Confess! Confess!

Published 20 years, 2 months past

Okay, so I can’t count.  I claimed yesterday that there were three new XFN tools, and then listed four.  Plus I missed one.  So… among our many XFN tools are rubhub; Rubhub It; Autoxfn; the MT template; Daniel Glazman‘s Nvu, which supports the editing of XFN values on links as part of the UI; and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

Based on the feedback to my question yesterday, it seems the #1 reason to link to your Amazon wish list is to help out family members who can’t seem to remember what you like whenever a birthday rolls around.  The other reason given was to provide a window into your interests, which is felt to help foster a sense of familiarity in what can sometimes seem an impersonal medium.  Fair enough.  I did something along those lines when I added the “Reading” feature (with archive) to my personal page.  Perhaps the only real difference is that I’m giving a current and backward glace at my interests, whereas the wish list link provides a forward look.

A couple of people also wrote to say that they actually have had random passers-by send them something off of the wish list, sometimes in thanks for a favor they’d done online, and that it was pretty neat.  I’m not sure I’d feel the same way, but I thought I’d pass along their feelings on the matter.

Speaking of passing things along, I promised that I’d summarize the suggestions I received regarding books presenting reasonable arguments for the conservative point of view.  Here’s the summary.

  • Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D’Souza
  • Radical Son by David Horowitz
  • The Content of Our Character by Shelby Steele
  • The Death of Right and Wrong by Tammy Bruce
  • First Principles: A Primer of Ideas for the College-Bound Student by Hugh Hewitt
  • The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man by J. Budziszewski
  • A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat by Zell Miller

I also received e-mail from liberals who had been looking at the same issue, and wanted to mention some books they thought were good.  They are:

  • Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell (for a look at both sides)
  • The 2% Solution by Matthew Miller
  • The Politics of Rich and Poor and other books by Kevin Philips

Please note that I have not read any of the books I just listed, and so am neither recommending nor condemning any of them.  Similarly, I’m passing along an unchecked recommendation for The Weekly Standard, not to be confused with The Weekly Standards.

Those of you more interested in the latter of those two links will probably also be interested in the Web Standards Awards, with three awards to be given every month.  You can submit any site for consideration, whether it be your work or someone else’s, but be sure to check the competition criteria first.  The first three winners are already listed on the site.  Check them out—there’s some great work there—and then go check out Wasabicube.  It’s elegant, lovely, and I love the current-page effect in the sidebar.  Now I want to redesign meyerweb again, except if I did it would be a ripoff of Peter’s design.  So I’d probably better refrain.

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