Tracey and I will be celebrating our 20th anniversary (September 28) with a 7-night Hawaiian cruise around the islands. I forget where we’re supposed to be stopping, but who cares, right? Well, today I thought I’d whet my appetite for this upcoming bonafide hoot with the first of several posts over the next few months with the latest news and items of interest from the 50th state. First, a primer:
The Hawaii Channel seems to have quite a bit of cool stuff, including news and weather (including a couple of web cams to show you that there is some pretty cool weather going down in Hawaii).
You want blogs? Seems there’s a ton of ’em, but here’s a couple I found intriguing:
* Mike Hu’s Thinking Hawaii appears to be a conservative blog in a pretty liberal state. Keep up the good work, Mike!
UPDATE 5/9/06: Since Mike commented, let’s not pin him down on any particular ideology – rather, let’s just say his blog is both interesting and informative!
* Scott Crawford’s Hawaii Independence blog, which seems kinda anti-U.S. in sentiment, but he likes cats, so he can’t be all bad! 🙂
* Metroblogging Hawaii, which seems just as interesting as one of my favorite blogs Metroblogging New Orleans. From the sounds of it Honolulu’s had quite a bit of rain. (Ed. note: Boy, that sounds nice – we’re about to enter the first of several days of pollution alerts and temperatures that will hit 100 for the first time this year.)
And, finally, what would anything about Hawaii be without a link to Hawaiian music and culture? Here they tell you, among other things, how to translate your name into Hawaiian? Want to learn how? Let’s do it all together!
There are two ways to determine the Hawaiian derivation of your name. The first is to determine the meaning of your name and then find the Hawaiian word for your name’s meaning. The second, and the most common, is by through transliteration which replaces the letters in the English name with Hawaiian letters. This is not as easy since the Hawaiian language has only has twelve letters.
So here is the formula:
Replace B, F, P with P
Replace C, D, G, J, K, Q, S, T, X, Z with K
Replace H with H
Replace N with N
Replace L, R with L
Replace V, W with W
Replace Y with IVowels always remain the same. Be sure to separate all consonants with a vowel for example, Barbara would translate to PALAPALA in Hawaiian because we must insert a vowel between the “r” and “b” letters of the name.
So, this means The Great White Shank would be (I think) “Kehe Kaleak Wahike Kahank”. (I hope I got that right…). At any rate, no matter how you slice it, it means “one who plays bad golf”.
Well, that’s it for now. A hui hou kakou!
http://hawaiirepublican.blogspot.com/
The “Problem” of Information
From: http://www.goodboysnation.com/
“* Mike Hu’s Thinking Hawaii appears to be a conservative blog in a pretty liberal state. Keep up the good work, Mike! “
I’d rather be thought of as the thinking person’s blog — rather than a conservative or liberal one — implying as it does now, that one has fixed views that he desires to impose on everybody else as his political correctness. Rather, I think of my discussions as being a “looking together” through common experiences to reveal the universality of those experiences before the point of divergence that divides us into ideological camps. So I think using such terms as “conservative” or “liberal” is for each individual to determine for themselves (if they still wish to) rather than to label/categorize any other, which as you know, becomes a self-fulfilling expectation.
If I’m conservative in any sense, it is because I don’t regard my own writing and thinking “liberally” to be brilliant and readable when they are not. I leave that judgment up to each reader to determine “conservatively” — that I have passed their most rigorous tests for intelligibility and clarity.
I think that is what the best of the new media (communications) is all about, rather than the old media (control) model that is oppressive to any freedom-loving individual. It just wasn’t so obvious before because there were very few alternatives — rather than being limited only by one’s own creative capacity and initiative. Early on, many would give advice that my blog was not like everybody else’s — offering tips on how it could be like everybody else’s. Of course such people usually were protecting the status quo’s belief that the only thing anybody could do was slavishly and fawningly imitate what they were doing — as though that was the height of communications and information that they would remain in control of for perpetuity.
However, old media made the critical mistake of unionizing and creating the arbitrary rules that snuff out creativity, innovation, and initiative. So lacking any true sense of meaning and purpose, all such people can do is demand more money for even less productivity. There’s no way out of that death spiral; they have to keep the best out while keeping those who not only not produce, but discourage everyone else from making positive contributions as though they were fools since many are now in the editorial (supervisory) positions — where they can suppress all the new information they don’t understand and are overwhelmed by — thinking that is enough to make it go away.
