Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Month: August 2002
Sleek Gophers
Posted on August 27, 2002 in Anthropology Attitudes
Sinclair Lewis probably wouldn’t find America different from what he saw in the 1920s except that the locus of banality has shifted. Carol Kennitcott would be just as miserable in today’s California suburbs as she was in Gopher Prairie.
An American Panda
Posted on August 27, 2002 in Zoos
“This is an American panda. You’ve never seen an American panda before.”
Questions for the Learned Ones
Posted on August 27, 2002 in Misc
OK, now I have a few questions for those conversant with Moveable Type:
- How do I set up and link a categories index?
- How do I limit the number of days or the number of entries that appear on a page?
- Stylesheet help: I want to put a little margin around the text in the boxes. How do I do this?
- How can I move the date so that it isn’t lined up like that?
Now entering….
Posted on August 26, 2002 in Site News
….the age of Moveable Type. You can now comment on the entries. I am working my way through the whole archive, getting things straightened out after the move from Blogger to here. I feel like I am among the civilized once again.
I have some back notes about the zoo. And I did manage to download a couple of pictures before my cable bit the big one. Stay tuned!
Freaking Camera
Posted on August 26, 2002 in Photography
It is going to be a couple of days before I am able to post photos (except for a few) because I yanked too hard on the USB cable for my camera and it is now dead. So I am taking things slowly or using old shots from the Zoo.
More Gratitude
Posted on August 26, 2002 in Gratitude
Thanks to everyone who has linked to me, those who will link to me, etc.
Rodents and Cats
Posted on August 25, 2002 in Zoos
When I mewed at it, it stared at me. Kindred? we asked one another in the secret language of the searching eyes.
Dream
Posted on August 25, 2002 in Dreams
Lynn goes out into the back yard of some house we are living in to bring in all our cats which have run outside. She shoos them in. I take count in the hallway and find Ambrose, Tracy, and seven or eight cats in various sizes that all resemble our black cat, Virginia. “Lynn,” I call impatiently. “Get in here. We have a problem.”
I described this dream to Lynn later. She said that is exactly what I would have said in real life.
“Don’t criticize the service — if you do, you’re UNAMERICAN!”
Posted on August 25, 2002 in Travels - So Cal
The Mediterranean has been around for a long time. It has a split personality — a coffee shop in the front and one of those darkly lit places in the back that I suppose are to remind you of the intimacy of the dungeons where the Spanish Inquisition conducted its researches.
Intellectual Property Deserves a Fence
Posted on August 25, 2002 in Liberty
The copyright pirates were whining again on #politics. So I proposed something: let’s treat all property like you want to treat copyright. I want to be able to drive whatever car tickles my fancy. Let me just walk up to any one on the street and drive it away as it pleases me. I want to live in whatever house appeals to me. Let me just move in. The rules the copyright pirates want for the world might work well in the wake of a nuclear war or a lab-spawned plague when all the copyright holders were dead and didn’t care.
Dream
Posted on August 24, 2002 in Dreams
I am a witness to a peculiar kind of play, with many scenes that happen in different places, all at the same time. You choose where you want to be and just sit there watching the actors. I choose to observe a scene that takes place in a bedroom on the second floor of a long cottage. Some lord is dying in bed. The emperor, who is also dying, comes to see him. They carry the emperor up the stairs on a white canopy bed. When they get to the dying lord, they force the emperor’s bed down on top of the lord’s bed, presumably crushing him. The heir to the throne, a middle-aged man, comes to talk. He wears an silk indigo turban. He’s clean shaven. Some great scene, crucial to the plot, is taking place here and I am the only witness. They ask me to move some props for them as the actors move off to play their parts somewhere else.
A Defense of Cultural Relativism
Posted on August 23, 2002 in Thinking
I don’t think Franz Boas and the other founders of cultural relativism meant to let evil persist uncriticized and unchallenged.
