Category Archives: Arts & culture

Increasing social connectivity in this corner of the blogosphere

Discover Magazine has a great, short piece on the connectivity of the blogosphere:

The blogosphere is the most explosive social network you’ll never see. Recent studies suggest that nearly 60 million blogs exist online, and about 175,000 more crop up daily (that’s about 2 every second). Even though the vast majority of blogs are either abandoned or isolated, many bloggers like to link to other Web sites. These links allow analysts to track trends in blogs and identify the most popular topics of data exchange. Social media expert Matthew Hurst recently collected link data for six weeks and produced this plot of the most active and interconnected parts of the blogosphere.

Link with incredible graphic. (Thanks, Techyum.)

And who’s at the center of this vast social network? Daily Kos, BoingBoing, Michelle Malkin, gadget freaks, porn lovers, and sports fanatics. Good grief. People who blog about religion and culture don’t even show up. Which doesn’t surprise me — bloggers in my tiny corner of the blogosphere don’t talk to one another much, we don’t link to one another’s posts, and basically we don’t exploit the potential of social connectivity that exists in the medium of blogging. To change that a little tiny bit, here are some links to the best blog posts I’ve read recently:

ck at Arbitrary Marks posts a thoughtful video commentary on women blogging without having to deal with stalkers and crazies (I’ve already commented over there, no need to repeat here): Link.

Will Shetterly is moving “It’s All One Thing” from Blogger over to Live Journal. He promises less religion, which probably means more science fiction. That works for me. I’m liking the new cat story: Link.

Jeremy at Voltage Gate provides links to dozens of bloggers who have bioblitzed over the past week. I’ve been following his links to some very cool ecosystems from Ontario to Panama, and enjoying citizen science in action: Link.

Abby at Children and Books has a great post about teaching, where one of the kids she’s teaching gets a complicated concept. Short as it is, this post is really sticking with me, and I’m still mulling it over: Link.

UU vlogs grow by 100%?

ck over at Arbitrary Marks has posted her first videoblog entry — as part of “blog against theocracy” weekend.

Aside from me, ck is the only Unitarian Universalist I know of who’s posting videos on their blogs — meaning a 100% increase in UU vlogs, as well as a huge leap up in average quality. Of course, even though we Unitarian Universalists tend to be way behind the curve when it comes to using new technology to talk about our faith, there must be more UU vloggers. I hope observant readers will let me know about other UU vloggers in the comments.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post about books that changed your life. One such book for me was Slaughterhouse Five. In high school, I was something of a science geek, was one of the officers of the high school science fiction club, and I played Dungeons and Dragons. One day my friend Bill Schmitt (who was a math geek more than a science geek, and who did not play D&D), told me about these science fiction books I should read.

“There’s this guy named Kilgore Trout who keeps appearing in the books,” said Bill. “He’s a character, a science fiction author, in the books, but then there really is a science fiction book published by Kilgore Trout.”

Who could resist books with a recurring character, a fictional character who even (somehow) published a book in the real world? I went to the public library and took out a book by this author named Kurt Vonnegut, an author who was wild enough to create a character like Kilgore Trout. First I read was God Bless You, Mister Rosewater; and then Breakfast of Champions; and then Slaughterhouse Five.

Slaughterhouse Five was the one that changed my life, just a little. Vonnegut himself is a character in Slaughterhouse Five, along with Kilgore Trout, Billy Pilgrim who is unstuck in time, and aliens called the Trafalmadorians who look like toilet plungers. The emotional center of the book is an eyewitness account of the firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces during World War II. Vonnegut himself witnessed the firebombing of Dresden; so did Billy Pilgrim. Reading about the firebombing of Dresden, I began to realize that World War II wasn’t quite the “just war” that everyone said it was. Within two years of reading Slaughterhouse Five, I was involved in the peace movement.

So Slaughterhouse Five remains an integral part of my moral landscape. When I later learned that Vonnegut — fatalist, rationalist, bedrock humanist — belonged to a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I was not surprised. I had already known he was a kindred soul.

