Good news is that my client renewed my contract and the surly edge of my uncertainty is rolling back like  water off the beach presagent to a tsunami of Beach-Boys-as-Power-Rangers proportions.

The bad news is the big wave on the horizon is megatons of work rolling forward and unstoppable.

I’m off this afternoon to San Francisco to attend BloggerCon IV, a gathering of people who publish on the web. This is turning into a tradition for me… I’ve attended the other three and didn’t see how I could pass up number four.

Dave Winer is the motive force behind these gatherings the first of which was held during his stint as a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center. His old colleague John Palfrey will be there tomorrow discussing how to make money out of blogging. One of Palfrey’s blogging interests is Top Ten Sources, where Halley Suitt is CEO. Here’s an interview Dave did with Palfrey around the turn of the year (mp3).

Our little corner of Second Street wil be alive with bloggers. Chris Pirillo and Ponzi will be there. Jim Zellmer from Madison was going to come, and I saw this as a chance to travel 2024 miles to meet him. Now it looks like he won’t be able top make it, so maybe I’ll have to make a local call this summer and introduce myself.

Doc will be there. Mary Hodder. All kinds of nice people, and brilliant. I sent Dervala a note, asking for a lunch or coffee date. Haven’t heard back. Fingers crossed.

While the bloggers are gathered at CNet on Second Street, the rest of the city will be jumping celebrating LBGT Pride.

Perfect timing really… you have to be a little queer to be a blogger. And I must add… we’ve come a long way ladies.

McD is doing an analysis of the OSI reference model in the context of net neutrality and he’s doing a pretty good job of it too!

Hey McD. We’re never going to be famous technorati bloggerambos if we keep trading links like this. The algorithm is biased against anything that smacks of gaming the system or deep echo chamberistics. That’s why it’s scientific and we’re not.

Right Kevin Marks? (Kevin, the link to “Frank Paynter” in the honored position adjacent to Andrew Odlyzko on your blogroll is now two generations out of date, and while I do forward traffic, and the old Sandhill sites are more fun than a grocery bag full of comic books on a blanket on the lawn on a hot summer day, you should update the link so my technorati rating so it is easier for you to get here and enjoy the simple open faced sandwich that is Listics-earth.)

http://listics.com  - openly link whoring so you don’t have to.

Vote early.  Vote often.

ze Frank, who has totally sold out by providing a “commercial link” following the show, explains the “sell out” concept in more detail.  Here is an edited transcription with the funny parts taken out:

“Selling out doesn’t have to do with actually having money, it has to do with the perception that your pursuit of popularity and potentially making money has caused you to sacrifice your core values…”

“It’s too late now but you could have started out with a transparent agenda to become rich, then if it happened people would call you a genius and not a sell-out.”

“Why don’t I take a poll and see what the community wants me to do?”

“That’s called pandering to the audience, that’s even worse than selling out.  And listening to polls?  Not even the president…”

None of this answers the question, “If a ducky and a baby rabbit fought to the death, who would win?”  But I’m thinking not Amanda Boom-boom.

Yule’s brief appearance…

image copyright george schelling

Presenting Ozymandias, a blogger who seems to post when he has something good to share.  Brief prayer for the wisdom to emulate Ozzie…  this Ozzie, the self aware one…

The struggle of the working class continues.  And “…once again the use of force instead of dialogue is the privileged response to citizens exercising their constitutional rights.”

Which side are you on?  Do you have a clue?

McD has opened the way for a whole new way of looking at the universe, the hot fudge sundaes and everything.  “What,” he asks, “would Frank do?”  WWFD.  There’s something compelling about that.  Yes my brethren and cisterns, I say to you…  keep McD in your hearts and Listics in your links.  Really, if we can build sufficient traffic here I will throw a party!

Thanks to Dave Winer for refocusing the Web 2.0 meme:

He posts “The Show” around 1 in the afternoon, and for the rest of the day, goes about cobbling together a living, doing speaking engagements, consulting for technology companies, and doing anything else he can think of to earn a dollar.

It’s not the cover of Rolling Stone, but it is a nice two-pager in the Sunday Styles section.

Harvest - J. Alva provides a beautiful audio and visual accompaniment to a passage from Ray Sweatman’s “Puddles.”

The Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition publishes a great cookbook that has a single flaw. It’s focused on seasonal eating. Now, from the point of view of a kohlrabi producer or a spinach maven, it makes sense to influence your customer base to enjoy what’s fresh when it’s fresh, and I have nothing against this concept generally. But it is particularly galling when one extends the logic. Fresh asparagus in the spring, crisp apples in the fall, tomatoes and zucchinis when summer is high - all this sounds delicious. It’s the winter time when we in Wisconsin might be expected to suffer. Seasonal variety from the root cellar frankly sucks. Salt cod and rutabagas only go so far toward providing that fresh variety we enjoyed during the growing season.

Extending the logic of eating locally grown and seasonal produce, one would have to feel sorry for the Floridians who might never enjoy an apple or a pear. Indeed, I’m not sure I’m ready to give up citrus. But eating locally grown foodstuffs is one way that we are enjoined to help offset the energy crisis.

Here’s the fact - the engineers had better get working on that so called energy crisis. I want to be able to enjoy 24 hour flood-lighting so intense that anybody dropping-in will be forced to wear shades any time of the day, and I want air-conditioning of polar quality for free forever without impacting the environment. So, again - let’s get the engineers working on that, okay? It’s more than the broken promise of flying automobiles that’s upsetting me here. Those clowns in the engineer boots have been so focused on extractive industries that they haven’t paid any attention to the easy stuff, like free non-polluting power for everyone everywhere. And their hippie opposite numbers in the food co-op biz play right into their hands by making people think they owe it to each other to eschew bananas and only eat lettuce in the spring, for god’s sake.

Get on with it Edison. Power to the peeps, okay? I want that first blimp-load of bananas here before fall.

Charlie Brooker in the Guardian says,

There’s no point debating anything online. You might as well hurl shoes in the air to knock clouds from the sky. The internet’s perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain’t one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional “live audience” quickly conspire to create a “perfect storm” of perpetual bickering.

I can infer that SquatCrunch agrees.

uchicagosm ©2002-03 The University of Chicago Law School® 1111 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637 773-702-9494

[This post is continued from here, where-in I kvetch and kvell about all kinds of things, and reveal myself to be a grumpy old grouch].
I visited the Meetinghouse and found the pamphlet I needed to prepare for the committee meeting Monday night. The pamphlet, a structured discussion of Quaker marriage has a lot to recommend it in terms of its elaboration of issues faced by Friends in matters matrimonial since the 17th century. My initial grumpiness centered, I think, on the fact that we support wedding commited couples and it seemed like this was the one step back in the progress two-step, because…

I’ve worked with clearness committees for marriage for heterosexual couples and we didn’t ground ourselves with this reading, or with any other, but rather relied on a traditional practice that drew on the combined experience of members of the committee and the couple. By pulling out this tract, are we creating a distinction that we would rather erase from our consciousness? I am afraid we are doing that.

Each of us has been wounded in some way. We have tender spots that we hope our friends and family will soothe and help us to heal. Some of us have been so cruelly branded by discriminatory practices that the wounds are a chronic condition. Others have scar tissue that shields them from the pain of continued social abrasion. And so, as we move forward to solemnize and to celebrate the marriage of Barb and Amy, we owe them and ourselves the consideration of issues they may face as a married couple of the same gender in 2024. But the pamphlet was written in 1993 and Friends in America had celebrated same-sex marriage for at least ten years before the pamphlet was written, so we are reaching a point that we have reached with other invidiously discriminatory practices in society at large - namely, this stuff is starting to get old. We recognize the dehumanized condition of many who discriminate against those who differ in our larger community, but here in our meeting community we must simply offer love and nurturance and ask, “How can we help thee, friend?”

