Apparently my post defining what’s harassment and what’s (mere) rudeness or boorishness caused much consternation in some quarters, because half of them insisted on reading me as saying I was all right with sexual ASSAULT. This lack of reading comprehension concerns me. It’s sort of like the idiot who thought that the post “If You Don’t Work, You Die” referred to my wish that the unemployed and those who simply aren’t fit to work should be killed. As opposed to its being a point of macro-economics about how much energy a society can divert to non-work-work or work that destroys work before it becomes utterly non-functional. (No one disputes that a sane society looks after those who can’t work in a humane way. Cave men were doing it. It is always the regimes on the left that come up with the idea of eliminating the non-functional. We find an inherent value in human life, productive or not. Hint, Death panels oh, I beg your pardon, cost cutting commissions who determine when you’ve been treated enough are a thing of the OTHER side.)
I’m not absolutely sure whether these kiddies (of whatever age) have the functional reading comprehension of a six year old (and not my six year olds who were both better than that) or choose to be blind for ideological reasons. Of course, it’s possible that their reading comprehension fuels their political opinions. If any sentence more complex than See Spot Run needs explanation and interpretation from their betters, it would also be very easy to tell them what they should think. Also, of course, you’d have no danger they’d read history for themselves and realize that the bright new way of doing things their betters are “trying” has been responsible for more deaths, poverty and misery than any other bright idea in the history of mankind, including but not limited to the hundred year war. I wish I could tell you that our schools are teaching better reading than that, but I’m afraid no. Mostly they’re teaching compliance with interpretation from on-high, if the few times I’ve come in contact with recent graduates is any indication.
Which brings us to the topic of sexual harassment and how the seeds of the current insanity were seeded long ago in schools. (I’ll pause here so those not on low-carb diets may pop popcorn and go grab a beer.)
I first realized that schools were doing something very weird to the relationship between boys and girls when Robert got sent home with a letter from Kindergarten commanding that he absolutely stop making little girls uncomfortable and hinted if he did this when older, he would be subjected to sexual harassment charges. What was his awful crime? It appears he had made a poem to a girl and compared her eyes to stars.
Now, I come from a long line of men who made poems to girls, though Robert might be a little precocious. Most waited till fourth grade or so. The poems were received – from stories I’ve heard, all these men being older than I – with varying delight, some resulting in the lady fair screaming and running away and some in the boy’s first kiss. None before this had resulted in a threat of legal action.
I thought well… we live – then – in hippieville USA, and we got some slightly crazy person (it wasn’t his teacher who sent the note, and now I don’t remember who it was.) I told Robert that he shouldn’t write romantic poems until he learned to spell and that his meter sucked raw eggs (I made it a point of never praising the kids’ work when it didn’t deserve praise. By and large this means that when I praise something they know I’m serious) and sent him off to play Magic School Bus.
Nine or so years later, having moved to a saner area of the state, I’m in the dentist’s waiting room, and the receptionist says there’s a call for me. Let’s give props to the kid for remembering that I was going to the dentist that morning and also what the dentist’s name was.
I grabbed the phone. Listened to the principal of younger son’s elementary school, and realized I’d let through a long sentence laced with profanity when I saw the expression on my dentist’s receptionist’s face (she’s a devout Christian) and realized the rest of the waiting room was staring at me.
At that point I put down the phone and said “I beg your pardon, but they just told me they’re going to charge my ten year old with sexual harassment and that he’s already confessed.”
The receptionist and the other people waiting in the room all stared at me aghast, for completely different reasons, and then the receptionist, who knew my son, said “But your son can’t PRONOUNCE sexual harassment.” (Which at the time was true. I understood him fairly well, but his sensory issues meant that he had speech issues because he didn’t HEAR properly. Once that was semi-fixed, the speech fixed itself. He still goes into these modes when he speaks too fast and you have to tell him to slow down or you don’t get a word, but that’s different.)
