31 October 2007

Debate

A question to Mr. Kucinich in last night's Democratic debate:

 

Tim Russert:  This is a serious question ... Did you see a UFO?

 

No one, but no one who is willing to belittle a minor candidate with a question like this should ever be permitted to "moderate" a debate.  And to pose the question as a serious question?  I can think of several choice words for this behavior.

18 October 2007

Madgrab

lintels.blogspot.com is now www.madgrab.net. I managed to fix the error I was getting when I tried setting up a custom domain redirection. But it seems to work now. Had something to do with having set up the page manager in Google Apps. Thanks.

Digital Ethnography

Michael Wesch does wondrous things at YouTube. But two of his videos in particular I find deeply disturbing ...

The Machine is Us/ing Us
A Vision of Students Today

Just thought I'd share.

13 October 2007

Saturday Distractions

Two distractions. First, the results of the "Winter's-a-comin'-better-make-space-for-the-Honda" project. Then the "Winter's-a-comin'-better-clean-the-flowerbeds" distraction.


08 October 2007

oconvpck.exe

Firefox has a lovely "search Google simply by typing in your search terms in the address bar" feature that I use. Tonight I went searching for "office file converter pack" and got this (color stripped to reduce size):
Note the URL: thesource.ofallevil.com. Apparently someone registered this in 2002. I'm surprised that it has actually become the first response to some queries.

04 October 2007

A Flurry

Yesterday I mentioned a flurry of posts, then posted twice. Three times constitutes "flurry," so here you go: a quote from Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Albert Borgmann), pp. 176-177.

We can unfold it [the one way in which we respond to a matter of final significance] by attending to the discourse in which an ultimate concern becomes eloquent. The attitude will be one of enthusiasm, sympathy, and tolerance. To be enthusiastic, according to the original sense of the word, is to be filled with the divine. Something is of ultimate concern if it is divine in a catholic sense, if it is greater and more enduring than myself, a source of guidance and solace and of delight. It is from enthusiasm that one draws the courage of speaking to others in a way that finally matters. In this way, enthusiasm leads to sympathy, the concern for the integrity and final well-being of my fellow human beings. In sympathy I want to share the greatness that I have experienced; I want the others to respond as I have responded; and since divinity has addressed and filled me in the fullness and subtlety of my powers, sympathy does not desire allegiance simply but one that comes from the undiminished capacities of the other, i.e., one that confirms the other's integrity. I will therefore reject or accept with reservations someone's allegiance when it engages only some of that person's faculties, and I will forestall an allegiance if its accomplishment would injure a person's capacities. Thus sympathy leads to tolerance. Tolerance springs from the realization that, if violence is used to give deictic discourse compelling force, the method of addressing someone disables that person fro mgrasping fully what I want to say. And my use of compulsion is itself oblivious to the character of the thing on whose behalf I want to speak.
From the quote itself, you'd think perhaps Borgmann was talking about mission rather than about technology. Probably you'd be thinking correctly, to some extent.

I like this quote except for one thing: it doesn't appear until chapter 21. Granted, that's sort of where it needs to appear, but it's rather a ways to getting there.

03 October 2007

Giving in to the Device Paradigm

And that last post was typed on Esther's new Mac. Lovely machines, those. Now we'll have to see whether we'll keep it.

Ending the Silence

Wow. Three weeks since I've blogged. Maybe a record. Part of that is laziness; another part the promise I made to myself that I would not blog about what a miserable day I had or how stupid people are. So here comes a flurry. First, something that's bothered me since the first time I saw it.

What's up with the Sprint ads? "Or maybe you dreamed of a magic screen you could carry in your pocket."

Who dreamt that?!