I am trying to post every day, but I tend to get long-winded when I think by writing, and I often get distracted by trying to understand things like this entry on John Locke, because I’m interested in copyright lately. Also I have to get off the internet and cut my hair because it has been too long!
This article about the decline of book reviewing is long and dry, and it gets caught up in itself and loses its way. This harrowing thought caught my attention though:
“There are no critical movements evident today,” observed Miller. (And even if there were, they’re not all going to be online, or in one forum. Any real critical movement simply should not be confined to one community or some new means of communication.) Perhaps a large problem in the decline of good criticism is that readers no longer know how, or where, to find critics, and, more importantly, how to define what makes it Good.
Who are your favourite critics? I’ve been looking for a critic who’s a strong and characteristic writer but who also has good taste.
1. Advice to writers from Cory Doctorow. But he says:
Especially don’t get in the habit of writing while smoking or boozing. Don’t hook the thing that makes you sane and whole to something that’s killing you.
Smoking and boozing is exactly what keeps me sane. He does say this, though:
Write even when you feel like it’s shit. You can’t tell what’s good and what’s bad while you’re writing it.
A necessary skill.
2. My housemate kind-of-jokingly said she wants to import a live kangaroo, so I looked up some info. This DFAT page says:
The live export of kangaroos is prohibited under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. There are a few exceptions where the purpose is noncommercial, such as inter-zoo exchanges.
And this page lists the native Australian pets that can be exported from Australia. Kangaroos are not on the list. It’s kind of sad that we still have to regulate such absurd behaviour as exporting kangaroos out of their natural habitat. Can you spell ‘cane toad disco’?
Cane toads dancing!
3. Boing Boing‘s post about Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth, a ‘a lengthwise comic’.
4. The geometry of sound, visualised:
5. This comment on an awful post about one douche’s attempt to justify his obsession with porn.
I’ve used porn as much as the next young man, and sometimes it worries me: how it affects my relationships with women; whether it’s ethical to consume porn; and, lately, whether it goes against the fourth Buddhist precept of not engaging in sexual misconduct.
The last two are kind of the same thing.
The most affecting part of the comment, for me, was this:
also believe that the industry is already taking advantage of people’s sexual desire, turning them into consumers in order to access their own sexuality.
The idea of selling my sexuality to a porn company is just something I hadn’t considered I was doing, and selling my anything to anyone just isn’t right.
6. This awesome clip of Goyte’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, covered by Walk Off The Earth:
All of the following links have some bearing on the research I’m doing for Flux.
This hardly needs a caption
I’m a tab fiend: I am easily distracted, and interested in everything, so I read one article and before I’m three quarters of the way through I’ve got another ten tabs open.
Sometimes my browser spits the dummy like it’s a passive-aggressive ‘gentleman’ and I’m a turtle-paced lady walking through the door he’s been holding open for weeks, maybe months.
These tabs are doorways to knowledge, ideas, miscellany. Sometimes I find it hard to justify spending the time required to read everything I’ve opened, so I’ve decided to do a good ol’ fashioned annotated-link post for SIB II.
Also I have this half-baked idea of getting away from the homegenising forces we know of as Facebook and Twitter, in the interests of user-generated web-filtering with a bit of Painey flavour.
So, Linkage #01:
a reflection of the cycling culture in current day cities. Our readers are encouraged to contribute their words and art. We pay real American dollars for published submissions—get in touch with your ideas.