The Flatland Almanack

The Flatland Chronicles for 31 July 2006

A long time ago, when I was studying philosophy in college, I got into an impassioned argument with a young professor I didn't like very much or take very seriously.  I can't even remember now what the argument was about.  I was interested in---as in "fanatical about"---the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead at that particular time; I don't remember the professor's particular field of study. 

I remember that he became rather flushed; and eventually he lost his temper.  "This is a philosophy course," he said.  "It is the study of ideas.  Why is it so important to you to believe or not believe in a particular system?  I am not trying to convert you to a new religion.  To do this well, you need to develop some detachment.  Do you really believe that what Whitehead said is true?  And how do you know that it is?  That's part of what we're discussing here:  not the truth of the idea, but the processes by which we attempt to assess the extent to which it appears to reflect reality."

That brought me up short because the fact is, I didn't believe that what Whitehead said was true---at least not in the sense in which some people believe, say, in the truth of the Resurrection.  I wanted his view of the universe to be the right one; it was a beautiful thing, his cosmology, and left room for God without requiring him to get personal with his creation.  Which at the time was what I wanted to believe.

One of my classmates argued that that truth was a construct of the human mind; something that doesn't exist in nature---because nature has no need of it.  Later, that's what I came to believe: at least, as much as I ever believe anything.    Studying Chinese philosophy helped rid me of some of the burden of having to believe or disbelieve in the reality of some particular "truth."  It helped me realize the irrelevance of belief and disbelief.  If something exists, it doesn't need my belief to sustain it.  Furthermore, it's possible  to contemplate an idea and even to live by it without concluding that it is true.  The first words of the Tao te Ching are:  The way that can be told is not the true way. 

In my spiritual life, this is how I balance my will to believe against my modern scepticism.  I think that eastern way of stepping back from an idea or construct without feeling the need to step into it, as it were---to live in it----was what allowed me at first to entertain (as in "try this on for size") some of the stranger aspects of Christianity I had previously rejected:  the Resurrection, for example, but not only that.  That same detachment allows me to entertain both the notion that it is true and the notion that it is not with equal complacency and without the least fear of divine retribution.  I could cite authority in the Gospels to support my thesis that this is the only way to come to an understanding of what Christ meant by "the kingdom of heaven" but....I'm not going to.  At least not now.

Right now, I am trying to understand and come to terms with the great anger I felt yesterday and my desire to assign blame.  Stepping back from my own time and my own life, what can I say about the death and carnage in Lebanon?  Can I say that it was Israel's fault?  Can I say that it was the fault of Hezbollah?   Can I say that it was the United States'?  As for all serious questions about the reality, the correct answer to all questions is both yes and no. 

You can always assign fault if you look only at a particular act at the time it occurred---at a given moment, so-and-so launched the rocket that laid waste to the ancient city of Qana---but is that the answer to the question of who is to blame?  What about the moments that preceded that moment, and the whole complicated web of interlinked causes?  How far do you go back in looking for the responsible party and in assigning blame?  A particular moment such as that one has its root causes in acts that were performed generations back.

The law recognizes and distinguishes the concepts of a "cause in fact" and the "proximate cause" when allocating responsibility.  I'm not sure it's possible or right to do that when allocating blame in a quarrel with roots as deep as these. 

Yesterday I had to confront what we don't often have to look at here:  the mad, raddled, and irremediable consequences of the consistent ability of human beings, individually and collectively, to value ideas over other people.  It's a misanthropy so deeply ingrained and so hard-wired in that we don't even notice it; it doesn't even strike us as strange:  ideas matter more than other people.

I suppose it must be the blight humankind was born for:  if you want to get Biblical, that's been the theme since God and Lucifer first fought over whether creation itself was a good idea or a bad one.  Later, Christ died for an idea.

The sad facts of the damage inflicted are all that we can ascertain.  We can count corpses; but we can't tally up the losses.  Those go on and on. 

I, at least, need to refrain from meting out judgment.  The wrong on both sides is grievous.  The question is not who is to blame---even if it can be answered; the answer is useless as anything but a spur to further violence--- but whether the parties can be brought to believe that the ideas that are driving them are not worth the price you pay when you kill someone.

The path away from judgment is empathy---the sort of love I have always believed Christ intended to require in the gospels. 

Before judging, you have to try to stand in the other's shoes. Which of course makes it impossible to judge. 

Furthermore you have to bear in mind at all times the possibility---not easily processed by westerners brought up on "Aristotelian" modes of on/off logic---that in any given situation, it's quite possible for both sides to be wrong and for no one to win. 

Which is the case here, I think

A plague of butterflies in Texas--or, Good God awmighty the apocalypse IS upon us!

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog, on July 27, 2006]

If I had to choose, I'd prefer them to locusts, a rain of frogs, or a river of blood, I guess. 

