The users of the Arts and Faith site have worked up a list of the 100 Most Spiritually Significant films. It looks interesting, though I spot right away some odd omissions (where’s Wings of Desire, the Wim Wenders original version? I’m not certain what to think of it, but I’d think it beats some they’ve included) and inclusions (I haven’t seen Prince of Egypt, but really, is it that good?), but on the whole I was impressed by its balance and variety. They’ve included many foreign films, a number that don’t by any means articulate straight-ahead Christian faith, and mountains that I haven’t seen.
Time to look at my Netflix queue.
As a gay-friendly vegetarian, I don’t know whether I support this movement or not — but it’s funny, and at least it’s theologically consistent.
(Note: I know it’s a parody. It says it’s a parody in plain type, and I came to it from the Church Sign Generator, by the same authors, which offers the opportunity for great humor.)
I’ve been playing with flickr lately, and I have to say that it flat-out rocks. It’s not quite YASNS, not quite just a fotoblog site. But it’s intensely cool, and it’s run by people who aren’t just geeks, but are clueful and sharp and have unerringly good taste.
“I believe that freedom is the future of the Middle East, because I believe that freedom is the future of all humanity.”
— George W. Bush, June 29, 2004
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
— Kris Kristofferson
I’m slow to make comparisons among religions, or comparisons of religious with non-religious culture (the sort of thing that gets done positively under the rubric of a theology of correlation) — as a thorough-going citizen of one theological realm, I don’t suppose I know another well enough to say, “your karma is just like my judgment” or some other such equation.
On the other hand — and I think I can say this without lapsing into self-contradictory correlation — when last month, Steve explored his progress toward a novel by way of three weekly conversations with John Updike and Philip Roth, I felt uncannily as though he had set out to illustrate the theological notion of the communion of saints.
Very often, Christians regard the church tradition as (on one hand) the leaden weight of credulous half-wits who saddled us with a load of rubbish that it’s our job to offload as quickly and as fecklessly as possibly, or (on the other hand) as the whole intricate crystalline repository of liturgical, dogmatic, ethical, and hermeneutical truth, the entirety of the beauty of holiness, arrived at by 451 CE and unaugmented ever since except by way of purification and refinement. Most who don’t hold to either of these models absolutely adopt one or the other by turns, depending on whether we’re supporting or decrying some aspect of church life.
What, however, if we undertake our conversation with the tradition in a spirit (a Spirit) of mutuality — of deferential but not submissive mutuality, since a true mutuality recognizes the excellence of the saints’ vision but does not forgo the possibility that contemporary theological reflection may recognize something that our forebears have missed — if we dare to converse with the saints, and have the honest humility to grant them the wisdom to correct us in that conversation, then we have to hold a much richer and more nuanced sense of tradition.
We can never simply reproduce what the saints (and the canonical authors) bequeath to us; the future of rock’n’roll depends not on developing ever more skillful tribute bands to repeat ad infinitum the Beatles’ greatest hits, nor can S. recast and rewrite Rabbit, Run and The Human Stain (or The Ursine Stain, I guess). “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change!” The heart of the matter involves learning to recognize which changes appropriately perpetuate the legacy of the saints, and which changes constitute our discordantly foisting our own priorities onto the forerunners who defined the grammar and vocabulary of our contemporary discourses.
It might sound like S. conversing with Updike and Roth, trying to persuade them that his novel about lobsters, bears, and cowboys has potential.
Simon, the amiable, eloquent, clued-in representative from Sun, points to this story from semi-parody journal The Register, noting that it takes the U.S. government to turn nightmare-parables into real nightmares.
The Guantanamo Bay prison camp seems to have a spokesperson named Kafka.
You say that everything sounds the same
Then you go buy them!
There’s no excuses, my friend —
Let’s push things forward
Well, yesterday Margaret noted that when Dave pointed to Shelley’s blog and the comments appended thereunto, that he asked David and me to stand up for balance in the turmoil that’s swirled around many of our neighbors. I’d been trying to keep my comments focused as tightly as possible on things that were exactly what I meant, concerning which I hoped there would be fewest hurt feelings — a fond aspiration, not finally viable in the harsh climate of this season. I was on the verge of putting my oar in several times, but the heat diminished right about the time I felt obliged to speak up, and I thought it better to let the embers die than to stir them up again. Again, my folly.
