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1 Mar 2008 @ 08:57, by vaxen. Ideas, Creativity
([link])
(From the Chinese classic The Dream of the Red Chamber) Black Jade was the central heroine of the story. She was in love with Chia Pao-yu, and he with her, but because of her ill health, his family decided she would be a poor choice as a future wife for Pao-yu. So they arranged for his marriage with another girl. Precious Virtue, but knowing how Pao-yu felt about Black Jade, they let him believe that she should be his future wife. Not until after the couple retired to the wedding chamber and Pao-yu lifted the red veil from his bride's face did he discover the treachery. Upon learning of the marriage, Black Jade finally succumbed to the consumption that had plagued her entire life. After her death, Pao-yu disappeared into the mountains, and was seen only once more as a monk in a red cloak.
[link] More >
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 29 Feb 2008 @ 06:49, by jazzolog. Politics
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
---Walt Whitman
I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly,
for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
---John Donne
And if the earth no longer knows your name,
Whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
---Rainer Maria Rilke
This photo of the Obama family clearly is a couple years old at least, but only over the March 1st weekend are we getting more recent pictures. "The Phenom" has become a tidal wave. The children are Sasha, in Mom's lap, and Malia on the right.
This peculiar title doesn't mean I advocate for Michelle Obama in place of Barack. It just means Mrs. Obama came to our town yesterday afternoon and took the place by storm. It means if we can vote Barack Obama into the Presidency, we get a package that includes a lovely family and this remarkable woman for First Lady. I hadn't studied the matter, knew nothing about her except those couple of media things, and was unprepared totally for one of the greatest addresses of any kind I've ever heard.
I was pretty much resigned to Athens, Ohio, being the place the candidate spouses come to visit. Hillary Clinton was here stumping for her husband back in the day, and now the former president showed up earlier in the week to give an energetic speech for her. I'd wanted to see Barack Obama before our primary next week, but I learned all we would get was a look at his wife. Oh well, my daughter and I went to stand in line.
The Templeton-Blackburn Auditorium---or Mem Aud, as it used to be called---holds a couple thousand people, so I thought if we got there an hour early we might at least get inside out of the cold. No tickets required, a quick frisk, and we soon were in the 12th row. The place has a magnificent sound system and mostly soul tunes from the '60s were banging away. Well you can't beat that stuff, and so pretty soon everybody was groovin'. Smiles began to appear, and as I looked around I realized I hadn't been in an audience of such racial, age, and gender mix maybe ever.
On stage was a bunch of people, but no obvious dignitaries or union T-shirts. My daughter said she heard folks were chosen at random to go up there. The active volunteers were being afforded the front rows as usual. The auditorium filled up completely from what I could see, and I suppose I'll read reports as to whether any were turned away or a sound system set up outside. A barrage of TV cameras, reporters, anchors and photographers was in the usual cluster.
We waited---but the hits kept on coming, so who cares? The spirit of hope and expectation was in the air. People looked happy but serious. We're not gonna get fooled again! The black woman next to me kept checking her watch. I heard her say she had kids that needed to be picked up. As it got to be 5 minutes past the hour, she said out loud, "They oughta have SOMEbody come out." I didn't want my first words to her to be discouraging, having waited hours at things like this, so I asked, "Do you know where she's coming from?" She didn't. But 5 minutes after that, out came the first of 2 introductory speakers...and we were off! More >
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27 Feb 2008 @ 09:48, by erlefrayne. Religion
[Writ. 19 Nov. 2007, Manila. Please see: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com]
A devout Catholic man hurried into the cathedral in his city one day to confess to his parish priest. He felt the irresistible urge to confess and be expiated of any guilt about what he saw in the parish convent one day, and so he had to let the priest be informed right away. Let’s listen to the dialogue:
Devotee: “Bless me Father for I have sinned.”
Priest: “Go ahead Son, tell me what’s bothering you.” The devotee was as white as ash, noted the priest.
Devotee: “Father, forgive me please, but for couples of occasions now, I’ve been peeping in the convent. I’ve been seeing you and your girlfriend having sex.”
Priest: “Oh My God! What things are you talking about?” The priest now turned furious.
Devotee: “I know you’ll feel outraged Father, that’s why I am confessing this sin to you. To be exact Father, your girlfriend is Sister Ngefati, the one from the Order….”
Priest: “Alright, you’ve really been committing this sin, really grave sin! Cut it!”
Devotee: “I’m really sorry Father. What will I do?”
Priest: “To expiate yourself, you must pray 1000 Our Fathers and 5000 Hail Mary’s right now!”… Whew, what a sinful Peeping Tom!... More >
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 24 Feb 2008 @ 21:18, by ming. Children, Parenting
My Dad died this week. I didn't really know him very well, so it is hard to know what to feel. At first I didn't feel anything. And the loss I feel now is maybe more abstract than it is about him in particular.
