June 27, 2008
June 26, 2008
Loren Feldman Gets a Web Design Refresh from Dave Winer
Dave Winer, who is the registrant of 1938media.net has created a new homepage for Loren Feldman, whose Don Rickles mocking shtick has become about as old as... Don Rickles. Dave's homepage design features some of Loren's best work!
Looks like some similar domains are available for those involved in the latest parody parade looking to launch an offensive defense strategy.
I don't know much about the origin of this feud, but it's going to be interesting to watch how this plays out. Especially with Dave entering from stage right.
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Looks like some similar domains are available for those involved in the latest parody parade looking to launch an offensive defense strategy.
I don't know much about the origin of this feud, but it's going to be interesting to watch how this plays out. Especially with Dave entering from stage right.
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well i missed the subway kid dying on twitter thing...
I guess I was too busy getting kissed to death by a grateful little dog (few posts down friends) to catch the jared-from-subway-died twitter mishap today.
Louis Gray Not Blue has a good rundown of what happens when the echo chamber tunes in to its own reverb, and suddenly twitterers were all a-twitter tweeting the news of the subway guy's demise.
Except that the whole thing was urban legend and Subway-Jared is just fine.
Cindy McCain on the other hand is probably still sneaking Vicodin. I took one after my surgery. I can hardly blame her, addict-thief that she is...
But I digress.
Louis noted that the ripple effect of popular twitterers tweeting bad information in this case had tens of thousands of followers of Kevin Rose of Digg and Adam Ostrow of Mashable mourning Jared's death before lunch.
Louis thinks that those who twitter should fact-check before tweeting 'breaking news' as a solution to the potential harm of false tweets (known pre-1999 as rumors). I think 1) fact checking online is overrated, 2) twitter is not a news-breaking service but ubiquitous IM and inherently untrustworthy yet entertaining overall, 3) that you can always count on the self-correcting nature of the Internet.
That's how you'll know when I tweet, "Surgeon General reports 140 character thinking causes brain damage," that I might be telling the truth.
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Louis Gray Not Blue has a good rundown of what happens when the echo chamber tunes in to its own reverb, and suddenly twitterers were all a-twitter tweeting the news of the subway guy's demise.
Except that the whole thing was urban legend and Subway-Jared is just fine.
Cindy McCain on the other hand is probably still sneaking Vicodin. I took one after my surgery. I can hardly blame her, addict-thief that she is...
But I digress.
Louis noted that the ripple effect of popular twitterers tweeting bad information in this case had tens of thousands of followers of Kevin Rose of Digg and Adam Ostrow of Mashable mourning Jared's death before lunch.
Louis thinks that those who twitter should fact-check before tweeting 'breaking news' as a solution to the potential harm of false tweets (known pre-1999 as rumors). I think 1) fact checking online is overrated, 2) twitter is not a news-breaking service but ubiquitous IM and inherently untrustworthy yet entertaining overall, 3) that you can always count on the self-correcting nature of the Internet.
That's how you'll know when I tweet, "Surgeon General reports 140 character thinking causes brain damage," that I might be telling the truth.
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June 25, 2008
Only In Amerika...
...where anyone can be President, and any any any really any anyone can be first trollop, I mean lady.
Cindy (not brady) McCain said at a recent rally that she is and always has been proud of her country (unsaid: unlike that obama bitch). TBogg says why:
-
Cindy (not brady) McCain said at a recent rally that she is and always has been proud of her country (unsaid: unlike that obama bitch). TBogg says why:
Where else could Cindy McCain get away with stealing drugs donated to help impoverished Third World people in order to keep that damn monkey off of her back. And where else could she walk away unscathed? To be fair, she was under a lot of pressure at the time because her husband was up to his wattled neck in the Charles Keating Affair, and now look, he's going to be the Republican candidate for President. So not only is this a great country, but it's also a very forgiving country, and that has to count for something...-
-
o this little dog
And I mean to tell you it's the laaast thing we need.
