Misc and more misc

A couple of days ago, my spouse asked me when I was going to add RSS to my blogs, and I told her that they've always had rss. She looked surprised and told me she would had them to her RSS reader (I think she uses bloglines - i just use the Google reader).
so this means that I now have a new fulltime reader, of course this means that everything I saw could be used against me, right?
- so watch me quickly delete old blog posts :-)

It's been rough this winter, so I havent had much desire to think about great posts for UU-ing. It's easier when i come home to just read a bit of email and do some reading.....

and I just know that you want to know what I've been reading? right?

VOGUES IN VILLAINY: Crime and Retribution in Ante-Bellum south Carolina (1959).
One of those books that just showed up in the house. This is somewhere between scholarly and popular history. Not dry enough for scholarly, and not lurid enough for current popularity. I didnt see any well known SC Universalist or Unitarian names. It does have another suggestion that the neighborhoods where the U and U churches were in Charleston, were less than savory. The book also tells us how much better that SC has gotten in fairness and crime in 100 years.


"the Shack" (c) 2007 William P. Young
an interesting book designed for (i guess) the more liberal
Evangelicals -where "God is presented as a loving and large black woman named
'Papa', Jesus as a laid back and friendly Middle Eastern man, and the Holy Spirit as a calm and cool Asian woman"
it almost made the trinity sensible (to me that is!), and it does explain why
evangelicals evengalize all the time even at the drop of a hat, (as if we didnt already know).
the book itself is about the murder of a small child , and
her depressed father going to the shack where she was murdered and
meeting the Trinity. With a plot like that, it would be easy to slip,
but I think it mostly succeeds. You might check the reviews on Amazon, to see if this would be your type of reading. I think it's a good view at this type of viewpoint.

I've read a stack of Jack Chick comics and tracts, and while this is also a good view of this type of viewpoint, it's a bit harder wading. Or is that too mild? Yes, I guess it is. You can go read a Chick tract on his website, if you havent had the experience.
For a while I was trying to figure out the range of some of the conspiracy theories: Mormon and Mason and Catholic and Muslim and Satanists and who else working together? However I figured it out fairly quickly. Everyone who disagrees with the author is engaged in a conspiracy to damn souls. It's a tough world we live in.

I always wanted a copy of the old socialist newspaper, APPEAL TO REASON, so I was delighted to pick up a copy for the price of a modern magazine - an issue from 1912, where the Appeal was almost up to 1/2 million weekly subscribers. this issue was an Teddy Roosevelt issue (not sure when Includes a space on the cover where the US post office refused to let them run a particular article on TR. Im still reading this, so not sure if this is pre-Bullmoose or not.

Lastly, I was reading one of my old posts on my history blog, where I comment about spam comments. At that time I mentioned that I would generally remove commercial spam, and that is when I put all comments to be moderated. I said I thought I wouldnt have to moderate more than that. Yes, I was young(er) and naive back then. For the record: since this blog is my house, I have the responsibility to keep it in what I think is reasonable shape. If you want to libel someone else, use your own blog, not mine. Thomas Jefferson is alleged to have said that "Freedom of the Press is owning one". Since almost anyone can do their own blog, I see no reason to let mine be hijacked by someone else.

I've gotten some Will Rogers films recently. You know, nice guy that he is, he never met a man he didnt like. It's been awhile since Ive seen one of his films (like decades), but I do have some old Will Rogers for President material that I enjoyed reading. I suspect that a good book of his old columns would be fun (maybe they would need to be annotated, but it would be fun." I see that the actual quote was about Trotsky and Rogers said about him "I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn't like." I can believe that, almost anyone can act likable.