So, summoned to “help get us on track here,” I’ll speak my peace and take my lumps if my words don’t please.
First, I think that weblogs.com users and their readers came out just about exactly right. Users and readers got the benefit of years of hosting, which benefited Userland by contributing to making theirs a visible, attractive, enterprise communication system; now, they’ll have three months of free hosting while Rogers sets up a for-pay hosting proposition. All this sounds like square dealing on all sides — and it’s good business all around, too.
Second, in the aftermath of Dave’s decision suddenly to pull the plug on weblogs.com users and their readers, many people, Dave included, called one another harsh things. I’m still trying to decide whether to work out the fine line that separates those that overstate points the force of which I see, and those that look to me more like naked imprecation; it’s worth doing, in one sense, but it also risks giving the impression (possibly justified, of course) that I’m only trying to rationalize taking sides.
I try to avoid that kind of rhetoric, for which I’ve been scolded once or twice; one could easily fit me into the picture of the writers whom Jeneane challenges as insufficiently passionate. Jeneane gets a rush from the spontaneous outrage, and rises to the occasion; I see casualties on every side, and it damps my willingness to say anything at all.
So my “balanced” response to the flame-war aspects of the occasion runs something such as this: People who want to throw strong language around should be willing to take what comes back at them, and they should try to observe Geneva Conventions about whom they lambast (since not everyone enjoys a good verbal bludgeoning as much as some do).
This last one is hard, since part of the problem involves making a distinction between “inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior” and “answering wrong-headed idiots in the same terms that those jerks used,” and again between “well-grounded inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior” and “fallacious inferences about people based on public on-the-record behavior,” and let me tell you, sisters and brothers, no one will be happy with how those get sorted out (especially since weblogs can, of course, be edited retrospectively to alter the appearance of the interchange).
That being said, I think Shelley’s attention to the gender politics of how the controversy played out stands on solid ground, and I wish I’d shown better judgment earlier about my silence when Dave suggested that “The attackers are dispropotionately women” or some anonymous commenter on some other blog called the controversy a “slutfest.” (Dave’s observation that today Shelley closed the comment thread with a “rant about women and weblogs” [my emphasis] touches that exposed nerve, too). The protests against spontaneously shutting down weblogs.com involved many men and a few women; Dave’s sympathizers involved many men and, I expect (though I don’t recall), a few women. I don’t think Dave was right to introduce gender as a factor in the response to his actions, and the anonymous commenter stepped horribly far out of bounds, and I should have had the alertness to speak up right at the moment. Instead, I shrugged off the remarks as ill-informed, thinking that it was pointless to address them head-on — forgetting that if I spoke up, I would at least communicate to others the shoulda-been-obvious point that it wasn’t only women who were upset at Dave’s shutting down weblogs.com, and that at least one guy was willing to stand alongside the women who protested.
Third, the outcry arose not because a bunch of people wanted to pick on Dave, but because Dave took an action that affected a lot of people — not just forty-odd active weblog writers, but all the writers and even more readers — in an unwelcome way, without explanation (at first) or apology. Dave has said that there wouldn’t have been any point in warning about his plan to shut down the promotional hosting at weblogs.com on Scripting News; maybe he’s right about that, but at least he’d have done the right thing in advance. Likewise, Dave has never apologized for his responsibility for what many people believe to have been a mistake (though a week after he shut down weblogs.com, when he and Rogers arranged the interim solution for weblogs.com, he said, “I am sorry for the rough ride, I wish it had been smoother,” which doesn’t quite get to the heart of the matter). A lot of the fuss would have dissipated extremely quickly if early on Dave had said, “I’m sorry; I didn’t expect this would affect you this way. Here’s what I’m doing to set things right.” Even when one is absolutely sure that one’s done the right thing, it’s worth acknowledging others’ dissent; a respectful apology doesn’t cost a mensch anything, and amplifies the central figure’s stature as someone who’s willing to recognize the possibility, even only the mathematically infinitesimal possibility, of having been wrong. Mensches do that all the time. SixApart did something like that, acknowledging Dave who was alluding to Shelley’s comparison of the Trotts to “baby squirrels”!, when Mena came out and said, “We were scared.”)
Dave wants to press forward positively from here; absolutely, by all means, let’s do that. Let’s make explicit the kind of reasonable social contract that many had been taking for granted when they signed on to have weblogs.com host their blogs. And I don’t assume Dave agrees to any of what I wrote here, it’s not binding on him or anyone else in any way; it’s the response I was asked for, that’s all.