[quote from NY Times article by Ralph Blumenthal begins]

South Texas is under siege from swarms of airborne migrants: tens of millions of Libytheana bachmanii larvata — snout butterflies to y’all — along with Kricogonia lysides, or yellow sulfurs, that have taken advantage of an unusual drought-and-deluge cycle to breed in spectacular if not record profusion...

Blinded drivers who have to pick the critters off their grilles to avoid dangerous engine overheating are less than enthralled, as are the mottephobes, who fear butterflies and moths. But lepidopterists are thrilled with the spectacle, which they predict may be only the beginning of a population explosion of snouts.

They concede, however, that it could denude considerable swaths of Texas hackberry trees and other choice caterpillar habitats, at least for a while.

“Snouts, I’m at a loss for words,” wrote Joshua S. Rose, a biologist and dragonfly specialist with the World Birding Center at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park near Mission, Tex., in an e-mail message to friends Tuesday.

“They’re beyond any mere collection of individual animals,” Dr. Rose wrote. “Like a flock, herd, swarm or even horde, they have more in common with a geologic or climatic force, the Gulf Stream or an Arctic front. While driving, we can’t dodge butterflies, we can only aim the car at the parts of the road where the density is lowest.”

[quote from NY Times article ends]

They look rather pretty in the photograph accompanying this article, but are described as "variegated brown."  That's a pity; if Texas is to have a plague, it would be nice if it could be an attractive one.

Whenever I hear about butterflies, and especially now, I flash back to the guy in One Hundred Years of Solitude who was accompanied everywhere by little white butterflies, like a character in a cartoon.  They were the outward sign of an inward and invisible grace, I guess.  Sadly, his fate is a harsh one; for reasons I can't any longer recall, he ends up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, being driven crazy by little white butterflies.

And of course I also think of Eugenia from A.S. Byatt's wondrous Morpho Eugenia in Angels and Insects.

Neither association is particularly encouraging if what we're talking about is a plague-like infestation of insects.  Butterflies.  What next?   What other weird phenomena lie in store for us? 

Whatever happens, some of us are sure to blame it on climate change and others on the Apocalypse that the prophets of doom are predicting.   Neither seems all that far-fetched just at the moment.   

Sweet: Other People's Pasttimes: grocery bag sandals?

[first printed in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog, on July 27, 2006.]  Perhaps this is a bit rich, given my new past-time of making cute little buttons with which to adorn my website....

One of the many aspects of the net that I could never have predicted back in the early days of the "personal computer" are the glimpses it provides into the ways that other people use their time differently from me.  It's eye-opening and often humbling.  Before the net, I certainly knew that many people lived very different lives from me and mine, but before the net I didn't have the actual evidence.

I have the greatest respect for people who work with their hands.  Science shows that the coordination of mind and hand is enormously freeing.  It shuts down the talky left brain and opens up the channels to the creative flow.  When friends are in trouble, one piece of advice I usually try to offer is "Make something."  It sounds stupid, but it is extremely soothing. 

During one of the worst periods of my life, a friend sent me some Dover coloring books and a set of coloring pencils.  Dover press produces awesome coloring books:  celtic designs, drawings of famous women, medieaval woodcuts, Tiffany glass, Japanese prints (my personal fave).  It sounds childish, but when you're drowning in stress, coloring is better than lying curled up in a fetal position.  Each picture I colored was a vacation from grim reality.  Furthermore, each picture I colored in indicated that I was a few minutes closer to being past the worst of it----and I had something to show for it (which is way better than having nothing to show for it).  I truly think we need much more emphasis in our schools on the visual arts and on various crafts.

But though I respect and envy artists and artisans, I really have very little insight into how they get their inspiration. How wonderful it must be to be able to say, "Hmmm, look at that.  I think I'll make something with that." 

But I suppose there is an argument that such innovations can be taken too far. 

Back in June, Manolo the Shoeblogger, the only style consultant anyone a girl really needs, posted a note regarding one woman's  unusual craft project:  sandals crocheted from plastic grocery bags  ("Garbage for the Feets!").   I enjoyed it.  I was not aghast at the thought of lumpy crocheted sandals---I live in a land amply supplied with wearers of Crocs and Birkenstocks and things made from crochet and macrame---though  must admit that I've never seen the craftiest of our craft-work wearers wearing anything made from grocery bags. 

Manolo's objections are aesthetic and based on his innate sense of fitness:

[quote from Shoeblogs begins]

These they are the sort of thing that would be worn the ranting homeless lady who lives in the culvert behind the Ralph’s Super Saver. You know, the one who wears the dirty grey poncho and shouts at you as you leave your car, “Whore of Babylon! You’ll burn in the sulphurous pits of Hell!”