The pamphlet offers a lot in terms of generalizable concerns for married couples. Where it strays from sound practice is in its assumption of difference in matters of law for these friends. Quakers have ever been faced with matters of conscience, and there are Friends who pay no war taxes, who refuse military service, who practice civil disobedience of any law they find noxious. So “gay marriage” will always, I believe, be an option in Friends meetings regardless of any repressive legislation. But happy marriage, a loving couple, well knit and supported by the meeting is not a sure thing. And this pamphlet, regardless of the cloying comparisons of John Calvi and Marshall Brewer with Margaret Fell and George Fox, offers a fundamental understanding of issues that marrying couples should consider:

1. Do you think you will be good partners? Can you compromise out of respect for the other? Can you articulate your feelings? Do you know your own strengths and weaknesses? What do you do to have fun together?
2. How do you deal with conflict?
3. Do you plan to have children?
4. What are your expectations of marriage? What are your understandings of the nature of the spirtual and corporate nature of a Quaker marriage?
5. What do you think about traditional roles and role separation between wage earning and homemaking?
6. Have you addressed the practical legal matters such as wills that will bind your relationship contractually? Are you free of of other binding relationships?
7. How will you finance your marriage?
8. How do you feel about your soon to be extended family? Do you enjoy each other’s family and friends? Can you have personal relationships that do not include your partner?
9. Are you willing to give the time, patience and openness to a good sexual relationship? How do you feel about sexual and emotional fidelity?
10. Are you aware that the marriage relationship needs constant care and nurture to insure good growth? Are you willing to recommit yourself, day by day, year by year, to try again in spite of difficulties, to recoginize, accept, love and delight in each other’s individuality?

Phil Sim says, at Squash…

Full credit to Mike Arrington, who has done an absolutely amazing job. But it would be wrong to view Mike as a blogger. He’s run TechCrunch as a professional, media business since the very early days. He’s placed a big emphasis on marketing, he’s built a community via events and networking, he’s brought in professionals and external contributors when needed and he’s taken every opportunity to monetise his success, enabling the snowball to keep up its momentum.

Tried this once.  Only got down about five feet.  Could have done better with a backhoe, I suppose.  Thanks to ze Frank’s “if the earth were a sandwich” project, I discovered how lucky I was.  My hole would not have hit China, not if I kept on a steady course straight through the center of the earth.  No, my hole would have hit the Indian Ocean and drained it into my backyard in Monona and if you think my mom was pissed with the initial excavation, imagine how annoyed she would have been with the entire Indian Ocean rushing in and flooding out her zinnias.

If you want to dig a hole through the center of the earth and come out in China, it would behoove you to start digging in Argentina or someplace.  ze Frank has a tool to help you figure this out.

(If you live where the Amazon rain forest used to grow, maybe you could get the Sultan of Brunei to fund your excavation).

Two years ago I finished a two year stint as Clerk of my Monthly Quaker Meeting. We’re a large meeting in a university town and among our members there is a wide range of beliefs. There are Catholics who attend our meeting because of the peace and community they find here, Jews, Buddhists, fallen Lutherans like myself… there are lots of different backgrounds represented. We have among us so-called “birthright” Quakers and “Quakers by convincement.” I belong in the latter group. We are largely descended from European white people. Only a handful of those of Asian or African descent can be found among us, and no indigenous people to my knowledge.

Our meeting has been described as a “mystical universalist” gathering, and when they named me Clerk, I’m not sure they knew that they were handing over the key to the meetinghouse to a foul-mouthed atheist. But the inner light shines out from everyone through a variety of filters, each unique, if shaded by particular belief structures and other trappings of the mind. I am grateful to be among friends, people who gather in mindful contemplation of truth and love seeking only clarity and goodness and light.

Now I have the opportunity to serve on a clearness committee for marriage. I’ve been asked to review the Pendle Hill pamphlet on marriage clearness committees and it doesn’t seem to be online.

[…and later] Oh boy. It’s getting deeper. After an exhaustive search, I find that there is only one Pendle Hill pamphlet that seems to be relevant… number 308.

Am I just grumpy, or would it have been a reasonable expectation for the person who is convening Barb and Amy’s clearness committee to have given us a clue that she isn’t asking us to read some generic pamphlet about clearness committees for marriage, but rather Marriage - A Spiritual Leading for Lesbian, Gay and Straight Couples?

Indeed, I am led to further inquire regarding the title of this pamphlet… what kind of a benighted bow to correctness was required to include “Straight Couples” in this title? Well, you can’t judge a book by it’s title, I guess, so i’ll have to read it and see if my judgmentalism is supported. But, simply to summarize…

• The convenor of this committee requested that I read the Pendle Hill pamphlet on marriage. There were dozens of appropriate ways that she could have led me toward the pamphlet in question. If “lesbian,” “gay,” “queer,” or “homosexual” were words too freighted for her to utter, perhaps she could have delicately pointed toward the pamphlet that addresses “same gender” marriage.

