Thursday, July 07, 2005
Color-full insights
I've had an interest in color, and its effects on humans, for a long time now; I wrote a little bit about it on 3-23-04. Today, I stumbled across a page called "The Karma of Colour," the bulk of which is attributed to Shelly Wu, PhD; much of what's said isn't anything new or surprising, but there are some fascinating revelations:
Yellow:
"speeds metabolism"
That sounds intriguing... unless it just lasts a few moments, in which case it wouldn't be helpful for weight loss/control.
"Paint a room yellow, you will make babies cry and grown-ups lose their tempers in it."
My parents were too cheap to ever paint the walls in any home we lived in, but my mother, ignoring my color preferences, had everything in my room yellow throughout my entire childhood, and it was certainly a room full of negative emotions much of the time... would I have been less unhappy if she'd been less of a psycho, and didn't feel the need to do my room in my least favorite color?
Blue:
"be careful when using blue in association with food - it is a natural appetite suppressant and can be repulsive in some instances. Blue is one of the least appetizing [colors]. Blue food is rare in nature. Blue-colored food is repulsive to humans because when our ancestors searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple. During experiments, when participants were served with food dyed blue, they lost appetite."
If blue surroundings can cause any shred of this effect, I see a blue dining room in my future; to someone who's hungry all the time, loss of appetite is a blessing. If not, I'd be willing to experiment with blue dye and see if, say, a blue rice appetizer would make me want less dinner.
"Blue relaxes our nervous system. It has a sobering effect on the mind and can cause people to be more contemplative. Blue surroundings, if not too dark, increase productivity. Studies show that students score higher, weightlifters lift heavier weights in blue rooms."
Sounds like blue would be a good color for a computer room, not to mention weight rooms.
"Peaceful, tranquil blue, which is a good color for bedrooms, causes the body to produce calming chemicals."
That makes me remember my idea for a bedspread of blue changeable taffeta or shot silk that'd give the effect of a pool of water with a pebble dropped into it...
"Darker shades of blue, however, can feel cold and depressing."
I'm thinking of bedroom walls of that purplish twilight blue, that I think might be the color of karma... with touches of cobalt, maybe, but I agree about too much dark blue being unpleasant.
"People retain more when reading information written in blue text."
Ad execs please take note... but bloggers who want people to remember what they say, keep in mind that more than a little blue text is hard to read.
Green:
"Green is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision."
VERY interesting; could this be related to our need in the caveman days to see clearly into dense masses of foliage to find food or avoid predators?
"It is a calming color and has a neutral effect on the human nervous system."
I don't like green enough to make it part of my decor, but I plan to have a bunch of indoor plants eventually, which should help create a tranquil atmosphere in my home.
"The 'green rooms' are designed for people who are waiting to appear on TV to sit and relax. Green is also a popular color in hospitals because it relaxes patients."
I'd honestly never made those connections before; sure, I know that all the "nature colors" are soothing, for the obvious reason, but the "green rooms" I've seen were NOT green, so I assumed there was a "historical" reason for calling them that, and I'd never thought that the hideous green used in hospitals was supposed to calm anyone... heck, any time I see "hospital green" anywhere, it makes me TENSE, because of the association with hospitals.
Orange:
"Orange is the color most associated with appetite."
I've read several times that this is why fast food restaurants have shades in the orange to red spectrum in their decor; they make you eat faster.
"Orange has a declassifying, broad appeal. It can be used to indicate that a product is suitable for everyone, and can make an expensive product seem more affordable."
Again, ad execs take note.
Pink:
"Pink is the most romantic and tender color."
That's a new one on me... perhaps because of the connection to sexual flush?
"It is also tranquilizing. Research suggested that pink makes people calm and soft-hearted. Dr. Alexander Schauss, Ph.D., director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma Washington, reported that when prison cells were painted pink, it reduced aggressive behavior among prisoners. 'Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he can't. The heart muscles can't race fast enough. It's a tranquilizing color that saps your energy. Even the color-blind are tranquilized by pink rooms,' according to Dr. Schauss."
This I HAD heard before, and I've certainly always found pastel pinks to be very soothing; since color-blind people are affected, it makes you wonder if even with the colors where the effect on us "makes sense" it doesn't actually have anything to do with psychological associations, and is instead biological in nature.
"Such a[n] effect, unfortunately however, was short-lived as later studies would show. It appears that once the body returns to a state of equilibrium, a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state."
Maybe the optimum strategy if you need to get calmed down would be to start in a pink room and switch to a blue room right before that happens?
"Other people tried to apply the above research finding. When Hayden Fry, who had a degree in psychology, was the football coach at the University of Iowa, he had the visiting team's lock[er] room painted pink hoping to make the visiting team lose their energy and the aggressive drive for winning."
I'd like to know if this did any good; either way, you've gotta hand it to him for trying.
Red:
"It [c]an elevate blood pressure and respiratory rate. It has the effect of stimulating people to make quick decisions and increase expectations."
Lingerie and short dresses are often red for a reason.
"Red is an attention grabber. Words and objects in red get people's attention immediately."
Even the gov't knew this one; that's why stop signs are red.
"When it comes to cars, there is a positive correlation between the color red and theft rate."
No one ever said that thieves were logical.
"Red rooms make people anxious"
Something to keep in mind when decorating a doctor's or dentist's waiting room... or choosing a wall color for an interrogation room.
"but rooms with a red accent can cause people to lose track of time, thus are favored by bars and casinos."
That might be useful in a meditation room, or in a large garden where you'd like to wander and lose yourself in nature.
"Restaurants often use red as a decorating scheme because of its appetite stimulant function."
See, told ya.
You can read the rest of the article here
http://www.enorc.com/colour.htm
The big question here is; WHY do the various colors affect our physical, mental and emotional states in these ways, or in ANY ways? Why does a color like pink, that our primitive ancestors would only have seen briefly sometimes at sunrise/sunset, and maybe if they stumbled across a field of pink flowers in the spring, have such a powerful effect on us? Why does yellow affect the speed of our metabolism, especially when it seems as if you'd need a higher metabolism in the winter, to keep you warmer, and there's not much yellow sunshine, or yellow anything, then? Why does blue help with reading retention when reading is NOT something we're biologically programmed to do? You can make biological cases for bits and pieces of how color affects us, but the rest of it seems... accidental.