That one.

This is the sort of person who would put such things upon her feets.

Do not be this person, do not wear such things upon your feets.

[quote from Shoeblogs ends]

Mine are kinesthetic and visceral:  plastic grocery bags?  On your feet?  Consider the texture of a garbage bag, which is both slippery and crinkly.  Crocheted into macrame-like lumps, they would be squashy and yet nonresilient, offering no support whatsoever for my abnormally high arches.  As you walk, they would---or so I imagine---make a horrifying shsh shsh shsh sound, like the sound of a hand sliding across paper (a sound which affects me in the same way as fingernails across a chalkboard). 

At the time I read the posting, I laughed, but didn't actually look at the link the Manolo provided to the actual site where these plastic shoes are featured.  Today, having temporarily exhausted the supply of unread Manolo-generated goodies, I went to the site (Craftster.Org) to have a look. 

They don't look any worse---or any better---at first blush than your average macramed-by-hand product, at least when the maker, or "craftster," MLeak, actually put them on her feet.  Somehow or other she managed to find grocery bags in a rather fetching shade of pale aubergine.  And I have to give her some Connecticut-Yankee-style innovation points for coming up with the idea---plus I think more students should be encouraged to make clothes out of grocery bags and tin cans and things, instead of relying on credit cards (theirs or their parents', but especially theirs). 

So my aversion to the thought of grocery-store-bag sandals is not unmixed with admiration. 

The date on the posting (April 1) gave me pause;  you'd think the whole thing as an elaborate April's Fool ploy, except...there they are.  On her feet.  Apparently, she had originally planned to fashion a handy tote from her grocery bags, but didn't have enough pale aubergine bags to carry through.  If you look at her link, you will see that the completed tote bag she intended to emulate really is rather beautiful, at least---or rather especially--- for a tote bag made entirely of grocery bags.

Anyway, here's her explanation of how she came to be crocheting sandals from grocery bags.

[quote from posting  by MLeak at Craftster.Org begins:]

I started two different totes.  Unfortunately, I ran out of the colors I wanted to use, and unwilling to wait for grocery day to get some more, I decided to do something small in one of the other colors I had.  Since today was one of the first warm, *beautiful* days of the year, I figured I needed some sandals, so I whipped these up.... just improvised the pattern, but I think they came out all right!  I have *no* idea how useful they will actually be as shoes (or more like sandal-slippers, really) but I'll see how they hold up outside.  They seem fairly sturdy, though I'm really wondering if they'll melt on hot pavement.  Guess I'll find out!

[quote from posting by MLeak at Crafster.Org ends]

There is a certain marvelous insouciance in all of this:  a twenty-something, the age at which most girls think much too much about their clothes, chirpily and industriously eking out her wardrobe by fashioning a pair of shoes out of the stuff of which landfills are made.  I can't help loving this unknown young woman for her can-do attitude and her willingness to try to spin gold out of straw.

I guess I just think that there is something dangerously destabilizing out of going down this road, which is why I end up agreeing with the Manolo. As always, he touches the matter with a needle (and skewers it to riotous effect); but putting aside the question of the ugliness of such "feetwear," I can't help thinking that a young woman who allows herself to wear shoes fashioned from grocery bags is soon going to find it to be one hell of a slippery slope because, seriously:  what's next? 

Making a virtue of necessity is one thing, but if carried too far, success in this sort of endeavor is sooner or later going to lead to tinfoil headgear and dresses made from newspaper.  After all, why not?  If it turns out that you can make clothing out of ordinary household goods, and if you like the artsy-craftsy sort of clothing, why not "recycle" your leftover bags and used wrapping paper by making them into a whole line of clothing?  And if you're asking, "Why is she saying that like it would be a bad thing?", we're probably done here.

The other craftsters were fairly complimentary---as much about the innovation as the end product, I thought, though at least one asked for a "tute", which the MLeak, the inventor, obligingly provided (so if you want to whip up some crocheted grocery bag sandals of your very own, just go to the link above and you'll be set.) 

One poster didn't like the way the grocery bag sandals looked and said so, though charmingly.

[quote from posting by Jelly at Craftster.Org begins]

Those are so cool
Well the concept of them and the fact that you made them
The actual shoes, they look good on you, but I personally cant stand that style - it reminds me of sandals we had to wear for school, and also of hairy european backpackers who wear them with socks. HAHA

[quote from posting by Jelly at Craftster.Org ends]

They do look like that sort of footwear, but I can't see a European backpacker, however hairy, wearing grocery bag sandals, can you?---whether with or without the thick white socks.  But if you look at what the sandals look like on, you'll see why this poster was thinking along those lines.  They really do have a "crunchy macrame" look from a distance.   But even if you don't mind the lumpy, scratchy feel of macrame, wouldn't you draw the line at putting grocery bags on your feet? 

