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Saturday, January 5, 2008
3:03:05 PM MST
Weekend Assignment #197: Missing Words
Oops! I forgot to crosspost this!
Ok, we're going to try this. John Scalzi left off with Weekend Assignment #196,
so with his permission and encouragement, let's try to keep it going.
Here then is Weekend Assignment #197 (numbering corrected Saturday at
4:38 AM):
 There's not a lot on tv these days.
Weekend Assignment #197:
Now that the WGA strike has had lots of time to affect the prime time
television schedules, how is it affecting you as a viewer? What show do
you miss most, aside from reruns? Do you miss your weekly
appointment with that ill-behaved doctor, or your visits to Wisteria
Lane? Does it bother you not to laugh at fresh jokes on your favorite
sitcom? Or are you just as happy watching reality shows, or new
episodes of shows that have been held back until now? We want to know!
Extra Credit: how are you spending the time instead?
To
be honest, I don't watch much broadcast TV myself. Most of the time I
watch DVDs instead, if anything. But even I am missing the few shows I
normally do watch. Three of them are--or were--on NBC's Monday night sf
lineup: Chuck, followed by Heroes, followed by Journeyman.
I kind of lost track of Chuck after he fought with his beautiful C.I.A.
minder once too often, but I watched the other two every week.
And much as I like Hiro and Peter and Claire, I have to say the show I miss the most that night is Journeyman. I'm a sucker for time travel shows anyway, and this one does it well. Sure, it's essentially a Quantum Leap
ripoff, but there are worse things to rip off--much worse. And the
character dynamics are interesting, as the wife struggles to cope with
her frequently time-lost husband, their young son starts to catch on to
what is happening, and the traveler's brother struggles to make sense
of what's happening with more mundane explanations. Good stuff!
Then there's Tuesday night. And yes, Julie, I do miss House MD, probably more than Journeyman. I think.
And
what do I do on Monday and Tuesday nights? Why, I spend it at the
computer, of course, with a DVD running on one laptop and ten tabs of
Firefox open on the other!
Your turn: write up what you miss (or
don't miss) on tv these days, and come back here (or to the Outpost) and leave a link in
comments. If for some reason you have trouble commenting (although it
should work for everyone, one way or another), feel free to email your
link to mavarin at aol.com. To give time for word to spread and
everyone to play, I'll do the roundup of your links in one week, next
Thursday night. Got it? Good! Thanks, folks! I know I'm no John Scalzi,
but we don't have to lose his legacy, as long as some of us care enough
to keep it going!
Edit: I
have been taken to task for not explaining what the WGA is and why it
matters. I don't want to get into the politics of it (let's just say
I'm pro-WGA and leave it at that), but here's what it's about:
WGA is the Writer's Guild of America,
the folks who write the TV shows. As has been widely reported over the
last few months, they're on strike, so networks and production
companies are running out of new episodes of comedies and dramas. Why
it matters, aside from inconvenience to the viewer and economic impact
on the entertainment industry and the New York and California
economies, is that it's a battle over writers being compensated for
their work in new media such as Internet downloads. The result will set
a precedent in determining the extent to which new tech is made part of
the royalty pie.
Karen
*** copying over the first comment from the Outpost:***
John Scalzi said...
Hey! My first time as a participant! And I'm the first to post!
My answer is here.
Thanks for taking these up, Karen. I think you're going to do a great job.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy!
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Monday, December 31, 2007
9:36:41 PM MST
Feeling Hopeful
Your Substitute Monday Photo Shoot: What's New?
Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin:
Your Substitute Monday Photo Shoot: What's New?
As you should all know by now, today (Monday, December 31st, 2007) was John Scalzi's last day blogging for AOL on By the Way.
A number of people have said they were going to miss John's Monday
Photo Shoots, and a few have asked me whether anyone will be picking up
the slack, and assigning them in John's stead. MPS addict that I am,
I'm willing to give it a shot. How about you?
Here's how this
will work: I will post an entry every Monday with that week's subject.
(After this week, it will be early Monday AM, not Monday night.) If you
want to join in, take your picture, post it to your blog or journal,
and leave a link in the comments to the original entry here. On
Thursday night, I'll do a follow-up entry just as John did, linking
back to everyone who participated. Simple, no? Then let's get started!
Your Substitute Monday Photo Shoot #1: What's New?
In honor of the new year, show us something new. It can be a gift you
got over the holidays, something you gave yourself, or even something
that symbolizes the New Year to you. If it's new, it'll do!
