2014-05-31
2014-05-29
2014-05-27
2014-05-25
漫画 Angel of the Morning
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Sorry to be late with this one!! Post something if you're upset about it!
2014-05-23
模倣子 Labels as MIAOs, man
I once visited Janis Johnson’s Native American Literature class at the University of Idaho and by way of introducing myself to the class I handed a few of the students pennies and asked them to read to me the inscription printed on them.: e pluribus unum, they read back to me. I asked them if they knew the meaning of that. Some did. My concept of the Latin phrase was one composed of many—the definitive foundation of an American value system replete with allusions to red, white and blue, purple mountain majesties, and freedom. The original meaning for this phrase has since been challenged, of course, and yes, its original intentions tailored in exclusion of brown people, and women, yet the general tone of its meaning remains fixed in the minds and hearts of America’s population and abroad; it is our foundational ideology, or as my good friend Jay posits, injected as a memetic system that we are terminally infected by.
Yes, the idea that an existing MIAO can have it's practical meaning changed, e.g., "men" = "people with penises only, no women, no blacks, no indians" changed to "men" = "humans". By doing this, all of the "rights" associated with the memetic systems built around the MIAO are automatically conferred on the new members, and it cannot be challenged or reversed or edited.
Similarly, the "gay marriage" controversy is that the MIAO of marriage has become associated with a bunch of things which non-breeders have a perfect right to, and which society benefits if they do. The memetic stickiness of the marriage MIAO is the problem.
By similar token, the "Y2K problem" was not a simple problem of idiotic short-sighted programmers just choosing six characters for a date to save space and out of convenience, e.g., October 9, 1996 = 100966, but a "data abstraction" issue. Six characters is quite enough to specify quite a lot of dates, in fact, Unix uses only 4 characters to specify every SECOND between 1970 and 2038 (the Unix Y2K -- when the world will officially end, by the way), so if you're only talking about keeping track of DAYS, then six characters is plenty, bordering on extravagant, even.
The morons that programmed the IBM dates over-specified by nailing down the meaning of these characters on top of everything else. Likewise, what the Crypto-pseudo-feminists should do (if they were ortho-feminists = really want to liberate women) is change the DICTIONARY, i.e., what the word "men" and "man" means, rather than trying to change everywhere the word is used (including in people's heads) and then the problem is automatically solved, using MIAOs. In effect, this has already been in place since the 1950s (in Stanley Kubrick's black-and-white "Lolita" with Shelley Winters and James Mason, Humbert Humbert (Mason) complements Lolita's mum (Winters) as being "quite a salesMAN" without irony). So the lability of these kinds of terms is readily seen.
This is rather the project of legal writing, by the way, i.e., to wring out any such ambiguity associated with terms in use. Lawyers are at such pains for the very reason that special terms are MIAOs and are subject to being stuck to or invoked by any number of (unintended) users, and automatically invoke the entire memetic system with which they are associated.
2014-05-22
2014-05-20
2014-05-19
Mushrooms of Moscow
Are these all different species? Can anybody identify them?
These previous two were blooming just a foot away from each other.