Color as we perceive it is just energy, wavelengths of light, not something magical, but it DOES do something to us once our perception of it reaches our brains... and given that, and that everything is at its base just energy, is it possible that the people of various belief systems that assign spiritual powers to colors are onto something?
Yellow:
"speeds metabolism"
That sounds intriguing... unless it just lasts a few moments, in which case it wouldn't be helpful for weight loss/control.
"Paint a room yellow, you will make babies cry and grown-ups lose their tempers in it."
My parents were too cheap to ever paint the walls in any home we lived in, but my mother, ignoring my color preferences, had everything in my room yellow throughout my entire childhood, and it was certainly a room full of negative emotions much of the time... would I have been less unhappy if she'd been less of a psycho, and didn't feel the need to do my room in my least favorite color?
Blue:
"be careful when using blue in association with food - it is a natural appetite suppressant and can be repulsive in some instances. Blue is one of the least appetizing [colors]. Blue food is rare in nature. Blue-colored food is repulsive to humans because when our ancestors searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple. During experiments, when participants were served with food dyed blue, they lost appetite."
If blue surroundings can cause any shred of this effect, I see a blue dining room in my future; to someone who's hungry all the time, loss of appetite is a blessing. If not, I'd be willing to experiment with blue dye and see if, say, a blue rice appetizer would make me want less dinner.
"Blue relaxes our nervous system. It has a sobering effect on the mind and can cause people to be more contemplative. Blue surroundings, if not too dark, increase productivity. Studies show that students score higher, weightlifters lift heavier weights in blue rooms."
Sounds like blue would be a good color for a computer room, not to mention weight rooms.
"Peaceful, tranquil blue, which is a good color for bedrooms, causes the body to produce calming chemicals."
That makes me remember my idea for a bedspread of blue changeable taffeta or shot silk that'd give the effect of a pool of water with a pebble dropped into it...
"Darker shades of blue, however, can feel cold and depressing."
I'm thinking of bedroom walls of that purplish twilight blue, that I think might be the color of karma... with touches of cobalt, maybe, but I agree about too much dark blue being unpleasant.
"People retain more when reading information written in blue text."
Ad execs please take note... but bloggers who want people to remember what they say, keep in mind that more than a little blue text is hard to read.
Green:
"Green is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision."
VERY interesting; could this be related to our need in the caveman days to see clearly into dense masses of foliage to find food or avoid predators?
"It is a calming color and has a neutral effect on the human nervous system."
I don't like green enough to make it part of my decor, but I plan to have a bunch of indoor plants eventually, which should help create a tranquil atmosphere in my home.
"The 'green rooms' are designed for people who are waiting to appear on TV to sit and relax. Green is also a popular color in hospitals because it relaxes patients."
I'd honestly never made those connections before; sure, I know that all the "nature colors" are soothing, for the obvious reason, but the "green rooms" I've seen were NOT green, so I assumed there was a "historical" reason for calling them that, and I'd never thought that the hideous green used in hospitals was supposed to calm anyone... heck, any time I see "hospital green" anywhere, it makes me TENSE, because of the association with hospitals.
Orange:
"Orange is the color most associated with appetite."
I've read several times that this is why fast food restaurants have shades in the orange to red spectrum in their decor; they make you eat faster.
"Orange has a declassifying, broad appeal. It can be used to indicate that a product is suitable for everyone, and can make an expensive product seem more affordable."
Again, ad execs take note.
Pink:
"Pink is the most romantic and tender color."
That's a new one on me... perhaps because of the connection to sexual flush?
"It is also tranquilizing. Research suggested that pink makes people calm and soft-hearted. Dr. Alexander Schauss, Ph.D., director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma Washington, reported that when prison cells were painted pink, it reduced aggressive behavior among prisoners. 'Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he can't. The heart muscles can't race fast enough. It's a tranquilizing color that saps your energy. Even the color-blind are tranquilized by pink rooms,' according to Dr. Schauss."
This I HAD heard before, and I've certainly always found pastel pinks to be very soothing; since color-blind people are affected, it makes you wonder if even with the colors where the effect on us "makes sense" it doesn't actually have anything to do with psychological associations, and is instead biological in nature.
"Such a[n] effect, unfortunately however, was short-lived as later studies would show. It appears that once the body returns to a state of equilibrium, a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state."
Maybe the optimum strategy if you need to get calmed down would be to start in a pink room and switch to a blue room right before that happens?
"Other people tried to apply the above research finding. When Hayden Fry, who had a degree in psychology, was the football coach at the University of Iowa, he had the visiting team's lock[er] room painted pink hoping to make the visiting team lose their energy and the aggressive drive for winning."
I'd like to know if this did any good; either way, you've gotta hand it to him for trying.
Red:
"It [c]an elevate blood pressure and respiratory rate. It has the effect of stimulating people to make quick decisions and increase expectations."
Lingerie and short dresses are often red for a reason.
"Red is an attention grabber. Words and objects in red get people's attention immediately."
Even the gov't knew this one; that's why stop signs are red.
"When it comes to cars, there is a positive correlation between the color red and theft rate."
No one ever said that thieves were logical.
"Red rooms make people anxious"
Something to keep in mind when decorating a doctor's or dentist's waiting room... or choosing a wall color for an interrogation room.
"but rooms with a red accent can cause people to lose track of time, thus are favored by bars and casinos."
That might be useful in a meditation room, or in a large garden where you'd like to wander and lose yourself in nature.
"Restaurants often use red as a decorating scheme because of its appetite stimulant function."
See, told ya.
You can read the rest of the article here
http://www.enorc.com/colour.htm
The big question here is; WHY do the various colors affect our physical, mental and emotional states in these ways, or in ANY ways? Why does a color like pink, that our primitive ancestors would only have seen briefly sometimes at sunrise/sunset, and maybe if they stumbled across a field of pink flowers in the spring, have such a powerful effect on us? Why does yellow affect the speed of our metabolism, especially when it seems as if you'd need a higher metabolism in the winter, to keep you warmer, and there's not much yellow sunshine, or yellow anything, then? Why does blue help with reading retention when reading is NOT something we're biologically programmed to do? You can make biological cases for bits and pieces of how color affects us, but the rest of it seems... accidental.
Color as we perceive it is just energy, wavelengths of light, not something magical, but it DOES do something to us once our perception of it reaches our brains... and given that, and that everything is at its base just energy, is it possible that the people of various belief systems that assign spiritual powers to colors are onto something?
