Garden Of Blog

Just finished this book by Philip Roth.  No lightweight shit.  I hate confusing books, but apparently, not spiritually confusing ones.  The main character, Lucy, is about as hateful and judgemental as they come, but in the end, it’s impossible to get a bead on judging these characters myself.  Possible spoiler alert if you’re thinking of reading this…

I can’t even figure out “when” she was good.  She had “good” moments when her outlook seemed to improve.  Her hysterical spiral at the end, disturbing and paranoid, was not discernable as a karmic payback as I thought it might be (Roth forecasts her death early in the novel).  It was even easy to feel sorry for her.

I’m amazed at how many people online see her as an unambiguous hero, and ultimately, martyr.  Can this really be justified from the text?  Or was her angst in moments simply so familiar that it had to be identified with, and strongly?  And was she pregnant when she died?  And what is the rest of the story behind Julian’s philandering?  Was it just something that the family had dealt with and digested on its own, and only an insane Lucy would bring it into the conversation?

Lots of questions and only some answers.  Quite a book; Roth is on “the list”.

If you are using innerHTML with Javascript to create dynamic elements in your web application, and for some reason are not getting all your input parameters submitted to server (Mozilla only!), check this out:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260967

The form element(s) being manipulated by innerHTML can get screwed up in the DOM if your form is nested within table elements in certain ways. The solution for me was to open the form tag before the table tag, and close it after the table tag closure.

In this talk, Geoff Nunberg cites a finding that the phrase “unapologetic liberal” is used far more often, even by the “liberal” media, than “unapologetic conservative”:

IT Conversations: Geoff Nunberg

It is assumed that such linguistic triumphs of the Right simply point to a lack of political savvy on the part of liberals. “We don’t bend language as well as They do.” But I think the shoe fits us Lefties.

Why are the strongest willed among the Left called “unapologetic”? What do we have to apologize for? I’ll tell you what: sin. The underlying difference between the secular humanist and religious value systems is in the rules themselves. Liberal attitudes towards sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll are viewed from a moral highground by conservatives; the alternative lifestyles look obscene and impure.

So the conservative is doing things Right, what could be apologized for on that side? Nobody is scandalizing sobriety or piety. Scandal by definition undermines those things. So a scandalous Left breeds apologetic moderates and unapologetic zealots. We hope the Right at least sympathizes with our struggle to reconcile our experimental tendencies with the consequences. We are not unaware of them, we just want all of life.

The blog’s been neglected lately; it seems I’m regressing to childhood and getting back into my comic book collection. I’m also discovering the wonders of eBay for the first time as a buyer and seller. eBay has to be about the best web application I’ve seen. It lets people interact in the most basic of ways, as “equal” participants in an economy. A well-trafficked storefront for all to hawk in, for all to shop.

Stating the obvious I suppose. I’ve certainly never seen such a thriving collectors community though.

09.03.2006 - A few months ago we had the honour of hosting Funkfoot on CozmiKast. It's about time we add them to our permanent archive here on mindmined.com. Here's "No Reason" from their EP "Badunkafunk". Thanks guys!

Web developers:

If you are fond of setting the window.status of your pages (that text that appears in the lower left-hand corner of your browser window), take heed. It now appears that Mozilla is suppressing this by default. Therefore your target users would have to check “change status bar text” in the advanced Javascript settings in order to see any of your manipulations. This makes window.status seem on the road to deprecation. Safari still seems to support window.status by default, and I guess I’ll check it out in IE 7 when they finally release it.

"Prelude In G Minor", selections from "The Sound of Music", and "Semper Fi" from the Dover Community Band and the final track "I Wake" from the new almost Now CD, "The Wreckage".