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Wednesday, December 11, 2002
New Name, New Location Lacking anything suitably profound to say on this momentous occasion, I will simply direct you to...
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Everyone could use a little... ...Daily Zen. A new bit of profundity to ponder every day. Thanks to Alan Daniels. We'll Miss You The Indepundit is going on hiatus. Congratulations on the career opportunity, Scott, and try to make time for a little blogging whenever you can. Seriously Twisted Laurence Simon has a sick mind. I'm going to have to give this some thought. Should I play to win, or send in a wish list?
Monday, December 09, 2002
Finally Found It! If, like me, you have been getting by with a minimum of HTML you must check out this tutorial. There is also a CSS tutorial. I've spent the past hour and a half reading through it and I think I'm actually getting it. Things are Weird Things? What things? Everything. Nothing. In this case "things" refers to vague "somethings" for which there is no other name. I have all sorts of things going on right now, stacking up on me to give me a feeling of impending disaster. Of course I should be reassurred by the fact that I cannot remember a single time when I had this sense of impending disaster and the disaster actually happened. Disasters rarely announce themselves ahead of time.
Still... I feel an urge to retreat from everything. I don't feel like blogging; I don't feel like reading; I don't feel like Christmas shopping. Well... maybe I do feel a little bit like Christmas shopping. That would be something different. But that's part of that sense of impending disaster: the disaster that will be my VISA card statement for the month of December.
Saturday was Pearl Harbor Day. I only heard it mentioned once on TV. I didn't notice any bloggers writing about it either but I could have missed that since for the past three days I haven't been reading blogs as much as normal. I thought about writing something about it. But what? I wasn't there so it's always been just another day in history to me. But now, considering a more recent day in history, it seems wrong to just let it pass without notice. Saturday, December 07, 2002
Cloning, Stem Cell Research and Evolution Andy at World Wide Rant has some interesting links about stem cell research and theraputic cloning. And a discussion has started in response to his post on evolution, a subject of which I'm wary because whenever I talk to creationists I tend to start disrespecting religious beliefs and using words like "idiot" and "bonehead" and "medieval fascist." Language Links List William Slawski linked to this page of Language Links. One more reason why I need a few more hours in my day. Car Lover's Rant My oldest son has a blog. He's had it for a while. I haven't linked to it because for the most part it's just not the kind of blog I'm interested in and also because he's just an intermittent blogger. But he has outdone himself with his most recent post. I'm not much of a car afficionado so I can't vouch for his information but I do love a well-written rant. The rant is a response to this worst cars poll. More Delay and Frustration I almost did it. I had the credit card out ready to sign up with a hosting company. Then I decided that it might be a good idea to actually read their Policy. This stopped me:
Any type of pornographic materials, hate materials, adult materials (adult material is not necessary limited to pornography), racial materials, or unlawful practices are prohibited. Well, obviously I'm not planning to run a porn site or a hate site but some people think anything that would have raised eyebrows before the year 1900 is pornographic, and we have seen that those on the extreme Left define "hate" as any opinion they disagree with. See Andy's comment below, about the commercial with the Barber twins, as an example of how nuts some people are. Would they be like certain others who have called LGF a "hate site" and demand that I remove the link? Would they consider this painting pornographic or "adult"? Or this one?
The statement "adult material is not necessary limited to pornography" especially makes me nervous. Since this is not a site aimed specifically at children it is of course an "adult" site. Do they host only kiddie sites? I doubt it. I wish people would say what they really mean instead of using euphemisms. This is frustrating because I really like this company. Their hosting plan looks great, everything I could ever possibly want, and they have promptly and courteously answered my emails. (unlike some other companies who have automated answering systems programmed to misunderstand all questions)
I know my few readers are probably getting tired of all my complaining the last few days. My apologies and I promise I'll get back to blogging as usual soon. I'm probably overreacting to this but it seems like freedom of speech is under attack from all sides these days and I am afraid of jumping into something that might place excessive and unfair restrictions on me. I suppose I should just go with Hosting Matters like everyone else but there are some others that look much better. Well...except for a few important little details.
Friday, December 06, 2002
Commercials Why is it that some commercials are funny no matter how many times you see them, even though you sit there and ask yourself "Why is that funny?" Example: two of the VISA Check Card commercials. There's one with Charlie and Martin Sheen. Charlie comes in to rent videos or something and the guy takes forever checking out his ID even though he recognizes him. Then he walks back to the counter and instead of Charlie standing there it's Martin. The guy says "This doesn't look like you," and Martin says "It did when I came in here." I think that's funny because we've all felt like we were growing old waiting in line.
Another one that always cracks me up - and it's a mystery why it isn't seriously annoying - is the one with Tiki and Ronde Barber and the dumb blond. The chick in this commercial is one of those cute little airheads that I usually want to grab shake until her tiny little brain falls out and goes rattling across the floor like a cat toy - "Are you sure this is you? It looks like him." - but even after seeing it a gazillion times it's still funny. Uh oh... Andrea wonders if viruses (real ones, not the computer kind) can be spread through blogging. This morning I have just a slight sore throat and my head feels sort of weird. And I haven't been around anyone else who's sick.
Thursday, December 05, 2002
New Blogger Diane started her blog Everything Must Go a couple of weeks ago. She's getting off to a good start. Here's a little quote to entice you:
The impending war with Iraq and the war on terror in general reminds me of the movie Notorious. It's a war movie with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. I saw it on late-night tv so many years ago, I don't remember it well enough to describe it in detail, but the main idea is that they're both spies or something, Bergman is definitely on the side of the Allies, but she doesn't know if Grant is on our side or a double agent (bad guy). The whole movie is a lot of plot twists and ambiguity. Is he or isn't he? At the end, he turns out to be a good guy. I read somewhere that they actually filmed the movie with two endings, and they decided not to use the ending that showed him as a bad guy, i.e., really working for the Nazis after all. Yeah...I know what she means. Go read more.
Hot Little Rant I hate Blogger more with every passing day. My last post refuses to appear on the page. For a long time I've had to refresh the page and re-publish several times each time I want to post something but this morning I have tried more than five times and it's still not showing up. I know this is a free service and you get what you pay for and yadda yadda yadda. I really don't expect a lot, but they do offer the service for free and I at the very least expect it to function properly most of the time. And support? Maybe that's a little too much to expect for free but they do post an email address. If they don't intend to offer free support they shouldn't make their email address available to us freeloaders. I would feel a whole lot better about it if they would just be honest and post somewhere on their homepage something to the effect that: "It's free. Use it as is and don't expect any support." Dreams and Dresses Have you ever had a nice simple dream that you thought was real, and then woke up very disappointed to discover that it was only a dream? Dreams are the only thing that keeps sleep from being a total waste of time. I often have very interesting dreams. Some would make good sci-fi movies. This morning's dream was not one of those.
This morning I dreamed that I found a skirt that had been missing for a long time and it went perfectly with a blouse I have that doesn't go with anything else. It was a lovely skirt; a large print, mostly light blue; long, rather full, buttoned down the front. But then I woke up and immediately realized that neither the skirt nor the blouse exist. Damn. The style of the skirt was identical to a skirt I do have that's a soft mint green with purple and peach roses. (I swear it doesn't look as tacky as you're probably imagining)
Anyway, now I'm thinking maybe I should make time for a little sewing. After I've done some shopping, of course. We won't talk about the mountain of fabric that I have taking up closet space. We also won't talk about the fact that I only wear a dress or skirt once or twice a year. That's irrelevant. It's a female thing. You guys wouldn't understand.
