I came across Mike Campbell's blog after he and David Janes linked to what Ross called my self-indulgent Halifax post. Mike is a Haligonian and I get the sense he and I may have stood shoulder to shoulder at the Seahorse waiting for service before the Guinness tap was installed. He has been writing an interesting series of posts comparing the Scottish Enlightenment and bloggery.
Now, I am all yikesey at the idea that this form of yapping is particularly new but I am liking this way Mike puts it. Instead of coming all evangelical and selfish - like thems that are sure their times gotta be the end times because God must love them more than folk from, say, 1473 so, therefore, God must be going to give them front row seats at the rapture - he points out it was not just sel-indulgent yapping for yappings sake but discourse to the greater good:
The Glasgow Enlightenment, in particular, promoted a mixture of the practical and the theoretical. James Watt's ingenious ideas solved a lot of problems and made possible an enormous increase in society's productivity, but this didn't mean Watt couldn't get rich in the process. Theory applied and put to good use, for both Watt and society at large.
If the net effect of all these blogs becomes a kind of intellectual liberation supporting living a freer and wealthier community promoting a sense of personal and intellectual obligation as well as individual rights, Campbell is right. If it is just breaker one-nine yappetry, Ross is right. Campbell does get one thing definately wrong. Like my family (and Jay Leno's, by the way, Ross), James Watt was from Grrrrreenock!
Still...read Mike. Anyone who likes WHA sweaters must get much right.
Comments
abuIskander - July 26, 2003 8:44 pm
No good ever came from listening to Campbells...
Alan Campbell McLeod - July 26, 2003 10:12 pm
...or not listening to us...
abuIskander Macdonald - July 27, 2003 12:09 pm
Not listening means not hearing the murdering cut-throats sneaking around with knives after the feast
Alan - July 27, 2003 3:49 pm
...that has been known to be within the repetior...
abuIskander Macdonald - July 27, 2003 9:17 pm
Frigging Campbells. They know how to use a knife but not a spell checker
Alan - July 27, 2003 9:37 pm
Ah, I knew I was taking a chance with that last word - but I thought I'd try...thought I would trust my instincts...alas...oh, well...spelling is for the weak.
abuIskander Macdonald - July 27, 2003 10:09 pm
Sheesh - here y'go. This is neat and works inside the blog. Frigging Campbells - if you're mot massacring Macdonalds, you're massacring the language.
abuIskander Macdonald - July 27, 2003 10:10 pm
no, it wasn't a complicated French pun - mot=not :-))
Alan - July 28, 2003 7:59 am
Haaa! Falling a foul with the dancing digits yourself, I see.
A Macdonald - July 28, 2003 11:35 am
Yep <vbg> Pots & kettles. However, your own dancing digits...er, "afoul" actually, but that's not one a spell checker would catch ;-)
Alan - July 28, 2003 12:19 pm
I meant you had collapsed with a chicken - a Bulgarian proverb of some relevance.
CMax - July 28, 2003 12:51 pm
You guys are nuts!
Alan - July 28, 2003 12:53 pm
Did we ever suggest otherwise?
Attila the Hen - July 28, 2003 1:04 pm
oh crikey - the Bulgarian proverb (which has become widely adopted in France: "La poule de ma tante est dans la poche du jardinier") has to do with *fowl* not foul, which is of course Arabic for "beans" - something my chickens don't much like.
Alan - July 28, 2003 1:30 pm
It was a bag of beans falling which caused the collapse. The fact that a chicken was involved was merely incidental.
Foul Mademas - July 28, 2003 1:40 pm
Oh <i><b>that</i></b> Bulgarian proverb. The vulgar Bulgars have so many. But, if I remember correctly, they were not beans, but chickpeas...
Alan - July 28, 2003 2:02 pm
Hence my confusion...
Ivan the Bulgar - July 28, 2003 2:59 pm
Quite so...easy to run afoul of the foul mademas, the fowl chick and the perfectly foul chick peas. Happens to Campbells all the time, especially when they are lost in "la foule", a large proportion of which they would likely murder if they happened to fall asleep after too large an ingestion of any of the afore-mentioned delicacies. I know this to be true because many Macdonalds have moved to Bulgaria.
Alan - July 28, 2003 3:12 pm
My point exactly!
Clara Pullet - July 29, 2003 12:14 pm
Whew!
ross - July 30, 2003 1:31 am
one i was just talking about this post in particular and two you mention somebody "who once dated one of my roomies." that's yapping.
Alan - July 30, 2003 8:23 am
ROSS!!! [Ross posted...dee dee...Ross posted.]
RossPostee - July 30, 2003 11:43 am
But what on earth was he referring to?
Alan - July 30, 2003 1:31 pm
he was yapping