It is important to have a father. Mine got divorced from my mother when I was 1 years old. I mostly didn't think about what it would mean to have a father, because I didn't really have one who was there. My mother married again, but I never considered the new guy my father, even though he obviously was a continuous male presence.
And I didn't see my real father much. Maybe a total of 2 or 3 times as I was growing up.
I liked him. His particular way of speaking, Copenhagen dialect, from I'm not sure what exact part of town, made me feel somehow safe and comfortable, as if I was used to it from when I was a baby, even though I don't really remember. And not that he ever really acted much like a father, even though he always was friendly.
He didn't do anything in his life that will make any history book. He was a fireman for a while, a taxi driver for a while, and an assortment of other odd jobs that didn't last overly long. I have no problem with that, I'm kind of proud of coming from a simple working-class family.
I wish I had inherited his hair. He still had a full head of wavey dark hair last I saw him, whereas I'm close to bald.
I maybe wish I'd have a lot of memories to talk about. Although maybe it is better not to.
What I'm sad about is maybe the thought of the importance of having a father. I wish I had had a father more. And maybe it reminds me that I haven't always been as present with my kids as I could be. Oh, I'm still here and haven't gone anywhere, but one could of course always have done it better.
At any rate, I'll be in Denmark at the end of the week for the funeral. More >
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 24 Feb 2008 @ 13:25, by jazzolog. Politics
We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
---Indira Gandhi
If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a longing, LAST real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop---everything.
---Pema Chodron
An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child.
---Arnaud Desjardins
The photo of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, taken by Melanie Burford for the Dallas Morning News, held my attention this morning from the instant I saw it. I think it's a great American face there, worthy of Mt. Rushmore. I'm not kidding, and I'm not saying it's a stone cold face. I mean that's a presidential face we're looking at. There's no doubt in my mind this candidate could handle the job. Except...except...
What is wrong with that picture? This is a portrait of a person in conflict. Cover the left side of her face as you're looking at her. In the half you see there's even a flicker of a smile, an openness, a quality of friendliness that I know she has. Now cover the other half. Woe, there is a person you wouldn't want to cross. Something unforgiving there in someone who's been banged around a lot.
I attempt this crude and rather adolescent psychology on Hillary Rodham Clinton because a certain unpredictability has permeated her campaign as well. If you watched her in debate with Barack Obama Thursday night, you saw it too. I didn't know what she was going to do next. She seems genuinely to like the man when she's standing right in front of him, looking him in the face. But then she'll go back to the it-should-be-in-your-own-words thing, and draw a shudder of disappointment from Obama, and boos from the crowd. Who is this person?
Maureen Dowd goes after it this morning, and while I do some shuddering myself at the masculine/feminine behavior characteristics in the column, I think she's on to something. She thinks Clinton is calculating her different approaches to impress various voting groups. She wants to be tough and macho for some, and sensitive and understanding for others. I think I have to differ with Ms. Dowd on this, though I'm really glad she noticed the stuff and decided to write about it. I'm not sure Senator Clinton is in control of how she's coming off. I think she's reeling from blows received in the ring.
Bill Clinton will be in Athens tomorrow, and I'm afraid the announcement came too late for me to clear my calendar. I do hope to get to it before it's all over, trusting he'll be an hour late like most of these guys. Former President Clinton is the first, and I hope not the last, of the big names to get to this important corner of the state. As the rest of the Ohio continually reminds us, we're rather different here. Some people even refer to Southeast Ohio as the West Virginia part of the state. There's some truth to that, going all the way back to glacial times. But let's not get into climate change.
Or maybe we should. When ARE these candidates going to mention it? And did you see McCain's record of environment votes? [link] Check out the fascinating final part of that blog entry to see how the new legislators, who replaced NINE of the 12 so-called "dirty dozen" in the last election, are doing.
Here's the link to Maureen Dowd's column this morning. [link] Let me say in another criticism of it (and I'm grateful to my online acquaintance Elle for reminding me of this), while Shirley Chisholm's presidential run in 1972 may not have been taken seriously she definitely was a serious candidate. I supported her too, just as far as she could go. [link] More >
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24 Feb 2008 @ 07:27, by skookum. Ideas, Creativity
It could be... More >
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22 Feb 2008 @ 16:36, by ming. Communication
Blogging is a bit too much like publishing. I mean, writing articles to be published.
Of course different people use the medium differently. Some people still just write about what their dog had for breakfast. But, with few exceptions, the blogs that are interesting to read consist more or less of articles that people write.
But that makes it less fun and useful to write. Writing an article is for me connected with deadlines and trying to match the expectations of the audience. Where I'd rather write a weblog for me, and then maybe share it with others as a second thought.
