site will be joining thousands of others in the Internet blackout of Jan. 18, 2012. We'll be in there with some big players like Wikipedia and Reddit. The action is in protest of the so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act" introduced in the House and the "Protect IP Act" introduced in the Senate. Neither version will do anything to stop online piracy, but both have the potential to break the Internet (long technical discussions available online) and give big corporations the power to shut down sites because ... well, the want to, and with no due process.

I hope all Americans support this effort to fight for free speech.

OK, to toot my horn a little bit, I could read at four, so it didn't shock me that Rayanna is making pretty good literary progress at the same age. Nor did it throw me that she can add, at least single-digit numbers. But she did blow me away two nights ago when she got online all by herself and Googled Dora the Explorer. I hadn't taught her that; neither had Lisa. I wasn't surprised that she could spell Dora. After all, it's plastered on the title sequence of the show, and she watches at every opportunity. But how did she get so Net savvy?

Then, yesterday, we were talking about Lazytown. Without a word, she went into the other room, and it wasn't five minutes before we heard the Lazytown theme playing on the computer! What the...? I asked her about that. She Googled Dora to get to the Nick Jr. web site, and from there got to Lazytown.

Smart kid.