A friend posted on the pervasive use of the "I feel" phrase over "I think" or "I know," then took it a step further.

Start listening: you will hear people say, "Well, I think..." when refering to perfectly immutable facts. I contend that this is a consequence of the rise of Pragmatism over a hundred years ago, and the widely-seeped ideas that conviction is arrogant, and that there is no such thing as truth. It is beyond the pale, now, to state a fact as a fact. That's "arrogant," you see...I see -- routinely -- people referring to facts on the order of the existence of sunshine, beginning with, "I think..."

The challenge deadline has been extended until tonight, 2359. You still have time to donate to Spirit of America.

All of the blog alliances have teamed up to reach $50,000 before the deadline. We've raised close to over $44,000 $45,000 so far, and I'm confident we can reach our goal before the day's over. Check out the marketplace to see what's being offered. Give, give, give.

(I'd make a very bad saleswoman with such a lame pitch, especially since I don't have anything to offer [she's too honest for this sort of profession --ed. Oh, quiet, you!], but I still encourage you to give what you can. So what're you waiting for?)

Update: WE MADE IT! Thanks to everybody who donated!

From Bryon, who tackled the Book of Numbers:

Count Tribes of Jacob
Argument with a donkey
God guards the marchers

What God says, He means
And what He emphasizes
He'll repeat again

Your post should include:

1. the previous book's haiku;
2. a link to the post where the previous haiku appears;
3. your book and its related haiku; and,
4. these basic instructions.

(As Eric noted in the comments, all the Bible haikus are here.)

One of the TAs for my Use of Personal Experience (UPE) class sent me this beautiful poem. Enjoy.

MY Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

By Andrew Marvell
(1621 - 1678)

Citizen Smash has a nice roundup of how each blog alliance is faring and what each is offering to lure you to give to Spirit of America. The Victory Coalition's donation page is here.

The fundraising challenge ends at 0001, Thursday, April 29. The race is on!

This says it all.

Hehe.

(Comic strip paneling via Mike Hendrix)

Hugo Schwyzer has a great post up about the curious mix of politics and religion.

I often hear a lot of complaints about the "Christian Right," but there's also something of a Progressive Christian side in the blogosphere, too. If it isn't obvious to you already, I don't believe a "Christian Right" exists, and neither does a "Christian Left." Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell do not speak for me.

There are Christians on both sides of the political aisle and they are there for individual reasons which comprise more of a corporate core. Sadly, they can get as fired up as their non-Christian colleagues and slam their opposite-leaning brethren for no other reason than they are on the other side.

Just a note: all comment sections to posts will be closed after two weeks. I'm tired of dealing with comment spammers.

Maybe I've been reading Lileks too much, and maybe it's 'cause a lot of bloggers have been using them as graphics lately, but I wanted to see if those WWII posters still linger somewhere online. With a tool like the Internet, I'd say it's hard to keep a lid on history any longer, even sixty-plus year-old history. Even thousand-year-old history.

So. Here is a collection of over 300 WWII posters at the Northwestern University Library. Here are more posters at Duke University - this collection focuses more on the United States's WWII ad campaign. I'm sure there are more sites out there, but these are the first two I stumbled across and I've been going through them all morning. Enjoy.

I don't normally do this, but it's been fun watching this side of the blogosphere lately. If you would like to help a good cause, donate to Spirit of America. Currently they have several ongoing projects that are meant to assist our armed forces in Iraq who are helping the Iraqis rebuild their lives.

This does not have to do with the political aspects of the war.
This is a cause to support our troops.

Specifically, the I Marine Expeditionary Force would like to set up seven TV stations within the Al Anbar province to combat the very biased news that Iraqis receive from folks like Al-Jazeera.

There is an ongoing fundraising campaign right now in the blogosphere that's running until 12:01 AM, Thursday April 29. You can join one of the three blog alliances which are racing to see which group can raise the most money by the end of the challenge. (Nothin' like a little competition to raise money for a good cause, eh? I'm still playing lone wolf on the blog alliances...unless one of them can convince me somehow that they're worthy of my company. Y'know, that princess thing again.)

So throw a few bucks SOA's way. It'll be worth your while.

UPDATE: I gave in to the Dark Side. I hereby declare that the Victory Coalition is going to kick butt. But that's just secondary detail, y'all - go donate before Lenore comes to get you.

The scientific study of names has always fascinated me, in an off-and-on way, since I was a teenager. I don't exactly engage in onomastics, but searching for the meaning of names (or inventing my own) is a hobby of mine. And you're talking to the girl who compiles lists of both names and surnames for fun.

Maybe you've seen the keychains that're meant to carry some sentimental value because your name is on it, but that doesn't count as much to me as the meaning often does. 'Course, my name means "princess," so for all you know, I'm just a total snob about the name thing since mine indicates royalty. (That's right, you peasants! Bow before... Oops, sorry, my projecting slipped into the open there.)

Over here, you can find a list of insightful essays on how the study of names impacts individuals and society on different levels. And in case you've forgotten the meaning of your name, you can search for it here. (And did you know that websites on parenting and babies have name search engines?) If you want to know the meaning of your last name, go here.

If you have a unique name and can't find its meaning at any of these sites, do a little research. Ask family members for help. My middle name is long and Polynesian (it's my maternal grandmother's name), and I didn't know what it meant until last year ("water") because I Googled for it and pestered my mother and other relatives until they told me. So now I suppose I'm a "water princess." A nereid. Fancy that!