I hadn’t driven, because the dentist is a few blocks from our house and has a tiny parking lot. This meant I had to run ten blocks in the other direction. I arrived out of breath and asked them what in the name of Sam Hill they thought they were doing.
They said I was threatening, and called the school guard. (Yes, I was also shaking trying to keep the berserker in. I can’t help that.)
After I reassured them that I wasn’t going to kill them all with my bare hands and a purse (well, I might have, but they couldn’t KNOW that) we went into a conference room and they bring in my crying son.
His terrible crime was as follows: He had this game that he had been playing with his brother since the younger one was able to talk. They called it the space game. In it our entire family were explorers in a spaceship (the house) tasked with exploring and charting new worlds. The cars were away pods, the places we visited were various planets (a trip to the aquarium was made fascinating for the whole family by listening to them!) cons were trips to administrative planets… you get it, right?
Apparently younger son had devised an addendum to this that involved school – aka “explorer’s academy” – and taught it to a select group of his friends.
One of his friends happened to be a girl. The other two were absent for whatever reason. Younger son had a great lack of tolerance (back then) to the world not working according to his plan. He wanted to play the space game. His friend (who happened to be a girl) was talking to other kids. He stood on the periphery and tried to get her attention. Nothing. So he reached in and tapped her to get her attention. Twice. On the behind.
The girl turned to talk to him, but it was too late. A playground guard had seen them. She grabbed both of them and dragged them in to the principal, where they SOMEHOW managed to get my son to admit to “Sexual Harrassment.”
Now, I’m not going to tell you that ten year olds aren’t interested in sex, though I’ll say mostly the sex-part they’re interested in is finding out why adults think this is so much fun. I’ll even admit some ten year olds (mostly girls) are developed enough at that age to have some embryonic interest, though normally nothing much unless they’re in an abuse or inappropriate environment situation. (Say watching a lot of inappropriate movies.)
I won’t even beg you to believe me that at that age my son had no inkling yet of what makes the world go round and what makes pretty girls smile. It’s true he didn’t. A mother knows this stuff. His brother sort of did at six – or at least he liked to make pretty girls smile. My younger son… not so much. The drive came in two years later, when he grew a foot over summer and his voice dropped two octaves.
BUT even if he’d had a rudimentary drive – note he touched this girl on the butt. Look, guys, my son would have no clue anyone considered the butt “sexual.” He wasn’t that far off his years when that area was mostly concerned with “did you clean yourself properly?”
If he’d been intent on “sexual harassment” he’d have touched her between the legs, maybe, or FAR MORE LIKELY kissed her.
That a touch, twice, on the behind could be interpreted as “sexual harassment” at that age boggled the mind.
That was bad enough.
More fun is what they proposed to do about it. They were going to put him in detention and notify the police of his “record” (I don’t remember the exact term for this) so they could be on the lookout for him in the future.
I should draw the veil of decency over the following scene, but I won’t. Since they had the guard standing there, to prevent me, you know, from strangling the principal, the school psychologist and the secretary (curiously the play ground guard who had started this was never brought in. So much for confronting the accuser) with my purse strap, I had to resort to other means.
The means I resorted to was sarcasm. First, I questioned my son and had him explain why he’d touched a little girl on the behind – TWICE — Then I asked him to explain why touching her there. “It was the place I could reach.” Then I asked him to tell me why he’d confessed to sexual harassment. Well, because they told him otherwise they’d expel him.
I finally pointed out to them that I was a writer and I was sure I could get a national magazine (Reason, for sure) to take an article about this. I took out a notebook and told them to spell out their names, because I was going to make sure they were the laughing stock of the nation from sea to shining sea.
They started scooting back. They’d just put him in detention. It would be in-room detention. Truly, they wouldn’t do anything except make him write out that he wouldn’t sexually harass people. No, really, they didn’t mean anything bad, they…
I got a full recanting and the whole matter dropped. (Except that as I write this I wonder if the Harassment By Employee Children, Using Complaints Of Harassment was a late hit revenge, since personnel from both schools mingles freely. I’ll note once he was out of that system he had absolutely NOTHING bad reported against him EVER even though by then he was a teen and more likely to harass if he ever had been.)
