July 2008
Mon 14th
As a protester stood up to barrack the Right Reverend Gene Robinson, the world’s first openly gay Anglican Bishop, the congregation did not abuse or strongarm him.
Instead, they opened their Orders of Service and began to sing.
Sat 12th
Totally awesome goats found at 7 Incredible Natural Phenomena you’ve never seen. 4 Comments
Fri 11th
…her campaign for “edible schoolyards”—where children work with instructors to grow, prepare, and eat fresh produce…
Her dream of organic, locally and sustainably produced food in every school cafeteria, class credit for lunch hour, and required gardening time and cooking classes is as utopian as they come.
Sounds pretty damn cool to me. 1 Comment
Fri 11th Having moved offices, my bike to work now has me not only bus-racing down Riccarton Road (oh goody), but if I time things right I get to tram-race down Armagh Street too. Action-packed. 0 Comments
Wed 9th
Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
— Mark Twain, The War Prayer
It is an essay packing some heat. 0 Comments
Wed 9th
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of ‘meanings.’
— Susan Bean-Bag, found here.
Tue 8th
I saw these urinals at Fat Eddies. Possibly my most traumatising toilet-break ever. 3 Comments
Mon 7th
I CALLED THE RABBITS WITH THE WALKIE-TALKIES!! GUESS WHAT THE RABBIT DID!! HE FOUND THE BEANS!!! THE RABBITS ARE CALLING THE DOGS AND THE SHRIMPS!! THEY WILL PLAY THE CELEBRATION MUSIC!! I AM YELLING ABOUT THE CARROTS BECAUSE THE RABBITS FOUND THE BEANS!!
Mon 7th That’s why you suffer. 0 Comments
The Cavern: 15. Home Sweet Someone Else's Home
Sometime in the late afternoon Jay reached the end of the valley. The riverbed widened out into a shallow pool, a small puddle surrounded by a larger dry area. The pool sat under a cliff that climbed straight up a distance, thin and bare trees and shrubs growing out of it here and there.
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Thu 3rd In long-delayed reply to Fraser: my memoir would, I think, be entitled It Seemed Like a Good Idea. 0 Comments
Thu 3rd
The desire to protect an innocent person from violence is, in and of itself, a good thing, not a bad thing. But the danger here is that it’s an unethical and corrupting, but a very tempting and easy, psychological step for these men to come to see themselves as the sole protector, as a woman’s only safe option. To see women as uniquely frail and in need of protection by nature (rather than uniquely threatened due to the choices of other men). And to try to make sure that women seek and depend on and stay within the scope of a man’s protection, whether or not they really want it…
I find that a little challenging. 0 Comments
Thu 3rd
Rape is a dull, blunt, ugly act committed by punk kids, their cousins and older brothers…. And yet, on the shoulders of these unthinking, predictable, insensitive, violence-prone young men there rests an age-old burden that amounts to an historic mission: the perpetuation of male domination over women by force.
…
A world without rapists would be a world in which women moved freely without fear of men. That some men rape provides a sufficient threat to keep all women in a constant state of intimidation…
— Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, via Women and the Invisible Fist
Wed 2nd Nick is raw-fooding. Good work! 1 Comment
Niqab
The niqāb (the full-face veil, related to the burqa) has always distressed me a bit, but recently I’ve been feeling more strongly about it.
My thinking used to be that, while I don’t like it, it can be a valid expression of someone’s morals and faith, and I can see their thinking even while I disagree.
Now I find myself feeling that it’s entirely dehumanising. How can you treat a person as a fellow human being when you can’t see their face at all? How do you respect a faith that requires women to completely hide themselves inside a fabric tent?
The Cavern: 14. In the Valley of the Shadow
Jay heads deeper into the valley, as the rescue party makes their way back to the building in the lake.
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June 2008
Sun 29th I hurt from laughing. (YouTube, via FailBlog.) 1 Comment
Fri 27th
“And what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?”
“The advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the centre of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this centre, the attached limbs are just what they should be.… lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You’ll look for it in vain in most of our dancers.”
— Heinrich von Kleist, On the Marionette Theatre
This 1810 essay (complete with a fencing bear and Eden’s tree of knowledge) was one of the influences of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. 0 Comments
Fri 27th Patagonia is [the slides from] an enigmatic presentation by Matt Webb. Topics include the conquest of the Americas, pre-conquest civilisation and communications networks, and physics, but… well, see for yourself. 2 Comments
