Frogs and Ravens

School's Starting, Isn't It?

Even if I hadn't been informed of this fact by D. and the various frenetic postings on said event, I'd be able to tell it from the commenting frequency. Well, it's either that or I've suddenly become boring. *grin*

ESP Trick

See if you can figure out the trick.

Go check out the link BEFORE reading the comments here, if you don't want to be spoiled.

Blogging Cred

This started out as a rant on the drive home from work yesterday, but it has mellowed in the aftermath of food and sleep. I think I have begun to nail down just what it is that gets me so angry and stirred up by pompous "academic" posters opining about what blogging is or should be. (I put the "academic" in quotes because I don't think that this is really a problem deriving from contact with academia per se, nor do I think that the majority of bona fide academics indulge in this pedantry. Rather, I am thinking that there is a certain set of rhetorical modes that can only be described with that label.)

And it is this: they are talking out of their hats and refuse to admit it. I have no problems with people forming and expressing opinions about things that are outside their areas of expertise -- hell, I do it all the time myself. I do have problems with people who assume that because they have credentials in one area that they are automatically authorities in all areas. I have even more problems with the people who, having done that, refuse to admit their ignorance when challenged, or, worse, continue to inflict their "superior" views on others. When those others in fact have more knowledge and understanding of the topic in question, well... that's just bad scholarship, and rude to boot.

See, the thing is, as far as blogging goes, I am not a newbie. In fact, in terms of the social world of blogging, I am, if not an expert, an experienced old hand. There is a broad range of blogging discourse with which I am familiar, from the rambunctious, rude and often potty-mouthed jousting of the the political blog comments threads to the shoulder-patting solicitude of personal blogs dealing with issues like motherhood and infertility. I read blogs that operate in a formal scholarly vein, blogs that opt for chatty narrative, snarky blogs, crafts-based blogs, multi-author thematic blogs, LiveJournals, blogs that are all pictures and blogs that are nothing but bullet-line news updates. I interact with bloggers in many walks of life, from sex toy store owners and "liberry" employees to UU ministers and catty political pundits. I know my way around the commenting systems of MT and Typepad and Blogger and Blog-city and many more, and know what tinyurl is all about and how not to "break Haloscan." I have worked with three separate commenting systems myself, designed template code and transferred my files successfully from Blogger to Typepad through two different computer platforms and three different browsers. I blog regularly myself, have an ever-growing presence on Technorati and Truth Laid Bear's ecosystem and I can make sitemeter sing with citations.

In short, I know my shit.

So when some pompous newbie, full of his or her expertise in some other venue, goes stomping about blogland assuming that they don't need to learn anything about this new world, or even has the balls to lecture other people about what that world looks like or how it should operate, I get mad. Yeah, as the old hand I figure part of my job is to help newbies through the transition process -- a hold-over from my teaching days, perhaps, or gratitude for those who helped me when I first started down this path. But these fuckwits! They aggravate me so much that it is hard to be civil to them, and to remember that even if they remain clueless gits to the end of their days, there are others who can and will learn to be decent, ethical bloggers and commenters, who are also reading my posts and comments. But sometimes, it's just too much, and hello, mama bear!

Today I am saying that I am proud to be a mama bear, and fuck those who Just Don't Get It and probably never will. Rowr!

A Public Service

Since I've seen this being an issue here and there in the blogosphere...

You know how Blogger or other sites sometimes want you to register? And how there are times when you'd rather not do that (like if you share a computer with someone else) but would still like to avoid posting anonymously? And you'd like to include a link back to your own blog, to boot?

Here's what you do:

Type in the following code at the beginning or ending of your post, replacing the square brackets with the pointy ones.

[a href="url"]name[/a]

Thus,

[a href="http://palimpsest.typepad.com"]Rana[/a] becomes

Rana

Ta-dah! A link to your blog attached to your signature.

(Does anyone know how to make a link to your email too?)

Magic Quiz

Your magical style is Druidic.

What type of magic should you practice? Take the Magical Style Quiz by Paradox

c/o ADPR.

Duct Tape

That's what I need. A big piece to tape my hands shut and render my fingers unable to type. Faculty Wife, I apologize again for fucking up your comments. I should have just let things ride, but no... I had to go into mama bear mode. *sigh* Why am I so touchy about this topic?

