Moving Along

Here's just a quick note for those of you who follow the blog, or run across it in the near future.  I'm having some technical difficulties with Facebook.  For some reason, they block all links to this blog, classifying it as "spam" and as a lot of networking happens on FB that is a major hindrance for me and for Martinus Publishing.  Repeated requests to fix this have been completely ignored, and nobody will even address this issue.

Therefore, as there is no way for me to share links to this blog on one of the biggest networking sites, I'm afraid there is no option but to move.  I will be setting up a new blog shortly, one that Facebook will hopefully not block as "spam."  I will share a link as soon as I have one, though it may be a few days or weeks before I find the right location.  In the meantime, all the old posts will remain here, for those of you who want to sample my wit and wisdom of the past.

Modern day censorship is a growing problem, and I am wary of Facebook's new algorithms, where innocuous content can be summarily blocked for undisclosed reasons.  I assume that some troll(s) decided to flag my blog as spam in complaints at some point, and that somebody at Facebook chose to simply block all links to it rather than investigate.  Though, nobody will actually respond to me, so I have no idea why they're blocking, other than I sometimes get a message saying my link is blocked because it is "spam."  Half the time, they just say it "violates their community guidelines," with no explanation how, other than a link to their "no spam, no porn, no hate-speech" page, which doesn't address any specifics, but just lays out their basic rules, none of which my blog violates.  That is, unless they want to say I can't tell people about Martinus Publishing books and where to buy them.  If that makes my blog spam, than the entire internet is nothing but spam!

Yes, I am a little angry about this, but I'll just have to move along, and hope they don't throw another roadblock in front of me too soon.

Madison Rising's "The Star Spangled Banner"

A few weeks ago, I ran across a link on facebook to a hard-rock youtube video of The Star Spangled Banner by Madison Rising.  While I'm generally more of a moderate rock kind of guy, this new version of America's national anthem appealed to me.  Now, for some inexplicable reason, facebook has been deleting the link to the video from people's walls.  Accusations of censorship are running rampant.  It's probably just the work of a few disgruntled facebook employees who don't like the video for whatever reason, but some people say it's a concerted effort at censorship.  All I know is, the video link I shared on my wall vanished recently, just as it has from many other people's walls.

Check out the music video here.

You'll see there is nothing offensive, pornographic, or otherwise ban-worthy in this video.  Your 5 year old could watch this and hear the song without any ill effects.  It's a very patriotic American message.

I reposted the link on my profile page today.  We'll see how long it stays there this time.  Feel free to share it on your fb walls, as well.  It's worth a listen.