geniquity, n. the degree to which an individual's life prospects seem fated by their genetic material; genetic justice.
From the Latin genus meaning kind or rank, and aequus, meaning level or even.
The notion of geniquity appears to have arisen simultaneously in a number of heavily class-based societies throughout Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. With the growing interest in science and the rise of evolutionary theory occurring at that time, a modern-minded, educated portion of the populace clamoured to apply these concepts within the world as they saw it.
Geniquity was one such application. The term was first recorded in written English in 1771 by Harold Batten-Batten, a wealthy estate owner, would-be intellectual and London dilettante. Batten-Batten proposed that the reason why he had enjoyed a charmed life while others suffered the apparent vaguaries of fate was geniquity.
"I was," he wrote in a paper explaining his theory, which was presented to the London Scientific Club in November of that year, "born to indulge, to enjoy, to succeed. My genetic material has pre-destined me to goodness."
Despite an outcry from the community's scientific quarter -- most of whose members scorned the London Scientific Club as a coterie of idle rich men who wished they'd achieved something with their lives -- the concept of geniquity took hold within the less intellectually rigorous upper eschelons of society.
It was called on as an explanation for all manner of injustices, many of them wholly malevolent, for the next hundred and fifty years. The concept finally lost support in the end days of the Second World War, and after a series of entirely fruitless experiments had been conducted across the European continent, starting in the 1850s and ending around 1893, in an effort to prove the concept.
Says the great Manfred Sayer, social historian, in his final opus In Our Nature: Europeans and the Dawn of Science (Faber, 1913):
"We must conclude that the popularity of the idea was due in large part to the guilt of an upper class whose then-living members had done little at all to achieve or maintain either their own prospects, or those of the society in which they lived.
"Geniquity made a convenient, if erroneous, explanation for the circumstances of an entire segment of society, and one that absolved its constituents of any personal responsibility to act or even think differently about the social order. It makes a fascinating study for those interested in what we call "class.""
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
WordPress why-can't-Is
WordPress, why can't I:
- search for authors in the admin section
- search for keywords in post content in the admin section
- search for practically anything with any success in the admin section
- sort the post view by clicking on column headers
- go from the Edit Post page back to the Drafts list (or Published list, or whatever) in a single click
- have you remove empty tags autofreakingmatically (empty tags for the love of God!)
- unschedule a post and save it as a draft in the Quick Edit screen
- find commenters by searching for their names in the comment admin view?
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Friendly Web
We've had Web 2.0, the Social Web, and the cutesy/gag-worthy intertubes/interwebs for far too long now. What's next? I'd like to hypothesise. Or perhaps I'm just dreaming. But I propose that we, the people who make the Web as well as consuming it, should now set our sights on creating The Friendly Web.
What is The Friendly Web?
It's a place where things work. Where life is easy, even if you've forgotten one of those sixteen-characters-no-spaces-at-least-one-number-and-one-letter-no-caps-ah-crap-it's-considered-"weak"-anyway passwords you need to log into any of the zillion services and sites you use every day.
It's a place where marketinglingo and corporatespeak are never uttered. Where people are treated as they would like to be treated. Where sales pages aren't fifteen angry punches of the Page Down key long, with crucial sentences highlighted in flashing red text. Where sales pages, my friend, do not exist, because people know what they want when they want it, and don't need to have it "sold" to them.
The Friendly Web is an intuitive place where you can get what you want, when you want it, without hassle. It's a place where news services go further than Mashable and Twitter for article topics, and further than first-year university students for copy editors.
On The Friendly Web, no one tries to coerce you to do something you don't want to do. There are no embarrassing popup-lightbox-skip-ad faux pas. In fact, there are no embarrassing faux pas (generic 404 pages, stupid contextual ad targeting, clunky language, etc.) full stop. It's a place where eTax is available for Mac, syncing is seamless, and your username is your freaking name, for Christ's sakes.
Can we do it? Consider if you will the sequential waves of uprising now taking place in North Africa. Here are people who are tired of the tyranny, and want to be heard, to be free. If ordinary people, without rifles, budgets for mercenaries, bombs, or their own secret service can topple tyrannical dictator after tyrannical dictator, then web geeks can certainly push us from the Social Web to The Friendly Web.