Truly. I don't have to tell you about the price of gas and how you have to drive everywhere in this megalopolis just to l-i-v-e. (FWIW, when was the last time a large bag of Lays potato chips -- which I didn't buy but did admire in amazement -- cost over $4? Answer: NEVER.) And did I mention healthcare bills up the ying yang? I know I'm singing to the choir here my sisters and brothers.
So when my sister told me about this starving, lonely, neglected mother dog next door to her (one puppy dead, one 'gone,' and the other now belonging to my sister) who wasn't being fed or watered (except when she'd sneak over to do it), and when she told me the owner told her to just find someone to take it--he didn't care as long as it was gone soon--and when she asked me to look at it with her while I was visiting last weekend, my question to YOU, dear readers, is why the heck did I not drive away?
Why did I go back to that dog pen in the glaring sun with no shade in the 100-degree heat and see this 4 pound shaggy black little mama dog sitting there so scared and so lonely? No babies, no friends, no family, nothing but flies and muddy water.
This is a matter of mathematics. We already have two dogs, two cats, one (currently) hamster, one beta, and a variety of insects who consider themselves kin. I should not have walked back there. I should not have picked her up. I should have driven away.
And that's what I did. With four little paws on the floorboard of the van, planted near the air conditioning, with two of the most grateful eyes I've ever seen looking up at me.
And we're calling her daisy.
She eats cheap dog food and runs around naked despite the list of Walmart dog clothes Jenna had in mind, and she eats out of jenna's old baby bowls and sleeps in a cat carrier. And I think she thinks she's in heaven.
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Truly. I don't have to tell you about the price of gas and how you have to drive everywhere in this megalopolis just to l-i-v-e. (FWIW, when was the last time a large bag of Lays potato chips -- which I didn't buy but did admire in amazement -- cost over $4? Answer: NEVER.) And did I mention healthcare bills up the ying yang? I know I'm singing to the choir here my sisters and brothers.
So when my sister told me about this starving, lonely, neglected mother dog next door to her (one puppy dead, one 'gone,' and the other now belonging to my sister) who wasn't being fed or watered (except when she'd sneak over to do it), and when she told me the owner told her to just find someone to take it--he didn't care as long as it was gone soon--and when she asked me to look at it with her while I was visiting last weekend, my question to YOU, dear readers, is why the heck did I not drive away?
Why did I go back to that dog pen in the glaring sun with no shade in the 100-degree heat and see this 4 pound shaggy black little mama dog sitting there so scared and so lonely? No babies, no friends, no family, nothing but flies and muddy water.
This is a matter of mathematics. We already have two dogs, two cats, one (currently) hamster, one beta, and a variety of insects who consider themselves kin. I should not have walked back there. I should not have picked her up. I should have driven away.
And that's what I did. With four little paws on the floorboard of the van, planted near the air conditioning, with two of the most grateful eyes I've ever seen looking up at me.
And we're calling her daisy.
She eats cheap dog food and runs around naked despite the list of Walmart dog clothes Jenna had in mind, and she eats out of jenna's old baby bowls and sleeps in a cat carrier. And I think she thinks she's in heaven.
---
June 23, 2008
June 21, 2008
Found: Virgin Pack of American Spirits
July 4th will be my FOUR YEAR anniversary of quitting smoking. Holy Cow! Most of you who read me were there when I quit. I languished over having to quit for the first two years. Every day, every mile. OH how I missed my best friends. OH how I fiddled and gnashed teeth in those early days.I quit for 4 years once before in my life - the day Bill Clinton was elected President (first term) was my first quit date. I quit for four years then too. Then on one night in one fit of one bit of frustration and anger, I grabbed a pack out of a cigarette machine (they were always close at hand back then, weren't they?) and lit up. Smokers are such addicts: I can quit again--I am good at quitting.
So imagine my surprise today when I was trying to find out why my car charger wasn't working for my phone, and I pulled out the little drawer at the bottom of my console that I never use, and there they were: an unopened pack of American Spirits - my brand, my old friend, right there--came back to see if I still cared.
