Friday Ephemera
Careful, children. It smells like human. // Tweet of note. (h/t, Damian) // Nosulus Rift. // HDR rocket test. // He wants all the oranges. // Puny Godzilla. // Keep very still. Their vision is based on movement. // A Firing Line compilation. // Kings Road punks, 1978. // Kings Road punks and New Romantics, 1981. // Classical mash-up. // At last, a rotating house. // Jihad interrupted. // The effects of Aliens. // Arrival. // His charcoal drawings are better than yours. // Hardcore victimology: “The idea of health is ableist.” (h/t, Julia) // Face for the paranoid. // And finally, uncannily, a stroboscopic picture frame of note.
You may have noticed that I am a pessimist.
Any honest observer of human society throughout the ages sees that entropy is inevitable in all spheres.
Say it ain’t so, Milo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrGnX-7lTmw
Each new volume provides more ways to evade responsibility for one’s conduct.
Indeed – it has become the Diagnosis Shirking Manual. That grad school you mentioned – would it have been in a large yellowish building ?
That grad school you mentioned – would it have been in a large yellowish building?
The grad school was off-white. The professional school was red brick, paid for by the parents of a former student who died in the Argonne in WWI, for whom the building was named. The year after I graduated from the latter, the professional school moved to rather posh new digs paid for by a professional firm in a “large Midwestern city.”*
*That paragraph sounds like the introduction to a Penthouse Letter. My apologies.
[ Fixes italics overflow. Decides it’s time for wine. ]
That paragraph sounds like the introduction to a Penthouse Letter.
I don’t know, it sounds sort of Dickensian (no that is not a pun).
That paragraph sounds like the introduction to a Penthouse Letter
I could actually see that as the opening sentence of any number of interesting stories. Setting the scene for a detective/thriller, or action/adventure piece. If the next sentence were to mention a series of mysterious and grisly murders it would not be out of place in the Monster Hunter series.
That paragraph sounds like the introduction to a Penthouse Letter.
I learn so much from these threads.
I present this, from long time friend of this blog Mistress Penny, without comment:
https://mobile.twitter.com/PennyRed/status/766715578946035712
“You may have noticed that I am a pessimist.”
Then you’ll enjoy this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uses-Pessimism-Danger-False-Hope/dp/1848872011
I present this, from long time friend of this blog Mistress Penny…
Please define, “…more conventionally attractive…”. Given the baseline, to reach anything resembling “conventional” is a might steep hill for her.
“It happened because I got into exercise, quit smoking and my skin cleared up. I’m happy to be healthier. There are unexpected downsides”
Somebody should call her out for being ableist.
It’s as if Ridley Scott’s Alien had never happened.
Oh, just slightly. And rather a long list of other movies as well.
Unfortunately for Aliens, that statement also has the additional slightly comical side effect of making the marketing for Caligula look mildly anemic.
making the marketing for Caligula look mildly anaemic.
“The combined talents of cinematic giants Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, John Cielcud and Shakespearean actress Helen Mirren, along with an acclaimed international cast and a bevy of beautiful penthouse pets, make this unique historical drama a master-work of the screen.”
Positively reeks of class.
Another recommendation for Canticle, and a pointer to George Stewart’s Earth Abides (which I keep thinking about these days because WW-III is precipitated by an accidental US air-air missile hit on the Syrian port of Latakia; Syria being a Soviet client state in the novel, written in 1949.)
damn, sorry, that reference about WW-III was to the book Alas Babylon (which is also good).
In Earth Abides mankind’s doom comes from an unknown but probably plague-like source, which the protagonist and a few others escape.
we’re supposed to nod along to the idea that the young are clever and the old stupid these days.
And just the other day on NPR or KQED (San Francisco) was some “educator” extolling the latest fad at his school, which apparently was a big success at making sure the curricula content and class processes accorded with the wishes of the students (method of ascertaining those wishes not stated). Said students were ages 12-14 years, and apparently were better informed on those subjects than the local tax-paid professionals.