Don't you think?
What is The Friendly Web?
It's a place where things work. Where life is easy, even if you've forgotten one of those sixteen-characters-no-spaces-at-least-one-number-and-one-letter-no-caps-ah-crap-it's-considered-"weak"-anyway passwords you need to log into any of the zillion services and sites you use every day.
It's a place where marketinglingo and corporatespeak are never uttered. Where people are treated as they would like to be treated. Where sales pages aren't fifteen angry punches of the Page Down key long, with crucial sentences highlighted in flashing red text. Where sales pages, my friend, do not exist, because people know what they want when they want it, and don't need to have it "sold" to them.
The Friendly Web is an intuitive place where you can get what you want, when you want it, without hassle. It's a place where news services go further than Mashable and Twitter for article topics, and further than first-year university students for copy editors.
On The Friendly Web, no one tries to coerce you to do something you don't want to do. There are no embarrassing popup-lightbox-skip-ad faux pas. In fact, there are no embarrassing faux pas (generic 404 pages, stupid contextual ad targeting, clunky language, etc.) full stop. It's a place where eTax is available for Mac, syncing is seamless, and your username is your freaking name, for Christ's sakes.
Can we do it? Consider if you will the sequential waves of uprising now taking place in North Africa. Here are people who are tired of the tyranny, and want to be heard, to be free. If ordinary people, without rifles, budgets for mercenaries, bombs, or their own secret service can topple tyrannical dictator after tyrannical dictator, then web geeks can certainly push us from the Social Web to The Friendly Web.
Don't you think?
Monday, February 21, 2011
You're invited to my experiment
Hello [name].
I'm making an experiment. Since you're...
...I thought you might be interested in donning one of those white coats on the rack behind the door and joining me.
WTF?
My experiment is an interactive fiction story called Greener Grass.
The story is presented through Twitter.
To:
...you will need to follow these four Twitter accounts, which represent the story's key players:
This way, the story will appear naturally in your Twitter timeline. If you prefer to track the story separately, you can follow the Greener Grass Twitter list.
Wait. Is this like a novel?
No, not really. It's more like an interactive short story in 140-character installments.
How long's this thing gonna take, lady?
The story starts on Friday February 25 and runs for two weeks, finishing on Friday March 11.
Will it overload my Twitter timeline with crap?
That's not the plan.
But what about—
Answers to further questions can be solicited in the comments. I do hope you'll join me.
Alida
I'm making an experiment. Since you're...
- a big reader
- interested in social media
- one smart cookie
...I thought you might be interested in donning one of those white coats on the rack behind the door and joining me.
WTF?
My experiment is an interactive fiction story called Greener Grass.
The story is presented through Twitter.
To:
- watch from afar
- participate, engaging with characters and shaping narrative
- ensure you don't miss anything
...you will need to follow these four Twitter accounts, which represent the story's key players:
This way, the story will appear naturally in your Twitter timeline. If you prefer to track the story separately, you can follow the Greener Grass Twitter list.
Wait. Is this like a novel?
No, not really. It's more like an interactive short story in 140-character installments.
How long's this thing gonna take, lady?
The story starts on Friday February 25 and runs for two weeks, finishing on Friday March 11.
Will it overload my Twitter timeline with crap?
That's not the plan.
But what about—
Answers to further questions can be solicited in the comments. I do hope you'll join me.
Alida
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
To-do
Writing tasks for the February-March liaison...
I feel like Hercules. An excited Hercules with typey titanium fingertips. And startlingly little time.
- two ebooks
- a 10,000-word report
- copy for two serialised digital products
- copy for two websites
I feel like Hercules. An excited Hercules with typey titanium fingertips. And startlingly little time.
Incompatible
Did I mention that I love confusing Google?In all seriousness, though, I can't wait until they start programming real-world question stems into search engines, so that they know, for example, that "wtf is" is a request for a definition or explanation. All this "Define:" bullshit is just that: big and lumpy. The day Google can recognise and answer the question "wtf is", we'll know we've finally achieved the Friendly Web.*
*More on that later.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Mind-blowing lines #23
Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote* is one of those extremely elusive things: a beautiful book. You know I'd never throw around such florid praise without due justification. It's the kind of book that makes you think that if you could invite one person, living or dead, to dinner, it'd be Capote.
