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checking in...
Hi, folks! I've spent a few weeks in Iowa with friends, and while there is as always some sadness at the realities of entropy, I loved seeing them. Other friends surprised me by rearranging my livingroom while I was gone -- I understand some people would feel invaded by that, but I'm simply delighted. For the first time since I moved in, it feels ( Read more... ) -
How to Avoid Being a Troll
How to Avoid Being a Troll - the Snowden Example
I base my how-to-article on one letter in Alternet, one of the few publications where I read every comment if I read the main article. It’s not aimed at that comment writer particularly though; half the commenting race seems to want to write trollspeak instead of conversation speak ( Read more... ) -
Just light humour today...
I was surfing, and ran across this, which I haven't read in years. After bearing the comments of those fanfic writers who complain of "grammar nazis," I thought I'd give them the pleasure of understanding what public release of stories really might be subject to, given higher expectations than they're used to ( Read more... ) -
John Brown's Body
There are stories about John Brown's Body. For those not inculcated in American history in grade school, John Brown was an heroic abolitionist who thought slavery was anathema and should be stopped by any means necessary. Not being a Quaker, the strongest anti-abolition religious group, he didn't see a reason to eschew violence. (Sorry, I think ( Read more... ) -
I have found my calling ... but need your help
Read this morning how the Crazy Right is appropriating "Battle Hymn of the Republic" for its own purposes -- plays the tune at the Crazy Meetings and all. Which did my historian's heart no good at all. Went to the Move On site because I assumed they'd named their organization after the version whose chorus goes "Move on over or I'll move on over ( Read more... ) -
sex between teenagers
Okay, I don't have the obvious opinion about Kaitlyn, the young woman (18 years old) who is being charged with a felony because she was having sex with a girlfriend who was 14 when they started dating (Kaitlyn presumably having been 17 then, since the younger girl's now 15 ( Read more... ) -
Five year old shoots and kills little sister with birthday present
The headline read like something the Onion might have featured, but it was true. There's a special 22 rifle called "My First Gun" marketed to (parents of) little kids. The five year old got one for his birthday. His parents left it lying around, presumably seeing no reason to teach gun safety until he was a little older ( Read more... ) -
Footnotes to an era... Susan Stern, Michael Justesen
I was much younger than the famous radicals of the 60s, but I knew a lot of them -- in the 70s, when I was in college and they were mostly living their lives ( Read more... ) -
Avoid Amazon, but buy Captive Prince
To add to its destruction of local money and employees, it now turns out that the behemoth has been a mite careless (at least) with screening its security contracts. Their security company has the name "Hess" and yes, it's pretty certain they're admirers of Hitler's deputy. Making sure foreign workers worked hard? Right up their alley ( Read more... ) -
Any Lacanians out there? Sherlock?
I've just been pondering the relationship between Lacan's mirror stage, which is central to the more inverted and convoluted studies in film, and Gallup's mirror test, which determines what animals have the self-perception necessary to recognise that when looking in a mirror they are seeing themselves ( Read more... )