Environmental Media

This excerpt from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book about the failure of the media to effectively engage with environmental issues raises some important questions and criticisms. Yeah, there's that day pass from Salon to get through, but it's quick and the article's worth the minimal hassle. It's better than having to get a password, ain't it?

Nice Post

I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning. Rant on, Tim!

Waterwise

Recently I was asked to comment on the matter of the direction water drains in different hemispheres. Having been to Australia, you'd think I'd have an answer to the age-old question about whether it does, indeed, spiral differently. It's a reasonable assumption, especially since I know that I did in fact check while I was there. Unfortunately, I can't remember the answer.

This is in part due to faulty memory, but more due to there having been something of greater fascination to fixate on: the toilet itself. You wouldn't think, right off the bat, that there'd be much to notice. It's not like going to rural areas in a second world country and encountering interesting things like servicios in which you are kept company by large insects and the amphibians that eat them. Nor is it like going to a country known for its innovative and high-tech bathroom technology like Japan. If you're an American, you go to Australia not thinking anything about the toilet possibilities except the direction the water swirls down the bowl.

So I was surprised when I encountered my first Aussie toilet and discovered that it had two flush knobs to choose from. True, the surprise was small -- any traveller who passes through airports in the Western U.S. soon becomes accustomed to odd flushing mechanisms, from foot pedals to wall buttons to infrared beams to timed flushes -- but the experience stuck with me. You see, the two buttons -- one usually indicated with a half circle and the other with a whole one -- offered the user a choice of flush volume. Press the half-circle button or knob, and a small amount of water flowed into the bowl. Press the whole-circle one and a great gush of liquid rocketed around and down. Fascinating.

And practical. Australia is not a country with tons of water to spare, and it knows this. It's hard to ignore the reality of an arid existence when massive fires rage out from the interior on a regular basis, and all the dominant vegetation are pyrophilic. It's a country with a great desert in its continental heart, so massively dry and inhospitable to casual human visits that airplanes typically route their paths around the interior along coastal periphery rather than directly across (as from Perth to Brisbane), so as to avoid disaster should a plane have to make an unexpected landing in the back of beyond. It's a place where its signature natural feature -- Ayers Rock or Uluru, as the Aborigines know it -- experiences maybe four or five rain storms a year -- in a wet year. (Amazing things those storms -- I was lucky enough to be there when there was one. I was soaking wet at the end of my circumnavigation of Uluru, but I felt exhilarated and incredibly privileged to have experienced it.) It's thus not surprising that Australia is the home of innovative "green" architecture copied around the world (seen those airfoil-like canvas "wings" offering shade lately? Australian) and things like those two-button toilets. Australians face the fact of their nation's aridity every time they use the loo and have to decide, half-circle or whole?

Contrast this with the attitudes of most Americans in the arid Southwest. Lawns and pools abound, water gushes exuberantly from fountains in dust-dry Las Vegas, tender lettuce soaks up moisture in the hot desert sun, and Californians up and down the coast whine about toilet-to-tap reclamantion programs while fantasizing about salination plants and glaciers from Antarctica as a form of aquatic salvation. Southern California is no less a desert than Australia; there's a reason why the same gum trees under which an old hobo went "waltzing Matilda" thrive alongside the fire-loving chapparrall in the hills east of Los Angeles and San Diego. But unlike Australians, the majority of Americans don't feel dry in their collective guts. Perhaps this is the legacy of a settlement pattern that ran predominantly east to west, humid to arid, green and lush to olive and dust. Certainly the Spanish colonists who formed the Californio community harbored no illusions about the character of the environment they were settling; familiar with the dry olive-orchard hills of their native Spain, they were the source of many of our common labels for western land forms: arroyo, mesa, llano, canyon... They knew a dry land when they saw it. The westward pioneers did not. They had no names for the dry world they beheld, and dreamt up hallucinatory oases of green grasses and lush orchards when they looked to the future. Their children built the Hoover Dam, and Vegas, and continue to live the life of Riley on nature's dime. As our precious water spirals down the drains, cool and unnoticed, perhaps we should reflect on the lesson offered by those Australian toilets:

Half-circle, or whole? How much do you need, really? It's something to think about every day. Every single day.

Note: I can cite great lists of books and articles on these topics if anyone's really interested. Just ask, and I'll email you a bibliography.

Lit Quiz

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a
mystery novel dealing with theology, especially
with catholic vs liberal issues. You search
wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that
learning is essential in life.


Which literature classic are you?
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