Blogger's block

It was a dark and stormy night & make that a hazy, humid day in which my brain is so exhausted from creative overload that it's refusing to come up with a really good blog topic. I've come down with blogger's block, an affliction that is by no means as serious as the potential H1N1 pandemic, unless your livelihood depends on your ability to continually create blog posts and other material.

I wonder if my foray into Twitter is partially to blame. Have my 140-character tweets exhausted my creative writing bank? Probably not. I imagine my blockage is temporary and will subside in a few hours.

However, in scanning news sites looking for possible topics, I ran across a couple of items I found interesting. Maybe you will also.

CNN Health reported on a new shoe outfitted with a GPS chip that aims to provide peace-of-mind to Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers.

"The embedded GPS tracking system will allow the wearer of the shoe to be located instantly online and for their whereabouts to be monitored in real time."

Prototype testing is expected to be completed by the end of the year, and the shoe likely will be rolled out in 2010.

The report quoted Andrew Carle, a professor at George Mason University, who was an adviser for the project. Carle said the system "could not only save lives but potentially save governments billions in search and rescue operations."

I think this is a great idea, and I can see it put to good use in other situations, such as keeping track of young children. I also can see the technology being used by people who suspect their partners of cheating; parents who want to keep tabs on their teenagers and young adults; and governments that want to track all sorts of people—without their knowledge. This raises ethical concerns about informed consent and personal privacy, according to Gayle Willis of the Alzheimer's Society in the U.K.

Personally, I applaud the use of this technology in some circumstances, but how do you limit the uses, and who decides which uses are legal and ethical?

The other item that caught my eye was the much-anticipated (at least by those of us who write for a living) announcement of the one millionth word added to the English language. What a surprise! Actually, "what a disappointment" better describes my reaction to "Web 2.0" being the new word. I had hoped for some delicious new adjective that could be used in the first sentence of a blog post or novel.

If you're interested in keeping up-to-date as new words are added, check out The Global Language Monitor. And if you have any creative ideas for good blog topics, send them my way!