I discovered Daily Lit on Diggnation and have now subscribed to read James Joyce’s Ulysses via email in 332 parts. I am going to super love this. I never could get through the entire thing, I am afraid to say. I pasted my first part below.

Ulysses by James Joyce

– I –

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

–INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:

–Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

–Back to barracks! he said sternly.

He added in a preacher’s tone:

–For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.

–Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

–The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.

–My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:

–Will he come? The jejune jesuit!

Ceasing, he began to shave with care.

–Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

–Yes, my love?

–How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.

–God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you’re not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.

He shaved warily over his chin.

–He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his guncase?

–A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?

–I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don’t know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I’m not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

–Scutter! he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen’s upper pocket, said:

–Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

“In the bitingly funny, razor-sharp I Love You, Nice to Meet You, platonic friends Kevin Bleyer (“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart???) and Lori Gottlieb give the no-holds-barred low-down on coupling up from the both the male and female points of view. Or as they like to put it, “Twice the perspective, half the insight??? (after all, what do they know – they’re still single).”

“Like romance anthropologists, Lori and Kevin deconstruct every key moment in the lifecycle of a relationship, from what the fake purse-grab really means when the check comes (how hard is it to find your wallet in a purse the size of doughnut?) to fighting etiquette (Is all fair when love is war?) to who gets “home couch advantage??? in couples therapy. Based on stories from their own dating experiences (funny for you, mortifying for them), I Love You, Nice to Meet You is a hilarious and eye-opening collection of “anecdates??? from a guy and a girl who just want to find the one but – lucky for you – haven’t.”

What People are Saying about I Love You, Nice to Meet You : A Guy and a Girl Give the Lowdown on Coupling Up

“The best new funny book about dating on planet Earth, perhaps in the entire universe, and certainly in the Milky Way. Even Tolstoy and God together couldn’t write something as funny and cool and weird and wonderful as this.”
—Molly Jong-Fast, author of Normal Girl and The Sex Doctors in the Basement

“I Love You, Nice to Meet You is funny, affecting, blunt and useful. Kevin and Lori are generous to old flames (well, most of them) and unsparing on themselves. This book may or may not help you find true happiness. But it will give you good, sound advice about what not to talk about over that first cup of coffee, or what items that are best not displayed in your medicine cabinet. Their alternating interpretations make us laugh at the gaffes we have all committed in hope of love. But they still hold out hope for love.”
—Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday

“For lonely urban singles, here–finally–is a warm, witty companion to crawl into bed at night with. The bad news is it’s a book. The good news is, “I Love You, Nice to Meet You” is very funny, only costs a low one-time fee, and won’t call you regularly at 1 a.m. ‘just to say hi’ (I forget in which chapter, but it’s covered). Shake up a cosmo for one and enjoy.”
—Sandra Tsing Loh, author of A Year in Van Nuys“The funniest book about dating to date. Gottlieb and Bleyer guide us through the twists and turning points in every relationship, providing insight, fresh perspectives, personal anecdotes and hearty laughs along the way. Read it in one big gulp, or savor slowly, bite by bite.”
—Valerie Frankel, author of Hex and the Single Girl and The Girlfriend Curse

“It’s amazing that this is a funny book because this is one exhaustingly detailed compendium of everything that could ever go wrong in every stage a love relationship. At long last, you, the book buying public, will never again have to actually participate in this barbaric uncivilized ritual to become the grizzled cynical veteran of bad love you were destined to be. For this we all owe Kevin Bleyer and Lori Gottlieb a debt of gratitude.”
—Merrill Markoe, original head writer of The Late Show with David Letterman and author of It’s My F—ing Birthday: A Novel.

“Sure, chivalry died. But it got replaced by something much funnier–and luckily Lori Gottlieb and Kevin Bleyer are here to describe it. In dueling essays, the authors spar, match wits, and reveal startling truths about contemporary relationships.Whether you’re searching for the soulmate you have yet to meet, or getting increasingly irritated at the one you found already, this book provides the antidote: pure laughter.”
—Jenny Lyn Bader, co-author He Meant, She Meant: The Definitive Male-Female Dictionary

Reviews of I Love You, Nice to Meet You : A Guy and a Girl Give the Lowdown on Coupling Up

