Quick report: I went to Dave Winer’s panel at the Seybold conference on how independent webloggers covered the disaster compared with the big media powers. Everyone seemed to agree that amateur news publishers provide the service of filtering the huge torrent of information that we all have to deal with. An infinite smorgasbord of filter [...]
Archive for September, 2001
McNuggets?
“There was a candlelight vigil in East Jerusalem on the night of the attacks; Yassir Arafat gave blood; schoolchildren around the country took part in moments of silence in reaction to the attacks. And a large part of the nation�s public figures spoke sensibly and generously about the American victims.” Matt Taibbi, pretending for a [...]
Clash of civilizations
My friend Paul (bottom center in this picture) heard the novelist E.L. Doctorow on the radio and thought it so useful that he transcribed it himself and send it out to some friends, bearing out Doctorow’s basic point: “[Democracy] has come as far as it has because writing and thinking is no longer the sole [...]
Decadent
An eyewitness named George Weld had his wits about him: “[It] was obvious that part of the difficulty of getting through this was going to be finding the language to describe it. Since then, not only has the poverty of our vocabulary for discussing what has happened to us been painful, but the lack of [...]
Monolith
“To present ‘the US’ as some predatory imperialist monolith … can only confuse and disorient. It not only serves as a barrier to genuine internationalism, it overlooks the contradictory character of American history and society.” More evidence that practical, principled and eloquent brainwork can come from anywhere.
Reprisal
Some more good sense from an unexpected quarter: “Terrorism, in the final analysis, will have to be tackled and destroyed through political initiatives and addressing the causes and grievances that give rise to, and support it. It can only be hoped that these horrendous strikes will bring on to the agenda of the world community [...]
Cast the first stone
Hear, hear! “I do not find anywhere in the Bible where it states that PK’s are to be perfect and without sin and yet many people take such a position about children of preachers.” An impassioned defense of the only oppressed minority I can claim membership in, unless you count Norwegian-Americans.
What Ed Said
Edward Said, as sane and humane as ever in the Al-Ahram Weekly: “We need to step back from the imaginary thresholds that supposedly separate people from each other into supposedly clashing civilisations and re-examine the labels, reconsider the limited resources available, decide somehow to share our fates with each other as in fact cultures mostly [...]
Bad news
Here is what looks to my layperson’s eye like a pretty solid list of pointers for those who want or need to discuss horrible events with their children. Courtesy of Joe Kelly of the Dads And Daughters website, which has a lot more stuff like it.
Train trip IV
Enormous thanks are due to the indispensable Stephy, who stood ready to port my weblog updates from the road during the last seven days. It turned out that Pacific Bell’s much-advertised nationwide roaming service is (surprise!) not quite what it promises; as soon as we were out of California I was unable to get a [...]
Train trip II
The first thing you notice about train travel is the leisurely pace. Amtrak’s train 11 moseyed into Emeryville about 3 hours late this morning. We spent the time pleasantly at the Borders bookstore across the street, buying the new Bob CD for me and a copy of the Beatles’ Revolver for Laura, who has been [...]
Train trip III
(Posted 9/18 due to technical difficulties)
The Los Angeles train station is the most full-on temple of Southwesternness I’ve seen. It’s worth a train trip to LA on its own. Decorous Mission tiles, outrageous deco fittings, gracious palmy gardens: you feel exactly like Cary Grant blowing in from New York. Even Amtrak’s efforts to make it [...]
Train trip
This is a test. In two days we will start our big train adventure all across this mighty land. First we are taking the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, where we will inspect the La Brea tar pits under Laura’s expert guidance. The next day we will get on a sleeper car and not get [...]
Wisdom
Had my wisdom teeth taken out Friday afternoon, all four of them. I feel like an idiot, letting the dental vultures talk me into this when I’ve made it this long without the slightest trouble. But I happen to have full dental coverage right now, and there’s no way to tell how long that will [...]
Publishing
Not one to let a hot media trend pass her by, Laura has been working on a series of short self-published books. In this one, she offers an unexpected take on her favorite parts of the Wizard of Oz story.
Transportainment!
I like the bridge, but I love the tunnel.
Greedian
Economists who work on things like child care don’t generally get the big jobs at Harvard and the Fed. Some of them do it anyway, but they still are required to talk about it only in the purest business-guy dialect. (Can we call it Avarese?) For some reason, “We’re going to wake up one day [...]
Hack U
From: Stevens, Martha (ISSAtlanta)
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 10:26 AM
To: documentation team
Subject: science fair
Hi, I am a high school sophomore and I have chosen “hacking” as my topic for this year’s science fair.The prize is a pair of tickets to see N’sync, and I, like, really, really, really want to win!!!!Can you send me all [...]
And the living is hectic
And from Elizabeth, back in the Minnesota homeland, this exhausting report:We had the most amazing summer. The girls and I were outside nearly every minute, swimming, kayaking, canoeing, motorboating, horseback riding, frog/crayfish/minnow catching, grilling, swimming, camping, relaxing in the hammock, playing t-ball and softball, and of course, swimming. We found a fantastic beach about half [...]
June Jordan
has a way of cutting through all the blather and giving you something tangible to work with when almost everyone else is increasingly full of BS. While doing some brainless PDF work I listened to a radio interview she gave last month about the nightmarish stuff going on in Israel and Palestine. I recommend it, [...]