I had noticed it has been quiet these last couple days. What gives?

It is the reaction to the failure to change the clocks by this time. I have noticed people standing in the street staring at newspaper boxes mumbling about cheese sandwiches.

Perhaps the people are taking MacLeans seriously?

Macleans?

Clocks change next weekend don't they (as in three days form now).

If not, I've been early all week for a change.

I for one Alan, hath been busy. ANd plotting revolution if you didn't already know. Saddle Gorthos with a huge mortgage and he starts planning revolution. Maybe its a Freudian thing.

Shhhhhhhhhhh, um no, we are...I mean aren't...um promise. ;-)

This week's Macleans cover story tells how bad the internet is - pron, spam, gambling, pervs, etc.

I disagree; I may have misnamed it as 'the Bloggish Enlightenment', but we're in the midst of an enlightenment nonetheless, enabled by the opportunities for information exchange that the internet provides (not limited, of course, to blogs).

... the information may be inaccurate, but that's for us to figure out. At least we have the opportunity and are provided with tools to make our own decisions.

I have gorthos figured out: he is a goofball just like me. All is now understood. I wonder which of us is higher on portland's "freak'o'meter".
Gorthos, direct from me to you: please revive your blog.

Gorthos's blog go now. Gorthos write much.

I, as someone near big university libraries most of my life, had all the information available to me before the internet. There was just not all the pr0n and spam in the way and it cost less to access. Less chatting, too, what with the librarians. Less misinformation and public tin hattery, too.

Also note thet timestamp on my blog postings is apparently wrong.

I just noticed that. Funny. I didn't know I moved to that part of the world, sheesh.

On the downside, much more Dewey-decimal too. And improperly-shelved books. And poring through chapter after chapter just to realise you read pretty much the same spiel phrased the same way in a footnote of another book a half-hour ago -- but still can't find the particular paragraph you need from a 200-year-old handwritten note only available from <i>Britain</i>'s National Archives.

The servers are Maritimers.

Improperly shelved books!!! The internet is a series of piles of pages which shuffle themselves according to popularity. It all made sense when everything was on microfilm.

Yeah, but you didn't have us.

Libraries are, inter alia, a collection of books so acquired because they were judged informative, <i>popular</i> and relevant to at least one librarian. A tome's popularity does wax and wane over time, resulting in greater (or fewer) libraries stocking a given text. The popularity flux is there, it is just not as rapid as Google is today.

At least you can quickly winnow the wheat from the chaff by applying modifiers and exceptions to your web search. In the olden days the card catalogue gave you (if you were lucky) a very brief summary of the contents and it was up to you to check the index and hopefully locate the facts or figures you were after. And if you didn't know the exact jargon and nomenclature of the desired data (like say "CEP of Mk21/W87 RVs") to look for, you were out of luck. Paper has no fuzzy search algorithms.

I enjoyed my time in libraries, but I can't say I miss the card catalogue and nascent electronic inventory systems at all. What would take you all day to research at Robarts you can now find in a matter of minutes. So you have to apply a little brainpower and effort to cross-check attributions and links on the web -- doing the same with printed bibliographies and footnotes takes a <i>lot</i> longer.

You may have had confidence in the printed word of the day, but it was hardly less fallible than HTML is today -- and infinitely harder for one to highlight errors and seek corrections from the author.

Busy.

Busy.

That's too cryptic.

Busy here, too, but there's now a lull in the action (and finally a subject I can comment on) as we all sit with bated breath waiting for all hell to once again break loose.

I think libraries work more at the speed of thought. We have an illusion of competence and completeness through the internet. I do miss the time between finding fact which was filled with analysis of the problem solving methodology. Without that, we make as many if not more mistakes unless we are working with a fixed set of data that is also authenticated such as Ontario's wonderful e-laws site.

Recently I had to inquire as to the means to measure the cubic metres of a ship. Find me that calculation on the internet. Had I gone to the library I am sure it would be there. Had I phoned my old law school class mate who went into Admiralty law, he would have known. The internet, like George Jones's bottle, let me down again. Plus there were people to go get a beer with after the library closed - cute ones, funny ones, old pals. The internet doesn't close. You are there all alone.

I think what you want is referred to as either bale cube or grain cube and it is basically cubic cargo capacity of a given hold/stowage area, measured from particular bulkhead distances (grain cube is larger since grain doesn't have to be packed into pallets). I can not begin to tell you how to determine either bale or grain cube though. The ship's builder could, though.

Don't make me stop by a library and see if grain cube is covered in a book somewhere.

No, it is a measurement related to taxation on the entire ship under the Retail Sales Tax Act. I suspect it is a cooked measurement. Made up. Phoney baloney.