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Selling on eBay is NOT rocket science
Or so you'd think... but it's amazing how much trouble some people have figuring out how to get paid for their auctions:
There's a seller that I won a vintage poster from a month and a half ago that I just got the shipping amount for TODAY, not because he'd been sick, or out of town, or without internet access, but because he's an IDIOT... and of course because eBay was falling down on the job as usual.
I was sending messages to the seller every few days, using every message system on eBay, but he wasn't getting them, firstly because eBay, despite being a multi-BILLION dollar corporation, is too clueless to figure out how to send notification emails that don't get screened out as spam, and secondly because, as I later learned, the seller had decided not to bother going into his bulk mail folder looking for emails from eBay, and that it was somehow ok to ignore them entirely (!!!)... they should offer this guy a job, because he'd fit right in with them.
After the 1st couple of weeks passed with no shipping info, I started trying to get the seller's contact info; after a bunch of failed attempts, someone told me that the American eBay site's request-info system doesn't work, and to log onto the Canadian eBay and use their system... which I did, to no avail.
Next, I started trying to get help from eBay; live chat help, customer service and "Trust and Safety" all blithered and stonewalled, tossing out lies like "we only provide a place for buyers and sellers to meet, nothing more" and "we CAN'T contact the seller on your behalf," and even refusing to manually generate the contact info that by their own rules I had a right to have.
I continued hammering them on all fronts, and finally, a MONTH after the end of the auction, the contact info appeared in eBay's latest innovation, the "My Messages" inbox accessible from each person's account, and I was able to call the seller; I gave him my email addy, and he said he'd send me the shipping info that day. Several days later, with no info received, I sent him an email at the addy he'd given me. Several more days later, I sent another one. Several days after that, I phoned him again, and left him a message. Today, he called me back and left a message... withOUT the shipping info!! I called him again, and discovered that he'd never gotten my emails, and that he'd sent the shipping info to my husband's email addy, NOT mine as agreed, despite my making it clear that he was being screened out there (I use free webmail accounts that don't screen much of anything, which comes in handy sometimes). The moron then tried to tell me that I should email him again to get the shipping amount... and I nearly bit my tongue out of my head trying to make myself speak pleasantly as I pointed out that at this juncture he really needed to go look the amount up and just TELL me while we were on the phone, which he grudgingly did.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
If YOU sell on eBay, it'd improve the experience for everyone if you'd keep a few things in mind:
1) This is NOT a game, it's a legal contract you've entered into to sell something and deliver it in a timely manner; treat your auctions accordingly.
2) Thanks to the spammers, almost every buyer's inbox is screening out lots of emails, including those from eBay, so do NOT count on being able to send info to a buyer via "eBay emails"; instead, you should:
A) Choose the account option that makes your email addy visible to your buyers, giving them another way to contact you whether or not emails from you are reaching them; people who give you $ SHOULD have a direct way to reach you in any case.
B) If you use PayPal or other online payment system, put a shipping amount or a shipping calculator on your auction page, AND put the shipping total into the payment form associated with the auction, so that the buyer can get their total due and pay you without hearing from you.
C) If time is passing and you haven't heard from the buyer, instead of forgetting about the auction (as my seller amazingly had, according to him), or tossing out - feedback which will get you one in return, request contact info, and harass eBay until you get it... and then use it with common sense-if you leave a message on someone's answering machine, leave the info they need from you as part of the message, AND your phone # as well.
3) YOUR inbox may be screening out emails too, and you can NOT just ignore emails from buyers (it's against eBay rules to not be contactable via email by your buyers, plus it's just plain stupid), so you MUST:
A) Alter your settings, if you have them, such that eBay emails are getting to you... and NOT in your bulk/junk folder, either. If you honestly can't get the eBay emails into your main folder without being flooded with spam, you're going to have to sift through your bulk emails every day looking for eBay stuff.
B) Check your "My Messages" inbox (it's in the left-hand margin in your "My eBay" area) every single day if you have uncompleted transactions, as copies of messages buyers are trying to send you will supposedly all end up there.
C) Make sure that your official eBay contact info contains your current phone #, and return any calls you receive with professional promptness... again, be sure any messages you leave contain all necessary info.
4) Keep in mind that not 1 buyer in a million will make the sort of protracted effort *I* did, and will instead give you - feedback which can NOT be retracted and/or report you to eBay for fraud or non-performance, which can cost you your eBay account... so don't expect to be spoon-fed your $, take action to make SURE your buyer can get it to you.
This last one has nothing to do with my specific eBay topic, but it makes me so nuts that I'm going to tack it on:
5) If you're selling something with a "face," such as a doll, stuffie or figurine, the most important photo to take is one that shows the face straight on; if you only have 1 pic on your auction page, that's the 1 to have. No, it doesn't show the side(s), which in the case of a "long" stuffie can mean a large % of the item isn't being seen, but when people display these things they usually display them facing forward, so that's the part of the item that they most want to see.
Until such time as eBay gets some long-overdue regulations applied to it, they're set up so that they can really stick it to you, and so can every trading partner; a little common sense will insure that you don't risk losing access to this increasingly valuable marketplace.
There's a seller that I won a vintage poster from a month and a half ago that I just got the shipping amount for TODAY, not because he'd been sick, or out of town, or without internet access, but because he's an IDIOT... and of course because eBay was falling down on the job as usual.
I was sending messages to the seller every few days, using every message system on eBay, but he wasn't getting them, firstly because eBay, despite being a multi-BILLION dollar corporation, is too clueless to figure out how to send notification emails that don't get screened out as spam, and secondly because, as I later learned, the seller had decided not to bother going into his bulk mail folder looking for emails from eBay, and that it was somehow ok to ignore them entirely (!!!)... they should offer this guy a job, because he'd fit right in with them.
After the 1st couple of weeks passed with no shipping info, I started trying to get the seller's contact info; after a bunch of failed attempts, someone told me that the American eBay site's request-info system doesn't work, and to log onto the Canadian eBay and use their system... which I did, to no avail.
Next, I started trying to get help from eBay; live chat help, customer service and "Trust and Safety" all blithered and stonewalled, tossing out lies like "we only provide a place for buyers and sellers to meet, nothing more" and "we CAN'T contact the seller on your behalf," and even refusing to manually generate the contact info that by their own rules I had a right to have.