Briefly, it's about a boy of thirteen who's sent to live with the father who abandoned him, in the rural Louisiana of the 1940s. It's a story of loneliness and dissolution, and the search for happiness—the search for belonging.
I have two mind-blowing excerpts for you.
It was a terrible, strange-looking hotel. But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams.
The whole novel seems to be written like this, but it's a delusion. There's a clean simplicity interwoven with this richness that catches readers off guard, plunging cool, hard knives into our hearts when we least expect it.
Overblown? Consider for yourself this example, presented as Joel steps outside on his first breathtakingly hot, deserted, abominably silent southern afternoon, having asked to see his father and received no response, and having seen no other living person in the dilapidated mansion for hours. He goes into the garden and finds himself immediately lathered in sweat. Says Capote:
It stood to reason such weather would have to break.
A curious line. Does it speak of the solace we take in logic? Or is it a plea for fairness in an unfair world—a gambler's prayer for clement odds regardless of the irrationality of nature, and of fate?
*Yes, mentioned before, and mind-blowing lines from his other books related earlier, and earlier still.
Briefly, it's about a boy of thirteen who's sent to live with the father who abandoned him, in the rural Louisiana of the 1940s. It's a story of loneliness and dissolution, and the search for happiness—the search for belonging.
I have two mind-blowing excerpts for you.
It was a terrible, strange-looking hotel. But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams.
The whole novel seems to be written like this, but it's a delusion. There's a clean simplicity interwoven with this richness that catches readers off guard, plunging cool, hard knives into our hearts when we least expect it.
Overblown? Consider for yourself this example, presented as Joel steps outside on his first breathtakingly hot, deserted, abominably silent southern afternoon, having asked to see his father and received no response, and having seen no other living person in the dilapidated mansion for hours. He goes into the garden and finds himself immediately lathered in sweat. Says Capote:
It stood to reason such weather would have to break.
A curious line. Does it speak of the solace we take in logic? Or is it a plea for fairness in an unfair world—a gambler's prayer for clement odds regardless of the irrationality of nature, and of fate?
*Yes, mentioned before, and mind-blowing lines from his other books related earlier, and earlier still.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Messages from the internet
Oh, if only shrimp jambalaya would do the job!Actually, existential questions aside, whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com does make for a rather compelling case study in stem sentence formulation:
- Lessen your mother's shame with some fucking...
- Classily partake in some fucking...
- Don't fuck up some fucking...
- Induce food coma with some fucking...
Hardly.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Confusing Google Ads
Yes! "Beautiful Women"! Perfect! Forget business planning and jet engines, that's just what I was after!****Yes, every sentence in this post has an exclamation mark. Yes, that's excessive. But I think in this case it also makes a neat point, don't you? That neat point being: advertising!? WTF?
**I am always, always ecstatic when something I write confounds Google Ads like this. Keep trying, Google. My type is gloriously, and thankfully, unintelligible!
Monday, February 7, 2011
Word of the Day #6: apochronicity
apochronicity, n. also apochronistic adj. The non-existence of time.
First discovered in 1907 by the Viennese physicist-philosopher Avgard von Bremner, the concept of apochronicity initially befuddled those in international physics circles, who questioned the possibility of a world, place, thing, or being without time.
"I spent some months pondering the dilemma," wrote eminent physicist and contemporary of von Bremner, Stanislav Schmidt, in his 1948 memoir. "What was a world without time? The apparent ubiquity of temporality seemed to preclude even the possibility of apochronicity. But, ironically, the more time I spent on the problem, the more it seemed to make sense. Days merged into weeks, weeks into months. Time exists, yes. But does it exist for everyone? For everything? von Bremner opened doors that were previously inconceivable."
Throughout the second decade of the twentieth century, as the notion of apochronicity gained traction, waggish physics students at the university at which von Bremner was professor would cite it as a reason for non-attendance or failure to deliver assessments.
Around this time, however, we see attempts to carry the concept across to broader language, viz.:
"The sphinx loomed apochronistically in the half-light. Beside it, Terence spied Lettice's skirts shifting petulantly in the warm night air." Babette Ford, Love in the Shadows of Pharaohs, Faber, 1913.