I doubt there’s a way to fend off online conflagrations over differences that go deep (in philosophy or theology or politics or personality), but we might diminish them if we worked by a Blogarian transposition of Postel’s Law: Be liberal in what you put up with from others, and conservative in what you say about them.” That would damp down the passion, though, and the passion contributes to some bloggers’ satisfaction with the environment, so no one had better assume that appealing to that [Postel’s Law] premise will solve anything. We’re all new to this environment — even Dave — relative to the length of time it takes to build cultural expectations of behavior, and no geographic barriers separate one subcultural sphere (where we celebrate passion and gutsy writing) from another (where everyone always speaks in evenly-measured tones). For now, at least, when one sphere bumps up against another, balls will get broken.
(Thanks to Shelley for keeping my attention where it ought to be, even when I want to look away, and for sharing the gift of her vision, and for caring about getting things right for everyone’s benefit.
Thanks to Dave for enriching our idiomatic discourse with “people just love to jump up and down,” and with the rubber and glass balls, which I realize he transposed from elsewhere, but which most of us wouldn’t have incorporated into our conversation without him. And of course, thanks for opening the doors that weblogs.com opened.
Thanks to Jeneane for not bottling up her voice, and for transcribing Dave’s audioblogs for those who do read essays but don’t listen to audioblogs.
Thanks for Rogers for brokering the buzzword.com solution.
Thanks to Halley for grabbing my attention, when I had been thinking Tom’s absence was just one of those things. It wasn’t, and now we all see that, even if none of us likes the way it played out.
Thanks to anyone else whom I ought to have thanked, but didn’t because this is already way too long.)
Everyone knows that I’m in some ways an archetypal anti-marketing kind of guy. I oppose capitalism’s domination of contemporary US culture; I resist definitions of “success” in terms of dollars or sales/attendance numbers; I actually believe in truth, in the teeth of a world of spin (whose practitioners then try to blame me for being “postmodern” and thus, they infer, intrinsically opposed to truth) (I don’t mean you, Tutor). Preaching the gospel is not just another version of “sales.” Ordained ministry is not just another species of “management” or “leadership.”
On the other hand, there’s a lot that one risks not learning if one pays no attention whatever to anything with “marketing” in the title, or if one declines to observe what happens when people get together in institutional ways.
All of which is the long way round to say that just as I learned a lot from reading Gonzo Marketing (I keep plugging it, Chris, I’m doing my part), I’m enjoying reading Mark Federman’s Rotman Business School presentation on “McLuhan for Managers.” (It’s no mere coincidence that David Weinberger studied with McLuhan, eh?)
This all has so much to do with The Disseminary — and partly, I suspect, with why it can be hard to persuade some people that we’re right.
I’m just thrilled to hear that Shelley’s earned her first byline as a print photo-essayist! That’s the best thing I’ve heard from the Web in ages; congratulations, and thanks for sharing so much of your gift with us all online!
I haven’t seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and I won’t till Netflix adds it, but isn’t the foofaraw about it overstated — at least, relative to the daily deceptions practiced by right-wing attack creatures, or the Bush Regime’s public disregard for the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions? (Not to mention the popular reception of novels that pass themselves off as revelations of historical facts.)
But Fahrenheit 9/11 is a propaganda piece, no less or more honorable than other modes of propaganda — and if I had to choose among Moore, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly, I suppose I’d choose Moore. I don’t have a strong predisposition for or against him. I agree with Moore that Bush is a miserable excuse for a President, and I’m pained by the transparent hypocrisy of the Republicans who hounded Clinton over his petty lying and his infidelity, but who turn a blind eye to Bush’s shameless sham leadership. The right-wing media mongrels revolt me, and I’ve winced at their unchallenged prominence on commercial media. When I watched Bowling For Columbine, though, my satisfaction that finally someone was contesting the ground of media visibility, was mixed with regret that Moore took the low road of meeting spin and lies with, well, distortion and deception. Christopher Hitchens can issue grandiose challenges, but those miss the point as much as do Moore’s partisan defenders. While Hitchens daringly brandishes his rhetorical dukes, Bush’s aimless, unjust war inflicts casualties on hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of Americans and the Coalition of the Coerced.
