Mad farmers

September 17, 2008

OK, one more for today. Found a wonderful Wendell Berry poem, “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” courtesy of Slacktivist. In light of current circumstances, the last stanza particularly resonates:
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals [...]

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Obligatory Election Post

September 17, 2008

Wow, two in one day? What did they put in my latte this morning?
I could go into a long ramble, but since I already did that once this morning, I think I’ll just post the best summation of the McCain campaign I’ve seen so far . From The Confabulum:
Presented with the possibility of being a [...]

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Things We Used to Know

September 17, 2008

This will be a rare long one…I’ve been thinking a lot about apocalypse lately.
It’s not quite what it sounds like.
What I mean is that all indicators seem to be pointing to a time where a lot of the way I (and most of the Western world) live is going to change due to outside factors [...]

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Not abandoned, exactly

August 5, 2008

This blog, that is. It’s just that right now, most of the action is going on over here: Set Your Guts on Fire. Grad school is going well; the second quarter’s been rough overall but is ending with a little less panic than the first one. I go back down to Santa Barbara next week [...]

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Catching Up

June 4, 2008

You can tell, probably, that my first quarter of grad school ended recently…May was a pretty dry month here, but rest assured that lots of writing was happening elsewhere. Almost 20 pages of high-quality academic prose flew from my computer in the 2 weeks before Mother’s Day.
Results? Straight A’s, for the first time ever. I’ve [...]

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Myth and Politics

May 5, 2008

Or, what I did this weekend.

Pacifica held a conference on Myth & Politics this weekend that I was fortunate enough to attend. There’s so much to think about on this topic, especially in a hot election season, but a couple of things really stood out for me so far (looking at notes):

I need to find [...]

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Cognitive Surplus and the Culture of Participation

May 1, 2008

Or, why it’s easy to find the time for creation when you don’t watch TV.
That’s a bit flip, but this talk by Clay Shirky does point out the amazing resources we have at our disposal (on an individual and cultural level) when we make conscious choices about how to spend time.

Money quote: “Media that is [...]

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Taking a Break

April 30, 2008

After a couple of hard weeks of studying & work, I went to Vega$ with some friends this weekend to blow off steam…it’s amazing how much it’s changed since I was last there 8 years ago. The food is a lot better, for one thing; I definitely got to fulfill my foodie jones at a [...]

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