The pack was in there because the last time George went down to see his mother, during her final days, he took the van. He quit a year ago August. That was one of his last packs - and he's always wondered what happened to it.
The first thing I did after staring for a Very Long Time was smell the pack. Cellophane sealed, I could still smell its sexy scent. Yes, even now, it smelled THAT good. Next I put them on top of the dashboard and drove to the pool, because that's where we were going when I found them.
The next thing I did was think about how it would feel to smoke, to escape, to have something ELSE to do--a distraction from everything else in the elses of the elses of the elses I have to do. As I wrote then:
When you smoke, you are always doing more than one thing at a time. Every time you light up you are smoking AND thinking, walking, breathing, sitting, talking, pacing, driving, writing, drinking, whatever. Usually you are doing several things at once. That's what stimulants do best--let you multi-task and enjoy the rush of it.I've gotten better over the years. Moments aren't exactly something to escape anymore. I'm mostly present during them. I have stopped running in between the tick of the clock. Somehow I think that's good, although I'm not sure it will ever feel normal.
Losing the ability to escape the perplexing LENGTH of a single moment is perhaps my biggest loss in giving up cigarettes.
There must be some joy to be found in those seem-to-last-forever-moments -- another stretch of highway, another commercial, another bill collector, another Zoom episode, another press release, another Web site. There must be something people enjoy about being present inside of those tick-tock-ticks of time. For me, it is extra time to be anxious.
I've got a long way to go, friends.
I didn't have one. And I didn't bring them home. I left them with a friend at the pool who still smokes. Someone I wouldn't be tempted to ask for one, because I thought about it. I sure did. Four years later I could have easily blown it by telling myself some story about how Good I Am At Quitting.
Like always, this blog is part of what keeps me honest and accountable -- to me as much as to you. It's not so different as I head toward four years than it was after six months, and my sentiments--they're pretty much the same:
This blog helped keep me honest. Honestly. There were times I thought about it. Seriously. George's cigarettes are in the garage right now. I could easily have grabbed one during one of my "moments." One of the thoughts during those "moments" was that I would have to post it. I would. I wouldn't not post if if I cheated. I would tell you all that I slipped up, and how good it was, but how bad it feels to have to turn the clock back, and you would all tell me that everyone has a slip up and it doesn't mean I've lost the battle--or lost respect--to just pick up where I was before the slipup, and I would say thank you, I love you guys, and to be honest, I wanted to avoid that WHOLE thing.Really. Thanks to you all for helping me get here. And pat me on the back and give a shout out to God for the help. Slowly, very slowly, I've used those moments I used to use to escape to connect in new ways to new people and new energy. And I don't mean that in a woo-woo way. I mean that in an ah-ha way.
So thanks.
Jenna, if you ever read this post, please don't EVER light one of those disgusting cigarettes. It's not just that they're bad for you. It's that they don't let you go. They cuff your hands and mess with your head, and all of your internal organs too, as long as you live. Which won't be as long as you would have. And even if you quit, they never stop messing with you.
peace-out.
June 20, 2008
a face
The big diseases have faces. The big organs have faces. Your heart, your kidney, your lungs, even your breasts -- they're the Big News body parts.
They have celebrity faces that get attention. And because they get attention, they get money. And because they get money, they attract talented young researchers who dedicate their lives beating the disease or figuring out the organ. And because they get talent, more people survive, get well, watch their kids grow up, are free from pain.
Pancreatic cancer is a disease without a face. That's because, as Randy Pausch says, no one lives long enough to become the face of that disease.
Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost 2 years ago. It is a rare for anyone with pancreatic cancer to live as long as Randy has. Most -- like my father -- die within six months. The five year survival rate is around 3 or 4 percent. Even 40 years after my father's death, the prognosis is the same. No other cancer has been as elusive or remained as aggressive over the decades.