I continued hammering them on all fronts, and finally, a MONTH after the end of the auction, the contact info appeared in eBay's latest innovation, the "My Messages" inbox accessible from each person's account, and I was able to call the seller; I gave him my email addy, and he said he'd send me the shipping info that day. Several days later, with no info received, I sent him an email at the addy he'd given me. Several more days later, I sent another one. Several days after that, I phoned him again, and left him a message. Today, he called me back and left a message... withOUT the shipping info!! I called him again, and discovered that he'd never gotten my emails, and that he'd sent the shipping info to my husband's email addy, NOT mine as agreed, despite my making it clear that he was being screened out there (I use free webmail accounts that don't screen much of anything, which comes in handy sometimes). The moron then tried to tell me that I should email him again to get the shipping amount... and I nearly bit my tongue out of my head trying to make myself speak pleasantly as I pointed out that at this juncture he really needed to go look the amount up and just TELL me while we were on the phone, which he grudgingly did.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
If YOU sell on eBay, it'd improve the experience for everyone if you'd keep a few things in mind:
1) This is NOT a game, it's a legal contract you've entered into to sell something and deliver it in a timely manner; treat your auctions accordingly.
2) Thanks to the spammers, almost every buyer's inbox is screening out lots of emails, including those from eBay, so do NOT count on being able to send info to a buyer via "eBay emails"; instead, you should:
A) Choose the account option that makes your email addy visible to your buyers, giving them another way to contact you whether or not emails from you are reaching them; people who give you $ SHOULD have a direct way to reach you in any case.
B) If you use PayPal or other online payment system, put a shipping amount or a shipping calculator on your auction page, AND put the shipping total into the payment form associated with the auction, so that the buyer can get their total due and pay you without hearing from you.
C) If time is passing and you haven't heard from the buyer, instead of forgetting about the auction (as my seller amazingly had, according to him), or tossing out - feedback which will get you one in return, request contact info, and harass eBay until you get it... and then use it with common sense-if you leave a message on someone's answering machine, leave the info they need from you as part of the message, AND your phone # as well.
3) YOUR inbox may be screening out emails too, and you can NOT just ignore emails from buyers (it's against eBay rules to not be contactable via email by your buyers, plus it's just plain stupid), so you MUST:
A) Alter your settings, if you have them, such that eBay emails are getting to you... and NOT in your bulk/junk folder, either. If you honestly can't get the eBay emails into your main folder without being flooded with spam, you're going to have to sift through your bulk emails every day looking for eBay stuff.
B) Check your "My Messages" inbox (it's in the left-hand margin in your "My eBay" area) every single day if you have uncompleted transactions, as copies of messages buyers are trying to send you will supposedly all end up there.
C) Make sure that your official eBay contact info contains your current phone #, and return any calls you receive with professional promptness... again, be sure any messages you leave contain all necessary info.
4) Keep in mind that not 1 buyer in a million will make the sort of protracted effort *I* did, and will instead give you - feedback which can NOT be retracted and/or report you to eBay for fraud or non-performance, which can cost you your eBay account... so don't expect to be spoon-fed your $, take action to make SURE your buyer can get it to you.
This last one has nothing to do with my specific eBay topic, but it makes me so nuts that I'm going to tack it on:
5) If you're selling something with a "face," such as a doll, stuffie or figurine, the most important photo to take is one that shows the face straight on; if you only have 1 pic on your auction page, that's the 1 to have. No, it doesn't show the side(s), which in the case of a "long" stuffie can mean a large % of the item isn't being seen, but when people display these things they usually display them facing forward, so that's the part of the item that they most want to see.
Until such time as eBay gets some long-overdue regulations applied to it, they're set up so that they can really stick it to you, and so can every trading partner; a little common sense will insure that you don't risk losing access to this increasingly valuable marketplace.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Separation of church and state
I caught a program about Ben Franklin on the History Channel tonight, and learned something new; when he was reviewing the Declaration of Independence with the other committee members, preparatory to showing it to congress, he requested that "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal" be changed to the familiar phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"... because he thought that the word "sacred" would prevent the new nation from having the separation of church and state that they wanted it to have.
Religious wrong, I mean "right," please take note; THAT is what the founding fathers wanted for this country.
You can see a pic of an actual rough draft, with a transcription of the alterations below it, here
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/rough.htm
It never ceases to amaze me how people who'd scream bloody murder if they had to be exposed to the images, symbols, rituals and words of any other religion truly believe that everyone in this country should be subjected to THEIR religion without complaint. My reply to their "but what harm would it do?" argument is:
"None... so let's rotate through ALL the religions and spiritual beliefs held by people in this country in our public displays; that'd be fair, and, after all, there's no harm in seeing other people's beliefs represented, right? We'll put your stuff up right after, say, the devil worshippers have had their opportunity to shove their beliefs in your face... how does that grab you?"
Do you suppose any of them would go for it, lol?
Then, there are those who say that because the original colonists were all Christian, that makes this a de facto Christian country; my reply to that is that Jews had long since settled here when we became a nation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_history_in_Colonial_America
and that the slaves, who weren't seen as citizens but were nevertheless residents of the colonies, had brought a variety of belief systems with them from Africa. If they try to push it back further, and point to the uniform Protestantism of the Puritans as "proof" that we're based in Christianity, my reply is that the actual endpoint of looking back in history to find our "national religion" would in fact be Native Americans and their spiritual beliefs... but I don't see anyone championing THEM, although frankly it'd probably do us alot of good to be submerged in their wise, planet-friendly worldview.
I respect all religions, and understand people's desire to be surrounded by references to their beliefs, but when it shades over into trying to force everyone else to be surrounded, that's where I become intolerant... and it doesn't matter how big of a majority Christians are in this country, the concept remains the same. Heck, not all Christians can even agree on what they like; the Catholic vs the Protestant thing is pretty major, but there are other disagreements too... I remember one I saw on TV, where a little boy from, I think, a Lutheran family, was in a school in a primarily Baptist district that featured prayers read over the intercom each day; the parents objected to how Jesus was being prayed to, so their boy had to sit in the classroom with big headphones on his head to block out the prayers, which of course resulted in him becoming a friendless laughing stock.
Even if you remove all the specifics from something with religious intent, making it apply to everyone is STILL not ok; the much-touted "moment of silence" is a perfect example, as forcing people to freeze in place and be silent for no reason is arbitrary and stupid, blocks their pursuit of happiness, and has no similarity to what the laws normally require people to do.
The government is supposed to serve ALL Americans equally, and the only way for it to do that is to have total separation of church and state; that we don't actually HAVE that degree of separation leads to all sorts of inequities, such as only Christian holidays leading to time off of work and school, swearing on a Bible in court, and gays not being allowed to marry.
