One of my blog entries that is most often commented upon is The Pieing of William Kristol, about the incident in March where Earlham Student Josh Medlin hit conservative commentator Kristol with some sort of pie. As the paper reported yesterday, Medlin pled guilty and will be required to perform community service and pay court costs. Fellow blogger and local attorney E. Thomas Kemp defended Medlin in the case, and it's good to see that it's mostly resolved in the eyes of the judicial process. I don't know Medlin personally, but the incident as a whole would seem to put him in a unique position to reflect on or even talk about some interesting issues related to dialogue and debate, direct and indirect activism, the nature of unintended consequences, and related topics - perhaps his community service could be an opportunity to make use of that.
Continue reading "Kristol Pieing, Dialogue Redux"
Category: personal
Thanks to the folks at TRIB (The Review of Indiana Blogs) for the kind mention over the weekend. As I told them even *before* they were nice enough to link to me, it's good to see a resource like this devoted to covering the Hoosier blogosphere. I've already enjoyed reading through the posts and learning about other folks in Indiana who are bothering to comment on happenings around the state and in their own lives.
My day started at 4 in the morning today. I was having a dream about someone knocking on the door to wherever I was, and then I realized that the knocking was in fact real, and that someone was pounding on the front door of my house and ringing the door bell over and over again. I think the last time that happened to me was at about 4 AM also, when I was in Scotland and a fellow student was so inebriated that he demanded that I leave "his" room, and then fell over in the hallway. So for that or some other reason, I was immediately thinking it was someone out of their mind with meth-amphetamine or something similar that's recently been played up as an unthinkable evil invading our communities. Gosh, I get dramatic at that hour.
Continue reading "Is Michael there? Are you sure?"
I almost feel like a student again! Not including my trip to the conference last weekend, which was a semi-academic learning experience in itself, I'm engaged in a couple of other great learning opportunities. I just completed a course in mediation training given by The Conflict Resolution Center here in Richmond as a part of preparing to volunteer as a community mediator. I already greatly enjoy studying and learning about how humans can communicate more effectively with each other (especially around difficult issues), so it was great to formalize some of those skills in this particular context, and to interact with other folks interested in doing the same. I also really appreciated that such a great resource with such important community services is right here in town.
I'm also taking a creative writing class from the folks at the Gotham Writers` Workshop. It's been an interesting experience so far, and I'm grateful for some structure around my desire to do more creative writing - or, dare I say it, "be a writer" - but I'll reserve for later my opinion of how well I learn in an online course environment - quite a contrast to face-to-face interaction. Anyone out there had any experiences with online education or training to share? What are *you* learning about these days?
Well, in case you hadn't noticed, it's taking me a while longer than I'd thought it would to synthesize my notes from the Peak Oil conference into blog postings. In the interest of getting them done and published at all, this entry will be much less detailed than my others, and hopefully you can check out the DVD of the conference (not yet available) if you want to learn more. You can start with my introduction if you're just joining us.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Sunday and Conclusions"
This post summarizes the events of the second part of the second day of the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions. You can read my introduction, my summary from Friday, and my summary from Saturday morning.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Saturday Afternoon"
This post summarizes the events of the first part of the second day of the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions. You can read my introduction and my summary from the first day. As you'll note, there's quite a lot there, I hope it's not too discombobulated to be useful. I should note that the conference organizers are planning to produce a DVD of the various sessions held here, so if you're at all interested in seeing some of this stuff for yourself (and without my filters/bias), stay tuned to the conference website for details.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Saturday Morning"
My friend Frank arrived in Richmond this morning to form the beginning of our small caravan to the Second U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, as I mentioned yesterday. After some brief touring around town, a visit to Summersault, and showing off some of the great local stuff Richmond has to offer, we headed east to pick Dayna up at the airport. From there we headed to Yellow Springs, Ohio and the campus of Antioch College, where the conference is being held. You can check out some random photos from today, or read on for a summary of the opening keynote by Richard Heinberg.
Continue reading "Peak Oil Conference: Friday"
I have the privilege to be headed to the second U.S. conference on "Peak Oil and Community Solutions" this weekend in Ohio. I've mentioned Peak Oil here before, and so I'm excited to be joining some folks who I already know think about this stuff on a trip to meet new people and explore this "issue" further. It seems to come at an especially relevant time, where energy concerns and oil production are tied in to most every headline, public policy decision, financial planning fear - even weather pattern! - that we hear about (and many we don't).
Continue reading "Headed to Peak Oil Conference"
I've been slacking off for a few years on getting my photos online for folks to see. Partly that's because I've been slacking off in actually taking photos (has the world become less beautiful and interesting as I get older?...hmm, probably not...lazy ass) but also because my ancient and clumsy methods for formatting and posting them became a significant mental barrier to even bothering. So, driven by a desire to share and a need to have better tools for doing so (and not to mention saving some space on the Summersault webserver where my site is hosted), I've engaged in what is hopefully a mutually beneficial and long-lasting relationship with Flickr, an online photo sharing service. You can already check out my photos there, but know that it's all in flux as I transition my existing online photos, add and remove some, and rearrange how they're sorted. Let me know how you like it, and I'll post something when I'm done.