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Marilyn Armstrong — Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

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Daily Prompt: Goals – None are so easily achieved!

I started blogging because people kept telling me I should. All my friends. My husband. My family. I’ve always been a writer, professionally and personally. I’d been sick a lot and for a very long time. A decade of being on the edge of dying is a lot of dying time and I was finally beginning to be a person again. The siege was lifting.

Facebook never did it for me. I never liked the format, the scattershot nature of posting. I have so many connections that aren’t friends, just people with whom I played various games. Even my circle of “friends” wasn’t a natural audience.

I had been following a WordPress blog for some months, ATMTX PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG. Every time I wanted to comment, I had to go through an annoying identification process unless I registered. One day, I registered. I picked a name for a mythical blog I might want to write. I chose Serendipity because I’m a serendipitous kind of gal. I had absolutely no intention of doing anything with it, but it made following other peoples’ blogs and commenting easier.

That was January 2012. In February, I put up an “About Me” page and posted a photograph because as an enthusiastic amateur, I have a great many pictures. Thousands, though many are not good enough to post anywhere but a family album. Still, there were some I thought someone besides my husband might enjoy. It was more than a month before I posted anything else. In March, I posted once, maybe twice. In April, not at all. In May, I found myself posting a couple of times a week. It was like writing letters. I wrote about whatever was on my mind or had caught my interest in the news. The presidential campaign was heating up, though it wasn’t red-hot yet.

Summer was slow. Vacation kept me away a lot. I posted, but it wasn’t particularly interesting or exciting material and my numbers reflected the ho-hum quality of the work.

And then, it rolled into August. Political hell broke loose. America became engulfed in a civil war of words on the Internet. I jumped in too. My numbers soared overnight. When Sandy, the Monster Storm, hit in September, it gave me plenty to write about. October was all-out class warfare. November. Election and aftermath. A tsunami of opinion, violence. Craziness everywhere. It was my biggest month, bringing in numbers I haven’t matched yet.

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By then, I was posting daily, more than once a day. I was reblogging other people’s work. I had found friends and colleagues on the Internet. We used each other as sounding boards and still do. The sense of community was not theoretical. I was part of it and I loved it.

The months have rolled on. I still have no goals. The question keeps coming up and I really think about it, but no matter how long and hard I ponder the question, I can’t find a reason better than my original non-goals. I love to write. I have a lot of opinions. And blogging gives me my own space to post photographs where people other than my immediate family can see them.

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I’ve achieved much more than I ever imagined because I never imagined anything at all. I’ve gotten close to 73,000 hits and although I’ve never been Freshly Pressed, apparently there are people who think I’m interesting enough to follow. I’ve made a difference to a few lives.

To know I’ve actually made a difference is a great feeling. Addictive.

Apple Blossoms

I have a focus for my time, a way to use the words roiling around in my head. In my working years, I always wrote for a defined goal and was paid for it. Now, at last, I can write about anything. I have no boss, no word limit, no corporate guidelines. Sadly, I don’t get the paycheck, but I have freedom. That’s worth a lot. And I’ve got a reason gear up, grab my cameras and go take pictures.

I’ve gotten much more than I ever imagined or expected.

Goals? What more could I need or want? Oh, I know. Send money? Please?

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What defines a professional?


MarissaMayerQuote

I’m not sure whether to consider this statement merely stupid and misinformed, or downright malicious and intended to undercut the ability of professionals in all fields — not only photography — to earn a living.

When did access to tools become equivalent to professionalism? When were talent, skill, experience, and training made irrelevant?

Using the same reasoning, everyone who owns an electric saw or other woodworking tools is a professional carpenter. Is anyone who owns a few rolls of electrical tape and a few gauges an electrician? Is a plumber anyone who can afford wrenches? Is everyone who owns a computer and a printer, who has a blog or posts on Facebook a professional writer? Since anyone can buy paints and an easel, that means I’m a painter, right? Everyone who has a digital camera can make movies, so are we all professional filmmakers?

If ignorance is bliss, I believe Marissa Mayer is the happiest woman on earth.

What do you think? Does access to professional equipment and/or professional tools make a professional? Does ownership of tools convey professional status on anyone with a credit card? I’d like to hear from you. Personally, I find this highly offensive. Am I overreacting?

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Prompts for the Promptless – What’s A Litmus?

Does anyone remember for what litmus paper actually tests?

