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Happy birthday, Blog!
Mar. 25th, 2018 09:50 amThis blog is 6 years old today. I started it on March 25, 2012 - also a Sunday. Is it living up to my expectations? That's something I'll need to reflect on a bit more but overall, I'd say yes.
Social media have exploded over the past decade and while some diehard Facebookies are threatening to cancel their FB accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytics scandal, I understand that that's easier said than done and I'll believe it if I see it. Meanwhile, I've bought myself one of those T-shirts that reads "Yes it's true - I'm not on Facebook!" And I can say with a certain amount of pride that it IS true. Meanwhile, I really like the whole idea behind Dreamwidth Studios and I plan to continue to support them, even if my blog entries are not as frequent as they used to be. There are still all kinds of nifty features to Dreamwidth accounts and I've barely scratched the surface in terms of exploring and experimenting with them. I'm also very confident with Dreamwidth that my personal data will not be sold and exploited for crass commercial and other nefarious purposes.
In my last entry, I described a recent haul from a second-hand book sale and while I'm looking forward to getting into them, they were temporarily put aside as I had quite a few library books on the go at the time. So in the remainder of this post, I'll write about my thoughts on those.
To My Trans Sisters (c2018) An "inspirational collection of letters written by successful trans women" sharing lessons learned on the journey to womanhood. Some of the characters I found sympathetic; others less so. After all these years, I'm still not so sure I understand the whole "trans" phenomenon, even though current thinking - by doctors, psychologists and the like - seems to be that those who feel they were born into the wrong sex or gender should be indulged to whatever extent they deem necessary for their mental health and survival! To me, you can be whoever you want in your fantasies so why should the outward manifestation be such a big deal?
So You Want to be a Robot: 21 short stories (c2017) - All written by someone who considers "themself" gender-fluid, they all deal to some degree with gender dysphoria and even species dysphoria. Heaven forbid we should all end up as cyber-people, but that's what some of the folk in these stories seem to want! Although it's certainly not MY fantasy, I nevertheless found the stories quite riveting!
The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw (c2007) - This was a kind of memoir of growing up in the UK and the important role popular music played in Lavinia's life. Born in 1962, she's a few years younger than I am but her descriptions of events in her life and songs with particular resonance for her nonetheless struck some responsive chords in me.
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield (c2017) - A very thought-provoking book with chapters on all the technologies that are becoming so pervasive in our lives - 3D printing, Blockchain/Bitcoin, virtual and augmented reality, and what they do to our society in terms of social values and how we spend our time. While none of it was exactly surprising to me, it clearly highlighted the creepy Big-Brotherish and lack or privacy aspect to the world we live in today.
Murder in the Manuscript Room by Con Lehane (c2017) - This murder mystery takes place at New York City's 42nd Street Public Library, somewhere I've long wanted to visit, and features a librarian protagonist, Raymond Ambler. The murder victim is a recently-hired library employee reporting to Ambler's friend and fellow-librarian Adele Morgan, who seems very interested in an Islamic scholar working at the library (and whom many seem to have pegged as the perp).
Longing for Certainty: Reflections on the Buddhist Life by Nyanasobhano (c2003)
Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness and Death by Soeng Mu (c2017)
I borrowed the above two titles because I'm currently taking a Learning in Retirement course on Buddhism at Carleton. I have one more class (tomorrow) and then on the final day (April 9), we'll be visiting a Buddhist temple. I still haven't quite decided what I think of the material I've been learning. On the one hand, I think there's definitely a value to the whole meditating thing, especially in this age of social media and everyone being glued to their phones all the time. There are also definitely some positives to be had in the whole idea of accepting things as they are, with equanimity, as well as being less "grasping" and materialistic. But should we just abandon any thought of changing the world, or at least trying to get things to be more to our liking? And I don't know that I totally see craving as being a bad thing either - what Buddhism labels "craving" you or I might think of as having something to look forward to or to cheer us up! Is it really true that when you satisy a craving, you just crave more and more and it's always out of reach? I don't think that's how things are for me.
Anyway, those are just a few stray thoughts on what I've been reading of late. Now I've gone back to The Atheist Muslim (Ali Rizvi) and As the Years Go By: Conversations with Canada's Folk Pop and Rock Pioneers (Mark Kearney and Randy Ray). I'll probably put aside Simone de Beauvoir's Letters to Sartre while I indulge in Alan Bradley's latest Flavia De Luce mystery and Linda Wiken's Marinating in Murder.
