It's All Too Much!!! Or Thing #8

I love the World Wide Web. I really do. I love that I could disagree with someone about tax law and find out that I was right within 5 minutes by going to the irs website, and then copy and paste the correct information into an email complete with a citation.

But there is just so much out there! And some of it's great, and some of it isn't at all interesting, but the medium doesn't give me enough control to limit what I can look at so eventually I'm just overwhelmed. The news feeds make it even worse.

Banned Book Week!

Banned Book Week has ended, and I forgot to celebrate it.

If you don't like that picture, try my banned books display.

Flickr issues or Thing #5

I wasn't sure what to make of Flickr. I'm still not. First of all, it needs a much faster connection than I have at home, where I'm relying on a dialup connection, to be really useful. I think it's nice that I can take pictures and put them up on a website so my family and friends can see them, but it's also a little disconcerting. It's too easy to forget that the Internet is in no way a gated community; anyone can see what everyone's posting. Forgive me if it sounds a little paranoid, but I don't want to put my name on anything I just put up without controlling who can look at it.

I know Flickr tries to control for this, because they do give people an option of restricting who has access to what's posted, but it still makes me feel a little uneasy.

I did however put pictures from my grandfather's birthday party up and invited my relatives to go look at them. We live all over the country and never really get a chance to see all the pictures we've taken of one another.

But Mommy, I Don't LIKE Science Fiction/Fantasy!

I've never really been a Science Fiction fan. I've read some Heinlein, I've read some Asimov, but I never really got into the genre. Then I found "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" by Robert Rankin, and I was hooked. Jack goes to "The City" to search for adventure. After surviving a carnivorous farmer who traps and kills orphan boys, Jack is taken up by Eddie Bear, a stuffed teddy bear private detective. "The City" is Toy City, inhabited almost exclusively by toys. Someone is killing off the old toys (Humpty Dumpty, for starters). If you need to recommend science fiction to someone who really doesn't want to read it, try offering them The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies.

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners?

I think calling "play" only half a habit belittles the value of having fun; I remember things better when I'm having fun. I am more likely to pay attention to things I enjoy, and I do not consider playing "work."

I took piano lessons for 7 years, and I never thought that practicing was "work" until the very last year. I think I got to be pretty good at the piano because I didn't consider exercises or practicing "work."

Beginning with the end in mind often prevents me from enjoying the learning experience, because all I'm concerned with is my intended "destintion;" getting there is half the fun, and staying aware of other possible uses for what I'm studying can make the process more interesting.

Commentary on HTML coding on blogger.com

I know HTML coding, so I found the HTML coding assistance a little confusing; I was just typing the link to Walmartopia into the text of my post, and I had to hunt around to figure out which of the icons was necessary to link to something else on the web. (That might be because I'm known for making things more difficult than they have to be, but I don't think the icon for posting a link is terribly meaningful.)

I also don't understand why the post time isn't right; I click on "Post Options" and a post time and date are listed, but the time has always been wrong by about 3 hours.

First Play

Last week I saw Walmartopia, a musical about Walmart and how Walmart treats its employees. It posits that there might be a time when Walmart is the only store in the world, and that is ridiculous. How could Walmart want to be the only store in the world, since at that time its "always low prices" ad campaign would be meaningless?

I just found this fabulous site, Off-Off Blogway, and I think other people should see it because it's pretty impressive. I wish I'd put up a blog like that.