I found Randy's story because reading Doc Searl's posts about his pancreatitis battle, and Suzi's blog about hers, reminded me of the pancreas' tricky stubborn ways. Doc and Suzi don't have pancreatic cancer, but they do have bum pancreases. As I read of their latest challenges, I searched around to see how things were progressing with that odd organ and came across Randy's blog, his Carnegie Mellon "last lecture," which has become a book, and his recent testimony before the Health and Human Services Subcommittee:
Please watch it, and give what you can to PANCAN or the Lustgarten Foundation.
They have celebrity faces that get attention. And because they get attention, they get money. And because they get money, they attract talented young researchers who dedicate their lives beating the disease or figuring out the organ. And because they get talent, more people survive, get well, watch their kids grow up, are free from pain.
Pancreatic cancer is a disease without a face. That's because, as Randy Pausch says, no one lives long enough to become the face of that disease.
Randy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost 2 years ago. It is a rare for anyone with pancreatic cancer to live as long as Randy has. Most -- like my father -- die within six months. The five year survival rate is around 3 or 4 percent. Even 40 years after my father's death, the prognosis is the same. No other cancer has been as elusive or remained as aggressive over the decades.
I found Randy's story because reading Doc Searl's posts about his pancreatitis battle, and Suzi's blog about hers, reminded me of the pancreas' tricky stubborn ways. Doc and Suzi don't have pancreatic cancer, but they do have bum pancreases. As I read of their latest challenges, I searched around to see how things were progressing with that odd organ and came across Randy's blog, his Carnegie Mellon "last lecture," which has become a book, and his recent testimony before the Health and Human Services Subcommittee:
Please watch it, and give what you can to PANCAN or the Lustgarten Foundation.
June 16, 2008
You had to be there...
...to know why this made me cry. I'm so happy Gary is back.
Meanwhile, I'd offer to take some of doc's extra morphine, but last time i had that shit in the hospital they had to stop me from itching my back raw with my dinner fork.
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Meanwhile, I'd offer to take some of doc's extra morphine, but last time i had that shit in the hospital they had to stop me from itching my back raw with my dinner fork.
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June 10, 2008
June 09, 2008
June 07, 2008
The Day of the Numerican
This story is unique and yet ubiquitous. It is one too often left untold because it is unfolding in real time in families across America. Our family history is written forward, yet linked back to the legacy of slavery.
John Lee Harris says of the Numerican Nation:
John Lee Harris says of the Numerican Nation:
"In as much as we are not immigrants, in the traditional sense of the word, I prefer to think of us as the Numerican Nation: A spiritual people borne of slavery."And he writes:
I’ve postulated that our family’s identity is inextricably bound-up in the past; therefore, we are Numericans.Numerican is constitutive of two words, Numen and American.
In ancient times the word numen denoted a local divinity, or presiding spirit of a place. The word American simply refers to “the New World”.
Our forefathers lived and died in the Carolinas’; their numen and/or spirit reside there:
Whereas Africans, Eurasians, and Native Americans entered, new Americans emerged, a spiritual people borne of slavery. Their identity forever changed through the passage of time.
Implicit thereto is the fundamental belief that historians simply got it wrong; 250 years of bondage left the Numerican Nation without global roots.
June 04, 2008
May 30, 2008
Powned! Getting Nasty about Nasty Business
I don't know the whys and wherefores of law enough to know if the scam mike describes on TC tonight is legally a scam or not. I know I've fallen for a couple, and I'm not the only one. Sure we are online regulars and should know not to click the BIG YES and instead click the teeny-tiny 'no thanks,' but every now and then, there's a disconnect and we enter into the quagmire of clicks, getting powned.
I personally paid for that scamified ringtone/download service for TWO YEARS without knowing. What does that say about me? I'm a financial goofball. Still, have you seen where they bury that on your phone bill? We have a bundled ATT bill that's like 26 pages. One little line item slips in and it can take a long time to catch it. I figured the bill went up by $14 because the bill ALWAYS seems to go up. We ended up getting some of the money back, but not all of it.