Even our MONEY has a reference to God on it, which, given our focus on finances, is about as UNseparate as it gets... and how must that make people who pray to Allah, Buddha or other deities feel? I know that as an agnostic cum metaphysicist, it even bothers ME to not be able to be free of the influence of Christianity; I'm not picking on that faith, mind you, I don't want ANY religion pushed at me, but in America no other religion is an issue in this area.
The founding fathers meant for us to have REAL freedom; to get that, we had to have no royalty to automatically have power over us, and no state religion, which would constitute another category of people having automatic power over us... they wanted us to have a government elected by the people as the ONLY source of authority, and that's one of their greatest gifts to us, even if it hasn't been implemented perfectly.
Unless and until we have another group of leaders of the same caliber as the founding fathers, we should NOT presume to change their plan for this nation... and I hope you're not holding your breath for THAT to ever happen.
Religious wrong, I mean "right," please take note; THAT is what the founding fathers wanted for this country.
You can see a pic of an actual rough draft, with a transcription of the alterations below it, here
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/rough.htm
It never ceases to amaze me how people who'd scream bloody murder if they had to be exposed to the images, symbols, rituals and words of any other religion truly believe that everyone in this country should be subjected to THEIR religion without complaint. My reply to their "but what harm would it do?" argument is:
"None... so let's rotate through ALL the religions and spiritual beliefs held by people in this country in our public displays; that'd be fair, and, after all, there's no harm in seeing other people's beliefs represented, right? We'll put your stuff up right after, say, the devil worshippers have had their opportunity to shove their beliefs in your face... how does that grab you?"
Do you suppose any of them would go for it, lol?
Then, there are those who say that because the original colonists were all Christian, that makes this a de facto Christian country; my reply to that is that Jews had long since settled here when we became a nation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_history_in_Colonial_America
and that the slaves, who weren't seen as citizens but were nevertheless residents of the colonies, had brought a variety of belief systems with them from Africa. If they try to push it back further, and point to the uniform Protestantism of the Puritans as "proof" that we're based in Christianity, my reply is that the actual endpoint of looking back in history to find our "national religion" would in fact be Native Americans and their spiritual beliefs... but I don't see anyone championing THEM, although frankly it'd probably do us alot of good to be submerged in their wise, planet-friendly worldview.
I respect all religions, and understand people's desire to be surrounded by references to their beliefs, but when it shades over into trying to force everyone else to be surrounded, that's where I become intolerant... and it doesn't matter how big of a majority Christians are in this country, the concept remains the same. Heck, not all Christians can even agree on what they like; the Catholic vs the Protestant thing is pretty major, but there are other disagreements too... I remember one I saw on TV, where a little boy from, I think, a Lutheran family, was in a school in a primarily Baptist district that featured prayers read over the intercom each day; the parents objected to how Jesus was being prayed to, so their boy had to sit in the classroom with big headphones on his head to block out the prayers, which of course resulted in him becoming a friendless laughing stock.
Even if you remove all the specifics from something with religious intent, making it apply to everyone is STILL not ok; the much-touted "moment of silence" is a perfect example, as forcing people to freeze in place and be silent for no reason is arbitrary and stupid, blocks their pursuit of happiness, and has no similarity to what the laws normally require people to do.
The government is supposed to serve ALL Americans equally, and the only way for it to do that is to have total separation of church and state; that we don't actually HAVE that degree of separation leads to all sorts of inequities, such as only Christian holidays leading to time off of work and school, swearing on a Bible in court, and gays not being allowed to marry.
Even our MONEY has a reference to God on it, which, given our focus on finances, is about as UNseparate as it gets... and how must that make people who pray to Allah, Buddha or other deities feel? I know that as an agnostic cum metaphysicist, it even bothers ME to not be able to be free of the influence of Christianity; I'm not picking on that faith, mind you, I don't want ANY religion pushed at me, but in America no other religion is an issue in this area.
The founding fathers meant for us to have REAL freedom; to get that, we had to have no royalty to automatically have power over us, and no state religion, which would constitute another category of people having automatic power over us... they wanted us to have a government elected by the people as the ONLY source of authority, and that's one of their greatest gifts to us, even if it hasn't been implemented perfectly.
Unless and until we have another group of leaders of the same caliber as the founding fathers, we should NOT presume to change their plan for this nation... and I hope you're not holding your breath for THAT to ever happen.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Happy 4th of July
If you're interested in learning a few facts about our founding fathers, whose efforts and sacrifices gave us a nation where we can be free, check out my July 4th and 5th posts from last year... and watch the wonderful movie "1776," which will tell you more about them, and the events of that fateful year, than 99% of Americans know.
Have you ever actually read the Declaration of Independence? If not, you should:
http://federalistpatriot.us/histdocs/declaration.htm
In my post a year ago, I said, "the Declaration as originally written would have ended slavery"; this year, I've found an online copy of the 1st draft of the Declaration:
http://www.constitution.org/tj/doi_rough.txt
The anti-slavery clause, the one that almost sank the Declaration because some of the southern states would have voted it down (the vote to pass it had to be unanimous), the one that, contrary to what modern media pundits would have us believe, many of the founding fathers passionately supported, begins with:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce..."
At what other time in history when people had slaves were any of them determined to END slavery... including people who, like Jefferson, were born into slave-owning families, and depended on the slaves for all their wealth? (Remember, Jefferson freed his slaves, knowing that the ruination of his finances would result.)
Every year that I've been online, I've been asked by people from other countries what the 4th of July is all about; after all, from the outside, it just looks like the standard excess consumption of food associated with all American holidays (in this case, primarily in picnic and BBQ form) enhanced by fireworks. For all we complain about how meaningless Christmas has become, the 4th means far less to most people, even though it SHOULD be overwhelmingly important to all of us; nearly every American beyond earliest childhood can tell the story of Jesus, regardless of their religious beliefs, but it's a VERY rare one of us who has any idea about the events that led up to the signing of the Declaration, even though that was arguably one of the most important incidents in the history of the human race... the moment of conception for the nation that would eventually become the most powerful in the world.