• My reaction may be over the top, but I started this morning as a seeker regarding the marriage clearness process. Researching that process, I’ve found precious little on-line to support the work of a committee. The pamphlet I’ve been pointed toward will be in the Meetinghouse Library, I think. I wish it was online. The assumption that I would know that there is a pamphlet reflecting on the pair bonding through marriage of same gendered couples and that specifically this would be the pamphlet I should be looking for is a matter of concern to me.

The Quaker clearness process is an opportunity to shine light on a matter of concern. A couple’s commitment to marry is a huge concern for the couple, of course. Preparing them and the meeting for that marriage, putting the marriage under our care, is I think what the clearness committee is about. Sitting together in silent worship, meditating, then inquiring, asking questions of each other and answering, sharing the warmth of community, finding a balance between the informal friendship we share and the sober responsibility sharing promises and intentions has got to be what this is about. What are some of the questions other clearness committees have found rewarding? How have committees introduced the couple to the community and assured a continuing nurturance that makes meaningful the phrase “married under the care of the meeting?” Will I find answers to these questions and others in the pamphlet?

I’m off to the Meetinghouse Library to see if i can find it.

[Update - I did find the pamphlet, and I read and I reflect further in this post.]

Too long since I’ve updated the blog with a cute story centered on the pup. She’s over two years old now, born 3/17/2004. She has matured, and she is too bright for her plodding owners. We don’t always have words for what she wants us to want her to do. So she teaches us.

Take for example the command, “Roll on rug.” One evening Molly was indeed rolling on the rug and I asked her about it. Pretty straightforward… “Are you rolling on the rug?” I asked.

She leaped into my lap and began to lick my face and ears. After a minor tussle she was back on the floor and I was swabbing off dog spit with a paper towel. Unable to leave well enough alone, I asked her if she liked rolling on the rug. Bam! She was back in my lap licking my face and showing no mercy. When she was back on the floor watching me wisely from the (rug), I called Beth in to check it out. “Sit on the couch,” I suggested. She did. Then in a whisper I said, “Now ask Molly if she enjoys rolling on the rug.” She raised her eyebrows. “Really,” I said. And so she uttered the key phrase with the predictable result, and now Molly has us trained. Whenever Molly wants to play licky-face, we have to ask her if she’d like to roll on the rug.

Complex communication scenario, ain’t it?

A nanowarhol (or nw) = 15 minutes x 10^-9 x (fame) = .000000015 minutes of fame = 9.0 x 10^-7 seconds of fame = 0.0000009 seconds of fame

The first usage of nanowarhol occurred in this post on the Krugle blog in reference to the brief ascendancy of the Krugle website’s popularity in Technorati following the go-live announcement on June 15.

Pointing today, Bloomsday, to the New Yorker article by D.T. Max on Stephen Joyce (pointage ironically associated with an article by Finnegan, perhaps a yachtsman, perhaps a water skier, but in any event leaving a wake as he reports on organized crime and the New York waterfront).

Lessig’s suit (on behalf of Schloss) attempting to deprive the Joyce heirs of their privacy and their birthright can be found here.

Or maybe I have that wrong.

“He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t shoot his own computer in his own home…” I guess I see his point.

As part of the Defense Authorization Bill for FY 1994, the U.S. Congress has asked the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council (NRC) to undertake a study of national policy with respect to the use and regulation of cryptography. The report of the study committee is due two years after all necessary security clearances have been processed, probably sometime summer 1996, and is subject to NRC review procedures. The legislation states that 120 days after the day on which the report is submitted to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary shall submit the report to the Committees on Armed Services, Intelligence, Commerce, and the Judiciary of the Senate and House of Representatives in unclassified form, with classified annexes as necessary.