“Knowing that bad dates make good stories, Gottlieb (Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self) and Bleyer, a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, share a collection of “anecdates” in this he-said she-said guide to “coupling up” that has not infrequent flashes of true hilarity—a rarity among the ever swelling ranks of humorous dating guides. The authors, good friends who have never been an item (“not now, not then”), provide individual interpretations on the standard fare of relationship topics, but cleverly; chapter titles include “Venue Ask Her Out – Is ‘location, location, location’ the key to getting a second date?” and “I’ll Show You Mine, If You Show Me How – Is there any civilized way to get naked with a new lover?” Insights such as “If you cry about anything less than the death of a mother…you’re doomed,” “Oprah is pornography for women” and “a week of uninterrupted physical presence isn’t a sign of love. It’s a stakeout,” make Gottlieb and Bleyer’s stiff shots of wisdom go down more like a fizzy summertime cocktail, helping to make the dating game, if not always fun, at least fun to read about.”
—Publishers Weekly

The first thing I thought while I listened to Da Vinci Code on my iPod via Audible was, “good Lord, this is the novelization of Holy Blood, Holy Grail!”

Well, apparently it isn’t, “The Da Vinci Code author denies he lied about reading The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail while preparing his book.”

Sure.

I don’t know anything about Bitter is the New Black except the title makes me happy, Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office Via A Socialite’s Life

Although I am only a quarter of the way into Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, I am duly impressed.

Actually I am so impressed with Naked Conversations that I rushed home last night and registered www.passionchamber.com.

Naked Conversations is not a step-by-step guide to how to blog but rather a very granular and high-level tactical and strategy guide to joining a conversational market. We can call it word-of-mouth, buzz, viral, relationship, or influence marketing but what corporate blogging actually is — and The Cluetrain Manifesto pegged this with it “markets are conversation” — is conversation marketing.

That’s the term for what I do professionally. I participate in a conversation. Global? Local? Internet? Interpersonal? No matter. Its all conversation. Leveraging the Internet for conversation marketing is a no-brainer. Its obvious to me but its still not obvious to everyone.

Companies like New Media Strategies are masters and early-adopters (“the industry pioneer and global leader”) of conversation marketing in the online space and the Internet. NMS is actually a very elegant example of online conversation marketing.

Although James Frey has already sold a billion copies of A Million Little Pieces thanks to Oprah, after today’s interview, James Frey will sell a trillion more of both A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard. Everybody in the office wants to read it now, even me.

There is a new PostSecret book that just came out a little while ago. Check it out! PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. Awesome.

Blogs are no longer just online personal diaries. Blogs and bloggers have become powerful influences in world culture. Blogs have uniquely been able to jump the rails into traditional media and bloggers are now routinely being quoted in the news and on television. This one-day class will explain why blogs have changed the balance of media power and how you can cheaply, easily, and powerfully take advantage of it. There has never been a time when it is so easy and possible to become part of a global conversation.…more

Blogs, Blogging, and the Blogosphere: Influence World Culture from the Comfort of Your Writing Room
Start Date: 4/11/2006
Meeting Day: Tuesday
Time: 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM
Instructor: CHRISTOPHER J ABRAHAM
Level: All Levels
Venue: Arlington Arts Center
Description: Blogs are no longer just online personal diaries. Blogs and bloggers have become powerful influences in world culture. Blogs have uniquely been able to jump the rails into traditional media and bloggers are now routinely being quoted in the news and on television. This one-day class will explain why blogs have changed the balance of media power and how you can cheaply, easily, and powerfully take advantage of it. There has never been a time when it is so easy and possible to become part of a global conversation.…more

Cheryl and I saw Capote last Friday in Dupont. Fantastic movie. Official Site.

“In November, 1959, Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and a favorite figure in what is soon to be known as the Jet Set, reads an article on a back page of the New York Times.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, & Clifton Collins come together in a very intimate, masterfully-acted, film.

The cinematography is what makes the film: a gold standard example of how depth-of-field, shadow, light, and a well-chosen focal point can tell as story as well as Oscar-winning performances.

I honestly didn’t know anything about Truman Capote, even though I received my degree in American Literature but I do feel compelled to read In Cold Blood for sure.

I have always been a huge fan of Douglas Rushkoff. His books Coercion & Media Virus! have been highly influencial to me. Now, Rushkoff is coming out with a new book called Get Back in the Box : Innovation from the Inside Out. Looking forward to reading it. Thanks Boing Boing

There are so many new books on blogs, blogging, the blogoshpere, corporate blogging, business blogging, Movable Type, and WordPress.

Every ten months or so, Maureen Dowd pitches a fit. And its always a rehash of the same jagged little pill: “the more successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the reverse is true.”

Yes, we know, we know. And it just isn’t fair. Call it karma.