The bad news isn’t that Moore spins and misleads (“I’m shocked, shocked to discover that”). The bad news is that sensationalism has so eroded good judgment that Moore seems like a bulwark for otherwise sober lefties.
I don’t care much about either Republicans or Democrats; I’m more of an Old Labour type, when I’m not being truer to my theological anarchism. So I don’t have any dogs in the presidential election fight, and though I’m against Bush, I’m not at all enthusiastic about Kerry. I was hoping Howard Dean’s supporters would have a chance to convince me to believe in him, but that sorta fell through.
The reason you write a commentary, of course, is to elucidate complicated or obscure constructions — so I shouldn’t be surprised to spend an hour hung up over how best to render the obsequious invitation in James 2:3 (should it be “Please sit here,” or an offer of an especially prominent bench, hence something like “Take this good seat”?), or the deceptively simple command and Christological formula in James 2:1.
“Do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory with favoritism. . . .” The expression “have faith” is common enough, though it doesn’t usually have a definite article in NT usage (I see only 1 Cor 13:2 as an example); and what’s with the position of “of glory” here? If it were earlier in the clause, I’d construe it as a qualitative genitive (“our glorious lord”), but it’s awfully remote from the word “lord” for that to be an easy answer.
I’m at Peet’s this morning, because Margaret’s right that I work more productively away from home and office, but commentary-writing really requires access to reference sources. I’ll change over and work on the other essay.
James wants to know what people use Technorati for (he has a secret, but wholly admirable, agenda). I referred him to my “seeded search” essay, which gains a certain degree of cogency since Mark noticed that Felix Just’s excellent gateway to Johannine Literature has gone offline. That’s a problem with gateways. . . .
If you have another idea of what Technorati is good for — apart from roll-your-own Trackbacks and ego-surfing — drop James a comment, why don’t you?
While I’m on the topic of writing and publication, I’ll mention that I had a moderately productive day working on my essay and on my commentary on the Epistle of James, which was exciting and encouraging. Maybe I’ll get these done on schedule after all!
Moire exciting still, T & T Clark has published the book (New Paradigms for Bible Study) that includes my “This Is Not a Bible” essay (only the online version has a color version of the title image). I don’t profit from any copies you purchase, unless perhaps you succumb to the temptation to write to T & T Clark and the American Bible Society to tell them how hot you thought my chapter was, but if it sold a lot of copies I would probably derive presumptuous delight from the fact.
Later: I hadn’t noticed how easy it is to make Technorati’s BookTalk list — why, with only a handful of links, a new book can clamber up onto at least one of the lower rungs of the list. . . .
As Lawrence Lessig (and other sources) have reported over the last few days, Congress will shortly consider an act that would make it illegal for corporations or institutions to induce others to violate copyright law (which Orrin Hatch, sponsor of the bill, seems to define as “making applications that may easily be used to share files that might be copyrighted”). He infers — from the legislative agenda — that this act will come up without hearings, and be enacted within a few weeks.
This is bad news, whatever one’s stand on copyright and digital media. So it occurred to me that the Net community might assemble a compilation of texts (and for that matter, audio files, images, whatever) from some pf the persuasive spokespeople in the argument. Prof. Lessig has already released Free Culture under a Creative Commons license — perhaps there’s a usable excerpt from that, or a speech he’ given before (I think I recall that several of his presentations have been published under a CC license). Cory’s talk at Microsoft; a version of what David said at Microsoft this week; Dan’s take on studios and their cartel. . . . You can think of more, no doubt, and someone — not me, this time, I’m on deadline — could compile into an XML/PDF book. I know from experience that such a demonstration could stir up attention, which is what this misconceived legislation needs.
Margaret had trouble sleeping last night because of a sound she described as a cross between a squeaky toy and the death scream of a Borrower. She currently thinks it must have been this. Now she’s sitting beside me in bed, checking out sound clips of various sorts of owls. . . .
Update: Actually, it sounded more this way — Margaret had doubted that it was possible, but evidently it was a Great Horned Owl (judge for yourself — she’s confident that she heard a sound such as this). That would actually be a tremendous blessing, because they eat skunks, one or more of which inhabit Seabury’s block.
David and Jeneane’s discussion of authenticity brings me back to olden times. I won’t go back to all the links, but I found one two-year-old nexus from which branches reach out in familiar directions. As if to respond afore to a stimulus that hadn’t yet arrived, even Dave (c & E) Rogers has blogged several times this year. Back then, of course, we blogged ten miles a day in our bare feet, uphill both directions, even when it snowed. . . .