Here's mine:
This is the coolest Christmas present I got this year: the 25th Anniversary Illustrated Collector's Edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams. It's one of my favorite books of all time. It's also
one of my favorite tv shows and spoken word records, several of my
favorite audio tapes, my very favorite radio show and my second
favorite towel. It's not remotely my favorite film, but one can't have
everything.
I have the text of the first Hitchhiker's
book in several editions as it is, but this one is pretty special. It's
full of visual reproductions of annotated scripts, behind the scenes
photos from the various productions, merchandise, flyers and fan
memorabilia. Love it! (And yes, I realize the above photo isn't
terribly good from a technical standpoint. The glare off glossy paper
gets me every time!)
Your turn! Take a picture of something new,
post it to your blog, and come back here and leave your link. You have
until midnight Thursday night, when I will compile the roundup of
links from both Musings and the Outpost. Remember, your participation or lack thereof will determine
whether there's still a Monday Photo Shoot in the weeks ahead. And if
someone else wants to take it over, please let me know so we can
coordinate. Thanks!
Karen
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Friday, December 14, 2007
8:38:41 PM MST
Celebrate Him Home
Cross-posted from
Outpost Mâvarin:
As we know, AOL will soon be parting company with John Scalzi, creator of the AOL Journal By the Way, the Weekend Assignments, Monday Photo Shoots, and a handful of nifty Ficlets.
This is one of those "by mutual agreement" situations; AOL is
contemplating a change in direction, and Scalzi is contemplating how
much easier it will be to meet his deadlines for writing books if he's
not busy amusing us with news of phosphorescent cats and fun games and
pictures out hotel windows.
I already did my main Scalzi tribute entry, so I'm not going to go on and on about him tonight.
That's where you come in.
Are
you one of John Scalzi's many fans? Was it because of him that you
first learned how to upload a photo or a video, or had at least one
thing to write about each weekend? Has By the Way or the Ficlets blog
always been a "must read" for you? As time ticks away to the end of the
year, when Scalzi's AOL contract runs out, would you like to show your
appreciation for his four years of fun and inspiration and community
building, and share your favorite Scalzi memes or moments with other
readers?
If so, we've got just the journal for you!
It's called
ScalziCelebration
and it just went live Wednesday night. Carly (whose idea this was), Steven
and I have put it together on AOL as a centralized place in which we
can all thank John Scalzi for all his good work, and leave links to our
own tributes, favorite Monday Photo Shoots, Weekend Assignments,
Ficlets or other Scalzi-related fun. We've got three entries to get
things started, and we'll be adding more over the next three weeks,
featuring YOUR links and tributes, plus several surprises. So click on
over and see what you think. Let's gather our scattered journaling
community one more time, and give our Blogfather a big send-off!
Karen
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Saturday, May 26, 2007
6:15:11 PM MST
Pointing at the Past
Because I'm totally insane sometimes in an OCD sort of way, I've spent an hour or two today updating two Musings entries from 2004:
5/21/04
Blame John Scalzi and Joe Loong. John Scalzi wrote about people using moblity scooters to get around the Las Vegas Strip, which reminded me how much fun John (Blocher) and I had walking around the place three years ago taking photos. But when I looked at my two postings about it, I saw something Joe warned us about recently: an old AOL You've Got Pictures album was displayed as a Ken Burns style Woohoo slideshow.
I actually hate the old YPG albums (too small and never worked well for me and my dial-up) and love the Ken Burnsy thing. That's not a problem for me at all. I've even put a Ken Burns Woohoo on my church's main web page. But the tiny, grainy photos in that entry, taken three years ago with a Mavica and edited with whatever I had available at the time, are not improved by scrolling lovingly across an extra-large display of the dark, low-res images. So I've deleted one photo that was especially bad, edited full size versions of eight more shots and added them in. And yes, I left it Ken Burns style. Because I don't quite trust you folks to go take a look at the original entry, here is the revised slideshow:
Hmm. It won't display for me in this entry. Stupid dial-up! I'll be interested to know whether it displays for anyone else. It could be a slow connection issue, or it could simply be the way I copied and pasted it in here. (I did get it to display when I loaded the individual entry, so it's probably a connection speed issue. YGP gets impatient with the wait while the Journals product is still loading the other pictures on the page, not to mention the darn ad.)
