Month: September 2004
definitions
I wonder if people who call themselves conservatives take issue with these definitions, and if they have their own?
In the view of George Lakoff, “the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.” [1]
Contrast with his description of a conservative worldview, from the same source. “the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.”
Later[2], “The term “progressive” originated from people who were Democratic Socialists, but the socialism aspect has dropped away, and it’s come to mean what I call “nurturant morality.” It includes choosing peace whenever possible, environmentalism, civil liberties, minority rights, notions like social justice through living wages, et cetera.”
beware any enterprise that requires expensive accessories
[apologies to Thoreau]
So I have noticed a lot of hubbub about Moleskine paper products, these really nice notebooks that Bruce Chatwin made famous. I look at them. They’re nice looking. They feel good. They exude exotic adventure and travel, risk and romance.
Moleskine is a family of notebooks for different functions, pursuits, and endeavors – personal and professional.
Fortunately, impressionable as I am, I never bought any, even when I was reading Chatwin. I have accumulated lots of other ‘blank books’ and kept some travel journals, but I find that those old school composition books are just as good.
Results 1 – 10 of about 38 confirmed / 155 total results for “composition books”. (0.23 seconds)
Cheaper, by far, available everywhere, and if you really get off the beaten track, you might find something local (rice paper? hand-sewn paper?) that has more than mere connotations of exotica.
I’m too utilitarian for Moleskine, I’m afraid. One argument in their favor, on a practical level, is that if you buy a nice quality journal, you’re more likely to keep it up. I don’t know if that would work for me . . . . I can drop an expensive habit just as easily as a cheap one.
what? there are people who haven’t used and love liblookup?
Request a library book…via Amazon
I still can’t get over how cool this is. Jon Udell’s little wizard lets you generate a bookmarklet for requesting a library book—based on the Amazon page you’re currently viewing. It’s clearly a flawless lifehack.
Wow, that was old news (or so I thought) many months ago:
An ingenious and elegant thing:
This is very clever, and since I belong to two iPac-using libraries, it’s twice as cool for me.
King County Library touts liblookup:
LibraryLookup is a small bit of JavaScript (a bookmarklet) that you add to your Bookmarks.
And I’m surprised to find that this is news to Rebecca.
I use this every week, sometimes every day.
Now playing:Over You by Roddy Frame from the album “Surf” | Buy it
WANTED: Cocoa-based FAX client
I am working on building a network fax server here at home and I can’t seem to find an OS X client to communicate with HylaFax that isn’t X-based. Here’s one: Galleon Software’s projects:
Apple Canada
In order to meet their mandate of switching their staff to Apple’s new operating system, Apple Canada contracted Galleon Software to develop a new fax client to support the bulk-faxing needs of their sales and marketing departments. The project was developed in Cocoa, Apple’s new state-of-the-art programming framework for OS X and was designed to interact with HylaFax servers installed under Linux running on Intel hardware.
I dropped Galleon an email to see if they were willing or able to release it: seems like it would be a great thing to bundle with the OS, and Apple has paid for it already. Why not?
We used network FAX servers 10 years ago, with hardware from Shiva and client software in OS 7.x. It worked quite well, given the limitations of the time. I guess I’m surprised to find so little progress in this area.
canning
I took delivery of 11 pounds of ripe Italian prune plums yesterday, after my son’s piano lesson: his piano teacher has a tree that I expect bore 50 pounds of the little gems this summer. There’s another 10-20 pounds still on the tree, and probably as much on the ground under it.
So with all that ripe goodness on hand, I decided I had better find some way of preserving it (we’ll eat quite a few, I’m sure). As with anything else that came out of the home kitchen as opposed to a food lab, there are many variations on how to can fruit, depending on the fruit, the taste of the canner, and other factors. I found this one entertaining but not all that helpful.
As I usually do, I chose a few recipes, distilled out the essentials, and proceeded from there.
Ben has a plan
You are under my power. Tell me your secrets.
[ . . . ]
(On which point, incidentally, I’m vaguely (ie not really) hoping for a Bush victory: not for political reasons [as much as I’m allowed to given my British citizenship and living in Italy and all, I find the guy deeply objectionable on every count] but because a Bush victory will hopefully cause the US Liberals to either rent some cojones from someone or move en masse over here. The prospects for good conversation are thereby doubled either way. The greatest thing the European Union could do on the day after a Bush election win would be to declare free work visas for anyone who pledged to come over and stay for the course of the term. Someone should suggest it to Chirac.)
Some of us don’t need a work visa to go, but some kind of work would be fine. In ’88, I worked for some people who said they would emigrate of Bush pére won. They didn’t, of course. Not unlike Dick Cavett[1].
deterrence, prevention, and low-tech exploits
These clips supposedly show someone opening a Krytonite U-lock with a ballpoint pen: the video doesn’t make clear exactly how it’s done or if the locks are otherwise good. The forum has more detail . . .
Opening a pricey bike lock with a plastic ball point pen
Mark Frauenfelder:
Over at Bike Forums, some guy posted a video clip showing how he opened his Kryptonite U-Lock with a plastic ball point pen. Uproar ensues on the board. Link (Direct link to movie clip, and here’s another movie with a different lock.) (Thanks, xavii!) [Boing Boing Blog]
So this is a exploit against the barrel-keyed locks: the right size pen barrel (or soon to be available on the internet custom tool, unless I miss my guess) is inserted instead of the key and with a little luck, it serves to turn the innards to open the lock.
The big draw of Kryptonite has always been a mixture of deterrence and prevention: like the burglar alarm sign, you hope the Bad Guy takes someone else’s bike since yours will be too hard to steal. Now it sounds like they may have lost that edge . . .
Now playing: Magazine: Cut-out Shapes from the album “Secondhand Daylight” | Buy it
have I mentioned how educational WikiPedia can be?
Today’s featured article
The Holy Prepuce (or Holy Foreskin) is one of the various relics purported to be associated with Jesus Christ.
This was never mentioned in any discussion I can recall about Holy Relics. The odd bone, perhaps a fragment of the True Cross[1], that was about it.
fn1. Definition of Relic – wordIQ Dictionary & Encyclopedia: Erasmus famously remarked that there were enough pieces of the True Cross to build a ship from.
Now playing: Magazine: Shot by Both Sides from the album “Real Life” | Buy it
the virtues of metadata: some assembly required
As I mentioned a day or so ago, I have been playing with AcquisitionX, a P2P client. [disclaimer]I have downloaded some tracks that I bought but have yet to receive from Amazon[/disclaimer], and looked around to see what else there is.
What frustrates me about this is how crummy the metadata is, how hard it is to know what it is you’re getting. I guess if the cost approaches zero, you decide or add the value, but I thought most people used applications that handled track names, album and artist details, etc. Apparently not. And don’t get me started on the bit rates . . .
It does cast some doubts on the P2P nets as some great goldmine of easily accessible media. It’s not like it’s easy to find a good quality file with coherent ID3 tags. And from what I can gather, the online collections I am finding are not assembled by completists: it’s like a colossal greatest hits collection. Perhaps it’s a limitation of the networks AcquisitionX uses: the Donkey/Mule networks offered a wider array of stuff, but actually getting it seemed to take forever. I thought coming late to the P2P party would mean I would skip a lot of this teething trouble . . .
Now playing: King Crimson: The Talking Drum (Live) from the album “Frame By Frame [4 – 1969 (Live)]” | Buy it