So, what happened to the idea of "log" or "logging"?
See, a log is really something more directed. One might keep a log if one is working on something. A record of one's progress, one's discoveries.
Like, a learning log, or a research log. One is working on finding something out, solving certain problems, arriving at certain goals. And one keeps a record, which charts the path, maybe for others to learn from too.
That's not how I use a weblog. I'd like it to be. But that would require a re-framing.
In that case one would set a theme or a goal. It is quite possible that the process would have an end, as one either reaches the goal, or one no longer is interested in the subject. So, one would open up new logs, keep them going as one is continuing exploring the subject matter, and one closes them when one is done.
That doesn't work so well with the way we currently use blogs. I'd expect a person to have preferrably one blog, which I can subscribe to in my blog aggregator. If they have several, it is a little annoying, and if they close them down and start new ones, it would be more annoying.
Regular blogs have categories or tags. Which of course can be used for particular threads. But typically one tries to subscribe to everything one person is blogging, and you might get a mix of postings on very different postings. Which is why most blog owners feel obliged to keep a certain uniform atmosphere in all the postings, as if it were a magazine, with a certain style and theme.
But, say I wanted to log several different of my interests and activities. Like me right now, I'm interested in photography, rollerskating, genealogy, Ruby on Rails programming, plus a whole bunch of other things I'd be more likely to write about on my blog. But, say I wanted to have a log of my experiences as a novice photographer. There are lots of blogs like that, where people share their photos, talk about their equipment, etc. Just like there are lots of blogs about genealogy, where people talk about their research, resources they find, etc. But if I mixed all of that together, it might not be fun for readers who aren't interested in those things, who just want to see me write about alternate dimensions or new civilizations or something. So, would I have a different blog for each? That would be quite feasible, if they were ongoing interests. Less so if they were more short lived. I don't think it is very comfortable to maintain several separate blogs, though.
From the user perspective, the author, the logger, me, I'd really want just one interface for an assortment of logging subjects. I wouldn't want to log into a different account for each one. Rather, one interface where I freely can add new subjects, and add log entries for any of them. Some of those subjects would be just for me, others I would choose to share, and maybe make public.
Of course, those logs that one chose to make public could be channeled into what appeared as different blogs for the rest of the world. But I wouldn't experience it like that. I'd just log stuff in my logging application.
And it would open the door to a different way of presenting or interacting with such logs. I mean, if each one logs the evolution certain subject, which maybe now is done, I'd like better ways of dealing with that sequence of events as a whole. It wouldn't just be an abandoned blog, but simply the log of a finished project.
People do put stuff like that on their blogs, but it might be hidden between lots of other things. A log of remodeling my garage is a perfectly valid and complete project. Doesn't have to either hide between posts about totally different things, or be a very short lived and abandoned blog.
If one keeps a log of actually going somewhere, trying to accomplish something, it also invites additional functionality to give the full picture. A project or a quest isn't just a series of equally important log entries. Some things will be more important than others. There will be key discoveries, reevaluation of priorities, ups and downs, a growing body of knowledge.
As one example, one might have a wiki-like area, functioning in parallel with the log, in which one puts the more permanent record of what one has learned or accomplished, the subject matter of the log. And maybe its versions would be synchronized with the log, so that one could see the evolution of the more permanent part. At the point of that particular log entry, how did the list of links look? How did it look the week after that?
It ties in with a project I'd like to do, but which I haven't carved out enough time for yet, which is to structure environments for particular purposes. Dynamic webpages that are structured so as to support what one is trying to do. A brainstorm takes a different structure and different tools than does a research project or the process of starting a new company. Each one involves some combination of logs, notes, permanent records, links, lists, outlines, ordering, sequencing, randomity, and more. If you don't use an environment that supports what you want to do, it doesn't work so well. A blog or a wiki or a forum do different things and inspire different kinds of behavior. The right constellation of interdependent tools can accomplish something more precise in a more appropriate manner.
This post here could be said to be a log entry in the project of building such things. But putting it right here doesn't help me much in keeping a record of my progress. More >
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 22 Feb 2008 @ 16:26, by judih. Ideas, Creativity
on a cold, wet day More >
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21 Feb 2008 @ 21:16, by ming. Networking
It is odd that nobody has made an open, public, platform free social network yet. Social networks *should* be independent of any particular central website, but it hasn't happened yet. They're all isolated, proprietary islands. Or, even if they're built on open source software, there's no way of exchanging much between them.
My main contribution to the field of social networks was and is the New Civilization Network. Which still exists, and I'm posting this message from my blog within it, but which is a bit dated in terms of it's software. But it has had profiles and buddy lists and blogs and forums and picture galleries for more than a decade. At the beginning, it was the intention to create a platform for social networks that would span many servers, run by different people, so that one could plug into it from many places, each having a different flavor, but accessing the aggregated resources of all of them. "The Sprawl" was the code name for this plan. Didn't actually materialize, so today NCN is just another isolated island in cyberspace.
