David Williamson pointed me toward a podcast of NT Wright singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” as well as talking about Christianity, politics, and the role of faith in action. This podcast was from an empireremixed conference held in Toronto.
Pilgrim Notes
Reflections along the way.
Month: November 2006 (page 2 of 4)
While trying to find out some words related to treasure chest, I stumbled across an old Catholic comic book series and eventually ended up at the Authentic American History Center. This site provides a fascinating collection of American pop culture artifacts that reach all the way back to the revolution.
There are pamphlets, comics, images and audio files from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, early 1900s, WWI, WWII, and each decade up to the present. The topic range from religion to politics to other elements that captured the national consciousness.
Way cool! Plus the Catholic comic book Treasure Chest was pretty interesting as well.
Here is a little poem from one of my favorite Welsh poets, Bobi Jones. Hopefully this will suffice in lieu of a good quote for the day. And I must also offer tribute to Joseph Clancy for the translation (as translation is an integral part of the poetic art).
The Middle Aged Poet
The child has dried up; his play and his sweat have died
His dance has shrivelled, besieged by bloated limbs,
And his leg’s sprightliness has grown bitter. I wonder whether
The muse can restore it in her swaddlings? Yes. Though finger
And thumb and ankle rot, praise will surely escape from their pit
By night, and make metre of the corruption: angels of mirth
Will still chat in the joints of the Poem. I bear within me
The innocents’ cheerful graveyard; an occasional night
Invites the remains of me to creep secretly out
To the early-patterned white leaves, and I dance a cradle’s questions
Through them, rhymes’ curiosity, till the dawn;
Then heavily, stooped, sad, in a magic procession,
Like lamentations that ventured out freely
For a time, they muster back to my silent daily ageing.
Phil Balderson recently suggested that social networking may not be the best term for the various functions that connect media, people, or ideas in different ways. When I asked what term might replace it, Phil suggested the idea of “meshing.” Playing off the idea of “mashups,” Phil suggests three reasons for meshing:
1. Individuals without prior relationships can mesh.
2. Society is meshing with technology (via Web 2.0).
3. Something new emerges as technologies, people, and sites mesh together.
Skimming through the backlog of emails and feeds, I discovered this earth-shattering news: my brain is a social network: no wonder I hear voices all day long. Roland Piquepaille ran a piece about this last month on ZDNet. Looks pretty interesting. Our brains seem to have something like gates that can open and close, allowing information to pass through or not. For a range of articles along these lines, see this issue of Science and be sure to check out all the PDFs at the bottom of the article.
This little sampling duet is cool!
Every so often these warnings come out, and it’s probably worth paying heed. Using WiFi in public places can endanger your computer (especially if you use windows). Internet News reported today that Windows-based computers with wireless capabilities are vulnerable for certain types of exploitation–even if you are not accessing the Internet. So be careful in public places and make sure you’re secure.
Celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Pet Sounds with your very own portable Brian Wilson! Woof! That’s a hoot, and I’m sure a collector’s item. I don’t know if I’m ready for a little Brian Wilson hanging around the house, but I do like his 37 year late album Smile: a true work of genius.
Every week I sign up for a new social networking site just to explore their features and see what’s out there. With so many socialnet sites, I lose track of what I’ve joined, and I usually never do much with many of them. I signed up with Flixster on Wednesday and wasn’t sure if I’d use it much or not. Flixster may turn out to be a useful site. It is definitely like Netflix’s Friends feature combined with MySpace. The nice thing is that users can simply rate movies; they don’t have to sign up for a rental plan. This makes it easy to build a larger friends database and connect with a variety of people who like movies. And for someone like me who prefers to hear movie recommendations from other people, I find this very appealing.
If Netflix was smart, they’d follow Flixster lead and offer an expanded version of the Friends feature with no requirement to join. Of course, once people enter into a network and come to visit their movie page, it would be easier to encourage them to sign up for a plan, download a film or buy a film.
Recent Posts by Folks I Like
© 2024 Pilgrim Notes
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