He went back to his class. I went back to the dentist.
However, before leaving, I gathered that the little girl had been gathered up into the arms of officialdom, and would be in counseling for some weeks, to get over the terrible trauma of having her behind touched – TWICE (they were very insistent on this) – by a ten year old boy.
Look, adults tend to read too much into what kids do. That’s always been so. For instance, when I was caught at six playing doctor with my cousin Johnny, I couldn’t understand the fuss and boderation. I was fifteen before – reading something about “playing doctor” in a book – I realized my parents and his had thought it was a sex game. Nothing could have been further from our minds. Johnny was in fact very lucky we were interrupted, because I was going to cut him open, being far more interested in what was inside him than outside and having no clue it would hurt or that I could kill him. We’d agreed to take turns. (It might have been his idea. He’s now a neuro-surgeon.)
Adults, of course, know about sex, and tend to interpret quite innocent actions on the part of children as precursors to sex drive. Freudian theories didn’t help.
HOWEVER though my parents and Johnny’s made a big fuss and botheration, and told him never to take off his shirt (!) when alone with me, they didn’t threaten penalties upon him or console me for horrible trauma. (Well, I was fully dressed, but I had the – old, used – razor blade. I got rid of that, of course, unnoticed because we weren’t allowed to play with them. A good thing, since otherwise my parents would have been appalled.)
There is such a thing as appropriate measures, particularly on the part of officialdom. It might be too much – as it was too much my aunt scolding me when at nine I took off my bikini top at the beach because it was uncomfortable – to even have told him “Don’t touch her there. It’s not nice.” But it would probably have been okay. After all, it’s bad manners, and kids DO need to learn manners before they learn morals. Manners are there to prevent huge problems before kids understand things. Manners are fine. A scold and telling him to stand by the fence the rest of recess would have been fine.
BUT to deploy the entire machinery of officialdom and threaten him with a record, and put her in counseling (without telling her parents) when she hadn’t complained and it was obvious he hadn’t known he was doing anything wrong, was a piece of insanity.
I was told this was driven by “policies” from the “district.”
Because the district is unable to tell the difference between a middle aged teacher and a ten year old boy, in the same way it can’t tell the difference between a toy gun and the real thing.
If I knew then what I know now, I’d have taken the kid out of the system right then and there. I’d also have understood the trouble we were headed for.
When I told the principal and the assembled illustrious company that in my day if a boy touched me anywhere and I thought he was getting fresh, I punched him. They told me oh no no no no no, violence never solved anything.
But apparently bureaucracy does…
These kids are now entering young adulthood. I suspect the trouble goes up five or so years older than them. So up to twenty six or so.
The system has taught girls they’re fragile flowers who need a massive bureaucracy to protect them. I mean, really, if a ten year old boy touching their behind can merit weeks of counseling, imagine what a boy telling them he loves them would do? The trauma might never pass! They’ll have to go to counseling the rest of their lives.
It has also taught boys it is completely irrational, and arbitrary punishment and accusation will come out of a clear blue sky for no reason at all. Which is why boys are choosing to disengage in record numbers.
And this, hitting professional organizations and market places will bring everywhere the fun we’ve been having at SFWA.
If you have kids, and you can get them out of school. If you can’t, make sure you de-program them at home.
If you have daughters it might seem to you that all this is concern for their safety and empowerment, but look really closely at it. Most of the time, in most places, what they’re being taught is to be fragile flowers who scream for nanny and then cry about it.
Unfortunately, the world we’re leaving them is not a playground, not even one supervised by neurotic playground guards.
And they’re going to need to grow up.
Like our debt, this is a problem not of their making, but one they’ll have to solve nonetheless, if civilization is to go on.
