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	<title>Potluck</title>
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	<link>http://potluck.com</link>
	<description>A Smorgasbord of Systemic Succulence, Dynamic Delicacies and Miscellaneous Munchies</description>
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		<title>SpinTunes 3 Wrap-Up Recommendations</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/08/22/spintunes-3-wrap-up-recommendations/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/08/22/spintunes-3-wrap-up-recommendations/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:41:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Songs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=1000</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After my first SpinTunes competition last year, I posted a lot about both my experiences going through SpinTunes and my thoughts on songwriting contests in general. This year, I knew better what to expect and so didn&#8217;t have as many thoughts along the way. I probably wouldn&#8217;t even be writing this post if it weren&#8217;t for the fact that Travis Langworthy, who runs SpinTunes, asks everyone for feedback, with particular questions as well as an open door to whatever other comments we might have. The additional comments I had to share with him don&#8217;t seem particularly private or sensitive, so I figured I may as well post it here as well. Maybe it&#8217;ll even help drum up support for some of these ideas. For the most part, I&#8217;ll just end up reiterating my recommendations from last year, though with some added insight that comes from added experience. Before moving onto to the meatiest stuff, I want to just mention briefly my thoughts on eliminations and voting systems, as well as the issue of qualification vs. judging. Increasingly difficult challenges: In a competition with eliminations instead of cumulative scoring, the contest would likely be that much more rewarding to contestants and [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/08/22/spintunes-3-wrap-up-recommendations/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Lost, Found: Finally</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/05/23/lost-found-finally/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/05/23/lost-found-finally/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 15:59:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lost Found]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mythology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paradigm Shift]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philosophy and Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology and Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=977</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If You Don&#8217;t Have Something Nice To Say&#8230; On May 23, 2010, Lost signed off with The End. Finally, the finale, after years of mystery. A few days later, one of my local libraries hosted a discussion. Someone there told of how she thought the last season&#8217;s Sideways world was real, the result of the series&#8217; characters having successfully changed history by thwarting the Oceanic plane crash that began the series and changed their lives. Then it was my turn. After I shared my take on the final episode, this other person said she could not stay. She got up and left. I hadn&#8217;t started watching the series until after the fourth season ended, catching up on the entire series-to-date in about a month. After that, I decided to blog episode by episode. With so much ground to cover once again and a fairly busy life, time wasn&#8217;t on my side, and I gave up on it indefinitely. Toward the end of the series, I wrote a few more posts and intended to write about the finale, in the service of at least getting to some of my bigger ideas. Between the finale itself and various things show-runners Damon Lindelof [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/05/23/lost-found-finally/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Global Population Speak Out 2011</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/02/01/global-population-speak-out-2011/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/02/01/global-population-speak-out-2011/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:15:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=975</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[2011 is the second consecutive year of my participation in the annual Global Population Speak Out, which strives to increase awareness of how the size and growth of Earth&#8217;s human population are fundamental drivers of the ecological crisis our planet faces. Sustainability has been a central interest of mine for my entire adult life. I wrote an award-winning masters thesis on the subject and have undertaken significant additional research on it and related subjects, from ecology and system dynamics to organizational development, psychology and more. All of this informs, both directly and indirectly, the work I&#8217;ve done over time as a writer, artist and businessperson. With proper attention to sustainability, countless other pressing issues in the world would automatically be taken care of and rendered obsolete. Without the needed attention, those other issues are merely worsened &#8212; and may become obsolete only through the extinction of the human species. A solid understanding of population dynamics is crucial to the pursuit of sustainability &#8212; and therefore to the future of people on this planet. As part of GPSO 2011, I am pledging to publicize, through updates to all my social networking accounts, the GPSO itself &#8212; Global Population Speak Out &#8212; [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2011/02/01/global-population-speak-out-2011/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Winky Yin Yang</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/12/10/winky-yin-yang/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/12/10/winky-yin-yang/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:53:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Other Projects]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=973</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Not long ago, I thought of this: Balance, harmony and positive change often seem like such serious things, but humor and lightheartedness are pretty important in a world where so much of what goes wrong is itself so serious and humorless. Thus, the Winky Yin Yang. I made a Winky Yin Yang CafePress store, where you can get shirts, sweatshirts, hats, bags and omore with the Winky Yin Yang symbol. Enjoy! CafePress is the ultimate source for holiday gift ideas like Christmas sweatshirts, personalized teddy bears or Valentine’s Day cards!]