What about registering with a foreign registrar? Is that possible? Legal? If those options aren't viable, I'm not sure what a site like ours would do. Close up shop or become criminals, I guess.
In such circumstances, one envisions the catallaxy taking care of you pretty quickly. A nation not subject to U.S. law rents server space, along with a domain, to you for a reasonable price.
I believe it's already ICANN policy that you must provice accurate WHOIS information. But your point about pseudonyms applies: it's not like anybody checks. And supplying valid information is a HUGE invitation to spammers, telemarketers and bulk mailers.
The domain registrars offer information escrow services, but those cost money. I prefer lying.
Anyway, if you're that worried about anonymity maybe you should be running unfogged as an eepsite.
I'm not very happy with the particular form of HNN's policy: like a lot of the overall site (not Cliopatria, the whole magilla) it seems to me to be in some ways weirdly archaic and maladapted to the current web environment. The policy there is a response to a truly toxic commenting environment once upon a time, when HNN really did resemble the worst Usenet group you ever might have read back in the day. I have to admit that the policy worked in that regard: the discussion threads are now decent, normal blog conversation, though they suffer because a number of people who would like to join in won't due to the policy. I'd rather just have a simple registration requirement--provide a real email at which a confirmation message can reach you and use whatever name you like, pseudo or otherwise--and a moderator who is prepared to ban and block serious trollage.
you should ignore those instances, and concentrate on the times when you get the allusion. None of us get all of the allusions that are made here. It's like Ulysses with cock jokes.
I always wanted somoeone to cry "lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!" in my direction, but it has not happened yet.
Gayly hott Fon Tanalabs came from the goodhead, bearing a bolt of pleasure and then in a nectar of torpor was lost. His aching trousersnake, unstiffened, was sustained gently before him by the fellow kneeling there. He held Fon's dong aloft and intoned:
Ineluctable Modality of the Mineshaft: At least if that, no more, penetrated into my eye-hole. Signatures of all things on which I am here to bleed, seaspawn and spur-spike, nearing the ride, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, spitpearly, greaseblack, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphragm. But he adds: in bodies.
You were meant to confuse them. Joyce was making an allusion to Vico. Though I wasn't sure quite what a vicus was. A via or street or conduit, I guess. Not, I'm thinking, a Roman British settlement. But it does look cool. And it seems, somehow, that Vicus re-enactment should be the official sport of Unfogged, rather than virtual softball.
my quote was from the opening to Proteus, Ch. 3 of Ulysses. Haven't read Vico. But that's the chapter where, if you read it five times, you realize that Stephen is walking around on the beach, and watches two whores empty out their douche bags into the sea, and all the while thinks all about his wondrous perceptive abilities.
" In the Roman Empire: a village or settlement; spec. the smallest unit of ancient Roman municipal administration, consisting of a village, part of a town, etc. Hence also used of some medieval European townships.", sez the OED.
so it's pretty clear that we should all quit our jobs and start up a vicus somewhere. The only issue is: who gets to play which roles. I think we should rotate. Slave-girl is going to be very popular.
I finished Ulysses, and think it a misfire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts. I'm reminded all the time of some callow board schoolboy, full of wits and powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him, and stern ones merely annoyed; and one hopes he'll grow out of it; but as Joyce is forty that scarcely seems likely. I have not read it carefully; and only once; and it is very obscure; so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair.
I find it hard to be patient with this topic. What's a "real name"? The one on the birth certificate? Plenty of people had those innocently changed upon childhood adoption or similar circumstances. Plenty of people changed them later. Plenty of people change them upon marriage, or simply upon whim. Legally changed, that is, casual as that comparatively is in America compared to many countries.
Meanwhile, back in the day, this argument was old and tired on Usenet in the Nineties, on Arpanet in the Eighties and Seventies, and in fanzines in the Sixties, Fifties, Forties, and the Thirties. Morojo is long dead, Bob Tucker yet lives, but, hey, every day old things are new to someone. (It's almost surprising how few death hoaxes have taken place in the blogosphere.)
All I prefer is some consistency in choosing handles, so I have some chance to build up a sense of someone's style and opinions. That, and pledging one's eternal soul to me. With a pony.
