Year: 2004

Categories
Connecting

My apolitical self

Kevin Hayden had some nice things to say about yours truly and other webloggers. I was especially thankful for his kind compliments on my photography.

I was taken back, though, when he introduced me as a member of blogs that are, “Good reads, even if apolitical”; especially considering that several of my posts in the last several years have been related in one way or another to the political scene.

I think some of the confusion arises from the fact that I’ve been labeled a ‘technology weblogger’–complimentary by some, less so by others (whatever suits the individual). Perhaps because technology and politics are two of the largest categories of webloggers, I’ll be seen as greedy wanting to be part of both.

Some of the the confusion could arise from the fact that I don’t focus solely on politics. But that’s not surprising because most of my attention outside of the weblog isn’t on politics, either. I am neither a senator nor a candidate for office, where politics is my life. Though the upcoming election is very important to me, as it is others, I also know that very little of what I can say here, one way or another will have much impact on what others d; or how they vote. Frankly, if I do write on politics, it’s usually because someone’s introduced some interesting new twist worth exploring.

I also don’t read that many ‘pure political’ weblogs outside of about half a dozen that manage to introduce some new twist on tired subjects (disagreeably or agreeably, matters not). Or they introduce charming dialog such as this (which I guess goes to show that the best of the ‘pure political’ weblogs aren’t purely political — there’s a clue here in this ).

I wonder how many posts I have to write on politics a week to be seen as a ‘political’ weblogger but without losing my ‘technology’ weblogger status? Since I also consider myself a feminist: how many posts do I have to write on this subject a week to be considered a ‘feminist’ blogger? As many as Ampersand?

After trying to be a technology weblogger who is also a political weblogger who is also a feminist, will I still have time for a photo, and maybe a poem or personal reflection now and again? A note about a hike, or a road trip? An aside about my cat? The task seems daunting; perhaps I’m just being needy, wanting to be seen as more than ‘just a…’

I’m not writing this to pick on Kevin. Well, yes I am, but I have no doubts that Kevin will accept this writing with humor and style. And, as I said earlier, I appreciate the lovely things he wrote about me and my work. Here’s a flower in thanks.

Categories
Photography

Several new Tin Foil entries

Today was cool and cloudy, which makes excellent photography weather. I spent the afternoon at the Shaw Conservation area, and the fruits of the effort have been posted at Tin Foil Project.

Samples of what to find include this flower pod, with what looks like miniscule spider web woven around it’s spikes.

flower pod with gossamer fine spider web, woven among it's spikes

Waste not, Want not — the gardener’s creed:

old shoes used as planters

Categories
Writing

Truth and authority

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Joi Ito points to an article by a reporter talking about the untrustworthy nature of Wikipedia. It would seem that a school librarian wrote to this reporter saying, that Wikipedia is …not an authoritative source. The librarian, Susan Stagnitta then continues:

“Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the authority of the site.”

Phil Ringnalda also wrote on this (a post that did not show up in Bloglines–is it real, then?), and I gather that Morbus Iff has been mixing it up with the reporter, a gentleman by the name of Al Fasoldt.

(I liked Morbus’ question at the end: “Tell me dear readers, is Morbus Iff anonymous?” We could extend this already complex topic to include the concept of authenticity, as well as authority and truth, but my head would implode messily from the effort.)

What makes this even more interesting is that it would seem Fasoldt wrote the article warning of the dangers of Wikipedia under his name, Fasoldt, but wrote in support of the wiki, previously, under a pseudonym, Dr. Gizmo:

In a column published a few weeks ago by my companion Dr. Gizmo, readers were urged to go to the Wikipedia Web site at www.wikipedia. org/wiki/Main Page , an online encyclopedia, for more information on computer history. The doctor and I had figured Wikipedia was a good independent source.

Leaving aside the ramifications of refuting one’s own story, and doing so in the third person, the topic of trust, truth, and authority is a compelling one.

For instance, I do find the Wikipedia to be a good resource. Do I trust the information written there? Let’s say that I trust it to be ‘a’ good source of information, but not the only one. It makes a good start when one is investigating a topic because the material at the wiki usually contains new perspectives, new avenues to explore on a specific topic. So yes, I do trust it to be a good resource…just not the only one.

A case in point of what the wiki can provide can be found in the recent discussions on the Japanese Internment camps. The Wikipedia entry on this topic provides facts that can be verified, such as the name of the camps, bills passed, and major participants in the internment process; or photos taken during this time, such those from this collection of photos of Manzanar by Ansel Adams.