Here's an update from MLeak, the maker: 

[quote from Craftster.Org begins]

They're pretty comfortable, though they do have a sort of strange texture.  I guess it's sort of like those weird "massaging" sandals you see sometimes?  If the straps slip around at all they can be a little scratchy, but not too bad.  The only problem is that they might get a bit sticky if your feet sweat!  In terms of slipping, they're just fine on carpet.  They're pretty good on wood floors, even.  It's possible that as I wear them more, and they get flattened out, they'll become more slippery, but I don't know.  They might actually get more comfortable too.

[quote from Craftster.Org ends]

A fellow craftster complimented MLeak on the 'recycling" aspect of making shoes from grocery bags.  I do have some questions about how that would work, because it's not as if shoes made from grocery bags are going to last.  Sooner or later---my guess is sooner rather than later----they will become dirty and sweaty and have to be thrown out.  When that time comes, I'm assuming you wouldn't want to return them to the grocery store for recycling the way I return my bags after I've used them.  You'd have to put them in with the old bottles and stuff, I guess. So grocery bag shoes aren't really a very practical form of recycling, it seems to me.  At best, you prolong the inevitable.

A part of me just instinctively resists the idea of grocery bags as material for clothing.  I'm not sure why that is.  On Project Runway, my beloved Project Runway, the very first challenge ever required the contestants had to use materials from a grocery store to make their an outfit.  The inimitable Austen Scarlett made a charming cocktail dress out of cornhusks; Jay McCarroll, the eventual winner, made a lovely ruffled mini-skirt from aluminum foil; others used paper grocery bags, ribbons, and the plastic webbing from an aluminum beach chair.  Last season, the contestants had to make clothes out of  materials from a plant store. This season, people had to use their apartment furnishings, including sofa cushions, beaded curtains, bathroom rugs, and anything else they could find; Michael Knight, an early favorite of mine, made a charming scallopy cocktail dress out of nothing but coffee filters.

The grocery bag sandals were different from your basic Project Runway project, in that the person who constructed them was---as she candidly said---a beginner at crocheting (though I'm predicting a brilliant future for her in that line) and "winged" it through the design stage.  They really did look homemade, as opposed to runway ready, though as I said, they didn't really look worse than other homemade stuff I've seen out there.

I am trying to keep an open mind  to these sandals in case they become a trend, though I would never personally wear crocheted grocery bags or crochet in any form.  There's a part of me that's grateful for the news that conversions from plastic bag to footwear are possible, given our ever increasing reasons to fear that we might end up living in a post-apocolyptic wildrness, freezing or burning up, and raiding landfills for our basic necessities.  In that world, I might be very glad to have instructions for crocheting my very own pair of faux-macrame sandals. 

On the other hand, I can't help wondering if the whole thing wasn't a truly diabolical April 1 joke on the entire community of craftsters by creating an article of wearing apparel that is fundamentally nonsensical.  Could that be it?  Was this craftster actually a prankster who was laughing in her sleeve while providing the instructions ("tute"), envisioning all the good and blameless artisans who frequent the site running around in shoes made from plastic bags?

I trust not; and indeed her follow up note earnestly addresses the questions submitted to her concerning construction, wearability, etc.  And on that note, I offer my heartfelt thanks to MLeak for providing me with instructions I hope I will never need to use for making shoes from petroleum-based plastics and to the Manolo for directing me to the site.  May it never come in useful for either the Manolo or me!

The Flatland Chronicles for 22 July 2006.

J OURNAL. Played-Out TV & Film Devices

From The Culture Gutter, this list of common film cliches that the author never wants to see again caught my attention.  It's so very true.  Here's one of Nick's most hated film/TV cliches:

[quote from Robin Bougie's article begins]

13. If someone dies with their eyes open, someone will close them by effortlessly moving their hand over the deceased face — and they will remain tightly shut.

[quote from Robin Bougie's article ends]

My personal faves:

[quote from Robin Bougie's article begins]

6. [W]hen a phone line is broken unexpectedly, someone will always frantically press the phone cradle button and yell “Hello? HELLO!?” with an emphasis on the second hello.

4. When someone yells “You never backed away from everything in your life, now fight!!” while giving someone CPR or working to resuscitate a stopped heart.

[quote from Robin Bougie's article ends]

Check out "25 Cinematic Cliches that I Never Want to See Again" here!

Inspired by this article, Nick is compiling his own  list for his brand new blog.  Stay tuned!

The Flatland Chronicles for 20 July 2006

JOURNAL.  THE AMATEUR BLOGGER'S AMATEUR CORNER.

To distract myself from my distress over recent events, I spent a lot of time last night reading up on blogging, searching for new blogs to read, and just generally educating myself. 