Japanese Class "totally doing it"
Baggage, two hens: tsuki (moon) and tsuchi (earth)
boil (niru), "totally do it"
"totally drink / eat it"
"the tea that cannot be / must be drunk"
shimau / shichau
tabenakereba naranai (it you don't eat it, it will be bad)
cure, go up (there are about four of these)
"fixing persimmons" vs. "writing it over"
many ways to cry
the many names of night
the allure / seeming of
the purpose of (sponge / tea towel story)
with the intention of
Yatsu-Ya Ghost Stories
Give somebody a chewing out
cause somebody a problem
I was caused a problem by vs. "please bother me"
"for toilet cleaning"
"the lucky sack / bag"
2014-05-18
漫画 Manga Index
| Vignette | Synopsis |
|---|---|
| The Poets of Porcadis | |
| Meet the Boys | Our heroes, Lenny & Sparky, are prowling around East Porcadis Park on what turns out to be a very strange and mysterious mission for a shadowy patron. |
| Lulu Goes to College | Their quest leads them to Porcadis University, the Department of Mythology and Crypto-Memetics, and Lulu is persuaded to become a graduate student. |
| Lulu Meets the Blue Horn People | Lulu's advisor leads her and her fellow students on a fantastical jaunt into and workshop of anthropology, biology, and ultimately memetics and memetic engineering. |
| Lulu's Internship at SCARE | Lulu's starts interning at a local company to help them transform their business processes using the memetic analysis & engineering skills she's learning at school. |
| The 2nd Coming | While waiting for her advisor to come back, Lulu once again locks horns and crosses swords with Pénélopé over points of philosophy and the bedeviling question of whether the office doughnut pool really is as fair as Lenny & Sparky think it is. |
| Schrödinger's Catachresis | Our heroes awaken to find themselves in a strange place with some strange new companions. |
| Mop & Broom Con | Lulu & Penny are taken on a study trip to the nerdy, feminist Mop & Broom Con. |
| Financial Intelligence | Upon hearing Lenny & Sparky's timeworn refrain about how broke they are, Lulu treats them to coffee (again!) and tries to teach them (and you!) her method of keeping track of her money and growing her Financial Intelligence, Financial Integrity, and ultimately (hopefully) reaching financial security. |
| Cloud of Dreams | Lulu & Lenny meet a new friend in East Porcadis Park, and they all discover that there's more going on at Lenny's place of work than meets the eye. |
| Mr. Peabody & The Mermaids | |
| A trip to the full-service Native American Bank | Honquèrelle's & Mr. Peabody's projects lead the gang on an adventure to a bank that tries to meet everyone's needs. |
| Electionville | Honquèrelle & Alexántebra use a new on-line game to try to get into office to prevent some bad trends from making it into Siren Cove. |
| Mermaid Comics and Japanese Mermaid Puns | One-frame jokes and puns. |
2014-05-16
2014-05-14
2014-05-13
2014-05-12
Japanese Class
Just Alice and me this time... (final exams?)
Last time? Machi (town). Information. Weather.
That radical (?) in Nitrogen, arrival, and room.
"It is better to say that..."
"Stopping / staying" vs. "living / inhabiting"
Opening a business
Jokes:
Rent = Hair Dye
Beauty Salon = Hospital
Ability (to fly), delivery, home delivery
"Hang in there / tough it out"
Stubborn, obstinate (shared characters)
Sufficient, "our feet stick out" -- related?
It's been a while
"Be bothered"
Engineering Writing
One that might make this make more sense is engineers' relationship to writing. This probably goes for accountants and marketers, etc., too, by the way. Some people go into engineering and science with the promise that "you shall never have to WRITE again" (whatever that means). That might be kind of a cliche' though.
One thing is pure economics. Engineers get paid a lot to write computer code, design products, etc. Writing huge tracts and spending hours editing them over and over in teams, etc., or making cute illustrations are, in cynical economic terms, a "poor use of their time".
My experience is that computer code is "under-commented" i.e., there is not much prose, not ENOUGH prose in there to explain how it works, why it was written, etc.
Why should this be? Since it's such a help to have those kinds of comments?
There is a fear of writing out there, I think. It's not to say that engineers and scientists (less for scientists, since they are in principle expected to write and publish all the time) CAN'T write, or even aren't good at it, or aren't avid consumers of good writing, but that there is going to be a consumer base consisting of other engineers and management who might look with a critical eye, invite criticism, etc., and why do that if you don't absolutely have to? Having others picking over your word choice, phraseology, grammar, punctuation, etc. -- why invite that hassle?
Creative writers, in principle, have overcome this latter issue, and don't face the former issue -- it's their job to write.
Engineers could arguably make themselves much more productive by writing comments and even by writing stories about their jobs (as I propose) but they aren't paid to do that and the perception (which may even be right) is that their time is better spent doing engineering, and engineers tend to see problems, product problems, structural problems, organizational problems as engineering problems, e.g., "just do more engineering" or "just do better engineering and it will come right", and NOT as cultural problems or problems to do with shared mythology and narrative.
Engineers tend to (in my view) see themselves as trying to solve engineering problems within the context of a given culture, and not in terms of changing that culture for a more optimal overall situation. That's perceived as a marketing or management issue, to some extent, but even that has very limited scope.