To quote from one of my favorite flicks (Get Shorty)
“So what the fuck do I need you for?”
David, in reference to Hedgehog’s remark about the henchlesbians, I got in here without any sneaking, and in fact my first sight of the HL was a sighting of the whole squad lounging by the pool (the little upstairs pool, not the competition pool). They had been drinking.
Just thought you should know…
It happened because I got into exercise, quit smoking and my skin cleared up. I’m happy to be healthier. There are unexpected downsides”
Is nothing sacred? I fear PennyRed is in the not-too-distant future going to settle down for a life of marital bliss, complete with the detached home with a 2-car garage and the white picket fence (or whatever the British equivalent is – a shrubbery?) and 2 healthy kids, both of them above average, like everybody else in Lake Wobegon.
Then you’ll enjoy this
Ah yes. Roger Scruton, of course. Thank you.
Soon I will need to build an addition to my library.
Fred, since you know your way around these parts better than I do, can we meet up in the future before we enter these hallowed premises so you can guide me past the henchlesbians without loss of life and limb on my part? Be the Virgil to my Dante, as it were? Thank you. I’ll spring for the wine.
Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz
See, also, the not exactly a sequel that takes place in parallel, sort of near the middle of Canticle
Hedge (Can I call you Hedge?),
Not a great idea, I’m afraid. I got in here because I took the second left off 395 instead of the 3rd left, and it was dark, and I may have been imbibing, and when my key didn’t fit the door I climbed in the window like usual, and went down to the basement room (not wanting to wake the wife) and only when the automatic lights came on at 0500 did I discover I had been sleeping next to the anacondas.
But I do like wine…
(Can we skip the whole Circles Of Hell thing and just hang out by the upstairs pool? Assuming I can find it again?)
Say there, Fred, shall I have my batman bring you around some of those red and green pills you were recommending to me yesterday ?
Fred: Yes, of course you can call me Hedge. Not sure why a hedgehog is called a hedgehog anyway. Nothing to do with a hog hog, really. Not even in the same taxonomic family. English is a strange language. But I digress. I just finished my dinner (Porterhouse steak, au poivre, and fries, with a 2004 Cabernet, if you must know; I’m nursing a Cognac right now) so I may be a bit garrulous. But never mind. I’ll bring the wine anyway, especially if you can find the upstairs pool again. I’ve always wanted to hang out by a pool surrounded by a bevy of henchlesbians. It is a bevy, right? A gaggle sounds odd. A pride? No. Too tendentious. How about a mob of henchlesbians? An implausibility of henchlesbians? No, no, that’s a bunch of gnus. In my case it’s usually been a battery of henchlesbians, but we’re trying to change that. I’m sticking with bevy. The power of thinking positively.
Be the Virgil to my Dante, as it were?
Out of sheer mulish stubbornness, I’m about to read the entire “Gender in the Substance of Chemistry, Part 1: The Ideal Gas”.
Pray for my safe return.
Health may be ableist, but check out all the other things that ‘require’ trigger warnings at Melbourne’s La Trobe University – https://twitter.com/pleasedontatme/status/766530923512803328
If I might put a word in for the deaf…While I totally agree in regard to the anti-outrage to the outrage above and do not in any way condone the desire of some to bring a child into this world with the willful intention that it be deaf, I do try to understand where the deaf themselves are coming from. Or at least the source of their adamant attitude. I have a friend who is blind whose wife in the past worked with various disabled people. The deaf were quite the challenge. I can’t point you to any hard sources as I haven’t done the research myself, but in discussion with my friend he related that there is a deep psychological barrier that those who are deaf from birth suffer from. It seems counter intuitive in our sight-oriented human existence, but if you consider what life is like for an infant that has no option but to remain in its crib with only the input of that room you can start to understand how incredibly more isolating such an existence is. It is occurring at a stage in mental development where the brain craves stimulus. And yet for the vast majority of infants, especially those up until the last decade or so, the parents generally had no idea the child was deaf. A blind infant does have somewhat similar disadvantages, however the blind child, assuming normal hearing, will pick up varying mental stimulus from the changing ambient sounds. The deaf infant will only get input from those moments when he/she is visually/actively engaged with the parent. For the most part, lying in a crib for hours at a time, nothing much changes. For the most part, nothing in a room is likely to change or move and even if it does, without the sound to attract attention, it likely will be missed. Other factors regarding the cooing and such of a mother’s voice have significant impact. The ability to communicate is delayed much longer for the deaf vs. the blind. I’m certainly not well qualified to get into these psychological details and such but it was an aspect of deafness that I didn’t understand before and to some extent explains, to me anyway, some of the more obstinate nature of at least some slice of deaf culture. I’m tempted to segue into a rant about the French at this point, but I’m just not making the connection right now…but damn, I sense it’s out there somewhere…
Oh, and it’s a bench of henchlesbians. It just has to be.
