General

A note to people writing articles about RSS-based news aggregators. UserLand wrote and deployed the first one, in the spring of 1999. It was called My.UserLand.Com and was quite popular. We then took the same code and converted it to run on the desktop, in the Radio environment. This was called My.UserLand on the Desktop, and it was also quite popular. It was then baked into Radio 7, and enhanced in Radio 8. To write a review about news aggregators and to not include Radio, is wrong, and if you have a reason for doing it, it should be clearly disclaimed in your article so your readers understand. Already one BigPub has done this (with no explanation). We care about people knowing about our innovations. We don’t file patents so other developers can compete with us. But please don’t penalize us for our philosophy of generosity. Thanks.  [Scripting News]

Showing that you care is something you’re not supposed to do. The penalty is death, in a symbolic sense. Better to stay aloof, uninvolved, like a TV character. “I don’t really care,” I say, when nothing could be further from the truth. This is the American way. (Or at least the California way.)

But, at some point you have to take a stand. Maybe it’s in the last days or hours of life, struggling against cancer, heart disease or diabetes, or whatever’s gonna getcha. Maybe at that point it’s okay to care, to take a stand, to fight. But I suspect not. Even then people say “What’s he getting so riled up for?” The answer of course is fairly obvious.

It’s called living, and it’s worth getting agitated over, in theory.  [Scripting News]

Harry S Truman. “I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: ‘Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.’ I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have – When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do.” [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Halley also wrote the famous Internet essay that begins with this stunning sentence. “When my dad wakes up today, the first thing he will notice is that he is dead.” What a great piece. It is art. We have our debates and beat our chests a lot in InternetLand, but this is why I love to make writing tools, to enable writers like Halley to tell stories like this one. I’ve never met her, and she uses Blogger, not my software, but I’m still proud to be part an Internet that hosts such great writing. [Scripting News]

Coming soon- the “I support a Bush regime change” t-shirt. [Sean Gallagher: the dot.communist]

Hanging at the Panera Bread shop in Everett, Massachusetts, out in the parking lot of a “real job” store.  Enjoying a Cobblestone Muffin, some Earl Grey Tea, and waiting on a peer to arrive.

My task:  writing assessment feedback for three folks that work for me.  Loads of fun!

“Union meetings by this time [early 1950s – ed] had settled down quite a bit and everything was done by Robert’s Rules of Order, but once during a meeting I particularly remember, one guy was abusive. I told him that as long as I was president, there could be any amount of criticism, but nobody was allowed to abuse the chair like that. If we were demanding that workers no longer be abused by the boss, then we couldn’t abuse each other. I took it seriously that the Mine Mill Ritual says: ‘Speak kindly to one another and be careful to not unjustly criticize any member, nor attribute to him unworthy motives simply because he may differ with you. It is by honest difference of opinion that we arrive at sound conclusions and correct judgements.’

“So when this guy still wouldn’t stop, I adjourned the meeting for ten minutes so that I could take him out and educate him. Nobody in the room stirred — they knew what was going to happen. I took him out back, took his glasses off and whacked him one. Then I put his glasses back on, left him lying there and went back into the meeting. I knew he’d come in later and he did — came in and sat down and never bothered me again. His name was Kitch Bannatyne — one of the guys on our side, later a vice-president. But it was no big deal. Kitch knew he had it coming.”

– from _Red Bait! Struggles of a Mine Mill Local_ by Al King