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
It Can't Be Easy Some intense stuff is going on at Where is Raed. I read some of the stuff Salam writes, and see the bitterness, and I want to tell him: "you don't get it; it's not like that at all." But most of the Americans who have left comments over there don't get it either.
Sitting over there waiting for the bombs to start dropping, how is he supposed to feel? Is he supposed to look forward to that? It must be something like having cancer. (Just guessing, no personal experience) The disease will kill you but the treatment, which is by no means a guaranteed cure, is no picnic either. (Yippee! I'm going in for chemotherapy and I'm going to be sick and throwing up all the time and all my hair will fall out and I will probably still die anyway. Isn't that all just fantastic!)
Everybody just give the guy a break, okay? We're probably going to invade his country (again) and if we succeed this time who knows what will happen next. How's he supposed to feel? Go ahead and disagree (I do) but at the same time try for a little understanding. ICK! A sixty acre spider web. Sixty acres? Oh my.... sixty acres?!?!?! I think I might have to move to Australia. I'm not sure if I can share the same continent with a sixty acre spider web. Fortunately there are no pictures of the whole thing.
Via Redwood Dragon.
Global Warming my @ss! I really need to try later to write something a little less bitchy. (No it is not that time of the month. Shut up)
Why don't the people in our schools who decide whether or not the weather is bad enough to close listen to the weather forecast instead of just glancing out the freakin' window? It rained all day yesterday and early this morning the temperature was 34F/2C. Right now it's 28F/-4C with snow and sleet coming down. My son is going to have to drive home in this mess in a couple of hours. The drive is approximately 3 miles along a four-lane highway and 5 miles along narrow, curving backroads. We're not unique. It's a small country school with something over 600 students in K thru 12 all of wom live on narrow, curving backroads anwhere from 1 to 10 miles from the school.
This is not a surprise snowstorm either. They have been talking about this since last night and it was all they were tallking about on every TV station in the area early this morning. Anyone who was paying attention knew that the weather was going to get very bad today. Some schools in Tulsa, where they have snow-plows and sand trucks unlike here, closed. What the hell are the people at our school using for brains? NOT Born Knowing Everything Some days I feel like I must be the most ignorant person in the world. I hate when it seems like everyone expects me to automatically know everything about a subject. One example is this HTML Tutorial that I found and bookmarked when I first decided to try to learn this stuff. I still haven't learned much because of all the pages like this that give some good information but don't tell you how to begin.
That's just an example, not my main concern at the moment. I'm getting fairly serious about leaving Blogger and I spent a couple of hours this morning looking at web hosting companies. What I'm getting out of all of it is that I'm too freakin' dumb to have my own real website. I'm so tired of reading "information" that talks about cgi, ftp, bandwidth, subdomains and other crap that I'm ready to just go sit in the corner under a blanket and suck my thumb and rock back and forth. What the hell is a subdomain and how do I know if I'll ever need one?
I know a lot of people use Hosting Matters but Feature Price seems to offer a lot more at a slightly lower price. I probably don't need anything near 1000MB but I am interested in more than just a weblog. Anyway, in one place Feature Price says they support MYSQL on all their hosting plans but in another place they say they only support MYSQL modules on the Premium and Platinum plans. HUH?
I should be able to do this. Even pimply-faced, snot-nosed kids who don't know how to spell have their own websites. I guess that's because they just dive right in without looking to see how deep the water is and somehow manage to learn how to swim. I, on the other hand, like to start out knowing exactly what I'm doing.
By the way, is www.dammitallthegooddomainnamesarealreadytaken.com too long for a web address? Cell Phones Jeff at Circularity complains about, amoung other things, people who leave their cell phones turned off. (Dec. 2)
3. Individuals with cell phones who leave them off. Their is vibrate mode for a reason, if youo dont want to be interrupted turn it to vibrate, or ringer off and occationally check to see if you have any voicemail/text messages. Why do you have a cell phone if you dont use it??!?!?!? Why? Well, duh! Maybe they want to be able to make calls but don't want to receive calls. If I had a cell phone I would probably leave it off most of the time because I would have it for my convenience. If you expect someone to be available to you at all times maybe you should pay their cell phone bill plus a nice little salary for being your gofer or whatever you call someone who's supposed to be at your beck and call at all times but is neither married to you nor gave birth to you. Jeff seems to have the same problem with people using instant messenger programs. Everything is all for his convenience.
We all have our pet peeves though and I have a few that I would like to share.
I could probably think of more but I guess that's enough for now. Gift Idea For that hard to shop for person: Celebriducks. Aside from the silly items they are trying to sell this is a rather interesting site. Click on the names on the left side of the screen and you will find some biographies and lists of quotes.
Via Birds Etcetera.
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
Trusting the Government In his usual amusing manner, Acidman comments on the National Institutes of Health Body Mass Index.
That idiotic Body Mass Index was invented by retard with a hiatal hernia and severe acid reflux who wanted to make his starving ass appear normal, then recalculated a few years ago by some tufu-sucking, celery-crunching vegans who decided that anybody who didn't look like a refugee from a concentration camp was overweight. They adjusted all the numbers down, so that now world-class aerobic athletes with 4% body fat are "overweight" under their guidelines. I've often wondered why it never occurs to most people to question the government's health guidelines. Even people who are cynical about everything else seem to accept the Body Mass Index, the Recommended Daily Allowances of nutrients, and that silly food pyramid that they keep changing every ten years or so. Sure most people don't actually follow the guidelines but they still accept them as gospel. I guess it's because most people are not doctors so they know they are not qualified to determine what's best for everyone's health but everyone thinks they're qualified to run the country.
Gloom, Rain, Cold and Music Addiction Is it possible to overdose on Palestrina? I've never listened to my entire 5-CD set one after another but that's not because I listened to two or three or four and decided I'd had enough. Most of the time after I have listened to one disc of Palestrina I don't want to listen to anything else but more Palestrina and I have been tempted to keep going until I've been through them all.
Some days seem to call for a particular kind of music. On days like today - gray, cold and rainy - I often feel like listening to to music that makes me think of an ancient cathedral filled with the golden light of hundreds of candles. Sometimes though, the music seems to deepen the gloom rather than dispel it, like a candle creating a tiny sphere of light and warmth while leaving the area outside its influence even darker. Is it just me? What happened to the polls on BlogBasher? Apparently some people can see them but I can't, not even blank rectangles where they should be. Monday, December 02, 2002
The Voices of Moderate Islam Shi'a Pundit addresses the accusations that Muslims have failed to condemn terrorism and posts links to numerous articles as evidence that this accusation is false. I posted the following in the comments:
...In the early weeks after Sept. 11 I did see a lot of essays by Muslims condemning the attacks and terrorism in general, but it wasn't long before I started to notice a pattern. In the majority of these essays the condemnation of terrorism was merely used as an opening for criticism of American foreign policy and American culture. It's a very elementary persuasive writing technique: first draw your audience in by saying something they want to hear then smoothly shift over to your real point. The response to this? I was accused of "moral relativism." Interesting. To observe moral relativism is... moral relativism. I know this will be hard for some people to believe but by posting these personal observations I actually meant to be helpful. I had hoped I might be able to provide an insight into why so many Americans are bothered by what we see as Muslim reluctance to denounce terrorism.
I certainly never intended to imply that Muslims, or anyone else, should refrain from criticizing U.S. foreign policy, but to immediately follow a perfunctory condemnation of terrorism with a condemnation of U.S. foreign policy seems to many of us rather like telling a woman who has been raped, "What happened to you was terrible. Of course I don't approve of rape but you shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt and you really need to go easy on the make-up." (There! How's that for moral relativsm?)