You, Maureen, are incapable of intimacy, incapable of compromise, incapable of acceptance, and incapable of weathering adversity. You, Maureen, are incapable of maintaining the vows of marriage — not because you cannot but because you refuse to out of indignant rage! You both want to participate in the Sacrament of holy matrimony while still holding onto your ego, while still not willing to relinquish yourself to your partner, to your husband, to your friend, to your spouse! We men are not too dumb to realize that we’re an extension of your “life’s goals” list rather than something your heart really wants. If she can have it, why can’t I? Why can’t I have it all.

It is always easier to blame someone else rather than yourself. It is always easier to blame a cultural rift or lack — or even an entire gender — than it is to blame yourself.

Consider it payback for the devil may care attitude you bandied about during your twenties when you could have really spent some time investing in relationships, investing in developing your emotional maturity, in working on yourself as a person, as a woman, as a human, and as someone who might at one point be judged not only for how smart, how successful, or how rich you are but rather for how suitable you are as a partner.

You, Maureen Dowd, are not entitled to marriage, a husband, or children through wedlock. You, Maureen Dowd, cannot just will any of this into being. Marriage is not something you can interview yourself into and your success in business, your success in the stock market, you success with money, networking, or even therapy is not an indicator as to how marriageable you are or how fit you are to be a mother or a spouse.

And you certainly cannot use bitterness and righteous indignance to fuel yourself down the aisle and into “the man you deserve’s” arms if he doesn’t want you. And he doesn’t want you because he is intimidated by your success or he is turned off by your age or your wealth or your equality. You, Maureen Dowd, are hot and funny and coy and have amazing legs! Its actually because you are only half-hearted, you are preoccupied, you are not committed, and because after reading this article, you are a harpy, a shrew!

In your teens and twenties, Maureen Dowd, you surely tortured us when we really wanted to marry you. Sure, you gave us quite a lot of sex and for that we are grateful; but a mistress does not a wife make. In our twenties, we men surely had the patience and the energy to work through all of the immaturity and the emotional abyss. We’re men, we are very slow to mature. But no, you manipulated us and made us watch as you upgraded from student to associate, from associate to partner, and from partner to CEO.

By the time we are 35, we are sure of who we are, of what we want, and are far less interested in games, in drama, in pissing about, or in wasting our time. In short, we’re tired of your shit.

At least in DC, 35 means we are ready to settle down and get married and start a family. To be honest, in our thirties, we are dating women in their twenties. Know why? No, not because they’re younger or more beautiful — that is rarely the case — but because women in their twenties are more hopeful, more romantic, more curious, and more impressed by the experiences, the successes, and the creature comforts we have. They think we’re cool, we’re exciting, and we’ve arrived.

And although we don’t have control over who marries us, we do have absolute control over who we marry. And that’s just the way it is.

Life isn’t fair.

“Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Lolita‘ first appeared on bookstore shelves 50 years ago on Sept. 15, 1955, in Paris.” Via Salon

“But how can a Christian be involved in politics – either as a citizen or a politician – and not compromise core convictions?” My dear friend Roy Herron has an amazing little book you have to read called How Can a Christian Be in Politics? Being faithful and political is essential in today’s moral and ethical climate.

Here’s a lovely passage that shows Roy’s insight and sensitivity:

Faithful Frustration

Many of us feel we have all the government we can stand and more than we can afford. We strongly, instinctively react against politics when we consider waste, fraud, corruption, deception, arrogance, misuse of authority, and burdensome taxes. Many people of faith hold this view of politics and government, and they also believe that government in recent decades has contributed to moral decline and the weakening of traditional values.

Anger and frustration toward government today are very high. But if you find yourself frustrated with government, imagine how frustrated we elected officials feel when we try to make government work and often cannot. Time and again, my task is not, as I would wish, to pass needed laws or set up helpful programs, but rather to try to stop bad bills and simply make existing laws and programs work. Often I work to get government to help people, but perhaps even more often I try to keep it from hindering or even harming citizens.

I just received a Skype call from a gentleman who thanked me for the article I wrote about my response to our — the United States’ — short sighted and self-destructive foreign policy, entitled America Does Not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy. Please check it out…

America Does Not Go Abroad in Search of Monsters to Destroy

Has anyone checked the label on the prescription that we in the United States have been given to treat permanent tyranny around the world? The side effects are much worse than the cure.

The most important side effect is that until the population of a sovereign nation-state is ready to join the emergent worldwide free market economy, any attempt at imposing either democracy or capitalism will fail once external influence is removed. The blowback from this imposition and resulting failure is that the resulting system will be similar or worse than the preceding system, and when it comes to the global balance of power, the devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t.

