Why the burst of activity lately? Well, the long quiet has primarily been due to the long haul that I’m in with regards to my dissertation. Well that, and the fact that most anything I want to report can just as easily go on Facebook though. Recently though I’ve been missing the format of the blog. In particular the way that a blog allows you to capture a moment, and return to it in reflection. Facebook and other social networking lives in the now (if not an idealized future where if you provide your name, number, those of your friends, family, dog, cat, and so on your social networking experience will be enhanced beyond your wildest imagination). What this lacks though is the ability to go back and recollect. (I don’t deny you can scroll back in time, but I personally find it to be a bit of a bother and generally filled with…well, filler). Add to that I’ve been missing a bit of the long form that the blog allows. Not that I’ve been very good at indulging in that long format. We can hope change, right?

Thus a new start that goes back to the core of why I started this particular blog. I’ll try to capture the peculiar zietgeist of my day – be it in link or long form – and try to capture a bit of the detritus off of the scholarly process that is writing a dissertation.

Here’s to high goals.

A beautiful set of pictures of the North Brother Island at The Kingston Lounge and a compelling look at the history of the island while you’re at it. Worth a look.

Oregon appears to be having something of a gold rush thanks to a moratorium on suction dredges in California. The cyclical nature of mining rushes for gold as well as the repercussions of this sort of mining certainly deserve greater scrutiny. It also poses an interesting problem for public land use as different interpretations of “the fat of the land” begins to contradict each other.” The “American Dream” is alive and well in the retirement dreams of people going out and mining for gold as well as the sense, as is mentioned in the article’s closing lines, that it takes more than opportunity to strike it rich. The popularity of this sort of mining is intricately tied to the price of gold, which is itself tied to the economy. The x factors here would seem to be the perennial hope of striking out on one’s own to get rich and the desperation involved when there’s not other hope to pay the bills.

News from the New York Times that publishers are looking into ebook editions for classics that don’t have their electronic copyrights nailed down. Despite being a Kindle owner, I’m a little concerned about the direction this will likely go. There’s already enough problems with copyright and electronic distribution. The most obvious being the “planned obsolescence” or at least inherent obsolescence that’s inherent in technology being applied to books (not a new move if you’ve know anything about book binding. You’re latest paperback? Yeah, it’s a piece of crap.) Still, another front in a war to nail down every right for every property. Then again, maybe I’m just being grumpy today and not seeing the bright side of all this.

A tragic end to rescue operations.  News stories and internet coverage for 4/10.

New York Times main story.

AP via Huffington Post.

BBC News.

Brief bios of some of the blasts victims from the New York Times.