And now he’s dead. Or maybe he’s just unstuck in time. So it goes. Damn, I’m sad.

*****

Update: Sf author Cory Doctorow wrote the following about Vonnegut on BoingBoing:

“My first Vonnegut was Breakfast of Champions. I’d never read anything like it. It was a novel that was so easy, everything just happening, one thing after another. The book almost read itself. That was his gift, I think: to tell you things that were hard to hear, without you even noticing it. Like a nurse who can slide a needle into your vein without making you wince.” [Link]

Also via BoingBoing, a link to Vonnegut’s appearance on the Daily Show: Link.

BBC’s obit: Link. BBC’s appreciation: Link.

Vonnegut’s own Web site, with nothing there now but this one image: Link.

Books that changed your life

My sister Abby is a children’s librarian who knows more about the field of children’s literature than anyone else I know. She’s been reading the blog of Julius Lester, a favorite children’s lit author for both of us. Recently, Lester asked his readers of his blog to send him a paragraph on “Books That Changed Your Life.” So Abby wrote to him about a book that she and I both love deeply, and today Lester published Abby’s paragraph on his blog:

There are so many books that have deeply affected me, but the book that first sprang to mind is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. My brother is eight years older than me…. The first time I felt myself to be more than a little sister to him, the first time that I felt somewhat on his intellectual plane, was after reading The Phantom Tollbooth. Dan and I had many long discussions about the book, most especially its subtle humor and twists of language, and thus began a life-long habit of sitting and talking together about literature and philosophy. There are two messages in the book that have helped to form how I approach my life: that the impossible can be achieved, and that it’s far better to appreciate the here and now than to waste time and life wishing you were somewhere else [link].

The Phantom Tollbooth is a book that changed my life, too, so here’s my own paragraph on how it changed my life (though I’m not so eloquent as Abby):

When I was in fourth grade, I got transferred to a new public elementary school. Structured on the “open classroom” ideas then current, the school was one huge open carpeted room with a library in the middle and groups of children around the periphery. I loved having the library so close at hand, and one day I discovered in that library a book called The Phantom Tollbooth. I remember the moment when my nine-year-old self understood that the whole book was an allegory about opening your mind to the wonders of the world around you. I read and re-read that book innumerable times, its characters and world became a part of me, and yes that book opened my mind. So of course I had to tell my beloved younger sister, Abby, that she should read it. She read it, and fortunately she also loved it; and over the years the book seemed to feed into shared realms of fantasy and puppetry and thinking and conversation. A few years ago, I understood that the book was also about how to cultivate a life of the mind to get you through the bleak times in life. And to do that, you need friends and companions to share that life of the mind with you — along with free and open access to a library full of good books.

So what books have changed your life? I’d especially love to hear about books that you read when you were somehwere between 8-12 years old — but talk about any book that changed your life.

Happy geeky networking Easter

So while the rest of you were enjoying your family Easter dinners, Carol and I were observing the holiday in our usual fashion — each sitting in front of our laptops. I spent the evening reading up on the Semantic Web. I got particularly interested in a subset of Resource Description Framework, or RDF. RDF is a way of presenting information on the Web that is machine-readable, and therefore which will make it much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when you search the Web.

What I got interested in is a subset of RDF called FOAF, which stands for “Friend of a Friend.” Here’s what FOAF-Project, the creators of FOAF, claim:

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

For example, FOAF-Project is working on a FOAF browser, which would show you the links from one person’s Web site to their friends and family and co-workers. The current FOAF specifications also allow you to specify your workplace, interests, contact information, and even your Geek Code.

After spending some hours reading up on FOAF and related topics, I came to the conclusion that FOAF is a great idea — or at least it will be a great idea, if it is actually ever implemented in a user-friendly way.

As it turns out, there are other ways to accomplish similar kinds of things. There are the commercial social netowrking sites that allow their users to do this sort of thing. Anad as any blogger knows, your blogroll is actually a social networking tool:– it’s a list of other bloggers with whom you have some connection (however fleeting). However, a blogroll doesn’t give you much beyond a bare link.