If you'd like to know more about what drove the then-colonies to revolution and the Declaration, here are a couple of sites to get you started:
http://www.americanrevolution.com/EventsLeadingTo.htm
http://americanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa070401a.htm
Some info on all of the 56 signers of the Declaration can be found here:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/index.htm
And last, but FAR from least, an image of the Declaration itself can be found here:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/image.htm
Doesn't look like much, does it? A chunk of text, bold titles, and a cramped bunch of signatures of men who, had things gone the other way, would have been seen as lunatics and traitors, and been hanged... but who history has proven to be visionaries, innovators, and heroes.
When they say that the pen is mightier than the sword, THIS is what they're talking about. This is why we celebrate the 4th of July. Be sure to take some time today from your hotdogs and potato salad and think about it.
Have you ever actually read the Declaration of Independence? If not, you should:
http://federalistpatriot.us/histdocs/declaration.htm
In my post a year ago, I said, "the Declaration as originally written would have ended slavery"; this year, I've found an online copy of the 1st draft of the Declaration:
http://www.constitution.org/tj/doi_rough.txt
The anti-slavery clause, the one that almost sank the Declaration because some of the southern states would have voted it down (the vote to pass it had to be unanimous), the one that, contrary to what modern media pundits would have us believe, many of the founding fathers passionately supported, begins with:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce..."
At what other time in history when people had slaves were any of them determined to END slavery... including people who, like Jefferson, were born into slave-owning families, and depended on the slaves for all their wealth? (Remember, Jefferson freed his slaves, knowing that the ruination of his finances would result.)
Every year that I've been online, I've been asked by people from other countries what the 4th of July is all about; after all, from the outside, it just looks like the standard excess consumption of food associated with all American holidays (in this case, primarily in picnic and BBQ form) enhanced by fireworks. For all we complain about how meaningless Christmas has become, the 4th means far less to most people, even though it SHOULD be overwhelmingly important to all of us; nearly every American beyond earliest childhood can tell the story of Jesus, regardless of their religious beliefs, but it's a VERY rare one of us who has any idea about the events that led up to the signing of the Declaration, even though that was arguably one of the most important incidents in the history of the human race... the moment of conception for the nation that would eventually become the most powerful in the world.
If you'd like to know more about what drove the then-colonies to revolution and the Declaration, here are a couple of sites to get you started:
http://www.americanrevolution.com/EventsLeadingTo.htm
http://americanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa070401a.htm
Some info on all of the 56 signers of the Declaration can be found here:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/index.htm
And last, but FAR from least, an image of the Declaration itself can be found here:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/image.htm
Doesn't look like much, does it? A chunk of text, bold titles, and a cramped bunch of signatures of men who, had things gone the other way, would have been seen as lunatics and traitors, and been hanged... but who history has proven to be visionaries, innovators, and heroes.
When they say that the pen is mightier than the sword, THIS is what they're talking about. This is why we celebrate the 4th of July. Be sure to take some time today from your hotdogs and potato salad and think about it.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Love and sex with aliens
Countless scifi books, movies and TV shows have portrayed humans falling in love with members of alien species (which are almost always very human in appearance, naturally)... but, could that every actually happen? Could such a wildly different being have enough of a meeting of the minds with one of us for love to bloom? Would they WANT to? Could love beyond the infatuation stage exist with someone whose mind worked in a way beyond our comprehension, whose psychology was utterly different than we were used to dealing with?
And what about sex? It's easy to be hot for aliens as portrayed on TV and in movies, who after all are just attractive actors with makeup and prosthetics, but would even the most humanoid-looking aliens send off the right physical signals for us to feel attracted to them, or, of course, for them to be attracted to any of US? Old school scifi always showed reptilian or insectile aliens eager to copulate with busty Earth women, but is there any chance whatsoever of species with no physical similarity being able to feel attraction to each other?
As to the sex itself; assuming the genitals were compatible, would any but the most adventurous of us really be able to go through with it? What if their skin was blue, or had an odd texture, or their body temperature was significantly different, or their nerves, if they had them, were much more or less sensitive, than ours? How would they smell, and, er, taste? Could a human really skip along the path to orgasm faced with this sort of thing? Even if they had no perceptible differences from humans, do you think YOU could go through with it, knowing that you'd be touching, and touched by, something not of this world?
And what if the alien was non-humanoid; if you somehow developed affection for it, like if it were really smart and funny and kind, could anything ever induce you to try physical contact, or form a romantic attachment to it?
If they as a species were able to be attracted to us, sexually and/or romantically, but we didn't reciprocate, would they think us racist... or rather species-ist? If the situation were reversed, would we think that of THEM?
If aliens wanted to come and live here, would you think that was ok? Would you be willing to have them living in your neighborhood, working at your office, sending their kids to school with your kids? Would you ever be able to trust one of them like you would a human? Could you be friends with one? If one of your loved ones started dating one, would you be happy or alarmed? What about when the 1st pregnancy between species occurred, assuming we were capable of interbreeding?
We're so used to the idea of humans and sentient non-humans interacting as if being different species didn't matter, because of the scifi films and shows we've been seeing all our lives, that this seems like the natural way for it to work... but if aliens DID show up one day, is there really any chance of human beings, who can't even tolerate it when another human's too short, fat, or old, or a different race or religion, or has non-standard genitals or sexual preferences, offering the aliens the opportunity to live among us as if they were like us?
And what about sex? It's easy to be hot for aliens as portrayed on TV and in movies, who after all are just attractive actors with makeup and prosthetics, but would even the most humanoid-looking aliens send off the right physical signals for us to feel attracted to them, or, of course, for them to be attracted to any of US? Old school scifi always showed reptilian or insectile aliens eager to copulate with busty Earth women, but is there any chance whatsoever of species with no physical similarity being able to feel attraction to each other?
As to the sex itself; assuming the genitals were compatible, would any but the most adventurous of us really be able to go through with it? What if their skin was blue, or had an odd texture, or their body temperature was significantly different, or their nerves, if they had them, were much more or less sensitive, than ours? How would they smell, and, er, taste? Could a human really skip along the path to orgasm faced with this sort of thing? Even if they had no perceptible differences from humans, do you think YOU could go through with it, knowing that you'd be touching, and touched by, something not of this world?
And what if the alien was non-humanoid; if you somehow developed affection for it, like if it were really smart and funny and kind, could anything ever induce you to try physical contact, or form a romantic attachment to it?
If they as a species were able to be attracted to us, sexually and/or romantically, but we didn't reciprocate, would they think us racist... or rather species-ist? If the situation were reversed, would we think that of THEM?
