Category: Weblogging

What an absolutely beautiful fish.

From Galactic Interactions: Gravity as the curvature of spacetime— it’s such a simple, elegant, beautiful concept that it almost pains me to think that efforts to unify gravity with quantum mechanics may result in our learning that General Relativity is just the effective limit of a deeper theory (much as Newton’s gravity is an effective limit of GR).

(I hope to actually finish my copy of Kip Thorne’s “Gravitation” before I die. I may have to live a long time.)

The Head Lemur’s Ning–the Latest Sharecropping Network, Part 1 and Part 2. Zing!

Via 3Quarks Daily, Marvin Minsky writes on Love. As always, a unique perspective from one of the premier AI scientists.

RDF and microformats rumble: post here, then comment, with follow up and referee. Why does all technology have to break along adversarial lines in weblogging? Probably needs more women.

Speaking of…Dori Smith: This is about claims that I “simply don’t exist.” This is about claims Shelley doesn’t exist. This is about claims that people like Molly don’t exist — ’cause nobody, but nobody could know that we exist, talk to any of us for five minutes, and still say that. Being as we three are the shy and retiring type.

Oop! Oop! No more of that. This year’s Diversity Steeple Chase and companion, Wondering where are the broads is over. Stay tuned, next year: same time, different channel.

via onegoodmove, Why I refuse to blog for Edwards: “So, it’s not a problem that I’m an outspoken atheist?” I asked.

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday. Let’s spend more time on congressional resolutions on Iraq that don’t do anything–and more billions in Iraq so kids like Deamonte can die.

It’s spring in California. Speaking of which, we’re expecting our first spring storm tonight or tomorrow, if it doesn’t float north of us.

Bill has loaded his first spring photo.

Come midnight, it will surely sound like spring.

To all my fellow Missourians: Be safe.

I wish I could write a post like Kathy Sierra’s, full of love for my readers, but I’m cold and I’m cranky, really tired of being stuck at home and working on the book, and the most I can summon up is that I respect you, or at least those of you who make yourselves known.

Love implies that we can share our most intimate details of our lives, and frankly, you don’t want to get that intimate with me, and I know I don’t want to get that intimate with you. Sharing life’s little farts with each other isn’t necessarily entertaining, and why on earth would you want to read this site unless you received some enjoyment from the experience?

The same for me: why would I write just for you? No offense, but readers never stop demanding, have the patience of gnats, and flit from Big Thing to Big Thing, worse than a fly flits between piles of shit. I know, I’m a reader, too.

Every once in a while, we connect. I say something that works for you, or you write something in comments that works for me. Then the moment passes. While there are enough of these moments, you’ll find it worth your while to continue reading, and I’ll find it worth my while to continue writing.

Respect, yeah, that’s important. Agreement? Ha! Admiration? Preferably not, because the inevitable end for admiration is disappointed disillusionment. Can’t we skip the appetizer and just go straight for the disillusionment?

Like is good. We can like each other, but unless you’re telling me you’ll fund my long-fantasized trip to Australia, loan me the money to pay my taxes, or that I can come live with you, let’s not get mushy.

Not mushy, that is, unless you are willing to fund that trip to Australia, then hell yes, I love you.

Rogers Cadenhead:

Dave Winer is one of the best bloggers out there. He makes love to us with every post.

Ground control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you….

Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.

David Bowie, Space Oddity

Seth Finkelstein has a Guardian article up on paid blogging and high rent versus low rent bloggers:

There’s a class division, where membership is exclusive and expensive, while payment is common and cheap. But both are monetisation of attention. If we want there to be areas of human interaction which have some protection against commercial pressures, blogs stopped qualifying long ago.

This also follows on a discussion Dave Rogers has been having with Doc Searls this week. The ‘money quote’:

I am opposed to the unchecked expansion of commercial activity at the expense of social and political activities. Markets are not conversations, because conversations are a social activity, not a commercial one. But if you tell people markets are conversations, then it stands to reason that conversations are for sale.

We’re in no danger of losing our heads, what else would marketers have to market to? No, we’re in danger of losing the notion that life means something more than an economic calculation or a commercial transaction.

There’s a person I read off and on. This week the person has mentioned one company in several different posts. I almost wrote in comments, “Are you being paid by this company?”, but didn’t. Doesn’t matter, though, because I realized that I can never approach this person’s writing in the same way again. I doubt I’ll even continue reading their weblog.