The Littlest Penguin

Amazon vs the store down the street

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | books, internet | 4 Comments

I don’t have anything terribly intelligent or informed to add to discussion over the Amazon.com vs Macmillan price debacle. In fact, I love, love, love Amazon. But I also understand the importance of supporting local businesses and I understand why authors whose books were yanked from the world’s biggest book marketplace (even temporarily) would be pissed off right now. In fact, Charles Stross removed Amazon from his “buy my books” area all together. Which led to a fairly delightful discovery for me. Now Stross’ links direct you to IndieBound, a site that (among other things) can help you find local bookstores carrying the title you want. You can go get the book yourself or order online from their participants. I wonder if the site can tell you if they serve good coffee, too.

On Facebook, Politics, and Status Messages

Friday, September 11th, 2009 | internet, rants | 17 Comments

Recently I broke one of my cardinal rules: I posted a political opinion on Facebook. And now, gentle reader, you get a rant.

Not that I have issues with other people stating what they believe in their profiles and status messages – by all means do. But when I joined Facebook I worked for a college and was not often sympathetic to their official stance on certain social, religious, and political issues. The campus could be a little bit like a fishbowl, and though I had (have) very few students and faculty on my friends list, I decided it might be better to exercise care in what kind of information I put out there. Also, ideologically, I’ve been a lot of places in my short life and know people all over the spectrum. Maybe it was one part fear that kept me from saying anything that would upset old conceptions of what I think. Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with the inevitable postings calling me an uninformed lemming of a liberal. Or worse, someone ignoring me all together.

Back in college I posted on a forum called The Ooze (no, I won’t link it) that was supposed to be a safe place for discussing the Church in the 21st century, specifically the Emergent Church. A lot of nice people on there, one or two of whom I even met personally a time or two, but eventually the trolls got to me. I couldn’t handle working on what I considered a well-worded and calm post for 30 or 40 minutes just to be brushed off with a “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day” ten seconds later. Worse was checking back on the thread a day later and realizing that no one had found my post worth the time to respond to. So I stopped going, stopped posting, stopped asking my questions in the forum and decided sitting around with two or three friends and a chai latte or beer was preferable to sitting in front of my computer agonizing over why some total stranger didn’t think I was worth their time. I rarely posted on forums after that, aside from the Order of the Stick forum’s silly message board games. Stabbity Death really doesn’t lend itself to political debate.

Part of me thinks that keeping my thoughts to myself is a little self serving and dishonest, though. Why should I let people think I’m something I’m not? They knew me once, and they liked me enough to find me on Facebook, so why not let them know me now? So the other day I responded to a status message posting about the health care reform debate. One of the hottest button issues I could have touched. Really, I should have known better. While the guy whose status message is of a similar mind to mine, and one of my old college mates complemented me for my presentation of a view counter to someone else’s in the discussion, I ended up angry and ultimately fighting a very intense desire to make a verbal attack. But this isn’t Facebook, this is my own personal blog. I still maintain that an email from an unconfirmed source claiming to be a congressman doesn’t count as a reliable source. Even if the email is legit, we’ve watched congressmen and women distort the facts of this issue for their own gain. Do your own damned homework. It isn’t that hard. Fox News isn’t a reliable resource, either. Hell, no ONE news or information source is. Cross-reference for crying out loud. This is the digital era. If you’re on Facebook you have the rest of the internet at your fingertips, too. Bills and proposals are easily found online. Lots of respected professionals have blogged commentary on this issue. Google is your friend. If you have issues with my argument, address them. Don’t discount or ignore me because the only thing you zoomed in on was my “liberal” source and not my actual argument.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, last night I posted a vaguely political status message of my own. Now, my big thing in the health care discussion is that no one has been treating it like a discussion. All I’ve seen is a lot of sensationalized coverage of town hall meetings, congressmen and women throwing insults across the aisle, and mass emails sent from God-knows-where about how we’re becoming a Socialist state or a Communist regime. Thank you for your fear tactics, whoever you are, but could we please set them aside now and talk to each other like civilized human beings again? So my status read “Ginger listened to the president’s speech and had some ice cream before bed. Here’s to hoping Obama was able to inspire a more informed, civil discussion about health care.” Maybe the president was able, but it appears I sure wasn’t. Trog posted a very even-handed response about how Obama addressed all the highlights of his critics’ problems with the idea of health care reform. But then an old youth minister of mine chimed in saying “Giving that much to the government is scary.” He’s a smart guy, and I don’t want to discount his opinion, off topic though it kind of was, but that feels like bait to me. And I took it, some. William took it more. He didn’t give sources, which is a little bit of a mistake for folks like William and I, but he isn’t a person who does research of some sort every day like we do (or I did) and probably doesn’t place the weight we do on sources. So again, I don’t want to discount his opinion, but I do want to know what kind of info he’s working off of. Not that it matters, because he shut the conversation down. Without responding to my response trying to tease out his sources, or at least better details on where he’s coming from. Yes, William got sharp with him. No, I’m not going to censor my own husband, though I do think I’ll serve him up a nice ‘I told you so.’

