This morning I’m looking at feeds in my RSS reader and I come across this terse entry from scripting.com:

Don’t you laugh when a literary nobody and venture capitalist uses a word like “stupid” to describe a science fiction giant like Ray Bradury.

The choice phrase “literary nobody” is a link, and I click on it and find myself in the midst of a bunch of comments on some weblog. Scrolling down, I find a comment by Dave Weiner, the author of scripting.com, which starts by dismissing the author of the blog entry he is commenting on as a “literary nobody” and then creates some twisted analogy intended to defend Ray Bradbury.

For those who don’t know, Ray Bradbury has been making quite a stink recently about the title of Michael Moore’s latest movie, “Farenheit 9-11,” an obvious play on Bradbury’s “Farenheit 451,” a book which many of us read as a defense of freedom of speech and the press. We’ll all have to wonder about that interpretation now though, because Bradbury seems to think that, contrary to centuries of literary tradition, no one should be able to borrow or play on the title of someone elses work the way he himself has, with, for example, Walt Whitman’s “i sing the body electric.”

So, Bradbury’s deeply hypocritical snit is reason #1.

Reason #2 is Dave Winer’s defense of Bradbury, which is both lame ( why can’t we call a spade a spade? Literary giant or not, stupid is about the nicest thing one can say about Bradbury’s behavior on this subject ) and insulting. I’ve often seen Weiner complain that people who disagree with him resort to personal attacks. Hard to imagine why.

It seems that Winer may have regretted his comment as he has since removed the link. Still, regrets are one thing, not being a jerk in the first place is quite another.

From time to time I try to condense my anger at the present administration down into a short phrase that hopefully conveys my outrage, and starts to stir it in others. None of them seem quite right, but I thought I’d post a few as practice:

Bush lied to us. I care, why don’t you?

Bush made America into a liar in they eyes of the world. Why aren’t you outraged too?

Bush and his men are liars, and they don’t care who knows it.

Bush and his men lied and betrayed America. I care, why don’t you?

Why don’t you care that Bush and his men are liars?

Onfolio
Onfolio looks like it could be useful. If it supported Firefox I’d have a more informed opinion. Still, I’ll be installing it at work. I’ve been looking for things to help streamline all the web-based research I do.

Ok, maybe not that much, but still, I’d like it if my cellular provider (Verizon) would, for a low low price (say another $3-5/month), give us a VoIP adapter for our home phone and allow us to receive calls with CallerID to our cell numbers through it with no per-minute charges. Verizon’s coverage in our neighborhood is weak, and any time I use my mobile in my house, i regret it. At the same time, I feel silly spending for two cell phones, a land line with no features and DSL. It would be nice to cut one of them out, save a little money, and gain some convenience.

Even cooler would to skip the VoIP adapter and use a mobile with VoIP and very power-efficient WiFi that would choose the cheapest best signal.

Everyday Matters. “Do not fear mistakes. there are none.” Miles Davis said that.

Everyday Matters is a series of occasional essays on creative things, journal making, drawing,etc. intended to challenge, inspire and perplex. Please feel free to comment and straighten my ass out.

I like the look and feel of this blog. (via BoingBoing)