On the 13th of February Meet the Press, Natan Sharansky debated Pat Buchanan over the book A Case for Democracy, about which President Bush admits he is passionate and which the White House intends to use as a foreign policy roadmap for the next four years. I have yet to read either Mr. Sharansky’s book or Mr. Buchanan’s controversial response, Where the Right Went Wrong, but I do have an opinion based wholly on the debate and the transcript of the debate.

I found myself in strong agreement with a lot of what Pat Buchanan recommended on foreign policy. For example, “In my judgment, what happened on 9/11 was a result of interventionism. Interventionism is the cause of terror. It is not a cure for terror.”

The President’s premise that domestic terrorism is the direct result of envy, jealousy, or insecurity is flawed. As Pat Buchanan states in the interview, “the United States was not attacked because we are free. Bin Laden was not attacking the Bill of Rights. We were attacked because the United–over here because the United States’ military and political presence is massive over there. Bin Laden in his fatwah, his statement of declaration of war on the United States, said the infidels were standing on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. They want us out of the Middle East. They don’t care whether we have a separation of church and state.”

All systems reject invasion, even our bodies. Even in the case of a transplanted organ which is welcome, one must continue taking medicine for life in order to keep the body from rejecting the invader, even though the invader is pink, healthy, not poisoned and dying like the original. Internationally, it doesn’t matter if our prescription, our pink and healthy liver, our strong heart, is going to cure what ails the world, because that just isn’t the point. Curing the world’s ills requires that we will need to make sure the patient is constantly taking its “for the rest of your life” anti-rejection medications. Even if this is delivered forcibly under restraint, “for your own good” and “it hurts me more than it hurts you.”

One of the obvious outcomes of this stated overt (and not covert) intention “to help democratic institutions in every region in every nation on earth is a formula for permanent war,” says Mr. Buchanan,

Buchanan went on to state very clearly that it is not in America’s best interest to intervene in affairs of sovereign nation-states, governments that are in fact recognized by the world. To again quote Pat Buchanan, paraphrasing John Quincy Adams, “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the champion of freedom everywhere, but the vindicator only of her own.”

John Quincy Adams said it better himself, “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

When it comes down to it, there is no legal mandate that we as a nation or as a member of the world government may aggressively pursue this sort of agenda. Again, Pat Buchanan, “where in the Constitution do we get the right to intervene in the internal affairs of countries that do not threaten us and do not attack us? If they don’t, their internal politics are their own business,” adding that “the president of the United States has no constitutional authority to do this.”

And even after all that, one might realize that the only form of government that can in fact be transplanted like an organ is an authoritarian dictatorship. In this case I will intentionally misappropriate Senator Charles Grassey’s quote when he said, in the same episode of Meet the Press, “I think that there’s a movement towards freedom that people are naturally born free, they want to be free, and you don’t impose democracy. Democracy is natural. You can only impose dictatorship.”

Even though we want to believe that all functioning systems need to have an emergent pattern that is democratic, this is not exclusively the case. Governments are really visible manifestations of their culture. There has never really been a long-lasting government that has been out of step with its mother culture. We know that a family’s culture is deep and very difficult to influence. A company’s takes either a lot of time or a total radical amputation to truly change the culture. Since nation-states are in fact artificial constructs anyway, it is almost impossible to make drastic changes without Draconian measures, the majority of which are morally and ethically offensive and more costly than their intended good.

My interpretation on this quote is that a Vanguard of Democracy is as futile as a Vanguard of the Proletariat. That imposing democracy is as futile and as temporary as imposing Marxist-Leninism, communism, capitalism, or even the free market. And when this Vanguard of Democracy and the free market system was imposed on Russia, the blowback was arguably the complete dissolution of realpolitik, resulting in an entire country run by the Russian Mafia in a very effective and complete power grab. Is this democracy? Where is the Nation-State in a country that can’t even contain its nuclear assets? The biggest weak link in the entire underground weapons-grade plutonium economy? A country that has a larger rift between haves and have nots than ever before, A true playground for the neo robber baron. Where the super rich can ignore traffic laws if they posses the official flashing blue lights on their Mercedes-Benz S600 sedans. In the case of Russia, we have a culture that has never known either democracy or freedom, from the Czars to the Communists. On a systemic level, the Russian system broke under this imposition.