But all this is a silly thing to do, isn't it? These are extremely obscure journal entries, virtually unknown to the search engines and remembered only by me. When I posted those musings about our Las Vegas trip in May 2004, I only had about two or three readers. Grainy pictures aside, I wrote what I still think is a really good entry about Las Vegas becoming a viable destination for fans of scence fiction and fantasy, but nobody ever saw it or commented. And this entire journal, Musings from Mâvarin, is virtually abandoned now. So why did I bother fixing up a three year old posting in a disused journal? Um, because I could, I think. And three years later, I still hope someone will read it and leave a comment.
Karen
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Friday, March 16, 2007
2:50:21 AM MST
Remembrance of Weekend Assignments Past
Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin because it seems appropriate:
Stories of the Weekend Assignments
Weekend Assignment #156: Repost your favorite Weekend Assignment from the past three years. Or, if you can't choose, post the first Weekend Assignment you ever participated in.
Extra Credit: Should we keep doing the Weekend Assignments? Or after three years, should we give it a rest? Let me know; I'm curious.
When I first saw this assignment this afternoon, I thought it would be quick and easy. All I needed to do was look up Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends, repost it, and I'd been "rolling with puppies," or whatever it is that Willow says in that one Buffy episode. Then I though I ought to actually look and see what else I've written at Scalzi's behest since June 2004. I started with a search for Weekend Assignments on Musings from Mâvarin, and never really got beyond that. After all, between the two blogs, I've written over a hundred of these things. It really wasn't possible for me to read (or even skim) all of them tonight.
But I did read or skim a bunch of them, and I found two contradictory patterns emerging:
- Despite the occasional overlap, there really has been a huge variety of subject matter in Scalzi's assignments.
- Despite #1, I personally tend to write responses that hook in to my own obsessions. Several times I've worked in some kind of time travel story or premise, relating to The Beatles, Disneyland, Doctor Who and certain early U.S. presidents. I've written about my novels, about books by L'Engle and others, and about friends, teachers and relatives of the past and present. And when the assignment was something that didn't interest me, such as pie, I tended to dispose of it as quickly as possible and find a tangent to carry us someplace more interesting.
That last thing under #2 led to the entry I'll be reposting tonight instead of the picnic with Thomas Jefferson. Oddly enough, it involves the same "Scalzi's clone" photo that Scalzi himself reposted today. I don't like it much, and wasn't terribly interested in captioning it, but that was the assignment that night. So I did it, and then I had an interesting conversation about it with my pirate house guest, Black Rose Katie Specks. Enjoy.
Thursday, November 3, 2005
9:17:00 PM MST
The Clone and the House Guest
Weekend Assignment #84: Take a look at the picture below. Tell us what you think is going on in the picture. You can write as long as you want, or as short as you like -- even a photo caption works. Now, it's a fairly weird picture, but I thought that would just give you more to work with. Ready? Here you go:
John Scalzi is finally forced to admit it was a bad idea to crib
his cloning experiment from a Treehouse of Horror episode of
The Simpsons.
Extra Credit: Would you like to see more "explain what's going on in the picture" sort of assignments?
No. Not as such. There's not enough material here for writing one of my patented long entries. Yet somehow I'll manage anyway, especially with my nosy house guest asking questions!
 "Tell me again who John Scalzi is," Black Rose Kate orders.
"He's AOL's designated, professional blogger," I tell her. "He's there to encourage and inspire people to post in their AOL Journals, give tips on how it's done, point the way to interesting or amusing stuff online, and generally entertain us."
"Then by what authority can he assign you to do anything?"
"Oh, it's completely voluntary. But it gives me something to write about that I might not have thought of otherwise."
"Is this something you wanted to write about, now that he's thought of it for you?" she asks pointedly.
"Not really, but I'm proud of the caption I came up with for it."
"I do not understand it. What is a clone?"
"A clone is an exact copy of a person, like a twin, but made by science instead of nature. It's been done with a sheep and other animals. Nobody's ever really cloned a human being yet, as far as we know, and a lot of people say we shouldn't even try it."
"But the monster on the left isn't an exact copy," Kate points out.
I decide not to mention that "monster" would not be a politically correct term for a "cloned American," even a wonky-looking one like Scalzi's. "That's because the premise of the photo is that the cloning experiment didn't quite work out," I explain. "It's supposed to be a joke."
"Well, I fail to see the humour in it," says Kate. "What does your caption mean, about The Simpsons? You have DVDs with that name on them. Are there clones in The Simpsons?"
