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New Scripting2 feature: Blog post sub-text!

By Dave Winer on 6/11/2010; 7:08:49 AM.

Did you see the final episode of LOST? I did. I'd love to write about it, and I will -- but be forewarned, if you click on the little plus sign next to this paragraph, there are spoilers below.

First, Jack dies. I know -- it sucks.

And Hurley became the new Jacob, and Ben was his #2. And both of them die too, but a long long time after Jack.

At the very end of the last episode, we find out that when you die you get reunited with all the people you shared the most heavy experiences with. So Jack meets up with his father, but his mother isn't there.

Jack says if he died so young (he did) and many of the rest lived long lives, how come they're all here now? Dad chuckles and says Here there is no now. Gotta love it. When you're alive you get to be in the moment. But when you die there's no such thing. I believe that's true. I figured that out when thinking about relatives who died.

But you have to be ready to make the trip. Ben wasn't ready, so he stayed behind, even though Hurley thought he could come along.

They didn't explain all the weird shit that happen, but that's part of the answer. In real life lots of weird shit happens that you don't understand and guess what -- you never find out what happened. Some people found that unsatisfying. Me, personally, I was too busy being moved by all the happy fun stuff that was happening to the characters to even care.

Now for a little humor.

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed.

The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face and the egg is frowning and looking a bit pissed off.

The egg mutters, to no-one in particular, "Well, I guess we answered THAT question!"

What will I really do with this feature?

It's another kind of linking. It's an in-line footnote. Who knows what else it is. But I reallllly like it. Can't wait to try out some more ideas I have for this.

BTW this is not the first post to use the feature.

I tested it out in a post I wrote earlier. So this is the second.

About the author

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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