Considering Intelius the company Mike has investigated is getting ready to go public, I hope the fact that he's got a big mouth comes in right handy and gives the powers that be some pause.
Nassty business.
UPDATE: - Jain's Son has his say on TC.
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I personally paid for that scamified ringtone/download service for TWO YEARS without knowing. What does that say about me? I'm a financial goofball. Still, have you seen where they bury that on your phone bill? We have a bundled ATT bill that's like 26 pages. One little line item slips in and it can take a long time to catch it. I figured the bill went up by $14 because the bill ALWAYS seems to go up. We ended up getting some of the money back, but not all of it.
Considering Intelius the company Mike has investigated is getting ready to go public, I hope the fact that he's got a big mouth comes in right handy and gives the powers that be some pause.
Nassty business.
UPDATE: - Jain's Son has his say on TC.
---
May 29, 2008
I like that friendfeed's a backchannel
On the other hand, I'm sorry to disappoint all of those calling for friendfeed comments to be pulled into the larger web, but I happen to enjoy the back channel short bursts of comments on the feeds in friendfeed. It is the perfect medium for wit and snark. Lord knows we need some more of that around here before this entire talkosphere turns into snoresville.So leave friendfeed alone.
I say it's not such a big deal if people have to get off their asses and walk over there when twitter is down. Satisfying an addiction can take a little work. If you want to complain about the extra effort, go chop some wood or water the horses or something.
Friendfeed's like a viewing booth at a porn shop, except with comments. Okay, not exactly. But kind of. You have your rooms if you're into that. Otherwise you can watch all the goings on, and if you're moved to respond, well, the platform is all yours.
oh they're gonna love me over there now.
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May 28, 2008
SezWho? My Blog Life in Comments 2001-2008
For as long as I can remember in the land of blogs, technology experts like Shelley Powers told me not to give control of my data away. Serious technology folks host their own stuff, and usually on their own servers, because they don't like to leave chance to chance--and because they know how.
I'll cop to the fact that It's a pretty dumb idea to have stayed on blogspot so long. Honestly? That's the trap of a closed system. Once you invest enough of your time and energy and passion into it, the barrier to change is about as high as the sky. Maybe higher. The relationship becomes sort of a 'the devil you know" dance, and you're not leading.
THIRD PARTIES? DON'T RSVP.
As I've written before, I like Blogger as blogging software. But I wish I would have left blogspot for my own hosted site long ago. On BlogSisters I solved illusion of hosting with web forwarding. But still, all of that content is on blogspot.
It's not like I haven't taken warnings about the risks of putting my content in the hands of third parties seriously. I have. But it has always been 'not quite seriously enough.' There are other must-dos competing with my time.
As the noise level escalates and Web 2.0 companies come and go, I see more clearly the argument for keeping ownership of my data whenever possible. It's a hot topic for social media and comment users lately.
FOLLOW THE BOUNCING COMMENTS: FROM YACCS TO BLOGGER TO HALSOCAN TO BLOGGER + SEZWHO
Take my comments here on Allied. Some of us were doing comments before most of the blogs on Techmeme tonight were born, and before most Web 2.0 CEO's could drive.
In the early days of blogging, if you wanted comments, you had to stay up until 2 a.m. and sign on to get an account on YACCS within a given 1 hour period. If you weren't lucky enough to get your login during that window, you had to wait until the next day. And after enough users were on the system to create headaches, YACCS said, No More.
YACC's creator, Hossein, was a one or two man shop - Remember, these were the days before flush funding and social media conferences. Having YACCS comments in those days was being a REAL blogger, because commenting tools were hard to come by. It meant you cared enough to stay up late.
After some years, I think about 2004, Blogger got pretty good comments of its own, and I was getting a lot of YACCS comment spam. Hossein decided to stop supporting YACCS and it was time to make a switch, so I turned YACCS off and turned Blogger comments on.
