From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

I’m putting this up here so that I can easily find it. It’s a link to a post by Dave Snowden (author of Cognitive Edge): he’s found something really good.

If you like cats, you must look at this…

I like this one:

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in
danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a
speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time,
he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no
interest in its forests but to cut them down!

*** Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) American Author ***

A lot of blogger people seem to have been disappointed by the election result.

Over on Twenty Major, and even here and here, you can find many people saying things like

‘you have no right to complain in future…
‘you have let yourselves down…

and many have used hyperbolic language to express their emotions.

In the blogging world, “a lot” and “many” translates into a tiny minority of early adopters of new technology: in other words, complaining bloggers are miles away from being representative of the average point of view.

Often when people are disappointed, even frustrated and angry, they strike out and attack others. It’s a human trait, a habit, a bad habit in my view.

I used to be a conscientious objector to voting.

Then I was a Marxist revolutionary who regarded parliamentary politics as ‘bourgeois’, designed to oppress the working class. I remember pouring scorn on the whole system. I certainly felt that I had the right to complain even though I hadn’t voted.

I still feel that people who don’t vote are fully entitled to complain about what elected representatives do.

I strongly defend the ‘right’ of everyone to complain, no matter who they voted for.

Without complaints there is no engine for change in the body politic.

Even if FG&L had been elected, and FF ousted, we would have needed complainers.

One complainer denying others the right to complain, that makes me smile.

I’ve been a bit guilty of doing that myself: I was so incensed at the dirty water in Galway that I struck out at the people there. I said I wouldn’t talk to any Galway person who re-elected the last shower. (Sorry, couldn’t resist that one…)