Archive - 2004

Date

December 29th

This doesn’t look like heaven

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/29/2004 - 18:03 (Check me out!)

“This doesn’t look like heaven.” That’s what Fiona said as she approached Auntie Anna’s casket at the wake the other day. We had explained to Fiona that Auntie Anna had gone to heaven. Yet, there was Auntie Anna’s body in this strange looking bed surrounded by flowers.

We told Fiona that this wasn’t heaven. That all that she was seeing was Auntie Anna’s body, which Auntie Anna didn’t need anymore. You could see the gears spinning in Fiona’s head as she tried to make sense of it all. She reached out and patted Auntie Anna’s arm. Motionless, Auntie Anna looked like a life-sized doll.

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The Best Christmas Ever

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/29/2004 - 13:29 (Check me out!)

I hate using superlatives. They are too absolute. There must always be something better. Yet this Christmas seemed like a superlative Christmas to me.

Perhaps some of it comes from the back drop. I remember studying aesthetics and learning the importance of the background, the negative space, the contrast against which the picture appears. To a certain extent, that is why the advent reflection about putting Herod back in Christmas was so appealing to me. In a wonderful world, it is too easy to lose sight of what is special around us.

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December 27th

Personal Stuff

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/27/2004 - 22:57 (Check me out!)

I feel that I need to provide my loyal readers more of an update than just a few pictures from Christmas. However, these updates will need to wait. There is a lot on my plate right now.

My wife's great-aunt, Anne Goodmaster, passed away on December 22nd. Today was the wake and tomorrow is the funeral. I need to pause, reflect, and add my words about her passing.

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December 26th

I've always wanted a smoking jacket!

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/26/2004 - 13:08 (Check me out!)

I've always wanted a smoking jacket!

Click on the picture to see a larger view, or go here to see more Christmas pictures.

I'll write more about the holidays soon.

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December 23rd

SC&A's Holiday Challenge

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/23/2004 - 23:07 (Check me out!)

Over on Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, a brilliant guest post has what has turned out to be a challenge that is harder than it first appears to be. Go out and find a blog of someone radically different from your own, and write something nice about it.

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December 22nd

Advent Reflection - Putting Herod back in Christmas

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/22/2004 - 15:19 (Check me out!)

I just received an email with a great reflection entitled: Putting Herod back into Christmas.

"Herod represents the dark side of the gospel. He reminds us that Jesus didn't enter a world of sparkly Christmas cards or a world of warm spiritual sentiment. Jesus enters a world of real pain, of serious dysfunction, a world of brokenness and political oppression."

The contrast of Herod is what brings Christmas into sharp focus. Please read the whole reflection, and have a Merry Christmas.

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Inside Connecticut Democratic Politics

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/22/2004 - 14:04 (Check me out!)

The Democratic State Central Committee in Connecticut is scheduled to meet on January 19th, 2005 to elect new officers. George Jepsen is currently the state chair. He has served well, and served as majority leader of the State Senate from my hometown of Stamford.

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December 21st

Assorted News

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/21/2004 - 17:36 (Check me out!)

Click on Read More for details about blog reviews, statistics, legal cases about the RNC demonstrations in New York, the civil rights of Muslims, and MPAA v SupraNova and what it means for Bit Torrent and Blog Torrent.

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December 20th

Tagging Events

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/20/2004 - 12:31 (Check me out!)

One of the great things in DeanSpace was the ability to load events from Dean for America into DeanSpace websites via a patched RSS feed. The folks at CivicSpace, the follow on to DeanSpace, have been looking at how this can be done in a more generalized way.

With my work with the Center for Online Investigative Research, I stumbled across the the IPTC’s EventsML. On that mailing list, was a pointer to Scott McMullan’s blog where he has an entry entitled Google/Internet Archive, Meet Mr. Event

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Are political parties obsolete?

Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/20/2004 - 11:05 (Check me out!)

(Originally published in Greater Democracy)

The Activist Tech group is organizing several interesting panels for the SXSW Interactive Conference is March 11-15. One is entitled, “Are Political Parties Obsolete?” and asks the questions, “If we can form and sustain coalitions around issues in a more distributed way, without centralized organization around ideology, do we really need political parties?”

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