* * *
Fortunately, this evening I did find something much more encouraging. Glenn Reynolds quotes an article in the L.A. Times.
The main reason we lack legitimacy among many Americans is because we don't take a critical look at the theological orientations within the Muslim community that could produce ugly acts like 9/11 or the Taliban regime's destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan," Syed said in an interview. As Glenn says, we need to support these moderates who are willing to take a stand.
The Goal of Protesters This thought occurred to me while reading this piece on some of the latest propoganda from the Washington post: What if it was announced that we would definitely not invade Iraq or any other country? Would the Lefties be happy? Would they celebrate victory? No, they would not. They would immediately find something else to protest against or, more likely considering current happenings, they would continue the exact same protests.
Look! Are we invading Iraq? We've been playing nice with the U.N. for months. The inspectors are back and the Iraqis are once again playing their games with the inspectors. So where's the invasion?
It looks to me like the Lefties are already getting everything they say they want. So what is their problem? Why aren't they happy? They aren't happy because no matter what they say they want, the real goal of protesters is to protest. Give them what they want and they will pretend not to notice. Manage somehow to convince them that they won and they will find something else to protest against. Protest for the sake of protest is the whole point. Is Bush on Our Side A disturbing comment from one of N.Z. Bear's readers:
"There's no nice way to say this. I don't think GW Bush is totally on our side. I think the Saudis own him and his family. I don't want this to be so, but there is No Other Explanation for his behavior... I have to believe the obvious--the President is not playing to win." I'm afraid that's what it looks like to me too. I've read comments by several bloggers who believe that once we have Iraq things will change. Steven Den Beste wrote a few days ago:
Once we're firmly established in Iraq, we won't need to pretend any longer that Saudi Arabia is our best friend, and the kid gloves will come off. They will be ordered to stop subsidizing Wahhabism internationally, and ordered to crack down on the people who have been giving money to al Qaeda. They will be given other orders, too, and with no leverage over us, with us able to destroy their economy and with large American forces poised in Iraq capable of invading Saudi Arabia any time (an interesting mirror of 1990, wouldn't you say?) those threats will have teeth. Almost certainly the result would be the fall of the House of Saud. I want to believe that, but I fear that, like many things that we would like to believe, it's only a fantasy.
Wisdom All of these are so good I couldn't possibly quote only part of the post. Well, maybe just one or two.
90% of the population are idiots, yet everyone who says that believe themselves to be in the remaining 10%. Line up ten random people. Tell them 90% of the group is comprised of idiots. Every one of those people is looking to the person at their side, feeling sorry for that idiotic sod. Some folks believe that Man is naturally good and holds within himself a part of the Divine. They've never worked retail. During the Holidays. And my favorite:
The Saudis are our "friends". Friends don't let friends fund terrorism. On second thought, maybe this is my favorite:
We've been bombing anti-aircraft sites in southern Iraq for ten years. For a country under severe economic sanctions for the past decade, it sure seems to have an inexhaustable supply of anti-aircraft weaponry. Lots more where those came from. Go read.
Sunday, December 01, 2002
Back to the Routine? Does anyone else have trouble getting back into the routine of regular blogging after taking a few days off? I just deleted a much longer post on that subject because I couldn't figure out a good way to end it. Having an audience, even though it's a very small one, makes me feel an urgency to write something. I'm feeling a little pathetic right now. Hopefully a little reading will cure this problem by tomorrow afternoon.
Friday, November 29, 2002
Exposing Kids to Classical My son and grandson are in the next room watching a Muppets Christmas special. I just heard a little bit of the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem. I grew up hearing snippets of classical music in Warner Brothers cartoons but I don't hear it very often in today's kids' shows. That's too bad. I don't know if that little bit of early exposure had any effect on my later "mature appreciation" of classical music but it apparently didn't do any harm. Another Neighbor I've just quickly looked over okansas. Looks like another worthwhile blog from one of my neighboring states.
Holiday Weekend Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Now the shopping begins. Here's a tip: stay out of the stores. There's still time to shop online. Just sit there in your pajamas and get it all done the easy way. I'll be doing some shopping here and here and maybe here.
Have a great weekend.
Update:Meow.com, the first of the links above, does not have an online store. Too bad. If you like cats you really must request one of their paper and ink catalogs even if it will arrive too late for Christmas shopping.
Blog When I saw this title in Blogger's recently updated list - Blogger Support Sucks - of course I had to click on it because Blogger support (Blogger has Support?!?!?!) does suck. I was a little disappointed to find that it does not actually say anything about Blogger Support and "Blogger Support Sucks" isn't even its real title. On the postive side though, it is a nice page design.
Update:I took a closer look at the page linked above. On the left is a list of blogs by the same blogger, including...ta daaa...Blogger Support Sucks. An amusing idea. I'll be watching to see if it works. I seriously doubt it. As Andy says in the comments we're not exactly paying through the nose for Blogger, but their free service isn't exactly a great advertisement for their paid service either. I have been getting Error 503, along with the "we're working on this" note, for several months. I usually have to refresh and click the publish button again several times before the page will show the latest post. Wednesday, November 27, 2002
It's de-lovely, It's de-lightful, It's de-linking I haven't read Cinderella Bloggerfeller before but if this is typical of his writing I really must start reading his page frequently even if it does take too long to load. A masterpiece of heavy-handed satire.
Thanks to Kathy for pointing this one out.
By the Same Name This is hilarious. If I had $3000 I would buy the painting myself. Even if the controversy doesn't increase the value the title is delightful.
Thanks to Alexandra. Not So Easy Porphyrogenitus points to this good advice.
Like a lot of good advice, it's hard to take. I don't have any friends who are real anti-defense nuts, but then I don't have a lot of friends anyway. My friends are all family and we tend to avoid politics. Last 4th of July someone asked me what I thought of the Pledge of Alliegence controversy, which was a hot topic at the time. I told her the same thing I said here: that I think the words "under God" should not have been added to the Pledge but that the words don't hurt anyone and everyone was getting way too worked up over the whole issue. Everyone found a different topic of conversation real fast. I got the feeling that she was hoping to start a good old circle rant about those "godless liberals out there in California" and I spoiled the fun.
Online most of my friends used to be liberals. Several people I had considered my "best friends" had already drifted away long before September 11th. Sometime after September 11 I started deliberately drifting away from the few who were left and ended up here. I miss some of my old friends and would like to hear from them but at the same time I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of them seeing what I write here. I don't know where most of them stand on the current issues.
I now feel cut off and distant from everyone. I both like and dislike that feeling. There are a lot of bloggers I like and often agree with but I haven't made a close friendship connection with anyone the way I did with a few people in discussion forums. In a way that's good because if you're not close to anyone you're not likely to get hurt, but I miss having friends to talk to. Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Sad News I don't know what to say. I'm very upset about this. I'm sorry I couldn't find a longer article. I guess it just goes to show how little most people care.
More Publicity for LGF The Lefties are getting all worked up again about that evil warblogger Charles Johnson. Steven den Beste writes:
Of course, there are always people who take themselves too seriously and who think they are more important than they truly are. And an unfortunately large number of those are on the political left, where there is a rising horror at the way that we bloodthirsty rabid warbloggers are perverting their medium to deliver the wrong message. Not only is it a "tempest in a teapot," these little crusades actually help the blogger they are trying to hurt. How many extra links will LGF get out of this? I'm betting he will gain more than he loses.
