Archive for August, 2009
changes…
Sunday, August 30th, 2009This is my favourite bit from the very funny email circular about how young people don’t know how good they have it, which Chris Yeh posts in full on his blog (via Jackie):
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like ‘Space Invaders’ [...]
beyond offensive
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009My bolds:
Then, in 1969, came the incident that would hang over him for the rest of his life – Chappaquiddick, where he drove a car over a bridge on a Massachusetts island, leading to the drowning of his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. The accident, compounded by the still unexplained fact that he walked away from [...]
go ahead, ruin the entire afternoon!
Friday, August 21st, 2009The French Resistance from WWII. But what if our friends and our enemies are the same people?
***
NB This post is not about the rights and wrongs of feminism, sexism, or any other -ism; it’s an attempt to rise above that level of debate, and uncover principles that both matter and work in practice.)
Here is an [...]
things you don’t see in a theme park
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009I could be totally wrong about these, as I have only ever been to about 1.2 theme parks, but after spending yesterday at 6 Flags Fiesta Texas, San Antonio this is my impression. (NB A day in the Texas sun standing in lines and walking miles and miles between attractions with limited rest and nutrition [...]
prejudice is sometimes necessary
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Prejudice colours our reactions to what we see: Wikipedia on swastikas. But sometimes we need to act first and learn more later.
Chapter 1: dictionary definitions
I own a 2-volume Oxford dictionary, but am too lasy to use it for basic definitions- here is dict.org:
bigotry:
The state of mind of [...]
against generalisationism
Friday, August 14th, 2009the symbol that most represents my politics these days, weirdly
(This is just a thought I’ve had floating around for a while and not done enough with.)
One of the things that bugs me about the New Massively Populist branches of the internet is the way it presents generalisation as truth that MUST apply to you and [...]
Equilibrium- another movie that got away (or: how to bring down a fascist regime)
Friday, August 14th, 2009Sean Bean in “Equilibrium”
The internet exposes things, and one of the things it has exposed is the gulf between critical approval and on-the-ground fan-love of all things creative. I only know about Equilibrium because my son found it on something on youtube then checked it out further and forced us all to suggested that we [...]
getting academic achievement in proportion
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009I asked my own British teenage daughter what she thinks about this (“Why are our teenage daughters the unhappiest people in Britain”), and she said she’s not surprised teenage girls are miserable, because, “they are all caught up in diets and boys, which isn’t any fun.” But the other big culprit is exams:
The government want [...]
