Why am I moving? Steve Rubel, PR braniac for Edelman, says it: Tumblr is where the people are. It’s got a fast-growing community of bloggers, and it has tools that make it easy to follow other blogs, as well as write blog posts yourself, sharing images, links, video, quotes, conversational snippets, and text posts like this one. Plus Tumblr integrates with Facebook and Twitter (though the Facebook integration could be nicer. I need to look at that).

Unlike Steve, I’m not nuking my old blogs. I’m just not updating them. I’ve left a trail of blogs behind me as I’ve switched from one platform to another since 2006. Blogs of mine that are older than 2006 have, alas, gone away, though I still think you can fund them in archive.org.

Are you on Tumblr? Let me know your blog ID and I’ll follow you there.

- 8-year-old girl
- Her twin sister
- An uncle
- Tennis ball.

HOW TO PLAY:

- Explain the rules to the uncle. Sort of.

- The player who is “It” throws the ball up in the air and yells “Jackpot!”

- While the ball is in the air, “It” yells, “ALIVE!” or “DEAD!”

- While the ball is in the air, “It” yells a point value. Just make one up. Pick the biggest number you can. A million billion gajillion is a fine number.

- Argue with your sister about the rules.

- Argue with your sister about whether the point value even matters.

- Argue with your sister about who gets to be “It” next.

- Something about “Stuck in the mud!”

- Something about “Magic box!”

- While the ball is in the air, he other players run to catch it. If “It” yelled “ALIVE!” the ball must be caught while it is in the air. If “It” yelled “DEAD!” the ball must be caught (or picked up) after it has bounced or landed on the ground.

- The player who first catches the ball (or picks it up off the ground) is the next “It.”

- Or possibly not.

I am very confused by all this but the girls seemed to enjoy it.

It is one hell of a video, but I’m not sure I agree with the speaker’s conclusions.

The speaker, Ric Elias, describes what it was like to have a front-row window seat on Flight 1549, the one a couple of years ago that went down on the Hudson. He describes his thoughts as the engine choked, he saw the terror in the stewardess’s eyes, and watched out the window as the plane narrowly missed the George Washington Bridge and approached the surface of the Hudson River.

He was sure he was going to die. He regretted all the times he’d let his ego drive him, fighting with his wife over things that didn’t matter, not spending enough time with his kids.

It comes down to the philosophy: Don’t waste time. Cherish the people around you. Live each day as if it were your last. I agree with the first two parts of it, but I disagree with the third part.

I used to phrase my disagreement as a joke: If you lived each day as if it were your last you’d never have any clean laundry. Because nobody wants to do laundry on their last day.

But I think I can articulate my objection better now. What I mean to say is that if you’re constantly aware that you might die, you’re not in the moment. You’re in that other moment, the moment in the future — perhaps only an instant in the future, but it isn’t now — when you’re dead. Which is kind of a drag.

Instead you should just be aware that life is finite. When making choices, be aware that every choice has opportunity costs. Whatever you’re doing now, be aware that you’re not doing other things, so make sure you’re okay with that decision.

Then forget about it and live in the moment.

I’ve recently been watching reruns of Roseanne on Netflix. I missed that show the first time around. It really was a hell of a show. The third episode of the first season revolved around Roseanne and Dan going out to dinner, while Roseanne’s sister Jackie babysat the kids. Except Jackie was late, and the kids tried to lock her out, so she snuck in and surprised them. Hijinks ensued.

At the end of the episode, Roseanne and Dan come home to find the house dark, the TV on, and the three kids and Jackie sprawled out asleep on the couch and the floor. The room is covered by a blanket of junk food wrappers and empty soft drink cans.

Nothing bad happened. Nobody faced any crises. Nobody faced death, or had any big, tearful hugs. It’s just everybody had a good time together and they all fell asleep. Which is what every day should be like.

Now we have Netflix streaming on the big new TV, and so we have B:G from the beginning, and so I’m starting again with the mini-series.

