You seem to suggest that the people who believe in God recognize that religion is root of human troubles, so they should give up and go home. As if to say, There is no God, so knock off this silly religion business. It’s causing nothing but trouble.  That’s not going to work unless you first convert them to atheism. I don’t think that will be easy.

You say that religion is the problem, the source of all the world’s divisiveness and horror. I say no, we call that good vs. evil. Sin is a word that comes to mind. Delusion works. My favorite word is prelest, which is Russian. [http://goo.gl/IE6zm]. That people use what is beautiful as a means to ugliness does not change the essence of the thing, is my point.

I’m not sure how a Christian posting a video supporting gay rights winds up getting a lecture on how religion is the problem for gays, except that nobody ever expects the Spanish Irony, I mean Inquisition. The very fact that this video has gone viral, that so many people honor its message of love and tolerance, completely contradicts your premise. You think only atheists care? And of course the church has always been the place where the struggle between good and evil is most profound. Where else would you expect evil to go looking for a fight?

It seems to me that telling religious people that religion is stupid makes exactly as much sense as trying that argument on an atheist, and demanding their immediate baptism. You could try killing the religion out of them. Didn’t work in Russia, hasn’t worked in China. Especially since throughout history even people who got their throats slashed by thugs believed in something they thought was worth dying for. And generally, it was just they wanted the right to pray.

You think only religion kills people in defense of its belief system? The Soviets killed millions of Christians in the name of atheism. Many people say the KGB is still alive and well, and stories of atheist evil still filter out of the “former” USSR. You think it’s easy being Christian, or anything except  Communist, in China today? What’s the penalty for being religious in North Korea?

I’m not demeaning your opinion by likening it to those of people who’ve committed atrocities; you have a right to your opinion on its own merits. But you brought up history, and took it back pretty far, not giving much credence to modern efforts to reform parochial thinking. So I will point out that the Bolsheviks had plenty of gripes about the history of religion when they revolted in 1917, and defiled every church they could find. And if Christians have, under delusion, killed for their beliefs, millions have also died for them. Getting thrown the lions will really ruin your day. … OK, bad joke.

So here’s my idea: Instead of telling people religion is stupid, let’s have a country with freedom to practice religion or not. And say that the government doesn’t get to decide what the religions are or mess with them. We’re probably going to have to keep reminding them about that, because religious people are going to get elected and get all judgmental on us. And if it happens, we can sue, or we can find a really smart college kid and send him to the state house to set their f—kin’ clocks.

And people who believe in God but aren’t trying to control other people will point him out and say Cool. … +1! … Like! … I predict a long hard climb toward enlightenment, tolerance, and peace. Progress, not perfection.

In a nutshell, the place to make and enforce laws is government. You can tell the government to stay out of religion and make it enforceable, because the government doesn’t have to stay out of government. The government can’t make a law against the church meddling in politics without breaking the law against meddling in religion. At best, it’s a pretty good suggestion.

I’ve never been a fan of revisionary, retroactive justifications for war.  War is bad, and unintended good side effects may be a consolation, but not justification.  And if it wasn’t a reason to attack, it’s not a reason to stay.

Our species seems to be addicted to war and to the absurd concept that it solves problems. I guess if someone attacks you, there’s little choice but self defense. But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to have very little to do with that.

There are more girls in school, and more girls in the ground too. We did not attack Afghanistan so the girls could go to school. Or so that the Corps of Engineers could improve their infrastructure. Which is also a good thing, I suppose. We attacked to kill Taliban. Now we’re broke and we’ve lost a lost of good people, and it’s time to rethink the plan.

The plight of girls and women in Afghanistan is terrible, but not even a little bit unique. If schools for abused and exploited girls is a reason for war, our next target is China.

There are schools on Native American reservations too. Ask them how they like the Great Republic, overall.

Bush stated his reasons for attacking. Historians will figure out what they were, even if we’ve lost track. But they’re no longer valid, are they? And I’m not saying the countries we Shock and Awe shouldn’t have schools, hospitals, roads, mosques, homes, irrigation, power, broadband, better cemeteries, whatever they want. Least we can do. I’m just saying we shouldn’t make war on their country to give them those things.

I’m not sure Moore has the answers. I damn sure don’t. The Taliban needed killing. But this is a BushCheney failcluster from the words, “bring ‘em on.” (I know, that was Irag, but same difference.) The Taliban aren’t dead, the girls aren’t safe. And there’s little hope they ever will be, without a different approach.

Afghanistan needs real, sane government.  So do we.  America should be the change we want to see in the world, or sit down and shut the f—k up.

I suspect that if we traveled to Afghanistan and asked the girls how they enjoy school, they might say it would have been better to help them have school without making war on their country. They might remind us of what all children know:

War Is Evil.