That worked pretty well for a while, but before Google's first big Blogger upgrade, I started getting MORE comment spam, tried moderating comments for a while and hated it (remember - this was before OpenID, before comment registration, and when CAPTCHA didn't even work well) and so I decided to turn Blogger comments off somewhere in 2006 and replace them with Haloscan.
Why Haloscan? Because Shakespierce used Haloscan, and I wanted to be kewl like Tony. No really. I'm serious.
See how adoption works? The Kewl Factor is a powerful thang.
SO Here I am again, and Haloscan is being difficult where Blogger's new templates are concerned (you've been seeing that error message for the last HOW LONG now?), so I'm turning Blogger comments back on.
AUGMENTING, NOT REPLACING
The good news is, I can turn Blogger comments back on and STILL HAVE a custom service that does more than Blogger lets me do with comments. I can get a universal user profile and comment tracking across social media. And instead of giving away the data, it stays where my comments live, with the rest of my content.
That's because I installed SezWho, which is not a comment replacement system, like disqus, but a conversation and reputation-driven universal profile. It is known for working across all kinds of social media -- including wordpress, drupal, and Blogger blogs; phpBB forums; etc. -- and for having a layer of semantic intelligence that tracks reputation over time. With open API's, it can do pretty much whatever the web decides it should do.
By turning comments back on with Blogger and adding SezWho, I don't think I'll be looking back three years from now and seeing the kind of SPAM that's piled up because my commenting service (as YACCS did) had to shutter its doors, but somehow left a window open for spammers to slip through.
Second of all, I'll have access to conversations that no matter what happens to the third party service provider. They'll live with the rest of my blog content, not on some other site somewhere else. I'll be able to keep my blog's conversational legacy, not wish that I kept it.
Third, as menopause progresses and I become even more forgetful than I am this very minute, my SezWho Universal Profile will give me a web-wide view of conversations I've participated in from wherever I am. Now, I wish I had a Universal Profile for my offline life. If only.
Fourth, Trackbacks work with SezWho, and that's a plus because with Blogger I could never seem to get trackbacks to work no matter how many times someone said: "Could you use trackbacks please?"
Well I've already given more reasons than Fred Wilson's Three Reasons in this post, and if he can do a shoutout for a company he's funding, then I can tell you why I decided to try SezWho as a mere flack.
Now back to our regularly scheduled conversation.
---
----
I'll cop to the fact that It's a pretty dumb idea to have stayed on blogspot so long. Honestly? That's the trap of a closed system. Once you invest enough of your time and energy and passion into it, the barrier to change is about as high as the sky. Maybe higher. The relationship becomes sort of a 'the devil you know" dance, and you're not leading.
THIRD PARTIES? DON'T RSVP.
As I've written before, I like Blogger as blogging software. But I wish I would have left blogspot for my own hosted site long ago. On BlogSisters I solved illusion of hosting with web forwarding. But still, all of that content is on blogspot.
It's not like I haven't taken warnings about the risks of putting my content in the hands of third parties seriously. I have. But it has always been 'not quite seriously enough.' There are other must-dos competing with my time.
As the noise level escalates and Web 2.0 companies come and go, I see more clearly the argument for keeping ownership of my data whenever possible. It's a hot topic for social media and comment users lately.
FOLLOW THE BOUNCING COMMENTS: FROM YACCS TO BLOGGER TO HALSOCAN TO BLOGGER + SEZWHO
Take my comments here on Allied. Some of us were doing comments before most of the blogs on Techmeme tonight were born, and before most Web 2.0 CEO's could drive.
In the early days of blogging, if you wanted comments, you had to stay up until 2 a.m. and sign on to get an account on YACCS within a given 1 hour period. If you weren't lucky enough to get your login during that window, you had to wait until the next day. And after enough users were on the system to create headaches, YACCS said, No More.
YACC's creator, Hossein, was a one or two man shop - Remember, these were the days before flush funding and social media conferences. Having YACCS comments in those days was being a REAL blogger, because commenting tools were hard to come by. It meant you cared enough to stay up late.
