Happy New Year, One and All

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 16:22:11 GMT

2006 was a good year for me and mine, in many ways.

To all of my family near and far, to my ecclesia here and worldwide, to all of my friends new and old, close or distant:

Happy
New Year!

Hoping 2007 will be even better, for all of us...

Choose Your High Ground

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 18:23:49 GMT

A complaint I often see about "the right," especially the "religious right," is that they always try to take the moral high ground.

But doesn't the left tend to claim the "intellectual high ground" as their territory? Today Brent made numerous references to the Democrats being the result of America's roots in Enlightenment, and basing everything on Reason. Since this was in contrast to the "other side," doesn't that imply that they are both unreasonable and unenlightened?

Brian Carnell made the point quite well in a reply to the message that started this topic. He said:

... the problem is that the media portrays opponents of gay marraige as a bunch of redneck bigots and the current strategy for instituting gay marriage is to bypass legislatures and go to the courts. Nobody should be surprised that when you tell a sizable part of the population that they're a bunch of bigoted morons whose opinion won't matter...

The "left" seems to believe that the "right" just needs more education, as though the reason they disagree is simply that one side doesn't understand the issues clearly enough, and those "educated few" on the right who still disagree are either bigoted (obviously that doesn't apply to all the issues), naturally unintelligent, or have some personal stake in or history with the issue which prevents them from seeing clearly.

The "right," however, tends to act like the "left" are a bunch of evil, baby-killing, gay heathen who have lost their way. With no built-in moral guidance of their own, laws are needed to protect them from theselves and to prevent them from corrupting America.

What a mess. Were this a negotiation of some sort, both sides would need a cooling off period.

Personally, I think the US is at its best when it's swimming the channel between the two banks, recognizing that individual rights and freedoms are wonderful and essential things, and tempering that recognition with an understanding that some things really do Matter, that some things can be Right or Wrong based on nothing more than principle.

Speaking of Multiple Categorization Vectors...

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 05 Jul 2003 13:29:31 GMT

My last post mentioned that Conversant supports unlimited metadata (categorization) vectors for each post.

Coincidentally (I think), Brian Carnell just wrote about his use of this feature under the topic, "Wikis+Blogs=Conversant".

Truer Words - A Journal

Happy New Year, One and All

Happy New Year!

Choose Your High Ground

Speaking of Multiple Categorization Vectors...

Happy
New Year!