Actaeon

I have no wish to incite a debate about the science or politics of climate change. I'm just sitting here, reflecting on the oddest spring I've seen in Western Colorado, looking out at beetle kill, and wondering if everyone else has seen things change this much.

 

So, I know most of you haven't been around THAT long, but...

 

How's the weather?

"Three Reasons Creators Should Never Read Their Forums"

 

Many of you are probably already plugged into Jeff's blog. Those of you that aren't or haven't caught this round yet, might find the above interesting.

I posted at 256, and will consider 512. I think an exponential approach is a logical one when dealing with ever escalating post counts.

I'm ahead on the 3000 levels, myself. A pretty easy, pleasant semester:

 

Physical Anthropology (~100 students)

 

Archaeology (Ditto)

 

Music Appreciation (Not sure Yet)

 

Travel Writing (~12 students)

Skribraaaaainsss....

It was one of my first shots, actually. About a second of exposure and a great deal of luck. It was about time. It seems like every time I shoot lightning it slips in the space in between exposures.

I noticed we have fairly current topics on photography and literature, but nothing to address the (potentially?) diverse musical tastes or talents of this community.

 

I imagine something of the sort went up about the time Spiderweb got its own last.fm channel, but it'd be quite the resurrection.

 

So what do you listen to? Artists, particular songs, genres...

 

Alternatively, are you a musician yourself? Perhaps your fellow Spiderwebbers would like to hear your stuff.

Again, my apologies, but I fail to get the point of all separations in the metropolitan area that pretty much stretches from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. It's all connected with a host of roads and strip malls, with a few major exceptions there's very little notable cultural difference...

 

On the other hand, I get pissed off when people say I'm from Aspen. As such, I will refrain from broad statements in the future.

 

Edit: Incidentally, there's still the possibility he might be IN Denver, even if he doesn't live there. Just like I, myself, would be in such a hypothetical situation.

I had it in my head that he was on the Front Range somewhere. Mea culpa. Still. Muffins.

Great. Now every time I see an emo kid in Denver, I'm gonna be thinking it's Iffy. Not to mention all the muffins with faces I run into on a daily basis.

Quoted to fulfill the immaturity clause for this week. Seriously, people. You're all very proper. I miss early Iffy.

How come I didn't get that email? Obviously KOL doesn't love me. That's okay, though. It's summer. Not the proper time for that level of commitment.

Indeed, why not? You're clearly not shooting for the result. Since approval of various equations is contingent on how they sync with your internal perception, the goal must be to discover the components of oldbiness and their relative effects.

 

In such a situation, my temptation would be to work backwards, starting with an agreed upon order and examining what factors would produce such a pattern. Bad science if you're trying to prove something, but not an entirely unreasonable approach to discovering unspoken and subjective trends within a community.

The day they have one of those conventions within two or three hundred miles, I'll consider making the trip. Since Denver is not known for such events, I suspect I'll be relying on online forums for quite some time.

 

Edit: Scratch that. Denver's the only large metropolitan area in that range, at around 200. Salt Lake's almost 400, and Santa Fe and Cheyenne hardly count, anyway. So, yeah, Denver.

Likewise.

Edit: Couldn't it break down to two pretty simple variables? On one axis, quantity of posts (with a minimum active period of say, two years). On the other, the totally subjective quantity "post quality" or maybe "post relevance".

That last picture (now the only picture, since my links were being squirrelly) is lightning hitting Mount Sopris at sunset. Pretty spectacular evening.

 

The other one I feel obligated to include, since it sort of posted before, is more self explanatory: cattle drive.

 

Colorado's quite a varied state, but my neck of the woods has cold winters and hot, but not humid, summers. I wouldn't mind a bit more moisture, but a few conifers and the occasional forest fire is a small price to pay to live in the middle of hundreds of square miles of National Forest.

I should really lay off the excessive links. I'll just go with a couple of my favorites so far this summer and leave it at that. Lightning

She's cute, too.

It's a good one. And "Ten Things I Hate About You" isn't half bad, either. I didn't select it, myself, because I thought going and naming my cat Katherine was enough.

Surely we could curb population growth on the reproduction end and avoid resorting to outright culling. I hear the US wouldn't even be replacing itself without immigration.

 

And, if we're going to try the flipside of Darwinism, why not make it interesting? Ship felons off to the moon Australia style. Distribute firearms during Twilight-based arguments. Create an evil twin agency for the UN...

It's long, repetative, and has very little continuity. It ends oddly. It's really not for everyone. The other day, I had a librarian tell me "I used to call it 1000 years of solitude, it was so long."

Finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and loved it. I'll get around to reading the somewhat derivitive "House of Spirits" sometime soon.

 

In the mean time, I'm on "Peace Like A River" and moving into "The Road" sometimes soon. To offset the heavy duty stuff, I've mixed in some occasional Carl Hiaasen and Jim Butcher.

 

It's all be very enjoyable. I suppose I'll slow down when I return to school and am deprived of a room of $1 books a block away, but my list is long enough to sustain me through much of the fall.

 

I gave up on Martin. I used to think willingness to kill off main characters was a sign of character in an author, but the man takes it too far. Besides, Feast for Crows was tolerable at best and Dance with Dragons is likely to be another decade.

 

Edit: But hey! Wheel of Time's looking worthwhile again. New book in Novemeber and my hopes are high.

Richard III and Hamlet were blantant rip offs of "The Lion King". The Bard tried to hide it with flowery language, but I could see what he was up to.

Three choices? I dislike being made to choose between Julius Caesar and Richard III.

 

Anyway, I continue to assert that Romeo and Juliet, if viewed as a tragedy and not as a modern romance, is an underrated play. With youth and blind love as a tragic flaw, several interesting side characters, and some great soliloquies, it doesn't deserve the rap it sometimes gets.

 

Other tragedies don't manage to sell me on the protagonist. I know several people who love Othello, but I'm afraid I spent the whole time wondering how the man could be so easily mislead. It's essentially the same ruse as "Much Ado About Nothing", but without the happy ending or the snarky secondary characters.

 

All that being said, I've only read a baker's dozen of his plays, and seen less, so my opinions may be ill informed and inherantly meaningless.

Fair enough, although I'm curious which you think are dying breeds and what forms might stand. For myself, sentimentality is only, say, 40% of it. I like my money staying in the community and helping keep my own head above water. I also like it when the proprietor of the movie theater trusts me to pay him later when I forget my wallet. Sometimes, not having to deal with a long chain of command helps get things done.

Of course, I concede that chains have the benefit of efficiency and mass production, and are generally cheaper.



I hate to sound like a complete hippie, but do you really think continued mining is the answer? Extraction, transportation... It's quite the endeavor, given the abundance of renewable resources on earth.

I think someone already mentioned this, but solar's improving rapidly. The raw forces of the sun and the planet, if harnessed, would more than take care of all our needs with a lot less hassle than mining. If we're going to bank on vast improvement in technology, why not there?

Myself, I suspect that we'll run oil into the ground and leave ourselves without enough energy to manufacture the necessary technology to move forward. I don't know of that's optimistic or pessimistic, in the long run.