(Though I personally found Adams formal style and obsession with creating ‘beautiful works’ resulted in photos that border on characterization at times.)

The site also reflects opinions, including those categorized as ‘dissenting’, mixed in with the facts. It is the opinion that usually reflects the changes the most, and I imagine it is this that caused much of the consternation with the librarian. But it is this that makes the Wikipedia just such a valuable resource.

The material in the articles can be fascinating, but no more so than that found behind the scenes. You only have to look at thediscussion or view the change log associated with the article to not only see how the topic has evolved, but the justifications for evolving the topic given by those who have made edits. You can learn as much for the reasons changes were made as you can by the changes themselves.

As for the more traditional works on the Japanese Internment, people have discarded the more researched and scholarly writings as the work of fusty out of touch historians with only a partial understanding of what was really happening. Even when a the work was considered ‘authoritative’, and annotated with thousands of pages of documents and the testimony of many who participated in the camps, the work is rejected.

The reason, according to those with more modern views, is though the authors could be considered ‘authorities’ on the topic, they don’t have the ‘truth’ because the truth, in this instance, is held by those who have new, and fresh insight into the existing material–they have reached an epiphany the others, weighed down by the mass of research material and outdated ideas, can’t hope to achieve.

According to these blessed with such insight, they have truth without authority, while the historians have authority, but can’t possibly understand the truth. Who you trust then, depends less on authority or even truth than it does on who you want to believe–literally whose interpretation rings your bell the most.

So much for authority and truth.

That poor librarian’s students would have a difficult time with this topic, as they discover that finding a source that can be trusted isn’t a simple matter of finding an authority who has the truth’; but they couldn’tcould do worse than to start at the Wikipedia, which at least promises to be interesting, if neither truthful nor authoritative.

Categories
Burningbird

About this entry

I added an entry to the top of the sidebar for my individual entry pages that lists information about the post, including: author, date and time of post creation, categories, a link to syndicate the comments for that post, post comment status, and other information.

I didn’t like the PREV_POST and NEXT_POST line at the top of the page. No reason why, just personal preference. But once I moved the entry navigation over to the sidebar, I started thinking of other bits of information that would go nicely with the individual post navigation links.

To populate this information, I’m using several WordPress functions that normally only work in what is known at The Loop — the opening and closing code to process the post(s) for a specific query. However, you don’t have to use these functions within The Loop as the data is global to the page — the last data set should persist throughout the rest of the page. Once you’ve processed the post in a page, the data should be available from that point.

Since I process my posts before my sidebar contents in my layout, to make the page more accessible to those using speech browsers, the data last set is still available to my sidebar. It’s just a matter of adding the function calls. Now, I can print out any type of information about the post in the side without having to re-create The Loop.

Of course, the results won’t be effective in pages that process several posts, but works nicely with individual pages.

Categories
Burningbird

All green

I would be adding more photos to Tin Foil Project, but the weather has been abysmal. Either extremely hot and humid, or thunderstorms, and now we’re looking at flash floods combined with thunderstorms and a tropical storm across the entire eastern portion of the country. Rather furious weekend, weather wise.

I made a version of the Tin Foil Project stylesheet for this weblog, as part of the switcher. I like the green background, and the faint image to the side. However, I have modified the overall look from Tin Foil Project, adding in a bit more color and other odds and ends. And I’ve disconnected the items much more than any of the other styles.

I know I do owe Danny Ayers an apology for doing a ‘green’ weblog when I said I wouldn’t. But at least it wasn’t the green that Danny dislikes. That one is very close to one of the colors published as part of the color forecasting done yearly. It’s called soho green, described as … A fusion of bronze and gold creates this 21st century neutral, elemental and enduring.

My color of green was from using a wonderful little shareware tool Color Cop to sample the colors in this photo. The colors from all my sites are found using this digital color eyedropper.

I used to worry about ‘web safe’ colors until a wise man told me that most monitors can handle millions of colors, and why limit myself to a couple of hundred? Now I test my colors on my Dell laptop, my TiBook, and sometimes the computer at the library. If it looks okay, then I don’t worry about other monitors. I figure if a color comes out glaringly wrong in someone else’s monitor, they’ll just assume I have taste as abysmal as the weather. Most importantly, it doesn’t stop their ability to read the text.