I still think that in both cases I posted a legitimate question that was ignored, and that really irks me. Maybe I should go back to keeping it to the blog, though some angry part of me wants to take every stupid opinion poll and sign every petition on Facebook just for spite. Maybe I’ll just post a link to this rant on my profile.

Pen pals reunited?

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | friends, internet | 1 Comment

I just sent an email to my old pen pal Susila. She lives in Thailand and is about my age. My uncle Panu introduced us through letters back in highschool but we fell out of contact. I also found my German pen pal Julia on Facebook after about 4 years of not communicating. I hope she accepts my friend request.

On female gamers

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 | gaming, internet, silly | 3 Comments

Posted by Avenging_Viper on the GitP Friendly Banter forums:

Gamus gynae is a rare and exotic specimen of the Geekanthropus family. Commonly mystaken for a mythical creature, Gamus gynae is merely illusive and endangered, as it’s natural habitat is frought with such dangers as the related predatory species Gamus lecheraii. Gamus gynae should not be confused with a similar species Nerdus femina. Though the two often share similar habitats, their plumage and mating behaviors are quite different.

Through time

Thursday, May 31st, 2007 | art, internet | 3 Comments

I wanted to share this with someone, so here. It’s an amazing video from Juxtapoz that morphs portraits of women in Western art from the Renaissance forward. Creepy. Cool. Very beautiful.

One of the comments on the Juxtapoz site notes that it’s almost like you’re watching the same woman, the Archetypal Beautiful Woman, depicted by many different generations of artists. It’s a trick of the morphing, I’m certain, but it does add the “creepy” factor in. What amazing and marvelous things can be done when you’re a super-genius with a computer!!

Global comparisons

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 | internet, world stage | No Comments

I found a really neat link on BoingBoing today. Worldprocessor takes globes and overlays them with data. Kind of like informative art. Some are mundane, some are interesting, and some have data that unnerved or saddened me. Some of the photos didn’t load for me, but the website states that over 300 globes have been created.

Catching up.

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 | cat, friends, internet, nephew | 1 Comment

Geesh, I haven’t blogged more than a snippet in a while. Let’s catch up a bit, shall we?

Yesterday my inbox was flooded with photos of my little nephew. He’s 5 months old now and they’re starting to wean him. As you can see, the strained carrots experiment was met with mixed results. You should see what he did with cereal.

Wes and I got to hang out a little bit while he was in town. We caught up with each other as well as talked about news from some mutual friends and acquaintances. Life’s moved pretty fast for some of us. He’s finished one of his books and has made significant progress with the second. Chalice Press is interested in the second book, which is about how MySpace became a place for Wes to do ministry. Welcome to Web 2.0.

Ah, and one more photo. While Kevin was in town I finally broke down and adopted another cat. I’ve wanted to for a while, but with the chaos with the old apartment I decided to put it off a little longer. I found a sweet three year old cat at Petsmart and decided he’d make a good friend for Anselm. He’s very mild, but he’s a chubby butt… 13 pounds. I renamed him Paddington since he’s marmalade colored and the pound didn’t know what his original name was. It’s pretty obvious that he was once someone’s house cat, though.

See? Told you she’s evil.

Friday, March 2nd, 2007 | John Kovalic, cooking, food, fun stuff, gaming, internet, silly, webcomics | 3 Comments

Dork Tower today was just too delightful not to share.

Beautiful people. And cats.

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 | cat, internet, photography, silly, travel, world stage | No Comments

Boingboing.net recently linked to the work of Raul Gutierrez. Among other places, he traveled to rural Tibet and photographed the people and their lives. Here is a link to his photos. I’d share some of my own from my 2002 trip, but he does a much better job. (And they really are some of the most beautiful people I’ve encountered.)

Boingboing also linked to this terribly silly YouTube video: “Cats in Things They’re Not Supposed to be.” Caution: Language not safe for work.

shiny link

Thursday, January 25th, 2007 | internet, work | 3 Comments

Today I finally got a link (two, actually) for the archives on the college’s home page. It involved a slightly frustrated email and a small defense of my position as a research entity and not an “Ask Jeeves” office, but for the first time in archvies history, people do not have to contact 4 different offices in order to find the information I provide access to. Huzzah!