"Not that I recall," I admit. "But the fake clone in the picture looks a little like the drawings of Homer Simpson in the tv show."
"There are drawings in the tv show?"
"It's nothing but drawings. You can watch some of the DVDs tomorrow if you like."
"And the treehouse of horror? What, pray tell, is that?"
"It's a series of Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, in which horrible things happen. If a cloning experiment went wrong on The Simpsons, it would probably be in a Treehouse of Horror episode."
Black Rose Kate shakes her head. "I think I have done very well so far in understanding your century; but this explanation remains unclear to me."
"It's not important," I tell her. "Nothing kills a joke faster than trying to explain it."
Kate nods thoughtfully. Then she hits me with a question that I should have expected but didn't. "Am I a clone?"
I look at her. There is no denying that Katie Specks looks enough like me that she could indeed be my clone. It is also true that she still doesn't know how she got here. I can't blame her for wondering whether she might not be who she thinks she is.
"You're not a clone," I tell her.
 "Am I a twin?"
"Not of me, you aren't. Perhaps we're related."
"Aye, perhaps. Were your ancesters from England or Ireland?"
"Some of them. I used to jokingly refer to the Irish ones as Viking Irish royalty, the ones who got tired of returning north and became landed gentry instead."
"Aye, I come from the same hardy stock," says Kate. "Mayhap we are relatives. But stay, I have one more question for ye."
"What's that?"
"Am I fictional? You told people that I was a fictional character."
Uh-oh. "How do you know about that?"
"I read the emails you sent to Paul and Gem."
Poor Kate! I'll have to approach my explanation delicately. "I didn't think you would learn to use my computer so quickly," I admit.
 "I find your keyboard difficult to operate, especially the keys with the letters missing. But even I can point and click with the mouse. What is your explanation, Karen?"
"What would you have me tell everyone, Kate? If I post the truth, that you're really here but we don't know why or how, people will either assume that I'm lying, or that I'm crazy, or that I'm telling a story. As a fiction writer, I'd rather they think I'm writing fiction than that I'm lying or crazy."
"You think people will not believe the plain truth?"
"That's right. People just don't turn up from centuries past, alive and well and asking questions."
Kate chuckles. "Fair enough. All right, then. We can pretend that you're spinning a yarn, an it helps you preserve your reputation."
"Thank you."
"But you should have asked me, Karen."
I nod. "Yes. Sorry."
"Aye, well, 'tis unimportant now. Tell me more about The Simpsons. Do these drawings you mention move, like the images in Buffy?"
I think I'll spare you the rest of that conversation.
Karen Some Fictional and/or Time Travel W.A.'s:
Holiday Picnic with Tom and Abby and Friends
Not Your Usual Subscriptions
With the Beatles
Black Rose Katie Specks
An 18th Century pirate looks at the modern world.
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Tuesday, October 24, 2006
1:10:08 AM MST
Cover Me
Cross-posted from Outpost Mâvarin:
Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of something you've made. Pottery, cookies, a drawing or painting, a poem or a pipe cleaner stick man -- it's all good, it just has to have been made by you. Show off your creativity.
First of all, John Scalzi, Carly, Steven, Pat and I want you to know you've put us in a bit of a pickle with this one. Compare your topic with the one announced this past Thursday for the next Round Robin Photo Challenge, entries to be posted on Wednesday, November 1st:
Pat (Deslily) author of the journal, "Here There And Everywhere 2nd Edition," has chosen "The Creative Side Of You" as our theme for the challenge.... Show off your creative side, by posting photos of anything you have created from scratch.
See? Pretty much the same thing, isn't it? You've kinda stolen our thunder here.
Of course we'll forgive you if you plug the Round Robin Photo Challenges. We've being doing these for a year and a half, and you haven't mentioned them yet, perhaps because we didn't ask! Well, we're asking now - nicely, even. Pretty please, beloved Blogfather? Hey, you can even be a Robin yourself if you want to!
While our favorite Campbell Award winner is mulling that over, let's get on with posting a few pictures of things I made. These are three issues of The Observer, the Quantum Leap fanzine / newsletter I used to edit. I designed all of these covers (and many others), wrote much of the stuff inside and edited the rest.
This first cover doesn't look like much, but it's from the first issue of the zine, back around Christmas 1990. It's also an almost exact replica of the cover of a report issued to members of a Senate Committee deciding the fate of Project Quantum Leap in the second season premiere episode, "Honeymoon Express."
