Friday Five ...

[tamaranth]

1. Bint magazine. How have I missed this? How have I managed? (Am 75.5% bint. And much amused -- though not at werk -- by the True Confessions.) EDIT: link fixed

2. Internet is social glue.. In other news, Pope is Catholic: but there are certainly people (my sister, for one) who don't believe that online society can be anything more than a pale shadow* of Real Life. It's encouraging to see that more and more people regard it as a supplement to real-life interaction. I don't think I would have been so ready to move out of London, away from my social circle(s), if I hadn't known that I could 'stay in touch' via LJ and so on.

3. I've been thinking about paperweights. An anachronism in modern, draught-proof housing? (Let's assume it's winter and you don't have the windows open.) Not at all. Their primary function -- on my desk, at least -- is no longer to hold paper down: it's to mark top-of-stack.

4. Under half those questioned in a recent survey believed in evolution. USA? No, UK. *emigrates*

5. Good old Google, wishing Wolfgang a happy 250th birthday.

* what a peculiar turn of phrase, now I come to think of it. Shadows are not usually noted for their pallor.

Comments

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

An anachronism in modern, draught-proof housing?

Not if the draught-proof house includes cats.

About the whole evolution thing - it was either 23% or 17% that said Intelligent Design rather than out and out creationism and 48% said evolution, is that right? I'd be interested to know what description of Intelligent Design was offered to the pollees (or what they assumed). I wonder how many people chose this option because they don't subscribe to a God-free universe (I'm one of these), not because they don't agree with the mechanism of natural selection. I wouldn't choose Intelligent Design over evolution if given those three choices without any further description or information, but I don't think it can be totally discounted. Also, how many people consider the "intelligent design" of humans in producing new species? GM crops include new species that were tended under laboratory conditions - no nature involved (of course, I'm sure there've been a few oops-I-left-the-agar-out-again cases that weren't exactly intelligent or designed). Hasn't Tamiflu encouraged a new strain of H1N1OMFGBBQ or whatever the right name for bird flu is these days?

Lies, damned lies and statitistics. :)

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

An anachronism in modern, draught-proof housing?

Not if the draught-proof house includes cats.

That's exactly what I was ging to say! Especially as cats gravitate towards paper, the more important to you, the more interesting to them.

Unfortunately, paperweights don't stop cats throwing up on paper, important or otherwise...

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

cats gravitate towards paper, the more important to you, the more interesting to them

Particularly if the paper is nice and warm from the printer. Callie is currently sitting on the invoice for my veg box. She has the entire rest of the couch to sit on, but no, only the cold piece of paper in the middle of the couch will do.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Mine are only interested if I am actively reading (or, far more exciting, writing on) the piece of paper. Stacks of paper bore them.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Not even as something to rub their heads on until the papers all go go "vwoooomfff" across the desk?

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

more and more people regard it as a supplement to real-life interaction

This much I accept, but I'd quite like the real-life interaction it's supposed to be supplementing In which case, online society is not a substitute. Indeed, I find it often points up the general wretchedness of daily life by bringing in happy tales of what a wild time everyone else is having. A whole new definition of the worth of life. If it's not worth recording on a blog, etc. it's clearly not much of a life.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

>The unblogged life is not worth living.
>--
>socrates@aol.com (Athens Online)

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

happy tales of what a wild time everyone else is having

... or unhappy tales of what a rotten time everyone else is having ...

Re a life worth blogging, I was arguing this very point recently. A lot of what I write primarily is for me: a lot of it (overlapping but not identical set) isn't really about me, but about books, or cool links, or whatever. The life that matters is not what I do.

Online society is no substitute, but I think my experience is more positive than yours. There have been some very bleak moments over the past year, and online friends have bolstered me against many of 'em.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Re a life worth blogging, I was arguing this very point recently. A lot of what I write primarily is for me: a lot of it (overlapping but not identical set) isn't really about me, but about books, or cool links, or whatever. The life that matters is not what I do.


I've never been entirely clear in my own mind what my LJ is about; I'm not sure whether I am writing for me or whether it is, not a performance precisely, but an attempt to get in touch, keep in touch with the world, a world, something, and therefore something about me.