1. Advice on Promoting Your Blog (someone else's advice, not mine)

I am such an amateur that I really don't understand a lot of the advice I've received and am acting on faith.  For example, a friend who doesn't blog but who seems to know a lot about it directed me to Blogflux.com.  I don't think I fully appreciated what a good tool Blogflux is, but I like it so much that I've listed it on my big page o' links here (where I not only provide the link, but also a brief description of it).  At Blogflux, you can do something called 'pinging'---i.e., notifying various services that you are updating your blog---to a number of important sites.  I'm not sure what these sites do, exactly; pI guess they are directories. 

Anyway, pinging them by pinging BlogFlux (ping ping ping)  apparently gets the word out into the void that you exist or something; I'm not really sure actually, except that it's a sort of cyber EXTRA EXTRA READ ALL ABOUT IT.  Actually, the more I try to explain it the less I'm sure how it works.  It's supposed to 'promote' the website, and I am not even sure yet I want my site promoted, but I always ping Blogflux now when I update my blog.  I really don't know why.  I do seem to get a bit more traffic these days and my "Google page ranking" as shown at BlogFlux is 5 (and I don't know whether that's good or bad, really, but it's better than 0).

That's another thing that Blogflux will do for you:  you can find out your Google page ranking and then, if you can get the little Blogflux HTML thingie to work in your template---naturally I couldn't---everyone ELSE can see your page ranking too.  That's assuming that you want them to, of course.  If it's 0, you probably don't.   

Furthermore, it has a directory where you can list your Blog, a search engine that lets you find blogs that you might be interested in, and other interesting tools.  Someone who knows what he or she is doing could doubtless REALLY benefit from this site.   

After reading everything at Blogflux and fixing a problem that kept this blog from appearing in their directory, I did some reading about google and google page rankings that I didn't understand at all during which I learned about something called a 'social bookmarking page.'  I still don't really understand what they are for, but I plan to register at one called  Digg because it sounds interesting.   Here's what the description says:  "Digg is all about user powered content. Every article on digg is submitted and voted on by the digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote the news that's important to you!"  I was attracted to the site by the administrator's liberal use of the word "digg"---e.g., if you 'digg' an article and vote for it, it and other articles you have dugg are 'promoted' (whatever this means) to the front page of the site....I don't know. 

Remember Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd as the ' two wild and ker-razy guys"?  As they used to say, "Learning all the time!"

(2)  Blogrolling and Blog-reading.

If I had regular blog traffic, say from members of the Salon community---and I don't----I might have to deal with the whole 'blogrolling' thing.  Some people have blogrolls as long as your arm; they list 20 or 30 blogs as well as other resources.  I can see the 'quid pro quo' aspect of it; even I can understand that if you give someone a link on your site and you give them one on yours, you're helping to direct traffic to their site, and if you are a really popular site, their blog will definitely benefit.

But when I see a giant blogroll, I don't feel at all inclined to click; I just assume that the people listed are the blogger's posse and that their names are there because they returned the favor or because they are so-called "A-list bloggers" that the blogrolling blogger is hoping will notice him or her. I don't assume, because that's insane, that the blogger regularly reads 45 blogs, you know?  I am much more likely to click a blogger's links if there aren't too many of them and they appear to be related to the overall content of the site.

I've therefore limited my blogroll to the few blogs I started reading last year and pretty regularly looked at.  A couple of the bloggers have been pretty sporadic about updating them (or have been since I started reading them), but I don't mind; there's good stuff in the archives and I choose my blogs based on how much I like the blogger's voice. 

I admit it:  I will read the blog of the biggest right wingnut on the planet if he or she (ah, my always enraged avenging angel Ann, why no blog to allow progressives like me their minimum RDA of mockery?*) has an engaging (or enraging) voice that pulls me in.

On the other hand, I definitely have found quite a few blogs that look interesting and as if they might qualify to be put into a "Still Deciding" list.  A lot of them aren't even Salon blogs, though naturally some of them are. 

If I like the writing, the blogger can talk about just about anything and I'll be interested. 

For example, I've nothing in the world against Mormons (or rather, only the same things I have against any other conservative religious group), but I have to admit that I enjoy the strident bad-assery of an ex-Mormon woman's blog, Trapped by the Mormons. She's a published writer, so the quality of the writing is high and some of the postings are very funny.  I know more than some about Mormons, having spent a certain amount of time educating myself about them when a Mormon friend was struggling with some issues; I mention this because I wonder if a non-Mormon would have enough context to enjoy Collins' adventures, but whether they do or not, I do. 

Trapped by the Mormons is definitely a good blog for new and aspiring fiction writers.  Natalie Collins includes amusing interviews with new writers and a kick-ass list of agents.  But for me, the insight into Utah and Utah culture ("Behind the Zion Curtain") for self-styled Ex-Mos is the draw. It's not like leaving, say, the Episcopal Church.