This cover is from the fourth issue. I didn't take the photo, and I certainly didn't create or design one of the premiere news magazines of all time. But I did design this parody of their distinctive covers. It refers to a line of dialogue in the pilot episode, in which Al tells amnesiac Sam Beckett that "Time Magazine even called you 'the next Einstein.'" I sent a framed copy of this to the show's production office, back in the day.
Now we come to the best cover I ever did, certainly the most ambitious and labor-intensive. Back in 1993 I did have access to PhotoShop, unlike now, and worked on a Mac. On the other hand, it was 1993, a long time ago in terms of technology. I replaced every face, every object on the cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with someone or something Leapish. I had trouble photographing the glossy cover well, but you get the idea. Click on the photos for much larger versions of the Observer 9 (Number nine, number nine) cover.
The four Beatles in the center are QL creator Donald P. Bellisario, stars Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula, and writer/co-executive producer Deborah Pratt. The four waxwork Beatles to the left have been replaced by the four founders of Project Quantum Leap the club. The rest of the cover has guest stars, writers, producers, fans, a crew T-shirt, Dean Stockell's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Panasonic camera. And Look! Teresa Murray's holding a copy of Observer 4 in her waxwork hand!
If you'd like to join in on the Round Robin topic, we'll be delighted to have you! Please see the Round Robin blog for details. The posting date for entries about "The Creative Side Of You" is Wednesday, November 1st.
Karen
Technorati Tags: Photos, memes, Creative, Fanzines, Round Robin Photo, Monday Photo Shoot, Scalzi, Quantum Leap
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Friday, October 20, 2006
9:55:56 PM MST
Classic Spooky Music!
Cross-posted, as usual, from Outpost Mâvarin (except the pictures here are bigger)....
 Weekend Assignment: We're making a Halloween Music Mix! Suggest a song. The song can be scary, spooky or silly, but it should fit into Halloween somehow. All genres are acceptable; indeed, I'd be very interested to know of a country or samba song that would work.
Extra Credit: Are you spooked easily?
You know, I could swear I've written about this before, complete with posted photos of my Haunted Mansion and Buffy Once More With Feeling CDs. But Google says no. AOL Journals search says no. Actually reading titles on the Musings archive pages for 10/05 and 10/04, and looking at any entries that sound as though they might contain what I remember, I still can't find it.
Yes, well, okay, I did find my "Haunted by the Mansion" entry, but that wasn't so much about the music. I don't care. I remember writing about party music involving Disney attraction music and Buffy and Quantum Leap...oh. Okay, that's the problem. It was party music in general, or sf and fantasy party music, not specifically Disney or Halloween. Even if I still haven't found the entry. It was probably on the Outpost, anyway.
So, for the record, I'll just recap the Halloween standards around here before moving on to some other selections:
The Haunted Mansion 30th Anniversary CD. Features the entire Disneyland attraction narration and music and effects, outtakes by Paul Frees and others, a clip from the Florida one, a Vincent Price narration for Phantom Manor, and even a Japanese Ghose Host. But the main drawing card is still that great song, "Grim Grinning Ghosts," with Thurl Ravenscroft as one of the singers.
Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. I don't actually have this on CD, but I used to play the sound effects side of this Disneyland record every year when I was a teenager.
Pirates of the Caribbean CD. Same kind of deal as the Haunted Mansion one. It's not as overtly Halloween, but you gotta love Paul Frees intoning "Dead men tell no tales!" On the CD, several dead men proceed to tell tales in outtakes.
But, as I say, I've already expressed by appreciation for these recordings. Let's change the channel - literally.
 The new Frigidaire
 Still, classical music does deserve its rightful place on the Halloween playlist. On the Fantasia soundtrack alone (which I bought on LP back in college, and had to exchange several times due to a bad pressing) has Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the quintessential spooky organ music, plus Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. (Actually, I was reading today that the Fantasia version of Night on Bald Mountain I know was heavily revised by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Leopold Stokowski.)
