I think she’s almost twelve by now…
[tags]sierra hull, alpha class, titanium[/tags]
Monthly Archives: April 2024
up the neck
Jim Richter in his bibs…
The Future is Uncertain…
Sunday Link Giving
Following Kent Newsome’s lead, here is a list of blogs I read. Yes, I have a blogroll, but it’s like the typical RSS firehose: I simply don’t take time to visit everyone in that list with any predictable frequency. But here is a list of several of the blogs I visited last week that I can recommend to others. A few are written by surly asshats. A few are written by people I love. In at least one instance the crossover condition applies. But all are worth reading:
yblogza
Tom Bozzo
UFOB Recipients
Hudwnked
La vache qui lit
Time Goes By
Mystic Bourgeoisie
Improprieties
Burningbird
Mining Nuggets
infinitepink
Searls
Weinberger
Winer
Jeremy Freese
Norm Jenson
[tags]good writers, interesting perspectives[/tags]
Reeboks in heaven
“In matters of art, ‘avant garde’ means little more than conforming to some daring philistine fashion, so, when the curtain opened, Hugh was not surprised to be regaled with the sight of a naked hermit sitting on a cracked toilet in the middle of an empty stage.”
Awkward American Hugh Person is sent to Switzerland to interview R., a novelist represented by the Publishing firm Person works for. He meets and falls in love with sensuous, sullen Armande, and their odd courtship and marriage, coupled with R.’s literary observations, shape the events of the novel. Diaphanous, dream-like, fleeting, Transparent Things explores the interaction between memory and observation in a delicate yet precise style.
“Once more he has managed to shape a formless, potentially threatening reality into a precise and transparent work of literary art while continually demonstrating for the benefit of attentive and imaginative readers the exact means employed for bringing about this transformation.”
Simon Karlinsky
Misapprehension
This afternoon while I was mulching some sapling evergreens and the dog was wandering around collecting ticks to deposit later in the house when her Frontline repellent finally forced them from her thick, concealing fur, I heard a frightening roar. From far up the road came the sound of a high-end race car, a throbbing drum beat of bass notes resonant in its mighty pistons, tuned exhaust crackling as it shifted up through the gears, the volume increasing as it approached. I didn’t think those things were allowed on the public highway. It fairly screamed as it flew past. Shrubbery screened me from the road and the road from me, so I had to ask Beth, “Just what the hell was that?”
“Three hogs and a rice-burner,” she replied.
bee cooties
There’s a fungus afoot. At least that’s what the LA Times reports on the bee Collapsed Colony Disorder problem. Like all things ecological, it’s dangerous to draw conclusions about first order causes and how to address them. Naturally, once the problem of a fungus is identified, a fungicide is proposed as the solution. I would like to gently suggest that we take a look at the bleak and barren moonscapes of the fields where we grow our crops. I think we should assess the meaning that emerges from a brown landscape where nothing green can grow until we plant our genetically modified seed stocks. I think we might ask ourselves if we have created a condition where fungoid growth is natural and if it is advisable to lay down fungicide on top of herbicide where we plant our insecticide treated seeds.
The English suffix -cide denotes an act related to killing. From Latin caedere “to cut, kill, hack (at), strike”. In its wider meaning, it may also signify the destruction or dismantling of an object or concept. When attached to a word indicating an animal or plant considered to be pestilent, the combined word is frequently used to indicate a substance used to eliminate the pest in question. E.g. Pesticide, insecticide and herbicide.
With all this killing attached to our food production, is there any doubt about the root causes of the current plague of unintentional “beehive-icide?” How ironic that the agribusiness that seems to have set the stage for another problem, will now profit from the sale of fungicide as we try to solve it.
[tags]monsanto, bayer, dupont, dow[/tags]
To the librarians
Abandon hierarchy all ye who enter here.
David Weinberger’s new book, Everything is Miscellaneous, is dedicated to the librarians. It could be likened to a lumberjack’s chain saw tearing down every Aristotelian tree in the forest, but that would probably be wrong. It would probably also be wrong to assert that the miscellaneous nature of everything in the universe destroys nested categories leaving homeless the twittering birdies of taxonomic classification. But I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.
What I anticipate, now that I’ve pried the book away from Veneta, is a pleasant guided tour through the information hell of the 21st century with an opportunity perhaps to grasp new ways of seeing how things relate, and even why they don’t have to relate until I want to make sense out of what’s within my own field of vision.
I’m looking forward to reading it. I’ll blog about what I find out.
[tags]David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous[/tags]