I’ve watched most of the first episode of the miniseries again. I like it so far. I like the mix of retro technology with starships and advanced artificial intelligence; it gives the show the feeling of being space opera from the 40s and 50s. The cast are universally excellent, particularly Edward James Olmos as Admiral Adama and Michael Hogan as Colonel Tigh, Adama’s second-in-command who may not be up to the job.

Katee Sackhoff is great as Starbuck, and not unpleasant to look at.

Tricia Helfer is outstandingly otherworldly as Number Six, the Cylon infiltrator. She’s also not unpleasant to look at although she can use a sammitch.

I’ve loved Mary McDonnell since Dances With Wolves. She’s been great on The Closer, and her character on that show is getting her own spinoff series.

I can do without the 90210 angsty nonsense between Lee Adama and Admiral Adama. Yeah, yeah, I get it, your brother died and you blame your father. Just hug it out, bitches. Oh, wait, that’s the wrong TV series.

I’m watching the show in bursts of a 10-15 minutes at a time while eating breakfast and lunch. Probably not the best way to enjoy it, but it’s not something I’m going to get a chance to watch any other way. 79 episodes looks pretty intimidating when you’re barely done with episode one.

A major theme Poniewozik notes is that the series examines to what extent a person should be ruled by law and honor. He notes a key sequence in the Aerie, when Bronn fights for Tyrion’s life and kills his opponent, throwing him through the Moon Door to his death.

Lysa Arryn, outraged at the outcome, scolds Bronn for his street brawling: “You don’t fight with honor!” “No,” Bronn deadpans, indicating the knight he just chucked out the Moon Door. “He did.”

It’s a funny line, but there’s much packed in it. First, there’s another affirmation of Thrones’ pragmatism, which is echoed in the other storylines in the series. Battles go to the best fighter, not the most righteous. It’s not to cynically say that nice guys finish last—I don’t think Thrones is making an argument against morality—but rather that being single-mindedly rigid and tied to formal codes is an encumbrance. The poor knight who dies trying to seal Tyrion’s guilt, fighting in full armor against a lightly guarded man, is a metaphor. He thinks he is protected by his armor; in fact, he is burdened by it.

Likewise, Ned is encumbered by his rigid adherence to honor and law. Watching Sunday night’s episode, I couldn’t help thinking how much misery could have been avoided in Westeros if Ned had simply taken Littlefinger’s offer of an alliance and grabbed the throne from the Lannisters. Ned and Littlefinger would have made a good ruling team. Littlefinger might never have betrayed Ned, as long as Littlefinger saw the continued partnership as being to his advantage.

But, no, Ned believed Robert’s brother was the rightful heir to the throne. However, as several people pointed out to Ned, the Baratheons themselves had no right to the throne; they stole it from the Targaryens.

And the Targaryens probably stole it from someone else. I know more about medieval and ancient history now than I did when I read the original books. Royal succession in premodern times was a matter of raw power winning out, and then figuring out a legal justification afterwards.

This has been a constant theme in HBO’s best series: The Sopranos, The Wire, Rome, and especially Deadwood: How should a person live, and how should government function, in a society where rule of law has failed (or, in the case of Deadwood, has not yet developed)? A person in that situation has to find a balance between whatever law exists, a moral code, and self-interest. The Sopranos began with Tony trying to live within the gangster code and with signs that he might become a lawful and reformed person; by the end of the series he had abandoned the gangster code, conscious, and law, and lived entirely for himself. In The Wire, we see law and personal power run amok. In Rome we see rule of law usurped (by Julius Caesar) and then re-established through violence (by Octavian). And in Deadwood we see a society existing before laws are formed, and struggling to develop them. Pity Deadwood ended when the story was only half-told.

Another thing that HBO’s series have in common: Swearing and boobies. Poniewozik correctly identifies a story device in Game of Thrones that’s already gotten old: A male character delivers a long background explanation while having sex with a prostitute. Or, in the case of last this week’s episode, watching two prostitutes get it on with each other. Enough already — let’s find other ways to deliver backstory and show us boobies. Thank you.

