Reading things I don't have to read for the holidays. I try to read outside the box.
I ran across this short 2007 blog [Moonbeam McQueen Blog] about the August 2000 UofA murder/suicide of Professor John Locke. Dr. Locke was my mom's world literature professor, who gave her the Tao te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, and other world literature that broadened my horizons (and FYI made me a much better Christian than I could ever be by thinking other religions were evil). Anyway I never met John Locke, but as my dad (a UofA professor in that building) was retelling the story this AM, it reminded me how any of us could be touching the life of someone we never even met, in a profound way. And now I know a smidgen more about Nola Royster, too.
The art of blogging, the art of editorializing, of keeping a journal, of scrolling, and journalism... the lines blur and harmonize. Moonbeam McQueen writes less prolifically, at least via blog, but "less is more".
Bloggers blogging about blogging is of course the most tiresome thing. I can justify some of it as being "transparency". It pierces the veil. The biographies of the "Techs of Color" have been my favorite thing to post about, but we've reached this point where I'm afraid of the lynch mobs. Does this make me a liberal or a conservative?
Thank goodness for intelligent controversy. People who speak loudly against the mobs give us a little more confidence that we are not going to be lynched for asking unpopular questions. But this is an opening for weak players, when there is a vacuum of Politically Correct (PC) leftists and Tea Party (TP) rightists (both PC and TP are "self-congratulatory and self-ascribed" labels). I'm so tired of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, conservatives who feed on "dittos" and applause-button-pushing... just as tired as I am of liberal anti-globalizationists. They sometimes say something interesting, but you have to wade through too much BS and rhetorical tricks (worse than the ads). And in response to them, suffer cutesy liberal "memes".
Straw man vs. Straw man debates.
Enter Camile Paglia. I disagree with Paglia on a certain number of things but I always, always am better off arguing with / listening to a very smart person than winning an argument with an intellectually weak person. Paglia gives the right an intelligent player. And she's gay.
Paglia: "Michelle Obama's going on: 'Everybody must have college.' Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum" and "people end up saddled with huge debts," says Ms. Paglia. What's driving the push toward universal college is "social snobbery on the part of a lot of upper-middle-class families who want the sticker in the window."
Team Truth needs to scout for talent and stop the PC vs. TP (Tea Party) litmus tests. We need to fire the weak players on both sides.
Fire Rush Limbaugh. Fire Jim Puckett. Listen to the people we replace them with, and move forward.
I ran across this short 2007 blog [Moonbeam McQueen Blog] about the August 2000 UofA murder/suicide of Professor John Locke. Dr. Locke was my mom's world literature professor, who gave her the Tao te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, and other world literature that broadened my horizons (and FYI made me a much better Christian than I could ever be by thinking other religions were evil). Anyway I never met John Locke, but as my dad (a UofA professor in that building) was retelling the story this AM, it reminded me how any of us could be touching the life of someone we never even met, in a profound way. And now I know a smidgen more about Nola Royster, too.
The art of blogging, the art of editorializing, of keeping a journal, of scrolling, and journalism... the lines blur and harmonize. Moonbeam McQueen writes less prolifically, at least via blog, but "less is more".
Bloggers blogging about blogging is of course the most tiresome thing. I can justify some of it as being "transparency". It pierces the veil. The biographies of the "Techs of Color" have been my favorite thing to post about, but we've reached this point where I'm afraid of the lynch mobs. Does this make me a liberal or a conservative?
Thank goodness for intelligent controversy. People who speak loudly against the mobs give us a little more confidence that we are not going to be lynched for asking unpopular questions. But this is an opening for weak players, when there is a vacuum of Politically Correct (PC) leftists and Tea Party (TP) rightists (both PC and TP are "self-congratulatory and self-ascribed" labels). I'm so tired of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, conservatives who feed on "dittos" and applause-button-pushing... just as tired as I am of liberal anti-globalizationists. They sometimes say something interesting, but you have to wade through too much BS and rhetorical tricks (worse than the ads). And in response to them, suffer cutesy liberal "memes".
Straw man vs. Straw man debates.
Enter Camile Paglia. I disagree with Paglia on a certain number of things but I always, always am better off arguing with / listening to a very smart person than winning an argument with an intellectually weak person. Paglia gives the right an intelligent player. And she's gay.
Paglia: "Michelle Obama's going on: 'Everybody must have college.' Why? Why? What is the reason why everyone has to go to college? Especially when college is so utterly meaningless right now, it has no core curriculum" and "people end up saddled with huge debts," says Ms. Paglia. What's driving the push toward universal college is "social snobbery on the part of a lot of upper-middle-class families who want the sticker in the window."
Team Truth needs to scout for talent and stop the PC vs. TP (Tea Party) litmus tests. We need to fire the weak players on both sides.
Fire Rush Limbaugh. Fire Jim Puckett. Listen to the people we replace them with, and move forward.
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