Such people like to write about the Iraqi war as though it is the Vietnam war, and every economic shift is the coming of The Great Depression — always fighting the last war (and winning!) in their own minds. But the reality is that they’re has-beens who never were — because what they were trying to be was merely an illusion in the first place. Their entire lives were consumed in manufacturing and imposing the Unreal — rather than the universal participation of the Real that is now possible to the many — and not just the self-designated, self-appointed, self-anointed few.
They just look awfully foolish now — huffing and puffing, threatening to blow everybody else’s houses down, when everybody else is gasping, “The publisher (superintendent, professor) has no clothes!”
Comment by Mike Hu — May 9, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
Thanks for the comment and the insight, Mike. Of course you’re right – what one person sees as conservative could be considered liberal by another – they are just tags used to categorize something or another. Which is no problem, unless you allow yourself to be hemmed in one way or another simply because you see your ideology as something to hang your own hat on.
For example, someone who says “I’m a liberal (or conservative, or Democrat, or Republican, or an albatross)” because his/her grandfather was, or father was, or JFK was, or Warren G. Harding wasn’t. Whatever. People have to think for themselves, let it all hang out, and if people want to judge them, fine – let them be judged on their own merits or lack thereof, whatever they may be.
In the end, we are who we are and should be judged solely on that alone. Not everyone has all the answers or knows all the questions. As long as you’re willing to stand for something, so that everything is NOT relative – that’s just a bunch of post-modern liberalism hogwash that’s as dead as Kelsey’s nuts. There are things worth standing up and fighting for even if it simply the freedom for some – including many elected officials – to be clueless or lost in some long-dead time warp because the train left the station when they weren’t paying attention. Thanks for writing!
Comment by The Great White Shank — May 9, 2006 @ 11:16 pm
Mahalo for the link. Yes, I love cats! But I certainly don’t intend my blog to come across as anti-American, although I understand how those who aren’t really familiar with Hawaii’s history might take it that way. There are many proud Americans of all political persuasions who want to tell the truth about our country’s dishonorable history in Hawaii, and who want our country to make things right. I support Hawaii’s independence because of the values I grew up believing America stood for. As president Cleveland said at the time:
“By an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of Congress, the Government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people has been overthrown. A substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for our national character as well as the rights of the injured people requires we should endeavor to repair. […] the United States in aiming to maintain itself as one of the most enlightened of nations would do its citizens gross injustice if it applied to its international relations any other than a high standard of honor and morality. […] if a feeble but friendly state is in danger of being robbed of its independence and its sovereignty by a misuse of the name and power of the United States, the United States can not fail to vindicate its honor and its sense of justice by an earnest effort to make all possible reparation.”
Comment by Scott Crawford — May 20, 2006 @ 12:30 pm
Hi Scott –
Mahalo for the comment. I appreciate and respect the subtle differences between my characterizing your blog as “anti-American” in the context of those “pro-Hawaii” Hawaiians who see the U.S. as villain for robbing Hawaii of its sovereignty. One of the great things about blogging is the ability to connect up with so many different viewpoints and perspectives.
Without a doubt, Hawaii’s relationship with the U.S. goes back to the imperialism and quest for dominance by the Great Powers of the late 19th/early 20th century. Given their horrific performance in the butchery of the Great War, one can’t help but be filled with a distrust of power used recklessly. (For example, I believe the leaders and generals of France, England, and Germany in WWI should have been tried for war crimes in the name of humanity.) In Hawaii’s case, maybe there is a case to be made that its annexation was yet another case of misuse of power. (Of course, what remediation there might be could open a Pandora’s box for every other state or group that has grievances against being a U.S. state; just thinking about it gives me a headache.)
Not knowing much of Hawaii’s history, I believe your perspective is both important and necessary to any discussion of what the U.S. is as a “country” circa 2006 and where/how decisions rightly or wrongly made in the past may or may not be applicable to who and what we are as a nation today.
Again, I welcome your input. Thanks!
Comment by The Great White Shank — May 22, 2006 @ 12:30 am
mahalo, i appreciated your response. it is certainly a complex issue with stirs strong emotions, and it is so important to be able to share different perspectives respectfully and discuss with an open mind.
Comment by Scott Crawford — May 22, 2006 @ 1:32 am