Link Splatter!

[pure_doxyk]

Here’s the best of what’s accumulated in my browser over the last few days. It’s been a powerful week for links!

If you’re like me, overt expressions of authority make you ill. Authority itself is pre-committed to an idea that human beings are separate, that one can be hurt without hurting the others, and that it’s somehow efficacious or correct

Comments

[sanguinity]

That thing with chairs in those photos...

As an ergonomics pro, chairs just make me crazy -- they're so deeply ingrained in the social structure as signifiers of power, that encouraging someone to try designs that are physically comfortable but visually less chair-like -- saddle chairs, for example -- is like asking them to violate gender norms.

And the flip outs about whose chair looks like it belongs to what rank...! You can't find an "executive" chair with a decent range of ergo adjustment, but the CEO would far rather kill his back each day (and yell at you for not finding an ergo "executive" chair) than sit pain-free in anything that visually smacks of "secretary". And if his assistant has got physical issues that require a high back, or arm rests, or what-have-you, there's flip out about her having an inappropriately cushy chair...

I'd want to slap people sometimes. It's a CHAIR. Not a ceremonial object.

Except that, in this society, it totally totally totally is.

...oh, and don't get me started on desks. Just fuckin'

[pure_doxyk]

Damn good point! The office politics of who-gets-what-chair are patently ridiculous, though I can't say I've never been sucked into it myself. It's insidiously ridiculous. I get driven positively crazy by what type of chair I *can't* have at work, because somehow the look of it makes people uncomfortable. HUH???

Oh, come on, can't I please, PLEASE get you started on desks??

[sanguinity]

A few years ago, there was a within-corporation transfer of power such that the previous corporate headquarters closed, and our location became the new corporate headquarters. The people who got promoted up out of Division HQ structure and into Corporate HQ structure actually got on planes and flew to Alabama in order to scavenge the Alabama corporate furniture for themselves

[pure_doxyk]

*rotfl* I totally believe it! There were surprisingly few pictures of monster desks in that photo collection, but there were a few. I work with lawyers a lot, and it's as impossible to "be" a lawyer without an Altar-Slab Desk (forever in my mind that way, now) as it is to do it without A Suit. Yet these people spend hours and hours at a computer. One almost wants to simply let them get what they deserve!

[nora_knickers]

I find it interesting how many 'authority' structures are crumbling and poorly maintained. As though to emphasize that the people who sit in them (even when in positions of 'authority') are just cogs in a decomposing system.

[pure_doxyk]

If only the authority crumbled with the buildings. That would make me very happy. And cause me to buy a bulldozer. ;)

[nora_knickers]

Well, it does. At least a specific authority does. Unfortunately, it's replaced by some new authority. Dammit!

[nora_knickers]

You know the statistic I want challenged? That one about how 85% of americans believe in God. They can start by saying "85% of Americans polled", and then explain how it was decided who to poll, who did the polling and what questions were asked.

I'm sick of the nuttos thinking 85% of americans agree with them.

[pure_doxyk]

I also like how most of the nuttos extrapolate directly from "believing in God" to "being Christian". There was an ad for a Ford dealership in California recently (hear about that one?) that made that leap directly, in a bigoted commercial: 86% of Americans "believe in God", therefore 86% of Americans are Christians, (here's where it got really good:) therefore 86% of Americans have the right to free speech and the other 14% can just shut up. The Consumerist had a field day...it was fun. ;)

[nora_knickers]

Yeah, I read about that in boing boing. Lots of people make that leap. Fricking Cliff Pickover made that leap in The Paradox of God. I'm fairly certain there's more than 14% (especially combined) of Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists in this country, which would pretty much blow that bs out of the water. Add the atheists, agnostics and various stripes of pagans to the mix and there's just no way.