"The village shaman has feathers in his hair, a bone in his nose, and an altogether apochronistic gleam in his eye." John Lynch, On the Serengeti, Cassell and Co., 1915.
"It is by the grace, goodness and apochronicity of God's benevolence -- and by no other means -- that we are granted access to eternal paradise." Sheldon Snaith, "Paradise Found", The Watchtower, Issue 9, 1916.
The usage of this term has contracted in recent decades, however the apochronicity of its meaning hints that it will remain in usage for no little time to come.
First discovered in 1907 by the Viennese physicist-philosopher Avgard von Bremner, the concept of apochronicity initially befuddled those in international physics circles, who questioned the possibility of a world, place, thing, or being without time.
"I spent some months pondering the dilemma," wrote eminent physicist and contemporary of von Bremner, Stanislav Schmidt, in his 1948 memoir. "What was a world without time? The apparent ubiquity of temporality seemed to preclude even the possibility of apochronicity. But, ironically, the more time I spent on the problem, the more it seemed to make sense. Days merged into weeks, weeks into months. Time exists, yes. But does it exist for everyone? For everything? von Bremner opened doors that were previously inconceivable."
Throughout the second decade of the twentieth century, as the notion of apochronicity gained traction, waggish physics students at the university at which von Bremner was professor would cite it as a reason for non-attendance or failure to deliver assessments.
Around this time, however, we see attempts to carry the concept across to broader language, viz.:
"The sphinx loomed apochronistically in the half-light. Beside it, Terence spied Lettice's skirts shifting petulantly in the warm night air." Babette Ford, Love in the Shadows of Pharaohs, Faber, 1913.
"The village shaman has feathers in his hair, a bone in his nose, and an altogether apochronistic gleam in his eye." John Lynch, On the Serengeti, Cassell and Co., 1915.
"It is by the grace, goodness and apochronicity of God's benevolence -- and by no other means -- that we are granted access to eternal paradise." Sheldon Snaith, "Paradise Found", The Watchtower, Issue 9, 1916.
The usage of this term has contracted in recent decades, however the apochronicity of its meaning hints that it will remain in usage for no little time to come.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Text decoration is for sissies
Yes, you may bold a heading. You may italicise a word or phrase for emphasis. But text decoration beyond that? Dude, that shit's for sissies.
"Why do people use text decoration online?" you may, rightly, cry in indignation. The answers seem to be:
Know your freaking audience
Know your audience members, and you'll know what content appeals to them. You'll also know how to present that information (using, you know, language, images, video, etc.) to greatest effect.
Write for the damned medium
Certain techniques apply to writing for the Web, and to making content capture the mico-second attention spans of scanning readers. A good writer should know and employ these.
Write with empathy, for the love of God
Decorate the bits of text that you feel are most important, and you pay little respect to your thinking reader. Frequently I find the bits that aren't bold (or otherwise decorated) the most interesting. Don't you?
Leave formatting to the style sheet, and give us all some peace
Formatting of text is intended to communicate structure. Using text decoration to make things look pretty is for sissies. Your text should do the job without additional visual fancification.
As someone said to me recently, nut up or shut up. If your text isn't strong enough to stand naked before the reader, don't publish it.
"Why do people use text decoration online?" you may, rightly, cry in indignation. The answers seem to be:
- to highlight important bits
- to catch the reader's eye and tease them into reading the whole piece
- to confuse readers about what's functional (link) or just for effect (underlined text)
- to make things look pretty.
Know your freaking audience
Know your audience members, and you'll know what content appeals to them. You'll also know how to present that information (using, you know, language, images, video, etc.) to greatest effect.
Write for the damned medium
Certain techniques apply to writing for the Web, and to making content capture the mico-second attention spans of scanning readers. A good writer should know and employ these.
Write with empathy, for the love of God
Decorate the bits of text that you feel are most important, and you pay little respect to your thinking reader. Frequently I find the bits that aren't bold (or otherwise decorated) the most interesting. Don't you?
Leave formatting to the style sheet, and give us all some peace
Formatting of text is intended to communicate structure. Using text decoration to make things look pretty is for sissies. Your text should do the job without additional visual fancification.