Personally I'm an equal opportunity linker. In fact I might add a few idiotarians as soon I can think of a sufficiently annoying category heading. The word "twit" seems to work extremely well for pissing people off but I was hoping to come up with something a bit more grandiose sounding - in a heavily ironic way, of course.
UAE Beauty Contest Via LGF:
The United Arab Emirates has held its first national beauty contest for camels with a prize fond of about $27,000 and various trophies for winners. This story is just begging for a crude joke or snide remark but I can't think of one right now. Feel free to supply your own.
Blogging Forecast I might not do much blogging for the next few days, maybe a link now and then. I have shopping to do today, baking to do tomorrow and hanging out with the family to do on Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Another World Domination Plan Bigwig has a plan to manipulate Blogdex.
It's possible to manipulate Blogdex. We do it every week when I beg for links from the Blogdex registered among you. Not only is it possible, it's fairly easy. 7 or 8 links is all that it takes to put a site on the front page. He admits, however, that it could get the participants kicked off Blogdex. Monday, November 25, 2002
Sci-fi Break I spent several hours today immersed in Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. I started it over a week ago. It normally takes me a long time to get through a book because I'm always doing so many other things, but I got about halfway through and couldn't put it down until I finished the last page.
I enjoyed this one more than the first book in the series, Ender's Game, which I did like very well. There's a lot to think about in Speaker for the Dead. I naturally want to try to relate the story to events in the real world, but it's not a very good fit. The story uses a rather typical sci-fi formula - two very different cultures meet, misunderstanding threatens to cause war between species, far away bureacrats who have no idea what's really going on screw things up almost beyond repair, colonists and aliens/natives rebel against authority and save the day - but excellent writing, realistic characterization and original ideas put Speaker for the Dead a cut above the ordinary. It feels epic.
I look forward to the next book in the series but it will have to wait a while. Another member of my family has just started reading it. Sunday, November 24, 2002
Loose Connections A long time ago, when I was still too young to worry about such things, I read that after age 35 you start loosing brain cells. I don't know if that's scientifically valid but it does seem to describe what happens to most of us. I think it's more likely that my head is just stuffed full of mostly useless information without any kind of logical filing system. I can remember all kinds of crap but pulling out the specific bit of information I need at any given time is like searching through your grandmother's attic for one particular trinket that's been missing since 1964.
This evening the following search string appeared in my referral log: +The+Spirit+of+Ink+Hovhaness. I had not heard of that work before but for some reason I was sure I had seen a blog called "Spirit of Ink" in someone's blogroll. I looked through the blogrolls of all the blogs I've visited today and haven't found it so I have to conclude that it was probably just a loose connection in my aging brain.
The good news is that I did find this Overview of the Music of Alan Hovhaness. I was a little put off by the first sentence: "Approaching the music of Alan Hovhaness can be a daunting prospect for new listeners..." Hovhaness, daunting? Please! Wagner is daunting. Even Bach might be considered daunting. Hovhaness is easy to get into. However, the essay did give some good recommendations and brief descriptions of many of Hovhaness' compositions.
I do not agree that "By far the best performance of Mysterious Mountain is the 1958 recording by Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra." It's certainly a good performance but I prefer Gerard Schwarz' recording, which is also mentioned. I also have the Koch CD which includes Celestial Gate, Mountains and Rivers Without End and Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places. There are several more that want to get. Unfortunately the piece that led me there in the first place, The Spirit of Ink, is not available on CD. A Great Time to be Alive From Pejman:
Think about the fact that in Wagner's time (and for that matter, in Mozart's, Bach's, Puccini's and Rossini's times), the average citizen would have to scrimp and save, make long treks to different cities, and perhaps even have a few favors done on his/her behalf in order to enjoy such transcendent music. My feelings exactly.
Out of the Ordinary I'm always thrilled to find unique blogs like Visible Darkness. Well written essays and interesting black and white photographs. Jeff is in Little Rock, Arkansas so now I have to decide whether to add him to "Special Interest" or "Neighbors."
Jeff had some interesting comments about Judith Butler and academic writing. Butler won the 1998 Philosophy and Literature Bad Writers Contest for this sentence:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. Jeff comments:
I’m really scared that I find Butler’s sentences quite comprehensible. What the hell is happening to me? Have I acquired the virulently pernicious academic gene? Maybe I’m even more terrified by the conversation I had today with the director of the graduate program here. We had a nice talk about my project, in post-structuralist terms that we were both quite comfortable with and she stopped to point out that our conversation would have been totally incomprehensible to most people in the department. I hadn’t thought about it. I was just talking. The "Bad Writing Contest" seems to me like just another populist celebration of ignorance. Maybe I'm wrong. I have to admit that I didn't understand Butler's sentence, but being difficult to understand does not necessarily make it bad. To judge whether it is good or bad I would have to understand it completely.
I envy people who can talk and write like that - to write not just competently but beautifully and to express complicated ideas. I actually love to read stuff that's hard to understand and to try to decipher the meaning. I've never read anything that is as hard to understand as some people - people who seem to be perpetually bored and yet are unwilling to explore any of the many possiblities for long term relief from their boredom.
Oh well, I've been up on this soapbox before. Reality calls. It's time for me to climb down and go fix lunch.
Saturday, November 23, 2002
What is your Sullivan Number? If I understand the system correctly my Sullivan number is 2. Obviously the whole idea is flawed. I'm nowhere near as popular or important as that number suggests.
Via Still Life with Woodpecker
Hypocrisy Alert Well, well, well... It seems that Muslims - you know, those peaceful, devout folk who are so worried about their culture being contaminated by Western commercialism - like a good shopping and feasting holiday as well as anyone else, or at least Saudi Arabian Muslims do. Vicky has the goods. (Nov. 22, 7:08pm)
Rachmaninov's Vespers Found in my referral log this morning:
Rachmaninov lyrics Vespers Once again... if you are searching for the words to classical or traditional religious music you will be more likely to find what you are looking for if you use the word text instead of the word lyrics. Unfortunately, in this case I didn't have any better luck. However, I did find a page with some information about Rachmaninov's Vespers, which happens to be one of my favorite choral works. Friday, November 22, 2002
Where were you when...? I had almost forgotten what day this is. I was only five years old when President John F. Kennedy was shot. We were at my grandmother's house. She learned of the shooting via a phone call from one of her neighbors. Someone turned on the television at the same time someone else turned on the radio and I clearly remember someone saying, "Are we going to watch it on TV or listen to the radio?"
Those are the only details I remember. I had never thought about our leaders at all up to that point. Like most little kids, my awareness was filled with fairy tales about kings and queens and other royalty. I do not remember now whether I had known, before November 22, 1963, that the U.S. has a president, but I do remember wondering why we have a president instead of a king and I wondered what happened when a president died. It was the first time I had ever thought about these things. However, I sensed that it was not a good time to ask questions.
Did the world change that day? It would require someone older than me to answer that but I feel that it did because every such event changes the world in some way. I got the feeling that the adults I knew didn't like President Johnson very much. I never heard anyone say anything bad about President Kennedy while I was growing up, therefore I grew up with the notion that Kennedy was a great hero, the last great president, almost sainted.
Later it became fashionable to tear down heros, to reveal the "truth" about highly respected persons. President Kennedy and other heros were never more than human. We made them heros in the first place. We chose to look only at the great things they did, overlooking anything that did not contribute to the purely heroic image.
