Sacred works

Posted on 24 April 2009 by scooterbird

who died and madeI don’t go to bat for people too much, especially on the Intarwebs.  One could spend one’s entire life doing so, unfortunately, and there are things around the house that need doing, and the cats need to be fed, and such like that.  But every so often I pipe up on something which I feel needs a bit of attention, and so it is with the Internet Sacred Texts Archive.

I don’t know the fellow that does this at all, or what his particular reasons are for doing it beyond those stated on the site, but the Archive is exactly what it says on the tin: a voluminous collection of texts which are sacred to someone, somewhere on the globe.  Note that this isn’t confined to the usual Most Popular Religions, Inc., but there’s also plenty of weird cultic stuff, long discredited nonsense, and even stuff that the seculars and atheists dredge up just to get into the act.  (They get jealous.  It’s almost cute.)

The guy running the site sells copies of it on DVD-ROM, and you should buy one, because I can’t, because I’m broke.  Obviously he has been – all together now! – hit by the economic downturn, so he could use the cash money to keep things going.

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GOOD LORD! [CHOKE!]

Posted on 11 April 2008 by scooterbird

I have hit the front page of Yah-who to test out a browser.  The top story is on last night’s American Idol episode, which is merely depressing, certainly in concept if not in content.  The true EC Comics horror factor kicks in when you look down in the bottom right corner.  It’s a feature labeled “Pulse”, and subtitled, in a bit of perhaps unintentional truth-telling, “What Yahoos are Into”.  The box randomly updates with a different glurge every time you update the page – favorite teen celebs, upcoming Hollywood movies, current “news of the weird” inbox cloggers…basically, a litany of glitzy, content-devoid culture crack for sheeple.  The absolutely horrifying one that made me despair for all humanity was Popular Music Artists, a three-word title of which only the first might be true; the accompanying pic was of the first listed putative artist, Danity Kane:

Looks like what happens when five girls from 14th Street uptown suddenly acquire enough money to go to Georgetown for a spree – and then voluntarily choose to go back to 14th Street afterwards.  If you’re keeping score at home, Client #9 would need another $21,500.

Not to be outdone, the remaining “artists” were Chris Brown, Lil’ Wayne, Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey, and Rihanna.  I can’t think of six better reasons offhand to pierce your own eardrums with a hatpin and gratefully enroll at Gallaudet.

Sure, it’s fashionable for each generation to sniff at the following ones’ musical tastes; it happened to Elvis, the Stones, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, any number of hip-hop artists.  And “pop music” has never been of too much worth as a body of work, no matter the era.  But by damn, skippy, what is wrong with music today?  I have gone on at length elsewhere that there were times when things were much better across the board; can we safely say that this is one of those times when the opposite has happened?  When things will be rejuvenated soon, and we’ll have another Elvis, another John Lennon, another Mick Jones or David Byrne to come in and clean out the chaff, to hasten them to the backwaters of kitsch musical history?  Please, someone tell me this will happen…soon…

Filed under: music | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Someone cue that “O RLY?” owl

Posted on 26 January 2008 by scooterbird

Two things: first, I recently read about Cory Doctorow, the author/blogger/activist/Boing Boing guy, being described as a “polymath“; I believe this was on 43 Things or something. That seems like a good thing to be, and I suppose in the abstract I’ve considered myself something of a polymath due to my various pursuits as a computer engineer, writer, businessman, politician, actor, religious minister, and, of late, journalist, though I would guess that “dilettante” might be closer to the truth. Given the description of Doctorow, however, I’m not as sure. His writing, be it in a book, on a blog, or otherwise, all seems to be related to his political activism (which I broadly agree with, btw) in some fashion…and his intelligence, in this or indeed in any field, might be better demonstrated by, for example, not having associates censor those who criticize your novels when you yourself are an anti-censorship activist (here’s a more illustrative example), or perhaps not suggesting database information leaks should be treated the same as nuclear accidents. These things don’t say “polymath” to me as much as “person with a serious lack of perspective”, and these and other statements were enough to get me to rethink having him on my list of people I’d like to meet on the aforementioned 43 Things.

Btw, dontcensorme.com seems to be a very handy site which is suffering from a lack of traffic and interest, and I would recommend folks visit it and remember to use it when such an incident happens to them.

Second, is anyone else looking at coverage of Anonymous’s declared “war” on Scientology and grokking what fools these mortals be? I have to wonder first if al-Qaeda looks at our coverage of them and wonders the same things. I remember hearing the CEO of meetup.com declare emphatically at the Claim Democracy conference that “loosey-goosey networks don’t get shit done”, but maybe that should be followed by “reliably” – in the aforementioned cases, they certainly seem to be doing the trick. At the risk of sounding like Marvel Comics, it’s difficult to figure out how to harness that power for good…but I have to figure that if Ron Paul can do it, people with better ideas – which doesn’t narrow down the field too much – can as well.

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