Blog Is Both A Noun And A Verb

Tucson Weather Today

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Winston Churchill
(American Novelist)

Winston Churchill
(November 10, 1871 - March 12, 1947)

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The Blag Hag Jen McCreight is a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist who recently escaped Indiana for Seattle. Recently she blogged: "Here is a list of some great female atheists who you should check out." So I did -- and... Wow! There are a lot of them: Authors, Journalists, Bloggers, Activists, Comedians and I don't know what all. And there are links to their sites, too.

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The word for today is dystopia . . .

dystopia is a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding; the evil twin of Utopia.

Read about it here

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What is NNDB?

NNDB is an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have determined to be noteworthy, both living and dead. Superficially, it seems much like a "Who's Who" where a noted person's curriculum vitae is available (the usual information such as date of birth, a biography, and other essential facts.)

But it mostly exists to document the connections between people, many of which are not always obvious. A person's otherwise inexplicable behavior is often understood by examining the crowd that person has been associating with. And, NNDB is a fascinating and addictive tool.

http://www.nndb.com/

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"My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn."
--Louis Adamic

The Times They Are A'Changin'...

Tucson Weather Today

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The Forever Stamp -- I just heard about it. Yes, I am behind the times, and in many other ways than merely not being aware of a roll of stamps that will still be usable even after the price of first-class postage rises again. This seems to be the best way for an infrequent user of the U.S. Postal Service like me to buy stamps. But I'm not sure about it.

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Another subject I have recently learned about is dystopia. Why it matters that I know what dystopia is or not is most likely immaterial, but I hate it when I discover that a subject exists that I know nothing about. That's why I spend so much time looking things up.

Below is a first paragraph contributed by some helpful soul...

Dystopia is utopia's polarized mirror image. While utilizing many of the same concepts as utopia—for example, social stability created by authoritarian regimentation—dystopia reads these ideas pessimistically. Dystopia angrily challenges utopia's fundamental assumption of human perfectibility, arguing that humanity's inherent flaws negate the possibility of constructing perfect societies, except for those that are perfectly hellish. Dystopias are solely fictional, presenting grim, oppressive societies—with the moralistic goal of preventing the horrors they illustrate.

Read more: Dystopia - Goals Of Dystopian Fiction

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Don Oldenburg is a columnist and writer I'd never heard of until a few days ago -- Good Grief! Click the link to read some of his columns.

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Here is a poem that truly paints a picture with words...

The poem Cher can be read at The Writer's Almanac and can be easily envisioned by any person who has viewed the old Sonny and Cher show on TV back in the 'good old days.'

Remember this? . . . I Got You, Babe

And . . .

Who could forget: Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

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Yep . . . The Times They Are A'Changin' sings Bob Dylan...

My favorite, though, was Joan Baez singing it.

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"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind"
--Bob Dylan