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Ideas, issues and life in nevada county CA
it's a weblogBelaboring the obvious since 2003
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Saturday, April 26, 2003
kleptomaniac goulashapologies in advance. best i could do under the circumstances.on geekdom: I wear my label proudly now of course, as many of my kindred do, but once upon a time in a galaxy not so very far away it was anything but cool to be a Geek. We were social outcasts living on the fringes of our peer groups. No one imagined that one-day we might be giants. No one knew that our kind would someday become titans of industry and kings of new uncharted digital realms. Doc Searls via Deborah: Napster and its successors are the listeners' workaround of the failed radio industry, which replaced trusted music connoisseurs with payola-driven robots that serve only as freebie machines for the record industry's pop music factories. the very cool Cary Tennis: Addiction is like a repairman who breaks your car and then insists that only he can fix it; then he breaks it again and insists that only he can fix it; then he breaks it again and says his rates are going up. And you keep going back because he always fixed it in the past. Thomas Henry Huxley: If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger? The Other Sixties, in Boston Globe: Menand writes, "The change that the counterculture made in American life has become nearly impossible to calculate-thanks partly to the exaggerations of the people who hate the sixties, and partly to the exaggerations of the people who hate the people who hate the sixties. The subject could use the attention of some people who really don't care." Doc Searls waxing on TiVo: Commercial television has always been conceived as a device driver for consumers. Friday, April 25, 2003
musical interludeBig White Guy composes a fine one. Easy to play on the piano too. But "I don't recommend singing this to your kids"...arghBlogger webmaster, use shorter ALT text! with image loading turned off the "Post and Publish" button is somewhat to the right of John Ashcroft.the consequences of "harmless fun"Jon Carroll is a popular San Francisco Chronicle columnist who wrote (and writes?) entertainingly and frequently insightfully about anything from current events to his cats.Kaycee Nicole Swenson was a tragic yet brave terminally ill young woman who won the hearts of throngs with her weblog describing her fight with cancer (her self description -"...creator of smiles and laughter, and i have a mischievous side that is nothing short of infectious." might make you want to puke just a teensy bit, but hold on.) People sent her letters and gifts and prayers, alas to no avail, her Blogger of the Week status was of no help when the time came. As it turned out, Kaycee was a fiction, created by a 40 yr old woman named Debbie Swenson for her entertainment, as Big White Guy of current SARS fame explained at the time in full detail. Much gnashing of teeth and betrayal of trust and investigative work to uncover this on the part of bloggers. And J.C. wrote about it. To decry the lies and deliberate manipulation of thousands? Well, no. To defend them: Seems to me Debbie Swenson was an artist using the tools at her disposal. She was a writer who wanted an audience, and she found a way to get one. Sure she lied a little -- have you never lied to get a job you really wanted? Did it even matter once it was clear that you could do a good job? this was when i stopped reading his column. Fast forward a couple of years to the recent past (yesterday), Sacramento Bee, Diana Griego Erwin of "don't call people names" fame writes about - yes - online friend Dingbat Annie, who is nobly facing terminal lung cancer and has throngs of wellwishers who are heartbroken and are doing all sorts of good deeds for her.: ...Phil drove 512 miles round-trip from Topeka, Kan., to Aurora, Mo., in the Ozarks to pick up Annie's mother...Yet another started a campaign to make sure Annie received cards or packages from every state in the nation...Lobster dinners appeared at her door...[one person] started a "Tell Annie a Story" thread, suggesting tales related to the view from one's window. Already there are 46 posts... And your response to this news? is it "how heartwarming, that people are coming together to care for someone like that"? and - if not - do you feel that you, and the world, are better or worse for it? (of course, maybe she is another Kaycee, in which case i guess we should be thankful for the gift of cynicism.) morning sight for eyesores Another truck with character parked downtown this morning. (Previous ones are here and here) title of post means absolutely nothing, in case you haven't figured that out. and speaking of meanings...in case you haven't figured this out - "belaboring the obvious" has two of them. Either it seems obvious to me but i'm not so sure it's obvious to you, or it feels fresh and marvelously new to me but is eye-rollingly clear to everyone else. the latter is typically more applicable. Thursday, April 24, 2003
Easter for adultsok, you're a bit old to believe in the Easter Bunny. So you've helped dye eggs, you've hid both them and the good ones, you've watched the children run through the house wide-eyed with greed and wonder seeking maximum chocolate bunny (and proto-bunny) biomass, and all of this was fine, but still, there's something missing...namely - the Easter Beer Bottle Hunt. buy a sixpack or two (of good beer) per participant, and while you're hiding eggs inside, have the kids hide the bottles outside. Then after their hunt, you get to have yours. (or if you're really cruel, insist that they wait and watch yours first...) one warning: do not hold hunt in yard with male dog when it's been weeks since the last rain. you wouldn't enjoy it. body and soulwonderful, thoughtful, heartful piece by Jeanne at bodyandsoul.blogspot.com on downsides to blogging in these times. a must read, here's a taste, re current national politics-I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I tried telling myself that even though they didn't do things the way I would, maybe their way could work, too. Maybe there was a value that I would come to recognize over time.and I'm a writer, not a lawyer. I'm better at musing and questioning than I am at building unassailable arguments. Arguments, to be honest, bore me. I don't write to persuade, I write to figure things out myself, and readers, to me, are not people whose minds I want to change, but people I've invited along on the journey (and who sometimes have suggestions for a direction to go in that I hadn't thought of before.) (voice of the crass biological determinist - here's hoping that as our xenoestrogenic environmental pollutants build up they turn lots of guys into Jeannes, i think it is our only hope) Wednesday, April 23, 2003
