Home
June 1st 2005
Welcome to civilization. This website is a family picnic managed by your host, Woot. You can browse the Pages or you can blog the Categories. You don’t need to register to leave comments to messages, but if you do want to publish new posts, you can register here, or log in here. Comments are made simply by clicking on the Comment link at the end an article.
Budding botanists.
Background
This blog is a companion to the North Central Washington website. There is some overlap, but the blog is more opinionated, beginning with the material below.
Some Journal Posts and Pages
Family Picnic
Lost and Forgotten (hikes)
Dad George (memorial)
Nuance
Nuance is communication with subtle distinction. It adds color, emotion and interest to otherwise monotone dialogues. Nuance is essentially a hidden metaphor. It is the essence of media (depending on the subtleness, aroma might be more appropriate).
Nuance is a powerful motivator when processed by a two-hemisphere brain. It is working every time you find yourself humming a jingle for a product you don’t even use. Most of us find that downright irritating. But only a fool would pretend not to use it, as only a fool doesn’t understand what it is.
Take the post, why republicans should thank the democrats, which could be read by some as being anti-republican, and which will be read by others as pro-democrat. But the message and title are open-ended about what the republicans should be thanked for, of which there are undoubtedly **many things**. The intended message is not the explicit one that sends people here from Google searches, but rather the implicit message that stimulates critical thinking (why are they ungrateful?, or why am I ungrateful?).
We don’t need rants. Ranting causes mild-mannered people to become inflamed and anyway it isn’t any fun. Like it or not, we have to live in the status quo, and whining isn’t an effective way to change the problems with our civilization. Social change has to come through social means.
The big picture
It is important to understand how civilization works in order to get some use from this blog, so let me digress.
Culture. For white anglos, the social lifestyles of western civilication (what we do) is controlled by the American cultural milieu (how Americans think). Our cultural icon has got to be the hamburger. Yes, that’s it. We do have culture. We just lack taste. We have a lot of freedom to choose our hamburgers.
Our Puritan work ethic is what has made America great. There is no moss on these rolling stones. From the greatest to the most tawdry, you won’t find anyone idle in America. We dream about success, but we never sleep.
Our political system is basically a ballroom dance contest in which the most popular dance teams get to be National ambassadors. This system is very different from the National Sport, baseball, which is organized into many teams. There are only two teams in politics, the red and the blue. The dance routines use podiums to help focus on the all-important message and try to influence the grand pooh-bah.
Actors make the best team leaders, but car salesmen are also suitable. Any experience as an entertainer is considered valuable. The judges appear on weekly television programs to keep the masses informed about the scoring and discuss all matters banal. The masses participate in civilization as masses do – by swelling and rising with emotion and passion whenever the judges call foul, and by pointing and swearing and getting photographed with their mouths open whenever the limits of bad taste or public displays of stupidity have been broached. There are also social events called elections, which are held at casinos.
Now we are ready to discuss the technical aspects of the internet.
Web content – literary, graphic art, entertainment or informational?
The internet is about communication. Who is your audience? A website with persuasive intention should minimize distracting imagery, whereas a site about art or entertainment may want to minimize verbiage. Expository websites that are meant to inform would likely benefit from a mix of both imagery and text.
Wordpress is a good choice for a blog, as it has the ability to easily switch themes, with a lot of extensibility and a wide following. This post celebrates the demise of my two-year moratorium on comment posting during the 2005-2007 spam wars (thank you, Akismet and Bad Behavior).
The gates for new posts and comments are once again open. There will be opportunities for both thoughtful and contrary contribution.
-Woot