blue in the blogosphere

B is for blogosphere

it feels to me like changes are afoot in the interwebs. it's becoming a more hostile place and i wonder why. first, i got bawled out by some righteous witch on flickr for tumbling her photo, despite the fact that tumblr gives full credit to the original and provides a LINK to it for odin's sake. and despite the fact that my tumblr clearly states that i'm sharing my flickr faves. honestly, i created it because it has a dark background and i enjoyed seeing my flickr faves on a dark background. but, i've gotten downright afraid to tumble anything after that. i don't do well with the righteous ones. the way i look at it, if you put your things online to be seen, you shouldn't be surprised when people see them, nor should you object to someone giving you both full credit and directing more traffic your way.

then, yesterday, i got an email from someone whose name wasn't familiar to me, accusing me of constantly "backpacking" on her blog (her: 73 followers, me: 1249, hmm, "backpacking?" methinks not.) by creating a link to her posts which she then had to delete. i didn't even recognize the blog initially because she blogs under another name, but i later came to find out it was on my blogroll as an "inspiration." needless to say, it's not anymore. granted, she also said she was notifying me, in case i didn't know, which i didn't. i had no idea that those blogroll lists would create links elsewhere in the blogosphere. but even if i'd known, i don't think i'd have imagined that someone would be upset by it. nor did i imagine how upsetting i would find it to be on the receiving end an accusation of "backpacking" (which i think i would call piggybacking, but that's just me).

but these are strange times in the blogosphere.

it seems to me that a big part of what the blog as a medium is about is linking. linking to other bloggers, to articles of interest, to inspiring photos and art around the interwebs. but it seems it's not about that anymore. people are getting protective of themselves and their content. the spirit of sharing and crediting and sending your bloggy friends to your other bloggy friends by way of links and favorites, is fading. and it makes me sad.

and it also made me take down my blogrolls today. so, it's not that i don't still love all of you, i've just gotten a little afraid about whether that's still ok with you...

in which she worries about the future

last night, we got home from playing cards with friends and started flipping through channels, as one does. we landed on an episode of law & order: SVU which featured a former IRA terrorist who had gone mercenary and was working for columbian drug lords since he was trained to kill and there wasn't so much killing to do anymore in ireland. so, very uplifting, as you might imagine, but a notch above the documentary on schools in germany which were training little super nazis in the years leading up to and during WWII that was on DR2.  during the commercials, husband was flipping to BBC world, where they were talking about years of strife in the congo on hardtalk. reminders of mubuto sese seko and laurent kabila and now his son flashed across the screen. why didn't i just walk away and curl up with mma ramotswe, you ask?

good question.

i sat watching these programs and i began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. i was glad sabin had fallen asleep and wasn't watching that kind of stuff. and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was for her sake. because sometimes i it makes me really ill to imagine the world she will inherit. what are we doing to our planet and ourselves? and are we just sitting here, letting it happen, as we watch it all unfold on t.v.?

there was a news recap on BBC during one of the breaks and they very dramatically and with a tone of indignation reported that russia had kicked out a couple of canadian diplomats from NATO offices in moscow. of course they did, that kind of thing happens all the time and the dudes were probably spies. which, if the editor choosing that story and the angle for that story had the slightest modicum of historical knowledge, would have been obvious. and then they would have realized it was actually really rather a non-story.

and this caused me to think of an article in information the other day about how few danish politicians (20%) think that studying the humanities (including history) is important. maybe i'm a bit touchier about this than most because i actually have a master's degree in humanities, but i think it's important to mankind's ability to sort out the world around us and make the right decisions. decisions of all kinds--but especially decisions relating to governing and how we treat one another and the planet (which cannot be done without governments cooperating). but we can't negotiate the waters as is necessary if we have no historical, sociological, cultural knowledge/background--all of which come from the humanities. it's good for us to read the classics and the so-called great books. it equips us with the necessary tools to think about things and sort them out and analyze and make good decisions. even editorial decisions like about whether it's a big deal or not that russia kicks out a couple of canadian diplomats.

and i worry that the world that sabin is inheriting isn't going to have people who are able to do that. i mean, if it's this bad now, how much worse will it get? where are the great thinkers today? the great ideas? the great philosophers? the great writers? as much as i respect and even like a guy like thomas friedman, who is arguably a public intellectual on the scene today, he's no kirkegaard. where are the people of that caliber today? where is today's dostoevsky? or voltaire? or byron? or thomas jefferson? where are the great men and women? instead we've got britain's got talent and madonna trying to adopt a kid in malawi and some asshole reporter asking some stupid football player what he thinks about climate change. we're asking all of the wrong people the wrong questions.

i want to shelter sabin from it, to keep that balloon before her face--so that what she knows is joy and laughter and all of the colorfulness there is in the world. but i know that balloon will rise and she'll have to face the mess we've left her with. and that just makes me feel sick to my stomach.

sorry for this uncharacteristically somber post, it's been grey and dreary all week and the world just gets me down sometimes.

randomness to clear my head*

fitful sleep, filled with nightmares about the environment and global warming, tossing and turning and hearing the alarm even tho' it wasn't ringing. strangely, when i woke up, the bracelet i always wear on my right wrist was on my left one. i don't really remember the dreams exactly, they were disjointed and noisy and colorful yet dark at the same time. there was some kind of planned landing in water (my dreams always involve planes), where we smoothly went under and lodged in the soft bottom of the sea and proceeded calmly to gather our things and get ready to leave the plane as if things were totally normal. at least no wings were sheared off from landing between tall buildings that were simply too close for that--that's what usually happens. and there was something about sabin being missing and me frantically searching for her. i woke up, heart pounding, having to check that she was indeed here, because although disjointed, it was very real. but it was strange to wake up to the life that's going on over here in the (ostensibly) awake world. perhaps i should go to bed before 2 a.m. tonight.