According To Hoyt 
The destruction of innocence… I went through something like this with my red-headed daughter, who was in first grade at the time. She was accused of inappropriate touching, by a mother who had… obvious issues. Fortunately, the school suported my incredulous assertion that both kids were far too young to have any awareness of other meanings to their playground play. But I sometimes wonder if it led to her lack of self-confidence she still struggles with now in middle-school.
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Hmmmm. Well, I picked up my son one afternoon after preschool. The teachers were chuckling and one pulled me aside. Apparently my son and his friend (female) were playing doctor.
J had been to the dr a few days before to get his booster shots, and guess what they were doing? :D
It wasn’t a matter at all, just funny and apparently the teachers turned it into a lesson on bodies and going to the doctor. They did stress that it was inappropriate to take your clothes off but no one was in trouble over it.
But again, I live in an area where it isn’t common for young people (younger children) to run around on occasion nearly naked when it gets hot. And on some occasions you catch an adult in just underwear. So long as the major parts are covered, it’s not a big deal.
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Words fail … I guess I got off lucky that my daughter was in DODDS schools overseas until she hit the 6th grade. (The teachers there were all very good, and were quite realistic about children, although this may have changed now, alas.)
I did get called to the principal’s office once, when we got back to the States. It seemed she had gotten into an argument with her teacher, over whether the Rock of Gibraltar was hollow or not. The teacher insisted it wasn’t – and my daughter and I had visited those chambers at Gibraltar that were hollowed out of the rock for various purposes. Daughter stuck to her guns – she had been there and seen them!
Teacher sent her to the principal’s office, and I backed her up when I got there. She didn’t have an easy time at any of the schools that she attended in Utah.
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My family ran into that, too.
Especially bad was the science teacher that insisted there are no antelope in North America…. (if you pretend you’re an idiot, it can be made to make sense…but he couldn’t support the claim)
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Was he arguing that the American antelope (or “speed goats” as we rednecks call ’em) is unrelated to other animals called “antelope”?
Strictly speaking that’s true. The American antelope is an odd creature in terms of its taxonomy and evolutionary antecedents.
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He wasn’t arguing, he just had the factoid that “there are no antelope in North America” and didn’t have the sense to say something like “the North American antelope is a goat– when I say that, it’s a hook to get into the difference between common names and species names; here are some pictures of true Antelope, which have as much to do with American antelope as a panda or koala bear have to do with true bears.”
But he couldn’t do that, because he’s an idiot. (Usually give folks the benefit of the doubt, but not when they try to expel my brother for not agreeing that duct tape is “duck” tape.)
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Yep.
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Gaffer’s tape, 100mph tape, the Blueshirt’s best friend, etc. WAS originally known as duck tape for its waterproof characteristics. How it came to be known as duct tape is a bit of a mystery to me because the stuff is absolutely HORRIBLE for ductwork (though it does seem to do the trick on gas lines as my friend who is renovating his basement has discovered). Though the issue is hardly worth expelling someone over.
And then there’s the Duck brand tape.
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Apparently there are multiple types, because my uncle has been using it on duct work since shortly after Vietnam….
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Oh, it’ll stick just fine. At first. But the adhesive goes bad after a while and the backing can degrade in hot environments (and oil just makes a complete mess out of it). For ductwork you really want the aluminum tape.
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Poking around, it was used in WWII and was made of cotton duck (like medical cloth tape) for sealing ammo cases. Similar to how, ahem, feminine pads got re-purposed, Johnson and Johnson switched from green to silver to match the primary purpose it was now used for– sealing duct work.
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Oh, the periodical absorbent pads! There is a funny story about that. A few years ago we were discussing that on The Donovan’s blog.
Well, it seems the reason they resemble battle dressings so much is because that’s pretty much what they are. Kotex was invented by an Army nurse in WWI who was used to stealing battle dressings and re-purposing them, instead of using actual rags as they did back then. Later, when Kotex was common and battle dressings hard to get, policemen and shooters would keep some Kotex around in case of getting shot. On that note, I went through that aisle in the Publix a while back, and found they don’t make them any more, just the panty pads. Roberta X says you can still get the original kind at maternity-goods shops if you need some for range bag or motorcycle first-aid kit.