If aliens wanted to come and live here, would you think that was ok? Would you be willing to have them living in your neighborhood, working at your office, sending their kids to school with your kids? Would you ever be able to trust one of them like you would a human? Could you be friends with one? If one of your loved ones started dating one, would you be happy or alarmed? What about when the 1st pregnancy between species occurred, assuming we were capable of interbreeding?
We're so used to the idea of humans and sentient non-humans interacting as if being different species didn't matter, because of the scifi films and shows we've been seeing all our lives, that this seems like the natural way for it to work... but if aliens DID show up one day, is there really any chance of human beings, who can't even tolerate it when another human's too short, fat, or old, or a different race or religion, or has non-standard genitals or sexual preferences, offering the aliens the opportunity to live among us as if they were like us?
Saturday, July 02, 2005
$ matters
The air conditioning in my husband's car broke down, so we only had mine for a few days while the mechanic version of the Keystone Cops got it fixed. On the day his car went in, MINE naturally didn't want to start, and then didn't want to stay running; it ran fine after a while, and my husband insisted it was just a blip and not indicative of a problem, but then it happened again, so when we got his car back we had to leave mine there to be worked on. We got it back today, and on the way home my husband was sideswiped on the freeway by a teenager driving a new Mercedes; he wasn't hurt, but the car will need body work along the entire passenger side... that's right, it had to go right back into the shop. The girl's insurance company has already admitted that she was 100% to blame, so they have to cover the cost of the body work, but the repairs we DID have to pay for, plus some unavoidable taxi rides when we had only 1 car between us, added up to a tidy sum... and it's times like this that I'm particularly grateful for being financially solvent, because to many Americans this sort of unplanned expense would be a major problem.
My husband and I have no debt other than the mortgage; ZERO. How many people do you know who can say that? We also have enough $ to never worry about failing to pay for bills, eBay purchases, dinners out, or, and here's the biggie, unexpected disasters... and how many people in America can say THAT these days? The scary thing is that this did NOT used to be the way things were; I'm old enough to remember when credit cards were a new thing, crushing mountains of credit card debt had never been heard of, and people lived within their means AND saved at least a little $ pretty consistently... what happened to us?
That was of course a rhetorical question; it doesn't take an economics PhD to see that the combination of the availability of easy credit, the sharp increase in the sheer # of things to buy, and the sense of entitlement that's become part of our national character made it inevitable that most Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, with their credit cards stretched to the max, such that something like 2 cars needing repairs at the same time, or even ONE car needing them, can cause a desperate scramble to stay afloat.
I know couples who make 6 figures a year who're always fretting about how they're going to cover their bills, whether they're going to have to sell their house, or can afford to furnish a room for their new baby, or will be able to take a trip to see their family this year... people who should be living comfortable lives free of $-related stress, rather that having to agonize over whether canceling cable TV and brown-bagging it to work will allow them to make their minimum payments on everything.
I cringe to contemplate what folks from other countries think of people with that sort of $ being unable to budget it so that they can pay for essentials as well as frivolous things.
If you're worried about the economy now, ask yourself this; what happens when that 1st wave of savings-free, debt-swamped people reaches retirement age and has to file for bankruptcy en masse because their only $ is from Social Security, and that won't even cover basic living expenses much less credit card bills? What happens when they go from spendspendspend to ceasing to take part in the rampant consumerism that fuels the economy because they no longer have any extraneous income? What happens when our refusal as a nation to live within our means and handle $ responsibly comes home to roost?
My husband and I have no debt other than the mortgage; ZERO. How many people do you know who can say that? We also have enough $ to never worry about failing to pay for bills, eBay purchases, dinners out, or, and here's the biggie, unexpected disasters... and how many people in America can say THAT these days? The scary thing is that this did NOT used to be the way things were; I'm old enough to remember when credit cards were a new thing, crushing mountains of credit card debt had never been heard of, and people lived within their means AND saved at least a little $ pretty consistently... what happened to us?
That was of course a rhetorical question; it doesn't take an economics PhD to see that the combination of the availability of easy credit, the sharp increase in the sheer # of things to buy, and the sense of entitlement that's become part of our national character made it inevitable that most Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck, with their credit cards stretched to the max, such that something like 2 cars needing repairs at the same time, or even ONE car needing them, can cause a desperate scramble to stay afloat.
I know couples who make 6 figures a year who're always fretting about how they're going to cover their bills, whether they're going to have to sell their house, or can afford to furnish a room for their new baby, or will be able to take a trip to see their family this year... people who should be living comfortable lives free of $-related stress, rather that having to agonize over whether canceling cable TV and brown-bagging it to work will allow them to make their minimum payments on everything.
I cringe to contemplate what folks from other countries think of people with that sort of $ being unable to budget it so that they can pay for essentials as well as frivolous things.
If you're worried about the economy now, ask yourself this; what happens when that 1st wave of savings-free, debt-swamped people reaches retirement age and has to file for bankruptcy en masse because their only $ is from Social Security, and that won't even cover basic living expenses much less credit card bills? What happens when they go from spendspendspend to ceasing to take part in the rampant consumerism that fuels the economy because they no longer have any extraneous income? What happens when our refusal as a nation to live within our means and handle $ responsibly comes home to roost?
Friday, July 01, 2005
I got them site-feed blues
I got too excited about the joys of blogging, so of course the blogosphere has thrown me a curve, lol:
Today, my new friend Daniel, whose terrific blog is here
http://ds.blogzy.com/
told me that he'd been subscribed to me via Bloglines for some time, and that it never updated; the last post he was seeing was from July 15, 2004, almost a YEAR ago!! :-O
I hadn't visited my Bloglines account since shortly after I set it up early last year, as I don't use it to track or read blogs, so I went over there to take a look; after a great deal of floundering around, clicking every link, I finally was able to see my posts, and verify that what Daniel had seen wasn't something buggy with his account... and that meant that something was terribly wrong with my site feed.
Any sort of blog-related problem is a bummer, but I still don't know the 1st thing about this part of blogging, so I'm out of my depth here; all I could do was give it my best shot. I clicked on the RSS/Feedster thing in my sidebar, and saw that the code and text that used to come up had been replaced by "en-us Fri, 01 Jul 2005 01:55:51 PDT"; my RSS feed info was GONE. I went to the Feedster site and did searches for both my feed and blog URL's; the system returned no results. I looked around for the link that used to exist for their service that'd give you an RSS feed URL for your site; it was also GONE.
