Journal Entries
Who broke the Internet this time?
Posted Aug 30, 2011
The SubEthaNet isn't working very well, and I don't know what is wrong. I can't seem to use gmail, skype or twitter. Reassuringly h2g2 still works, I think.
I hope it is just the lousy internet service we country bumpkins are supposed to be ever so grateful to overpay for. I'll head into town in a bit and sponge off of the library's WiFi.
Can't wait to get real internet service, but that will take our government growing a spine, enforcing FCC rules, and maybe even breaking up a monopoly. I hope I live long enough to see it.
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Latest reply: Aug 30, 2011
Praise St Beloit, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried
Posted Aug 25, 2011
Beloit College, in St. Beloit, Wisconsin, claims to be noted "for its passionate engagement with ideas and the world."
The college just released its yearly Beloit College Mindset List, which is alleged to be a "look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall."
The list is supposed to help other faculty members be aware of dated cultural references. An eighteen year old incoming freshman might have studied the Persian Gulf War in her American History class, but she's certainly not going to remember it unfolding in the news as her professors might.
This year, I wasn't able to get past item number four on the Beloit College Mindset List before throwing my head back and laughing so loud, I woke up a snoozing kitty cat. Good news, Beloit College, the kitty is back asleep, as some members of your faculty must surely have been while compiling the list. Here is the amusing item:
"4. The only significant labor disputes in their lifetimes have been in major league sports."
Beloit College is about a 55-mile drive from the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. As everyone recalls, with the except of the Beloit College faculty and staff who compiled this year's list, Madison Wisconsin has been the site of a lengthy labor dispute with enormous political ramifications since last winter.
The Wisconsin labor disputes over Gov. Scott Walker's push to remove collective bargaining rights is a battle that has moved from the capitol building and nearby streets to the courts and ballot boxes, but which isn't over yet. The liveliness of the twitter hash tag #wiunion attests to the public awareness of the significance of today's labor disputes.
Here's a link to the list which caused cat-awakening mirth:
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2015/
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Latest reply: Aug 25, 2011
h2g2, Mother Jones, Bullies, Trolls and Internet Rage. And a beer.
Posted Aug 18, 2011
I read an article today that made me so mad, I nearly posted in anger. "Tom Philpott," I did not say, "you made numerous factual errors in your Beer Charts of the Day article, two in the following sentence alone."
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/08/beer-charts
Then I didn't point out the mistakes in that sentence*, nor any of the others in his article appearing in Mother Jones. I did not express my sudden doubts as to the veracity of all of Philpott's articles. I did not share my suspicions of the quality, nay, the very existence of fact-checking at Mother Jones. I managed to restrain myself, under the calming influence of a quality craft brew.
Of course nothing in what I would have posted could remotely be considered trolling or bullying. My scathing criticism would have included no personal remarks nor calls for violent action. There would have been no campaign to carefully comb through Philpott's other articles for errors upon which I could pounce, no hounding him through the lonely stretches of cyberspace. Who has the time?
Oh yeah, that's right, trolls and bullies do. They go through every post in every thread to see what they can find and twist into something that makes their target look bad. They follow their target from one forum to the next, derailing conversations, making threats and vile accusations.
Some of my fellow researchers and I have been discussing this side of human behavior in light of Tim Adams's recent article entitled 'How the Internet created an age of rage'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams
The article suggests that trolls and bullies behave deplorably because they feel safely anonymous. But this would mean that hatred and bile were unheard of prior to the Internet age and outside of a cloak of anonymity, and we know this isn't true. Sure there are some cowards who wouldn't dare put their name to the bile they spew, but there are plenty who do. Numerous talk radio hosts come to mind. This ugly behavior has always been going on, just not in an easily distributed electronic print format. Until the advent of search engines, a person or group often had no way of finding out who was spewing bile about them, unless the bullies and trolls were issuing their hate-filled messages through some form of distributed media.
My exasperation over Philpott's article seemed out of proportion to his errors, as numerous as they were. (Quiz: Can you find them all?) Sure, h2g2 has spoiled me. I'm used to reading better quality online journalism and writing for the Guide and the Post, both of which expect fact-checking and references. But the guy was talking about beer; he wasn't giving out erroneous health advice. What was the real cause of my vexation?
And then it struck me. I found his article because I followed a Twitter link. Mother Jones promotes its contributors through social media. h2g2 hasn't just doesn't have the same kind of promotion. Philpott's stuff is seen, because Mother Jones makes sure to promote it.
For all the promotion we give ourselves and each other, we might as well have written less, turned off our computers, and gotten a little more fresh air over the years.
Can we build a h2g2 social media marketing machine or will we leave Radox the Green to plug away at Twitter all by himself? 
* The offending sentence: "Note that breweries plunged to zero in 1930, in honor of that ignoble experiment, Prohibition, and then recovered for a few years after."
Prohibition began and the number of brewing establishments went to zero on 16 January, 1920 - not 1930. (A29019369) Once prohibition was over, only half as many breweries were able to reopen. The number steadily dwindled until there were fewer breweries than states in the US. The number of breweries did not recover a few years after as stated - it took decades.
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Latest reply: Aug 18, 2011
Tron and other flashbacks
Posted Aug 11, 2011
I just finished watching the original Tron and the new one back to back. An enjoyably nostalgic imagining of the affairs of the programs we write. I've been working with, in, and around computers since the first Tron, and unless a meteor hits the site of my potential new place of employment, I shall be back in the game in about two weeks.
This comes as some relief to me, given the wretched state of the economy. As a recap I used work at a very secure, well-paid job that had the huge disadvantage of being extremely far from my home with my husband. When the contract came to an end, I declined the opportunity to stay with the Company and get on another contract that would be just as far or even farther from my husband.
After that, I worked as a lab tech for a few months and then as a chemical analyst for about a year and a half; all in all just under 2 years. Then I quit to try and ultimately fail to open a chocolate shop in what has turned out to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The candy-cane nail in the chocolate coffin was catching whooping cough through the holiday season. When I should have been making truffles, I was rather disgustingly sick instead. (I did manage to complete 3 EGEs.)
When it because painfully obvious that I would, and in fact already did, fail I began trying to find a job in the Great Recession. Like every other time in my life, one sneaked up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder while I was job-hunting elsewhere, volunteering to save h2g2, combing kitty-cats at the shelter, and helping out at the radio station.
So the new job should start in about 2 weeks. There still should be time to give all the kitty-cats at the shelter a weekly grooming and help out the radio station's engineer once a week or thereabouts. I also need to bone up on java and a set of open source tools specific to the job.
This probably means I'll have less time for h2g2, or at least, I shall have to use my hootoo time extremely efficiently. I'm a bit amazed that I ended up on the Comms Team rather than the Tech Team, but it is allegedly this sort of working outside one's comfort zone that's supposed to build character, or some such nonsense.
In the meantime, I have quite a few things to wrap up, both online and in Real Life, whatever that is.
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Latest reply: Aug 11, 2011
Chuck Lorre Productions #212
Posted Jun 10, 2011
I believe that the voices of fear, both from without and within, can only be dispelled by trusting the voice that comes from the heart. Be still and listen to it. If it speaks of love and compassion for others, for the world itself, it just might be the voice of God -- or a reasonable facsimile. If, however, it snarls with fear of the unknown, fear of losing what you have or of not getting what you want, then it just might be the voice of Rupert Murdoch -- or a reasonable facsimile.
After the end credits of the television show Big Bang Theory.
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Latest reply: Jun 10, 2011
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