I'm looking at another by a young girl living in England; I'll talk about it when I've tracked the content a bit further.  The endless variety of human experience...

The Flatland Chronicles for 20 July 2006

JOURNAL.  THE AMATEUR BLOGGER'S AMATEUR CORNER.

1.  Digg:  What it Is.

Okay, so I went to Digg and joined up so I could see what it was all about.  I don't know what it could possibly have to do with generating website traffic---nothing at all, I should imagine---but it was still pretty cool.  It's called "a social bookmarking site" and I don't know what that means either.

If you go there, it's similar to a giant online magazine, except that the USERS find and link the content.  I admit that I found some very cool things to read there that I'd never have found on my own.  It's too the usual online news sources what a giant corporate bookstore is to a small independent bookstore.  If you go into a corporate bookstore, you'll see everything that mainstream publishers think you want to read.  To find the books that you want to read, you have to turn to independent booksellers (God help them).   

Same with news services and so forth.  All of them give you the news, but a lot of the really choice tidbits and intriguing oddities and absorbing specialty stuff and choice bits are spread right across the internet and  there is so much net.  Whatever else it does, Digg (meaning each individual user who wants to participate) gather these together by posting links to them.  Other users can then read the articles and vote on whether they found them useful, informative, etc.  Eventually this has consequences that I don't quite understand yet; the articles get moved to the head of the queue or something.  (I don't want to make a complete fool of myself here, but I was too busy reading and bookmarking to spend much time wondering about the significance of the votes they were asking for.)

It doesn't matter to me anyway.  Because whoever the Digg 'power users' are who find all of these goodies, I click my mouse to them.  I planned just to glance briefly at the site and come back to it whenever, but I was there for a couple of hours.  In addition to the intrinsic fascination of the material I found there, there was the considerable satisfaction of 'voting' for articles I really liked and seeing the vote count number going up.  And---in case you're thinking you've spotted a loophole---you can only vote ONCE.  I clicked twice (an accident) and a little screen tip appeared that said "You have already dugg this article."

The internet, eh?  To paraphrase an ancient (1960's) song by the Turtles, "The more you see, the more there is to see."  For all practical purposes, the world wide web = infinity. 

2.  Some advice for other amateur website builders.

Speaking of Digg, I found this article from The Guardian Unlimited there and bookmarked it for future reference.  It's by Charles Arthur and is called "What is the 1% Rule?"  It doesn't have any real application to me, but it interested me because it tracked the way I use websites.

[quote from The Guardian begins]

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it....

Earlier metrics garnered from community sites suggested that about 80% of content was produced by 20% of the users, but the growing number of data points is creating a clearer picture of how Web 2.0 groups need to think. For instance, a site that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of 10 people just pass by.

[quote from The Guardian Unlimited ends]

I'm definitely among that portion of the population that is inclined just to read.  I've posted on message boards at a couple of sites, but only after reading them for a VERY long time and not on any sort of regular basis.

I sent that article to a friend of mine who is despairing over the failure of her message boards to come to life.  From this article, I took away the lesson that if you want to set up an internet forum, you need to generate plenty of content to pull readers to it and to which they can respond.

I'm assuming that only a small number of Digg users are regularly posting links to articles (and they don't have to 'author' the content and that this is the way it's going to be at any 'interactive' site.  Most of them are like me; they come there to read, not to participate.  (Though I can certainly imagine that there is significant satisfaction in selecting articles etc that you think are interesting and finding that other people like them too).

The Flatland Chronicles for 19 July 2006

JOURNAL.  I will NOT comment specifically on the situation in the Middle East in any depth.  Not today.  At least, I am trying not to.  I do not understand EITHER side.  I've heard from supporters of both; they both have their points but it's completely possible that BOTH are wrong.  Religion and politics are not on/off yes/no propositions.  Unfortunately, human life is.  I guess I just feel that what's happening can't be right.    

We watch BBC World, which shows what is actually happening in Beirut.  Damn BBC World!  I understand why our media only show us US news; having the broader perspective makes it hard to stay detached.  Very difficult not to get angry.  I have a bit of trouble taking the Israelis seriously when their spokeswoman says that they are determined to wipe out the culture (?) "of hate." 

I am pretty sure that they are not going to be able to do that, you know?  There are some things that you can achieve by aggression, but getting rid of hate and eliminating terrorism are not attainable goals.  The problem is that even our enemies have families and their families tend to resent it if you kill them----so then you get another generation of them.   

Ah God, why do people think that war is a shortcut to resolving violence?  The only way to achieve stable change is to take the long way around.   

