by Megan Tady
- USA -

Connie Toops would be content photographing birds all day long. In fact, she’s made a business of it, working as a professional freelance nature photographer. Her office could be her backyard – she moved to the mountains of western North Carolina just to be closer to her subjects.

Connie’s work has appeared in magazines like Orion, and she’s even published her own book of photography. Yet these days, business is slow, and it’s not because the birds aren’t chirping – it’s because her Internet connection is crawling.

by Megan Tady
- USA –

For Maureen Mullaney, helping her kids with their homework takes more than just proofreading their papers. Fed up with a painfully slow dial-up Internet connection at home, Mullaney often drives her children into town, where they sit outside the library to pick up a wireless Internet signal on their laptops in order to do research.

“How silly is it that in this day and age, you have to get in your car in the middle of winter, drive to the center of town, sit in your car with it running, while your child can research the traditional clothing of Chile?” asks Mullaney, who lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts.

Mullaney says her children’s ability to do research for school reports is “ridiculously hampered” by their dial-up connection, particularly when they need to include images with their assignments. “You can’t see [the images] quickly,” Mullaney says. “You click on one and then you wait. And oh, that’s the wrong one.”

The process can be so frustrating, that sometimes Mullaney and her kids give up. “I just say, ‘Forget it, I’ll look it up for you when I get to work,’” she says. “So then I end up doing their research? What’s that all about?”

by Megan Tady
USA

If only “Find the Warhawk Dressed in Sheep’s Clothing,” were a children’s game. Unfortunately, it’s a real life scenario that US voters face as we weigh the options of the Democratic presidential candidates placed before us like limp split peas on a platter when we asked for carrots.

Most of the candidates are dressing for show, and when the party’s over, they slip into something more comfortable, which just happens to be a charging general’s uniform. After all, a politician is a politician is a politician.

The two main political parties in the US – the Democrats and the Republicans – are traditionally pitted against each other in the media with descriptors that evoke good cop versus bad cop scenarios or, in more poetic terms long in use, for some reason they are referred to with winged similes. The Republicans, who currently hold the US hostage with their White House presence, are most often characterized as “warhawks” for their zeal in pursuing war and violence, supposedly to both protect and further America’s “interests.” Democrats, on the other hand, are portrayed as “doves” for their commitment, at least theoretically, to non-aggressive, diplomatic strategies during confrontation.