Slashdot Mirror
World's Oldest Blogger Dies At 97
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that a Spanish woman who is thought to be the world's oldest blogger has died in Muxia, the northern coastal town where she was born on December 23, 1911. María Amelia López's posts, which chronicled her civil war memories, failing health, left-wing views, and cantankerous humor, attracted a global following and more than 500 readers have left tribute messages on her site after her family published a final post to announce her death. The blog began in 1995 as a gift from her grandson Daniel, with whom she lived, who had no idea what he was unleashing into cyberspace after he taught her to navigate the Internet after she pestered him to download biographies of poets and politicians. He later become her chief assistant, typing in her words as she dictated. 'Now so many people write to me that I can't hope to reply to them all, though I want to,' she explained. 'My grandson complains that he has to work as well, he can't spend all his time typing.' López said in an interview that the Internet had given her a new lease of life and in one of her last posts, published in February, she wrote; 'When I'm on the internet, I forget about my illness. The distraction is good for you — being able to communicate with people. It wakes up the brain, and gives you great strength.'" The Times adds, "Mrs Lopez became the world's oldest blogger on the death of 108-year-old Australian Oliver Riley in June 2008. The new holder of this unofficial title is unknown, although the actor Kirk Douglas, 92, who blogs regularly on his MySpace page, could be in the running. Twitter's oldest microblogger is the 104-year-old Briton Ivy Bean."
As a socialist who feels the Western world has since the mid '80s pretty much lost its sense of community, its manufacturing industry (we make nothing! do you not see why this is a long-term problem?), and its heterogeneity, I'd like to say thank you to people like her. Such individuals tend to outlive, intellectually and physically, all the greedy flag-wavers for Number One, even while constantly kicked and mocked. The world has seen many empires rise and fall, and I take faith in knowing that our current state of affairs contains no special qualities that will keep it propped up ad inf.
I've lived in post-Franco Spain, and during the 10 years after his death, the legacy of community spirit remained while the the shackles of authoritarianism had been broken.It was actually a bearable place, still carrying a class with a keen, honest work ethic, care for extended family and neighbourhood, and the desire to get together and enjoy life during free time. Then they joined the EU, they got greedy and materialistic, and the '90s gave Spain the consumer society countries as idols. Now, they're as fucked as the rest of them.
Most people today are so boring. Do you have an iPhone? Have you seen the latest Star Trek? How big is your house? Those who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union were either already at the top or had chosen to always invest in education. For while kingdoms rise and fall, anyone who has kept his brain sharp will carry himself through and always be of value to the society he finds himself in. And let us be clear - a Soviet mathematical or scientific education was nothing like the jokes you see from average modern Western first degree programmes. I learnt Russian to have the privilege of being able to read Soviet mathematics textbooks at university.
I'm sure there are other socialists, lurking here and afraid to post lest the Objectivist with his sophistry or the Libertarian of contradictions pounce on him with an army of straw men. But be proud, brothers, that you are not so lazy as to want to work only for yourself; stand tall, and know that your principles have made bearable the lives of so many. There are those who will point at Stalin or Gorbachev and say that "Communism is an evil failure", just as there are those who will point at America's economy of 2009 or interference in the Middle Esat and say "Capitalism is an evil failure" - but neither of these countries are the incarnations of an ideal, nor would an ideal ever be incarnated. What is important is that you have chosen to live your life in a principled manner, and that when you have the choice to destroy another man or to give him your hand, you choose to give him your hand.
(in b4 hand-holding is gay)
No nos moverÃn!
Or get her an operating system that doesn't allow programmers to rely on a distinction between right- and left-click and, yes, I'm talking about OS X.
Uhh, OS X does allow for right clicks and you can also use a single button mouse on Windows/Linux if the second button troubles you. Few programs require use of the second button and for those that do there's a button on a keyboard for it.