WELCOME TO eplovejoy's EPINIONS HALL OF FAME AND MISCELLANY
Anyone who wants to can post advice about Epinions.com in categories relating from everything to building your Web of Trust to establishing your Epinions "personality." Despite my having been on the site only since December 2000, I've tried to toss out a few pointers for people who are just coming on board. That piece is here, but the advice boils down to: write well and have fun. Also, be patient with Epinions because the site frequently has glitches (if something is going wrong, you're almost certainly not alone) and consider joining Epinion Addicts, a free site which offers forums in which you can promote your own writing and the work of writers you admire. EA members can do a whole lot more there, including playing games and getting into discussions about Epinions and other important matters.
Finally, it pays to read the works of other writers, and some especially talented ones to start with are: * Caleo; * Grouch; * hadassahchana; * mangiotto; * mshawpyle; * NFP; * Psychovant; Sloucho; * SusanGranger; * Urbanist; and wordwalker. Perhaps the most valuable source of information about details relating to Epinions is ptiemann, who also is knowledgeable about computers, software and personal finance.
People who know what a biscuit joiner is might not appreciate amycamus' use of the category for advice about caring for such devices (appliances?) as a home for her consideration of sparkly cake decorations. But almost everyone else will appreciate the humor and insights in her very clever piece.
Roark 8's review of the Paul Simon album Graceland is a thoughtful, funny meditation on how our experiences can shape our judgments about works of art.
"People take the wrong lesson from the fact that in the old West, they hanged horse thieves." By thewasp in his review of American History X.
"... if we were to believe 20th century film and literature, there were more independent, feminist, riotous tomboys running around prior to 1920 than we have today ...." By viglime in her review of Memoirs of a Geisha.
"The day I take out a life insurance policy is the day Mastercard puts a bounty on my head." By SLOW in "Why I don't have any". SLOW also said, "Writing is tough enough without bringing ethics into it."
"When my interlocutor went on to complain about the fraternization between classes as unrealistic because the class distinctions of eighteenth-century Europe were absolutely and unforgivingly inflexible, I realized how important it is for us to dispel this notion of Bonaparte having risen through the ranks to become emperor. Obviously the success that Napoleon enjoyed as Napoleon the First was entirely contingent on the statesmanship of Napoleon the Zeroth." By Sloucho in "Lots More Than You Ever Needed to Know about the Philadelphia Opera".
EPINIONS: CONSUMERS REPORT elvisdo's advice about how to pick an Epinions personality is fascinating and . . . surreal, I suppose is a start at a description. "Visdo's Hitchhiker's Guide Into His Brain"
I've assembled my Web of Trust solely for my own use, although you are of course free to use it however you like. For me, it's a reminder of writers whose past work has contained sparks of some sort and whose future works I want to be sure not to miss.
PIECES I'M GLAD I READ There are so many brilliant writers on this site and they've each written so many worthwhile pieces that the following should be considered nothing more than an exceptionally limited introduction. Other recommendations are here.
Reviews that combine laugh-out-loud humor with insight and wisdom include:"Never Before Revealed Feature" by theeye is about baby spoons but it is worth reading even for those of us who don't plan to use such spoons in the future and can't remember when we might have used them in the past;
EPINIONS CAN BE USED FOR IMPORTANT THINGS, TOO sibhreach's "Did She Ask for It?" is a challenging piece about rape that includes information for victims about where they might find help. Reading it is worth the time, especially because sibhreach is donating all the revenue it generates to the Rape Abuse Incest National Network (RAINN). We live in a world that is smaller for women than it is for men. Reasonable fears of rape and other violence compel women to stay out of many areas and force them to employ calculations of caution that are unknown to most men. sibhreach has helped to foster understanding of this and to promote improvement.
MISCELLANY In Buffalo, New York in May 2001 there were more homicides than in any month in the city's more than 140 years. That Buffalo's most murderous month comes years after the State of New York reinstated capital punishment is stronger evidence that the death penalty does not discourage violence than any evidence available to suggest that it does.