Oh, and tampons are reputedly good for stopping up bullet holes. The OB brand is supposedly superior, as it expands only radially, not axially.
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I see no reason you couldn’t use the “feminine” purposed pads as medical ones– they’re just as obsessively clean, and if you get some designed to be packed in a purse they’ll take up as little space, be as sealed and punch above their weight as well as anything medical.
Also, go to the vet store for that lovely sticks-to-itself wrap; “horse wrap” costs a fraction of what the human packaged ones do, and it’s just blessed disposable Ace wrap!
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Exactly, Ma’am! As I pointed out above, they are pretty much the same thing. I am grateful for Roberta’s Protip on where to find the old-fashioned kind.
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Been there, Done that. The ones with sticky wing thingys on them work excellent. Just pull the cover off the sticky wings, press the absorbent pad firmly to the wound, and stick the wings down on either side to hold in place.
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Oh, man– I WANT THIS!!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Duct-Tape-1-88-Inch-10-Yard/dp/B008LAFAHO/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1373941981&sr=8-6&keywords=duct+tape
Now, how to justify wasting five bucks…..
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Oh man…I can’t imagine the look on the worker’s faces if I were to pull that out of my bag.
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The rainbow peace sign one is PERFECT.
For what, I’m not sure.
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It’s perfect for taping your spare magazine to your AK-47, of course. Bonus psych-warfare points if the AK-47 you’re taping it to is a Kalashnikitty.
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Neither one of you had seen those before? They’re in my local Meijer store, let alone the hardware stores.
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I’ve seen some interesting ones, but not the covered-with-tiny-rainbow-hearts style!
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I won a roll once in an archery contest. The organizers described it (I don’t know the actual name) as Salvadore Dali tape.
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The last time I was in Michael’s (a big craft store) they had rolls in a whole bunch of plain covers and every sort of day-glo design including hot pink zebra stripe patterns (shudder)
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Aarrgh Colors, I meant COLORS, why can’t wordpress come up with an edit comments function?
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One of the colors is ROY G BIV. Anyone else remember what that stands for?
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Waaaaaainbows!
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Indeed, the spectrum of visible light Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo and Violet.
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I think the mnemonic for stellar classes is way cool, as is the one for resistor color codes. A Brit schoolteacher got in serious trouble a while back for teaching the latter. Hey, it’s just silly boy tricks, dinna fash y’sel’, Lassie!
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The Daughtorial Unit ran afoul of her second grade teacher by insisting that, contrary to the teacher’s pronouncement, snakes did, too, have spines.
Regarding the antelope, is it worth mentioning that there is no species of buffalo indigenous to North America — perhaps the science teacher got the animals confused?
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Have googled pictures. They look tasty!
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They are, as jerky! My aunt and uncle hunt them…which is why I, in all my 13 year old innocence and curiosity, said something like “what? Yes, there are– pronghorn antelope.”
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You should see ’em run. They are the fastest thing in North America, built to evade a cheetah-like predator, now gone. They remind me of girl gymnasts – round, compact, and very solid.
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Omigosh, there is a stretch of state highway within sight of our house where the antelope hang out in the corn/wheat fields and play Frogger with the traffic to get from one field to that greener-looking one across the way … yikes! Worse than white-tail deer imo.
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The highway between Raton, NM, and Clayton, NM, runs alongside one of the largest ranches in the state. There are always herds of pronghorns along that stretch of highway. I’ve got a photo somewhere of a pronghorn kid nursing. I’ll see if I can dig it out.
There are pronghorn around here, also, especially east of the city. I see them now and then when I go to my daughter’s house.
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If I can, I’ll get you some to try.
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What can be fun is to tie a white scarf to a stick to flutter in the wind and watch them come over to investigate it.
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Do they still do that? I remember reading of pioneers using that trick when they needed food (or just wanted something easy to shoot) but I would have thought enough had been shot using that trick that they would be wary of it.
