Humor from a friend.
There will be no nativity scene in the United State Congress, this year!
The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a nativity scene in the United States capital this Christmas season.
This isn’t for any religious reason; they simply have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the nation’s capitol.
There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.
Political Philosophies Explained in Simple “Two Cow” Terms
I got this from my friend, Ray, who got it from someone else. (You know how it is.) During my attempt to track down an author, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry for Two Cows. Amusing all around.
Enjoy.
Socialism: You have two cows. You keep one and give one to your neighbor.
Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk.
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them and sells you the milk.
Nazism: You have two cows. The government takes both and then shoots you.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours it down the drain.
Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Corporate: You have two cows. You sell one, force the other to produce the milk of four cows, and then act surprised when it drops dead.
Democracy: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point that you must sell them both in order to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow which was a gift from your government.
A plea to those who [should] care.
I write about Twitter too much. I know that. But Twitter has become part of my life and, like other things that are part of my life, it has given me plenty to write about.
Today’s topic is Twitter fluff. That’s my term for the kinds of tweets that are downright boring and childish, written by people who should know better. The sole purpose of these tweets seems to be to fill the Twitter world with content. Trouble is, the quality of that content is about equal to the quality of the stuff that accumulates in a clothes dryer’s lint screen.
While you expect that kind of behavior from people who really don’t have anything to tweet about or people too immature to realize the significance of their everyday experiences, you don’t expect it from people with experiences worth sharing.
I’m not naming names here. Or Twiter IDs, for that matter. But I recently added a professional journalist to my list of Twitter friends. This is a person who works for a media organization and typically follows stories relating to the Iraq war and politics — stories that matter. An adult. A professional. Someone who should have interesting tweets.
What I found, however, is that more than half of this person’s tweets are messages to his new Twitter friends to greet them. For example, “Hi new Twitterfriends, @AlexTheBird, @JackTheDog, and @mlanger!” While it’s very friendly of this person to greet all his new friends, reading dozens of tweets like this throughout the day — between the daily “Good morning, Twitter!” and nightly “Good night, Twitter!” posts — is pretty much a waste of my time. I’m interested in what this guy is doing. Who is he interviewing? What has he learned? What insight can he share about his professional journalism world? How can what he’s doing make me think about the world around me?
I need to mention here that I don’t expect every tweet I read to contain some kind of deep revelation for me. (If that were possible, I’d spend all of my time reading Twitter tweets.) This morning, one of my Twitter friends posted a tweet in which the text was all upside-down. How the heck did she do that? She followed up with a link that showed us how. Useless? Yes. Trivial? Sure. But fun? You bet! And a heck of a lot more interesting than “Hello new Twitterfriends @joe, @jim, and @jake!”
And, for those of you ready to go on the offensive, I’m also not saying that my tweets are anything special. I just tweet about the things I’m doing. Some of them are pretty dull. (Who cares that I’m reading my e-mail?) Some of them are pretty interesting. (How many people land their helicopters in a new friend’s backyard?) But I’m not filling the Twitter world with fluff, either.
Anyway, I’m kind of hoping this journalist friend reads this and recognizes himself and thinks about what he’s typing to the world — especially to all of those new friends he keeps greeting. No offense guy, but you can do much better than that. I know you can.
I’m not the only one struggling.
I use a feed reader (endo) to follow about 30 feeds in a wide range of topics. At least I try to. The trouble is, if I skip a day reading the feeds, no one tells the authors to stop writing. They just keep churning out new material. The result: as I type this, there are 1188 unread blog entries waiting for me in endo.
Sheesh!
Why don’t I read them regularly? Well, one of the reasons I subscribe to all these feeds is because they give me food for thought. I’ll read an article and think about it and, in some cases, it’ll get the creative juices flowing so I can write a blog entry based on what I’ve read.
Perfect example is the article I wrote yesterday about notebooks and scratchpads. It wasn’t a good article — I’ll be the first to admit that — primarily because I threw it together without giving it enough thought. (My husband was rushing me. He wanted to go out to dinner. Can you imagine putting food before blogging?) But the seed that became the article came from a blog entry (which I now can’t find) recommending that bloggers keep a notebook beside their computers. I think that’s incredible advice — and it goes against what all the geeks out there recommend — and I realize that I follow it. I wanted to explain why it’s good advice by explaining how I follow it. My post didn’t communicate the story the way I wanted it to, but that’s where the idea came from.