Have we "grown up" since Kennedy's assasination, or just grown cynical? I honestly don't know. Blind hero worship can be dangerous but, on the other hand, is it necessary to make a villains of all our heros in order to prove that we are not naive? Can't we be aware of the imperfect human and still honor the hero? My Kind of Top Ten List! Pejman and Gregory have both posted Top Ten Lists of Badass Classical Music. As soon as I read them I immediately wanted to get in on the fun but Pejman has already posted half my list and there's so much to choose from I'm not sure what else to add. I can't resist making the attempt anyway so here it is, very much off the top of my head.
1.Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor - Of course! And I totally agree with Pejman that it must be on the organ. I do like the orchestration but no instrument is as "badass" as a huge pipe organ.
2.Mozart, Requiem - Pejman's favorite part is the Confutatis. I love it all but I think the Dies Irae fits in with this list a little better. In fact, I think you could fill the entire list with the Dies Irae from various Requiems. Dvorak and Verdi are a couple of my other favorites.
3.Mozart, Piano Concerto in D minor - Another one stolen from Pejman's list as are the next two.
4.Carl Orff, O Fortuna
5.Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries - A must for every list of "badass music."
6.Brahms, German Requiem - Pretty darn good even if it isn't Latin.
7.Dvorak, Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" - I considered that this might go better on a follow-up list of celebratory music but the final movement can definitely go here.
8.Stravinsky, Rite of Spring - Not one of my personal favorites but it will definitely scare anyone who thinks classical music is all pretty and prissy. (Update: I considered replacing this one with Viktor Suslin's "Dawn Music," a double bass solo. I like it a lot better but Rite of Spring is probably more scary.)
9.Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain - I once heard a classical DJ call this the "scariest piece of music ever written." I find that hard to argue with. I like the version with the quiet ending which, if I'm not mistaken, is the later orchestration. The beginning may take your breath away but that ending will send chills down your spine.
10.Mozart, String Quartet in D minor, K421 - Number 10 on any Top 10 list is always the toughest because at this point I can always think of at least 5 more, but I have to include this one. It sounds like a manic-depressive finally going off the deep end.... or maybe it's all just a joke. Just kidding, everything is fine, go to sleep now, hehehe...
Inspector Magoo John J. Reilly writes:
Why did I immediately think of Mr. Magoo when I heard that Hans Blix had arrived in Baghdad to begin the leisurely process of looking for weapons of mass destruction?... I hadn't thought of it quite like that but I have had my doubts about the ability even of competent inspectors to effectively search an entire country for weapons.
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Learn to Love Big Brother? N.Z. Bear has a different take on the scary Total Information Awareness System. It would be hard to lift a representative quote so just go read it.
He has a sensible way of looking at it, if a little rosy. I've said before that the doom we expect rarely comes to pass. However, I'm still worried. I'm not worried that TIA will make our lives hell; I'm worried that it will erode our freedom and privacy so subtly and gradually that most people will simply accept it, first as an inconvenient necessity, then eventually as a "normal" part of life.
NZB believes that the TIA might actually protect civil liberties. It makes sense the way he explains it. I think there will be many benefits but I worry about the potential for abuse. Digital Art Thanks to Andrea for pointing the way to Terragen, a free digital art program. I might get brave and give this one a try. I tried to find something like this a few months ago and downloaded a free program that was supposed to be "easy." HA! I can't remember the name of it now but it was totally incomprehensible. (to me) It apparently worked something like HTML but it was a thousand times more confusing. What I want is a super 3-D version of Paintbrush where you can just point, click, drag, etc.
Update:I downloaded Terragen (10 minutes) and it is easy to use. I created a picture in only a few minutes. Learning to create a picture that looks exactly the way I want it to look will take a while longer.
The List I've rearranged my links again, and added a few. The Neighbors category includes bloggers in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas. If you belong in that group let me know. I don't know everyone's location. The Frequent Reading category is likely to change frequently.
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Tip Jars Tip jars are the latest thing that people are getting anal about in the blogosphere. I was pretty much ignoring it until I read Laurence's fisking of Skippy's rant. Lair, you were way too nice to the little twit.
If I switch to MT I will definitely add a tip jar myself. I've considered doing so anyway even though this isn't costing me anything. The reason I haven't has more to do with the lack of an audience. I'm getting about 80 - 100 visits a day, according to Sitemeter but I figure that I have only 10 - 15 regular readers, and that's likely an overestimate. Having a tip jar for everyone to ignore would be almost as depressing as the comments box that everyone is ignoring.
But back to Skippy:
if you can't afford a computer and an on line browser to accesss one of the many free bloggging software programs available, maybe you should get a pen and piece of paper. Well then I would really need some kind of tip jar. You say "pen and paper" so that means I will be writing by hand. First expense will be making copies. I know a place that makes copies for only 10 cents a sheet so depending on how many readers I have and how much I write, which varies, we're talking about maybe a dollar or two or three a day. Let's be conservative and say copies will cost me $30 a month. Well, that's already more than hosting would cost me so I won't even bother to figure in postage and other expenses. Get the picture?
i strongly suspect that everyone who blogs, with the exception of that homeless guy, has a day job which pays for every other d*mn hobby they participate in Sorry, at present my day job and night job is "domestic goddess." Except for some great fringe benefits it doesn't pay very well.
so to us, it's a bit like asking people to pay to watch our pick-up game of basket ball so we can buy better sneakers to play in. No, actually I think it's more like the street performers I used to see in New York putting their hat down on the sidewalk. Everyone's free to stand there and watch and listen then either drop some change into the hat or just simply walk away without giving a penny. But on the other hand... if the basketball players put down a hat and if they were really good...
if you want to write for a living, then do it the hard way...write and submit and get rejected and write some more and get rejected some more and keep writing because you have a burning desire to share your point of view until finally some schmuck with a checkbook likes what you do and then pays you for it. Why? There's a better way now. Instead of schmucks with checkbooks we have schmucks with PayPal accounts.
but don't expect the world to support your own diary (which is, after all, what a blog is) You don't actually read very many blogs do you?
and espcially in light of the level of sophistication that is apparent from the vocabulary Yeah! Not to mention that some people don't even capitalize! (Some of ya'll knew that was coming didn't you?)
jesus h. christ on a rubber pogo stick, there are about a billion more things far more deserving of charity than bloggers who don't want to shell out the extra bucks for more band width. children are dying out there, and these folks want us to click on pay pal? Oh! There it is! "The Children." Okay folks I think we're done here.
I'm amazed that anyone could really be all that bothered by tip jars. (Maybe he's not really. Maybe he's just trying to boost his traffic. Heck, that's what I'm doing) Ignore the freakin' tip jars if you don't like them! Ignore the whole damned site if you just can't stand seeing the tip jar there. Quite frankly, it's none of your damned business what anyone else does with their own blog.
Karl Barth A couple of days ago I posted my result in the "Which Theologian Are You?" quiz. It said that I was Karl Barth and I remarked that I had never heard of him. Wanting to know more about this person with whom I supposedly have something in common, I did a Google search. Amoung the many Karl Barth pages are this and this. The New Look Please let me know what this looks like to you. I was in the middle of making changes when Blogger went into its daily coma this morning. After it came back up and I finished making the changes what I ended up with didn't look anything like I expected. One color code gave me two completely different colors in two different places. Then, without me doing anything, the problem just fixed itself. At least it looks fine to me but it's been acting so weird I'm worried about what everyone else is seeing. Hopefully you are seeing a very nice light beige, not an icky shade of yellow.
And another thing... What happened to the Blogger button? It should still be there right above the Sitemeter button. Has Hell frozen over? To whoever has been hitting Peter Singer over the head with a clue-bat: good job! It looks like you might be starting to make an impression.