“Fragments are the only way that life makes sense.”

Hmm. Restated, it says:

Life only makes sense in fragments.

Fragments make sense of life.

Life is made of fragments? … Life is fragmentary?

It’s true. We are the experiences we’ve had and the conditioning to which we’ve been subjected. And there’s nothing whole or continuous about that stuff.

Your mother at the sewing machine, working through the evening to get something ready for you.

A rainbow trout held to the light, returning light; fishing with your Dad.

Your little brother at Halloween, Casper the Friendly Ghost.

“And time is the matter before us, or memory and what it makes of a man and leaves of him as it gathers up the chips of wood and broken glass that time will always make of life.” [My novel in process.]

If memory and hence life is fragments, bit of broken things, then why do we write story the way we do? Why try to make life fit a continuum, and form narratives into long, smooth arcs of experience and time? Why pretend that all the pieces fit, and insist on proving to the reader that they do?

To be true to life, shouldn’t story be fragmentary too? Of course, good story is fragments. It’s just really hard to see one’s own work that way, or to believe it’s possible, when writing a first novel.

Windows Live Writer is a fantastic tool for blogging. It’s easy to set up with a Blogger blog or WordPress.

It does everything you’ll need to do in Blogger except insert a jump break. (That’s where you want the post to stop on the main page of the blog and give the reader a link to read more.) And I usually post my longer things, then return and add the jump break in a day or two anyway.

You can set up Windows Live Writer to handle multiple blogs, and it can insert any kind of media you need. And additional cool plug-ins can be downloaded from Microsoft to customize the program.

It’s free, like me.

Metaphor by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

So feel free to mimeograph it for all your friends, if that’s what you like to do.

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Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

-Hafez, poet (1315-1390)

That’s kinda sweet. It came in my Word-a-Day email this morning. I looked at it and thought that for Hafez, that’s a little weak. Hafez was a powerful poet.

Then I thought, Training wheels? On what?

Does anybody how there know what they were putting training wheels on for kids in the 14th century? Frequently enough that it made its way into the idiomatic lexicon of a Persian poet in Shiraz?

I think somebody got a little too free with their translation there, is my point.

"You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone. … Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display."

I get the point. We're using the traditional website less because we have newer devices and applications to receive content. Cool. But gee, I hate hyperbole sometimes. Half the examples they cite of non-web uses of the Internet either are Web content, or at least depend on a Web browser and a computer at some point in the experience.

For example, they cite:

"During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. … watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service."

Wrong. Facebook, Twitter, and The Times are websites, not apps. You can use an app on a device such as a phone to get their Web content. I use my PC. And Netflix's streaming service works just great in Firefox; just as well as it does via wii or cable.

Saying Facebook is an app is like saying Wal-mart is a car, because you used a car to get to the store and bring your Wallyworld goodies home.

The Web isn't dead, it isn't dying, it's just the older child in a growing family, and it's getting less attention.

But I guess a headline like that wouldn't have gotten my attention as easily as "The Web is Dead," would it?
]]> http://kimberlin.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-web-is-dead/feed/ 1 kimberlin http://kimberlin.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/theres-a-velociraptor/ http://kimberlin.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/theres-a-velociraptor/#comments Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:04:00 +0000 Kyle Kimberlin http://kimberlin.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/theres-a-velociraptor ]]> in your lap.

Previously in this space, I posted about comparisons and contrasts between Microsoft Word 2003 and OpenOffice.org Writer 3.2. All other contenders have been eliminated, by virtue of cost or ineptitude. Only these two remain on the island.

I’m still using Office 2003 most of the time. I’m enjoying learning OpenOffice.org Writer and I think it’s great. But as part of my learning process, I made a list of what I find wanting in Writer. Meaning, features of Word that Writer doesn’t have, or doesn’t get quite right.

This isn’t about which to buy. I own Office 2003, and I downloaded OpenOffice Writer, free gratis. I would not again pay what Microsoft wants for Office in any version. And if my computers hadn’t come with Windows, I would be running Ubuntu Linux. Microsoft makes great stuff but they charge too much and their licenses are oppressive. Plus, they sue people at the drop of a hat. But that’s another post, another day.

Here’s my list of things I like better about Word. There are 10 items.

Comments

Both have comments, but Word does it better.

I use comments a lot when I’m editing what I write. The feature is designed for others to make remarks on a person’s work, but I make notes for myself. You insert a comment at a certain point, and balloon with your thoughts appears in the margin. In Word, I can highlight a paragraph or a phrase, to show what my comment refers to. But Writer just links the balloon with a single point. This makes it less effective and useful when I return to work on that passage again.

Review Display

Works great in Word, just barely in Writer.