dim sumI'm tired and incoherent so here, have some chicken feet:via road to surfdom: "When the axe came into the forest the trees said: at least the handle is one of us". Also this - The trouble for people like Donald Rumsfeld and any number of pro-war bloggers and pundits who continue to take credit for a liberation as if this was the sole intention, or even a primary intention, of unleashing a war on Iraq, is that there are those, not least amongst them the Iraqi people, who are going to hold you to it. via personal experience: Microsoft does not always know what is good for you. I finally submitted to the full-body upgrade/patches/etc due to the usual dire security warnings, now Outlook takes an at-least-daily (and generally very inconvenient) fatal antipathy to what once was known as the carriage return. Not fun, not appreciated. Amin Maalouf via Christopher Lydon: I never try to think what should be my opinion coming from this or that background. I try to think as a human being. I hate for example to see people in debates, each one defending the opinion of his tribe, with all the bad faith that is put into defending his own tribe. I love people who defend the other side, you know? I love to see a debate in which an Arab and a Jew debate, but the Arab is defending the opinion of the Jews, and the Jew is defending the opinion of the Arabs. I love to listen to that, and I feel I belong to this kind of debate. truer and more heartfelt words rarely spoken, from Geoff at work: "it's amazing what a difference a single digit makes" via Deborah Branscum, marketers' humor (or not, depending on whether you are among them) the not so great Santorum ("If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy . . . polygamy . . . adultery . . . incest . . . anything.") - handily neutered by Andrew Tobias today - brings to mind a .signature from years ago, "I'd rather have a bigot mistake me for a lesbian than a lesbian mistake me for a bigot" Slate on McSweeney's, the literary mag that's "created in darkness by troubled Americans," typeset "using a small group of fonts that you already have on your computer, with software you already own," and "proofread, but not by paid professionals." (actually this McS tagline is the best part of the article) the Red Dress Run (you have to scroll some). sad to say Nevada City could never pull something like this off - Grass Valley could though, or Penn Valley if not summer. Tuesday, April 22, 2003
why radio stations should have a companion weblogGreat article by web usability guru Jakob Nielson on the superiority of Low-End Media for User Empowerment:Almost every Web usability study we've ever conducted found that low-end [ie text and a few photos] media forms are superior to high-end [ie video,audio] media forms. So what does this have to do with radio, which is typically not experienced via the web at all? Answer: radio is missing a segment of its potential audience simply because it is "fat media" and therefore unsearchable: the people who would be interested in some parts aren't listening, because they're not interested in wading through the rest. A companion weblog, giving highlights in a terse and service-oriented manner, can provide these people with the scannable information they crave and is likely to drive up listenership by drawing their attention to features of which they would otherwise remain ignorant. (hint) Monday, April 21, 2003
misc holier-than-thou Takings of words from the mouths of othersThese are apropos of local property rights personalities&reporting in general -from SARS Watch Apr. 20: Peking Duck [in China] writes about what a jaw dropping and unprecedented experience it was to see the government hold a two-hour, live press conference broadcast on national television, with international reporters hammering them with tough questions. [Rare editorial note: Heck, that doesn't happen in the United States any more.] Poynter article on SacBee columnist Diana Griego Erwin: Treat other points of view with respect. Patrick DiJusto on emotions over intellect: (btw the article is excellent) Our emotions are too powerful to be placed in the hands of politicians. Adolescents are a firestorm of 100% emotion with very little thought attached to anything they do, God bless 'em. An adult, on the other hand, is supposed to have the self-control NOT to act on every emotion she has. and an excerpt from updated Dr Seuss, via email: ... (the sentiment's nice, but i suspect the "Mean people need Prozac" bumpersticker approach is more effective - when you're in Grinch mode it is not easy to climb out.) Sunday, April 20, 2003
letters to the editor from Bill Weismanna few posts ago I typed about how we project our motives onto others (ie belabored the obvious)... here are excerpts from alleged hit-man-hirer Mr. Weismann's letters to the editor of The Union. (to see everything, go to The Union's post-Jan02 archives and search for "Weismann")emphasis is mine. in chronological order...
News on Bill Weismann the alleged attempted murdererArticles on property rights activist Bill Weismann's arrest for allegedly trying to hire a hit man to kill his neighbor over an 18" wide prescriptive easement:
Rumor has it that the desire to see a couple of more prominent local persons dead was also expressed by a local property rights activist. Mediation would not have solved this. The problem is loose cannons, and the tolerance of them by particular factions (e.g. see the end of FReep This: How the right-wing is making itself heard, also the "The Attack on Citizen Participation in Civic Life" section of the Yubanet article on Property Rights Politics In Nevada County), not the perceived lack of a system for ruling on conflicts. I must also take issue with The Union's once again attempting to obscure distinctions ("Seething anger - on both sides - fueled the debate over Natural Heritage 2020...") (From Dr. Ink: "If ... journalism is an art of verification rather than assertion, we must work hard in our reporting to distinguish between competing positions rather than to assert them as equal.") - anyone viewing or attending the NH2020 public meetings or reading letters to the editor of The Union could not help but be struck by the difference in tone/civility/rationality between the factions. |