Year: 2005

Categories
Places

That’s Missour-ah

It might seem as if Missouri consists of nothing but red state, conservative, fundamentalists with mullet haircuts. However, they don’t call Missouri the “Show Me” state for nothing — there’s a stubborn streak of independence that runs through this piece of the American Pie…and by that, I don’t mean Independence, Missouri.

Instead of cats and cute, and the usual back and forth of politics, I thought I would start pointing out items from the local news organizations on Fridays. Sort of a “Hackers Guide to Missour-ah!”.

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Top of the list, a present for my pinko, liberal, commie, ACLU card holding, tree hugging friends who are trying to steal Christmas: How the liberals stole Christmas (or) A visit from St. Dick.

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Today, my next door neighbor, Archbishop Burke, on orders from the holy Roman Church, excommunicated the entire lay board, and priest of the St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. This church has become a center of faith for the growing Polish community in St. Louis, and there’s an interesting story behind the little quarrel.

The Church hired the priest, Rev. Bozek, who was happy to accept the job. The thing is, though, he didn’t have permission to take the job from the Archbishop. Why didn’t the Archbishop give him permission? Because there’s been a squabble about the money that the church board holds. The Catholic Church wants control of the 9 million dollars currently managed by the church board, but the board doesn’t want to allow control of the money outside of the parish.

The Church removed the priests originally at the parish, and they’ve been without spiritual guidance until Rev. Bozek defied the Archbishop, tossing aside his 30 year career, because he originally came to this country …to help people with no priest.

Yes the Church excommunicated several people because of a long standing dispute over corporate financial structure.

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Then there’s the guy award. What’s the guy award? According to Bill McClellan:

This award is not to be confused with the Man of the Year award, which was established years ago by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and then kept alive after that newspaper’s demise by a bunch of rich, establishment types who had not yet been selected. This is definitely not that award.

Instead, it honors the fact that women are smarter than men. Which is a nice way of saying that guys tend to do stupid things.

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Don’t want St. Louis to have all the fun. From the Kansas City Pitch, Merry Christmas from Dead Malls.

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Just remember, that’s Missour-ah!

Categories
People Web Weblogging

It’s a mountain Mohammed thing

“So I have a blog” the words read, as I scrolled down the entries at Planet RDF. And then I noticed the author: Tim Berners-Lee.

In his first weblog entry, Sir Tim wrote:

…it is nice to have a machine to the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can to limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog.

For all those who claim to be first, there is no doubt who was first, though late to this particularly party. Probably all that Web 2.0 stuff floating around.

I do believe that Sir Tim is also the first weblogger to hold Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire. Mind the language, children. Mind the language. No more of this informal lower-case ’s’, ‘w’ when talking about the Semantic Web now.

Categories
Diversity

SxSW Panel 2

I can’t go into details yet, but there might be changes on the SxSW panel. I’m still waiting to hear from some of the players, and when I do, I’ll post something online.

Not that I think anyone is going to SxSW just because of this panel, or even because I was going to be there.

update

Kathy Sierra won’t be participating on the panel, and I haven’t heard if we hope to bring someone else in, go with the folks we have, or cancel.

Categories
Writing

Clarion call

AKMA wrote on authenticity and referenced me in his work. He wrote:

Or to put it another way (because I admire Shelley, and I want to share out my links), if we were to find out that the Burning Bird’s phoenix-song were very carefully composed, to convey the effect of having been written by someone very much like the Shelley we imagine when we read her heartfelt, sometimes very pointed, clarion-calls — would that be inauthentic? What degree of deliberation and painstaking composition disqualify a recording or literary work from the category of “authenticirty”? A brilliantly gifted writer, after all, may well be able to depict impassioned spontaneity with utterly convincing prose. Is it only authentic if she really felt it?

I am honored that AKMA included me, as I have always admired him tremendously. His writing is like a mirror with which to see oneself and decide if what we see is really what we want to continue seeing.

Is it only authentic if she really felt it. Such depth hidden in simple words. How do we answer? How do I answer?

I do enjoy writing about technology, and yes I am an impassioned warrier for openness among our peers, and equality among our ranks. I’m not afraid to go toe to toe, and have made friends, and lost them, doing so. I am passionate; there is no fakery there–no practiced art of writing in order to deceive. I believe, with all my heart, in the cause for women, gay rights, and the struggle to save what little we can of the environment.

I reject that we are seen, too frequently, as either a commodity to be sold; or a patsy to buy what others are selling.

I like debate, and though I am not fireproof, can usually stand the heat. More so now than in the past, but that’s because I’ve become somewhat tempered these last few years. I like to think I am even and just and though I will blast the tiger to save the kitten, I will swat the kitten when its greedy.

I know, though, that I have also hurt in my single minded pursuit of rightness. I have been thoughtless. I have been too quick to temper. And I have been vain.

Is this writing authentic? Is it, as the dictionary would claim, real and genuine? Yes, because I don’t write what I don’t believe–that depth of feeling that AKMA references.

No, though, because it is not complete.

Categories
Environment Events of note

Unnatural Acts

Reporters checked with the Missouri state park system and found out, yes, the flood yesterday did a massive amount of damage to the Johnson Shut-Ins, most likely part of the Ozark Trail, and surrounding area. The trees and landscape in the following photo are most like gone now.

ironcountyfall1

It also sounds as if the park superintendent and his family who were hurt by the flood will recover, though the children are still in serious condition. All of us are thinking about what would have happened if this had been a peak weekend in the summer when the area gets anywhere from a thousand to two thousand people, on the trails and river, or in the campground.

Several people in the comment thread to the Topic of the Day discussion at St. Louis Today (the online site for the local newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch), mentioned about how this was a ‘miracle’ that no one was hurt. Thank God, they would say, that this wasn’t in the summer when more would have surely been killed; thank God that the family was found while they were still alive.

I wrote last night in the thread that this wasn’t a miracle; do they see God as this capricious being that destroys the dam just so he can swoop the family to safety, after first almost drowning them?

As sad coincidence would have it, I’m currently re-reading, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America by Ted Steinberg. He writes in the introductory chapter:

Once, the idea of invoking God in response to calamity was a strategy for eliciting moral responsibility. In the twentieth century, however, calling out God’s name amounted to an abdication of moral reason. With the religiously inclined less disposed than ever to take acts of God seriously, the opportunity has arisen over the last century for some public officials to employ God-fearing language as a way–thinly veiled though it might be–of denying their own culpability for calamity. In this sense, the act of God concept has become little more than a convenient evasion.

A person who wrote that they were an employee of Ameren, wrote in comments to the Topic of the Day thread:

I WORK HERE AT AMEREN. THIS IS MOST DEFINATELY A MIRACLE. THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. NOT A SINGLE LIFE LOST.

Yes, a miracle.

(Photos from St. Louis Today)