Hugh Miller

New Word:

Satisfaction +  Fiction

Satisfiction

= Short-lived perfection; The happy ending you believed in completely…until you realized the mistakes you made.

 

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  • I think if you look at a person and remember that they are probably no more than about 40% rational you’ll do OK.
  • “Offensive” in current usage means “Shut Up!”.
  • Got a new product idea: A “5 Hour Energy” type product called “Workahol”. Investors welcome.
  • One of those nights where sleep can’t be found but every single thing you’re worried about comes to chat.
  • Anyone with an ongoing interest in Ayn Rand has such a low ceiling over their imagination that they literally can’t imagine anything more important than what they want.
  • Sometimes when I get done teaching a night class and say goodbye, and watch the backs get smaller, and turn off the lights, and lock the door and step out into cold streets that don’t know anyone, I turn into a small dog, that nobody loves.
  • My state is an inch from legalizing gay marriage. I’m not against it, I just feel that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.
  • How can you tell if you’re talking to a Finnish extrovert? He’s looking at YOUR shoes.
  • If triangles had gods they would be three sided.
  • I have decided to adopt a doctrine of personal infallibility. I believe you will come to see that I was right to do so.
  • So this magician is walking down the street, and he turns into a grocery store.
  • Your first phrase in Irish: “Whale Oil Beef Hooked.”
  • Citrus fruits are useful for locating paper cuts.
  • Call me old fashioned but I believe marriage is between a man and his goods and chattels.
  • That which doesn’t kill us makes us hyper-vigilant and traumatized.
  • I read somebody complaining that they forgot to bring their phone into the bathroom and they had to spend several minutes being bored and I thought: We’re Doomed.
  • Blame it on the boogie.
  • Giving midterm exams ALL day today. I have this weird desire to dress up like Professor Snape and hover darkly near anxious students.
  • I just want to wish Kim Kardashian the kind of Princess/Storybook divorce she so deserves!
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A sixteen minute video on the devastation caused by income inequality probably won’t excite anyone. But this is really clear, concise, even heartbreaking information about the damage it does. I’m not sharing it in a “Let’s all say the usual things” way but because it shocked me. It’s like a clear accounting of the cost. 

 

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I love nudes and I have a weakness for ordinary, daily scenes. My artwork has developed considerably since I made these, but it’s one of my most popular pages, so I’m leaving it as it is for now.

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Because 9 isn’t enough and 11 is too many.

The 10 Commandments (hereafter known by their DJ name, 10C) are often cited as an important foundation of morality for the west: Sort of the moral grandfather to western civilization. This makes the assumption that without them we would behave badly, that if we are behaving well it is partly due to their influence, and that people without them must behave measurably worse.  Since they are treated as a collection I assume that they are all viewed as good and basically equal in worth. Conservative politicians have made enormous efforts at times to connect them with our government and put them in front of us in as many places as they can. It’s always amusing when a reporter asks them to recite the 10C and they can pull together maybe two of them. 

Since I could remember about the same number, I decided to read them over and evaluate their worth as a moral compass. 

1 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.”

This is a message addressed to ancient Hebrews, why it should concern anyone else is unclear. They certainly would not have considered Christians (when they came along) as an appropriate audience for this message. In fact they might well have been outraged. The last bit is interesting because it implies that there ARE other Gods but you mustn’t put them first. Theoretically, it seems to hold out the possibility of worshipping demigods if you don’t get all carried away. As far as western morality is concerned the only link I see here is too monotheism and Christianity in particular. 

2 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.”

This appears to be a restating of the first one with a sudden very strong disapproval of arts and crafts. The emphasis on jealousy reinforces the “other gods exist” idea because otherwise, what is he jealous of? Finally there is a sub clause explaining that if you violate the arts and crafts rule he will kill your grandchildren and beyond. Message for western morality? Be very serious about Christianity. 

3 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

Perhaps it means don’t speak the name at all, again a Hebrew thing. Perhaps it means don’t use it out of the context of worship and adoration because that is blasphemy. Perhaps it means don’t pretend you love me: YOU HAVE TO REALLY LOVE ME! In any event it’s a carrying on of rule number one as additional sub-clauses. I think the vagueness inherent in this one may even be intentional, since one is uncertain what it even means, speaking the name is fraught with the danger that one MIGHT be doing something wrong. This serves the whole “tremble before me” thing. Also, this one seems to suffer from a little self referential thought circle e.g. “Don’t do it because… I’ll consider you guilty if you do it. Because I hate it when you do that.” Continue reading

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I get daily updates of people’s bad ideas about websites.

Here are simple answers to the fundamental questions and mistakes.