But the blogging software I use actually implements a kind of social networking called XHTML Friends Network, or XFN. Embedded in my blogroll are markers that tell what kind of relationships I have with the bloggers I link to. If you go to RubHub, an XFN search engine, and enter the Web address of my blog, you’ll get a list of all the bloggers I link to, along with what I claim is their relationship to me. You can then in turn check out those bloggers, and see their relationships to still other bloggers. (Oops — although I’ve requested that they add my site, they haven’t added me yet….)

XFN is still pretty new, and still not widely used. But even so, it gives you a taste of what it could be like to embed machine-readable relationship information into your Web site. Someday, I’d like to see every Unitarian universalist blogger linked up through some such scheme — whether FOAF or XFN or what-have-you. It would make it far easier for readers and bloggers to explore the large Unitarian Universalist web on the Web.

And I got so involved in this fascinating topic that I forgot to call my dad, as I usually do on Sunday evenings. Sorry, Dad! I’ll call tomorrow.

Two more blogs…

OK, it’s turned into a night of serious blog surfing. Two more blogs worth reading — this time, they’re both Unitarian Universalist blogs…

Not Muslim Anymore is the religious journey of a former Muslim who has become a Unitarian Universalist. As someone who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, I love hearing how people who came from other faiths become Unitarian Universalists. And I’ve been particularly interested in the Muslim-to-Unitarian-Universalist path ever since I met a former Muslim in another UU congregation congregation I served. Fascinating blog. Serious snark.

Faith and the Web marks the return of Anna Belle Lieberson, who formerly blogged at Talking UU Technology. Started on April 1, Anna Belle promises “excellent websites for churches and other faith-based organizations.” In just five days, she’s posted lots of great ideas. Anna Belle is particularly good at combining PHP and CSS, so there is lots to look forward to with this blog.

Blogs to visit once

They’re not going on the blogroll at left (yet), but these three blogs are worth a visit:

(1) Father Matthew, a liberal Episcopalian video blogger. Only a little didactic. The one on the sermon is pretty funny.

(2) Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. Yt is a goode waye to practise yowr Middel Englysshe. But ich knowe not if yow wil lyke hys poetrye:

THYS IS JUST TO SAYE

We haue had y-slayn
the knightes
that were in
Newgate

And which
ye were probablie
wisshyng
vs to pardoun

Forgyveness
nevir!

The lawe of Engelonde is ower will and lieth in ower breest, knave.

(3) And yes, after vingtillions of years, Plush Cthulhu does have his/its/her own blog, Brain-operated God. Be a good minion, and go listen to Fluff slaver and gibber.

That’s enough for now. Good night.

Bad dessert

Waiter Rant had a great post on bad restaurant desserts. And I posted a comment there that I can’t resist reposting here, because those of you who live in New Bedford may well know the restaurant I’m talking about in the second paragraph….

Ah, the joys of restaurant desserts…. Once when my partner and I were driving across country, I tried apple pie at every restaurant we ate at. The diners with their allegedly “home-made pie” were the absolute worst:– crappy pie without much in the way of apples, soggy crust, badly microwaved, tasting worse than a McD’s apple-pie-in-a-box. So much for the much-ballyhooed diner food. The absolute best apple pie I ate on that trip was at a Bob Evans — probably my least favorite chain, but they probably turn over so much food that at least the pie was relatively fresh.

On the other hand, bad desserts can be really good under the right circumstances. Here at home, the fancy restaurant in the next block over from our apartment serves really bad apple crisp. I mean really really bad. They buy it from someone who uses those canned spiced apple slices covered with sweetened goo that isn’t even crispy, and then at the restaurant they barely heat it with a microwave so that some bits are cold and some bits are hot. We love it anyway — we order it at the bar because (sick but true) it tastes really good with a martini. Yeah, OK, you have to drink half a martini before it tastes good, but whatever.