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I am not sure if this is still true, but in the 70s and 80s it was illegal to shoot an antelope in Utah (and probably other places in the West). My uncle shot one thinking it was a deer (yea city-ite). He lost his deer license, the antelope, and was fined. So many of the herds have probably forgotten what happened in the 1800s. ;-)
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From what I’ve read, some pronghorn are still curious, but not as many, and even the curious ones don’t come trotting straight up to see what the funny-looking thing is.
It looks as if all the western states have at least a short pronghorn season, usually rifle, blackpowder, and bow.
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Thanks for the update.
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It is illegal to use a visual attractant for antelope in at least some states. But this is for hunting purposes, I don’t believe it is illegal to do so simply to watch or video them.
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Might amuse folks to look at http://www.riflesandrecipes.com/ for an example of a couple with a large (but not exclusive) component of indie publishing to support their preferred lifestyle in small town Montana. The recipes and cookbooks are pretty good too.
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Huh? That science teacher should be fired. *just saw antelope in Southern Nevada on our vacation last year.
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They really are awesome:
Entirely unique on this planet, the Pronghorn’s scientific name, Antilocapra americana, means “American antelope goat.” But the deer-like Pronghorn is neither antelope nor goat — it is the sole surviving member of an ancient family dating back 20 million years.
The Pronghorn is the only animal in the world with branched horns (not antlers) and the only animal in the world to shed its horns, as if they were antlers. The Pronghorn, like sheep and goats, has a gall bladder, and like giraffes, lacks dewclaws. If that weren’t enough, the Pronghorn is the fastest animal in the western hemisphere, running in 20-foot bounds at up to 60 miles per hour. Unlike the Cheetah, speedburner of the African plains, the Pronghorn can run for hours at quite a fast pace.
Range
Throughout all 4 deserts of the American Southwest, from Saskatchewan, Canada south to Mexico.
Habitat
Grasslands, brushlands, bunch-grass and sagebrush areas of open plains and deserts.
Description
This North American hoofed mammal is the sole surviving member of the family Antilocapridae (order Artiodactyla). It is also called the Prongbuck, Pronghorned Antelope and American Antelope. It is not related to the Old World antelopes. The slender, graceful, Pronghorn has a deer-like body weighs between 90 and 125 pounds, and stands about 3 1/2 feet at the shoulder. It has large, protruding eyes and a white or buff, 4-inch tail.
The upper body and outside of the legs are tan to brown. The cheeks, lower jaw, chest, belly, inner legs and rump are usually white. The male has a broad, black band down the snout to a black nose and black neck patch, together with black horns.
Not an antler, the horn is a hollow sheath over a bony core arising from the skull directly over the eyes. Horns are lyre-shaped, with the female not exceeding 3 or 4 inches. Male horns may grow to 20 inches with a short prong jutting forward and upward halfway from the base. Unlike any other animal, however, the Pronghorn sheds its horn
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Even if he’d just said “it’s sort of like how American Indians have nothing to do with India” it would be OK…..
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True–… and they are gorgeous to see when they are running. We saw two bucks stand in the middle of the road and then the entire herd ran across and then they walked behind them. They were good crossing guards.
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Very much so– even if my folks are very glad to not have to fix the fences they’ve wiggled through! (Dad was pretty proud of having figured out a height that made it so they could get through, but most cows can’t.)
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The teachers and administrators quickly learned that threatening to call my kids parents didn’t work. In fact they dreaded so much when my kids showed up because the first words out of their mouths was “Call my mother.” Since they were sent there due to stupidity on the adult’s part, my wife always backed up the kids. Once all the way to the head of the school district.
It is annoying when the teachers pull out their high horse about being professional teachers and we should trust them about what is best for our children. Right. My wife fires right back that she too is a professional teacher, and at the university level and thank you very much but knows what’s best for our children.
If we had to go in for a meeting it was my job to make sure she didn’t hit/kill anyone.
