Monday, June 02, 2003
Fashion Fun
For True Word Junkies
This is truly the creme. And it comes in Interface Type 1, the original, and Interface Version 2, which is an all on one page thing good for slower connections.Oh, and BTW, it is truly, unfeignedly, and perfervidly Da Goddess's fault ("fault" being the word of the day at OneWord...) that my chores remain undone!
Update: The Visual Thesaurus does crash my Explorer 5.2 after about 20 minutes ( ! ) of play -- but it's worth it !!!
Play !
Ok. THIS has got to be the most fun I've had in a long time. (yes, I am a word-geek) Enter a word and then use your mouse to experiment. Touch the lines, click the words, watch 'em evolve. Inredably kewl!Want more word play? This time putting them together is the goal. Go to One Word and follow the instructions.
ThanQ! to Da Goddess.
ISPs = "rat spies?"
Here is another FCC/Fed issue we have to pay attention to: At ISPCCON, an annual gathering of Enternet Service Providers, ...ISP owners also were educated on ways of working with the government and given tips on dealing with new regulations that require them to act in ways they feel could compromise their customers' privacy...."I've had two years to read through the 1,016 sections in Patriot [Act] and so far I've gotten through and understood maybe a couple of dozen pages," confessed "Joe," the owner of a small ISP with 3,700 users.
..."But as I've been told this week, any employee of the federal executive branch can contact me and force me to provide access to the electronic communications of any of my customers who may have information relevant to any federal case," Joe said. "And anyone who owns a copyright on anything can also demand info about my users.
So I've essentially been turned into a rat spy. It used to be fun to run an ISP. Now it's all regulations, legal issues and new hidden hassles."
Said Bruce Kushnick, chairman of TeleTruth "It is now time for you to make sure that these regulators and the public know the contribution ISPs have made in bringing the Internet and World Wide Web to the American public so that you can continue to deliver the services and expertise that the monopolies, who want to take over your business, do not offer and have never delivered."
I don't know about you, but I like my little local ISP. They're available, helpful, and the phone is never busy. Buy Local!
The Patriot Act. It's a lovely little document. Grab your Advil and settle in...
Blog, dammit, Blog !
The five FCC commissioners are expected to vote 3-2 to relax decades-old rules, allowing television networks to own more television stations, permit a broadcaster to own two stations in more markets, and allow one company to own a newspaper and a television or radio station in most markets.Now this is all well and good - IF there are 20 or 30 stations in your area. Maybe. But howz about those of us who live in the hinterlands and have but a very few stations available to us. With the predilection of the media to allow itself to be spoon-fed junk science, junk-politics, and junk-in-general, free of fact checking and other nuisances, we're stuck.
There is a little radio station serving this county that seems somewhat locally owned. In the am they program nationally syndicated advice-talk. Their news is rudimentary. And in the pm, they just lost the only talk-show host who discussed local issues, and did it very well. [Her name is Pat Thurston - she's a little lefty, but she Knits no Yoghurt) They replaced her with some Limbaugh-wannabe. Fingernails on blackboard... [oh, and on weekends, they will have great long stretches of dead air because someone can't figger out how to work all the little buttons. Aswan! My college radio station was much more professional. /rant]
So my point, here, is that we are stuck! There is no local news/discussion radio. The local paper is owned by the NYT. *sigh*
Although it's true anyone with a website can publish news, it's still the established media players, such as newspaper publishers, that attract the largest share of the online audience, Murray said. While it's also true that more people are using the Internet as their primary news source, the same handful of companies run those sites. ..."Yes, there are 500 channels on cable television, but five companies control the same market share that the three networks did in the 1970s."My overall point, here? Keep blogging. Blog about local issues. Blog about personal issues. Blog about blogging issues. Just Blog On!
