lurkin' 9 to 5

This morning's Post-Gazette Forum section featured a few things of interest, front-and-center being a reprint of an article from the Washington Post by David Vise, whose new book on Google is coming out soon. While his angle on the matter is perhaps not in line with mine (I couldn't care less about the "business status quo") he makes some good points about the way in which Google treats its workers and gathers personal information about people (although I certainly didn't have to give anyone a cell phone number to get a gmail account; if I did, they'd be out of luck). So, recommended reading: What lurks in the soul of Google?

(Duly Noted Irony #1: I of course used Google to track down the full text of the article. Duly Noted Irony #2: Once you click the link to the Post site, you have to contend with a number of ads, including one of those ones that pops up in the window but in front of the text you're trying to read. What lurks in YOUR soul, Wash Post?)

Most of my holiday weekend was spent with Julia Kristeva, if only in a figurative sense (sigh). I'm stoked to finally be delving into Revolution in Poetic Language, as I've been familiar with the general jist of it for a while but have been too intimidated to try to actually tackle it. I don't have a background in a lot of the seemingly prerequisite stuff (phenomenology, Saussure, Husserl, even Hegel), and I don't even know where to start with all that (or if I could handle it), but I'm pleased to report that in between slogging through entire chapters of near-gibberish, I occasionally (and with increasing frequency) hit an important paragraph and basically get what she's saying. Congratulations to me.

Otherwise, a lot of family, and friends, and Apples to Apples, and apple pie, and relaxing. I watched the History Channel and the Match Game 1979 and Book TV on CSPAN-2 and wished a little that I had cable at my house. Now back to important things. I guess.