I’m surprised it’s that high, actually. It’s probably because I have a lot of friends, and I check several times a day. I almost never manually update my status, and the answers to most of the other questions were “no.”
By the way, vanilla friend requests from people I don’t know are generally ignored. If you want to be my Facebook friend, tell me who you are and why.
I give you this.
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
[Note: this will be the top post all day, so scroll down for fresh posts]
This is apparently a real, and true email to the boss, from Down Under. It’s pretty funny, as long as it doesn’t happen to you. But perhaps he’s laughing about it now, too.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s the news story.
An interesting article on the divide between pro- and anti-gun cultures in America. And it’s about a lot more than guns:
“The intensity of passion on this issue suggests to me that we are experiencing a sort of low-grade war going on between two alternative views of what America is and ought to be. On the one side are those who take bourgeois Europe as a model of a civilized society: a society just, equitable, and democratic; but well ordered, with the lines of authority clearly drawn, and with decisions made rationally and correctly by intelligent men for the entire nation. To such people, hunting is atavistic, personal violence is shameful, and uncontrolled gun ownership is a blot upon civilization.
“On the other side is a group people who do not tend to be especially articulate or literate, and whose world view is rarely expressed in print. Their model is that of the independent frontiersman who takes care of himself and his family with no interference from the state. They are conservative in the sense that they cling to America’s unique pre-modern tradition—a non-feudal society with a sort of medieval liberty at large for everyman. To these people, ‘sociological’ is an epithet. Life is tough and competitive. Manhood means responsibility and caring for your own.”
“That really kind of spells it out,” Reynolds says. “It is a division between two very different views not only of American society, but also life itself.”
It’s really a low-grade cultural civil war going back to colonial times. But one side is a lot better trained and armed so, fortunately for the other side, it hasn’t turned into a shooting war.
Is it perverse, and even immoral, to brine pork chops with kosher salt?
…of Halloween.
When I was a kid, Halloween was for kids. And then I grew up and didn’t care about it any more (like, when I hit my teens). But apparently, many of my generation never wanted to grow up. One more Boomer-caused societal disaster.
There is something very strange going on here. I think that it’s probably a result of the increasing secularization of British (and European) society, in which the traditional religions have made themselves increasingly irrelevant.
[Update a few minutes later]
Mohammed (in its various spellings) is now the most popular boy’s name in Britain.
Uh oh.
A post from Lileks with which I can strongly identify:
…what of the objects? You know, the things to which you apply Meaning simply by owning them for a while? That’s another issue. You have to realize that the meaning changes when you no long own them, which is a kind way of saying “it’s wiped clean when you die, mate.” There are some things whose previous meaning I can infer; my Grandma had a little metal container for pins, with 1893 Columbian Exposition engraved on the cover. It was regarded as junk, I guess, but my mom kept it, and then it passed to me. It’s possible my great-grandfather went. He got out of town from time to time. The fact that it sat on her dresser for seven decades was enough to infuse it with meaning, but that’ll be lost after me; daughter didn’t know her, never saw the farm, never saw the sleek 30s Sears bedroom-set dresser on which it sat. Daughter may see a corner of that dresser in an old photo, because I inherited it. But that’s the end of the chain – after that, it’s a series of facts, not a sequence of memories and emotions.
I’m a pack rat. I keep (and don’t organize) too much stuff. Every time we move, the books are a problem. We’ve been back in California over a year, and they’re still not quite unpacked and shelved. And movers charge by weight. I’m not sure what we would have done if the company hadn’t paid for the move. And I know that there’s not enough time in my allotment, sans dramatic life extension, for me to reread them. But I can’t bring myself (so far) to get rid of them. They contain too many remembrances. Accumulated stuff is the external memory of life, and I feel as though they’re a part of me and my sense of self. When I lose old email in a disk crash I feel partly lobotomized and amnesiac. At some point, though, I have to rationalize my possessions.
I had dinner with Leonard David Wednesday night, and we often talk about his collection of tchochkes and media bags that he has collected over the many dozens of space conferences he’s attended over the past few decades. They’re historically significant, and I doubt there are many people with as extensive a collection as his, but where to keep them all? I have the same problem, on a smaller scale. Someone needs to set up an archive to which such things can be contributed, assessed and put into context, but it takes money.