digitaldust

Well I’ve moved back to blogger. It seems to offer me the things I need. I can publish to my webspace, and I can export via a troubled route into movable type products. Cant go the other way, so it makes it a good longer term experiment.

Upgrading to the typekey version of MT didnt help me at all. I left comments on over the weekend and came back to 200 spamments. ARGH. At least deleting them in MT3.11 was easier and the moderation queue works, still I dont want to have to delete 100 bits of spam every day.

Anyway I like the look here, it feels friendlier than MT, more rounded edges and larger font size.

Derrida, founder of deconstructionism, dies at 74

The slippery french philosopher is gone. Joining other greats I remember studying at Uni… Foucault, Camus, Satre. Another of the giants is gone, but there is room now for more. The era of Moderna French Philosophy as a movement is more or less gone, although it was never really a coherent school of thought, more an overlapping of various thinkers lives. Postmodernism still exists incarnate in the body of Baudrillard, who now no doubt holds the title of most-famous-living-french-philosopher. Lucky guy.

I feel a bit sad, I had the chance to see Derrida talk a while back and passed on it. I’ve missed that small tenuous connection with history.

Derrida, founder of deconstructionism, dies at 74

The slippery french philosopher is gone. Joining other greats I remember studying at Uni… Foucault, Camus, Satre. Another of the giants is gone, but there is room now for more. The era of Moderna French Philosophy as a movement is more or less gone, although it was never really a coherent school of thought, more an overlapping of various thinkers lives. Postmodernism still exists incarnate in the body of Baudrillard, who now no doubt holds the title of most-famous-living-french-philosopher. Lucky guy.

I feel a bit sad, I had the chance to see Derrida talk a while back and passed on it. I’ve missed that small tenuous connection with history.

And in fact an arts student as of last week…

I’m now truly a bastard child of art and science, just like the photography I’m studying. I’ve just had my second week in the course and it’s fantastic. I’m so loving it.

And in fact an arts student as of last week…

I’m now truly a bastard child of art and science, just like the photography I’m studying. I’ve just had my second week in the course and it’s fantastic. I’m so loving it.

I’ve just upgraded to MT 3.11. Lets see if it can keep the spam down with the typekey thingee. I know I’m about 6 months late on this and everyone else has either done this or moved to typepad. I’m just not on the bleeding edge anymore…. and proud of it

I found this idea, quote today…

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

Tyler was an 18th century historian/economist who wrote ‘The Cycle of Democracy’
in 1778. This quote is the central thesis from his work.

It was being used in reference to the current situation of the US government, though I’m not sure personally where the US is at… maybe selfishness. Whereas the UK is probably beyond that and already into apathy. Not long for us here before we end up back in a dictatorship, so maybe the US is better off.

Mind you I’ve always thought that the best form of government was a benevolent dictatorship anyway, so hopefully one is around to pop up soon. Though I did have a thought that if every one was free to move you should just have anyone who wanted to be a dictator pop up and anyone who liked them would move there. Then you could have the size of the country dependent on the number of people in it, and jostle around till everyone found a nice place to stay, where they liked the regime, and maybe even the climate. The only rule you need to have is that people can leave or move around as they feel fit. Then the dictatorships are self selecting, whether benevolent or not. People will find the place they like the most. A much better form of democracy, where you can vote by your presence.

I found this idea, quote today…

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

Tyler was an 18th century historian/economist who wrote ‘The Cycle of Democracy’
in 1778. This quote is the central thesis from his work.

It was being used in reference to the current situation of the US government, though I’m not sure personally where the US is at… maybe selfishness. Whereas the UK is probably beyond that and already into apathy. Not long for us here before we end up back in a dictatorship, so maybe the US is better off.

Mind you I’ve always thought that the best form of government was a benevolent dictatorship anyway, so hopefully one is around to pop up soon. Though I did have a thought that if every one was free to move you should just have anyone who wanted to be a dictator pop up and anyone who liked them would move there. Then you could have the size of the country dependent on the number of people in it, and jostle around till everyone found a nice place to stay, where they liked the regime, and maybe even the climate. The only rule you need to have is that people can leave or move around as they feel fit. Then the dictatorships are self selecting, whether benevolent or not. People will find the place they like the most. A much better form of democracy, where you can vote by your presence.

Masonic Lodge
Originally uploaded by digitaldust.

Well, I’ve tried moving to blogger and it seems to have worked. What’s more I have a lovely template now that seems to fit the feel of me and my site. No more pale grey boxes, it’s rounded and friendly, as well as sort of symbolic.

Anyway, here are the doors in the Masonic Grand Lodge that I visited the other day. Mostly just to see that flickr can stick it up here.

I’m being a bit of a rebel I suppose. I thought I would try this blogger thing even though everyone else is flocking to typepad. Blogger seems a bit friendlier, it’s got rounded edges to everything, it feels very different posting in this than in MT.

I’m going to try moving to a blogger published blog for a bit. Enable my comments again. I might then get on to typepad, but I will see how I like blogger and flickr tied together. The URL will be the same, digitaldust. I think the RSS feed might still be the same. If not and anyone out there in blogville is subscribe then you might have to get back on.