Ran Prieur: I am known on the Internet as somebody who writes about dropping out of society, the critique of civilization, sustainability and the collapse. I’m a softcore doomer. I write about why this entire society is unbalanced and a large mistake and why the mistake is ending and how you can, how we can get out of it. How we can live better.

Avi: Who has influenced you the most?

Ran: I always tell people my two biggest influences are Ivan Illich and Charles Fort. Everything I write can be derived from those two guys. Ivan Illich wrote his most famous stuff in the early 70s. He was a big critic of industrialization and centralization and certain kinds of technology.

Ivan Illich was not a primitivist. He thinks that technology can be used very well and can be used to live much better than primitive people but it mostly has not yet been used that way. Ivan Illich was so smart and wrote so clearly that reading him is like looking at the sun. You just read a couple of sentences and then you’re like, “Wow! I have to look away, that’s too much”, and you kind of process those sentences and you go back and read a little more.

Then he goes on to talk about Fort, who is known for a lot of comic science but had a serious idea at the core of it: Everything in the universe is connected.

After reading the Boing Boing interview, I hit Prieur’s Web site, and caught up on his essays, of which he has quite a few. But the essential part of Prieur, at least for me, is contained in the Boing Boing interview.

Prieur believes modern society is on the verge of collapse, but he’s not a survivalist. He’s not advocating arming yourself and living in a barricaded camp. Like other smart people who’ve written on this subject, Prieur believes that the people who will survive the collapse are those who have strong community ties, who help their neighbors and are, in turn, helped by them.

Prieur believes that civilization is a 10,000-year mistake, and that we were better off living in small villages, close to nature. That sounds crazy, but there is anthropological support. It’s well-known that people lived longer, healthier lives before the invention of agriculture and cities, and that we’ve only recovered to the pre-civilization of health and lifespan in the past century. (So why did people invent agriculture and civilization at all? Prieur has a theory.)

Prieur doesn’t believe we should go back to the primitive state, though. He thinks we can combine the best of so-called primitive life and civilization to make something better.

Here are some of Prieur’s more interesting essays:

The coming expansion. Prieur uses the word “expansion” where most people use the phrase “economic collapse.”

Prieur believes that the collapse expansion will be catastrophic for great swathes of the population, every bit as bad as conservative economists say it will be. Millions will die in wars, starvation, plagues, and the destruction of the infrastructure they rely on. But Prieur notes that the current order already brings misery to millions, if not billions. And after the collapse will hopefully come a much better world.

He does not believe the collapse will be sudden. It’ll take years or decades to play out. It’s already been going on for a couple of decades — things have gotten steadily worse for a long time, although they’ve also gotten a little better sometimes. The collapse will continue in a stepwise fashion, worse then better, worse then better, until the world is transformed, hopefully into a better place.

J.R.R. Tolkien, the man who saw tomorrow. Lord of the Rings as a metaphor for the expansion.

Where was Luke Skywalker on Sept. 11. Soldiers of the rebellion, led by a bearded desert prophet, fly airships into a titanic structure built by the empire they see as evil incarnate. The difference between Star Wars and 9/11 is that the Americans weren’t rooting for the rebels on 9/11.

Prieur is not rooting for al Qaeda in the previous essay. Read it for yourself before you criticize.

What we learned from Katrina. You can’t trust the government.

9/11 FAQ. I’m not sure whether Prieur is arguing for the truther argument here, or simply arguing that the official government explanation — the events that everybody knows to be true — is equally implausible.

Dumpster diving FAQ. You can get a tasty and healthy meal from other people’s garbage.

How to drop out. Prieur’s most famous essay.

iChromy is my new favorite Web browser, and it now lives in the taskbar at the bottom of the iPad screen.^[1]

It’s a Chrome clone for the iPad. Most importantly, iChromy replaces the dual address and search boxes in Safari with a single box, called the Omnibox, like in Chrome. That’s just the right way for browsers to work. It’s much more efficient.

