Archive for December, 2004

2004.12.04

Framework Revisited

A while back I brooded on the fact that this site and my writing doesn’t have a specific framework. This would be a topic that is specific enough for visitors to easily identify with and give them a reason to keep coming back. In an email to Odd I wrote this bit, lamenting this fact again.

Focusing down a topic I think is one reason none of the ookee blogs have really taken off. It seems people are more interested in finding people of similar interests by only searching for one subject matter instead of a whole person’s identity. This is understandable since it’s hard to get the feel for who a person is on a blog like ours unless you’ve followed it for months or had some direct experience with the other person.

Creating a blog that is topical isn’t a good or a bad thing, but for someone like me with many interests it is hard. I am not inclined to narrow my interests to where I can’t express myself in other ways. I am more interested in writing about everything that interests me rather than showing merely one dimension of myself.

This is why I run this blog and The Unofficial Blosxom Users Group, and participate in the group blog, OOKEE.com. This is why I’m intending to launch another blog about my political interests based on some ideas talked over with Mookee. It will, hopefully, be a group blog with participants from across the political spectrum. I’m hoping to launch it in the new year.

Meanwhile I’ll keep ranting and raving here about whatever comes to mind and not attempt to define a framework for this site!

2004.12.04

It’s Dognuke Day

Happy Dognuke Day, everyone!

2004.12.03

The December Challenge

A trend has started. This month’s challenge was issued by Uncle Roger, to express gratitude to those that have made a difference in your life. I like the idea. None of us got to where we are being who we are entirely on our own.

If you are wondering why I’m saying thank you to a few people, now you know…

2004.12.03

Thank You: J. Franklin Henderson

Professor J. Franklin HendersonOhio University, my Alma Mater, has a program where students vote for who was the best professor that year. These professors are then given leave to create a class they really want to teach, as opposed to a classes the have to teach. It’s called the University Professor Program. As a student, getting into these classes was quite competitive.

In the 1990-91 school year I was fortunate enough to get into one of these classes. The title was Heroes and Devils and it was taught by J. Franklin Henderson of the Political Science Department. Professor Henderson had led an interesting life, starting with being one of the first black graduates from Little Rock’s Central High School, the location of one of many serious civil right’s efforts.

The name of the class, as I said, was Heroes and Devils. Why he decided to teach the class I don’t recall, but I think he was disappointed that so many modern Americans were making social, political and economic issues grey. No longer were people able to see the world in terms of black and white, right and wrong, but only as shades of vile grey which mired opinions and prevented passion for the things a person might really care about to bloom. This was, along with wretched Political Correctness, one of the big problems with university education when I was in school.

I’m sure he was not so blinded as to not be aware of the great pitfalls of viewing the world in such absolute and delineated forms, but I’m just as certain he knew the benefit of individuals knowing how to judge an issue or another person in clear terms.

In class he would present us with historical personalities and we would talk about them, thier works and their legacies. The class ended with each student declaring -clearly and definitively- whether the person was a Hero or a Devil. For our final papers he assigned each of us a person -mine was Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes- and we had to had to declare him or her a Hero or a Devil.

The class was an great experience for me. I’d never been called upon to sit in judgement of another person, even if the people are now merely a part of history. Counter intuitively, I learned that it is easy to villify a person for his evil aspects when perhaps they did more good than anyone knows, and to glamorize others when they are corrupt, irresponsible, and dangerous. Forcing myself to make absolute judgements taught me more about myself and my opinions than any other experience in college, and it’s the single class I still talk about.

Professor Henderson, along with my other political science professor Ron Hunt, gave me an interest in politics that I might never have had otherwise. Professor Henderson’s interest in civil rights and his brilliant Heroes and Devils class helped form many of the opinions I have today. I can still hear his voice egging us on, coaxing our opinions out of the grey.

I was very saddened to learn the Professor Henderson died recently. Thank you, Frank, for one of the greatest experiences in my lifelong education. I declare, in no uncertain tems, that you are a Hero.

I found this by Leigh Householder, which give another perspective on Frank’s life and influence on some individuals.

2004.12.02

The End is Nigh

December! It’s almost 2005 and this past year has flown by uncomfortably fast. The potentially sad thing is that I’m not even sure where all the time went. Possibly wasted on work, commuting to and from work, and more work.

The sky is falling, the end is nigh, it’s time to bid adieu… I’ll stop brooding the past year and brood on the new.

2004.12.01

Long Live the Republic

Long Live the Republic
As some of you may know, I’ve a keen interest in politics. It started with polisci classes in college and has smouldering for years. Many entries in my old analog journals, and this digital journal, deal directly or indirectly with political thought and theory.

One of my most recent discoveries has been some of the work of George Lakoff. I read his don’t think of an elephant (Here) while in NYC recently. Based on this I picked up Moral Politics (Here) in which he goes into much more detail about his theories. Though a “liberal” himself, Moral Politics is suprisingly analytical and mostly unbiased.

Another recent interest of mine is a question I asked Mookee a long time ago: What is the difference between a Republic and a Democracy? I’d seen the words used as if they were interchangable. Indeed, to many people today they are interchangable, but they should not be.

Read the rest of this entry…