Day: August 6, 2005

Did you know that there’s a national, network television show with an Iraqi-American central character?
It’s true: the CBS reality show Brother, a guilty pleasure of mine, has as a contestant Kaysar, an Iraqi-American graphics designer from Irvine, CA. He’s proven to be a formidable competitor in the game during the first few weeks, and seems like a genuinely intelligent and decent fellow.
There’s only one problem: he lost last week and was “evicted” from the house.
So why should you care? Because CBS is holding a public poll to determine whether Kaysar or one of two other evicted players will be allowed back in the house. And you can vote, for free, right here.
I, for one, want him back. And so I figure I’ll spread the word, and ask my fellow citizens of the blogosphere: click that link, give Kaysar a vote, and keep a positive example of an Iraqi-turned-American in front of the television viewing public.
It’s a little thing, but sometimes those actually do count…

Folks:
I’ve just completed work to make it easier to ensure that Carnival entries are added to the TTLB ÜberCarnival.
If your blog is registered in the Ecosystem, you can tag your Carnival entry post to be picked up automatically by including the following exact phrase in your post’s text, replacing [Carnival Name] with the name of the carnival:
“[Carnival Name] can also be found at The Truth Laid Bear’s ÜberCarnival.”

The Ecosystem scans will notice this text and the link to TTLB and automagically add your Carnival entry to the ÜberCarnival.
For this method to work, the blog hosting the Carnival must be registered in the Ecosystem with a working RSS feed. In addition, if the blog doesn’t publish full entries to the RSS feed, the Ecosystem may not be able to detect the Carnival tag (because it may not appear in the truncated version of the post presented via the RSS feed).
If the automatic method doesn’t work, you can now also add a Carnival entry manually via the form here.
Try ’em out, and let me know if you have any difficulties…
NZ