After some years, I think about 2004, Blogger got pretty good comments of its own, and I was getting a lot of YACCS comment spam. Hossein decided to stop supporting YACCS and it was time to make a switch, so I turned YACCS off and turned Blogger comments on.
That worked pretty well for a while, but before Google's first big Blogger upgrade, I started getting MORE comment spam, tried moderating comments for a while and hated it (remember - this was before OpenID, before comment registration, and when CAPTCHA didn't even work well) and so I decided to turn Blogger comments off somewhere in 2006 and replace them with Haloscan.
Why Haloscan? Because Shakespierce used Haloscan, and I wanted to be kewl like Tony. No really. I'm serious.
See how adoption works? The Kewl Factor is a powerful thang.
SO Here I am again, and Haloscan is being difficult where Blogger's new templates are concerned (you've been seeing that error message for the last HOW LONG now?), so I'm turning Blogger comments back on.
AUGMENTING, NOT REPLACING
The good news is, I can turn Blogger comments back on and STILL HAVE a custom service that does more than Blogger lets me do with comments. I can get a universal user profile and comment tracking across social media. And instead of giving away the data, it stays where my comments live, with the rest of my content.
That's because I installed SezWho, which is not a comment replacement system, like disqus, but a conversation and reputation-driven universal profile. It is known for working across all kinds of social media -- including wordpress, drupal, and Blogger blogs; phpBB forums; etc. -- and for having a layer of semantic intelligence that tracks reputation over time. With open API's, it can do pretty much whatever the web decides it should do.
By turning comments back on with Blogger and adding SezWho, I don't think I'll be looking back three years from now and seeing the kind of SPAM that's piled up because my commenting service (as YACCS did) had to shutter its doors, but somehow left a window open for spammers to slip through.
Second of all, I'll have access to conversations that no matter what happens to the third party service provider. They'll live with the rest of my blog content, not on some other site somewhere else. I'll be able to keep my blog's conversational legacy, not wish that I kept it.
Third, as menopause progresses and I become even more forgetful than I am this very minute, my SezWho Universal Profile will give me a web-wide view of conversations I've participated in from wherever I am. Now, I wish I had a Universal Profile for my offline life. If only.
Fourth, Trackbacks work with SezWho, and that's a plus because with Blogger I could never seem to get trackbacks to work no matter how many times someone said: "Could you use trackbacks please?"
Well I've already given more reasons than Fred Wilson's Three Reasons in this post, and if he can do a shoutout for a company he's funding, then I can tell you why I decided to try SezWho as a mere flack.
Now back to our regularly scheduled conversation.
---
----
perhaps the best term for stubborn ass I've ever heard
In the new book What Happened, President Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan decides to stop covering up for his former boss, and eloquently expresses his version of life in the administration.
He utters one of the best descriptors for Bush's particular kind of flawed thinking that I've ever heard. He calls the President's particular kind of pig headedness a "detrimental resistance to reflection."
How accurate of a phrase is that, and how many people do I know who have fallen lockstep into a pattern of thinking that denies subtleties?
Never look back, only ahead. Never peel back the layers, go with your gut. This, I think, is the single biggest flaw, and a poison that has now invaded the cultural personality of conservative republicans, and much of America: an unwavering commitment to disallowing what might be gleaned from nuances and the cadence of things.
That is his legacy - It may be the death of us.
---
He utters one of the best descriptors for Bush's particular kind of flawed thinking that I've ever heard. He calls the President's particular kind of pig headedness a "detrimental resistance to reflection."
How accurate of a phrase is that, and how many people do I know who have fallen lockstep into a pattern of thinking that denies subtleties?
Never look back, only ahead. Never peel back the layers, go with your gut. This, I think, is the single biggest flaw, and a poison that has now invaded the cultural personality of conservative republicans, and much of America: an unwavering commitment to disallowing what might be gleaned from nuances and the cadence of things.
That is his legacy - It may be the death of us.
---
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