Hint hint

I love when they track this type of stuff......


Dan Cook (Globe and Mail) Posts:

December 2, 2006: "You have before you a Liberal dream team. Stephen Harper, we are counting the days to the next election." — Liberal Leader Stephane Dion

November 30, 2007: Dion hints there could be a spring election

December 23, 2007: Opposition hints at 2008 federal election

February 10, 2008: Dion hints budget might be election's trigger

July 23, 2008: Dion hints at possible fall vote

August 16, 2008: Liberal Leader Stephane Dion criticizes Stephen Harper's election hints

To Gear or not to Gear

Matt at 37 signals writes:

Years ago I read a book about guitar effects pedals. Something the author wrote in the intro stuck with me: “Tone is in your fingers.”

He went on to explain: You can buy the same guitar, effects pedals, and amplifier that Eddie Van Halen uses. But when you play that rig, it’s still going to sound like you.

Likewise, Eddie could plug into a crappy Strat/Pignose setup at a pawn shop and you’d still be able to recognize that it’s Eddie Van Halen playing.

Sure, fancy gear can help. But the truth is that your tone comes from you.

I often think of this story when people fixate on gear over content. You know the type: Wannabe designers who want an avalanche of fancy typefaces and Photoshop filters but don’t have anything to say. Amateur photographers who want to debate film vs. digital instead of what actually makes for a great photo. Startup folks that worry more about software and scaling issues then how to actually get customers and make money. They all miss the point.

Aspiring podcasters consantly ask Gary V about the tools he uses. He responds:

It’s not the camera that I use, it’s not the blogging software, it’s not the widgets, it’s not the SEO. It’s the two C’s: content and community…There are so many crap podcasts out there with billion dollar cameras and editing tools for days. It’s about giving from your heart with content you really understand and, more importantly, giving back to the community that supports your show.

Figure out what you have to say that’s interesting and then unleash it. Use whatever tools you’ve got already or what you can afford cheaply. Then go.

It’s not the gear that matters. It’s you and your ideas that matter. Tone is in your fingers.

Crap - gotta go sell my bass gear again.

Want the good news or the bad?

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. writes:

Sometimes the bad news is the good news. So it is with the report that retail sales are down by 0.1 percent in July, the sharpest drop in many months.

Why good news? It means that consumers are starting to cut back. They could be going into less debt. They might be saving more. They are being more careful about long-term plans pending short-term trends.

I don't know if people are really learning anything - or if things are just so bad that something has to change....sort of reading the manual after you have spent hours claiming you "know what your doing" reading it once dosen't mean you will pick it up the next time you open the Ikea box.

The article isn't actually annoucing that any big change is happeing, but more challenges the way we somtimes interpret data. It caught my attention because I sort of hope that maybe people will start to change the way they spend money.... well I can hope right?

Direction of the Spiral?

Jonathan Brink writes:

I’m reading this morning and something hit me.

Beneath the subtlety of religion (which is a system of performance) is the lie that I’m not really broken, that secretly I’m okay. And that if I just learn the right thing, know the right material, read the right book, do the right thing, or pray a certain way that I will be okay. Nobody will notice my indiscretions. And the very nature of the lie is to convince me that it is true, and because I’ve believed it I hold out hope that the lie is actually true. The search for those things leads me down the spiral to captivity, yet to admit the truth is to let go, which I don’t want to do because then I will have to admit I am broken.

Just thinking out loud.

I think that is me too. I seek knowledge to enhance my faith, but the knowledge leads me to rely on knowledge not faith. The question is - can that become a cycle of growth and not a downward spiral?

Better and faster at meaningless

Jordan Cooper posts:

"We can talk on the phone as we eat fast food while using the ATM. Not only are we better at multitasking and becoming more productive and efficient, along with the increased pace, more is required of us. And so we hurtle through life faster and faster, becoming busier and busier. The result is that in our busyness we are becoming increasingly efficient at leading meaningless lives."

Don Whitney, professor, Midwestern Seminary

Yep... that's what it seems like.

The Junky Car Club

I came across the Junky Car Club today... This seems like a neat idea to me

Junky Car Club members are learning to live with less so we can give more. We're a bunch of happy drivers who are politely rebelling against consumerism by driving junky cars. We encourage our members to use their dough to support social justice causes instead of making fat car payments. We believe in environmental stewardship and hanging onto things a little longer. Junky Car Club members sponsor kids living in poverty through Compassion International.

I ride the bus for a similar reason. We switched to a 2000 mini van as part of our on going goal to just spend less on "things" If junky cars, saving money and donating to the poor can become cool - I think I'm in favour.

via

iThoughts and cool culture

I have been thinking about technology and consumerism a lot lately. It plays into my decision on why I am quitting my job at the end of the summer* There have been a number of great post on it in the last few days.

Empire Remixed has thoughts on media interviewing people people that slept out side to be the first to have an iPod

Why is it that we celebrate those who sleep on the street in order to consume, and yet shun those who sleep on the street because they can’t afford to be anywhere else…what is wrong with us?

Jordon Cooper takes on the culture of cool.

Culture and coolness is local. It’s all local. When I am in rural Saskatchewan, a leather John Deere ball cap is cool and a very important part of culture. Yet when I hear people in the church talk about culture, we talk about “emerging culture” (there is no such thing), or global culture (sorry, culture is awfully localized). The thinking is what is cool in San Francisco or New York is going to be cool in Saskatoon or Calgary is incorrect. I always cringe when I read my blog as being listed as an important blog to read for understanding culture. That is totally incorrect, you don’t understand culture by reading a blog about culture, you learn about culture by observing it or living in it. Now there are those that are completely oblivious to popular culture but they aren’t trying to be cool anyways.

I've been walking through this sort of stuff and should really get my thoughts down, but for now others continue to give me good things to think about

* Sorry if you haven't heard the news on the job change, I should really get around to writing about the eh?

I'm being tracked

I've been noticing the content of the user specific ads that appear all around us - Google, Gmail, Facebook etc.

Today on Facebook I saw the following Ad title

"Is someone tracking you?"

umm...yeah.... Facebook

Please think of your reading public

Public Service Reminder to the People that blog

IF YOUR BLOG IS NOT ABOUT YOUR KIDS (or family) AND SUDDENLY YOU HAVE KIDS. DO NOT START POSTING EVER PICTURE YOU TAKE OF YOUR KID.

I read you blog for the tech/theology/wit/knowledge/whatever. I love your blog and that's why you're on my RSS feed. One picture was nice - now.... stop.


......hmm do I link to the offending web site? sure

Because I have yet to say something cool.

I have yet to read much (ok, anything) of G.K. Chesterton, But I have read many quotes from him in my reading of Marshall McLuhan - So in the interest of the "sound bite" here are some excellent quote that I stumbled on...

Happy Birthday, G.K. Chesterton! «:

"Here are a few of my favorite G.K. Chesterton quotes:

- “The point of an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.”

- “Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

- “The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.”

- “By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.”

- “The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.”

- “You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.”

- “It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.”

- “All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.”

- “There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”

- “These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own"

Maybe I should go to the library tonight... and try to find some of these.