Summer Camp -- A Quick Postcard

Having a great time... Wish you were here!

Actually, you are, in a way.

I am at the Midwest UU Summer Assembly in Missouri. While I intend to offer more detail later, a couple of quick notes for now...

The first is, that I really am offering my workshop on liberal Christian theology and scholarship. Day One went well, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week. Some of what I'll be speaking about and asking participants to reflect on comes from the things I've thought about and shared here, and heard from others here.

The second, is the accidental discovery of a bit of online opportunism founded on my URL here... if you miss one letter in it (leaving out the 's' in 'blogspot') you wind up at a completely different place -- some kind of gospel music portal.

I guess I'm at least a little bit flattered... but then I can probably be bought cheaply...

Video/Audio vs. Print

In the news business, newspapers are turning to online video as the Next Big Thing, using it to enhance or sometimes replace print versions of stories they report on.

A number of ministers -- UU and non-UU -- opt to post their sermons only as podcasts.

On his blog, Will has a recording of something by Adolph Reed that I really want to get to...sometime. ("I haven't had a chance to play this," he notes...)

Am I really that unusual in my preference for print over audio/video? I don't boycott web video or anything like that. (There are some web videos I make a point of watching, in fact.)

But my bias is toward the written word, big time. Maybe its my general impatience and the difficulty I have sitting still. I can flip through really quickly and zero in on the portions of a text that are most pertinent to me right now.

If I have to listen to an hour-long audio clip or video clip, it's gonna be when I'm otherwise able to multi-task, like cleaning up my office space.

Am I that unusual this way?

A Serious Question about Godwin's Law (updated)

Godwin's Law is the humorous maxim that asserts that, the longer an Internet discussion continues, the probability of someone raising the Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

As I noted over on Will's blog, its more serious purpose, as I understand it, is to rein in hyperbolic warnings of looming fascism.

So, back when the Nazis were rising to power, what (besides thuggery, of course) was used to shut up the anti-Nazis?


Update:

Steve Caldwell points out that my question has been anticipated previously.

Amateur Hour

There is a discussion over at Will's blog about interracial romance in science fiction.

I was gonna post something about the William Shatner-Nichelle Nichols kiss on Star Trek TOS but then I realized this is sorta like bringing up Lionel Trains Thomas the Tank Engine toy trains

in a discussion among fine-scale model railroaders.

:-)

"Facebook isn't our friend."

Good advice and a tale of woe here.

When is the Jedi Council not the Jedi Council?

When it's the Presbyterian Church.

An old story, I know, but new to me.

Tweeting the Declaration

Slate had a contest. I read about it here. My favorite:

@Boston1775: "We seek independence based on noble and universal ideas combined with petty and one-sided grievances."

Fascinating and Creepy

Google's ads, that is.

Google has figured out I'm into model railroads. No surprise there.

So at the top of my Gmail in-box is an ad that says:

"Model Railroad - TheFutureNeedsUs.com - The Crescent Corridor Means More Jobs & Cleaner Air. Learn More."

Here's where it leads: an ad for the Norfolk Southern Ry. The real-life one, not a model.

(Crossposted at Blogging on the Railroad)

Well, I wasn't gonna get an iPad anyway: Updated

Now I definitely won't. [**Update: Link fixed.]

As I've said before, I'm holding out for a lower price point when it comes to e-readers, and something that's more of an open-source type device.

(via it's all one thing.)

Bottom line: e-readers, definitely cool as a concept. Apple hegemony? definitely Bull$#i+.

Update: iPad printing problem solved.

YouTube hits back at Viacom

For the most part I stay away here from writing much about the evolution of media, for a few reasons. The primary one is that I know a lot less about what's going on in that regard that a whole bunch of much smarter people.

And when I do reflect on the topic, I consider myself primarily a reporter, not an analyst and not, especially, either a champion or a basher of the new digital age. I don't, for instance, line up reflexively on either side of the big divide over how strongly copyright should, or should not, be enforced on the 'Net, although as someone whose livelihood comes from content my sympathies tend to lean toward preserving copyright -- within reasonable limits. But once again, I refer you to the last sentence in the previous paragraph.

But with this revelation, I'm inclined to root for YouTube:

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

via Andrew Sullivan.