LiveJournal has instituted a tag and flag system for "adult concepts" and content.

What you should be aware of: the default setting on your account for reading other journals is for "moderate" filtering (scroll to the bottom of the screen).

My current reaction to this is very mixed. I'm fine with the theory of provocative content being opt-in; after all, that's why I maintain a separate journal for my own fandom natterings (and vice versa - a lot of the folks who follow that journal aren't interested in the minutiae of my daily life, my lover's quarrels with God, etc.). That said, I am once again dumbfounded by LJ's ineptitude and half-assedness on multiple fronts. (A number of people have already articulated my concerns and cynicism better than I have, as well as raising other issues that wouldn't have occurred to me, such as how sex ed/health awareness comms may be affected by this new mishegoss.)

Anyhow, while I'm theoretically in favor of opt-in filtering, it's not "opt-in" if the general readership doesn't know about it. Which is one of the reasons why I won't be voluntarily restricting this journal or bronze_ribbons to 14+ or 18+ readers (another reason being that the tools don't appear to be bug-free, judging from early reports from the field). A third reason being that I read Ayn Rand, Kathleen Woodiwiss, D.H. Lawrence, Nancy Friday, and many other sexually frank authors before I turned 18 (which wasn't until the end of my first year in college), and that was before I had regular Internet access. (Not to mention the occasional racy guest contribution to a friend's ongoing Real Person Fic series, which was passed from music stand to music stand in all its dot-matrix glory every afternoon during sixth period. But that's an anecdote for another time...)

*stomps back to the em-dash mines*

To my mysterious well-wisher: Thank you for your kind thoughts. The same to you!

General housekeeping note (there being new names on the friendslist, etc.): I moved my online hammock over to JournalScape in June, so that's where you'll find my current natterings. There is an LJ-feed (mechaieh_js), but be warned that (1) the coding sometimes goes splat between JS and LJ, and (2) I'm not notified of comments on syndicated posts.

Wishing you all a good week, and safe traveling/happy feasting to those observing this Thursday's giving of thanks. :-)

6A/LJ has been making an effort; jury's out on whether it's sincere and/or will stick.

For now, I plan to continue at JournalScape, but as long as things appear to be improving here, I'll reverse my stance on not linking to any LJ content from there.

The fabulous and gifted xochiquetzl has set up an LJ feed, mechaieh_js. I am honored and humbled.

ETA 9/3: Oy. Staying at j-scape, y'all.

Effective immediately, this journal will no longer be updated (unless SixApart suddenly wises up and does right by those wronged, which is looking less and less likely by the hour). I won't delete it (if it disappears, it wasn't my doing), but neither will I be linking to it or anything else posted at LJ, no matter how scintillating or thought-provoking or gorgeous or just wildly funny. Yes, I'm that angry and annoyed.

I do plan to delete all information on my user profile (including the friendslist) as soon as I have time to reorganize the information for myself elsewhere. Between that and the ongoing crush of work, I will likely be even slower and more erratic than ever in terms of following all y'all's posts and comments. I beg your patience (and if it's important, do send me a note or e-mail).

Going forward, you can find me here: http://www.journalscape.com/mechaieh

Wishing you all the best. Let's keep in touch!

Blessings,
Peg

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/05/21/070521crbo_books_gottlieb

In the May 21 New Yorker, Robert Gottlieb reviews Hitchens and other recent manifesti against religion in an essay titled "Atheists With Attitude." One of the paragraphs that leaped out at me:

One practical problem for antireligious writers is the diversity of religious views. However carefully a skeptic frames his attacks, he will be told that what people in fact believe is something different. For example, when Terry Eagleton, a British critic who has been a professor of English at Oxford, lambasted Dawkins’s The God Delusion in the London Review of Books, he wrote that "card-carrying rationalists" like Dawkins "invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince." That is unfair, because millions of the faithful around the world believe things that would make a first-year theology student wince. A large survey in 2001 found that more than half of American Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians believed that Jesus sinned—thus rejecting a central dogma of their own churches.

---

Didn't get to more than a twelfth of what I'd hoped to cover today, but the weather was spectacularly nice. I did literally stop to smell the roses during my walk this morning, and brunch was a bottle of Orangina and a leek and goat-cheese quiche. And in the squeezing of blood out through my forehead the rest of the day, I did eventually come up with one of those lines that occasionally persuade me I might be clever after all (it's not a spectacular line in itself, but I was grinning from ear to ear as I typed it in).

Back to sermon-drafting. Onwards.

David Brooks's editorial in this morning's New York Times is titled "The Catholic Boom," but it's also about "who speaks for the quasi-religious," arguing that "quasi-religious people often drive history" (citing the influence of Abraham Lincoln, quasi-religious Victorian Protestants, and quasi-religious 20th century Jews):

...there are at least two things we know about flourishing in a modern society.

First, college students who attend religious services regularly do better than those that don’t. As Margarita Mooney, a Princeton sociologist, has demonstrated in her research, they work harder and are more engaged with campus life. Second, students who come from denominations that encourage dissent are more successful, on average, than students from denominations that don’t.

This embodies the social gospel annex to the quasi-religious creed: Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects. Participate in organized religion, but be a friendly dissident inside. Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization. Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open.

The problem is nobody is ever going to write a book sketching out the full quasi-religious recipe for life. The message “God is Great” appeals to billions. Hitchens rides the best-seller list with “God is Not Great.” Nobody wants to read a book called “God is Right Most of the Time.”

_ _ _

Mulling over the sermon, roasting squid, and wrestling with a story. Onwards.

So. Not my most stellar week: it's not near done in spite of me hitting 40 hours just before midnight, there was a messy night of gastric distress, and I said the wrong thing and/or too much in several conversations. *headwall*

On the other hand, I'm making discernable headway on Project Barbeque Albatross. And, as ever, there's the funny and the good:

Via kirbyfest: Turtle Creek Chorale's performance of the "Hallelujah Chorus." With nuns. Socrates, I thought of you.

The title of Janet Maslin's NYT review of Newt Gingrich's Pearl Harbor novel: "An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too." (No, that wasn't nice. But I don't claim to be.)

Michiko Kakutani characterizing Al Gore's new book as full of "the sort of wonky ardor" that made An Inconvenient Truth "so bluntly effective." (I probably won't read it -- I'm not who he needs to sway -- but the phrase "wonky ardor" tickles me to no end.)

One more from the NYT, from Bernard Holland's review of a Met Orchestra concert: "[Michelle DeYoung]'s encore was "Traume" from Wagner's "Wesendonck Lieder," which can be heard as a sketch for the second act of Tristan und Isolde but also as a thing of beauty itself. That such a treacherous and unprincipled man could write music as moving as this argues for the division between art and morality."

Just read about a Uruguayan joint down the street from the BYM's office that hosts Gnocchi Day once a month. I love my town.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/21/hello-kitty-takes-a-dip-in-usb-powered-aquarium

"Mr. Alexander preferred an unflashy life. He played Mozart on his violin, drew cartoons and fed squirrels in his back yard. He once admitted to a weakness for doughnuts and wafers before bedtime."

- from the Washington Post obituary of Lloyd Alexander