Let's Just Say Hors d'Oeuvres

Boingboing guest blogger Paul Spinrad is Projects Editor for MAKE magazine. He enjoyed everyone's attention enormously.

Guestblogging for Boingboing has been a real treat-- I always love the discussions here, and as anticipated, I learned and will continue to learn a lot from this opportunity. Thank you!

If you're interested, check out my website Premises, Premises, devoted to one-paragraph descriptions of new business ideas and inventions. I haven't updated it in a while and need to re-do it using all the great free online community tools available now, but I think many of the ideas there have real potential. Others are just for grins, and most are somewhere in between. Deciding which is which is left as an exercise for the reader. It also lists other "ideas sites" -- which is a genre I love and have been following, although it has yet to succeed as a frame.

FWIW, with this post about atheism I apologize to any atheists who thought I was saying they should shut up or be untrue to their beliefs-- that's not what I wanted to say! I am an atheist myself, by Greta Christina's definition of certain enough although I've always been fascinated and inspired by religion. I like these quotes:

"Religions fulfill deep-seated psychological needs for people, and if you don't get it from a specific religious doctrine, you'll get it from the kind of films I like to make. A film like The Terminator is consciously meant to give a sense of empowerment to the individual."
--James Cameron, American Film, July 1991

"We think heaven on earth is a real possibility. There are resources enough to create it. And people are intelligent enough to advance it. Now all that remains is to market it."
--Olivier Toscani, (media director of Benetton), Colors #12

Thanks also to Mark F. and all of the other boingers for their help and support-- and I'll see you on the boards! I will leave with another favorite quote, from Flaubert, which I got from my father (it's originally from Madame Bovary):

"Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity."

Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by Cowicide, March 9, 2009 2:18 AM

Human language is like a crack

#2 posted by Feliz, March 9, 2009 2:37 AM

Some kind soul should make Mr. Friedman a website that's suitable to the respect he commands...

#3 posted by ridl, March 9, 2009 4:28 AM

Premises link is broken.

Thanks for all the posts - you sparked some great discussions, Paul. Cheers.

#4 posted by Beanolini, March 9, 2009 4:38 AM

"La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles."

Is James Cameron trying to say that he's "bigger than Jesus"? Is Olivier Toscani proposing immanentizing the Eschaton?

#5 posted by 4thAce, March 9, 2009 6:02 AM

I think of this place as the Large Hardhead Collider on the Web.

The Premises Premises site.

#6 posted by Zan, March 9, 2009 7:34 AM

Nice "Fernwood 2 Night" reference w/ the title. Am I the only one that got that without googling?

#7 posted by Ryan David Jahn, March 9, 2009 8:16 AM

I dig that you just throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. It's been fun to read your posts, even when I disagreed with their premises, their conclusions, or both.

#8 posted by FoetusNail, March 9, 2009 8:48 AM

Thanks. Still enjoy reading your Re-Engineering Fundamentalism post.

#9 posted by Talia, March 9, 2009 11:22 AM

Thanks for your posts, i enjoyed most of them quite a bit.

#10 posted by Patrick Dodds , March 9, 2009 11:40 AM

Thanks for the posts, particularly the atheism one - I'd not heard arguments such as those you put forward previously and it was interesting to be made to think and have some of my ideas challenged.

#11 posted by Lauren O, March 9, 2009 1:33 PM

I didn't agree with a lot of what you had to say, but a lot of it was also quite fascinating. I really appreciate that you never got arrogant or defensive when people disagreed with you; I think it takes a lot of courage to do that. Thanks for the stint!

#12 posted by pspinrad, March 9, 2009 8:21 PM

Thanks very much! The pleasure was mine!

Paul