Toluu

Mrs. du Toit Weblog

Mrs. du Toit Weblog:

The Old GuardAugust 1 2008

One of the things I used to love about the blogosphere was the… well… the blogosphere (even before Daily Pundit coined the term).  I loved blogs.  I thoroughly enjoyed the debates you’d find all over the ‘net.  It was invigorating and satisfying, like finding a fresh-water spring after a long journey across the desert.  You could jump in to any discussion, in the way one might leap backwards into an open jump rump.  (And yes, there was a time when I loved to jump rope and I could make the dangerous backwards leap into one.) There was no such thing as comment registration, because there were so few trolls and spammers, there was no need to worry about them.

The debates were fabulous.  At Rachel’s site you could find any number of meaty discussions, often on guns or the war in Iraq.  Michele not Malkin (you remember Michele Catalano, right?) would have slumber-party open threads on a Friday night, while working herself to the bone doing good deeds and organizing money-raising campaigns for the troops.  Misha’s was great for a mud fight.  Francis and Mark would hammer out posts week after week. Dean Esmay would have a battle that would extend beyond Dean’s World

Internet FriendshipsJuly 31 2008

It’s often difficult to write about this sort of topic and limit the scope appropriately.  It’s like writing about people who are rude online: The rude folks don’t care and the polite folks get nervous that you’re talking about them.  You’ve missed the mark completely when that happens.

With that caveat, let me begin.

Kim and I have developed friendships with folks we’ve met online.  All of our Brit friends we’ve met through online channels.  The real friendship didn’t begin, however, until we met face-to-face.  There’s always a bit of a reservation about that, as you do have to keep your guard up when first meeting folks from the Intarweb, but once you’ve confirmed that the couple you’ve been talking to really is a couple (and not two 13 year old boys or grifters) it is as if you met through non-web channels. 

Keeping in contact with people all over the place has been the real benefit (from a personal life perspective) of the Intarweb.  My sister and I exchange emails all the time.  When we do see each other (generally no more than once a year) there isn’t that feeling of “a lot to catch up on” or being out of touch.  You are in touch, on a daily basis, or could be if we sent an email.  Emails are miraculous in that way.

The addition of Blackberry-style phones (web-capable) has just enhanced that capability and feeling of closeness.

I’ve been using the Intarweb for a long time.  Before

Retiring TooJuly 29 2008

As Kim announced today, we will be retiring from blogging.  I’ve taken several hiatuses from blogging, and have never posted as faithfully as he has (and I have minuscule traffic in comparison to his), but I, too, will be retiring from blogging (last day on November 30, 2008).  I will be retiring from the blogosphere completely, at least for a long time.  I may, at some future (unknown date) pop my head into the comments of other blogs, but after the retirement date, I don’t suspect I’ll be doing that for a long time either.

Even when I took breaks from my blog, I continued to be the official webmaster for all our various sites, and participated on Kim’s sites.  This will be different because I’m going to stop doing that, too:  “Tech Support” is also retiring.  Our personal blog sites will remain (kimdutoit.com, theothersideofkim.com, and this site, mrsdutoit.com), but no new content will be added (ever again).  That is a promise.  As Kim detailed, other than our three personal sites, all our other websites will be taken off the Internet by December 1, 2008.

Kim mentions in his post that this will allow him to return to his first love, which is novel writing.  I am going to return to my first love, which is caring for my family, and tinkering around the house.

I named this blog “Personal Effects” because I wanted to leave my thoughts behind for m

AestheticJuly 23 2008

Today’s word is aesthetic:  1: a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. 2: a particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight (also adj: Artistic)

I went to school at a time when we still had weekly spelling tests.  It wasn’t just about spelling, however, and part of the week’s practice involved using each of the spelling words in a sentence, so we could demonstrate that we knew what each word meant.  I remember learning the word aesthetic and being excited that there was a word that said so much about what mattered to me, so clearly.  It was all in a single word.

There are all sorts of aesthetic fads.  The one that has taken hold more recently (and held on far too long, in my opinion) is feng shui.  My objection to feng shui has nothing to do with the design approach, only that it has all sorts of hocus pocus nonsense associated with it (ditto, aromatherapy).  In a society where we pride ourselves on long abandoning such silly pseudo-science concepts such as alchemy, it seems like a backwards step to believe that chair placement will bring you riches.  I guess people really are sti

AllegoryJuly 10 2008

A great deal of literature was written in allegory (not to be confused with parables).  There were many reasons for using allegories, outside of the ability to write controversial material without having your head lopped off, and as a way to discuss something, without actually discussing it. 

The primary reasons that allegories are used is as a memory aid and as a learning aid.  Let me get the memory aid aspect over with first, because I want to focus on it as a learning aid.

Allegory as Memory Aid

Abstract concepts are difficult to explain and even more difficult to remember.  One of the most popular (and well known) allegories is the story of the little boy who cried wolf.  The story is used to teach children about the dangers of falsely crying out for help, because it will eventually lead others to stop responding to their cries.  But it also has another meaning, learned later, which is a bit more complicated (and hidden).  Its lesson is to teach that it is important to speak the truth, because if you become known for speaking falsehoods, people will stop listening to anything you say.

So a tiny little story, that can be told in a matter of minutes, has multiple messages.  It can be understood by children as a story, about the little boy getting eaten by a wolf (taken literally) that teaches