Sunday Links: Non-Politics

[zarq]

RIP: Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III has died of heart failure after battling MS for 19 years. (IMDB profile) The Guardian looks at his life.

NYT Magazine: The 5th Annual Year in Ideas

Could pathological, extreme bias be a mental illness?

Very cool: The Mosquito: People under 20 can hear it, but almost no one under 30 can. Now being

Comments

[made_of_paradox]

1) No, the Mosquito is NOT cool to a number of adults over 30 who still have hearing in that range. (Grrrrr....) See discussion here.

2) Lovely. I check out the myspace_deaths community and there, one from the bottom, is the kid from my town who is the third major tragic young death this year (the one who had a collision with a truck at the intersection of US 79 and FM 685 being the first, the one who fell off a parade float and was crushed under its wheels being the second). BLARGH.

[idunn]

People in that community need to wake up. Some girl is leaving comments after most of the deaths listed, writing how funny or amusing it is, including one kid who left a suicide note on a friend's myspace and then shot himself.

Don't people have a heart?

[made_of_paradox]

Some people are just sick.

And then they insult you if you point out that this sort of behavior isn't very nice. So I don't try to anymore, unless it's in a RL interaction and I can't avoid being around their behavior. (I think the insulting is defensive -- some part of them knows it's wrong and that's why they're so quick to take offense at someone else's offense.)

I need to just stay away from there. (Admittedly, the death in my town was one of the stupider ones -- it's not bright to cross a highway at night on foot wearing dark clothing, but the death from the parade float was less than 2 months ago and there's still some reeling from that and the subsequent motorcycle accident that girl's father was in that had him in the ICU for awhile, so there's more hand-wringing over it than there might otherwise be.)

[zarq]

I didn't look at the comments before posting the link, just the entries. I suspect that if I had initially seen the comments rumigirl describes I wouldn't have included the community.

And then they insult you if you point out that this sort of behavior isn't very nice. So I don't try to anymore, unless it's in a RL interaction and I can't avoid being around their behavior. (I think the insulting is defensive -- some part of them knows it's wrong and that's why they're so quick to take offense at someone else's offense.)*nods agreement* I think their initial reaction is equal parts lack of maturity and an inability to empathize. I also suspect they feel a freedom to say anything they think because of the relative anonymity the net provides -- when someone posts something on the net, real life consequences seem very far away. When someone points out how ugly and callous they sound, they don't know how to handle it except defensively

I was about to say...

[gbam]

I was about to say that I thought it was funny that the stories I read about Richard Pryor today couldn't really give examples of what made him so famous (and funny) in the first place - his fearless use of profane language.

Then I read the Guardian piece. We Yanks are such prudes. :-)

Re: I was about to say...

[zarq]

Yep! :)

I looked up his site to see if there was news on the forums this morning. Love the shot of him saying "I'm not dead yet, motherfucker!" that's also on his album of the same title. :)

I suspect SNL will also do a tribute. Should be fun to watch! :)

[rparvaaz]

I don't watch 'Survivor' but I read that Salon article and I have a few problems with it. The first is the assumption that giving up the car would have been the Right Thing to do. I presume that the other contestants are relative strangers and that she is under no obligation to provide them all with cars?

Yeah, it would have been generous, it would have been canny, it would have been a great PR move,...but I'm not so sure that there was any moral imperative to give up that car.

Also, I'm a bit uncomfortable with the suggestion that the rest would have then refrained from voting her out...surely one car can't offset all the other calculations and swing a vote?

[zarq]

You're right, she didn't have a moral imperative to give up the car. However, the move destroyed her chances at keeping the other contestants from booting her

[quixotickitten]

However, the move destroyed her chances at keeping the other contestants from booting her.

I disagree. Cindy was never going to end up in the final two, and it was quite doubtful that she would have made Final Three. What cost her was not her keeping the car; what cost her was the mistake of talking about the car repeatedly. She's not the only one. Too many contestants this season and every single previous season make the fatal mistake of chatting about their reward, regardless of whether the reward is the car, a neat overnight luxury, and/or a feast. The inability to shut up is what is expensive

[quixotickitten]

Oh, and it wasn't really the entire group's "jealousy of her prize and resentment of her selfishness" that doomed Cindy. It was that bitch Rafe. You know, the one who was originally part of the Outcast group consisting of himself, Lydia, and Cindy... before he was able to ingratiate himself to the Popular Kids and turned his back on his original alliance with the Losers. You know, the one bombasted Cindy's lack of morality, then turned around and told Danni he was "releasing her from her promise" to take him into the Final Two... then proceeded to bitch and moan about how Danni did not take him to the Final Two per her promise?? Yeah, him, the one that was Cindy's little buddy what was it... three episodes ago?? Karma.