Cory Doctorow’s explanation of why Microsoft should resist Digital Rights Management schemes was lucid and brilliant in plain ASCII. It’s all that and also readable in Matt Haughey’s redesigned version. It’s probably great in Jason Kottke’s audio version, too, but I haven’t listened yet.
Be it acknowledged that I’m already sympathetic to Cory’s perspective, this presentation makes it awfully hard for me to imagine a reasoned opposition to his case.
I can’t get “People just want to jump up and down” out of my mind. Some of the others are good, too — probably my favorite is “Audio Thing” — but the first one I heard made the biggest impression.
Nate observed, “happy father's day... although i have issues with holidays created only with the intention of making you feel guilty for not spending money on hallmark cards,” which sounds about as sentimental as you can really expect a collegian to sound.
Si blogged it (sweetly), of course.
Pippa made me a picture-frame and a huge scroll that reads,
Dear Dad,
Have a nice
summer! Hmmmm. . .
Today’s something else to?
Let’s see. . . Oh, wait!
I remember! It’s Father’s
Day too!
Let’s see. . . 1985, April 8th. . . 2004
that makes. . . 5 years. . . Hmmm. . . I wonder. . .
8. . . Oh, I know!!!! 1985 to 1995 to 2004 is. . . 19 years!!!!
Happy
Father’s
Day
for the 19th time!
That reminds me about her recent song:
Give me a mouse, and I'll give you a hairy cat
Give me a toad, and I'll give you the hiccups
Let's play Parcheesi with a toad and hiccups
And I say to myself, What a wonderful world
Give me a cup of lemonade, and I'll give you hay fever
Give me a straw and I'll give you some coffee
Give me the moon and I'll give you some cheese
Give me a yellow snake, and I'll give it a sword
Give me a bottle of rum, and I'll give you an evil ancient song
Give me a log with moss on it, and I'll give you something else I haven't decided yet
Give me some cheese, and I'll give you a plate of nachos
Give me a body, and I'll give you some fluffy coats and mittensSo precious and green, so precious and green, so done
“That was, ‘Ode to a Silkworm,’ by I forget his name. . . .”
I spent an hour or so playing with fish yesterday afternoon. Other OS X users who don’t mind a certain degree of instability (especially with full-screen mode) might lose some time with it, too.
Does anyone actually use gmail for anything? So far, I don’t, really.
This would make gmail look a whole lot more interesting — but I don’t use Outlook or a Mozilla clone. Is there any way to get from OS X Mail.app to gmail?
The first blast of dust may be clearing, and everyone may still be standing, but when there are death threats, plots for hooliganism, mayhem and miscellaneous intemperate gender-bashing and name-calling (not from Jeremy, I hasten to add), it’s premature to talk about peace. The consuming heat of a flame war scorches out nuanced distinctions about who started what, whose charges stick better, whose accusations are firmly-grounded characterizations, and whose are out-of-line libels. That doesn’t mean such distinctions don’t exist — just that it’s a fool’s errand to try to make a case for them, standing between aggrieved, rhetorically-armed combatants.
Last night’s doubleheader at Ravinia was a delight. Nate and a college friend came with Pippa, Margaret and me, Si came along with some friends from the Frisbee team, and Trevor and Susan joined us.
Margaret prepared a delicious, sumptuous portable feast (as always). This time she made three distinct sorts of sandwich, a variation on the theme of a Waldorf salad, and brownies for dessert. I had a couple of sips of wine, not even a glass, and some sips of the beer Trevor brought (I was driving, and tend toward the cautious in this regard); these beverages and the sandwiches were a heavenly match, and feeling quite full and happy we settled back to hear the concert.
Ben Folds came first, and performed a marvelous set:
Encore
It was a little disappointing that he played only one encore after a rousing set, but I’m sure there are protocols that govern this sort of thing on a two-attraction tour.
Ben played with energy and urgency, firmly interpreting his covers, performing solidly his own material. He conversed amiably and coherently with the audience (I’d heard the “bitchin’ horn” audience participation rap and the introduction for “Not the Same” before — the live DVD? — but the story about operant conditioning with “The Last Polka Boxing” in England was new to me). A wonderful opening to the evening.