2014-05-11
2014-05-09
2014-05-07
2014-05-05
模倣子 Yes, please lecture me about my body
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2013/09/18/how-intactivists-are-ruining-the-debate-on-circumcision/
This is pretty awful -- comments are closed.
You should send to some folks we know -- it's a typical crypto-pseudo-feminist not caring about bad things that happen to men, not knowing the facts, and pontificating (grubsnarking) about the situation, minimizing it, of course, saying things are "much worse for women" and calling anybody who disagrees or points out their mistakes of facts and logic "misogynist".
I'm going to try to be less angry about all this stuff. It's still perfectly awful and disgusting, as are "rape culture" promulgators, in the spirit of working the 10th step, which I've decided I need to seriously do, probably in conjunction with my newfound sponsoring re-sponsibilities.
I'm trying to find one where they list all of the other kinds of things where "they won't remember" trauma which are NOT justified.
Can y'all help me with processing this? Please?
How can crypto-pseudo-feminists (CPFs) not see that circumcision at the very least MIGHT BE the male equivalent of a clitoridectomy? There have been detailed nerve mappings done, etc.
Men circumcised in mid-life say it's "paper or plastic"? That's a lie. That's THE big lie. In fact, they describe it like a crippling, heart-breaking severe deafness and not being able to hear the birds and the wind anymore, or not being able to hear any but the loudest and most booming instruments in a symphony any more.
While I will mention that my wife said childbirth was about as painful as "a papercut" (admittedly, one that kept happening over and over for three hours...!), but does my (mis)interpretation of one woman's off-hand comment mean that I suddenly have the right, as a man, to tell hundreds of millions of women that "Childbirth isn't painful. Quit whining!"? Let's just say that I'll get back to you after I've given birth myself, and leave my wife's comment as just one woman's (unusual) comment for now.
The "alleged horror of male circumcision"? The "circumcision debate"? Why is there even a debate? It reminds me, and I apologize for the reference, of the Nazi phrase, "The Jewish Problem", or debating about what we should do about "the Jewish Problem". What are we going to do about these purple elves who keep stealing our baloney? It's question-begging. It's strawman-like. There is nothing to debate, there IS no problem. Cutting half the skin off of the penises of millions of baby boys every year (and selling it for huge profits), killing a hundred or more each year (more than SIDS, car accidents), and causing permanent sexual dysfunction and misery, severe for thousands, for all of them, and for NO MEDICAL BENEFIT is not an answer to anything. It's just wrong. We don't have to debate it. We should not join this debate that the CPFs are trying to perpetuate. Joining it gives it legitimacy.
Intactivist women (dismissed here as "men (and some women)" are the most beautiful type of human being I can think of. They see the cold facts, they recognize the implications, and while they themselves are not directly impacted, they see that others around them are and then step in.
If my own experience as an "ortho-feminist" (and this article) is any guide, they don't get the whole recognition they deserve. I've marched, I've voted for women in corporate board elections, I've joined groups, gone to meetings, I've written and drawn, I've given countless money, I've gone to functions, shows, spoken out, supported individuals, and put my career and my social standing and my personal safety on the line time and again for the sake of women's liberation. Why? Because I'm the stupidest person on the Planet Earth? Apparently, yes. But also because, I guess, I've seen an injustice and refused to participate and had faith that it could change and tried to do what I could.
I also think that women's liberation is very likely the most important cause there is at the moment, that all else may stem from it. At the very least it is very visible and very identifiable. I have come to believe that men's liberation is very important, too, but that it will never happen WITHOUT women's lib, but also that women's lib may grind to a halt if women don't start to help men get out from under it.
And I see crypto-pseudo-feminists as not getting this, as blaming men for everything, for minimizing the horrible things that men have to put up with, and trying to dissociate that from women's plight, which I don't think can ever work.
2014-05-02
The most sexist thing EVER!
ED. 20 million men in the US have it? That's like one in five, and one in five over the whole population, including young guys?
http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=0epm5l99D6s&u=/watch%3Fv%3DdT_H08ppIs4%26feature%3Dem-subs_digest
Thanks a lot, circumcision!
I gotta post this along with the "most sexist sign ever"http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=0epm5l99D6s&u=/watch%3Fv%3DdT_H08ppIs4%26feature%3Dem-subs_digest
Thanks a lot, circumcision!
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