From the ubiquitous source of all knowledge and frequent misinformation — Wikipedia — comes this enlightening but incomplete (please feel free to conduct your own research) definition:

Litmus is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from lichens, especially Roccella tinctoria. It is often absorbed onto filter paper to produce one of the oldest forms of pH indicator, used to test materials for acidity. Blue litmus paper turns red under acidic conditions and red litmus paper turns blue under basic (alkaline) conditions, with the color change occurring over the pH range 4.5-8.3 at 25 °C. Neutral litmus paper is purple. Litmus can also be prepared as an aqueous solution that functions similarly. Under acidic conditions the solution is red, and under basic conditions the solution is blue.

I’ve yet to determine the “litmus test” for Freshly Pressed. Whatever it is, I have flunked. I don’t measure up. Not clever enough? More clever than socially acceptable? Overly sarcastic? Insufficiently witty? Excessively eclectic? Irrelevant? Too topical? Too vague? Too pointed? Unable to follow simple directions? Failure to be a team player?

“Marilyn does not play well with others. She runs with scissors.”

I hade my face because I cannot bear the shame. Oh the horror!

I hide my face because I cannot bear the shame. Oh the horror!

Too many typos? Ouch.

“I plead guilty, your honor,” she said sadly, baring her soul for punishment. “I just don’t see them. I am a pathetic failure, dishonored, disgraced. Tear off my buttons. Break my sword. Rip the epaulettes from my shoulders. I deserve no less. Pass the yellow feather of shame.”

Despite the deep anxiety engendered by my un-freshly pressableness, I keep writing. Doggedly and with determination. Sometimes I’m so dogged I write about dogs.

As for litmus testing, I’m pretty sure I have a pH. If an actual litmus test were applied, I would definitely pass. Everything and everyone passes a litmus test because … (drumroll, trumpets) … you can’t fail a litmus test. There’s no correct answer and no passing grade. (Throw that bum out! His pH is way too low!) If my mother was any kind of judge, I’m too acidic, though there are days when I feel distinctly alkaline. I think this is one of those days.

Since I have recovered from my brief fling at being young, I have many opinions, but I don’t test. I have standards. Does that count? I don’t hang with racists. I don’t argue with stupid people by which I mean those delightful, heartwarming folks who combine blissful ignorance with strong opinions. I suppose there are a few other points, political, intellectual and social (don’t chew with your mouth open), but there’s no test. I like’em or I don’t. As with books and movies, I like what I like and don’t know why. Shameful. 

I don’t necessarily believe anything or anybody except my husband. He is an epic truth-sayer. If you ask him if that dress looks good on you, I hope you really want the answer. Because he is going to tell you. He will tell you with grace, charm and tact, but tell you he will.

I’m not litmus-test friendly. Worse, I’m completely out of touch with whatever is au courant. I wouldn’t know what to test for, much less whether or not someone passed, failed or whatever.

Does that make me a loser? Or, to put it in Facebook-ese, a LOOSER? I’ll bet my problem is I do not allow having nothing to say stop me from saying it anyhow. That’s gotta be it!

Tighten up, bitch. Get your act together! No looseness! Stand up straight! Button that uniform! Yes SIR!! Maybe if I get really tight, I’ll be Fresh enough to be Pressable!

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Blogging Part 4: Etiquette Part II

Reblogged from MikesFilmTalk:

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Metaphorically strolling through the recent entries on the Freshly Pressed page, I noticed a disturbing trend. Some of these recent winners of that coveted page placement aren't responding to their comments. They are responding to a few, but not many.

When I got Freshly Pressed last year, I tried my damnedest to answer every single person who commented. I would have continued doing so if I hadn't had a…

Read more… 483 more words

I try hard to answer every comment, at least to acknowledge that I've received it. It's courtesy and it's also the only way to have a dialogue with ones readers and get to know them (and vice versa). I think it matters. Others obviously don't agree. Because I know that the response rate to my comments is no better than 50% across the board.
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Improbability Drive Powers WordPress Statistical Base!

PanicIn the wake of my cogently worded suggestion that WordPress make some alteration to its “followers” calculation, I did not receive a direct response, but I know they are listening. They apparently heard my plea and have responded above and beyond my wildest hopes for a solution.

They doubled the number of followers they say I have on Facebook.

From yesterday’s absurd calculation of 1313 Facebook followers, at midnight, WordPress recalculated my numbers and informed me — and I suppose the rest of the world too — that I now have 2,628 followers on Facebook. I admit I added one friend, an old pal from college who looked me up (Hi Charlie!) and asked to connect. I said golly, haven’t talked to him in a dog’s age and gave him the green light. That must be what triggered the WordPress engines to leap on my growing Facebook coterie and send it to new heights.

