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Disks in Rotation: Books Lying
Open What's For Lunch? Soul-Devouring
Worry When I Grow Up:
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Friday May 3, 2002 |
| Quote
of the Day If you talk about yourself, he'll think you're boring. If you talk about others, he'll think you're a gossip. If you talk about him, he'll think you're a brilliant conversationalist. -- Linda Sunshine |
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Daily
Blog I'm good at sleeping through noise, as long as the room is dark, which comes in handy, being as there's a rather busy street about 15 feet from my bedroom, straight out the window. I'm on the 2nd floor, and there's a steep hill from the sidewalk to the apartment, so I'm not as close to the backfiring trucks and rap-music-blaring Nissan Sentras as it might sound. Anyway, I have to set my alarm clock radio to nearly max volume if I'm going to wake up, and oft times when my vampire hours are forcing me to turn the sleep into a nap, I've slept right through the hour it plays for and awakened 3 or 4 hours later, surprised to have entirely missed whatever I needed to get up for (usually work) and suspicious of whether or not the goddamn alarm went off at all. Didn't happen today, fortunately, since I made good money. However since my footsies are killing me, and I didn't get out early enough to beat traffic, I can't give the day a passing grade. Last night (when I should have been sleeping) I updated the Daily Archives page, and added a bit more description and formatting to the short listing of past blogs. This should make it easier for me to find which day I mentioned a given article or news item. And in theory if site visitors go there it'll be more useful for them, though your comfort is of secondary consideration. *bows* And for some news: • Here's the news report you're least likely to hear mentioned by any drug companies. • News of the Australian WWI soldier who took an enemy head home as a souvenir has been popular the last few days, but this version of the story on has a cool photo of the desiccated skull. Don't click if dead things freak you out. • The thong-check story (see yesterday's essay) continues to be the biggest news on earth. Tons of follow up articles today, but there's nothing new to say, and no photos of underaged girls in skimpy underwear. At least not on the news reports. Here are some naked women in Korea though, just so you'll know I care. Oh, and a big sexual looking flower thing too. News:
It's the well-endowed Fat Bastard of the plant world, basically. On the thong thing, news about it here and here, and it boils down to basically the Vice Principle is on leave while her superiors hope this thing blows over and they don't have to fire her. Reports are she's a real hard case about the dress code and other rules (surprise surprise), but she apparently does a lot of nice programs and helps students individually as well. Obviously she feels that teen sexuality is a dangerous thing, and that it's important girls aren't spinning around in short skirs with thongs on. Her method of investigating and enforcing this was pretty suspect though. • Prince Phillip is pretty wacky. Some quotes of his in this article.
• This is a dumb picture and news item, but I can't resist. One of the most popular shots on Yahoo the last few days has been this one.
She doesn't look anything special to me, really. Ugly outfit on, and just raggedy jeans that don't really do much to promote her most valuable asset. Isn't naming a sub-18 y/o this sort of child pornography? Perhaps younger age of consent in the UK than US. • And just because I find them funny, here are the top 5 search strings for May thus far. I don't even know what these are, they only just appeared recently on the stats, after not showing up at all during March and only the last couple of days of April. I don't have a search feature on this site, so it's some sort of a remote search, but why they are listed in a separate table on the stats, and not in with the top referrers, where the odd Yahoo searches I listed a few days ago, is unknown. •
iran peeing photo |
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Read the whole thing if you are interested, the quote here is only a small portion of the argument. It's an interesting concept, though enormously over-generalizing, in typical American/Western fashion. Let's reduce the goals, thoughts, and desires of a billion people to a primitive, feudal, insecure mindset. Some cultures are changed from without through war, most are changed from within by individuals. No one invaded the US and forced us to treat blacks and women as full humans, able to vote and own property and pursue liberty and justice. The mindset and societal attitudes changed over time, lead by a few key individuals. I see a strong parallel to the frequently-demonstrated way that new scientific theories come to be majority views; that the old guard dies off, and the younger scientists who were more open to new ideas come into their prime and embrace the new paradigms. In other words, people don't change much, they just get old and die off, while younger people come up with the new ideas in their heads from the beginning. Conceptual evolution is the same as physical change through evolution, in that individuals don't change, populations do, over time, as older models/mindsets die off or retire, clearing the way for major changes. Mindsets are much more malleable than physical anatomy, and can change over time, but try to get your grandparents to like rap music, or approve of inter-racial marriage. They are just hardwired to how things were in the 30's or 40's or 50's, and though they might want to overcome it, they're unable to really open their minds. We'll be the same way in 30 or 40 years, wondering what the hell kids are wearing these days, and what their goddawful music is. (Actually I've been wondering that since I was about 24, but don't mind me.) As I was thinking about this whole changing Islam blog topic today, and preparing to write something up on it tonight, I happened to see this shot, from the most popular pictures on Yahoo. It's from Iran, supposedly the biggest terrorist sponsor on earth, but also a country that's got a much more moderate and wordly younger class, who are pushing against the restrictions the older ruling class and priesthood imposes on them.
The women shown aren't exactly Britney Spears back up dancers, but they're wearing slacks and dresses, form-fitting clothing, faces and hair are uncovered, etc. It could easily be a shot from a NY restaurant. I'm not saying this means they won't have another revolution, or that the mullahs won't crack down violently on women not wearing veils and burkas and such. The Islamic Revolution in Iran was mostly fueled by the younger people, from my understanding of it. I'm just pointing out that it's overly-simplistic to portray 1/5 of the world's population as identical, honor-shame victims, that can only be shocked out of their primitive mindset by military action. That seems to me to be a rather wild hypothesis, one that's attempting to be self-serving in providing motivation for military actions that may well escalate into WW3, or at least do nothing but make much of the world hate and fear Western culture even more than they do now. On a related topic, the adults in charge of various Arab countries now are just out of control. Oddly enough, it seems to be almost entirely our supposed allies. Egyptian ambassadors making outrageous comments, Saudi and Egyptian papers printing Jewish cannibalism recipes, and today this. An Egyptian paper has published a psychological analysis of Dubya, and part of it is quoted here. It starts off pretty funny, in an insulting way:
However it turns to crap quickly enough, with a lot of name-calling in an attack on basically everything about Israeli policy. All valid things to criticize, but when it's done with "stupid" in every sentence, it's 5th grade playground taunting, not psychological or political analysis. |
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