 But my favorite spooky classical piece (albeit less so now than when I was a kid) has always been Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. (Listen to it here.) It's based on a medieval allegory about dancing skeletal figures from all walks of life - the rich and the poor, the powerful and the peasants - all called by Death. (Hey, these people were dealing with the Plague at the time.) I remember being exposed to this musical masterpiece back in elementary school, and even seeing a cartoon that went with it. But like that blog entry about spooky music, I can't prove that what Iremember ever existed. Yes, there's a great Disney cartoon called The Skeleton Dance, the first Silly Symphony ever made. I've even read claims that the music for that was the Danse Macabre, or, at least, that brilliant cartoon composer-arranger Carl Stalling adapted the Saint-Saens for it. But it just doesn't sound like it to me. Ah, well. Next you'll tell me there is no wooden bridge in Lucerne, Switzerland that depicts the Dance of Death on its wooden panels. But there is. I photographed it when I was 15 years old. And no, I don't have the pictures.
Extra Credit: well, I am a little spooked that I can't prove what I remember, and also that it's past 2:30 AM already!
Karen
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
9:20:46 PM MST
MPS: Wonderful Worlds of Color
Your Monday Photo Shoot: Turn something an unexpected color. Most photo editing software will let you fiddle with the hue of your photos: Use that feature to make your photos subject a color it would be impossible (or at least, very unlikely) for it to be in real life.
Okay. I can do that!
 A canal outside Yuma.
Sand dunes near Yuma. Or is it another planet?
 Any purple pumpkin eaters around? Disneyland.
Oddly enough, I've had color on my mind today. I did some work on a Wikipedia article called "The Spectrum Song," the lyrics of which begin,
Red, yellow, green, red,
Blue, blue blue,
Pink, green, brown, yellow, orange,
Red, red.
It was sung by Paul Frees as Ludwig Von Drake, in the first-ever episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. It was part of the first Von Drake cartoon, An Adventure in Color. The first half of the episode was all color this, color that, and it was all in aid of promoting the show's new name, new color format, and its move to NBC. But that's okay. It's a cute song by the Sherman Brothers. John had it on a recond as a kid. And Wonderful World of Color was my era of watching that show, back when Uncle Walt was still alive to host it.
 This last shot is an experiment and a teaser for the Round Robin Photo Challenge, "Very Scary." More scary pictures tomorrow night!
Karen
Originally posted on Outpost Mâvarin, 10/17/2006 01:01:00 AM (more or less)
Technorati Tags: Monday Photo Shoot, Scalzi, Disney, Color, Photos, Wikipedia
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8:57:38 PM MST
Statistical People
The people ahead of us at Disneyland, October 8, 2006
John Scalzi mentioned today the heavily-reported fact that the U.S. population officially just hit 300 million. I wrote such a long comment about this that I've decided to post it here:
When this subject comes up it always reminds me of a population counter display I saw at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Back then the count was a little over 200 million, and for years afterward that was my rule of thumb - 210 million, 214 million, 220 million...after that I lost track. I was fascinated at the time by the ticker (I was seven years old), and wanted to know how they knew that someone had been born, someone had died, someone had immigrated, someone had emigrated. The display covered all four of those factors. I think it was my brother Steve (age 14 at the time) who explained about statistics and estimates and the census.
But ever since then I've never quite believed the official count - in general, perhaps, but not specifically. Having gone door to door as an enumerator for R.L. Polk in 1977, I know that people don't always want to be counted. How do they know exactly how many people are evading the census takers? How do they know the degree of fluctuation in the birth and death rates between actual counts? So okay, yes, MAYBE the 300 millionth current American arrived today by birth, boat, plane or on foot. But more likely it's a statistical convention, and only vaguely correct. In terms of real living breathing people, the milestone may have been reached last week or last mont, or could be yet to come - and we'll never know it.
Is this milestone, such as it is, a good thing or a bad thing? Some of each, I expect. There are economic facters involved, and political ones, and sociological ones, and environmental ones. Economically, the country needs an influx of taxpayers to pay for the social security benefits of aging baby boomers. Legal immigration seems likely to fit the bill there. But sociologically, we are still fighting that same old human tendency to label people outside our own tribe as Them, and view Them with suspicion and disdain. 75 years ago it was the Irish and the Italians and the Poles who got such treatment. Now it's Mexicans and Muslims and people from India and Africa (yes, I know those categories aren't mutually exclusive). It was wrong then. It's wrong now. Being "white" is a social construct rather than a genetic one, anyway. We need to get over all these subdivisions, and deal with people as people.
The people behind us at Disneyland, October 8, 2006
Environmentally, we probably don't want to overdo things with a new population boom, but we can probably handle things if we do it right, with strict standards to curb pollution and global warming, and efficient use of land for food and well as living space. There are a number of countries with more people per square acre than we have. It's not pleasant (ask my husband, who just suffered through huge Disneyland crowds), but it can be done.