Talk about a responsive organization, what could be more reassuring than this? I officially, as of this writing, haven’t the slightest idea how many followers I really have. The math has just gotten too complicated for me. Math has always been my worst subject, but I swear that the folks at WordPress have taken a page out of Douglas Adams‘ playbook and are now using Bistromathics to calculate my numbers.

Bistromathics (from Hitchhiker’s Wiki)

Bistromathics is the most powerful computational force known to parascience. A major step up from the Infinite Improbability Drive, Bistromathics is a way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it was realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.

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Nonabsoluteness

The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.

The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexclusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. Recipriversexclusions now play a vital part in many branches of math, including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else’s Problem field. Douglas

The third and most mysterious piece of nonabsoluteness of all lies in the relationship between the number of items on the check, the cost of each item, the number of people at the table and what they are each prepared to pay for. (The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a subphenomenon in this field.)

Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the universe.

(Excerpt from the Hitchhiker’s Wiki)

Anyone else want to weigh in on this? It’s the same poll as yesterday. So far, there’s 100% agreement that this is an absurd number. Now that WordPress itself has made it clear that they know how absurd it is by making it even more absurd, I think they may have already had the final word, but give it a go anyhow.

I thought it was important to maintain an honest relationship with readers, but that was before I realized we were actually on a space ship piloted by crazy aliens, powered by the world’s first Improbability Drive. Now I know there’s never going to be a fix because the whole issue is swathed in an S.E.P. (Somebody Else’s Problem) field and it is invisible! Hail Douglas Adams! You did not die in vain!

Note: If this trend continues, we will move from the Douglas Adams paramathematical realm to the Humpty Dumpty College of Astrophysics where “a word means what I say it means” and so do numbers. Just saying.

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Faux Figures from WordPress — Oh no!!

WordPress

WordPress is a great organization. Really, lots of support, recognition to many people. Not to me, but lots of other people. And most of it is for free. From templates to tech support, I get more service from WordPress than I would get from most blogging services at any price. But I think this time, WordPress has made a serious mistake and they need to rethink this thing.

Followers. Imagine my astonishment to discover that from my previous day’s statistic that counts my number of followers — 280 — I am now showing the world that I have 1,605 followers. I know I had a good day Wednesday, but I don’t think I gained more than 1,300 followers between Wednesday and Thursday. If I have that many followers, where are the hits?

Even if a mere 10% of them dropped by, that would give me a base 160 hits per day, and while I do get more than that (usually, but not always), WordPress also kindly does a pretty thorough breakdown of where all my hits come from.

So how did they get this astonishing calculation of my followers? What happened?

WordPress is now counting my Facebook “friends” as followers through Publicize. All 1,313 of them.

Most of my connections on Facebook are people I don’t know, but with whom I play games, especially Metropolis, a game that requires a lot of connection. There’s virtually no interaction between players. We post jokes on each others’ walls and silly stuff like that, but we don’t hang out or share our lives, virtually or otherwise. We ignore each others’ posts because we aren’t really friends. So from this number, let us now subtract about 1000  – because that’s how many of my Facebook association are attributable to Metropolis. About another 100 or possibly more, are associated with me via some other game, and a few of them, several games. That’s okay. That’s one of the things that you can do with Facebook. Although some of these connections might occasionally take a look at something I’ve posted, they do not participate in my virtual or real world.

The remainder of my Facebook contacts are people with whom I have or had some kind of relationship. Maybe a few dozen are friends or family. The rest are people I’ve met, worked with, used to know from my traveling days, or had some other brief association based on some shared interest and with whom I may have intermittent contact.

Yesterday, I got 216 hits. Because of WordPress’ excellent statistical analysis, I know exactly how many of these hits originated on Facebook.

The answer? One. Just one. Sometimes I have gotten as many as half a dozen, but never more than that, so counting it as 1313 followers renders the statistics not merely meaningless, but embarrassing. A joke, not a statistic.

So the follower figures are not just a little pumped. They are ridiculous. WordPress, you need to rethink this statistic. It is misleading and unfair to actual followers who did sign on to follow me. And it’s unfair to me, too,  because I have to subtract all those bogus followers to get a meaningful number. No one has anything to gain from this. To be counted as a follower, a person should be required to do perform an act of will, for example, say he or she wants to be your follower, not just a wholesale raking in of everyone on a list. That really would be like assuming that all the contacts in my email contact list are also followers, which I assure you, they are not.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful for all the services WordPress provides, but this needs to be undone as quickly as it was done. You just can’t call every Facebook “friend” a “follower” and have the term follower continue to mean anything at all.

Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

Let WordPress know that pumping up our statistics just makes them meaningless. In the meantime, I’ve removed the follower statistics from the “Follow Me” box. I’ll happily reinstate it if this gets fixed. Otherwise, it’s  too much of a lie. I don’t want to be a liar all over the Internet even if it makes me look good. It also rewards those of us with Facebook accounts and punishes those who don’t. As far as I know, Facebook is not connected to WordPress … or is there something I don’t know about?

I think it’s important we maintain an honest relationship with our readers. So in the meantime, I won’t post that statistic. I’d rather it didn’t exist, but I’ll settle for not being part of the scam.

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Lips that touch liquor …

Once upon a time, Americans had national fit of self-righteousness and decided alcohol was the root of all evil.  To rectify the perceived problem, the nation rose up on its collective hind legs and passed the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment established a legal prohibition of recreational alcoholic beverages in the United States. The separate Volstead Act specified how authorities would actually enforce Prohibition including defining “intoxicating liquor” for anyone who needed an explanation.

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The folks who needed an explanation were not your average Jill or Joe. Jill and Joe knew how to get drunk just fine, but apparently lawmakers, politicians and gangsters-to-be needed clarification. The gangsters needed to know what they had to do to cash in on this opportunity and the others, how to persecute people in the name of the law. Many beverages were excluded for medical and religious purposes. It was okay to get drunk as long it was accompanied by an appropriate degree of religious fervor or if you could get a doctor’s note.

That left a lot of room — a barn door-sized hole — through which an entire generation strolled. Many people began drinking during Prohibition who had never imbibed before and whereas previously, alcoholism had no social cachet, during prohibition it became fashionable. As with most things, making it more difficult, expensive and illegal made it more desirable and sexy.

Regular folks, society leaders, and criminals all basked in the glow of joyous illegality. A whole criminal class was born as a result of prohibition. If that isn’t clear proof that legislating morality doesn’t work, I don’t know what is. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Whether the issue is booze, drugs, abortion, prayer, same-sex marriage, or term limits … law and morality don’t mix.

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Passing a law limiting how many times you can vote for a candidate rather than letting you vote for any candidate you want isn’t going to improve the quality of legislators. You’ll just wind up voting for a bunch of clowns and opportunists who don’t give a rat’s ass about government while dedicated potential candidates won’t bother to run because there’s no future in it. Making drugs illegal, especially marijuana, has created an entire drug culture — exactly the way making booze illegal created an entire criminal class.

There are no fewer gay people because we have made their lives difficult and turned them into second-rate citizens any more than segregation made the world safe for stupid white people. Illegal abortions kill not only fetuses, but their mothers too. You may not approve of abortion, but do you approve of forcing women to risk their lives to not have babies they don’t want?

How is that better or more moral? This kind of knee-jerk “lets solve social issues by making bad laws” causes a lot of pain and suffering. And as often as not, you end up legislating your way into a vast sea of exciting new problems you didn’t have before. Throughout history, laws designed to force everyone to do what someone else deems ”right” have failed. Monumentally and spectacularly failed. You’d think citizens and lawmakers alike would notice this recurring theme, but remarkably, we seem unable to connect the dots.

If you never drank before, bet this picture could change your mind.

If you never drank before, bet this picture could change your mind.

We haven’t learned anything at all, probably because no one is aware history is repeating itself. Many of our citizens apparently don’t know any history, so how could they?

The 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and took effect a year later, on January 17, 1920. Immediately, the demand for liquor increased. Producers, suppliers and transporters were turned into criminals, but drinkers were not prosecuted. What could go wrong with that? The entire justice system — courts, cops and prisons — was buried under a landslide of booze-related busts. Organized crime went from being a minor group to a major social force. Is that progress?

Having achieved results way beyond the wildest dreams of the amendment’s creators, prohibition was repealed in 1933 via the Twenty-first Amendment, the only time in American history an amendment was repealed.

Every time I hear someone on Facebook declare how we need a constitutional amendment to solve a political or social problem, I contemplate how successfully we got rid of alcohol in 1920. No one has had a drink since! The next time someone tells you history is meaningless, tell them without history, they are meaningless. They won’t understand what you mean, but a bit more confusion can’t hurt them. Saying it might make you feel better.


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A Half Hour Radio Show

See on Scoop.it – Books, Writing, and Reviews

This site hosts the original broadcasts of the cult radio comedy show “A Half Hour Radio Show,” syndicated around the US in the early 1990’s.

Marilyn Armstrong‘s insight:

When I was in college, I worked at the radio station. This show was a very big hit at the time. Since then, it has gone through a lot of iterations, refinements, rewriting … and it’s still hilarious. Take a trip in time. Enjoy a type of entertainment that used your imagination instead of special effects. Fall in love with radio!

See on captclerk.podbean.com

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