Despite never having had the faintest urge to post under any name other than the only one people have ever known me by. (Which is to say, no, I generally don't use my middle name, utterly banal though, or because, it is.)
From an article by someone calling himself Kothar Wa-Khasis. Unfortunately, the full article doesn't seem to be free on the internet:
In 1987, at age twenty-nine, James A. Hogue decided to apply to Ivy League colleges. He had already been enrolled at the University of Washington, the University of Texas, and Palo Alto High School, in that order. His name in Palo Alto was Jay Huntsman. Posing as a Stanford Ph.D., he then worked as a coach at a sports cross-training camp in Vail, Colorado. When his credentials came under scrutiny, he departed for Aspen and then Utah, apparently taking with him $20,000 worth of bicycle frames and tools. In this period, as the police were closing in on him, he invented the new identity that he would present to the Ivy League. He became Alexi Indris-Santana, ranch hand and autodidact. In his admissions essay, he wrote about his horse Good Enough. Both Brown and Princeton admitted him. He deferred his matriculation at Princeton for a year while he served time in a Utah prison.
Hogue had grasped the semiotic power of the personal name. His multicultural Russian-Indian-Hispanic name by itself filled the large, blank space of his application-the lack of a high school transcript, the missing facts, the fuzzy details, the absence of letters of recommendation, except for a note from the (nonexistent) Lazy I Ranch. Here was the ideal candidate, the son of an Indian mother and a Hispanic father (or vice versa) with perhaps also a few drops Russian blood. This man was thus worth, on the chart of diversity three other students. He was in himself what academic administrators want their student bodies as a composite to be. If there was any doubt about him, his horse's name provided the answer.
Abstract: Presents strategies in the selection of personal names for writers. Includes use of multicultural-sounding names; Preference for names which are confrontational in nature; Onomastic piggy-backing; Avoidance of British-sounding names for Americans; Orthographic glamor; Use of endearing nicknames.
What purpose would they have for this, other than to discourage anonymous whistleblowing and the like?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:53 AM
As my grandfather said, when we pried the keyboard from his cold, dead hand: "When blogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have blogs."
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:01 AM
Time for the Robert Williams Liberation Front to strike a bold blow for freedom!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:11 AM
Our Leader.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:13 AM
How does it feel to be "merely cute," Labs?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:14 AM
Hard words, Ogged. But I can't compete with your ethnic look, can I?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:24 AM
Picture eight in that series should not be.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:30 AM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:32 AM
I can't compete with your ethnic look, can I?
Not unless your name is Papadapolous, you can't. Ra Ra Sis Boom Bah, say I.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:33 AM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 11:28 AM
"Angel"?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 11:29 AM
Actually, that's apparently "Angels." But the point still holds.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 11:31 AM
What, finally, do they want?
Knows God.
What about registering with a foreign registrar? Is that possible? Legal? If those options aren't viable, I'm not sure what a site like ours would do. Close up shop or become criminals, I guess.
In such circumstances, one envisions the catallaxy taking care of you pretty quickly. A nation not subject to U.S. law rents server space, along with a domain, to you for a reasonable price.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 11:36 AM
I believe it's already ICANN policy that you must provice accurate WHOIS information. But your point about pseudonyms applies: it's not like anybody checks. And supplying valid information is a HUGE invitation to spammers, telemarketers and bulk mailers.
The domain registrars offer information escrow services, but those cost money. I prefer lying.
Anyway, if you're that worried about anonymity maybe you should be running unfogged as an eepsite.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 12:08 PM
I'm not very happy with the particular form of HNN's policy: like a lot of the overall site (not Cliopatria, the whole magilla) it seems to me to be in some ways weirdly archaic and maladapted to the current web environment. The policy there is a response to a truly toxic commenting environment once upon a time, when HNN really did resemble the worst Usenet group you ever might have read back in the day. I have to admit that the policy worked in that regard: the discussion threads are now decent, normal blog conversation, though they suffer because a number of people who would like to join in won't due to the policy. I'd rather just have a simple registration requirement--provide a real email at which a confirmation message can reach you and use whatever name you like, pseudo or otherwise--and a moderator who is prepared to ban and block serious trollage.
Posted by Timothy Burke | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 12:48 PM
Geez, I think they want an easy way to shut people up!