Also, Godspeed Fred the Fourth.
“Gender in the Substance of Chemistry, Part 1: The Ideal Gas”.
Ideal Gas! I can see that that would be ableist. Maybe even idealist. Oh wait.
Hal: Oh yeah, Inferno,one of my favorite guilty pleasures.
Hedge: I liked “bevy” but you’ve got to admit that wtp’s “bench” is a winner.
So yeah, I’m back.
It was not as amusing as I had hoped, rather, typical of a style of argument I used to indulge in myself when writing for my Rhetoric courses at Uni, i.e. misunderstanding System A in order to advance it as an analogue for System B. I used to do the “misunderstanding” part on purpose, but I think Ms. Kovacs may be doing it by accident.
It does not start well – from the abstract, we have:
“I argue that it is possible to imagine a theory that utilizes different philosophical ideas and which therefore would be more compatible with feminist values.”
A feeble rhetorical device which is actually a nullity, but which is also her lofty goal.
Then right away we have question-begging about inequality:
“When looking for gender ideology in the substance of chemistry (in chemical theory, that is), I am looking for
general metaphysical principles which serve as the conceptual foundation for the scientific theory in question, and which, in other contexts, constitute the philosophical foundations of a worldview that legitimates gender inequality.”
“The first chapter of Atkins’ Physical Chemistry is titled “The properties of gases” (Atkins & de Paula 2006, pp. 3-14).”
Can I be forgiven for thinking that she wasn’t capable of getting past chapter 1, and so elected to do her analysis there?
The bulk of the first 2/3 of the paper are quotes or summaries from Atkins text, which I suppose alleviates the burden of making her own argument.
Speaking of “ideal” and “perfect” gas and solution models,
Kovacs writes:
“Not only is the basis of ideality the same as with ideal gases, but its status is similarly valorized as well. If real gases are treated as imperfect copies of the ideal gas, then real solutions are treated as imperfect copies of the ideal solution.”
Kovacs inserts “valorized” and her own value-laden phrase “imperfect copies” (not in Atkins’ text) and hopes the reader will not notice.
“The possibility of being non-ideal on more than one account introduces a further gradation on the scale of perfection-imperfection: mixtures with zero excess entropy and non-zero excess enthalpy are called “regular solutions” “
Kovacs invents the notion of the “scale of perfection-imperfection”, with “gradations”. It is not in the text.
Ah, here is the nut of her complaint, I think. It’s really all about her issues with “second wave” feminism, and the futility of the fully atomized view of people she imputes to third-wave feminism, Science is just an excuse:
“The problem with the prominent figures of second-wave feminist theory is not that they postulated some kind of essence of womanhood, but rather, that they abstracted this essence from the lives of white, middle-class, heterosexual women. As in the ideal gas model, the problem is not with generalization per se, but rather with the misfit between the basis of generalization and the intended scope of its validity.
