Of course not! At least not as long as we live in a free country where the First Amendment exists. But with that said, I did a little Google Searching for this post and came to an interesting, albeit depressing, conclusion.

For instance, we all know we are having an “energy crisis.” When I Googled that phrase I received 9,900,000 hits. Sounds like a lot. How about “housing crisis,” another very big issue in our country today, that showed 3,080,000 hits in my Google Search.

Here is the other side of the coin. Put in “sex” and you find, hold on tight, 853,000,000 hits–that’s 86 times more than you do for “energy crisis.” Let’s go to the political arena. When using “Presidential Campaign” I got 11,700,000 hits on my search. Plug in “porn” and you get 234,000,000 hits or 20 times more than you do for “Presidential Campaign.” How about “human rights in China,” a pretty big topic right now? That tallied 15,400,000 hits which was more than energy and housing crisis together and also more than presidential campaign search.

What it’s all about Alfie? (If you don’t get it you’re not old like me.) I’m not sure, the Internet is a gigantic tool in business today and will hopefully become even more so. I worry about the clutter on the web and the ability to narrow searches down in a timely manner. But it’s evident to me that business commerce outside of the sex industry is not doing as well on the web yet. For instance if you search for “furniture stores” you get 7,380,000 hits–a tiny fraction compared to “phone sex” which gets 21,200,000 hits.

I for one am glad Manny is gone. Yes he’s a first ballot Hall of Famer but a guy who never understood the passion we New Englanders have for our sports teams and players. Give me guys like Dustin, Lowell, Youk and even Varitek - at least they care enough to come to work every day.

Now how about the Opening Ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics? I don’t know about you but I have seen more opening ceremonies than I want to admit to and I don’t think anybody has done it better. Let’s not make the athletes policy experts for the next two weeks let’s just let them compete and leave the political drama with the politicians where it belongs.

Brett Farve playing for the NY Jets! Wow I cannot believe that that could ever happen. What did happen? Did Brett just change his mind? Or was the Packers GM intent on putting his mark on the team and Brett was the “other guys” quarterback? I’m not sure we will ever know the answer but a 16 year Packer is now playing in the Meadow Lands with Jimmy Hoffa. I think Vince just rolled over and made an obscene gesture.

Finally a word about the World Champion Boston Celtics. They showed how superstars can play together for a common goal. We all could learn from that in our everyday life.

The Olympics start this week and we’re already hearing that athletes from the USA should be addressing human rights abuses by the Chinese. I’m quite conflicted about this and wonder how others feel. Back in May I saw Lebron James say that athletes should speak out and that he planned to do so. However, this morning on ESPN Sportscenter he spoke about being just a member of the team and that they [athletes] all want to leave the politics to the politicians.

Do you suppose the Olympic Committee reminded him that the contract he agreed to as an athlete specifically prohibits political actions/statements? The bigger question here in spite of the contract is whether or not members of the American Olympic Team have any responsibility to talk about the well-documented human rights abuses in China–to say nothing of China’s support of the racial cleansing going on in Darfur.

One of the thoughts that first comes to my mind is that it’s one thing to ask an NBA multi-millionaire about human rights abuses, but is it fair to put that question to a 16, 17 or 18 year-old gymnast or swimmer? I guess I don’t think it is.

P.S. Please check out this link as a follow up to last week’s blog about social networking.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121729233758791783.html