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/12/10/winky-yin-yang/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Songwriting Cycle and the Benefits of Cooperation</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/09/30/a-songwriting-cycle-and-the-benefits-of-cooperation/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/09/30/a-songwriting-cycle-and-the-benefits-of-cooperation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:08:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Songs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=968</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Edric Haleen, one of the participants in the first SpinTunes songwriting contest, decided to create a project to tide people over during the wait between SpinTunes 1 and SpinTunes 2. A number of participants from SpinTunes 1 and other past songwriting contests he&#8217;d done were invited to collaborate on A Songwriting Cycle, in which each participant created a challenge, and challenges were distributed randomly among all the participants. In this way, an album&#8217;s worth of songs would be created, with a complete cycle of challenges given and received among the songwriters. Non-competitive, just for fun. After SpinTunes 1, I wrote here about both songwriter-generated challenges as well as the possibility of non-competitive songwriting collectives. So I was glad when Edric came up with this songwriting cycle idea! I&#8217;m really pleased with how my song, Do It (Duet), came out. You can check out the song, lyrics and story behind it. And I really enjoyed participating, cooperatively, with all the other songwriters in this cycle. Contests like SpinTunes are great. The tight timeframes, competition and eliminations can be energizing. We get the excitement of challenges, the camaraderie of being involved with a number of other artists up for playing the same [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/09/30/a-songwriting-cycle-and-the-benefits-of-cooperation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Thoughts on Songwriting Contests</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/08/16/thoughts-on-songwriting-contests/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/08/16/thoughts-on-songwriting-contests/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:56:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Songs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=957</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In addition to some valuable learning about my songwriting and how to participate more effectively in songwriting contests, my SpinTunes experience led me to some general thoughts on how songwriting contests are &#8212; and could be &#8212; run. SpinTown and the others most directly involved in running SpinTunes explicitly made an effort to design the contest in a way they felt would run well and work best for everyone involved. They deserve a lot of credit for the thought put into this. A number of people, myself included, felt there were various hiccups along the way. So be it &#8212; live and learn. I have a number of thoughts that I believe would make for even more solid songwriting contest experiences. Many are relevant for SpinTunes. Some of the suggestions probably go outside of the bounds of the kind of contest SpinTunes may want to be, but most or all would probably be of interest to a lot of people associated with SpinTunes. If you&#8217;ve read some other things of mine, you know I can write a bit long. And this post is no exception! Here, though, is a quick summary, in case you want just some bullet points. I&#8217;ve [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/08/16/thoughts-on-songwriting-contests/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Highlights from My SpinTunes 1 Experience</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/08/16/highlights-from-my-spintunes-1-experience/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/08/16/highlights-from-my-spintunes-1-experience/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:55:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Biography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Non-Fiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Songs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=955</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My participation in the SpinTunes songwriting contest has come to an end. It was a valuable experience. I learned a lot and had many thoughts and insights along the way, and I met a bunch of great people, my fellow competitors in particular, a group with a lot of songwriting talent and an earnestly friendly sense of competition. To keep any potential for skewing the judging out of the mix, I didn&#8217;t want to express much while I was still in the contest. Even now I won&#8217;t express everything I could. I have nothing bad to say about the other contestants, even if I didn&#8217;t always like all of their songs. The judges also were, on the whole, respectable and helpful. Out of good sportsmanship, I won&#8217;t bother to express any subjectively negative opinions about any of the competitors&#8217; specific works, nor about much of the specifics said by the judges. What I&#8217;m sharing below are some valuable things my experience helped me learn about my songwriting and how to improve it, as well as about how to best participate in a songwriting contest like this. I also developed many more general thoughts on songwriting contests and how they are [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/08/16/highlights-from-my-spintunes-1-experience/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Lost, Found: Last Tuesday</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/19/lost-found-last-tuesday/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/19/lost-found-last-tuesday/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 May 2010 19:05:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lost Found]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mythology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paradigm Shift]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=952</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last night, the final new Tuesday episode aired. As much as it moved things forward and set up the finale, I don&#8217;t have much to say other than this: I remain pretty convinced of the general direction I posed the show taking in last week&#8217;s post and the post from the week before. For a show so much about history repeating itself, and usually to people&#8217;s detriment, the ending can only be satisfying if &#8220;the curse is broken&#8221; &#8212; i.e., if in the end nobody remains &#8220;trapped&#8221; on the island, whether as protector or Smoke-Monster-prisoner or otherwise. If anyone stays on the island at the end, it must be because they truly want to be there. Perhaps the very fact of the finale taking place on a Sunday instead of a Tuesday supports my perspective. A change is taking place. The old patterns are coming to an end. Indeed, the series ends on a traditional day of rest &#8212; a day for as many characters as possible to find a resolution to their age-old conflicts. Also, the four remaining lostaways &#8212; Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley &#8212; not only include, as I noted last week, one of the key conflicted pairs [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/19/lost-found-last-tuesday/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Lost, Found: Light at the End of the Tunnel</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/12/lost-found-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/12/lost-found-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 18:53:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cultural Evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lost Found]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mythology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paradigm Shift]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philosophy and Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology and Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Good and Evil and In Between The third from the last episode, and we start to see, literally and figuratively, a light at the end of the tunnel. And I believe more than ever in what I&#8217;ve said about Lost providing a complicated, atypical look at &#8220;good&#8221; vs. &#8220;evil.&#8221; A Woman kills the twins&#8217; Mother, apologizing to her right before smashing her face. She raises the kids as her own and lies to them about their origins, telling them they are from the island, that there is no place else in the world, that there are no other people in the world. Later, she&#8217;ll smash her &#8220;son&#8217;s&#8221; head with an apology as well, to prevent him from leaving the island, even though she needs only one successor to protect the island. She then kills all of the people in the Man in Black&#8217;s settlement after learning of their plans to leave the island. The Man in Black sees his dead Mother &#8212; sees a truth Jacob cannot. He hears what she has to say and wants to honor it. If the other people on the island are his people, he wants to be with them instead of the Woman who [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/12/lost-found-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Lost, Found: That Sinking Feeling</title>
		<link>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/05/lost-found-that-sinking-feeling/</link>
		<comments>http://potluck.com/blog/2010/05/05/lost-found-that-sinking-feeling/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 May 2010 01:56:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mark S. Meritt</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Essays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anthropology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lost Found]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mythology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Narrative Motion Picture Series]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paradigm Shift]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philosophy and Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Psychology and Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sociology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Systems Sciences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Television]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://potluck.com/?p=942</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yes, I haven&#8217;t written about Lost for ages. Yes, I&#8217;ve procrastinated across the better part of the entire series in what was intended to be episode by episode commentary. Yes, this isn&#8217;t an episode-specific commentary. Yes, I realize nobody probably even reads this or cares much about my take on the show. But here are a few words, summing up why I thought I might have had an original take, why it may have been genuinely important if I was right, how the way things are heading toward an end may seem to go against the perspective I&#8217;d had in mind, how the show can&#8217;t really be ultimately satisfying except as pure entertainment if I&#8217;m wrong &#8212; and how it still may be possible that my take my be correct. At the end of last night&#8217;s episode, The Candidate, in the preview for next week&#8217;s episode, we saw clips from earlier in the series. Locke explaining backgammon as a battle between black and white. Jacob (in white) and the Man in Black on the beach, the latter declaring how badly he wanted to see the former dead. And if that weren&#8217;t enough, there was even a title card in the [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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