My advise to teachers and administrators – read the rules and policy manuals that all the students are required to read, and sign a document signifying they have read the docs and will follow them. And then the adults should follow them. And not selectively. Don’t let some break rules and not others, don’t enforce rules after letting them slide for six months. Oh, and they should also not lie. Not to the children, not to their parents. We don’t like liars.
Sorry, this is a subject that gets me ranting.
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“didn’t hit/kill anyone…” With that berserker thing, sometimes I wonder if our Sarah has a Finn way back in the woodpile somewhen. We could test this hypothesis by giving her a snootful of good Port, putting a sharp knife within easy reach, and then threatening her children in her presence.
My crazy old tanker neighbor credits his German half for imposing discipline on his Finnish/Mohawk half. Even so, he remembers occasions when he recovered consciousness standing in the middle of a bunch of horizontal people who weren’t moving very much.
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We could test this hypothesis by giving her a snootful of good Port, putting a sharp knife within easy reach, and then threatening her children in her presence.
I don’t know The Sons, but wouldn’t it be hard to balance the amount of alcohol to where her inhibitions are down but not enough that she thinks “then you deserve what you get from them”? I get the impression it’s a really bad idea to be a Hoyt target, ever barring the hostess.
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“… half of them insisted on reading me as saying I was all right with sexual ASSAULT. This lack of reading comprehension concerns me. ”
Its not a lack of reading comprehension. Its an intentional degradation of language to mean whatever they say. Coupled with brazen lying.
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Well, sometimes. Other times, it’s a result of reading only half of the words and jumping to conclusions based on only the words read. I’m not sure how this comes about, but I think some people learn to skim for “code words”, and base everything on the existence of those words in whatever they are looking at (I won’t say reading, because they obviously are not).
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Sometimes it is because the writer was insufficiently forceful in expressing outrage. “If you fail to engage in the ritual denunciation it can only be because you secretly endorse” actions which no sensible person feels any need to denounce because, like cannibalism and enslavement they are presumably obviously wrong.
The benefit of such hystericality is it allows its practitioners the frisson of moral outrage without the inconvenience of having to actually confront moral dilemma.
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And the required level of ritual outrage is constantly upgraded, so that even if you are upset with a situation, you can still be part of the problem because you aren’t upset enough
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No, it’s intentional and lying.
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As I say, sometimes it’s not. I know this because I have seen it in people I KNOW are not lying. Observing their behavior and their arguments, they cannot be lying, often because they are not intelligent enough to create a lie that convoluted.
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Rob, I hate to burst your bubble, but it is also. “Being professionally offended, as a career.” There really are people, who make a profession of “being offended.” It’s how they make themselves seem important.
If they were to make it through an entire 24 hour period, without being offended, they would be offended by that.”
It’s one valid argument for bringing back Code Duello. Or, as Niven/can’t remember his name called it. “Evolution in action.” A situation that I fear is coming in all its full force, within the next 3-5 years. I believe that at _best_ we’re looking at an evolutionary solution of 30%, and *worst,* I’m afraid of 75% or higher. The following century or greater will be worse than Europe after the “Black Plague.” With rare exception, 80+%, of those withing 5 miles (8 Km) of city center, have no idea what food looks like in its raw state.
With “just in time” grocery stocking, any city over 30K pop., will face starvation. Exposure, bad food, disease, and riots, will kill the majority, at first. The collapse of the water, power, sewage systems, will take out another 50% or greater. I wish more than most can imagine that it “couldn’t happen,” but it will. If some of the major centers of the oncoming disaster go fast enough, it *might* self cauterize.
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What about those of us who can’t live in the boonies for medical reasons and others?
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We die
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I guess we can take as many of the enemy with us as we can. Anyone got any cheery thoughts?
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In Valhalla you get bacon, alcohol, and sex.
Is that cheery enough?
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BUT we have to go down fighting. Oh, wait. No other way to go, AFAIC. And if my idiot health betrays me into dying in bed, I’ll be haunting you guys into battle.