I agree with Alan. All this free-floating information only leads to confusion and disorder. Fortunately, I have a plan to store all non-timewaster knowledge in a single tome called "Book". Book will answer all questions of any importance. So much so, in fact, that all other "books", pamphlets, web-pages and such will be burned and/or deleted. Approved commentaries on Book may be allowed but only after my death and then only after generations of internecine warfare between followers of my lineal descendants by my fifth wife and followers of Alan, who will have proved to be awkward about everything despite Book's teachings.

Vote Flea! Блоха -- вождь!

I was spending my time reading <i>Right Side Up</i>, which arrived in the mail today. Was going to post a mini-review of it, but Blogger seems to be taking a sabattical till after dinner...

Careful Alan, you are veiling the reasonable simplicity of Book behind arcane language and ritual, when <i>we all know</i> Flea intended it to be apprehended by the common man with innate reason. Let us join together to defeat the heresies of the Scarlet Fifth Wife. And also France.

You are trying to trick me with words. AGAIN!!!<p>All this internet has given us is trickery and plotting. And pr0n.

You do realize, Alan, that there is a great need for bullet points and chat on off days, too. make note cm: tomorrow is Friday, and the race is ON, baby....

OK, Chris, does St Louis win any more games? I am guessing a 2-2 tie when game 4 is over.

If Boderman can pitch like the last game against the Yankees and Suppan like he did against the Mets it will be a hell of a game...unless they try to trick us as well. I have not truly believed in anything since I saw <i>Capricorn One</i> when it first came out.

It's 50/50.

Give the word, O Flea, and the Book Jihad shall commence.

Hmmm:<ul><li><i>All this free-floating information only leads to confusion and disorder.</i></li><li><i>I may have misnamed it as the Bloggish Enlightenment</i></li></ul>It isn't the lack of ordering the problem so much as the centre not being able to be found let alone hold. What if the "Mission Accomplished!" of the internet is not the one we want? Do we celebrate the victory or curse the tool we made?<blockquote class="smalltext">Turning and turning in the widening gyre<br>
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<br>
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<br>
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...</blockquote>

Close game and the Cards look tougher than anyone could have imagined.

Ah. But from "the best lack all conviction," it does not follow that those who lack conviction are best. And from the "worst are full of passionate intensity" it does not follow that those who are full of passionate intensity are worst.

Re: Technology, bring back the horse and buggy. I miss spending hours by the river with my children washing hand made clothes with a stick and som lye while my husband breaks the ground of our four acre plot with his bare hands.

I have run out of licorice. It may be years before I see another strand.

I for one love the internet in its current form. The cramped compartemntalization of libraried nformation forced upon it by the dewey decimal system stifles its natural chaotic evolutionary expansion.

i.e. I get a few magazines at home. Nat Geo Adventure, GQ, Toro (on occasion), WIred. I buy books when I am not even doen the one I am reading. I take out library books on varied subjects on a whim. I essentially pile them on the coffee table and rifle through filling my head with whatever satisfies it at the moment. I am the better for it because it prepares me for the real world and the way things come at you left and right, al day long.

Okay, the real reason is that I am an adult who was never diagniosed as ADHD because my parents were hippies who just assumed I was just a hi-IQ kid who was a free spirit but I have all the symptoms.

Anyone watch Survivor last night?
I'm cooking a ham in th crockpot for tonight.
I love my hiking boots.

See how my brain works?

Wouldn't mind sharing a pitcher and a pizza with you, gorthos, 'cause I know what its like.

Can we organize a licorice airlift into Budapest?

Funny how observations of the weakness of tool "A" respective to the strengths of the preceding technology do not receive response as to the weaknesses of tool "A" respective to the strengths of the preceding technology but comment as to what the world would be without the strengths of tool "A".

That being said, I say licorice for Budapest is my sort of campaign. What do we need to do?

We may need to get the military involved... Operation Candy Drop.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2004/12/24/candy-drop-may-041224.html

Unfortunately, nothing can be done. It's hard if not impossible to find here, of course. My mother loves me and sends me stuff in the mail, but it has a tendency to get stolen. So I tell her not to send. Darn, eh? In a year or so I'll go to Vienna and buy some. It's too bad we can't receive licorice via the internet. There's the real weakness of tool A.

What about one massive FedEx shipment?

Five hundred tonnes of black twizzlers please! Um, very expensive. Actually, I hadn't really thought about the internet before as an answer to this problem. It's possible that I could, in fact, order through some online thingy. Companies (as opposed to individual citizens) don't usually put up with much pilfering of their stuff before they start putting pressure on higher ups to get the job done.

GR:

mmmm, beeer. mmmmm Pizza....