But how much about me? Clearly not that much as at times my feelings and thoughts come as a bolt from the blue ... see this week, for example. I am aware I seem to write in a WYSIWYG style, but equally, I know, other people gradually find out, it's not all I am by any means. But I wonder what people make of my life as I report it (and was equally struck by the fact that someone commented that surely, if anything had been wrong, PK would have said, failing to notice that PK rarely if ever writes anything even vaguely personal, and certainly nothing about his home life).

Online society is no substitute, but I think my experience is more positive than yours.

I think so too. I often feel my online presence is useful for people who know me in real life to keep a tab on the fact that I still exist, as fans so often like to do, but many fewer people see it as a means of actively keeping in touch with me. There is no online life behind the posts, no discussions taken to email or anything like that ... for example, in the past five days, I've had about eight personal emails; the rest was work arrangements, and so on. I rarely have much sense that I'm participating in something; when I feel very low, I feel my online writing is akin to writing letters and throwing them out the skylight.

And of course, I am sure that people assume because PK is here, he takes care of everything from providing company to mopping up when I'm upset. Which is true to an extent, but mostly, he isn't actually here. We see each other for a brief period each day, like most couples, and there's a lot to be done in that time.

And then I stop and start all over again, trying to figure it out. Am definitely lacking a sense of community at present but will doubtless rise above it, as always, so pardon the moaning.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't feel that I get very much feedback. Oh, lots of comments on trivial posts, or posts asking questions: but no one reads my book and film reviews, and no one comments on the simple feel-good posts (which, as you at least will probably understand, are there in part as notes-to-self for when I'm not feeling good).

I thought long and hard about bothering with book reviews this year, but concluded that at some point I might want to be able to point to the fact I've done them -- heaven knows why, a kind of portfolio or something -- and that I do actually enjoy that level of analysis of what I read. Moving them out of LiveJournal rather emphasises that separation from my everyday rambling, and probably makes them less accessible to others.

And of course the moaning -- or general lowness, quite different -- is pardoned: if you can't write about depression and bad times in your own journal, where can you?

I hope things are getting a little better. Don't push yourself harder than you must: time enough for that when the year's turned a little more springy.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

if you can't write about depression and bad times in your own journal, where can you?

Well, I do wonder sometimes ...

I hope things are getting a little better.

Slight improvement but it vacillates wildly from hour to hour at times.

I thought long and hard about bothering with book reviews this year, but concluded that at some point I might want to be able to point to the fact I've done them -- heaven knows why, a kind of portfolio or something -- and that I do actually enjoy that level of analysis of what I read. Moving them out of LiveJournal rather emphasises that separation from my everyday rambling, and probably makes them less accessible to others.

I think about this sort of thing myself, without reaching a conclusion. I have set up Paper Knife to take the longer essays because I do feel LJ isn't really geared up to handle long material comfortably, but the stray comments I've received over the years about writing stuff that's too scary and intimidating for a journal nowadays receive very short shrift. My journal, my life, my writing, and if that means Derrida this week, so be it.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

pale shadow* what a peculiar turn of phrase, now I come to think of it. Shadows are not usually noted for their pallor.

I think it's one of those phrases that got mangled in spelling (like "for all intensive purposes") or meaning (like "begging the question"). I expect the original phrase referred to a ghost, or shade, of some sort, a pale phantom of the real thing.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

penumbra?

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking more a supernatural phenomenon than an optical one.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I'm not inclined to be too impressed with the ones who "believe" in evolution either. It's not really an appropriate subject for faith. But even that may not have been their fault, as it's likely to have been a wretchedly-worded question anyway. I'm one of those people who object to multiple-choice surveys where there isn't a single answer offered that I consider acceptable.

And I'm still annoyed at last night's piss-poor Horizon treatment of the subject, where they got on my bad side from the outset by having Bill Paterson say that Darwin was the first scientist to hypothesise that life had evolved. He was not, that had been a respectable scientific opinion for years by the time Darwin came along. The missing piece that Darwin (and the forgotten-by-crap-documentary-producers Wallace) supplied was a convincing mechanism for evolution, namely natural selection.

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

How comforting to know that cats are the same the world over.

The Bint link doesn't work for me. Bah.

[devilgate.livejournal.com]

Just from mousing over it, it looks like it's missing one of thre "w"s at the start of the URL.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Looks like tamaranth has fixed it. And now I see that bint is the female equivalent of a lad mag. Ladette mag?