If we did away with globalization, would the poor of the developing world be better off? No, he answers, to do so would leave them worse off. This is the big point missing from the whole debate, and it's impressive that Singer has locked on to it... More.
Keep that clue-bat handy. He's made progress but you never know when he might need a few more whacks.
Tuesday, November 19, 2002
How do you like your chocolate? Scott linked to this article about putting weird stuff in chocolate. Except for animals without backbones, I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to food so I actually would like to try some of these.
Tangerine - sounds good to me. This is supposed to be weird?
White chocolate with cardamon - OMG! Where can I buy some? I must try this.
Red chili - hmmmmm. Oh well, why not? I don't remember ever tasting anything with chili peppers that I didn't like.
Rose or violet truffle - Okay, what's the deal with putting flower petals in food? (I'd probably try this one too)
Pepper - Do they mean ordinary black pepper? I think I'll pass on this one.
Oh, here we go. This sounds like something else I must try. Hey, I bet I can mix this up myself! "At Jacques Torres Chocolates...the big seller is Wicked Hot Chocolate, ... With ancho and chipotle peppers, cinnamon and allspice..."
I'm going to have to give this some thought. I bet I could come up with some really interesting ideas of my own. Holidays are coming up. I need something truly original to bring to our annual Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers.
Le Pew Here is another reason why I am unspeakably thrilled that I was born in the good ol' U.S of A!
Do unto others... The Militant Pagan tells it like it is:
We cannot be nice, kind or tolerant to an entire culture that is devoted to wiping us off the face of the earth and feels justified by doing so based on dusty books interpreted by mean-spirited, hateful little men. We cannot sit idly by wringing our hands over the murders of our countrymen and clinging to the ideals of non-interference and pacifism. We cannot embrace these monsters with open arms, and far too many Americans continue to do so. Read the whole thing. Nov. 13, 12:58pm. Permalinks not working correctly.
Redecorating Vicky has a nice new page design with a great header.
I really must get around to adding her and several others to my links list soon. Also, I'm starting to get the redecorating bug myself (I understand that's a female thing) so you never know what you might find here in the next week or two.
I don't think Blogger likes this template even though it is one of Blogger's standard templates with a little tinkering by Scott and me. (Yes Scott, I did finally order the sweatshirt.) Does anyone else on Blogspot still get the 503 error? Mark was having the same problem only worse but changing templates seems to have fixed it. I like having three columns though so I'll probably just stick with this template. It works most of the time.
Never Say Die? Okay, so Ray Kurzweil is just plain nuts, but a little positive thinking can't hurt, right?
Monday, November 18, 2002
Software Pain Is anyone else out there using Norton Internet Security? We used to use Pop-up Stopper and several security programs that you can download for free. When it came time to upgrade our Norton Utilities we decided to get the "Internet Security" version which would replace the several free programs. I am not pleased with result. Pop-up Stopper was great. It was easy to turn on and off with just two clicks. It takes at least three clicks to turn Norton's ad-blocker on or off, but that's only on those rare occasions when it actually works like it's supposed to. Most of the time when you try to turn something off in Norton, even though it says it's off it doesn't turn off until you've tried several times.
That goes for the "Parental Control" also which we don't really need because the youngest "child" using the computer is 18. But it's there and just as hard to turn off and keep off as everything else. You're supposed to be able to edit the list of banned sites but that doesn't work right either. And speaking of that list... it must have been programmed by a clone of Pat Robertson. Norton bans more sites than the Chinese government. I wasn't too surprised when it wouldn't let me go to Victoria's Secret but when I couldn't even go to Yahoo Mail that was just too much! Oh well, it's bought and paid for and the other half likes it so I guess we're stuck with it. Controversial Art I've seen comments about this painting on several blogs. I think A.C. Douglas has a good interpretation though not necessarily the only one. Whatever the interpretation, I am amused by all the uproar over this rather ordinary piece of "pop art trash" as ACD calls it. I think the best comment I've seen was in Nukevet's comments: "history is the only art critic that matters." Some of the greatest works of art of all time have incited moral outrage. I wouldn't say that all works of art must be publicly displayed in spite of protests, but when will the philistines of the world ever learn that such reactions only serve to validate works of art that would otherwise soon be forgotten? Religion A recent newspaper article alerted me to Why Religion Matters, a book by the well-known religious historian Huston Smith. Apart from its very existence, the article drew my attention because of the familiarity of the charges it leveled against science and skepticism. I bought a copy, and while it was difficult to struggle through the whole thing, it was a valuable exercise. It served as an excellent window into the mainstream religious mind - many of the arguments in the book had a familiar ring to them. In fact, the book was quite a nice summary of the prejudices and fallacies about Freethought that are taken for granted in society at large. Via Ye Olde Phart Welcome Chinese Readers! Apparently there was an error that caused all sites to be reported as banned in China. When I check a few minutes ago this blog was reported as accessible in China. I suppose that now I will have to actually work at convincing the Chinese government that my opinions are dangerous. Reading I finally started reading Speaker for the Dead last week. I've had the book for a couple of months but I've had to wait while three other family members read it. Every time I thought I was going to get to read it one of my guys snatched it up. I was beginning to think I was going to have to buy another copy. Actually I think it's pretty cool that we all like the same books so much that every time we get a new one we compete to be the next to read it.
So far I'm liking the book very well. Got mixed reviews from other family members.
Pretty Good Tea I recently discovered Island Rose Rum Vanilla Tea at a local grocery store. Normally, I don't buy tea from the grocery store unless it's an emergency (If I'm out of tea it is an emergency) but I had never seen rum vanilla tea anywhere before so I gave in to the impulse and bought it. I'm glad I did.
Theology Test Will you laugh if I admit that I've never heard of this person? Whoever he was I think he might have been an okay kind of guy.
What theologian are you? A creation of Henderson Via LilacRose. Sunday, November 17, 2002
Banned This blog is banned in China. I am outraged! I am seriously pissed! A billion people are denied the benefit of my wise opinions and observations. This is absolutely unacceptable. It's a good thing for the Chinese government that I'm not a hacker. I would make them so sorry they dared to ban ME!
Seriously, are all Blogspot sites banned? You can test any site to see if it is banned in China. I would be interested to know if anyone on Blogspot is not banned.
The Arts vs. Popular Culture Friedrich at Two Blowhards has actually read all of Adorno's 16,000 word essay "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception" and written a good summary and commentary on it. These are just some of the main points; be sure to go read it all. (Friedrich's essay, not Adorno's)
#1—Modern popular culture represents the triumph of fixed entertainment formulas: I'm afraid I can't find much to disagree with in these four points. Most people get quite indignant if you dare to suggest that the vast majority of the population are little more than zombies mindlessly consuming whatever the movie, television and music industries shovel out. Like all generalizations, this one is no more than partially true but I do see some truth in it. It's not so much that people are zombies being controlled by advertisers. Rather, the advertisers are extremely clever. By satisfying consumers' most immediate wants and needs they take away the need of individuals to put forth effort to satisfy those wants and needs. It's all right there in front of us; one has only to choose from the standard menu.
The primary goal of advertisers is to make a sale. Offering immediate gratification is the best way to a sale. The fine arts don't normally lend themselves to instant gratification. With patience they will give a deeper and more lasting kind of gratification but, being surrounded by offers of instant gratification, most people see no need to look for anything else. Anything that doesn't provide instant gratification is "boring."
