Pocket Full of Words

I just finished posting the final lesson and technique for the Think Sideways course. I’ll be adding bonuses, and going back through and revising the existing lessons based on the errata pages my students have been doing for me, but in spite of the holidays, I hit that final deadline.

Haven’t been around here, but that’s why. Holidays. Deadline. Tough combo.

Going to go sleep for a day or two.

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The writer of this is Quaker (I used to be) and a visiting scholar at Yale Divinity School. My personal take on any religion is “no, thanks,” but I am a firm supporter of freedom of religion. And of tolerance, defined as follows: I will tolerate you, your quirks, and your beliefs, if you will tolerate me, my quirks, and my beliefs, and if nothing you do imposes on the rights of others to life, liberty, and the pursuit of lawful happiness. I, in my part, will not impose on your right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of lawful happiness.

I will not pretend to be someone I’m not in order to have you like me under false pretenses. I ask that you return the favor.

And I don’t tolerate child molesters, rapists, murderers, or factions of religions whose only happiness can be achieved if I am subsumed into their religion, or killed for not joining.

This is, I think, a reasonable definition of tolerance. It may not be perfect, but neither am I.

And with that thought, I give you Sarah Ruden writing for the Wall Street Journal on Yale’s Christian/Muslim Reconciliation Conference.

Some of what she had to say made me think of Talyn. Some of it made me think of Hawkspar.

Thanks to Jim for the link.

Tags : freedom of religion, Hawkspar, personal freedom, Talyn, tolerance

I’ve put up a notification page here: http://hollylisle.net

I’m not sure what form the contest will take, but my editor says my publisher wants to work with me on it, so I’m thinking we’ll do something. I hope it’ll be something even better than what I had in mind.

If you want to be notified when I get things going, add your e-mail to the list.

As for why, I don’t know. I don’t have the details yet. There were apparently legal issues or legal ramifications or legal somethings with something related to something. As is usual with any thing that involves the word “legal.” When requested to, I pulled the page. When I find out the details, I’ll pass on what I can.

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Whatever sort of contest I can have to promote my books, it can’t be that sort. {sigh} My publisher put the kibosh on the video contest. So. I’ll come up with something else.

But not today.

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Who’d have thought we could have skipped the whole mortgage-loan, credit-crunch fiasco if people still studied history?

Tacitus is on my nightstand in my to-be-read pile. He just got moved way up the priority list.

Thanks to Jim Woosley for the link, and for my introduction to a weblog that is now added to my Recommended Reads: Fourmilog: None Dare Call It Reason

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This is a contest for everyone, basically. If you can legally enter the contest where you live, and if you have a PayPal account (or your parents will accept prizes at theirs), you can play. You can even play if you don’t qualify—you just can’t win.

All the details are on my new site:

HollyLisle.NET

Tags : Holly Lisle, Movie Trailers, Video Contest

I have made the full versions of the How To Think Sideways movies for Month One, Two, Four, Five, and Six publicly available. Month Three is a private discussion between me and my students, and will not be made available. The rest, however, you can now post to your website, download to your iPod, or recommend to friends. If you want to do this, this is the link to my Holly Lisle On Writing show page.

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I hate every Wordpress theme I try. All of them. I hated the ones I was using because they were cluttered and ugly, and I hate these because every single one of them has some issue of being ugly, or being difficult to use, or doing idiotic things with font faces.

I hate this theme, and I’m not happy with the main site look, but I don’t have time to do a redesign. I have to do lessons.

I want to do something beautiful, low-tech, low-bandwidth, well-optimized, that won’t screw up my existing links.

{screams quietly}

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I have redone my site’s front page.

Take a look at the redone front page here.

• Does this help you use the site?
• Does it simplify finding what you were looking for?
• Does it let you know I have resources available that you did not realize were there?
• Does it save you time?
• Is everything clear and understandable?
• Is everything easy to use?

I would really appreciate comments.

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Via my friend Brian Cansler, a site that is pure evil if you’re trying to get any work done. But utterly cool.

http://onesentence.org

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