I've been spending a lot of time in the past day and a half getting into Indymedia; reading their mailing list archives, and talking to people on irc.indymedia.org. As a result, I haven't really been visiting any other sites. Thus the dearth of recent links. There is a lot of independent media to read, though. :>
Niel Bornstein's Personal Political Platform puts things in perspective, and otherwise illustrates the really big gap between ideals and reality.
In other politics, there are some serious demonstrations going on in Korea. Wow.
Markerfight!, and an interesting piece about the use of Hitler in ideology. Both by David Grenier.
LOL! Jessamyn sent along some markerfight pics...
Dang. I just realized that CSS support is even worse in Netscape 4.0/windoze than it is on the Mac. Back to the drawing board? Nah. I'll just sit tight and say I'm supporting web standards. Hee hee. So follow that link and upgrade your browser already! Or just turn off Stylesheets, if you haven't already. update: I fiddled with the CSS enough that font size shouldn't be an issue anymore, and as a bonus, people can now post comments. Apparently, the form wasn't working in Netscape. God, I feel like I'm managing some kind of important project. Except I'm not.
I had someone email me that he had come across my Personal Political Platform and found some commonalities with what he believed (and some differences, which is fine). But he had gone one step further and written up a Personal Hypocrisy Inventory, detailing the ways in which his behaviour differed from his ideals.
Interesting idea, I thought. I'll do something like that at some point.
testing the comments by adding this link to the Alternative Press Collection at the Minneapolis Community & Technical College Library.
I've always liked Niel's PPP -- both the idea and most of his actual views. My favorite thing about it is that he doesn't mess around; he goes right to the heart of the matter: the UDHR, which I take to be one of the most important political documents of the 20th century.
I thought about doing a PPP once, following Niel's example, but then I realized that's what Monkeyfist is, more or less. :>
Hmm, I'm not sure where else to say this, and it seems the kind of wankeresque thing webloggers are always saying, so I figure I'll give it a whirl: I just realized, having read Jessamyn's comments lately on Misnomer, that, subliminally, I bet, the DSL provider, Speakeasy.net, I picked for our new house is the one Jessamyn works for. How completely odd. It must have stuck in my head from the times I used to read her blog.
Of course this means that I can't play all my fun (and perverse) technical support games if, or when, I have trouble. But, then again, it may be nice if I can reach her when I call in because I can't post my latest anarchist rant because the DSL is down -- at least she'll give a damn or, failing that, know what I'm whining about.
The person I've talked to so far, in sales, has been helpful, and I realize all the *really* gross DSL stuff is mostly the Bells' and Covad's fault -- like them making me wait 1 *month* until after our new phone line is setup before they'll let me order RADSL, a bit of petty bureaucratic stupidity I circumvented by ordering SDSL, for which they require only a week petty bureaucratic wait -- but I did get a bit pissy with him. Oops.
Suffice it to say that if there is a hell for petit-bourgeois losers like me, it's having to order and reorder DSL for eternity. While listening to on-hold music. While doing tedious Unix sysadmin work via a 28.8 dialup. In vi.
Make that "worked for"...
the good news: you can make all their lives a living hell as far as I'm concerned [though karmic retribution will bite you on the ass for that eventually] and drop me a note if you need the straight skinny on anything.
the bad news: your support will suck worse than it might have before my departure. ha ha ha. I write teacher's manuals for fifth grade textbooks now, no nasty customers!