The Uncertainty of the Web: What your design looks like on your computer guarantees nothing. Your site has no REAL, TRUE appearance because it isn’t a hard copy. Your website only really exists when it is opened up by a browser on some device. Different browsers and different devices interpret the code differently and affect the appearance. If built well there won’t be many problems, but there is no way to know to a certainty that everything about your site will perform as expected. 

The site itself: You should know exactly what it is for. It’s a machine. What does it do, or make, or accomplish? Avoid mission creep. You should be able to describe its purpose in 3 short sentences. 

Design:

  1. Design is based on serving the target audience. It comes from knowledge of who they are, and what they will find welcoming and reassuring in the appearance. It’s not about you and what you like. 
  2. Design isn’t just appearance, it is appearance and function. 
  3. There are not really a lot of different ways to lay out navigation. It’s going to be either vertical, left side, or horizontal, top. Why? Think of yourself at an unfamiliar ATM: Do you enjoy not knowing what to do next? 
  4. We shouldn’t make your website radical and totally different because it would most likely suck. 

Navigation: The simplest, clearest menu is best. Can things be coupled and condensed? Do it. Classic example: “Home” and “About Us” How are these different? And ask yourself, “Is the wording on my navigation crystal clear?” We tend to take familiar concepts for granted, so be careful not to baffle your customers. The best navigation is barely noticed because no pause is required to understand it. 

Search Engine Optimization: There are a LOT of ways to polish and improve this but as the site owner you have the most important role. Write well. The entire site should be as well organized as a research paper. Write succinctly and with intention behind each word. ALSO: Consider your target audience, what words and phrases do they type in search engines to find you? Be realistic about this and include them (gracefully) in your writing. 

Social Media: Again consider the target audience. Think strategically about this and include social media in the machine concept from the beginning of this article. You don’t need to be everywhere and irrelevant social media is a stupid waste of your time. What role do they play in the machine? Understand it, or don’t do it. Don’t over-commit to social media responsibilities, include your available time and energy in planning. The same goes very much for a Blog. If a blog is part of the machine, OK. But don’t add one because other people do. If you can’t keep it fresh and updated it will work against you. 

As far as building the site itself, which many people want to do themselves, you probably can’t. I’m not trying to be a downer. But it’s a skill set most people can’t add given the available time and energy. The exceptions are people who regularly achieve easy- breezy successes in complex computing situations. If you struggle with any basic computer issues, in my experience, you can’t do this. 

That’s it. Done. 

 

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Fast travel to farthest space and deepest inner space by factoring each distance. Science has advanced since this was made but it still does a brilliant job of mind stretching. Balanced between quantum foam and infinite space our lives are utterly mysterious. This is very nice way of FEELING the Holon levels that stack to make the world. See my posts on Holons if that is a baffling sentence. Right here.

1977 POWERS OF TEN © 1977 EAMES OFFICE LLC

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A weird, related thought: Millions of years ago trees lived and died. But their fallen bodies never decomposed because no life form existed who could make a living out of breaking down wood. In the nick of time (I made that part up) a hero arose who could feed on the cellulose and lignin, converting those into their softer tissues, which in turn begin to decompose when the fungal fruiting bodies die. Hail to thee, Fungi; you saved us from the deadly pile of wood!

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A talented and esteemed lecturer in early childhood education has resigned from teaching at Yale because an email she wrote suggesting a little flexibility about Halloween costumes resulted in an inferno of moral indignation and demands for her (and her husband) to be fired by the college. (Demands by the students of course).

Here is the intolerable message:

“This year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween,” she wrote. While noting that she did not wish to “trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community,” Christakis went on to question the imposition of “standards and motives” on others as well as the feasibility of agreeing on how to avoid offense. “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” she asked. “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.”

Even -asking- the profoundly politically correct to consider being a little more relaxed results in a take no prisoners purge of the impure. Left wing. Read your history. You do this. Stop.

The Reign of Terror | The Great Purge | The Cultural Revolution | The Killing Fields

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“I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”  Hamlet, scene ii

 An Odd Revelation

When I was a college boy many, many years ago I saw a cat.
I saw a cat and the cat was acting like a cat.
The cat was catlike and there was nothing about it that was anything BUT catlike.

This was a revelation and like most revelations it loses practically everything in the translation from shimmering vision to paragraph in black and white.

He was stalking and playing and being curious and easily startled and all sorts of catty things that anyone could predict. What filled me with awe was the fact that this cat had a nature and that he could do nothing that was not of a piece with that nature. The word nature comes from the Greek natura meaning “essential qualities, innate disposition” and that is the sense in which I mean this. I saw that cat as an expression of the essence of “catness” but not as some platonic ideal, I saw it as an instance of a running program. The program “Cat” existed in millions of instances all over the surface of the earth and I was watching a single instance of it having a nice moment in the Florida sunshine. Continue reading

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