As someone said to me recently, nut up or shut up. If your text isn't strong enough to stand naked before the reader, don't publish it.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Semi-colons, bitches
Not so long ago, we talked about colons. The whole wide world seems to confuse colons and semi-colons, but as we are about to see, the semi-colon is nothing like the colon. They are, in effect, unconfusable. Isn't that a relief?
Semi-colons are very simple. Think of a semi-colon as being a half full-stop.
The alligator ate the dog. He was soon sated.
The alligator ate the dog; he was soon sated.
Both are correct. Here's the thing: semi-colon usage is most frequently a stylistic choice. The only rule is that the two phrases joined by the semi-colon must also be able to be separated by a stop; the two phrases (like these ones) must be able to stand alone as independent sentences.
So why would you use a semi-colon?
The first option above is very definite. Some might say that rhythmically it's a bit boring, being, as it is, the presentation of two separate facts in two separate, similarly constructed sentences. Yawn.
The second option has more flow. The sating is more closely tied to the eating. The semi-colon joins these two facts more tightly than does the stop. The semi-colon joins what the full-stop puts asunder.
That may sound high-falutin' (or biblical) but it actually makes a considerable difference in real-life prose:
There is a paved area beside the door, and here his breath forms small clouds in the chill air. All is silent; even the hens have housed themselves. The dying light seeps, luminous, over the dark green hillside to his right.
You, of course, know why a colon would be incorrect in all these cases. Try dropping "ta-daaa!" in where those semi-colons appear and all you have is a mess. The housed hens, for example, are not precipitated by the silence. A colon does not work where a semi-colon is needed. A dash could work there (All is silent—even the hens have housed themselves) but a colon would be an alarming choice.
As an aside, you can also use a semi-colon to separate items in a list where those items themselves contain comma-separated lists:
Having consumed the dog, the alligator proceeded to ingest a rosemary bush; three kittens named Lisle, Betty, and Alan; six hard-boiled eggs; and a plate of roast beef.
See? I told you semi-colons were simple.
Semi-colons are very simple. Think of a semi-colon as being a half full-stop.
The alligator ate the dog. He was soon sated.
The alligator ate the dog; he was soon sated.
Both are correct. Here's the thing: semi-colon usage is most frequently a stylistic choice. The only rule is that the two phrases joined by the semi-colon must also be able to be separated by a stop; the two phrases (like these ones) must be able to stand alone as independent sentences.
So why would you use a semi-colon?
The first option above is very definite. Some might say that rhythmically it's a bit boring, being, as it is, the presentation of two separate facts in two separate, similarly constructed sentences. Yawn.
The second option has more flow. The sating is more closely tied to the eating. The semi-colon joins these two facts more tightly than does the stop. The semi-colon joins what the full-stop puts asunder.
That may sound high-falutin' (or biblical) but it actually makes a considerable difference in real-life prose:
There is a paved area beside the door, and here his breath forms small clouds in the chill air. All is silent; even the hens have housed themselves. The dying light seeps, luminous, over the dark green hillside to his right.
You, of course, know why a colon would be incorrect in all these cases. Try dropping "ta-daaa!" in where those semi-colons appear and all you have is a mess. The housed hens, for example, are not precipitated by the silence. A colon does not work where a semi-colon is needed. A dash could work there (All is silent—even the hens have housed themselves) but a colon would be an alarming choice.
As an aside, you can also use a semi-colon to separate items in a list where those items themselves contain comma-separated lists:
Having consumed the dog, the alligator proceeded to ingest a rosemary bush; three kittens named Lisle, Betty, and Alan; six hard-boiled eggs; and a plate of roast beef.
See? I told you semi-colons were simple.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Insomnia rules for writers
- If it's keeping you awake, write it down.
- But don't publish it.
- You'll need a scotch.
- A teacup is the preferred vessel at this time of night.
- Yes, go on, fill it.
- Forget about what time you're supposed to be up.
- All that matters is the idea.
- The flashing cursor.
- The blank page.
- The deep silence of night.
- No one can hear you write. Or type.
- (Or pour more scotch.)
- Why not lose yourself revising what you just wrote?
- It's not like anyone's telling you to stop.
- Say it exactly how you mean it.
- Don't err or waver.
- Cut, cut, cut.
- Take it back to its bleeding bones.
- Spellcheck.
- Save.
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