I believe that the fine arts could be successfully marketed without reducing their quality or the dignity that has always surrounded the arts. As an example of a different approach to advertising look at banks and investment companies. They are different from most advertisers in that they are selling long term benefits not instant gratification. They have to sell trust in their integrity. There are other kinds of "high class" products that are successfully advertised - wine and diamonds for example. There are some "instant gratification" aspects of these items but elegance, taste and lasting value are emphasized.
Unfortunately what little arts advertising there is tries to reduce the arts to fit pop culture attitudes and the desire for instant gratification. To take a particular pet peeve of mine, look at all the pop-classical CDs, all the Mozart for the Mind and Bach for Relaxation type CDs and the selling of mediocre performers like Charlotte Church as pop-culture icons. This kind of marketing works - for Sony and the other major labels. What it does not do is increase appreciation of classical music. Classical music packaged in this way is every bit as boring as most people think it is. People need to be sold on the idea of classical music as an active interest, more like a sport or a hobby, rather than entertainment which is basically always passive.
Getting people into museums is a similar problem. Not long after I started blogging, a friend asked me to comment on a statement he had heard someone make - something to the effect that she couldn't understand how anyone could just "stare at paintings." This is the attitude of the TV generation. When we look at something we expect it to move on its on - "don't just sit there, do something, entertain me." The arts should be marketed but somehow we have to sell people the idea that they should be (mentally) active participants not just passive viewers or listeners.
That Question Again (NOTE TO SELF: Stop wasting so much time blogging about blogging and instead blog about something that someone might actually want to read...and maybe even link to!)
Well, here I go again already. I wasn't going to do this anymore but Alan of Amax Weblog asks - I wonder if other bloggers might do a quick rationale for their own blogging? - and since a half joking remark I posted in Misha's comments yesterday has me musing on the subject again I can't resist, one more time, answering the question "Why do you blog?"
I've written before that I blog because I like to write and I like being part of an Interenet "community." Those things are still true, but I also blog because I want someone to know me for who I really am. All my life I've been a very ordinary person and I hate being ordinary. In high school I was a nobody, neither popular nor very unpopular. In my adult life I've always been the quiet one, whom nobody knows anything about. I hate that. I'm not as "ordinary" on the inside as I appear on the outside, but in face to face situations it's hard to open up and let people know the real me. I just follow the flow of conversation and since more often than not it doesn't flow anywhere that I'm interested in going I just sit quietly and wish everyone wasn't so freaking boring.
I have to admit (we're taught while we're growing up that this is a bad thing) I would love to be the center of attention. It has never happened and in the blogoshpere I'm still a nobody. It's frustrating sometimes when I seem to be the only one not getting any links from the latest blogburst and I feel the childish urge to jump up and down and scream 'why isn't anyone paying attention to me?'
I know there are a lot of bloggers who hate that attitude and think you can't be yourself if you're always "whoring for links" but I hate that attitude. It's certainly not true that you can't be yourself and try to build traffic at the same time. Why write and put your stuff out there where the whole world can see it if you're not wanting at least some attention. If you're really writing only because you like to write then why not just write it in Word and leave it on your hardrive where nobody but you will ever read it?
Well, enough of that - really - I do think I do too much blogging about blogging and I intend to move on to something (hopefully) interesting but sometimes you just have to take time for a little navel gazing.
Saturday, November 16, 2002
New Additions Legal Bean - I used to have this one on my list then dropped it when he didn't update for a while. I just discovered today that he is back in action and has a new blog design.
Amax Weblog - One of the most interesting blogs I've ever read, even though a lot of it is way over my head. I've had it bookmarked for a few weeks. Alan lives in Australia and writes mostly about technology and occasionally about other topics including current events. That's weird! I just tried to go to my blog and ended up at Preacher Blog, a Portugese blog with a disturbing header. I would link to it but I don't know the correct URL.
Friday, November 15, 2002
Excuse me? I found a link to this article about Nancy Pelosi at Random Nuclear Strikes.
Pelosi will not take the party to the right or left, but instead “she will take us forward,” said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. “And by being the first woman (to lead a party on Capitol Hill), she immediately convinces half the voters that Democrats are in the 21st century, which is a good start.” Well Mr. Conyers, I assume that the "half the voters" you are referring to are the female half. It just so happens that I am a member of that half and it will take a whole lot more than picking a woman to head the party to convince me that Democrats are in the 21st century. Thursday, November 14, 2002
What are we doing here? I feel the need to fisk a couple of lines quoted by Michele. I'm not going to link to the little brat who wrote these lines. They're not original anyway, just part of the usual whiners' litany. I don' t know if this will actually qualify as a "fisking" but whatever you want to call it here we go.
i absolutely hate what blogging has become Umm...what exactly has blogging become? I wasn't in on it from the beginning so I don't know the history first hand, but from what I have read in several places, weblogs were orginally used by technical people to record and share information and were almost unheard of by anyone else. Then, after September 11 those we now call warbloggers came on the scene and popularized blogging. I don't know exactly when the personal journals came along but they seem to make up the majority of blogs.
As an example of what blogging has become, you can take a look at my links list. Notice the "Different Keystrokes" category. Obviously this is a take-off on the saying "different strokes for different folks," and the blogs here are indeed different. They are all well written, most about a specific subject - for example Badgett's Coffee eJournal is in fact all about coffee - and not a single one is a warblogger. In the main list there are some warbloggers but there are also many eclectic bloggers - a personal journal or two, people who write about life in general as well as news, and just general ranting and musing.
In short, blogging has become a way for everyone to express themselves on any subject they happen to be interested in or no subject at all. And someone thinks that's a bad thing? Sounds like someone who wants freedom of expression only for themselves and the few people who agree with them.
do bloggers in general actually feel like they are contributing to anything? This is not so much a question as a childishly petulant complaint. I think "bloggers in general" (whoever they are) don't really care whether they are contributing to anything. Most of us are blogging primarily because we enjoy doing it, but of course we are contributing to something. We are contributing our voices to the community of bloggers. Bloggers contribute in many ways, just as individuals in "meat-space" (term borrowed from Andrea) contribute to their communities in various ways.
As a group bloggers might have some influence on the world as a whole, or maybe not, but in small ways some bloggers do make important contributions. One blogger who made an important contribution to my mental well-being was the Muslim Pundit who, sadly isn't updating his blog anymore. At a time when we were being force fed the line about the "religion of peace" and other "moderate" Muslims denounced terrorism merely as a jumping off point for criticising U.S. foreign policy, Adil was offerring informative and original commentary. This meant a lot to me personally and I'm sure there are many other bloggers out there who, in sharing their personal thoughts, touch some readers in a meaningful way. These person-to-person connections are the most important contribution.
Blogging is all about freedom of expression. You can say anything you want to and nobody can stop you. They can criticize but they can't stop you. If, by expressing yourself, you are able to contribute something that's great. If not that's fine too. And if you don't like what some blogs have become... just quit reading them!
My Sob Story It's not much of a sob story but everyone likes sob stories so, lacking a real one, this will have to do.
This morning I was still limping along with my crippled keyboard. I had taken some of the keys off and managed to get the spacebar to work most of the time but the "b" was so difficult that I found it easier to copy and paste a "b" whenever I needed one instead of banging on the key over and over again with all the strength in my frail little hands. But still, I had to blog, so this morning I was slowly and laborously typing a fairly long entry which I felt simply could not wait. As if the keyboard weren't enough of a problem, my piece-of-crap old mouse which we have been fixing almost daily for several months now started getting tired and stubborn with the excessive copying and pasting action. Finally, when I was almost finished, the screen completely locked up. I lost everything I had spent almost an hour typing.