PASSAIC TWP. — A Gillette man was arrested at his home last Thursday
> >night after he fired eight bullets at his home computer, according to
> >police. The man, Michael A. Case, 35, of 64 Summit Ave., was arrested
> >shortly after 11 p.m., at his house, when police said they received a
> >report that shots were fired. They arrived at the home to find a .44
> >Magnum automatic handgun and a shot-up IBM personal computer with a
> >Princeton Graphics System monitor. The monitor screen was blown out by
> >the blasts and its inner workings were visible, Lt. Donald Van Tassel
> >said on Monday. The computer, which had bullet holes in its hardware,
> >was hit four times while four more bullet holes were found in various
> >areas next to the computer, Van Tassel said. “The only thing he (Case)
> >said was that he was mad at his computer so he shot it,” Van Tassel
> >said. The handgun, which the lieutenant identified as an Israeli Arms
> >Desert Eagle .44, has “a lot of firepower,” he said. “It’s a big gun.”

i don’t want to cut those terrorists any slack. They’re murderers and we ought to bring them to justice, every one of them. Swift justice. But here’s the thing. There’s this word, “Islamofascism,” and every time I hear it I wonder if there isn’t some kind of Godwin’s law being broken.

Islamofascism, fairly rolls off the tongue, and we know fascism is the worst thing ever so it makes good sense to tie Islam to it so we can think that Islam is, well - you know….

Here’s some of what the Wikipedia says about the term, and it pretty much speaks my mind…

Islamofascism is a neologism and political epithet used to compare the ideological or operational characteristics of certain modern Islamist movements with European fascist movements of the early 20th century, neofascist movements, or totalitarianism. Organizations that have been labeled Islamofascist include Al-Qaeda, the current Iranian government,^[1] the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah. None label themselves fascist, however, and critics of the term argue that associating the religion of Islam with fascism is both offensive and historically inaccurate…. [emphasis mine]

The more widely used term for politicized strains of Islam that seek to place governments in Muslim countries under the guidance of Sharia law is Islamist.

Islamists do not advocate corporatism, an important component of “classic” fascist governments in Italy and Germany….

Whenever I read or hear the term Islamofascism I think someone is trying to influence me big time. It’s a large, lazy word that reeks of guilt by association. It polarizes people in order to justify continuing the Bush crusade. Let’s only use it when it’s meaningful (like never, since the corporatist state, oddly enough, is far more emergent in the crusaders’ countries than the Islamists’ and the whole thing reeks of Orwellian double-speak).

Maybe I’m dried up.  I have a bunch of posts bubbling, but I don’t have time to do any of them justice.  And just when I’m thinking I’m creative or something, I’m humbled by a brainwave like this at Jeneane’s and I simply have to suggest that somebody get on over to the Sessum house with a bag of money and maybe you can get in on the ground floor.

Writing credits for the Dick Van Dyke Show:

Carl Reiner
Bill Persky & Sam Denoff
Bill Idelson
Rick Mittleman
David Adler
Walter Kempley
Jack Raymond
Norm Liebmann, Ed Haas
Arnold and Lois Peyser
Leo Solomon, Ben Gershman
John Whedon
Sheldon Keller, Howard Merrill
Ray Allen Saffian, Harvey Bullock
Charles Aidman, Roy Roberts
Lee Erwin
Martin Ragaway
Ray Brenner, Jack Guss
Ronald Alexander
Garry Marshall, Jerry Belson
Ernest Chambers
Nathaniel Curtis
Jay Burton
Joseph C. Cavella
Dale McRaven & Carl Kleinschmitt
Fred Freeman, Lawrence J. Cohen
Art Baer, Ben Joelson
Joe Bonaduce
Ronald Axe
Jack Winter

Associated Press/US Psy Ops laff-a-minnit transcriptionist team for the ongoing bullshit in Southwest Asia…

Anonymous.

Thanks to Bruce at The River for the grins. (You gotta laugh, does no good to cry).

If you, like me, clicked thru from Doc Searls to Markoff’s article on ServerLand, Google’s theme park on the Columbia River, and if you found it interesting, then you will want to read McD’s cogent if speculative ramble around the world of distributed iron this morning.

Disintermediate.

From Flaubert’s unfinished final novel to Charles Olson, the avant garde inspiration of so many beat poets, there is ever a lesson at le blog de Mme. Levy. One has only to Google to become aware. Following up the Googly citations with several decades of awareness and study, one may hope eventually to become informed.

And don’t forget Wikipedia! It is only through assiduous study of these fine source works that I am able to discover those minor factics that bring an immediacy to the subject matter. For example, were you aware that Charles Olson and Frank Paynter share the same birthday?

fantastic, embarrassing, and gave rise to morbid thoughts. something for everybody. free beer and shirt basically. gossip laden. ugly. funfilled.