Till next time!
Social media have exploded over the past decade and while some diehard Facebookies are threatening to cancel their FB accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytics scandal, I understand that that's easier said than done and I'll believe it if I see it. Meanwhile, I've bought myself one of those T-shirts that reads "Yes it's true - I'm not on Facebook!" And I can say with a certain amount of pride that it IS true. Meanwhile, I really like the whole idea behind Dreamwidth Studios and I plan to continue to support them, even if my blog entries are not as frequent as they used to be. There are still all kinds of nifty features to Dreamwidth accounts and I've barely scratched the surface in terms of exploring and experimenting with them. I'm also very confident with Dreamwidth that my personal data will not be sold and exploited for crass commercial and other nefarious purposes.
In my last entry, I described a recent haul from a second-hand book sale and while I'm looking forward to getting into them, they were temporarily put aside as I had quite a few library books on the go at the time. So in the remainder of this post, I'll write about my thoughts on those.
To My Trans Sisters (c2018) An "inspirational collection of letters written by successful trans women" sharing lessons learned on the journey to womanhood. Some of the characters I found sympathetic; others less so. After all these years, I'm still not so sure I understand the whole "trans" phenomenon, even though current thinking - by doctors, psychologists and the like - seems to be that those who feel they were born into the wrong sex or gender should be indulged to whatever extent they deem necessary for their mental health and survival! To me, you can be whoever you want in your fantasies so why should the outward manifestation be such a big deal?
So You Want to be a Robot: 21 short stories (c2017) - All written by someone who considers "themself" gender-fluid, they all deal to some degree with gender dysphoria and even species dysphoria. Heaven forbid we should all end up as cyber-people, but that's what some of the folk in these stories seem to want! Although it's certainly not MY fantasy, I nevertheless found the stories quite riveting!
The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw (c2007) - This was a kind of memoir of growing up in the UK and the important role popular music played in Lavinia's life. Born in 1962, she's a few years younger than I am but her descriptions of events in her life and songs with particular resonance for her nonetheless struck some responsive chords in me.
Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield (c2017) - A very thought-provoking book with chapters on all the technologies that are becoming so pervasive in our lives - 3D printing, Blockchain/Bitcoin, virtual and augmented reality, and what they do to our society in terms of social values and how we spend our time. While none of it was exactly surprising to me, it clearly highlighted the creepy Big-Brotherish and lack or privacy aspect to the world we live in today.
Murder in the Manuscript Room by Con Lehane (c2017) - This murder mystery takes place at New York City's 42nd Street Public Library, somewhere I've long wanted to visit, and features a librarian protagonist, Raymond Ambler. The murder victim is a recently-hired library employee reporting to Ambler's friend and fellow-librarian Adele Morgan, who seems very interested in an Islamic scholar working at the library (and whom many seem to have pegged as the perp).
Longing for Certainty: Reflections on the Buddhist Life by Nyanasobhano (c2003)
Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness and Death by Soeng Mu (c2017)
I borrowed the above two titles because I'm currently taking a Learning in Retirement course on Buddhism at Carleton. I have one more class (tomorrow) and then on the final day (April 9), we'll be visiting a Buddhist temple. I still haven't quite decided what I think of the material I've been learning. On the one hand, I think there's definitely a value to the whole meditating thing, especially in this age of social media and everyone being glued to their phones all the time. There are also definitely some positives to be had in the whole idea of accepting things as they are, with equanimity, as well as being less "grasping" and materialistic. But should we just abandon any thought of changing the world, or at least trying to get things to be more to our liking? And I don't know that I totally see craving as being a bad thing either - what Buddhism labels "craving" you or I might think of as having something to look forward to or to cheer us up! Is it really true that when you satisy a craving, you just crave more and more and it's always out of reach? I don't think that's how things are for me.
Anyway, those are just a few stray thoughts on what I've been reading of late. Now I've gone back to The Atheist Muslim (Ali Rizvi) and As the Years Go By: Conversations with Canada's Folk Pop and Rock Pioneers (Mark Kearney and Randy Ray). I'll probably put aside Simone de Beauvoir's Letters to Sartre while I indulge in Alan Bradley's latest Flavia De Luce mystery and Linda Wiken's Marinating in Murder.
Till next time!
