Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Archives for July 2003

Around the horn

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I’ve pledged money for both WampumBlog and Paper Bent for Blogathon 2003. Why? I don’t know. There are plenty of worthy blogathoners out there, and if they’re willing to sit there and blog for twenty-four hours straight, they’re welcome to do so. A

Skimble has a neat little summary of the heist of a lifetime. If there is a spot o’ truth to this “river of light” story, it needs to be investigated and revealed post haste.

Calpundit’s entry about medical malpractice—and how people testifying about it can change their stories rather drastically once they’re made accountable for them—is required reading.

John Scalzi has a nice little essay/rant on what being a professional writer means in regard to criticism—to paraphrase using the words of a recent episode of “Monk,” Suck it up. And he’s right. If you think this is hard, you ain’t seen nothing yet. (My professional writer experience consists solely at this point of being a tech writer at Apple, and it was as true there.)

If you want to be loved, have a blog. Oh wait.

(I’ve read Natalia’s followup, and she makes a good point: this is her journal; she was writing about her feelings. Fair enough. But I’ve been in enough writing classes/workshops/seminars to know how the vast majority of people react to criticism, and it’s not with the detachment they’re going to need to whether writing professionally. I know how I deal with getting criticized on my writing, and I have a much stronger sense of self-esteem than most when it comes to my writing. So John’s reaction is not at all from left field.)

A couple of people have now written to ask why my right-hand column (which contains my list o’links, among other things) doesn’t show up in Mozilla. I don’t know why; it shows up in Safari and IE. The first time I got this question, I thought it was because blogrolling.com was down, but now I suspect it’s a Mozilla problem. Any clues?

No paternity test needed

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I am not making this up:

Yesterday afternoon, Sophia and I snuggled on the living room couch so I could read to her. She wanted “Sleeping Beauty.” Okay, okay. In Disney’s version, there are three good fairies at the baby’s christeninig who give the new baby gifts like “Beauty” and “Song.”

I turned to Sophia and said, “What did the fairies bring you when you were born?”

She smiled and said, “We don’t have fairies in our world.”

I swear to you she said this.

I also swear to you that, while we’re planning on bringing the kids up without religion, we haven’t exactly been harping on it yet. After all, Sophia’s three. The whole sky-elf discussion can wait a little bit.

Or maybe we can skip that whole thing. She seems to be a little ahead of the curve.

I told Darin about what she said and he said, “Yes.” Daddy’s little rationalist.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means

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I picked up the paper today—an actual physical paper, something I don’t do very often—and read about Odai and Qusay and the amazingly well-timed (for the White House news cycle, at any rate) four hour firefight. And then I read this article and I feel, well, disoriented.

Odai, 39, Saddam Hussein’s elder son, was the wolf — a sadist who tortured athletes for losing matches, a womanizer who had henchmen snatch women and girls off the street, a tantrum-thrower who beat underlings and rivals to death, a show-off who collected fast cars and jungle pets.

Um, hello?

Colin Farrell is a womanizer.

Odai sounds like, oh, I don’t know…a rapist? Or a psychopath?

Why the hell did the Washington Post use a term like “womanizer” for a vicious bastard like this guy?