Hmm. Clearly I needed to blog this. And now I have.
I'll have my Round Robin post after midnight tonight, on the other blog.
Karen
Cross-posted:
http://journals.aol.com/mavarin/MusingsfromMavarin/
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
Technorati Tags: Population, Scalzi, Ethics
Written by mavarin
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Friday, October 13, 2006
2:41:46 AM MST
E Plebneesta and the Dangerous Writers
Weekend Assignment #133: Share with us a person or person who you think is a model for free speech in the United States. It can be one of the Founding Fathers, another historical personage, or someone who is living right now. Yes, this is slightly more work than the usual Weekend Assignment, but, you know. Free speech is worth it. For those of you in the UK or Canada, you can nominate someone who represent free speech in your own country, or pick someone from the US.
Extra Credit: A favorite controversial book (it doesn't have to be from an American). I'm not up for the full-blown rant on this subject, at least not tonight. Tonight I'm just going to toss out some names and a few anecdotes, and call it a night. Maybe over the weekend I'll take the subject and run with it.
When I was in high school, the U.S. Constitution always reminded me of a silly bit in a Gene Roddenberry-penned episode of Star Trek, "The Omega Glory." It still does, really. In the episode, the Yangs would trot out a tattered American flag as their leader chanted a garbled version of the Preamble to the Constitution. "We the People of the United States" became, at least to my ears, "E Plebneesta."
And if you break it down, "E plebneesta" makes a surprising amount of sense. "E" also begins the Latin motto "E pluribus unum": "from many, one." "Plebn" could refer to plebians, or ordinary people. And "eesta" could be "ista," a (usually)plural suffix found in words like "Sandinista" or "fashionista." So "E plebneesta" becomes "From the ordinary people and their proponents." And that's pretty much what the Constitution is, the ordinary people (as represented by wealthy landowners) ceding certain rights to various branches of government, while retaining others for themselves.
Yes, I know the Preamble and the Bill of Rights are two different parts of the Constitution. I'm mentioning the E Plebneesta anyway, because to me the whole Constitution is important and sacred, its priniciples worthy of a lot more respect than certain politicians give it. So there. That's my preamble to this entry.
Thinking about the actual Bill of Rights, though, leads me to an entirely different memory, from a Weekend Assignment two years ago. The actual assignment was about which Founding Father we'd each like to hang out with. It provoked in me an account of a fictional 21st century picnic, to be attended by John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James and Dolley Madison. In my first entry, I merely mentioned the guest list and the two destinations, but the follow-up entry was a vignette in which time traveler Karen invited the Madisons to the 2004 picnic, and mentioned the Bill of Rights.
 The Bill of Rights, image enhanced slightly for visibility
 So, now that I've fictionally partied with Tom Jefferson (left), who believed that "half a loaf" of rights secured to the people was better than none, and James Madison, who wrote the Bill of Rights (partly cribbed from the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the writings of John Locke), what proponents of that all-important first amendment right of free speech do I especially admire? Well, those two guys for sure, and Samuel Adams, for starters. I really should learn more about Madison; he didn't say much during that picnic. He did mention, however, that he mostly put the Bill of Rights together to keep the newly-formed Constitutional government from collapsing in the wrangle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists.
More contemporary outspoken people who made a difference in my lifetime: Martin Luther King, Jr. is probably the most important one. If you're going to say things that people don't want to hear, it's helpful to have a thirst for justice, a substantive message backed up by action, and a gift for oratory. Some of those old speeches still blow me away. At a more personal level, I used to admire the heck out of George Carlin, with his infamous Seven Words. It wasn't that I actually liked or used every one of those words myself, although I did use the two biggies in those days. What I admired was Carlin's ability to satirize the folly of thinking those words, of all the words in the language, were so dangerous and harmful that they must never be broadcast.
I was going to work in a riff about Harlan Ellison here, but let's skip it.
Favorite controversial book? That's got to be A Wrinkle in Time, of course. This classic about love and faith, friendship and family, and individuals fighting evil (including enforced, mindless conformity) rates high (#22 in the 1990s) on banned book lists. It's been slipping down the charts with the advent of new targets for self-appointed censors, but it's still an important and misunderstood book. But I've already ranted that rant, at least once.
Karen
Tags: Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Ethics, Constitution, Bill of Rights, L'Engle
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