And sure enough, suing your best customers is probably not a good idea.
Now, you have ISPs shutting down websites for hosting copyrighted material…. even though the same people who own the website hold the copyright! It’s out of control…
The music industry (defined as a near-monopoly by a few major labels) is doomed. They are panicking. Too bad for them.
I’ve lived in the suburbs. I’ve lived in medium-sized midwestern cities. I’ve lived in small coastal cities. I’ve lived along the beach. I’ve lived on a beautiful hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
But living in the woods is easily my favorite. At least so far.
I ran across The Wrath of the Secretrons by Connie L Schmidt. In it, she coins the very amusing term “New Wage” movement, which is her term for “the prosperity-obsessed, MLM-loving segment of the New-Age and motivational crowd.”
Basically, she dismisses The Secret and its emphasis on the Law Of Attraction in promoting personal wealth, which I agree is a somewhat dubious motivation for spiritual enlightenment.
One of her biggest critiques is that the Law of Attraction “is presented as a scientific law akin to the law of gravity.” This reveals her misunderstanding: The Secret, What The Bleep, and all this other stuff is metaphysics, not physics.
Metaphysics cannot be proven one way or another; it either makes sense or it doesn’t. They all are theories and cannot be scientifically tested; whereas metaphysics speculates on the whole of the universe and how it operates, scientific theory must rely on isolating variables (ie, cutting off the interesting variable from the rest of the universe and testing it in lab conditions). One cannot do this with metaphysics.
I agree, The Secret and What The Bleep and countless other metaphysical offerings have their problems. But they shouldn’t be taken as science. They are more metaphysical in nature; they suggest to us ways of being in the world as opposed to solid, provable, repeatable, and peer-reviewed hypotheses about isolated chunks of existence.
An interesting bit of science:
The Cardiff team suggests that radioactive elements can keep water in liquid form in comet interiors for millions of years, making them potentially ideal “incubators” for early life. They also point out that the billions of comets in our solar system and across the galaxy contain far more clay than the early Earth did. The researchers calculate the odds of life starting on Earth rather than inside a comet at one trillion trillion (10 to the power of 24) to one against (emphasis added).
The technical name for this theory is panspermia, which invites its own lewd metaphorical joke. But maybe Tim Leary was right — ashes to ashes, dust to dust, from outer space to outer space.
There are lots of junk shops, antique shops, and the like in Maine. It’s a big, rural state, with a small economy, where lots of people with money own second homes (which of course drives up the property prices, further repressing Maine’s economy).
You can find just about anything in these shops. That’s probably where this collectible severed hand was found.
….wake up one day, look around, and realize you live in a really amazing place?
That happened to me the other day. And a few times since.
All of our stuff is unpacked now, and I’ve been quite busy around the house doing lots of fix-it type things. I’ve built 8 bookshelves (4 quite small, two quite large, and two medium-sized), a new compost bin, and a bench seat for my daughter’s loft bed. I’ve also lowered her loft bed (she can now sit up in bed!!!). I installed a new kitchen faucet, and caulked our bathtub. Whee!
In all seriousness, I really love this kind of work.
Soon now, I will begin turning my attention to the outside. In the short term, I have compost to cook, garden beds to plan and landscape, and a yard to get ready for a party in September. In the medium term, I have a studio to build. In the long term, I’d like to put a screened-in-porch and a deck behind the house.
Fun fun fun. The woods behind our house are very cool. I need to spend more time in them.
We’ve moved in to our new house, in the sense that all of our belongings are on our property. Many of them are even in the house. A few of them are put away….
Lots of work is ahead, though. Tomorrow’s big project is some carpentry. There isn’t much storage space in the place, and shelves are needed. This will allow there to be an “away” to “put” many of our belongings.
We also bought a futon today. So we’ll have much better crash space than a sleeping bag on a floor….
My to do list is a mile long, and I don’t even want to think about how much my credit card debt has increased.
But all in all, it’s a very exciting, if exhausting time.
Imagine. A group has, after careful study, concluded that Terrorism is not the focus of the Department of Homeland Security.
Exhibit A:
Of the 814,073 people charged by DHS in immigration courts during the past three years, 12 faced charges of terrorism, TRAC said. Those 12 cases represent 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed.
Exhibit B:
The TRAC analysis also found that DHS filed a minuscule number of what are called “national security” charges against people in the immigration courts. The report stated that 114, or 0.014 percent of the total of roughly 800,000 individuals charged were charged with national security violations.
And what was DHS’s response? Nothing but empty rhetoric, stating that the report is “ill-conceived” and that the group “lacked a grasp of the DHS mission.”
That’s what is so maddening about this. This report looks at what the DHS DOES. The DHS spokesman wants us to focus on what they SAY they do. Big difference.
One can draw two possible conclusions from these facts: either the mission of DHS is not what it is commonly claimed (ie, to protect Us(tm) from Terrorism(tm), or they are just terribly incompetent at what they do. Additionally, it seems fairly obvious that terrorism just isn’t the threat that it is made out to be.
For the first time in human history, right around now is when the World population becomes more urban than rural.
In other news, we have officially bought the house in New Gloucester. We’ve started moving now; we get the rental truck and take the bulk of our stuff on Monday. Then, we start sleeping there.
I guess they might have to wait another day on that; 3 Mainahs are going from urban to rural….
Time for some spring cleaning around here, methinks.
I’m still thinking of moving this site to a WordPress blog. The cool thing about that is that I believe I could import both this blog and my old blog into one giant, mega-site of happy JWL goodness.
Though since Google bought out Blogger and went to Blogger 2.0, there seem to be some issues in importing the content.
This page, however, seems to say that it is possible.
Hopefully I’ll start working on this soon….