"What else can they do?" one of my friends wrote, meaning the Israelis.  I really have no idea.  So despite what I said, here I am writing about the Middle East. 

Instead I am trying to focus on OTHER things.  I have been pursuing, courtesy of the internet, several oddball interests of mine.  Thank God that I studied Taoism in college; as my "research" progresses, I know less and less, which is how you find yourself getting closer to the truth.

The Flatland Chronicles for 16 July 2006 [part 2]

The Flatland Chronicles for Sunday, July 16 [part two!]

Journal. A correction from Mr. Rumcove himself

At last, after a certain amount of arm-twisting by e-mail Mr. Rumcove granted me the boon of a telephone call.  During the course of our conversation, he reminded me, not without a note of rebuke in his voice, that while some people who live in Essex (such as Mr. R) have an estuary accent, not all people in Essex have an estuary accent.   The real and authentic Essex accent is different.  He said that the pure or original form of the Essex accent mainly exists these days above the Crouch (a river, if you're not a Brit).  He said with some annoyance, "I told you that before, you know!"   And it's true, he did---in, what was it, 1998?  But I do remember, now that he has reminded me.   

So I am publishing this amendment, but I am NOT going to go back and edit my Estuary Englishman publication.  I shall link to this amendment and call it a day.

No Angels for Me!

After a spirited discussion with a group of women friends about whether there are angels and--if so---what angels are like, I took a look at a few sites that purport to deal with angels.  I came away with a distinct feeling of envy and dissatisfaction;  why are there all these people who get to have these reassuring supernatura/religiousl experiences and I never do? 

A couple of sites deal with the nature and appearance of angels.  I wish I still had the links because they were fascinating; also bizarre, but in a fascinating way.  One woman who claims to have met a certain number of angels said that angels all look different and that their 'appearance' tends to reflect their personality.  Her personal angel was called 'Bernard.'  She talked about how some are feathery, some billowy, and many enjoy a joke just as much as you and me.  I forget which sort Bernard is. 

Why don't I get personal visits from angels?

ANGELS:  Girl, please.

Okay, I admit that I am ambivalent about angels.  I do not live in a milieu that is receptive to such entities. Nick is an atheist; Rumcove an agnostic; and my other friends quite pragmatic people.  My family, who are all religious to a certain degree, would be quite embarrassed, I imagine, by a serious discussion of angels.

The Gnostic Gospel called The Book of John discusses angels.  It also sets forth an account of the creation of the world that is quite a bit different from the one in Genesis.  (For one thing, God has a wife.)  There are a lot of angels in that book. Eventually I intend to take a closer look at it.  But I would not like to meet any of the angels mentioned in this gospel, even if I believed in them.   

The most convincing account of angelic encounters that I've ever read is Martha Beck's Expecting Adam.  Beck is a Harvard educated ex-Mormon who now writes a column for O Magazine.  I love her, at least as she presents herself in her books and in her columns; and I like her books; while a bit more kaffee klatsch in tone than I generally prefer, she's good at getting across both the experiences themselves and her resistance to them.  At the end of it, I felt very jealous of the strange experiences she had while pregnant with her extraordinary child, Adam.  She tells the tale convincingly.  Furthermore, her beliefs tally with my own occasional intuitions about what such an experience could be like.

Anyway, to cut a long story short---I am really not ready to deal with either Martha Beck or angels---I am interested, in an abstract skeptical way, in people's accounts of their meetings with angels.  I don't feel any obligation to believe in angels myself. 

But my own conception of angels, to the extent I have one, comes from a very cool story by Flannery O'Connor---I can't recall the title at the moment---in which a self-satisfied (and very bigoted) nominal Christian farm woman in Georgia who gets a much merited rebuke through one of the Lord's mouthpieces.  Afterward, she has a vision in which she sees the sky full of spinning eyes. 

This concept was reinforced by A.S. Byatt's The Conjugial [sic] Angel, which deals with a 19th Century spiritualist, Tennyson, his sister Emily Tennyson, Arthur Hallam (the subject of In Memorian), and Swedenborg.  It was probably this story (the second novella in Angels and Insects) that first made angels interesting to me.  I didn't care much about them before.

For reasons I am unwilling to explain, it is my thought that the eyes of angels are invariably green.  It is full of the sort of personal angels I would have if I had any.

The Flatland Chronicles for 16 July 2006 [part 1]

Journal. My Brief Stint at the Top of the Pops

Ever since I worked out what they are for---I am very slow that way---I have loved reading my list of referers to see what wild-ass searches had led people to me.  The fascination never palls.

In the only fairly small hours early this morning, I noticed that someone had reached my site through the Top 100 Rankings at Salon.  Curious about this---it's certainly not something that has happened before since I started paying attention--I opened the Salon "Top 100" daily ranking by page reads for Salon Blogs, and lo, my blog's name led all the rest. 