And there are a surplus of sovereign governments worldwide unready or unwilling to accept an imposed “freedom,” “democracy” and “the free market” systemically from the top-down. These desires happen in emergence, through bubbling up from the bottom. From discontent, from desire, from education, and through participation in a global market and global economy. By willing hearts and minds legitimately as opposed to through heavy-handed coercion.

So, in that regard, Natan Sharansky’s naive comment, although correct on the surface, is not a very complex argument, “I believe that all the people, when given opportunity to choose between living in fear or living in freedom, choose to live in freedom,” What he forgot to mention is that his argument doesn’t include a very important missing piece, which is, “all things being equal.”

I agree with the following premise, “All things being equal, I believe that all the people, when given opportunity to choose between living in fear or living in freedom, choose to live in freedom.” But in developing nations, in nations that are still tribal or predominately rural, in nations that don’t have a history of education or are based on tribalism, monarchy, or religion, and in nations that have high scarcities or are under crushing debt, the resulting unintended consequences of imposing democracy, capitalism, or the free market economy usually results in a situation much worse, or at least much less predictable, than the original. I hate to use “better the devil we know than the devil we don’t” but the jury is out as to whether an Iraq with no boarders and a forced, unnatural, system of government will chomp at the bit until it is given an opportunity to revert to something similar but different.

Again, to quote Pat Buchanan in support of the above — the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t theory of foreign policy, “We cannot make the enemy the best of the good . . . we have had occasions, the last great crusade for democracy was Woodrow Wilson going across the sea with an army to make the world safer. We brought down all the monarchs and we got instead Lenin and Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler.”

Posted by Chris Abraham at March 10, 2005 01:17 PM

“Major book publishers have quietly begun selling directly to customers over the Internet.” Via the Huffington Post.

“Global sales of Harry Potter books have surpassed 300 million, the agent for author J.K. Rowling said Tuesday.” Via the Drudge Retort and the San Francisco Chronicle.

I cannot agree with Kit Robinson’s belabored point, “the medium by which the content is delivered or exchanged directly influences the nature of that content and how it is processed.”

His belabored “duh” point may have been true as recently as five-years-ago, before aggregation, syndication, and the blogosphere, but I argue that his point has been untrue for much longer.

In much the same way that sampling has changed music and co-opting has always influenced the art world, the high-static anonymous confluence that occurs in the blogosphere, especially when consuming content through an aggregator or RSS reader, almost gurarantees a certain level of source- and data-corruption.

According to the Marshall McLuhan web site, what the “medium is the message” does not mean, “the channel supersedes the content in importance.”

To quote Mark Federman, Chief Strategist of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology:

“Marshall McLuhan was concerned with the observation that we tend to focus on the obvious. In doing so, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. Whenever we create a new innovation – be it an invention or a new idea – many of its properties are fairly obvious to us. We generally know what it will nominally do, or at least what it is intended to do, and what it might replace. We often know what its advantages and disadvantages might be. But it is also often the case that, after a long period of time and experience with the new innovation, we look backward and realize that there were some effects of which we were entirely unaware at the outset. We sometimes call these effects ‘unintended consequences,’ although ‘unanticipated consequences’ might be a more accurate description.”

In other words, Kit, please try to work past the duh moments because there are no duh moments.

I chose my tagline, “Because the Medium is the Message,” because my blog’s purpose is to use my capacity as pattern recognizer to look and think ahead to anticipate consequences and render as few unintended consequences as possible.

Again, Federman succinctly defines “the medium is the message,” “We can know the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes – often unnoticed and non-obvious changes – that they effect (message.)”

I accept this definition much more readily than I do Kit Robinson’s, which is more along the lines of, “the blogger and the blog are limited by the perception of the blog as an unrespected conversational medium for delivering message.”

There is no duh there because this has not panned out in the blogosphere as blogs have been tremendously influential and subversive in politics, style, entertainment, news, and culture. Oftentimes directly (and often invisibly) influencing the influencers.

I hate it when writers use the word duh. If you are writing the inane, you shouldn’t be writing. That said, I don’t agree with Kit Robinon at all. None of his duhs are duhs and cannot be assumed nor may one assume that any of his background knowledge is common-knowledge. To introduce other “obscure post-modern words,” “there is nothing beyond the text,” by Jacques Derrida.

If you rewrite this, please be less conversational and try to assume that your reader knows very little if nothing of the topic.

At the end of the day, I tend to wonder if Kit Robinson might just be a frustrated, pissed off liberal. Of course, it might just be because Kit believes that “blogs are a medium that is much more a conversation than a lecture.”

The secret to reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — and any Harry Potter book — is to read it slowly.