Sunday, June 01, 2003
It's Human
Eric Rudolph, charged with four bombings including the explosion at Atlanta's Summer Olympics in '96, and attacks on an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub, was arrested yesterday. He is "believed to" adhere to a group called "Christian Identity." So I looked 'em up. I found the U of VA Religious Movements pages. Well written, seemingly well-researched, and explicit in their biases, they outline the beliefs, origins, and histories of piles and piles (don't ya just love esoteric lingo?) of different religions and cults/sects - though they are disinclined to call just anyone a 'cult' because:Negative sentiments are typically implied when the concepts "cult" and "sect" are employed in popular discourse. Since the Religious Movements Homepage seeks to promote religious tolerance and appreciation of the positive benefits of pluralism and religious diversity in human cultures, we encourage the use of alternative concepts that do not carry implicit negative stereotypes. [more info on their conceptualization of the terms]Apparently the "Xian Identity" ...uh, *group* has its origins in British-Israelism. Begun in 1840, the British(Anglo)-Israelists believe(d) that "the Europeans of the time (Anglo-Saxons) had descended from several Scythian tribes, who, in turn, had descended from the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel." Having been separated through war from the tribes of Judah and Levi, their hope was to rejoin with the Jews in the Holy land which would bring on the second coming of Christ. In 1884, Hines, the originator of this line of thinking, decided to come to the US and reveal to US our "true identity." The whole point of this is that Hines and followers believed that they were *the Chosen people* and, therefore, had received promises from God.
Now, here is where the system is vulnerable to all sorts of wacky justifications and rationalizations - and they're thrown about willy-nilly - but their bottom line is: WE are chosen by God (the Father...) and are therefore 1) privileged, 2) special, and 3) important.
Wow. What a lure for the disenfranchised. Seeing oneself (or being seen) as the one "Mom liked best" gave Dick Smothers a great career, a winery, and a pretty country estate. And that was just his human Mom. Regular ol' Mom like we all have.
To be seen as Chosen by the supernatural progenitor of the universe - that's pretty heady stuff. The kind of stuff that people would be willing to go to *great lengths* to protect. I mean, what's the good if we all are Chosen? Where's the specialness in that? Nope, there must be an Ins and an Outs; an Us and a Them for there to be any value in being Chosen.
And therein lies the rub. It is at the core of human-ness; this need to belong. It is hardwired into our beings, from the time before pre-humans, that our survival odds are greatly increased if we stick together. The "lone wolf" - dies. The person shunned from the group for transgressions unbearable - dies. The workable size of a hunter/gatherer group seems to be around 20 individuals. This is where the us/them idea has its origin. If a group incorporated more individuals than the environment could support, they all died. Therefore, if food was plentiful and disease did not winnow out sufficient members of the group to maintain an ideal population number, some members had to become "other." They had to go forth and create another group/tribe in another place that could support them, thereby saving all from starvation. It also cleans up the gene pool.
Where "other-ness" goes awry is when resources are slim and individuals must fight other individuals to meet their needs. Humans are coming up with increasingly better ways to meet the basic needs of individuals. The physical needs. Meeting the emotional needs of an individual is still pretty much left to that individual. The strong, and the lucky, may have family and other community to help to meet those needs. But there are a great many individuals who, for whatever personal history reason, do not feel that they *belong* anywhere. They are the individuals who are vulnerable to the desire to be seen as Chosen by the supernatural progenitor of the universe.
They are the individuals whose *belongingness* feels dependent on the *not-belonging* of others. And that individual is a great danger to all.
Spiriuality is a human pursuit - religion is a cultural artifact, and therefore has served many different masters. I am not anti-religion. I am saying it is not useful to use religion as an attempt to heal psychic wounds. That is not what spirituality is for, either. Spirituality is getting in touch with the one-ness, the *interconnectedness,* if you will, of Everything. It is not a justification for hurting Everything (and Everyone) out of anger over feeling displaced.
Random acts like bombing the Olympics seem to have no other motivator than the personal. At least bombing abortion clinics and gay nightclubs could be seen to fall in line with acting on one's beliefs - however mistaken, or Wrong, those beliefs might be.
But those individuals who believe that they have no place within human society will go to any lengths to create a place of belonging for themselves. And they will step on anyone who, according their belief system and perception of the world, stands in their way or is likely to reject them. It's only human.
Excellent resource for basic info on religions of all sorts and links for further investigation. Some link-rot.
Where am I?
I'm just figgerin' out this system and have managed to put a few entries into yesterday that are mirrored at the old *spot*. For those of you (like me) who had no patience with the old *spot*: Read On, MacDuff...BTW
Does someone need an intervention?Pencil Principle
A pencil is a piece of technology. It can be used to write a sonnet. It can be used to poke your eye out. The end result in not inherent in the object. The end result of a piece of technology is created by the choice of the user.Statistics
This page has been viewed 18188521 times
Total Entries: 5718
Total Comments: 4193
Total Trackbacks: 714
Most Recent Entry: 06/14/2011 06:44 am
Most Recent Comment on: 11/27/2011 05:18 pm
{/if}