Humans are not the only animals to have culture. I know that shouldn't come as a surprise, but it is easy to forget. An interesting overview about how humpback whales and other animals teach their cultures to their young is in the March 26, 2001 Newsweek on page 49. A fascinating Web site about chimpanzee culture is http://chimp.st-and.ac.uk/cultures.
IF THERE'S A GOD, God has a sense of humor: Election Day 1992 was Tuesday, November Third. That's an anagram for Many voted, Bush retired.
Like serendipity? Try the Random Epinionator on Sloucho's profile page. It used to work on mine, but doesn't any longer so I got rid of it. (Wouldn't it be great if we could do the same with, say, Chief Justices of the United States?)
Mathematics as gossip: "Mathematicians deal with a collection of objects--numbers, triangles, groups, fields--and ask questions like: 'What is the relationship between Objects X and Y? If X does this to Y, what will Y do back to X?' It's got plot, it's got characters, it's got relationships between them, and it's got life and emotion and passion and love and hate, a bit of everything you can find in a soap opera. On the other hand, a soap opera isn't going to get you to the moon and back. Mathematics can." Keith Devlin, dean of science at St. Mary's College in Moranga, California, and author of The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved and Why Numbers Are Like Gossip, quoted in Discover magazine, January 2001, p. 26. Discover is one of the world's most interesting magazines. It is simple, but not simplistic. Articles shed light on mysteries from the human past and raise profound questions about our collective future. Some of the information is potentially life and death stuff. For example, smokers need more vitamin C because nicotine blocks much of the nutrient from being metabolized. And some of the stuff is cool to know in just a Gee Whiz! sort of way. For example, half of the genes in a banana also are in people.
HENRY KISSINGER was the source of much of Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate reporting in The Washington Post. Leonard Garment's In Search of Deep Throat makes an entirely unconvincing case for someone else.
About the painter of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling: There is a massive reproduction of his statue of David overlooking the park in Buffalo, New York that was the site of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. The bronze lettering on the statue's base attributes the work to Michael Angelo. You gotta love a city that tries that hard, even if it sometimes falls short.
Someday I hope to deserve praise as lavish as the following: Evelyn Waugh's British publisher released Scoop by proclaiming it: "Stupendous, epoch making, intoxicating. We have published nothing like it this week."
Go to www.openmind.org/commonsense if you want to help make computers smarter. Watch Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey to see why this might not be a good idea.
Sex and plastic kitchenware: It is inspiring that some people subvert consumer culture for their own ends. Beyond that, I'm not qualified to comment on the following: Yvonne Flowers' participation in pioneering lesbian and gay activism is chronicled in Martin Duberman's Stonewall. Flowers went on to be active in the National Black Feminist Organization, Black Women for Wages for Housekeepers and the Center for Women's Development at Medgar Evers College. Flowers also established "Sweet Sensations," an organization which promotes erotic "Tupperware parties as a means for increasing women's right to sexuality."
BUMPER STICKERS AND OTHER WISDOM "After the beginning, or perhaps later ...." (from the first exhibit at Portugal's National Museum of Archaeology)
"Don't judge a book by its movie." (Buffalo & Erie County Public Library t-shirt)
"The past teaches us that mere appeals to prejudice yield no lasting victories." (Edward Lovejoy, Elijah's son)
"UFOs are real. The Air Force doesn't exist."
"Deliver me into the company of those who seek the truth. Deliver me from those who have found it."
"The trouble with karma is that it takes too long."
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." (H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulu")
"God was my co-pilot. But we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat Him."
"It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt."
"I've seen the future. I can't afford it." (ABC, "How to be a Millionaire")
"One woman's insurrection is worth a thousand erections." (Ann Nocenti, Kid Eternity #1, Vertigo Comics, May 1993)
"What the head makes cloudy, the heart makes very clear." (The Eagles, "In a New York Minute")
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice." (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail")