The only conclusion I can come to is that Feedster went out of the RSS-feed-URL-providing business... about a year ago, judging by Bloglines, which was using that feed. It sounds crazy to think that they deactivated everyone's RSS feed URL, when so many people had entered those URL's in so many blog search engines and such, but what else could explain what's happened? I've written to them asking about this; who knows, maybe I missed something on their site, and my old feed still is recoverable... that'd be nice, because then I could get Bloglines working again.
I've written to Bloglines, because it seems likely that my old feed will NOT be coming back, and I can't find a way to change the RSS feed they use for my site to one that works; I've got subscribers who signed up in good faith and have a right to expect me to fix this, and if you're one of them, rest assured that I'll keep on top of it... they warn to not expect a reply for a couple of business days, though, so don't expect anything to be fixed until next week. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for having no idea this was going on.
My next step was to get a new RSS feed URL, so I went to the only place I could think of; FeedBurner. I registered, entered my site info, and... the XML thing (which should have shown my recent posts) was BLANK. I started methodically clicking through every page in my account area, and eventually found the reason; their system had picked up on the Feedster URL and was trying to use it. I would've been at a loss at that point, but luckily Daniel had mentioned my Atom feed (which Blogger automatically generates), so I got that URL and tried to substitute it into FeedBurner; it gave me an Error 404. I tried to access the URL directly, and got a Blogger "page not found" error... and yes, I DID have it set up to publish my site feed. I then implemented a strategy from my old programming days, "when it's failing for no reason, change something, anything, and try again"; I changed the "Descriptions" control from "Short" to "Full," republished, and tried the Atom feed URL again... and there it was!! I tried to enter that URL at FeedBurner again, and the system accepted it; I checked the XML, and there it was!! (If you don't know what any of this means, click on the orange XML button in my sidebar.)
Then, a new thought occurred to me; this must be why I couldn't get Yahoo to accept my RSS feed and generate a "+ My Yahoo" button for my site... too bad their tech people couldn't ever be bothered to reply to my messages asking what the problem was, grrrrrrrrrr. I'd bookmarked the page to add RSS feeds to Yahoo, so I went there, added in the new URL provided by FeedBurner, and... it claimed it couldn't find that URL. Ok, I thought, there might be a lag in the system; I tried again a few minutes later... success!! The result can be see in the sidebar.
THEN, there's that NewsGator thing, not to mention "+ My MSN"; I'm going to pass out from sheer exhaustion if I don't get to bed now, so I can't do anything more at this point, but I'll try to check it out sometime soon.
AND, I'm almost certainly going to have to go around and re-enter my RSS feed in every directory and blog search engine that asks for it... whimper...
Anyways, this was an important thing, and it's most of the way fixed now; thanks, Daniel!! :-)
Today, my new friend Daniel, whose terrific blog is here
http://ds.blogzy.com/
told me that he'd been subscribed to me via Bloglines for some time, and that it never updated; the last post he was seeing was from July 15, 2004, almost a YEAR ago!! :-O
I hadn't visited my Bloglines account since shortly after I set it up early last year, as I don't use it to track or read blogs, so I went over there to take a look; after a great deal of floundering around, clicking every link, I finally was able to see my posts, and verify that what Daniel had seen wasn't something buggy with his account... and that meant that something was terribly wrong with my site feed.
Any sort of blog-related problem is a bummer, but I still don't know the 1st thing about this part of blogging, so I'm out of my depth here; all I could do was give it my best shot. I clicked on the RSS/Feedster thing in my sidebar, and saw that the code and text that used to come up had been replaced by "en-us Fri, 01 Jul 2005 01:55:51 PDT"; my RSS feed info was GONE. I went to the Feedster site and did searches for both my feed and blog URL's; the system returned no results. I looked around for the link that used to exist for their service that'd give you an RSS feed URL for your site; it was also GONE.
The only conclusion I can come to is that Feedster went out of the RSS-feed-URL-providing business... about a year ago, judging by Bloglines, which was using that feed. It sounds crazy to think that they deactivated everyone's RSS feed URL, when so many people had entered those URL's in so many blog search engines and such, but what else could explain what's happened? I've written to them asking about this; who knows, maybe I missed something on their site, and my old feed still is recoverable... that'd be nice, because then I could get Bloglines working again.
I've written to Bloglines, because it seems likely that my old feed will NOT be coming back, and I can't find a way to change the RSS feed they use for my site to one that works; I've got subscribers who signed up in good faith and have a right to expect me to fix this, and if you're one of them, rest assured that I'll keep on top of it... they warn to not expect a reply for a couple of business days, though, so don't expect anything to be fixed until next week. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for having no idea this was going on.
My next step was to get a new RSS feed URL, so I went to the only place I could think of; FeedBurner. I registered, entered my site info, and... the XML thing (which should have shown my recent posts) was BLANK. I started methodically clicking through every page in my account area, and eventually found the reason; their system had picked up on the Feedster URL and was trying to use it. I would've been at a loss at that point, but luckily Daniel had mentioned my Atom feed (which Blogger automatically generates), so I got that URL and tried to substitute it into FeedBurner; it gave me an Error 404. I tried to access the URL directly, and got a Blogger "page not found" error... and yes, I DID have it set up to publish my site feed. I then implemented a strategy from my old programming days, "when it's failing for no reason, change something, anything, and try again"; I changed the "Descriptions" control from "Short" to "Full," republished, and tried the Atom feed URL again... and there it was!! I tried to enter that URL at FeedBurner again, and the system accepted it; I checked the XML, and there it was!! (If you don't know what any of this means, click on the orange XML button in my sidebar.)
Then, a new thought occurred to me; this must be why I couldn't get Yahoo to accept my RSS feed and generate a "+ My Yahoo" button for my site... too bad their tech people couldn't ever be bothered to reply to my messages asking what the problem was, grrrrrrrrrr. I'd bookmarked the page to add RSS feeds to Yahoo, so I went there, added in the new URL provided by FeedBurner, and... it claimed it couldn't find that URL. Ok, I thought, there might be a lag in the system; I tried again a few minutes later... success!! The result can be see in the sidebar.
THEN, there's that NewsGator thing, not to mention "+ My MSN"; I'm going to pass out from sheer exhaustion if I don't get to bed now, so I can't do anything more at this point, but I'll try to check it out sometime soon.
AND, I'm almost certainly going to have to go around and re-enter my RSS feed in every directory and blog search engine that asks for it... whimper...
Anyways, this was an important thing, and it's most of the way fixed now; thanks, Daniel!! :-)
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