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)

Categories
RDF

Zoe says read this or Scoble gets it

Zoë, via her goduncle Danny Ayers, sent me an email telling me I should write about an excellent Semantic Web Tutorial by Ivan Herman.

I told her, well I told Danny to tell her, that I wrote the Bad Words (”Semantic Web”) once today, and that I may end up banned from *Scoble’s RSS feed aggregator for this. She, through Danny, said no problem–including a cat picture would make it all okay.

So here I am, pointing you to probably the most in-depth and comprehensive tutorial on RDF I have seen (not to mention a fun use of Ajaxian-like technology in presenting it).

Here, also, is the cat picture so that Scoble won’t ban me from his RSS feed aggregator.

* “I mean it, I really mean it this time. If you don’t provide full feeds I’m going to stop reading you! I know I’ve said this 73 times before, but this time I’m serious! I’m re-a-a-a-ly serious. Here I go…I’m going to unsubscribe you…there you go…you’re gone…no more billions or readers because I stopped reading you! No one knows who you are, now. Who are you? Nobody, because I’m not reading you!”