* * *

please check out the wonderful, giving post on how you can help kelaya over on tangobaby. kelaya is a woman who fled an abusive husband together with her three children and because all of the shelters are full, she needs your help. the lovely and talented tangobaby has set up a way for you to do that. because she's just that cool. please go read kelaya's story and do what you can, even if it's only leaving a note of support.

* * *

the poor swedish police, they always seem to have the worst luck. just reading in my newspaper that a 40-year-old swedish count and his 38-year-old girlfriend were brutally shot on tuesday outside his daughter's school in the middle of gamla stan in stockholm. and, as is often the case (remember olof palme and the early days of the anna lindh case, tho' thankfully they eventually solved that one), they have no clue who did it, despite it happening in broad daylight. they brought in some jetset ad exec for questioning (he's friends with the count's ex-wife), but released him again after a few hours.  meanwhile, the count and his girlfriend are in critical condition in a stockholm hospital. 

* * *

interesting:

annual danish military budget: 20 billion danish kroner

amount made by maersk on US military shipping contracts in 2007:
18 billion danish kroner

source: information 

* * *

a few people among my influx of new readers here and those checking out my photostream on flickr have asked me for advice for amateur photographers. ha! imagine that, asking me for photographic advice! i am the most amateur of amateur photographers myself, i'm just fortunate to have access to some good cameras and lenses (nikon, nikon, nikon). and also fortunate to be part of the digital age. when you take a dozen pictures of every subject, one of them is bound to turn out, right?
 

but to be serious for a second, i will say that developing your eye is the best advice i can offer. and carry your camera with you everywhere. everywhere. i take my camera in when i go to the grocery store (that's only partly to do with the fact that it's worth more than my car). i am never, ever without a camera.  and when you do that, you start noticing things...like shadows and light and eyeballs on the trees. 

you also find that you get increasingly fearless in stopping and snapping pictures (i don't do much of that with people, mostly with things, if you take pictures of people, you should ask them if it's ok). you lose your self-consciousness and you get down on your knees to get the right angle, and you stop caring what people might think of that. you may also start carrying a little pouch containing subjects that you photograph in various places.

so my best advice to amateur photographers--take your camera everywhere and be totally fearless. 

* * *

please tell me i did not just hear a CNN weather man say expecially....

* * *

please forgive crappy quality of phone picture

do you ever stand next to such a door on a plane at cruising altitude and feel a nearly irresistible urge to open it? don't worry, i resisted. they were about to come around with cocktails and those great little bowls of posh mixed nuts (no peanuts), so the urge passed.

* * *

and finally, a question: what would your dream job be? it sounds like a weird question to ask in these troubled economic times, but perhaps a bit of creative thinking is warranted these days. what would you most like to do?

*this may become a regular feature. my head seems to need a lot of clearing.

what makes an insult an insult?

ever since the shoe-throwing incident on sunday, i've been pondering insults. it was supposedly extremely insulting from an iraqi cultural standpoint to throw a shoe at bush--which supposedly made it even worse than it already was to throw such an object at one of the most powerful leaders in the world. but i find it hard to get worked up about a shoe. for me, i pretty much only wish he'd been a better shot or that bush had had slower reflexes. i'm more insulted that he threw a shoe at the man and missed than that he threw shoe at all. if you're gonna do something like that, it's worth getting it right.

so, if something that's meant as an insult isn't insulting to me, is it still an insult? what is the role of intent in the insult? can it retain its meaning in the face of being misunderstood as not particularly insulting? is it even MORE insulting to the insulter that their insult isn't seen as insulting?

the role of culture in insults cannot be underestimated. i used to (and occasionally still do) expend a lot of energy being insulted by the fact that all those people i saw on the train every day never acknowledge my existence with a simple nod or "good morning." but, i had to realize that they were not actually meaning to insult me. they were just ignoring me, as dictated by their culture, since they hadn't met me back in kindergarten, but there was no intent in it. so, all of that energy i was expending fuming about it was really quite wasted. i was insulted by something that wasn't an insult.

a couple of years ago, we saw a big impact of the difference of cultural perspective on insults in the whole incident with the danish cartoons. jyllands posten published a dozen cartoons depicting the prophet. they did it after a children's book company had been unable to get anyone to do some illustrations of mohammed for them. the newspaper took it as a challenge and tasked their cartoonists to come up with mohammed cartoons. they published them and then the news was apparently transported to the middle east on the back of a camel because it took another five months before the anger exploded. and a whole lot of people felt really insulted that their prophet was depicted with a bomb in his turban in a danish newspaper.

the danes were quite bewildered by the whole thing, because they had meant it as a bit of ironic humor and an exercise in freedom of speech, not as an insult per se. the swiss were a bit bewildered too, because their red flag with its white cross was also burned all over the middle east, mostly for looking a bit like a danish flag. big danish dairy producers were bewildered when their products were boycotted in the middle east, because they were accustomed to selling quite a lot of feta there.

but, i'm no farther. i'm still left wondering if an insult is still an insult if it's not seen as insulting...

EDITED:  on my flight home, i happened to think of the classic monty python insult bit from the holy grail:

john kenney had an amusing little ditty on the subject of insults in yesterday's IHT.