New Words

By George Orwell (1940)

Drupal Navigation Reloaded: Displaying Taxonomy and User Menus as Primary and Secondary links.

UPDATE: I've writing a multipart tutorial on how this was done, follow it in order:

I've put together an example theme which impliments the top navigation menu that you see in this site. I'm very strapped for time at the moment, so I hope you'll forgive the lack of detailed instructions.

However, if you have any experience with creating new drupal themes, then you should have a very easy time figuring out how it works. It doesn't require any new database tables, or modules. All that is required is php-template. For the lovely categorization that you see in this site, you'll also need the taxonomy menu module, though.

Orwell on Poetry and the Microphone

in broadcasting your audience is conjectural, but it is an audience of one. Millions may be listening, but each is listening alone, or as a member of a small group, and each has (or ought to have) the feeling that you are speaking to him individually. More than this, it is reasonable to assume that your audience is sympathetic, or at least interested, for anyone who is bored can promptly switch you off by turning a knob. But though presumably sympathetic, the audience has no power over you. It is just here that a broadcast differs from a speech or a lecture.

On the platform, as anyone used to public speaking knows, it is almost impossible not to take your tone from the audience. It is always obvious within a few minutes what they will respond to and what they will not, and in practice you are almost compelled to speak for the benefit of what you estimate as the stupidest person present, and also to ingratiate yourself by means of the ballyhoo known as “personality”. If you don’t do so, the result is always an atmosphere of frigid embarrassment. That grisly thing, a “poetry reading”, is what it is because there will always be some among the audience who are bored or all but frankly hostile and who can’t remove themselves by the simple act of turning a knob. And it is at bottom the same difficulty—the fact that a theatre audience is not a selected one—that makes it impossible to get a decent performance of Shakespeare in England. On the air these conditions do not exist. The poet feels that he is addressing people to whom poetry means something, and it is a fact that poets who are used to broadcasting can read into the microphone with a virtuosity they would not equal if they had a visible audience in front of them. The element of make-believe that enters here does not greatly matter. The point is that in the only way now possible the poet has been brought into a situation in which reading verse aloud seems a natural unembarrassing thing, a normal exchange between man and man: also he has been led to think of his work as sound rather than as a pattern on paper. By that much the reconciliation between poetry and the common man is nearer. It already exists at the poet’s end of the ether-waves, whatever may be happening at the other end.

George Orwell on Background Music

The music—and if possible it should be the same music for everybody—is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people. In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off, though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of that dreaded thing, thought. For the lights must never go out. The music must always play, Lest we should see where we are; Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the dark Who have never been happy or good.

Foucault on Rationality and Violence

"All human behavior is scheduled and programmed through rationality. There is a logic of institutions and in behavior and in political relations. In even the most violent ones there is a rationality. What is most dangerous in violence is its rationality. Of course violence itself is terrible. But the deepest root of violence and its permanence come out of the form of the rationality we use. The idea had been that if we live in the world of reason, we can get rid of violence. This is quite wrong. Between violence and rationality there is no incompatibility."

-Michael Foucault

Muppet Movie Reviews

Muppet film critics Statler and Waldorf are back, and reviewing current movies.

The Ultimate Drupal Navigation Menu

It's alive!

Look above, at the menu I have created. I have succeeded in connecting the top navigation menu to drupal's taxonomy system. You won't see why its so cool from the front page. However, click this link to this article's category, and you'll why I'm so excited: it layers itself through colored tabs along with my taxonomies' hiearchy. Best of all, its fully integrated into the drupal CMS's database so its builds itself automatically.

The end result is magnificent. Not to toot my own horn, but my method is worthy of an instructional article. I will write it that as soon as the menu is better tested and tweaked.

Films of the Strange, Beautiful, and Hypnotic

Pleix is a virtual community of digital artists based in Paris. Some of us are 3D artists, some others are musicians or graphic designers. This website is the perfect place to share our latest creations.

Governmentium: The World's Heaviest Element

Via Frank Paynter:

Berkeley just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Governmentium".

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has half as many peons, but twice as many morons.

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