As I edit text, and track changes in Word, by default I’m looking at the final document with the markups visible. But I can switch from that to Final to see what it’s going to be like when I’m done, or Original, to see what it was like before I started editing. Writer can record changes, and you can hide them, but you can’t look back at the original. It’s not quite the same thing.

Toolbars Access

Easy in Word, a pain in Writer

If you right-click the toolbar area in Word, it shows you the list of all its toolbars, and you can select the ones you want. In Writer, you have to click View on the menu, then Toolbars, to see the list. Things like that slow down work.

Color Palette

A Writer glitch.

Both Word and Writer have a text color button on the formatting toolbar. Both have a little button that opens a palette of colors. But sometimes, depending on how the toolbars are configured, the little button disappears in Writer. This is really picky, but it has stumped me once or twice.

Document Views

Word gets it right, Writer left it out.
In Word, you have 6 views – ways of looking at your document while you work:

• Normal hides all formatting such as margins and spaces between pages. It’s just the text.
• Web previews your output for Web presentation.
• Print shows you your document the way it will be when it’s finished, with margins and page breaks. It has a slice of gray space between pages.
• Outline shows the text as plain, collapsible blocks. This is used mostly for moving sections around.
• Reading shows the document in a final format but is not for actually working on it.
• Page Preview is for viewing the final product.

When I’m working, I usually use Print Layout. I prefer the way it orients the page visually. But if I have a multiple page document, I don’t want to see the top and bottom margins, the headers and footers, and the spaces between the pages. I can click the gray slices between two pages, and the top and bottom margins, and the headers and footers and gray spaces between pages, all disappear. I can concentrate on writing my text. Unlike Normal view, the left and right margins remain intact, so the text doesn’t shift off to one side.

Writer has only one view for working. It’s the equivalent of Word’s Print Layout view, with margins and everything visible. There’s no option to hide any part of the page or the spaces between them. I find this to be a significant deficit in openoffice.org Writer. If you’re working on a large document, you need to be able to focus on the text.

Writer does have a Web view, which is a preview of what the page would look like on the web. It’s nothing to write home about. Basically, a plain text view of the page. Unhelpful, for my purposes.

Split Screen.

Tricky but cool in Word, Writer left it out.

There is no split screen function in Writer. Click the link if you want to learn about that. It’s cool.

Line Select Tool

Missing in Writer.

If you want to select a line of text in Word, you move the cursor to the left of the text. It turns to a white arrow. Then you can select an entire line with a click. OpenOffice.org Writer does not have a line select function like this.

Document Opening

Writer is lazy sometimes.

Say you have the program minimized, and you double-click a document in a Windows folder. The document should open, right? Writer opens the document alright, but the window stays minimized. You have to click the button on the toolbar to make the document window appear. Trivial, sure … but what the heck?

Research

Missing from Writer.

Writer doesn’t have any Research functions. In Word, you can alt-click a word and get definitions, synonyms, etc. Or right click for synonyms, etc.

Fonts Issue?
A possible Writer glitch, or maybe just me.

Sometimes Writer does weird stuff with my fonts. It’s probably because I’ve been flipping back and forth between two office suites too much. But fonts seem to get FUBAR either when I switch between Writer and Word, or open a document on a different computer. It changes Arial into Calibri, etc. And sometimes the Calibri isn’t really Calibri– it’s some weird script-looking funky font.

In Conclusion

OpenOffice.org has been downloaded over 300 million times, all over the planet. It and similar products are used by professionals, companies, and governments. None of the things I mentioned above are worth paying for, when you can get a great Office suite for free. I’m just sharing things I like better about Word.
I guess it’s like cars. Some of the big, powerful, luxury cars have all sorts of thoughtful amenities that you won’t find in something smaller and lighter, quicker and much less expensive. Still, there are reasons to park the old Cadillac and take the Honda for a spin. And I’m going to keep using my little vehicle for smaller trips, until the old Fleetwood outlives her usefulness.

There are reasons not to get caught up with buying proprietary, strictly licensed, heavily copyrighted software in the first place. More on that another time.

Now I know they want you to wander in there and buy a nice hardback book, and the $5 won’t sting, right? I’ve got a stack of good books to read. But just for chits and jiggles, I clicked the link, redeemed the coupon to my account, and set out to see what might be on sale.

Low and behold, there’s Wired Magazine, defined by Wikipedia as “…a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since March 1993, that reports on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics.”

Cool, I’ve been kinda wanting to check that out. I’ve read some of their articles online and it’s good stuff. But it sells for $60/year. … No, it’s on sale on Amazon for 10 clams. Into the old shopping cart, click submit, out the other end like this…

$10 minus my $5.00 coupon = $5.00. That’s 92% off, boys and girls. I’m tellin’ ya, this Internet thing is pretty cool sometimes. I like getting stuff cheap.

Like I said. Sweet.