The other thing iChromy has is a Reading List feature (iChromy calls it a “Readling List” — get a proofreader, quick!). With a single long-tap on a link, you can save that link to a queue accessible from a button on the toolbar. Tap on an individual link on that list and you open that page.

You can save pages to the Readling– um, Reading List by tapping an eyeglasses icon in the Omnibox. The Reading List also supposedly works for offline reading, but I haven’t tried it for that.

The Reading List works a lot better than tabs on the iPad for opening large numbers of pages at once. Tabs are great for opening a few pages, but the iPad 1, which is the one I have, doesn’t have enough horsepower to keep a lot of tabs open without crashing.

The other iPad browser I looked at is Opera Mini, also free. Opera Mini uses server caching of Web pages to load extremely fast, which is great. But I found it unusable because it defaulted to showing the mobile versions of sites, rather than the full desktop version.

My previous favorite Web browser for the iPad, until this week, was Cyberspace. It’s great for reading Web articles on the iPad, which is mainly what I do with an iPad Web browser. Cyberspace has big buttons to switch between the Instapaper reader-friendly article view and the regular page view. It also supports a page queue, like the Reading List in iChromy.

However, Cyberspace has some serious design problems. The search engine is something called DuckDuckGo rather than Google. Also, searches go to the “I’m Feeling Lucky” result; when you run a search, you often get a Web page rather than a page of results, and often that Web page is not the one you want. Drove me crazy.

1. ^[1] Don’t read too much into that. I’m very fickle when it comes to favorite apps. I change up a lot. ↩

I like going to these kinds of things. As a work-from-home professional blogger, I spend a ton of time standing in the same spot I’m standing now, staring at the computer display, alone. Julie comes in and talks to me and I give her a blank stare because I’m a million miles away. Then she leaves.^[1] Going to networking events is an opportunity to get the heck out of the house, wear something other than a T-shirt, and have the interpersonal interactions normal people get around the company coffee machine.

It’s also good professionally, of course. Maybe I’ll get a story idea out of it, or meet a potential writer, or make a professional connection who will prove useful next week or next month or in five years. Maybe I’ll just have some pleasant conversation. Either way is fine.

Professional networking has a bad reputation — or it did when I was starting out in the workplace. I guess people envision networkers as always been on the sell, always being on the lookout for themselves, always trying to sell you insurance or a used car. But done right it’s outward-directed. You try to connect other people, do things for other people, and don’t think about yourself. It comes around to help you out in the end.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Mitch, what’s with the hippy-dippy selflessness baloney? You keep singing kumbaya like that, soon you won’t be able to pay for all that Apple crap you keep buying, not to mention your house payments and car and food and doctor’s bills.

To which I respond: The hippy-dippy selflessness baloney is how I pay for all that.^[2]

1. ^[1] She’s used to it, I think. ↩
2. ^[2] I don’t want you to think I’m all sunshine and roses. Indeed, one of the constants of my career is to have former colleagues approach me and remind me of some time that I verbally cut a PR person or a corporate executive down to size. I smile and nod while they’re reminding me of the incident with great relish. And all the while, I’m thinking: “Wow, I vaguely remember that. It sounds like something I would have done. And it makes me sound like a real jerk.” ↩

The HD box arrived today and I spent far too much time getting it configured, involving far too much time on the phone with our cable provider, Cox. But I think it’s finally straightened out. Julie did a lot of work on it too. When I left the living room, she was in there swearing at the remote control.

The picture looks great. As I write this Wednesday night, I’m looking forward to watching the season finale of Glee in HD. I imagine Rachel will be even more annoying. Is that even possible? They’re in New York tonight; perhaps Rachel will drown tragically in the Hudson River.

Also opened a new USB hub, which doesn’t work, so I replaced it with the old hub, which is mostly reliable. I got the new hub because I was going for reliable, but perhaps that’s too much to ask. Perhaps “mostly reliable” is all there is.