Facebook, Ryze, Orkut, LinkedIn and all the others are also separate islands. Several of them have interfaces so that programmers can add modules to them, or access a limited amount of information from them. But nothing at all that allows you to move seamlessly between them.
People who make virtual worlds are working on standards that would allow you to go from one to the other. There's no terribly good reason you shouldn't be able to teleport from Second Life to World of Warcraft. To create something like that would require that one defines a minimum of characteristics that a virtual character would have everywhere, so that each world could implement a way of supporting them.
Social networks could do the same. If there was a shared way of representing a person/profile, what they do, and who they know, it should be something transferrable. But it is probably harder than the virtual reality scenario. Because a big part of it is the relation one has with other people. Or, we could say, with other profiles. And how do they exist, separately from a particular network site and its software?
That probably ties in with identity. How does one know that the ffunch on Facebook is the same as ffunch in Orkut? Not without some shared standard of identity, one that everybody would support.
But, assuming that the problem of a universal identity system was worked out, what would be interesting would be if somebody made the pieces of a platform-free social network.
The web is based on some standards for presenting content, and linking it together. It doesn't matter what server anything is on, it is just part of the address. So, I can link to your stuff from my webpage, hosted on any which web server, and I can even include some of your stuff on your server in my page on my server.
That is of course how a social network should work too. I don't just have friends who use the same brand of shoes as me, or who drive the same brand of car. I have friends wherever they happen to be, and whatever they do. The web way of doing it is of course that I can link to them, and make a list of them, no matter where they are, what ISP they're using, etc.
I can call your Nokia phone from my iPhone. Doesn't matter at all, as long as I have your number. That's kind of the point of network structures, that one can link freely between nodes. That's kind of the definition of a network. So, what we call Social Networks are kind of fake networks. One can list web links as before, but one can only link to people who are wearing the same shoes, who are subscribed to the same website.
So, all it takes is that somebody comes up with a way of expressing profiles and lists of contacts in a standardized format that can be put on any website. Some kind of XML thing that has most of the things you'd find in a profile on Facebook. Your interests, where have you worked, the lists of movies you like, and links to other profiles.
There is, of course, FOAF, which is indeed an open format for expressing a list of contacts. And, really, it is what the Semantic Web is supposed to do. And the World Wide Web could transform into the Giant Global Graph, connecting everybody with everybody else, no matter what server their stuff is on.
"Social Graph" is a word that expresses what Social Networks should have been, but aren't: the actual network of connections between people.
I don't know what's so hard about it, since it hasn't yet happened. Other than it maybe is more complicated than it seems. Whenever I try to look at the work of standards groups that are working on pieces of that puzzle, I walk away confused. I'm not sure if that's because it really is terribly complicated, and I'm a little slow and/or impatient, or because they're making it more complicated than it is.
Sometimes a major advance in Internet standards comes from somebody who didn't bother dealing with committees taking years to work through all the complexities. Dave Winer invented RSS and XML-RPC and other good things, basically just by deciding what would be useful to himself. RSS is very simple, and can't really be called anything other than a huge success. Somebody might come along and do the same thing with the standards needed for social graphs.
Anyway, in a week and a half I'm going to BlogTalk and Webcamp in Cork, Ireland, which will focus on these kinds of things, I'm sure, with smart people who've been much more involved in possible solutions than I have. So, hopefully I'll get a little wiser on where things are going. More >
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 21 Feb 2008 @ 01:20, by letecia. Spirituality
Thanks to Genevieve Vaughan and Heide Goettner-Abendroth for drafting and circulating this pledge:
Here is a pledge against racism in the Goddess Community. If you want to add your name please click below or e mail me genvau@aol.com. Please also send the pledge on to others.
If you prefer you can also just print it out and sign it personally, as an agreement with your own spirit.
We will send the pledge with signatures to Goddess publications and events.
Please let me know your comments or suggestions.
Blessed Be
Gen
Pledge of the Goddess Community on Racism
As a member of the group of human beings who honor the present and past images of female divinity, I pledge to include in Goddess conferences the indigenous people of the locality or territory where conferences are held, and to reference and honor their deities. That is, I myself will make every effort to invite speakers and participants of the people indigenous to the area and of other ethnic groups. If I am not an organizer of the event myself I will work to ensure that the organizers invite them. Given the economic injustice in our society, I will promote special stipends for speakers of color and sliding scale or free access to conferences for any participants of color or other participants who may be economically oppressed.
The multiplicity of the Goddess is expressed in the variety of humanity and in the many kinds of ritual and worship. Racism dishonors the Goddess(es).
Signed in good faith
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