Two learned, serious friends sorting through the world:

The oft-unraveling RageBoy is raveling like mad. In Spiritual but not Jewish he’s on about the connection of New Age thinking and the history of racism. I love the title of his post, making concrete exactly what one who says “spiritual but not religious” is rejecting (where one substitutes the speaker’s religion for “Jewish,” as appropriate). Since I think “spiritual but not religious” exhibits the Fear of Being Historical that is the basis of so much of the West’s self-loathing, it works for me. (There’s nothing as pathetic as a culture that loathes itself for the wrong reasons. On the other hand, has a culture ever loathed itself for the right reasons?)

Meanwhile, Ethan recently had a fascinating and detailed post about the languages of the Web now and upcoming. Also not to be missed: Ethan on what the US can learn about Net neutrality from Africa.

[Tags: chris_locke rageboy ethan_zuckerman net_neutrality newage spirituality language web]

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I’m plugging Boston BarCamp because it sounds like it will be a fun, informative, community-building unconference. So, if you’re a geek – or geek camp-follower like me – consider coming out to Monster Worldwide in Maynard, June 3-4.

(I can only be there part of the time, probably Saturday evening through the Sunday. I think I’ll hold a session on Everything Is Miscellaneous.)

</plug> [Tags: barcamp conferences boston]

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[Tags: environment politics al_gore film]

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Last week AKMA struggled with the precise meanings of genotext and phenotext. I have no idea what either term means, but there is a certain joy in watching someone as smart and honest as AKMA trying to understand something in public. Before blogging, where would we have had the opportunity to see this?

AKMA writes that he thought that an Eric Idle sketch in which a talk show is conducted in enthusiastic gibberish provided a good example of the distinction between the two terms. (Remember Andy Kaufman’s foreign man routine?) And that reminded me of the following unrelated cheap shot:

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself. — John Searle, Intentionality, Introduction, p. x.

The key to meaning is simply that it can be part of the conditions of satisfaction (in the sense of requirement) of my intention that its conditions of satisfaction (in the sense of things required) should themselves be conditions of satisfaction. — Intentionality, p. 28.

Got it?

PS: Congratulations to Nate. [Tags: akma philosophy monty_python]

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Shel Israel and Rick Segal are going around the world this August, looking for “companies that may prevail because they are empowering communities of people, rather than attempting to command and control them.” But little did they know when they set out on this journey that the biggest treasure of all was right in their own backyard.

(No, that last sentence doesn’t make sense. It just seemed like the obvious ending.)

[Tags: shel_israel rick_segal travel]

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In late 2005, the Internet got its one billionth customer. The rumor is that the lucky winner received a lifetime supply of pornographic spam and genuine Nigerian scams. Just like the rest of us.

According to a report from eMarketer, 845M use the Internet “regularly.” About 250M households (how many people per household, I wonder) will have broadband this year. Although the US has the most Internet users and broadband households, Asia-Pacific has almost 40% of the world’s broadband households. Latin America is growing fastest.

For more details – like why with, say, 2.5 people per household, the total broadband population number seems implausibly high – please send $700 to eMarketer. And then spill the beans about what you find out. [Tags: internet]

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Gov. Mark Warner has posted the text of his commencement address at Wake Forest University. After some opening comedy (not bad, actually), he focuses first on his theme that America is special because everyone gets a second chance: “Being able to fail, pick yourself up, wipe off the dust, and get back into the game is what is uniquely special about our country.” I heard him use the same theme a couple of months ago in a speech, and there’s something about it that doesn’t work for me, perhaps its assumption that we’re all equally in the game.

Then he discusses the need for civil discourse:

Turn on the TV. Listen to the radio. Click on almost any blog. And, you’ll see what I’m talking about: personal and partisan attacks, complex issues reduced to easy-to-digest sound bites, and way too much cross-fire and not nearly enough cross talk.

My kneejerk response is, of course, that I don’t like seeing blogs being lumped in with the mainstream media. But that’s just me being a (knee)jerk since Gov. Warner’s point is:

If you remember nothing else of what I say to you today, remember this: No one-no one-in politics has a monopoly on virtue, on patriotism, or most importantly, on the truth.

I of course agree with this. It’s what makes me a liberal. But it’s precisely what a big chunk of the country doesn’t believe. So I’m glad to hear Warner say it. But if he says it in a political context, the next set of questions will be about where he draws the line: He’s not a pacifist, so whom is he willing to kill to defend the virtue and truth on which he has no monopoly? Anti-absolutism is admirable, but I’m pretty sure existentialism is not a winning platform in this country. (But jeez it would be fun to hear it discussed seriously.)

Anyway, I liked the commencement address. And I don’t envy anyone the task of writing one. [Tags: mark_warner politics]

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Have questions for the NSA? Here‘s where to ask them… [Tags: humor]

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MySociety.org, which runs some of Britain’s main non-partisan democratic websites (e.g., TheyWorkForYou, PledgeBank), is asking for proposals for websites that “will give people really tangible benefits in the democractic and/or community aspects of citizen’s lives.” They’ll build the ideas they like. [Tags: politics mysociety democracy]

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BusinessWeek Online has a two-parter on business blogging that’s smart enough to cite Jeneane Sessum, among others. (Part 1 Part 2) [Tags: blogging jeneane_sessum]

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