Upon reporting to my new aircraft carrier command, I noticed that a lot of blogs and forums were blocked 24/7. After about two months, all the few blogs and forums (including SWC) I could view previously were now blocked (certainly why I quit visiting SWC). After checking with the IT's about this, they pulled out a battle group regulation about no blogs, no forums and no "social networking" sites (i.e. the book site Shelfari or the PPT site SlideShare). Yet people at my old aircraft carrier can still (as I did) blog, visit blogs and interact on (SOME) forums. None of the regs match up in the Navy.

My fun now consists of pointing out hypocrisy with the blocked list, i.e. why can I visit FHM or Maxim sites but not DNI or Small Wars Journal? Or embarrassing them and pointing out that I can't visit Obama's site or read news on PBS but I can visit Rudy G's site and watch streaming video on Fox News?

The most offensive thing to me is the sheer idiocy of it all... I have a subordinate who is taking a physics college course and his professor posts assignment hints and further resource ideas on his university blog, but even with myself and the department master chief pushing the IT's to "unblock" just this one professor's blog, they refuse to do it.

Oh well.. Six months.....