I went out hoping that Rufus Wainwright would win me over from my status of sympathetic unconvinced listener; certainly Ben Folds set him up well. For whatever reason, though, he lost me (I don’t know enough of Wainwright’s repertoire to have recognized song titles, so I didn’t bother to try). He seemed uncomfortable on stage, making unnecessarily self-deprecatory remarks about his instrumental skills, forgetting his lyrics; the tunes and arrangements sounded same-y, and he sounded overmatched by his cover of “Alleluia.” He suggested at one point that he had only just gotten back from a European tour, and we knew this was the first night of the Folds-Wainwright (-Guster) shared tour, so maybe he was just a little off-kilter; certainly, many in the audience enjoyed his portion of the show immensely.
So I hate to disappoint Nate (commentor from Cambridge, not son Nate), but Rufus didn’t capitalize on my favorable disposition last night.
I was favorably disposed toward Spirited Away (which we watched tonight) after having read Jonathon’s articulate enthusiasm, and Spirited Away entirely captivated me. His description of the movie goes into much more informed detail than my naïve U.S.-native observations could, but I thank Miyazaki for composing a fantasy that thwarted my assumptions about mythic narrative at several turns, that offered richly-realized animation (putting to shame most of the recent Western animations I’ve seen), and that helped me see better. And thanks to Jonathon for so firmly commending the film.
(Later: Thanks to Nate for concert corrections. . . .)
The other night, Margaret and I went to see Azkaban; tonight, we’re accompanying Nate (for his birthday present) to Ravinia to see Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright. It’s an active week, far outshining our usual “watch a DVD” or “walk the dog” evenings.
We thought Azkaban was outstanding, noticeably better wrought than the first two Potters. As so many others have observed, Chris Columbus directed the first two films as though they were children’s movies; Alfonso Cuarón, however, directs this as a suspense movie with children in the lead roles. That captures Rowling’s tone much better — Cuarón’s treatment doesn’t cloy. Everything else responds to that change in approach; even John Williams’s score sounded fresher and more adventursome, and I’m no fan of Williams. The young actors have grown into their roles, and were here given the occasional opportunity to act (whereas before, Rupert Grint was only given occasion to grimace and mug, Cuarón treats the role of Ron Weasley more respectfully — though I look forward to a Potter movie in which Ron doesn’t screw his face up in horror or terror, once). Nate and Si particularly notice that Emma Watson is no longer the little girl she once was. Emma Thompson was a treat, and the new Dumbledore took up leadership of Hogwarts with gravitas and abstraction.
I felt quite moved by the character of Lupin, and thought David Thewlis did a splendid job with the role, taking it in a direction that I hadn’t anticipated from the book. Margaret didn’t see things the way I did, so I’ll broach the possibility here as a question: did anyone else read Lupin’s role as translucent to the situation of a gay teacher forced to resign by intolerant parents? I, at least, read Cuarón and Thewlis as signaling that possibility, and I found the oblique presentation all the more affecting.
As for Folds and Wainwright, Nate has been the household advocate for Ben Folds for a couple of years now, and has won him a loyal following here. Wainwright hasn’t caught my ear yet, but we’ll pay attention and see what he comes up with.
Dave looks back on the weblogs.com events, and concludes that “it's a rare thing when people consider your feelings in how they deal with you” — and I agree with that observation whole-heartedly.
Dave Winer has published details of a rescue mission for dispossessed weblogs.com blogs, that he and Rogers Cadenhead and Steve Kirks have set up — including 90 days of free hosting, redirects from the old domain to the new (“xxx.buzzword.com”), and lots of clarification about process and terms and expectations. Well done, all around.
As many have praised Dave for providing four years of free hosting for three thousand bloggers, let’s join in thanking Rogers and Steve for their contribution to putting together a spontaneous interim solution.
Jim Davila affirms Mark Goodacre’s apologia for gateway pages; I think the world of both Jim and Mark, so it’s a little vexing that I didn’t make clear enough that I’m not ill-disposed toward them, their blogs, or Mark’s magnificent gateway (one should definitely not infer from the breadth of Mark’s portal that it leads to perdition).
In few words, I’d be pleasantly surprised if we can count on top-notch scholars to devote their all-too-few research and writing hours to maintaining gateway pages. A gateway is only as reliable as its maintainer. Yes, blogs constitute a vital aspect of the metadata ecology. One valuable part of a student’s growth in maturity involves her or his learning to read not just an argument, but the metadata about the argument (and to weigh the metadata, too — nothing simply assumed here). All these things are true, and are firmly grounded in present experience.