More invention by Kovacs of hierarchy:
“Clearly, forms of matter are understood here as stages on a scale of perfection-imperfection, with the perfect gas on the top, real/actual gases in the middle, and liquids at the bottom. The perfect gas is the standard to which other forms of matter are compared. The hierarchy of states of matter is based on the extent to which these states resemble the ideal gas. Thus the theory of matter in Atkins is a theory of inferiority.”
which she does not justify in any way from Atkins’ text, nor does it match any scientific description I ever heard.
And then, thankfully near the end, we have the non sequitor:
“For although liberalism declares that each and every
individual should have certain rights and freedoms, these rights are in fact not universalizable, as their attainability for some depends on their unattainability for others.”
…AND we are done. Modern scholarship at its finest.
Farnsworth: Thanks for the medicinal offer, but are implying that I IMAGINED those anacondas?
I think not, and I have the fang marks to prove it.
When I finished Kovacs’ paper, my first thought was that someone should take her gently aside and tell her a few jokes involving perfect spherical racehorses.
…these rights are in fact not universalizable, as their attainability for some depends on their unattainability for others.”
Is there nothing these pompous nitwits can’t force into the “zero sum game” fallacy?
. . . i.e. misunderstanding System A in order to advance it as an analogue for System B.
Sooo, in short, Reducto ad absurdum?
Can I be forgiven for thinking that she wasn’t capable of getting past chapter 1, and so elected to do her analysis there?
Right . . . Two variations that come to mind are that A) Either one sticks to noted and viable reality while cranking out pages of observations, and keeps tying the observations to the general reality, so that across all those pages, all one’s readers are following along and don’t get lost, or B), when launching off into total nonexistence, either one keeps it down to no more than about seven or so paragraphs given that the audience supplies the countering reality and has to keep track of it all, or, one deliberately one doesn’t even try keeping track and just keeps generating variables . . .
and to some extent explains, to me anyway, some of the more obstinate nature of at least some slice of deaf culture.
The militant attitude extends to other disabilities. A few years ago on Radio 4, I heard a legless and rather prickly “activist” insist that it was “oppressive” to view the loss of a person’s legs as in any way regrettable. Regarding this loss as something negative – something you wouldn’t wish to happen to you or anyone you care about – was apparently “ableist,” “ignorant” and offensive. This claim was repeated several times, emphatically. At one point the activist declared that given a chance to walk again he would refuse, such was his “pride” in having lost a third of his body.
Anger had been displaced from the obvious grievance – the traumatic loss of one’s legs – to the supposed “injustice” of regarding limb loss as a dismaying or terrifying state of affairs. As a coping mechanism, it wasn’t entirely honest. Or, it seems, successful.
What was interesting is how the discussion travelled from an unremarkable sentiment – sort of, “look past the disability, see the person” – to the exact opposite: “Look at my disability, see nothing else, and then validate it continually. But don’t call it a disability because the word is oppressive.” By the end of the exchange, the activist was referring everything back to his legless condition and its alleged political implications – and railing against people who preferred to be able-bodied and hoped that function might be restored to others.
But this is what Marxoid identity politics ultimately does. It turns people into cartoons; it makes them absurd, even grotesque.
“Can one role “snake eyes” with only one die?”
There is no ‘one-eyed snake’?
Cheers
Instead of merely No, Roger Ebert states Oh, Hell No.
a twitter of henchlesbians perhaps?
And yet for the vast majority of infants, especially those up until the last decade or so, the parents generally had no idea the child was deaf.
In less developed countries, maybe, but in the olden days of 30+ years to which I can attest, a basic functions check of the sensory systems of newly manufactured humans included reaction to sound. Granted these checks might not have been done to young Moonflower born in a commune of hippies, or by a midwife in East Swamproot, but everywhere else it was.
Can I be forgiven for thinking that she wasn’t capable of getting past chapter 1, and so elected to do her analysis there?
In my rambling academic career I was at one time (actually the second) a chemistry major, and p chem was a mother. I doubt she got past the chapter title.
Oh, and it’s a bench of henchlesbians. It just has to be.