I was over at the fancy restaurant down the street earlier this week, and I think they now have cut down on the microwave time for the apple crisp (maybe they’re trying to save power?), and this time only the corners were vaguely warm. I ate it anyway. Yum.

So what I really want to know is this — have you ever gotten good apple pie at a restaurant? In fact, have you ever had a good dessert at a restaurant?

Clear Blogging

A while back, I mentioned I had started reading the book Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them by Bob Walsh. Now that I’ve read most of the book, I want to say a little more about it.

This is quite simply the best book about blogging I have yet seen. We are ten years into the blogging phenomenon now. Technically, blogging has evolved from a few geeks hand-coding Web sites to carry entries in reverse chronological order, to wide availability of easy-to-use publishing platforms that require no technical knowledge. The result of this technical evolution is that millions of people are now writing and reading blogs, and blogging has really changed the way many people exchange information.

In Clear Blogging, Bob Walsh gives an excellent overview of the state of blogging today:– from the way blogs have changed the national political landscape to the way blogs have changed personal life. I’m going to focus on two chapters in his book, both of which apply directly to post-Christian congregational life. At the end of this post, I’ll give a broad overview of the book, and tell you why you should read it.

Congregational blogs?

While Walsh is really writing about the corporate for-profit world in the “Building Your Company Blog” chapter, much of what he has to say applies equally to congregational blogs. So when he makes his most important point — that a company blog can increase sales — that applies to congregational blogs as well. Blogs build Web site traffic; blogs give potential buyers (or potential new members) a personal sense of what you are all about; blogs are a very efficient and very directed form of marketing. All this means that congregations should be taking a serious look at incorporating blogs into their marketing mix.

However, in order for congregations to incorporate blogging into their marketing mix, it’s going to mean a change in the way most congregations perceive marketing. Walsh interviews Richard Edelman, a blogging CEO (my comments are in square brackets []):

Q. Corporations [and congregations!] tend to be known for their hierarchies more than anything else. How does the idea of people [e.g., ministers and staff] just saying what they want on the company’s dime at their blog go over when you talk to other CEOs? [or how about to congregational boards?]

A. I think there’s a real trade-off between control and credibility. If you are too much of command-and-control kind of person [or congregation], blogging is probably not for you, but you’re also probably not in tune with what it takes to be credible in this world….

I hope congregations — and the Unitarian Universalist Association — take note. Congregations should really start thinking about credibility…. (For the record, I do not blog on company time — I write this blog solely on my own time.)

Blogging professionals

Every minister who is blogging or who has ever considered blogging should read Walsh’s chapter “Professionally Blogging, Blogging Professionally.” While Walsh focusses on the traditional professions of law, medicine, and ministry, all other religious professionals — directors of religious education, congregational administrators, etc. — will find much that is useful and relevant.

Walsh covers the obvious ethical questions, and gives us enough specifics to really make us think. Doctors actually have a code of conduct covering what they post on the Web; that’s something we ministers should be thinking about.

For ministers and other professionals, Walsh also points out how blogging can build your career. Most obviously, if you’re looking for a job Walsh shows you how a blog can help your job prospects. Yet for those of us who aren’t looking for a new job, a blog is still a way to communicate with various constituencies, and let people know who we are and what we stand for. As a working minister who has been blogging for more than two years, I found this to be the single most useful chapter in the book.

The rest of the book

Anyone who blogs will find lots of useful tips and ideas in Clear Blogging. For example, even though I think I know something about blogging, I learned a lot about feeds and blog usability and search engine optimization — indeed, I’ve already implemented several of Walsh’s tips on this blog.

And anyone who just reads blogs will find lots of useful information, from very practical things like how to post good comments on blogs, to big-picture ideas like the way political blogging is changing democracy.

Definitely, a book worth reading — just make sure you read it soon, because blogging is changing so fast this book will be outdated in a year or so. (Let’s just hope Walsh updates the book to keep up with changes!)

Do I need to remind you that this blog is completely non-commercial and ad-free? I reviewed and recommended this book because I wanted to, not because anyone asked me to do so, or paid me to do so.