Totally OT - I'm off pursuing my avocation this week so commenting will be sparse.
Celebrate as you think appropriate.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:10 PM
Tripp, I sent you an email that bounced.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:13 PM
You call that a celebration?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:19 PM
You should have seen how high it bounced.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:21 PM
Was it wearing a gold hat?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:26 PM
Yes, at Chuck E. Cheese's.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:31 PM
Right over his head, LB.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:34 PM
Uh, was there an allusion there? You're right, I missed it if there was. (I'm still missing it, in fact.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:36 PM
ogged is bourne back ceaselessly against the tide of allusion. But he rows on.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:40 PM
It's the epigraph to The Great Gatsby:
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
if you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:41 PM
Thanks. Maybe I've said it before: I remember nothing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:43 PM
Cripes. I love The Great Gatsby (or so I thought), and I totally missed that one, too. Sometimes you people make feel bad about myself.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:45 PM
you should ignore those instances, and concentrate on the times when you get the allusion. None of us get all of the allusions that are made here. It's like Ulysses with cock jokes.
I always wanted somoeone to cry "lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!" in my direction, but it has not happened yet.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:50 PM
Wait, there have been *other* allusions?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:51 PM
ogged, the perfect host.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:53 PM
It's like Ulysses with cock jokes.
So, pretty much, just "like Ulysses".
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:54 PM
No one's falling for 29, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 4:56 PM
fair enough, LB. But with more of them.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 5:01 PM
you should ignore those instances, and concentrate on the times when you get the allusion. None of us get all of the allusions that are made here.
Besides, life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 5:22 PM
You know, I didn't really feel bad. It was a joke, though, apparently, not a terribly successful one.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 5:33 PM
But with more of them.
Gayly hott Fon Tanalabs came from the goodhead, bearing a bolt of pleasure and then in a nectar of torpor was lost. His aching trousersnake, unstiffened, was sustained gently before him by the fellow kneeling there. He held Fon's dong aloft and intoned:
—At-the-tay ineshaft-may
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 8:08 PM
brings us by a commodius vicus of ejaculation back to the Mineshaft and Environs.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 8:22 PM
cockjokius vicus, even.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 8:23 PM
Listen!
The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, plash and silent roar.
Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss.
You don't?
Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.
Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.
Posted by jj | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 8:48 PM
Vicus?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 8:52 PM
Ineluctable Modality of the Mineshaft: At least if that, no more, penetrated into my eye-hole. Signatures of all things on which I am here to bleed, seaspawn and spur-spike, nearing the ride, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, spitpearly, greaseblack, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphragm. But he adds: in bodies.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:11 PM
oddly, most of that I didn't have to change at all.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:16 PM
I am brief-writing again tonight. Come boys and girls! Who shall detain me from completing my dull employment tasks?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:27 PM
So, text, are we in Vico's fourth age: the chaotic?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:28 PM
I just followed that link. I hope we're in the age when we get to make some of those bronze castings.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:35 PM
I confused Vico with Vicus. Does not bode well for cogent briefing.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:36 PM
You people who have read Ulysses and Vico are in that respect objects of my admiration.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:38 PM
You were meant to confuse them. Joyce was making an allusion to Vico. Though I wasn't sure quite what a vicus was. A via or street or conduit, I guess. Not, I'm thinking, a Roman British settlement. But it does look cool. And it seems, somehow, that Vicus re-enactment should be the official sport of Unfogged, rather than virtual softball.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:40 PM
my quote was from the opening to Proteus, Ch. 3 of Ulysses. Haven't read Vico. But that's the chapter where, if you read it five times, you realize that Stephen is walking around on the beach, and watches two whores empty out their douche bags into the sea, and all the while thinks all about his wondrous perceptive abilities.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:42 PM
Vicus reenactment does look like a lot of fun. Better than civil war reenactment, and you get to fight/be barbarians.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:45 PM
Private events can involve combat in woodland environments and craft skill exchanges.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:47 PM
at least I think that's what happened. My study of Ulysses was not as they say structured.
