...more recent posts
Here's a cogent passage from that Gopnik article on Popper that Dratfink had posted.
But what really underlay the contradiction between what he thought and what he was, I now think, after a quarter-century's reflection, is a perversity of human nature so deep that it is almost a law-the Law of the Mental Mirror Image. We write what we are not. It is not merely that we fail to live up to our best ideas but that our best ideas, and the tone that goes with them, tend to be the opposite of our natural temperament. Rousseau wrote of the feelings of the heart and the beauties of nature while stewing and seething in a little room. Dr. Johnson pleaded for Christian stoicism in desperate fear of damnation. The masters of the wry middle style, Lionel Trilling and Randall Jarrell, were mired in sadness and confusion. The angry and competitive man (James Thurber) writes tender and rueful humor because his own condition is what he seeks to escape. The apostles of calm reason are hypersensitive and neurotic…I just want to say how true it is. And if any of you have been taken in by that namby-pamby, new age nonsense posted elsewhere, well, just let me assure you that it's strictly therapeutic. I require the bandwidth in order to dispense with these awful impulses of love and understanding that torment me. I am so thankful to have this means of eliminating my baggage, so that I can get back to my real business of being one nasty bastard!
I'm sure this has already been discussed but I missed it. What is up with the yellow underlined words in posts that then link to definitions of that word or in other cases, products.
bucky meets jesus --> future positive
Life: it's the Anti-Death!
(Happy Easter, in despite.)
Obviously the situation is very serious. The most up to the minute weblog reporting from Jerusalem I've found is Michael Bernstein. He's not a news reporter, but like many of us in NYC on 9/11 he is just trying to say what is happening. Does anyone else have any links to other personal reporting from this region? What's really going on over there?
Elsewhere on the Tree we've been discussing Google, on and off. Two analogies I've been thinking about. Maybe someone else has posted about this.
1. Just as biodiversity is good for an ecosystem, having a lot of search alternatives is healthier than having just one. Practices such as googlebombing emerge because people figure out the weaknesses of the system. Eventually the system becomes unreliable, diseased, because too many people know how to exploit it in ways it wasn't meant to be used. If there are no alternatives remaining when it rots, the ecosystem (Web) as a whole suffers.
2. Google is like the Interstate highway system. Towns on older roads decay and shrivel up because everyone starts building to catch passing traffic on the superhighways. Weblogging, with its heavy dependence on the link-and-constant-update-loving Google, is like Motel 6 and the Olive Garden. Yet just as those clusters of Interstate franchises will be collecting tumbleweeds when the oil economy winds down, many webloggers now furiously linking to each other to "up their ratings" will be history when, say, Google is wrecked by greedy shareholders after it goes public. And there'll be no "old growth" community to fall back on, because static websites will have packed it in for lack of hits (see #1 above).
These are meant to be words of caution, not pessimism. Just use Dogpile once in a while.
Musto on murderous club-kid king Michael Alig. A movie is in the works, no doubt looking for that audience who's world didn't change on 9/11. Party on, kids.
the gauntlet has been laid down!
The plan is to convert a DNA sequence – the order of the four chemicals that form the genetic code of a plant or animal – into a piece of digitally encoded music that can then be copyrighted like any other tune.
Talk about a gestation period; it only took nine months, but I finally got my new Bookstore Clerk! That's a typical government timeframe. She's just out of film school, and I guess the pickings are slim. I told her I know someone who'll hire her, as soon as he gets a job. (Just kidding; no way I'm letting her go.) Now maybe I'll actually be able to take a vacation…
Do As We Say, Not As We Do
In Mexico, George W. introduced "Millennium Challenge Grants," foreign aid available to developing countries that "end corruption, reform their economies and help their own people," in the Washington Post's words.
another daily candy like venture: flavor pill.
Czech Republic Enacts World's First National Light Pollution Law
"Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution."
"Welcome to Booklend, a lending library that sends books out by the mail. Booklend is the creation of a man with a postage meter, a roomful of books, and an urge to share. Borrowing a book is free, and you're welcome to keep the book until you're done. Read it at your leisure -- nobody likes to be rushed while they're reading. When you're done, pop it back in the mail. We'll even pay return postage."
dictionary of (someone with way too much time on their hands)
good doctor W, did you hear they found a fossil of a dino that wasnt much bigger than a pheasant, feathered but flightless...
I know it isn't very patriotic of me to say this but I just got a peek of what I think is "Tribute To Light" and am underwhelmed. I imagined two pillers of light, with corners/edges sharp enough to cut glass, not a vague colored stain on the cloud cover.
A little girl and her mother passed me on the street.
Girl: Hey look Mommy? What's that?
Mother: (tepid enthusiasim) Oh huh, I don't know...
Girl: It's a stuck search light.
Maybe the designers and crew are just getting the kinks worked out in time for the eleventh.
favorite new store in Red Hook,
hope to be aquire some garden stuff soon....
favorite street name in Red Hook
The Persimmon came up in conversation yesterday. There is indeed a native a native version, but the ones you see in the markets are larger, and come from Asia.