Thinking takes time, which brings up…
I simply don’t have the time to read (and think) about them all.
Now you might tell me that I can make the time. And I’d tell you that I really do need to sleep at night and get some paying work done during the day.
I stumbled upon a blog post today, written by Lincoln Adams, who evidently really likes to punish himself with this stuff. From “Can I get back to blogging now??” on Habitation of Justice:
Honestly, I don’t know how some people do it. It took me literally all day just to check out places like Digg, Reddit, MyBlogLog, and so on. Just to read the latest feeds from my newsreader sucked up so much time that before I knew it, it was 3AM and my brain was fried from fatigue and an overload of information. How do people find time not only to sift through the all the crap out there, but also blog 20 posts a day AND work a full time job on top of that? My goodness.
My goodness, too!
Apparently, Lincoln and I have the same problem, only he’s taking it more seriously than I am by actually trying to keep up. I don’t think he writes 20 blog posts a day and I know I don’t. But even two or three can be tough when you’re doing so much other stuff.
Of course, you might tell me that I should subscribe to fewer feeds. And I’d tell you that I think you’ve got something there.
But which ones to remove? Lately, I’ve been adding more feeds than I’ve been removing.
But I’m starting to think that the ones without full-text feeds will be the ones to go first. Like Slate.com’s feeds. I don’t subscribe to the entire magazine — I did for a while and quickly put an end to that. I subscribe to about 10 different columns. And the problem I have is that all that appears in my feed reader is a tease to get me to the site. While it only takes a few moments to click a link and see if the article is worth reading in full, it would be quicker and easier if I just scanned it in endo. And it would certainly prevent me from being distracted by links to other articles on Slate’s site.
I think my main problem is interests. I have too many of them.
I’m interested in blogging and productivity. I’m interested in writing and traveling. I’m interested in photography and flying. I’m interested in politics and religion — as an observer (rather than a participant) in both. I’m just interested in too much stuff.
And the blogosphere is a great place to find information and viewpoints about all kinds of stuff. So how could I turn up the chance to suck in some fresh new content?
So I subscribe to a bunch of blogs and I wade through all that content when I have time.
I mean find time.
No, I mean make time.
I think I’d better make some time right now. If you’ll excuse me…
I find a Bible reference in a weird place and look it up.
This morning, while having breakfast with Mike, he pulled out an aviation catalog I’d never seen before. It’s evidently a company completing with Sporty’s and Aircraft Spruce to sell pilot supplies and aircraft parts. A slick catalog with color photos and a clean layout.
But on the cover, in small type, was a cryptic code: 1 Peter 1:3-5.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never read the Bible, but I know a Bible reference when I see one. I whipped out my PowerBook and did a Google search for the reference, wondering what Bible verse would apply to aviation. I wound up on a page of BibleGateway.com, an excellent source of Bible text, with multiple versions all searchable by verse or text. Here’s what the Standard English version had to say about this reference.
Born Again to a Living Hope
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
I don’t know about you, but I find references to the end of days on the cover of an aviation catalog a bit over the top. Disturbing, in fact. So disturbing, I find I don’t want to order anything from the company who published the catalog.
On a related note, I was listening to Bill Maher’s HBO show yesterday. I subscribe to the podcast (we don’t get HBO) and I find it fascinating to hear so many viewpoints about what’s going on in politics and the world. In the most recent episode, someone said, “Didn’t Jesus say the truth will set you free?” He was talking about the current administration’s lies regarding Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch. Evidently, some right-wing conservative told the Tillman family that they’d feel better about their son’s death if they were “more Christian.”
I decided I wanted that particular bible quote on my TumbleLog, where I collect quotes. So I looked it up on Google and wound up on the BibleGateway site. (I really do recommend the site if you ever need to check out something in the Bible.) I found the full quote and added the King James version to my TumbleLog:
John 8:32
32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
It interests me how people use the Bible. They pull out passages when they want to send a message, but they completely ignore the simple passages that everyone — even non-believers — find right and good. The truth will make you free — free of lies and the burden of maintaining them. I don’t need to read the Bible or even be a religious person to know and understand that.