At this I was much abashed.  85  of the hits were from my very own address while I was trying ineptly to make something work---I was under the mistaken impression that I understood how to make some changes to a certain template using HTML--- were counted in the total.  As it was 2 or 3 a.m., I was slightly consoled by knowing that this inflated number would soon be out-stripped by hits to worthier contenders for the honor, but really, I felt like a complete impostor.  WHY do they list my own hits to my own blog during editing and trying to see if my technically inept attempts to make adjustments to my site are working??? 

I am assuming that there are people (I am not one of them) who take this "Ranking by Page Reads"  listing seriously.  Personally, I can't possibly take it seriously.  I have been compiling a list of some of the searches that have led people to me under the mistaken impression I might offer information germane to their search.  Most of the hits that lead people to me lead them straight back to the search engine of their choice.

One search that has garnered me quite a few hits is "flatland training" or "flatlanding," which apparently is a skateboard technique.  A lot of sk8ters in quest of information about Tony Hawke or whoever land on my site only to find that it's not so much about the skateboarding.  Dudes!  (I love skateboarding and I love to watch it; if there were a 24 hour round-the-clock skateboard channel, I would spend a portion of my life in a hypnotic daze of skateboard-watching enjoyment.

I also get a lot of people searching for commentary on the wonderful and remarkable novel Flatland. Someday perhaps I should provide some.  I studied the book in a philosophy class in college.  I loved it. 

Another that actually yields a result is "Cirencester pronunciation" or the equivalent.  This gives me hope; obviously I am not alone in finding anomalous the pronunciation of the name of this ancient city.  (If YOUR search brought you hear, click on this link.)  Now if only the people of Cirencester could be made to realize it!  I never did send them my posting because Rumcove said that it would be mocked and derided. 

A few people have landed on my posting about epilepsy which is germane and which I hope helped them develop a sense of perspective.  Many, strangely, have reached it through the route "constant metallic taste," but that is okay.  You're not alone, guys!

Also I get a lot of hits to the long screed I wrote on H. H. Munro (Saki), doubtless from students looking for help with their homework.  (If that's you, [teacher voice] do your own work! [/teacher voice].) Sadly, nobody reads The Chronicles of Clovis for pleasure anymore, even though they totally should (for the pleasure).

But fascinating as the referers are, the ranking by page-reads doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  Out of most of the searches that have brought people to me, only a very small percentage would have paid off in terms of giving them information they really wanted.  ["Der prat der pillock" (presumably from some German speaker who must have wanted to learn to insult someone using British slang or who had been insulted and wanted to know how badly) comes to mind.  I absolutely intend in the near future to write on this fascinating subject, but I haven't yet.]

To tot up "page reads" is like totting up the number of times a car passes through a particular intersection and using it as evidence of the popularity of the intersection.  It's not exactly random, but most of the people pass through on their way to somewhere else.  The quantity of page hits doesn't really reflect popularity very accurately (though it took me a while to figure that out after the joy of seeing my blog listed at all in the "top 100" for Salon). 

If people want to know which blogs are really pulling in the traffic, the list of subscriber rankings is really much more informative.

The Flatland Chronicles for 13 July 2006

[initially published at my previous blog]

JOURNAL.  Tonight we had another writing class.  Ugh, I hate reading my stuff aloud, even though I enjoy listening to other people read theirs.  They enjoy it (or seem to); I don't. . 

I signed up for the class because I wanted to get Nick back in the arena; he's written a book which has received excellent feedback from everyone who has read it so far, and I wanted him to get feedback from objective third parties.  It's been a great success from that standpoint.

But I don't like reading my own work.  My internal narrator doesn't sound a thing like I do when I open my mouth to speak.  I do it because it's expected, but I would rather not have to.  But I do enjoy listening to other people read.  There is something very intimate about hearing these works in progress read by their authors.  I am fascinated by the things people choose as subjects and by the details which they select in telling their tales.  I have heard some excellent stories.

I've tried during the last couple of days to begin reducing to written form (the rough essay form I use here) some of my thoughts and questions about Christ and the Christianity of Christ.  My vision of him shifts constantly.  Perhaps someone else who has some insights or information will eventually share them with me. 

I'm continuing my rereading of the Old Testament using the New English Bible.  The language of King James gets in the way, I find.  It makes everything sound so remote in time that you can't picture it mattering.  But reading the laws of the ancient Hebrews give a very vivid picture of how they lived.  Furthermore, there is no better way to get insight into the anxieties and failing of a culture than through reading its laws. 

But I am interested in it mainly because I am curious about what the world would look like if Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale ever came true.  Scary is my verdict, at least for women. 

I intend to keep it up; I'm learning a lot, and if anyone else can get anything out of it, they are very welcome.