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A thought, earlier in the reading than the writing. I have noticed a very strong tendency for readers to only comment on a single aspect of a blog post. Often, indeed, people will remark on the same thing rather than each picking a different topic to follow. I could not say if this is an artefact of following after the first to comment or of a particular part of the post finding better resonance with the readers in general, or to what degree it might be a combination of those (or other?) factors.
It does tend to make me inclined to separate thoughts into posts rather than paragraphs to better spark discussion (although I also am wary of what I have seen called 'spamming people's friends lists'). Is that bad or good? It is a change in style from my previous unexamined preference. An adaptation to the medium which maybe better accomplishes goals (provoking discussion, sharing ideas, providing learning/enlightenment opportunities for myself), so it may well be good. If I could someday say the state of the world has been improved I might even call it Good but that is rather unrealistic.
It is a change and on that ground I am inclined to dislike it. Is this because I grew up reading of older modes of discussion and hoped someday to participate in them myself? I think so. I am disappointed but, to refuse to take into account the fact that the world* is changing (I cannot appreciate how much) would be counter-productive. Nor would I know how. Do I write a letter to my friends?
That blog posts slip away so swiftly is an annoyance. Oh, they are saved and still accessible later but they only hold attention very, very transiently. This might be more a matter of substance than medium. Sometimes when I have written something I am especially pleased with I am tempted to withhold from further posting for a number of days so that it remains more visible, even though anyone who reads what I have to say is using LiveJournal and the flow of their river is little affected by what I do. Should put in a feature request to be able to tag posts into streams of varying priority, then the daily grind can flow on and disappear while topics for discussion remain visible until displaced by more discussion.
These thoughts are incomplete.
Amusement: Blogging software in a browser with built-in spell-check ability does not recognise 'blog' as a legitimate word.
Further amusement: I suspect I ironically mangled that laughing sentence.
Ami Angelwings Heavenly Comic Rants
But Enough About Me!
*The world is humans and their doings, their society? There is more than that, oh yes, but we are all-consuming to ourselves. And this is where we live.
It does tend to make me inclined to separate thoughts into posts rather than paragraphs to better spark discussion (although I also am wary of what I have seen called 'spamming people's friends lists'). Is that bad or good? It is a change in style from my previous unexamined preference. An adaptation to the medium which maybe better accomplishes goals (provoking discussion, sharing ideas, providing learning/enlightenment opportunities for myself), so it may well be good. If I could someday say the state of the world has been improved I might even call it Good but that is rather unrealistic.
It is a change and on that ground I am inclined to dislike it. Is this because I grew up reading of older modes of discussion and hoped someday to participate in them myself? I think so. I am disappointed but, to refuse to take into account the fact that the world* is changing (I cannot appreciate how much) would be counter-productive. Nor would I know how. Do I write a letter to my friends?
That blog posts slip away so swiftly is an annoyance. Oh, they are saved and still accessible later but they only hold attention very, very transiently. This might be more a matter of substance than medium. Sometimes when I have written something I am especially pleased with I am tempted to withhold from further posting for a number of days so that it remains more visible, even though anyone who reads what I have to say is using LiveJournal and the flow of their river is little affected by what I do. Should put in a feature request to be able to tag posts into streams of varying priority, then the daily grind can flow on and disappear while topics for discussion remain visible until displaced by more discussion.
These thoughts are incomplete.
Amusement: Blogging software in a browser with built-in spell-check ability does not recognise 'blog' as a legitimate word.
Further amusement: I suspect I ironically mangled that laughing sentence.
Ami Angelwings Heavenly Comic Rants
- Negativity hurts Ami :( [Ami is right. Nominal equality doesn't mean everything is peachy keen now, there is still time needed for (hopefully) social attitudes overall to improve. And spreading negativity, pulling other people down does not seem very helpful to me - I rather thought the idea was to pull people up, so to speak, although if a person is behaving badly/advocating for a harmful position I do thing they should be called on it somehow. Sadly, my opinion is that a large part of this is human nature and not subject to change in the immediate future.]
- Small update :O [*sigh* At least I know where not to spend money]
- Pantheon Earth and Moon [It took me a while to see this as an image of something real.]
- 3D Face on Mars [I need to make a pair of those red/blue glasses]
- Smooth Sections of Asteroid Itokawa [The rubble-pile asteroid collision simulation shown in this link bears passing resemblance to simulations of colliding galaxies. That site looks very interesting. Must revisit. I think this particular APOD is a repeat though, hasn't taken account of the CIA World Factbook move. I am excited to learn what we might discover when Hyabusa returns - we have never brought a sample of an asteroid back to Earth for study before (although there have been some self-deliveries). Note to self: Find out more about these low gravity 'space hopper' probes. Amusement: The Wikipedia article on the 'Brazil Nut Effect' has been edited to mention this picture, since that kind of sorting by size has been proposed as a mechanism to explain the lack of visible craters on the asteroid. I suppose what we need to do now is send another probe to probe its interior with radar.]
- A Supply Ship Approaches the Space Station [Just as it says. The blog of one of the astronauts being delivered is here, too bad I did not know about it while it was being written. Photo added to desktop slideshow.]
- The Sun in Three Dimensions [Hey! You're missing one!]
- Carina Nebula Panorama from Hubble [Eta Carinae is one of my favourite possibly already dead stars. As the article said it did fade dramatically in the 1830s (and if memory serves, had first brightened dramatically). Eta Carinae is one of the most luminous, massive stars we know of. Possibly it is even larger than our theories allow for a star to be - but it is not the most stable of stars, already having blown off an amount of mass equivalent to that of our Sun many times over and producing frequent, enormous eruptions. It is not expected to last long for a star. And it might be a binary! I remember reading a paper in the university library suggesting that a regular variation in X-ray output may be caused by a companion star with a ~5 year orbit, although the amount of dust and gas Eta is giving off, I think, make it impossible for us to observe directly. Eta Carinae's companion might be much smaller than Eta but still be a rare giant among stars - Eta Carinae is in a class of perhaps a dozen out of ~200 million stars in this galaxy. So naturally this is another desktop picture]
- Gliese 581 and the Habitable Zone [Yup, they are finally finding these worlds. There will be many, many more to come.]
- M81 in Ursa Major [Pretty!]
- Young Moon and Sister Stars [I wanted to see this but kept forgetting to look]
But Enough About Me!
- Further Ruminations on Girls, Coming of Age, and the Hero's Journey [The often important reminder that, in valuing difference, one must be careful not to devalue the ordinary ('sneering at "the mundanes"'). Read the comments. I want to keep thinking about the topics raised here and they do plenty to keep it going.]
- "They didn't want the violence to be real or the truths to be inconvenient." [Refers to this post by Gwyneth Jones|Bold As Love. New word for me: traduce. I am tempted to step away and say I do not have the education or insight to respond to this. Yet, if I do, how will I ever acquire them? I believe I must attempt to engage in order to learn. So I will ponder the first question coming to mind: what else could be considered a success? Is there any other outcome that might be considered a victory for more than immediate visceral gratification? But those questions fail to address the substance of the post. More understanding required. The word grok springs ironically to mind (I get to use that word once more in this post before you are allowed to complain.]
- 2007-04-28 [*smiles* Not that easy]
- 2007-04-28 [:-/ Sure, she's sitting on the mallet, but what is holding the mallet up?]
- 2007-04-28 [meh]
- 445: A Song for the Departed [I had been trying to wait and see how sad I should be, before Rich Burlew went and had Elan show us.]
- 2007-04-28 [also meh]
*The world is humans and their doings, their society? There is more than that, oh yes, but we are all-consuming to ourselves. And this is where we live.
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