Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Writing

Literature through the ages

This also from *Jonathon: Norwegian Book ClubsTop 100 books of all time

I was pleased and frankly astonished to realize how many of the books on this list I’ve read. I don’t consider myself one of the more literate members of my virtual weblogging neighborhood. I read constantly, but I don’t seem to read the same books as most of my neighbors.

However, it would seem that I do have similar reading habits as the Book Club. I wonder, does this make me more literate? Or them less?

* I almost posted a third link to Mr. Delacour’s weblog today, to the Cuckoo story. However, my supply of Tim Tams is running low and if he wants triple linking, he’ll have to pay up.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

More voices on moral clarity

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Two new voices raised on the issue of Moral Clarity:

Kath writes:

My friend claims that my demanding of my rights violates his right to what he values most – his safety. I claim that living life is a risk. You could get hit by bus while crossing the street. You could slip on rug and break your neck. You could get on the same plane as a terrorist no matter what safety precautions are put in place, short of requiring everyone to travel naked, with no luggage and no in-flight amenities that might be turned into weapons.

I agree with Kath on the issue of not compromising our freedoms in order to claim a spurious sense of safety. As we have seen recently, you can get killed just crossing a bridge. In life there are no guarantees.

And Jonathon writes:

Moral Clarity, now playing at a multiplex near you. There’s the risk of confusing the audience by casting Saudis and Pakistanis as both Arnie’s allies and his enemies. But a top-class writer like Bill Bennett should be able to paper over any holes in the storyline.

Viewpoints based on expediency and morality based on oil. Too sadly true. Hypocrisy, moral clarity, and oil. But before we willy nilly slam governments, when was the last time you topped off your tank?

Categories
Web

Congrats, Sam Ruby

I consider Apache to be an excellent example of what the computer industry can accomplish when it pulls together to create a truly open product. When I heard that Sam Ruby was just elected to the Apache Board of Directors, I had to post a note about the event.

Congratulations, Sam! The Board will be richer for your presence. Of course, you can now kiss all your free time good-bye…

Categories
Weblogging

Welcome to the new baby blogger

In all the fuss about realtime blogging yesterday, I missed a realtime event:

Bill Simoni and his wife had a baby boy – Christopher Michael Simoni!

Big baby, too — 8 pounds.

Take a moment to go over to Bill’s weblog – Binary by Accident – to drop a note of congratulations!

Categories
Writing

Dave Winer’s ‘help’ with book

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Wow. Generosity itself. Dave wants to try and “salvage” O’Reilly’s weblogging book, by putting together his own mailing list rather than let O’Reilly go through the usual editing process.

According to the intro page at the list, Dave writes:

I was hoping this book would start like the WebMonkey survey of blogging software and go deeper into the relative merits of each of the products. I think ultimately it’s going to be difficult to get this book into shape in time, probably would have been a better idea to have just a couple of authors who really understood all the products (Radio, Blogger and Movable Type) and give them more time to really get it right. The products all took years to develop. A quick treatment like this is bound to miss the spot. This book really does miss the point, at least as far as our software is concerned. Perhaps this new mail list can do something heroic and rescue the chapters. Not sure what to recommend to O’Reilly at this time.

I’m sure that Tim O’Reilly, who knows very little about the publication business and books and writing and that sort of thing will be extremely grateful for Dave’s support.

I hesitate, though, at chopping the Blogger chapters down to, “Don’t use it. Use Userland Radio, instead” next to a graphic of a coffee mug.