Some important dates
There are a few important dates coming up over the next month, so I thought I’d do a quick post in case anyone didn’t know about them. One might be of interest to anyone looking to follow up on BlogCatalog’s Blogging Against Abuse Day.
The first is that October is international Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an annual campaign by the major breast cancer charities to increase awareness of the disease and to raise funds for research. In Australia alone 36 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every day and one in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 85.
Part of the campaign in Australia includes Pink Ribbon Day on Monday October 22nd where you can buy a Pink Ribbon or Wristband to support the cause. Something else you can do is to support The Breast Cancer Site. The site helps to provide free mammograms to women in need; every click from a user raises money from sponsors which goes toward the costs of mammograms. 11,000 mammograms have been provided since the year 2000.
October 15th is BlogActionDay, a community project encouraging bloggers around the world to unite about an issue on everyone’s mind: the environment. BlogActionDay is in its inaugural year and is being supported by over 6,850 blogs and institutions including Greenpeace, Lifehacker, Treehugger, Web Worker Daily and Change.Org. Bloggers are being asked to publish a post relating to an issue of their choice about the environment and to donate any daily advertising revenue to an environmental charity. I haven’t decided what my topic will be yet but I’ll definitely be participating; if you want to find out more, check out BlogActionDay. And thanks to MusEditions and Sanjida for letting me know about it.
The third thing is more of a public service notice for anyone in the US. I heard about this from WC and couldn’t believe it; the laws in the US that keep Internet access tax-free are set to expire on November 1, 2007 and the houses of Congress are currently debating whether Internet access should be kept tax-free. I find the idea that you might have to pay whenever you go online bizarre and it really impacts people outside the US as well as US policy is often adopted as standard in other countries. It’s probably not going to happen but the coalition at MyWireless.Org has a form for people in the US to fill out urging politicians to pass the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act of 2007. You might like to have a look and find out more about keeping the Internet tax free.
Lastly is just a reminder that the next court sitting regarding the defamation case which led to the banning of Wordpress in Turkey is also set to take place on November 1st. Hopefully more information about the ban will be available after the 1st, but if you’d like to send a letter to the Turkish authorities asking that the Turkish courts reconsider their position or sign MidEast Youth’s petition, it might help. Plus you’d be joining with other people in condemning censorship, something which seems particularly important now with the events in Burma.
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Dean on 
Thanks for the info on Breast Cancer Month. I’m with you on that cause, CJ.
Obviously.
210 000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the US, and another 40 000 in the UK.
Added together, that’s one every two minutes.
Meaanwhile, now I’ve got the date for Blog Action Day, I’ll try to plan something on Roads of Stone to mark that occasion.
Probably a piece on the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya - a fantastic place to visit, but looking worryingly likely to become one of the planet’s last zoos.
CJ: I’m lucky enough not to have lost anyone directly in my family to breast cancer, but have lost people to other forms of cancer. The awful thing is not just being diagnosed or seeing the person living with it, but seeing the effects it has on them and everyone around them, the chemotherapy, the pain. Months like Breast Cancer Month are so important because they give a human face to the disease, beyond the numbers… two a minute is just staggering.
Look forward to seeing what you come up with for Blog Action Day. The Masai Mara would be fascinating to talk about; if you think about how beautiful the wildebeest migration is and how we’re endangering that and so much more, it would be very powerful. I’ll probably do something on some of the ways we can all make a difference, though urbanisation is a hot topic for me as well… maybe I’ll do two posts!
Thanks for making awareness about Breast Cancer…I did the same thing on my blog dedicated to my mom who died of Breast Cancer in 1989…
What I find very positive about blogging is that there is no boundaries…A bond can be made where ever u come from…
A Breast Cancer in Australia as the same impact as in Canada..
Colourful Vision
CJ: Thanks, CV. Breast Cancer is such a terrible disease and I’m happy to bring any attention to it that I can; particularly when people can help in such a simple way as buying a pin or clicking a banner on The Breast Cancer Site.
It’s funny that the world is such a huge place, but the net has made it so much smaller. The causes we support and care about are the same all over the world, have the same impact; it’s wonderful that we can join together in a cause at the same time. It’s the first step towards a real global community; we’re all richer for it.
i saw the incoming link today! aw, thanks so much for the mention!
i will write a post about blogactionday quiz and pay you back you know how!
CJ: No worries. Your post and MusEdition’s let me know about it to begin with, so a link to say thanks was the least I could do.
Look forward to seeing what you come up with on the 15th; you always look at things from a different angle, so should be good! No pressure, though.