the BisonBlog

Samuel P. Huntington says the West won the world only with superiority in applying organized violence and says that non-westerners never forget that but he only implies that it's a bad thing and by doing so he hits on a cultural value that is prevalent in western society: violence is bad. I think its foolish of us to assume that the rest of the world sees violence as a bad thing, just like we make so many other assumptions about other cultures based on our own cultural values. This also follows from what Jeremiah said our non-violence culture is constantly being pushed onto other cultures by movies, music, television shows, etc and thus we are waging war on their culture by propaganda. We must not forget that just because it seems obvious to us that violence is bad it does not mean everybody else does.

God Bless

~Discrete Dave <><

I was watching the Jessica Alba Diary on Mtv last night.. while doing something academic, I am sure, and she was in the Cayman Islands in time for their Pirates Festival.. or something like that where they celebrate the fact that foreigners came and overtook their island. She commented that it was odd that they celebrated it, but I thought.. hey, we celebrate odd stuff too. Weren't we the "foreigners" that came over and screwed up the Indian way of life? And we celebrate that...
THEN while I was looking through my teaching blog, I found this:

"the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Samuel P. Huntington

Interesting stuff.

I can look into the ProBlogger upgrade, I suppose. (and take in $ from those that want to chip in) My main goal for this blog, however, was to get people on here... NDSU peoples... talking, etc. I was hoping, in my hippie mind, to make this as free as possible too.... hm.

Will going Pro or syndicating take away from its simplicity? Maybe not. I have no idea. This is yet another aspect to think about.. write about... hm hm hm. There are so many elements to take into account with online communities.

It's like going to Abercrombie (Chelsea's post) and realizing that you need to shop in quieter atmosphere. You never realized you needed that until it happened. Or like when I go there, I want to be able to reach everything.. and I can't. Before I ever went there, I thought: Man, the design of that place is cool and different... but I found that it's not as functional for 5'6" people. For 6'5" people, it's all good. Shopping there works for some, just like blogging works for me... hmph.

Follow-up. Jeremiah, I check out your personal blog and immediately followed the link to iBlog. Are you happy with the application? I am always shopping around.

Jeremiah, Sybil would have to upgrade to ProBlogger if she would like to syndicate the Bison Blog, and as we saw from her post about PRACs, she needs money, and probably won't be spending any money on the site. But I would be willing to chip in a few bucks if others also want to see Bison Blog get the upgrade.

Do you have a favorite RSS reader?

I've been reading about "freewriting," about the value of writing 10 mintues every day as a kind of word warm-up. I've been interested in blogging as an outlet for freewriting, even though freewriting doesnt particularly need an outlet. I am not sure where this is going, which means it probably is freewriting. Now I should go write that paper about the blogosphere.

For some reason, I was just thinking of an NDSU finals week story. It was during the winter that we had 100 inches+ of snow. I had a final for Steve Ward's class at the buttcrack of dawn (7:30 am).. and it was blizzarding, etc. It was horrid. My Bronco, if it could have talked, would have disowned me and told me off that morning. 12th Ave was like driving in a snow tunnel (like what you imagine dying to be like- with light at the end, etc). When you are young and build snow tunnels with your dad, that's cool.. driving in one= not so much. After I wrote out everything contained in my brain about American Lit., I shuffled through the deep snow from Minard back to my car and back to SLEEP. That was the winter of HIBERNATION.

Hey all! What's shaking? (besides the old windows in my front porch)
I was up in my room... reading Natalie Goldberg and thinking about my 120 syllabus (I am a geek, I know).. and I thought, man, I should blog. I came to this because I need to get on here more (it is a good time) and because I have figured out that the act of weblogging is asychronous (sp?) communication. Synchronous is when everyone's on at the same time = chat, IM... but weblogs are different. Anyhoo, I felt like I got a little smarter finding that out. One more thing to talk about, perhaps, in my thesis paper.

Jeremiah.. I have no idea what the RSS feed thingie is or the XML reference. I am not quite a full-fledged techno person in that respect. I just know enough.. sometimes. And, yea, the BisonBlog is for NDSU bloggers to talk about anything. I'd like the conversations to relate to NDSU college life, but I realize that that is broad. Basic goals: Get to know people.. blog to your heart's content.. be fun... be controversial. Be yourself.

My Thanksgiving: Happy to have turkey, happy to have pumpkin pie, and happy that the Packers lost.

A Question- Has anyone on here ever done a Pracs study? They have a big one week one during finals week... I could use the money (duh!) and the hermit-ing myself to start reading for next semester. Any advice?