Benches are hard, how about a divan of henchlesbians ?
Fred – anaconda fangs ? Oooook, I think maybe you need something to counteract what is already in the system…
I defer to Dr. Muldoon’s greater understanding. I’m certainly not an expert on the details and was going from a conversation of a couple years ago. Still, I believe deafness, or more narrowly deafness from infancy, does have an element to it that sets it somewhat apart from other disabilities in that there is a more serious cultural divide. And again, I am speaking from relative ignorance here having not known any deaf people myself, though I do know a couple of blind folk and have written software that uses handicap accessibility features. Which is certainly not much to go on, expertise-wise.
Benches are hard,
Yes, but so are henchlesbians. Hence the hench qualifier. And speaking of expertise, if you’ve ever been caught with your hand in the liquor cabinet here whilst David was out of town, ITYKWIM.
Having now awoken from my red-meat-and-alcohol-induced stupor I feel that I should enter this debate. While divan has much to recommend it, with its connotations of Ottoman capriciousness in judgment, I think that bench more accurately describes the cold reality of being subjected to the retributions of the aforementioned henchlesbians. wtp has it. It is an ambush of tigers, an ostentation of peacocks, and a bench of henchlesbians.
Still, I believe deafness, or more narrowly deafness from infancy, does have an element to it that sets it somewhat apart from other disabilities in that there is a more serious cultural divide.
I would find that hard to argue with, but note, based solely on personal observations, that it is appears to be a self imposed segregation. In my aforementioned peripatetic academic career, I had occasion at one time to be at a school with many blind students, and another with deaf students.
At the former, the blind students, although they did have a few special classes, took classes with the rest of us, roomed with the rest of us, and ate in the same dorm mess halls. Regarding the latter, aside from a very few classes and mess halls where they again isolated themselves, the deaf students kept to themselves in their own classes and living areas.
The million dollar (£764,700) question is why. One could argue that the blind needed more assistance in some ADL like crossing uncontrolled streets, or figuring out what was being served in the mess halls (even looking at it was often hard to tell, so trying to tell by smell was right out), so integration was inevitable. The deaf, obviously, would not have had those sorts of constraints. The interesting thing is that deafness, even from birth, is rarely absolute, and many of these students could hear nearly as well as the rest of us, but still chose to remain segregated, and attempts by the hearing to engage any of the deaf of any degree by learning to sign or whatever, were usually rebuffed.
I still have no why for my observation, nor for why their “culture” looks down upon hearing aids and surgery – it would be like an amputee refusing a prosthetic leg to preserve “wheelchair culture”.
WTP & Hedge – regarding the henchlesbians and terminology, I have no doubt they are hard, but as no one, other than David, has seen them and lived to tell the tale, it is my understanding that they are not biker/linebacker types, but more on the order of the late Muammar Gaddafi’s army of bodyguard babes. I suggest that a “bench” would be more apt for describing a group of judges, not bodyguard babes. If you find “divan” to conjure images of too Levantine sensuousness, and want to keep the bench motif, you could have a Davenport or Chesterfield – both more suitable for bodyguard babe types.
OTOH, given their role, something more martial – a clip, magazine, or scabbard, the latter of which would be particularly apt as we all know what the Latin for scabbard is. A scabbard of henchlesbians – has a nice ring, I think.
Ok … now this is art.
“the camera man seems to focus on women”
https://youtu.be/vP6hCx5_pYs
May I put a late call in for an anger of henchlesbians?
Introducing facts at this point might be gauche, but it seems the word “Hench” derives from the German for “stallion” or “horse”. So…are we faced with something boring like “herd”?
Help a fella out, here.
No, I think it is a herd of democrats (or socialists, or labour partiers, etc.), a dumpster of SJWs, however – how about a lair of henchlesbians ?
Oh, speaking of goings on and definitions and redefinitions in the underground lair(s) of London, are there any local assessments of or reactions to the new 24 hour subway schedule?