Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Tuesday, 9 April 2002

# 8 PM

Question for the audience: Should one timestamp blog entries with the time that one starts writing them, or the time one finishes? (I suspect most blog-automation winds up using the finish time; I've been writing these by hand and using the start time. It's getting tedious to update the boilerplate, so that might change soon.)

# 7:40 PM

Nope, I still find Mozilla's page editor unusable.

subtextual agendas

There's been an argument on rec.arts.sf.composition about the appropriate words to describe organic farming and related issues. One side takes the position that it's inaccurate to describe crops grown without benefit of synthetic pesticides or fertilizers as "organic"—all food is organic, in the chemical sense. The other side says that words mean what their speakers want them to mean, as long as their hearers comprehend, what's the problem?

As an argument over semantics of a word it's really not that interesting. However, both sides appear to have major hidden agendas. Word choice is being used as a proxy for the real argument, which is whether organic farming is an appropriate thing to do. And in this service, the "it's inaccurate" side is using rhetorical tactics which are toxic to discussion. If someone comes to the table with the axiom that organic farming is the province of hippie nuts, well, it's not possible to have a productive debate with them over whether or not it's a good idea. This despite the same people claiming that they do see the problems with antibiotic resistance, algae blooms, etc. associated with "conventional" farming. People will come away from the discussion remembering the hippie nuts.

I find this thoroughly disappointing. These people are writers (mostly); they understand rhetoric and discourse; they are none of them kooks. Therefore, I can only conclude that they want to poison the discussion. And no good ever comes of a poisoned discussion.

geek-pac

Jeff Gerhardt and Doc Searls have announced their intent to form a political action (i.e. lobbying) committee with an agenda directly supporting free software and opposing antiinovative legislation like the infamous DMCA. See the draft position statement.

It's a shame that this is necessary, but since it is, bully for them. I'll wait a bit for them to finalize their agenda, and then send them some money.

# 4:10 PM

i get by with a little help from my friends

I'm lucky enough to have friends who can tell, when they call me on the phone, that I'm messed up because I haven't eaten all day, and will then drag me out to eat. I feel much better now than I did this morning. In fact, I might feel better than James Brown.

still scares me two years later

While engaging in the quintessential act of navel-contemplation known as "rereading old Usenet posts via DejaNews Google", I found a post about what it's like to come home and discover someone who's overdosed on speed sitting in your living room. Yes, it's a true story (although I seem to remember it was a bit more convoluted than that... oh well, these things always get simplified down in the telling).