Ok, now I seriously want to set up a Vicus tent out on the sidewalk.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:47 PM
" In the Roman Empire: a village or settlement; spec. the smallest unit of ancient Roman municipal administration, consisting of a village, part of a town, etc. Hence also used of some medieval European townships.", sez the OED.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:48 PM
Which you STOLE!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:50 PM
He stole the OED? Or a medieval township?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:51 PM
I'm not sure about the township.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:53 PM
"We do this both days to ensure that we all go home really tired. There is no better way how to learn to really handle your weapons and armour !!"
I have been wasting my life.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:55 PM
Looks like a vicus is also a road, which makes more sense in context.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:55 PM
Yeah, that's right, I stole the OED. And what are YOU gonna do about it? (Hopefully not tell OUP.)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:57 PM
John gives the slave girl, Lizzie, a little tweak (which she clearly enjoys).
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:58 PM
Best is that you have the University of Chicago hosting it. There's gotta be something in the Patriot Act to put you in Gitmo for this.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 9:59 PM
60 is a quote from the Vicus site, in case that's not obvious.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:00 PM
So check out the link in ac's 58 ... Anyone else seeing a pretty distinct cock'n'balls in downtown Rome?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:02 PM
Right before the head (aka Flavian Amphitheatre) is a temple of Venus. And the balls contain temples to Jove and Juno.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:04 PM
the Flavian Ampitheatre is what really brings it off. Well, hat's off to the Romans.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:05 PM
so it's pretty clear that we should all quit our jobs and start up a vicus somewhere. The only issue is: who gets to play which roles. I think we should rotate. Slave-girl is going to be very popular.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:07 PM
The gladiator outfits are fetching.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:10 PM
Particularly the green one.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:13 PM
and they don't restrict one's movement.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:13 PM
is that prince harry? It's more tasteful than his other costumes.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 10:15 PM
"Studly, hott" damnit. I don't know what I was thinking.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-28-05 11:54 PM
You people who have read Ulysses and Vico are in that respect objects of my admiration.
I can only accept admiration for having read the first chapter, which is not much admiration at all.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-29-05 12:04 AM
I finished Ulysses, and think it a misfire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts. I'm reminded all the time of some callow board schoolboy, full of wits and powers, but so self-conscious and egotistical that he loses his head, becomes extravagant, mannered, uproarious, ill at ease, makes kindly people feel sorry for him, and stern ones merely annoyed; and one hopes he'll grow out of it; but as Joyce is forty that scarcely seems likely. I have not read it carefully; and only once; and it is very obscure; so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair.
Posted by Virginia Woolf | Link to this comment | 06-29-05 12:44 AM
That isn't Virginia Woolf it is only someone pretending to be Virginia Woolf. Like Nicole Kidman, who didn't fool me for a second.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-29-05 3:11 AM
I'm not the least bit afraid of her.
Nicole Kidman that is.
oh cursed time gobbling, muddle headed, brief-writing tartarus.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-29-05 3:21 AM
I find it hard to be patient with this topic. What's a "real name"? The one on the birth certificate? Plenty of people had those innocently changed upon childhood adoption or similar circumstances. Plenty of people changed them later. Plenty of people change them upon marriage, or simply upon whim. Legally changed, that is, casual as that comparatively is in America compared to many countries.
Meanwhile, back in the day, this argument was old and tired on Usenet in the Nineties, on Arpanet in the Eighties and Seventies, and in fanzines in the Sixties, Fifties, Forties, and the Thirties. Morojo is long dead, Bob Tucker yet lives, but, hey, every day old things are new to someone. (It's almost surprising how few death hoaxes have taken place in the blogosphere.)
All I prefer is some consistency in choosing handles, so I have some chance to build up a sense of someone's style and opinions. That, and pledging one's eternal soul to me. With a pony.
Despite never having had the faintest urge to post under any name other than the only one people have ever known me by. (Which is to say, no, I generally don't use my middle name, utterly banal though, or because, it is.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 06-29-05 2:59 PM
From an article by someone calling himself Kothar Wa-Khasis. Unfortunately, the full article doesn't seem to be free on the internet:
Abstract: Presents strategies in the selection of personal names for writers. Includes use of multicultural-sounding names; Preference for names which are confrontational in nature; Onomastic piggy-backing; Avoidance of British-sounding names for Americans; Orthographic glamor; Use of endearing nicknames.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-29-05 3:17 PM