If scholars want to be prepared for what has already happened, they’re entirely free to stop at this stage.
If they’re intrigued by what may well be coming down the pike, if they want to orient their scholarly efforts toward the future, they might do well to think beyond the present capacities of academic Blogaria, take a critical look at the affordances latent in present technologies, and consider what next-generation online research might look like. Jim points to Technorati as an example of a great thing that we can use now; my point is exactly that Technorati is a great thing now, that will be even better, in ways we can begin to estimate and prepare for now.
First we picked up the clue phone, then we climbed on the Cluetrain, and then. . . then, we had the opportunity to respond to that Instant Message icon bouncing or blinking or chirping or whatever at us.
In the ongoing wake of the weblogs.com fiasco, best chronicled from David Weinberger’s thread, not much has been left unsaid. )If you aren’t inclined to use Dave’s audio feed of the rationale, by all means consult Jeneane’s transcription.) Yes, it was free, God bless Dave for being so generous for so long; yes, there must have been some way more gracefully to handle this transition.
I first noticed that something was up when I made my daily pilgrimage to tom.weblogs.com, but I didn’t read the page closely; I figured that Tom had sent someone pesos instead of dollars, and that all would be well shortly. When the magnitude of the change sank in — Tom’s Commonplaces would be gone indefinitely, maybe forever (for all I knew) — I was amazed, and began reading more widely and more deeply. I (selfishly) don’t want Tom’s writings to just up and disappear; they’re much too important a part of my blogging years.
If, as the wise man once said, ”On the Web, we are writing ourselves into existence,” then what happens when someone turns off the switch?
One of the resonant points that Cluetrain made involved the extent to which the Web makes relationships possible in new, unfamiliar, powerful, (dangerous) ways. It’s precisely about relationships, not just tools, not just media. Dave built four years of relationships — good business and good neighborliness — and then gambled that goodwill in a single gesture. More than that, he gambled the Web-based-existence of three thousand people who had no say in his decision.
If Dave wanted to shuck off his online dependents, that was his prerogative; he had the power so to do. It doesn’t seem wise, though; it doesn’t enhance Dave’s stature as a father (and trustee) of the weblogging revolution, or increase someone’s motivation to conduct business with him, and it doesn’t seem the sort of thing most people would want done unto them. I wish Dave had tried a gentler route, and seen how much more positive response he’d have gotten.
I’m guessing; I haven’t paid all the bills yet.
I sit here this morning wearing bifocals, about which I have sharply mixed feelings. I am greatly relieved to be able comfortably to read the low-contrast type in Pattern Recognition (for example). No, tremendously relieved. I’m a reader by vocation, and my alienation from various forms of type has been a Major Nuisance for too long. I don’t, however, like the way that bifocals introduce blurriness into my field of vision when I glance outside the designated, designed-in loci for viewing. Glasses are supposed to remove blurriness from my vision, and I object to seeing blurs through the lenses. That’s why I get a new pair, after all.
And I’m not sure about these new frames.
At the same time, I’ve come to the end of my occupational therapy for my thumb. My therapists have said, in essence, “We’ve done our part; there’s no point in coming back.” We’e increased the flexibility in my thumb (good thing) and decreased the pain (good thing), but the swelling hasn’t gone down (odd thing). They’re referring me back to my PCP, for her to decide what to do about the mystery swelling.
Lessons learned (and this is important, listen to the old geezer, kiddies):
I’m 100% with Dorothea on this. Now I just have to buckle down and fiddle with the CSS. . . .
James saw an unexpected leader before a recent screening of The Day After Tomorrow, and he followed it up with a visit to the UK’s “official film copyright protection body’s” site. There he learned that this group so interprets copyright restrictions as to forbid showing recordings to “a group.” So those of you in large families, line up to the left. Me, I’m just killing time till Margaret’s done, so I can have a turn watching the movie we rented. . . .
Ministry being one of the oldest professions, we’ve developed a pretty dusty repertoire of clergy jokes that were probably real side-splitters back when Hillel was arguing with Shammai, and when Paul was traveling around the Mediterranean arguing with everyone. One of these dusty gems runs something like this:
Congregant: Hey, Padre, you’ve got the connections — why don’t you do something about this rain we’e been having?Priest: Don’t complain to me — I’m in sales, not management.