I am totally in love with my new green 4G iPod nano. I love it, totally love it. I only wish that I had gotten the one with more capacity. I am very close to crossing the limit already, and I’m only about halfway through my CD collection. I’ve had to redo a couple of the songs – some of my favorite CDs are a little beat up. Of course, I can keep more on my computer, and just check…
Two pleasantly plump Jehovah’s Witness women have just departed, their undelivered invitation to the upcoming District Convention in hand. They were still huffing and puffing a bit from the exertion required to climb the driveway when they rang the bell. For a moment, I was tempted to pretend not to be home. Sigh. Nah. I instructed Ben to go play elsewhere in the house so that I could talk to them. Follow the Christ. Sigh. I let them go through…
Richard Rorty has died. Rorty had an uncanny ability to stare into the post-modern abyss, in which nothing is grounded in the divine or universal, and yet somehow, some way, find a kind of practical empathy that could serve as a beacon in the face of nihilism, authoritarianism and cruelty. Yes. Richard Rorty helped me to understand that an ethics based on universals might be neither kind nor accurate to human experience. He offered some possible alternative methods. I had…
I wrote my Ph.D. twice. I tried to write in academic language, but I never found my academic voice. Instead, I wrote in my own voice, and then translated it over. I tried to avoid becoming completely opaque, while maintaining the level of technically-precise terminology (or jargon) that seemed to be required. So I was delighted to see (thanks to Medusa at Professional Mirror Ph.D) that there is a random academic sentence generator from Pootwattle the Virtual Academic. Smedley the…
Thanks to my boss, who donated a used computer to me for my birthday, I now have a computer that can handle ITunes. Unfortunately, the CD drive on the computer reads but doesn’t write. I guess I could hook up my old computer, wipe most of the drive, and use it as music backup. Or even harness the CD drive to make a couple of music disks. I have an mpg player, but it plays cds. I’ve finally begun looking…
“The Jig of Life” by Kate Bush has been playing in my mind since I got up this morning. It has had an effect. I planted more lavendar, and golden thyme, and french thyme, and some patches of mondo grass, and a new annual called a chartreuse leafed lemon talinum (which has tiny little pink beads on its stalks that are supposed to erupt into tiny rose-pink flowers). Then, I got into water, namely our little pond. I mean I…