About…
16 Aug 2006 at 20:55
The Blog
The Indigestible began in 1999, before anyone even knew what “blogging” was. Several hiati ensued, most having to do with resource paucity in the areas of (1) time; (2) energy and (3) adequate medications.
So here’s yet another launch. Over time I’ll be adding old TI pages so you can see what oldschool thinking I did.
Regarding the categories — they try to be more or less catch-all.
- Cock isn’t naughty. He’s just a character of mine that leaked into the blogspace.
- Fiction is my place for stories and other such … well, works of fiction. I do write things other than opinions, you know.
- General Foolishness refers to the behaviors of Earth’s most irritating species.
- Huh is more or less what it sounds like; things that made me say “huh” when I read them.
- O, Pine With Me is where I tend to editorialize more than usual; it’s where I place posts that aren’t necessarily about a story or news piece so much as they are about an idea.
- One Thousand Words is the catchall for my graphical, comic and comic-centric posts.
- Reality Trumps ‘God’ is the category where I drop things that debunk superstitions, such as … oh, I don’t know, maybe the belief in a deity.
- UFnO is a baby category, just a couple posts deep right now, where I state my reasons for doubting that we’ve been visited by aliens. It’s a contraction of “UFO? No!”
- Why Culture Sucks is the home for my movie and entertainment recommendations; the “culture” here is meant to be American, monolithic modern culture, which really truly does suck. In this category I recommend alternatives to the usual fare of shit coming from the networks and Hollywood. A surprising amount of my recommendations are likely to be family-friendly, which strikes me as being quite odd.
- Yoshi is where I put my escapades in the pre-adoptive and (I think eventually) post-adoptive process. I’m working with state agencies on becoming an adoptive parent, and here’s where I’ll say what I have to say. I chose Yoshi for the category because the word is Japanese for “adopted son”.
- You Must Be F***ing Kidding is like Huh, only stronger.
Snarks are for one-offs and snotty comments; Burps are actually asides.
I should note that my blogroll (Digestives for text, Biscuits for comics) might be unique in that it contains sites that I actually visit and read daily.
Posts
Currently first-time visitor posts are moderated; most of the time I’m killing spam. If you have a blog of your own you know the type I mean. If your post doesn’t appear immediately, it’s just because I haven’t got to it yet. Don’t let that keep you from writing.
Followup posts by you will generally pop up right away rather than going into the moderation pool; at least some of this has to do with the username/email/IP combination you entered in your first soliloquy.
I’m not a fan of censorship, so don’t imagine that you won’t have a voice if you want to disagree with me. Just try to keep it civil. Also note that I don’t include content filters, because they’re generally stunningly arbitrary, and the idea that the word shit is obscene but Scheisse is not is pretty fucking ludicrous. Just don’t get all teenage-Tourette’s on me.
Abuse, threats and the typical stuff that wouldn’t be considered acceptable in face-to-face social discourse won’t be tolerated here either. If you need to have such unacceptable things rigorously defined, you are probably either a lawyer or a sociopath, and shouldn’t try posting any responses at all. Just get your own blog.
Link Policy
Unless I explicitly declare otherwise, you are free to link here as much as you wish.
Spammers, as always, are excepted, because spammers, as always, are worthless.
If you want to sell something, if you have an idea that you want to make money from, if you are pushing Ciagra or Vialis, you are invited to take your promotional materials, fold them until they are all corners, and shove them deep and dark into your most sensitive areas.
For the rest of you, humans with ideas: If you find a comment I made to be good to link to, or if you feel you’ve put a particularly good reply in a followup to any post, you are welcome to link anything anywhere from anywhere to anywhere. This is an open and free discussion forum, and linking to, fro and in between is encouraged.
I am a longstanding proponent of the idea of free exchange. Put your ideas here. Post them as links elsewhere. If things seem too offtopic I’ll say so in the comments; until then, play, have fun, and link until your fingers fall off.
The Banner
It’s Earth from low orbit. You know. The planet we all share, the only one we know of that can sustain life. Curving gracefully against the depthless, lifeless black of hard vacuum. This is it; this is what we have; here is where we live; here is where we are.
Just a little bit of perspective.
Me
(Image via Planerium.)
As for me — I’ve done digital media stuff for more than a decade now, so I guess you could say it’s my career. I’m working in the graphics department at the local community hospital (actually, I am the graphics department), and since the hospital is a nonprofit organization I’m able to live with myself — as opposed to how I felt about using my skills to further enrich corporations that were already very wealthy, or how I would feel were I working for, say, Halliburton.
I’m also running a very small and eclectic press, nightwares Books, and occasionally pick up freelance graphics, programming and web design work. I also freelance teach at the local community college.
Contacts: On the front page. Look for it. Be smart. Remember I do Wii and Xbox and gmail. Obfuscated? Sure. Hidden? Nope. Any non-bot will find it in a trice. Religious idiots might take much longer than, say, intelligent humans.
Guess who I want to hear from.
ANYway.
What I’m not is a sheepskin-bearing biologist, physicist or chemist; I mention this in the interest of full disclosure. I’m not technically qualified to know the details of, say, molecular biology — so some might find it perverse or, at least, disengenuous that I mention it when I say evolution is a fact.
Possibly.
However, what I am is an avid adherent to the disciplines that have, at their core, the merits of the scientific method; I accept their results as being valid most of the time becase I’m aware of how rigorous their reasoning processes are.
And while it’s certainly true that one need not be a scientist to comment on science or its gifts to the world, a healthy respect for the art is probably necessary, and I think I have that respect.
Whether I’m a biologist or not, I’ve got enough programming in my history to recognize good thought-work and engineering when I see it; and enough graphics and writing to know elegance is usually beautiful not just because it strikes a chord but because it is simple, parsimonious, truthy; and therefore probably valid.
I don’t pretend to try to know the details in a lot of the sciences I comment upon; what I do know is that those details are vetted by professionals whose job it is to spy failures in reasoning. What I do know is that the sciences have given us electricity, radio, the Internet, and flu vaccines; therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that the findings of the sciences are factual, since their results inarguably work.
What I do know is that science is a human endeavor and therefore subject to all our weaknesses, conceits and follies; yet it is innately self-correcting and, for that reason alone, considerably more trustworthy in pointing the way to facts than is even the most respectful political debate.
Scientists self-delude; scientists lie. Just like all the rest of us. And when they do, they usually get caught, exposed and debunked very quickly.
And just as (for instance) I don’t have to be a molecular biologist to argue strongly and soundly in favor of the fact of evolution, you don’t have to accept my claims as being true simply because I utter them. I try to include links to relevant information on subjects as I bring them up; you are welcome to follow them, read their information, and see for youself if what I post makes even the slightest shred of rationally-defensible sense.
And if it doesn’t, I hope you’ll do me the courtesy of adding a rebuttal in the comments.
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