Now for the happy ending. I went to Wal-mart a couple of hours ago and checked their electronics department to see if they had replacement keyboards and to my surprise they not only had them, they cost a lot less than I expected. I had no idea that keyboards are so cheap. Last time I priced one the cheapest I could find was almost $70. Today I bought a standard keyboard for just a few pennies under $10. Since that was such a good price I bought a new mouse too and that's the other surprise - mice don't have balls anymore! I had heard of optical mice before but I thought the "optical" part was just to take the place of the cord and that they still had a ball for tracking. The one I bought has a cord but no ball. It works great. I feel just a wee bit sentimental about the ball though. I've always thought it was sort of cool the way mice work, but I'm sure I won't miss having to take thing apart and clean it.
Anyway, everything's back to normal here and I will try to recreate my lost entry and do some more blogging later when I have time. Wednesday, November 13, 2002
The Cult of Gould Worship My sincere thanks to A.C. Douglas for pointing out this very enjoyable essay by Kevin Michael Grace. I am not qualified to comment specifically on Glenn Gould, having heard so little, but I have observed that people who get caught up in the cult-like worship of popular performers are almost invariably people who, though they might have heard a lot of classical music, still don't get classical music. Though we all have favorite performers, it should be understood that, unlike pop music, classical music is composer centered not performer centered.
As for Gould, I heard his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations on the radio when I was still fairly new to classical music and at the time I was not especially impressed. Later on someone who shared many of my musical preferences and whose opinion I respected had some very negative things to say about Gould therefore I have never bothered to listen to any more. After all there are a number of other brilliantly talented pianists and more music than I will ever have time to listen to. Since I'm mainly interested in what the composer had to say I figure I'm not missing all that much in depriving myself of Glenn Gould's alleged genius.
Besides... everyone knows Bach sounds better on the harpsichord. Cat Logic "No matter how much food is in the dish, if I can see even a tiny part of the bottom of the dish I cannot eat until you add more food to the dish."
Cat Paintings
Here. Be sure to look at all four galleries of cat paintings. (If you like cats that much) Republicans, now that you've won... I'll second that! Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to listen to either one of us.
Where is Osama bin Laden? Splattered all over the walls of a cave in Afghanistan?
Living in luxury as an honored guest of the House of Saud?
Driving a taxi in Manhattan?
Working at a 7-11 in Hoboken?
Working at the DMV in Los Angeles?
Teaching “weapons safety” at a gun club in Alabama?
Working as a janitor at the Al Jazeera TV studio?
Working as a janitor at Disney Studios?
Living in London and writing for The Guardian? (using a psuedonym of course)
Please add your own theories in the comments. No idea is too ridiculous. Speculation as to which Guardian writer is really Bin Laden is also welcome.
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Spoilsports Yeah, yeah, yeah...we all know movies are unrealistic. Who cares? Just forget the physics and sit back and enjoy the freakin' movie! Actually, some of the stuff at this site is sort of interesting.
Evidence That Bin Laden is Dead If he was alive and wanted to prove it, wouldn't a video tape be more convincing than an audio tape?
Just a few quick links Fire Dog Alley, recently found via The Militant Pagan
For anyone who likes ducks, poetry or cool mouseover animations Monday, November 11, 2002
...must...blog... Still having keyboard trouble. Typing is slow because the two sticking keys only work if I hit them as hard as I can. Sometimes I have to hit the spacebar several times before it will work. Naturally, I won't be blogging much until I do something about it, but I have to link to this. Sat. Nov. 9, no permalink. Good discussion in the comments. I_have_a_few_things_to_*log_today_*ut_I_ need_to_fix_this_damned_key*oard_or_ may*e_just_*uy_a_new_one._ Guess_which_two_keys_don't_work. Sunday, November 10, 2002
Science Fiction Discussion A discussion of sci-fi literature has started at 2Blowhards in response to a post by Michael.
One thing I notice over and over that I've never managed to make much sense of is the appeal sci-fi seems to have for many libertarians. Can you help me with this? As a sci-fi fan I run into this attitude a lot and naturally find it disturbing. Conversely, I have to confess to holding an opposite prejudice: I'm always a little suspicious of people who don't like sci-fi if I find out about this dislike before I really get to know the person. The things that go through my mind when I meet someone who expresses a dislike for sci-fi are: "Not intelligent enough to understand it," "Lacks imagination," or "possible religious fundamentalist." I want to emphasize that I know these things are not true of all people who don't like sci-fi; it's just my immediate gut reaction.
Whether or not you like science fiction has a lot to do with which book you pick up first. There is a lot of trashy science fiction out there, but that's true of other genres also. There is a great variety in science fiction and fantasy. Some of it is mere escapism; some of it tries to make political statements; some is aimed at ultra-geeky readers who are into high tech gadgetry and speculative science; and some is very human and deeply psychological. I generally go for the latter category. In these the storytelling and the characters are exactly the point and science fiction allows for situations that would not be possible in mainstream fiction.
A very good example of this is a book titled The Death of Sleep by Anne McCaffrey. In this book a woman must leave her young daughter behind to take a job on another planet. It is only supposed to be for a couple of years but something goes wrong and the woman ends up spending several decades in "coldsleep." There is certainly a lot of high tech gadetry and exotic locations in this book but the meat of the story is the human relationships and the psychology of loss and being out of one's own time.
Regarding the libertarian connection with sci-fi. I hadn't really noticed but I guess it makes sense. I assume that Michael is talking about the radical sort of Libertarian who wants to eliminate all government. Setting a story on another world or in the distant future makes it possible to present ideas that wouldn't work in a story set on present day Earth.
Art and Communicating Ideas From Out of Lascaux:
Art is about ideas, but it is also about communicating ideas. If art doesn't say something to the audience besides "I bet you're too stupid to figure this one out," then it has failed. Saturday, November 09, 2002
I don't feel so good I don't feel all that bad either....yet. All day I've had a headache, a general lack of energy and a hot, dry feeling in my throat. Soon I will either have a full-blown cold, complete with all the usual nasty, uncomfortable symptoms, or it will just go away. Yes, sometimes it does just go away. It's comforting to think that my actions might have something to do with that - drinking plenty of fluids, taking extra vitamins, mind over illness - but I know that I have no control. Still...if I could only make myself believe that it's possible to just think myself well...maybe....
Toward Better Blogging If there is a down side to blogging it's that it makes me impatient with longer articles. Generally I don't have any problem reading long essays or even complete books online but when I'm blogging I want to get around to reading as many blogs as possible and find myself skipping longer articles or just skimming them to get a general idea of what they're about. I link a lot, make short comments and write less.
I can't entirely blame blogging. There is an overwhelming wealth of things to read on the Internet. I found the Access the Great Books site long before I started blogging. I go there and spend hours just browsing. The Internet itself invites us to browse, to keep clicking on the next link and the next one. We might make mental notes to come back and take a closer look at the most interesting sites when we have more time but there is never more time because there's always another link leading us to more treasures.
I tell myself that I need self-discipline. I need to designate two or three days a week as non-blogging days, or to limit my blogging hours and spend a couple of hours every day just reading on the Interent. But the lure of the blogs is powerful. I must check in regularly and catch up on the latest. I must put my two cents worth in while the topic is hot. I must chase after more links. I must attract more readers. There is the danger: if I try too hard I risk chasing away what I'm chasing after.
In blogging, as in most things, balance is needed. The best bloggers are those who interact with other bloggers and post often but also make time for things other than blogging. |
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