Some wild ideas about Religion and convergence culture.

Hartshorne and Jenkins- in Convergence Culture, Jenkins talks about communities of knowledge. In Divine Relativity, Hartshorne talks about the idea of a God for whom human experience constitutes a part of his own knowledge, and in Reality as a Social Process, he talks about the concept of the divine memory, in which all human memory is stored and sustained. I think that there is some crossover between the two, where religious communities constitute a knowledge community....

This is not quite fleshed out yet in my head. Hartshorne really describes God as though he is a backup harddrive, but in fact God is changed and takes part in these changes, so the idea of a storage facility is not right.

I still think there is an undocument parallel between fandom and Christianity, where believers find a portion of the Christian story to resonate with them and involve them in much the same way a particular story or character will involved and resonate with a fan of a certain way. I think that Christianity, particularly in the Evangelical churches, are more and more becoming the fanboys of Christ.

Comparative Media Studies at MIT- I keep thinking about it. I really, really wonder what it would be like for me to to that after I get my M.Div. It's usually funded....

Something to hold in mind.

Horse-people and Facebook

Some people apparently like horses- these include my maternal grandmother and my aunt on that side, as well as her family. I am of the opinion that there is a fair divide between horse people and myself, and this article, Things Horse People Take for Granted, seems to confirm that.

My own opinion falls in with that of Gen in Megan Whalen Turner'sThe Thief:
I hate horses. I know people who think that they are noble, graceful animals, but regardless of what a horse looks like from a distance, never forget that it is as likely to step on your foot as look at you.

I date my horse hatred to my grandmother perching me atop a restless "blue" behemoth at the tender age of 10 and expecting me to enjoy myself. I did not. I did not fall, and I was not stepped on, but nevertheless I was straddling an animal of uncertain temperament with no direct supervision and I was. not. happy.

This was compounded by my mother, on my grandmother's advice, deciding that I had the makings of "a real horsewoman" and sending me to a riding camp. More there was about mucking out stables and interacting with giant animals at close quarters for several hours than any riding. And I was never very happy about the riding, but asking me to approach the ass-end of a large herbivore and grabbing its foot between my own knees to then stab at it with a small scraping tool, just after telling me to watch out so I don't get kicked? That's not something you should tell to someone as anxious and stress-prone as me. That's just a bad fucking idea, as far as these things go, and I would not thank you now as I did not thank my mother then.

So, while I have nothing against the animals themselves so far as they are sufficiently distant from me, I am not, and shall never be, a horse person.

Real life news! In light of all the recent crap about Facebook being assholes about privacy protection, I have opted to take the following precautions:
1) set every damned thing in my profile, pictures, and posting to Friends Only, as well as limiting the things that my Friends can share after I post them.
2) removed all of my interests and hobbies and whatnot
3)removed almost all of my contact information and my address
4) changed my name, making me easy to identify once I know you and can tell you my Facebook abbreviated name, and very difficult to find based on random cruising.

I'm hoping that will be all I have to do about that, but I am keeping an eye out for other notices of Facebook being haphazard with their information.

Random Thought

The correct arrangement of charms on a Pandora bracelet will act as a key to open the gates of hell and unleash the remaining evils upon mankind. Hope escaped from the box early- you don't want to see what got left stuck inside.

This of course explains why the charms are so ugly and yet have such power over the human soul.

In other real life news, the mouse my roomie saw sometime a few weeks ago walked over to the threshold of my bedroom door, looked around, and then skittered away when I noticed him. I will be making a note to the landlord.