Listics

Is it big yet?

Still, reading this I felt like I was on some kind of light-rail cluetrain…  so I’m asking myself how to apply these simple principles to the 3 ring circus that is Blog World Expo.

Cousin Betty who raises organic beef (Scottish Highland Cattle) up near Douglas City, wrote a letter to the editor regarding another corporate push to usurp local control.  Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) represent at once a tremendous dream of agricultural productivity and a tremendous substantiated risk to biodiversity and protection of the gene pools in food crops and the native ecology of wild places surrounding farms and ranches.  GMOs threaten the food purity of organic operations.  Since there is little short term profit in preservation and since American corporate interests are simply rapacious, it remains for local government to discern what is best for a community, its farmers and ranchers, and its environment.  Here is a link that can help you follow the issues and get involved in your neck of the woods.  And here, blogged with her permission, is what Betty Jo had to say about the corporate end-run around local democracy in California:

To: Editor, Trinity Journal
Re: CA Senate Bill 1056 - GMO and local control.

And so, like thieves in the night, legislators do the bidding of their corporate financial sponsors. An unrelated air quality bill (SB 1056) is "amended." The amendment changes the Food and Agriculture code to rob communities of their rights to protect their grass, forest and farmlands from contamination by Genetically Engineered seeds. Even labeling and notification of use are excluded by this bill from local control. Under this act local communities are not to be allowed to know when or where GMO seed is used. They are not to be allowed to choose.

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Bloggers, vloggers, photo loggers and podcasters all bow to the multi-talented Doc Searls‘ synthesis of all things webbly!  Seriously, this schwagcasting bit combines Doc’s fascination with schwag with his mastery of the media.  Also… who has a MICROPHONE like that?  Holy decibels, Schwagman!

I don’t know why "Intelligent Design" bothers me so much.  It seemed a reasonable approach to posit a metaphysical first cause in the ignorant Lutheran days of my pre-adolescence.  It all has to start somewhere, I thought.  Most of the other fourth graders in my set agreed with me in those rock skipping afternoons by the river when we would lose ourselves in discussions of the relative merits of GM versus Chrysler and catechism versus Sunday school.

Okay.  I really do know why it bothers me and the matter is complicated.  First, "Intelligent Design" is a disinformation technique, a propagandist’s approach to the introduction of religious beliefs to the public educational systems.  It is, in other words, a lie.

People who lie usually have a reason for it.  The first sentence of this post is a lie, stated for some light-weight rhetorical purpose and quickly acknowledged.  The people who promote the big lie of "Intelligent Design" do so to thwart public policy and democratic process, to pervert religious principles by rationalizing that the end justifies the means, to ultimately betray their own god by denying her place and her name in the structure of their political arguments.

Yet I am not a big fan of "Inherit the Wind" arguments either.  Spencer Tracy dropped the ball when he got into a pissing contest about the length of a biblical day.  We were very much in tune with Tracy’s arguments in the fourth and fifth grade, but since then the kids who were cannon-balling off the old 4-ton Bridge with me have pretty much come to the reasonable conclusion that it’s not about denying literalism in order to come to terms with biblical inconsistency, it’s simply a matter of dismissing theism.  Of course some of those kids grew up to cling to primitive xian beliefs and advocate that "Intelligent Design" be taught to public school children, but when I think of them I’m heartened by these words from Betty Bowers:

Jesus told us that the poor will always be with us. But this simple statement of a thoroughly annoying fact should not be construed as a direction to actually acknowledge them when they wander into your field of vision. I am reminded of the last time this passage from Matthew was quoted to me. It was by dear Juanita after she informed me that she was resigning from Golden Door Spa. As she carefully scraped the deep-cleansing Italian mud off my troublesome t-zone area, she said: "For you have the pores always with you; but me you will have not always."

If, like me, you would like to encounter the bizarre Bush-led Christian Jihadist movement and their Trojan horse issue of "Intelligent Design," you might consider signing up for membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Brian’s comment on a previous post led me down his link path to the Liftport site.  That got me thinking about carbon nanotube manufacturing.  I wonder if I could set up a facility in the barn and supply material for the time machine industry or something?  (Have to get to work solving that tachyon problem, of course…)

The delocalized pi-electron donated by each atom is free to move about
the entire structure, rather than stay home with its donor atom, giving
rise to the first molecule with metallic-type electrical conductivity.
The high-frequency carbon-carbon bond vibrations provide an intrinsic
thermal conductivity higher than even diamond.

Thump in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere. Lifestyle branding rulz! (not)

Whatever happened to the cool, slightly upscale shades with sales driven by insider slogan auto window stickers?  Curmudgeon?  Me?  No, just old school.

My personalized Google home page has a huge "outliner" component now.  Clicking on ADD CONTENT a left panel opens that looks like it could have been drawn by Dave Winer.  Dave’s OPML editor project is moving along smartly.  My best guess though, is that Google either hand-crafted the look and feel of outliner content, or they used the open standard XOXO to render the page.

I need some schooling on differences and benefits of OPML versus XOXO - one over the other.

I know! I’ll Google it!  There’s also a lot of food for thought stacking up under the technorati OPML tag.

Comrade J. Elvis Kombinat! (button man for the story Mafia) reports his concerns regarding "Quicken for Mac 2024."

Cartoon copyright Kirk Anderson