Listics

You say you got a resolution
Well you know
We all want to lose some weight

You tell me it’s your constitution
Well you know
We all want to lose some weight
But when you talk about the Atkins
Don’t you know you can count me out (in)
Don’t you know it’s gonna be aeight
Aeight Aeight

You say you need some meal dilution
Well you know
We’d all love a smaller can
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
I don’t have a diet plan
And when you want honey-nut pastries to fill your plate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be aeight
Aeight Aeight

You say you need an institution
Well you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s just food pollution
Well you know
You better see the Doc instead
And if you go carrying pictures of steamed pork bao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know know it’s gonna be aeight
Aiight Aeight

I was so impressed with Timothy White’s flash presentation (see preceding post) that I wanted to see if I could find out more about him and his work.  Google to the rescue… I learned quite a  bit, including the fact that the guy in Chetek is probably not Timothy White unless a lot of changes have happened to Timothy since the Lucie Awards in October.

Hornswoggled.  Hoaxed.  I think I was lied to by an aging hippie, a guy who drives a rusting out sedan with the old blue California plates with gold letters… a guy with a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker.  A guy, in other words, like any of several others who live in Bolinas, spend week-days looking for razor clams on Duxbury Reef, weekends partying at some gaffers’  house in Nicasio, and who may or may not fly down to LA for a photo-shoot tomorrow morning.

I’m gullible, but stranger things have happened than meeting a celebrity photographer in a northwoods resort town in the off season at an internet cafe.

I know where I was on this day in 1963.  Do you? 

Here’s my participant statement for the Accelerating Change Meetings:

Frank Paynter

Passions and Futures
I have a passion for truth. For three hundred years, euro-culture advanced an understanding of the universe in a quest for foundational truth. Then about thirty years ago, there was a retreat from the commitment to shaping a universal understanding in favor of a darker solipsistic postmodernism. While this cultural cul de sac provides fuel for its own immolation, it has also encouraged the growth of bizarre belief structures and fundamentalisms. Ideally, the next thirty years will be spent recovering lost ground and committing to reinvestment in science, knowledge and the growth of respect for universal education. I look for an emerging global culture with broad advances in international law, health and wellness, food and shelter for the billions, and equal opportunities for creativity and interpersonal cultural enrichment.

Projects and Problems
The problem of combustion-based energy haunts us. Discarding substitutes like coal gasification, ethanol, and bio-diesel in favor of bio-electric, wind and solar will be necessary if we want to halt global warming in time. Unfortunately, combustion alternatives are the low-hanging fruit economically as we shift from the petroleum culture. Democracy is necessary to enforce the mandate world-wide against the destruction of combustion based energy. Chemical based agriculture seems to harm as much as it provides sustenance. Closed system organic approaches that recycle bio-wastes will be needed on a broad scale to restore soil that has been sterilized by herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers. The internet promises communication and cultural integration for all. Protecting it as a commons and developing it according to standards that will prevent it from collapsing under its own weight is a challenge constantly before us.

Resources to Recommend
http://sandhill.typepad.com/
http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html
http://idcommons.net/principles.html
http://www.eff.org/

=Frank.Paynter

2idi can you hook you up too.

Jay Rosen says, “There’s too much happening. The public world is changing faster than we can invent terms for describing it.” Then he gives us a list. Scoble intends to discuss overload at Winer’s BloggerCon 3.

When I was a student working in the library and trying to keep the Library of Congress classification system straight (Heinlein was PZ3 H364…. that was all I needed to know after I finished the oeuvre of Ian Fleming PZ4 F598) I grew aware of the hopelessness of ever absorbing a small percentage of the information in those twelve floors of tightly packed stacks. The PMLA alone would have wasted some years of my life.

There are dozens of bloggers whose work I enjoy, but blogs comprise a tiny subset of what’s published on the web. Plenty of what’s published stays in paper and never makes it into pixels. Chris Locke’s work at HighBeam seems to be opening the door to a lot more printed matter for a price. I’m afraid we may be approaching a point in web publishing where we will get what we pay for.

Worthwhile the blog has morphed into Worthwhile the printed matter. Who knows if what’s available on the website will be available in the ragozine and vice versa.

I’ve met blawgers and med bloggers and journo-bloggers and all, and what I get is that indeed, it’s all too complex. The sum of human knowledge is almost too large for me to grasp, and if it’s difficult for me, well… what does that say about YOUR chances of understanding it all?

Boring results… let’s see, I was at John Calderone’s spare site and I clicked through to soon to be daddy Nathan Black in Austin. Nathan had the personality disorder quiz posted so I clicked on over and tried to be honest. The results, as I said, were boring, but the catalog of mental illnesses was interesting. Unfortunately it had a typographical error in it. See if you can find the typo. Probably can’t. Probably too stupid. Probably just another one those bastids that are out to get me, out to drag me down. If my parents hadn’t locked me in the box when I was a baby things would be different, that’s for sure! Why is everybody always picking on me? Excuse me while I sit here in the corner and chew on my sleeve.

…but unable to keep my big blog shut, I must relate my trepidation as the registration deadline draws near for the Conscientious Objector Counselor Training session I’m helping with this Saturday. They’re coming out of the woodwork — people who one might consider somewhat, ummm - marginalized.

There are thirty seats in the class. We’ve been preparing for this since August. This shit is as serious as it gets, particularly in the Ashcroft Gtmo Abu Ghraib era. So it’s good to know that most of the people in the class are bringing earnest intentions and experience to the effort. But in the last few days, as time runs out, I’ve had the opportunity to sign up the procrastinators… you know who you are… the socialist former mayoral candidate, the single mom with the teen-age kids hoping to parlay the training into a J-O-B… won’t happen, we discussed it, but she’s an optimist and we need those. Optimists. The guy who wants to “get all the facts together so he can hold workshops at the Rainbow - World Peace Earth Healing Gathering…” I talked to his message machine… deep voice, kind of scary in a way… I think I agree with what Liz Ditz had to say about these gatherings… mess up more habitat than they protect…. can’t find that post right now…

When we started taking registrations I thought that I’d screen people. And indeed I’ve talked with each of the applicants, but how do you screen out the “marginalized” when what conscientious objection is all about is being marginalized?

I was pleased to learn that if you’re a young man who has refused to register for the draft going to a Mennonite college, there will likely be student loans available to offset the Pell grants that you disqualify yourself from by not registering.

Marginalized people. I think I hold the record for the lowest ranking honorable discharge from the US Marine Corps: Private - E1. No pay grade lower. I got out though. And I may have trained as a US government killer but happily I never had to ply the trade. But I was thoroughly marginalized.

Now I’m a serial contractor.