David from Ripples was very kind in linking to me (and saying a lot of nice things about this blog, too), so I wanted to return the favor. I value his blog and his words because he usually posts about many interesting topics. And his pictures are fantastic!

I like to check out other people's blogrolls, so I started at Ripples and found Denny at Book of Life. This recipe for pumpkin soup made my mouth water. The pictures he's posted are also varied and beautiful. (What can I say? The photography bug has been buzzing by lately...) And I dig the fortune at the bottom of each post.

From there, I jumped to Crawford Kilian's Writing Fiction, which is like candy for the writer in me. There's no doubt that Mr. Kilian knows about the professional writer's life, and his posts are insightful. He doesn't always talk about writing, either.

Then there's Likha, by Zarina N. Docken, another writer whose posts are just as knowledgable and fun to read. Last night I finished reading Damia by Anne McCaffrey, and my favorite supporting character (as opposed to the protagonist herself) is Afra Lyon.

This is my linktrain. I may add more cars or start a new train later, but I encourage you to check out these blogs. At one time I thought there wouldn't be enough good blogs out there for me to discover and feature for the Noteworthy Site section on the left, but that was before terms like "blogosphere," "blogroll" and "fisking" had been invented. As it turns out, the blogosphere is a universe that's constantly expanding.

...over a grisly murder story. Well-known authors and other concerned individuals have protested the decision.

I've murdered characters in my stories and submitted them to writers' workshops, but I ain't into slasher fiction and I've never been reprimanded for writing about killing somebody. Maybe 'cause my stuff isn't grisly enough.

Some lessons here about what is and isn't acceptable in material where writing classes are concerned nowadays. That sounds strange but it's still true. Take heed.

(via Critical Mass)

I wish he'd hold more press conferences - it would probably do wonders for his poll numbers, but more importantly, people would get answers directly from him.

Bush's central focus, even during the Q&A session, was about the War on Terror. For the most part, his answers were pretty straightforward and honest. (I am not a member of the "Bush lied" camp, so he came across as honest to me, as honest as a president can be when asked about his own administration's policies - and sometimes they ain't honest period, they just come across as charismatic.) Now if only the members of the press had been able to come up with more original questions instead of rehashing the same ones every few minutes.

The press conference routine isn't one of the President's strong points, but he didn't do too bad tonight.

The familiar glow overhead winked like a slowly dissipating mirage. It was only part of a sky full of untouched black and silver freckles, like the kind a makeup artist would apply with eyeliner pencil for a play. As silvery as her own hair. But these freckles fell to earth and were reborn within a matter of centuries. She had lost her own freckles within a matter of months when the summer heat finally faded into the frostier fall. The sun always seemed to have that effect on her facial skin.

She gathered her legs to her chest with long arms and looked up until the back of her neck creaked in protest. She may as well have lain down on the sweet-smelling grass that surrounded her family's Holding and made it easier on herself. But she fell asleep whenever she laid down, and sitting under the stars was a better position to be in when one wanted to get lost in thought.

The tour was still on her mind, although her father had only grazed over that subject at the dinner table. She couldn't understand why, considering how much he had insisted that the tour was a mandatory Prime Heir function. Had someone told him beforehand about her "curious" exchange with the attendant?

"I've always wondered how far the stars went. They seem to go on forever."

"M'lady," he said patiently, addressing her as a child and not as a Prime's Heir, "there are more species and worlds among those 'glowflies' than you will ever know. If you can catch them, you can catch the entire universe in your hands, too."

Now the stars seemed much farther away from this level, out here on the O'uce property, away from most of familiarity. She caught a strand of hair between her fingers and idly rubbed it. The silver of her hair glinted against her cheek, caught by the amber light from the torch, silver and amber back to back, reflecting pale on her fair skin. She glanced down at the strand, blinking against the sudden dizziness that quick action provoked, before turning her gaze upward again.

One day, she vowed, even if was only for a moment, she would see the stars' silver light glint against her cheek as well.

I've also been checking out Bloglines, which requires that all links have an RSS feed. That's unfortunate because I know quite a few LJs that don't carry a feed, and Kinja managed to pick up the LJs I did input, anyway. Ah well - here's my Bloglines public profile. I can't decide which one I like better yet.

I've been fooling around with Denton & Company's latest fandangled creation, which is basically a "man-on-the-street" RSS aggregator for amateurs who don't usually care for such technical details. I had to take one link out because all the comments on that particular blog were p-linked, and then another link disappeared off the face of the blogosphere... Anyway, I only put in blogs that are updated on a defined regular basis (i.e. daily or every other day) - I'll put in more once I'm used to the thing. Here's my personal feed.

Because I was sick of having an April Fools post at the very top of my blog, and it's already April 4. Yeah.

her: Pastor Derek wants me to start a newsletter for the church and I need...
him: You're always up and gone.
her: What? >Where did that come from?< How so?
him: You used to linger and talk to me. Now you just make small talk before rushing out the door.
her: Um, what's wrong with that?
him: You need to get out more and talk to more people. You're never going to come out of your shell otherwise.
her: ...
him: Well?
her: Pastor Derek wants me to start a newsletter for the church and I might need your help.
him: Cool. Just lemme know what I need to do. >Pause< Why're you looking at me like that?
her: If I need to talk to more people, you need to shut up around them more often.

Y'all know what today is, right?

The only trick I can think of is writing a "You Owe Me A Month's Rent" Check to my landlady, and I doubt she'd appreciate it, even in the spirit of the holiday.

What's the best April Fool's trick you've ever pulled or had pulled on you?