Category: Uncategorized

GearBits I like the style, the palm stuff and the movies – all in categories!

From a 2-day Seminar: November 8 & 9, 2002, Held in Santa Barbara, CA at the historic, beachfront Radisson Hotel, Rough-Draft Conference Notes & Comments by Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D. (Written 19 November 2002 – ?)

But when JH asked what war might want from us — and gave those telling examples — I was hooked.

This is typical of my response to a lot of Hillman too – he infuriates me, but this way of looking at things has a peculiar appeal. For anyone reading along here this is the sort of question that brings in the power of a acting as if the entity has a life and is pulling us along – see earlier item on teleology.

More in line with my project we might ask:

What does cyberspace want from us?

This is one of the links I just found from Matthew Clapp’s website – which I am exploring at the moment.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.:

R. Buckminster Fuller’s students once asked him to name the most important figure of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud, he said without a moment’s hesitation. They were shocked. Why Freud? Why not Einstein, about whom Fuller had written extensively, or some other figure from the world of science or economics or architecture, to which he had devoted his considerable energy? So Fuller explained himself. Sigmund Freud, he said, was the one who had introduced the single great idea upon which all the significant developments of the twentieth century had rested: the invisible is more important than the visible. You would never have had Einstein if Freud hadn’t convinced the world of this first. You would never have had nuclear physics.

Linking to this item for that one quote, and to add, that if it were not for that one idea, we would not have cyberspace.

Ich hiess Sabina Spielrein: My name was Sabina Spielrein – A documentary film directed by Elisabeth Ma¡rton

The Brights:

Currently the naturalistic worldview is insufficiently expressed
within most cultures. The purpose of this movement is to form an
umbrella Internet constituency of individuals having social and
political recognition and power. There is a great diversity of persons
who have a naturalistic worldview. Under this broad umbrella, as
Brights, these people can gain social and political influence in a
society infused with supernaturalism.

As someone who grew up taught atheism in the most reverent way,
and for most of my life having thought of myself as a humanist, it
seems strange I don't like this movement. But I don't.

I am not on the liberal theologian's side either. Nor a theist or
even a polytheist, nor wicca even Starhawkian, though she appeals.
Not a person of faith.

Does that leave anything? Yes! And we are an even more isolated
bunch than the brights – at the risk of helping to spread the
unaesthetic meme. As someone who works with the psyche, and who knows
there are autonomous depths at work in our lives I am ok with being
something more than a naturalist. Perhaps of poetic temperament – which
is different from faith and it is not bright, give me shaded,
deep, chthonic, moist, soulful, hidden, dappled, dark. I don't
want a meme for it.

Clay Shirky has some good insites here: Many-to-Many: Why I Don’t Like Wikis Email

Weblogs provide a good counter-example. While wikis make a poor presentation medium (when my students use wikis, they universally and unconciously move the content into Word, PowerPoint, HTML or Flash when they ahve to present), weblogs are in many ways too pretty.

Every day I grieve the messyiness of email. I dont like it at all. It is not the plain textness of it but the html mess and the lack of a clear quoting protocol… one that was there in the early days. Then there is the whole line length issue, broken urls and so on. There is a loosing battle to keep emails in plain txt. I cant even find a decent email client. But Clay is onto something here… the mess is somehow convivial.

Just saw the DVD The Source about the Beats. Had to go and
find (and found) the points listed below which were
spoken in the movie by Johnny Depp. These tips make a nice
counterpoint to Garbl's (see below).

Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

by Jack Kerouac

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for
yr own joy

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

4. Be in love with yr life

5. Something that you feel will find its own form

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical
inhibition

14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior
monolog

16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the
eye

17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language
sea

19. Accept loss forever

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in
mind

22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture
better

23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr
morning

24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language
&knowledge

25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of
it

26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American
form

27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman
Loneliness

28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under,
crazier the better

29. You're a Genius all the time

30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled
in Heaven

William Gibson stops blogging blog-end:

The bits and pieces that Joseph Cornell assembled in his shadow-boxes wouldn’t have seemed nearly as interesting if he’d simply left them arrayed on the bench of some picnic-table –- and they certainly wouldn’t still be there.

I crave the sweet and crazy-making difficulties that can only be imposed by the box, the Cornellian stage, the frame, of a formal narrative.

Makes sense, I need to get into the difficult stuff too! Damn.

Later: Been thinking about this and it seems to ignore one, that weblogs are a box, a FORM. Secondly they are a way of doing research.

PS Joseph Cornell

Explored Garbl’s Editorial Style Manual and found:
Page for E, where he cites:

e-mail A shortened version of electronic mail. OK to use e-mail (lowercase) in all references, including first. Capitalize as E-mail only to begin sentences, headings and headlines. Do not drop the hyphen. Follow the same style for words like e-business and e-commerce.

Made me wonder if I am on the loosing side of this as I prefer “email” – not as a general rule for initial based words, just that one, email, because it is ubiquitous. How does it Google?

267,000,000 for email

15,000,000 for e-mail

Not only that, but in the last search it asked me if I meant email. I am sticking with email! Not just because of the numbers, I stick with counselling because of the culture I live in, and email is a bit like that. It was not till Wired lost its original impetus that it changed to e-mail, it was part of its demise as an icon for online culture.

While I have my view on this it does not take a way from the site – the site is a nice one to have a link to – covers a lot of ground.

Garbl’s Writing Center, wonderful site. Web oriented.

Welcome to Gary B. Larson’s portal to a free editorial style manual, annotated directory of writing Web sites, concise writing guide, personalized advice and writing forum.

He has a powerful page on Bush Lies as well and the values shine right through the writing style material. He has a sense of how words can hurt and how they can heal.

When I see a site like this I become curious about American English, International English and in my case New Zealand English. There really is no one style for all. I run into problems with my site as I have Online Counselling and Online Counseling to deal with. I always write counselling but need to put the more common American one in the various places for key-words etc.

Here is how they Google:

2,290,000 counselling

8,890,000 counseling