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I want an Official Finger-Bone. Can’t have enough patrons and saints, I always (always just now, at least) says.
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If we’re preemptively claiming Sarah’s fingerbones, I want the first section of the right middle finger. I’ll put it atop a carried flag pole, the easier to wave it at advancing progs. Nothing else would capture her essence quite so well. :)
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LOL.
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We’ve got St. John Moses Browning, so why not St. Sarah of Hoyt, patroness of the defiant?
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aw. You know why!
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Absolutely!
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Yes–
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You don’t have to live in the boonies.
“A Failure of Civility” talk about how to stand in place & organize a Neighborhood Defense Plan.
On feeding your-self after; look into Aquaponics & Urban Guarding & Homesteading.
Just some Ideas.
;-)
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correction:
Urban Gardening/Homesteading books.
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Gun and Garden would address that issue nicely!
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:-)
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Based on being close or near a city center- and considering DC seems to be epicenter- Well hopefully it wouldn’t be long and drawn out. But where does all this come from? Some sort of normalcy bias? It’s not us that are the problem it’s them. For whatever given value of ‘them’? I mean.
Meh maybe it’s because I am young- that plus all I have known is this school stuff, but then people now think I’ve got some social problem because I walk around singing, or in mid sentence sound like I am from across the pond. I do think all the discussion is fascinating is what I am saying.
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Some nonfiction books I think should be in everyones library.
“A Failure of Civility” by Mike Garand & Jack Lawson
“Secret Garden of Survival: How to grow a camouflaged food- forest” by Rick Austin
“The Homeowner’s Energy Handbook” by Paul Scheckel
Reader Digest Back to Basics
“The Self-Sufficient Life” by John Seymour
“A Practical Guide to Self-Sufficiency” by Terry Bridge
“Cost-Effective Self-Sufficiency” by Eve &Terence McLaughlin
And if you don’t want to lone wolf it there is “The Cohousing Handbook.” Chris Hanson is a little Hipy-dippy but it had a good outline of what is needed if you want to build a comunity of like minded individuals.
Hmmm….
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I must say that Garand is an excellent inducer of civility.
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:-)
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We have so much slack in the system that I think you need to invoke a lot of active craziness from local authorities to reach widespread starvation. E.g., maybe it takes forever to get permits to repurpose animal feed for human gruel, or to get permission to use a truck to carry grain, or maybe the price of motor fuel isn’t allowed to rise and instead fuel is confiscated and command-allocated to something other than food-shipping profiteers. But if people are at all free to produce and sell and ship marginal food at the price that hungry people will pay, so that people pay 60% of their income for food that’s as marginal as what poor people ate in the 1850s and these payments cascade back up the supply chain in the ordinary way, we have an awful lot of food and shipping capacity compared to how many calories people need. (Similarly, we have an awful lot of slack in water supply if we mostly drink it: today water is mostly used for low-value-per-liter things, not drinking.) And while our food growing efficiency would take a huge hit if something disrupted fancy inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, we could get quite a lot back automatically from the ordinary consequences of a major surge in the price of food. (Bring marginal land back into production, go to higher-labor-input crops, kill most of the livestock and grow human food directly… all stuff that again, could be stopped by policy craziness, but is otherwise fundamentally pretty straightforward and effective.)
That level of policy craziness isn’t impossible by any means, you can find parts of it in dysfunctional countries without looking very hard. But by the time you have it in food policy, the food supply problem may not be the worst of your problems, there are a number of other ways for crazy policies to really screw up a country.
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And while our food growing efficiency would take a huge hit if something disrupted fancy inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, we could get quite a lot back automatically from the ordinary consequences of a major surge in the price of food. (Bring marginal land back into production, go to higher-labor-input crops, kill most of the livestock and grow human food directly… all stuff that again, could be stopped by policy craziness, but is otherwise fundamentally pretty straightforward and effective.)
Livestock is most effective for using marginal land that cannot be reasonably re-purposed for growing human food– it can also be very effective for managing areas that aren’t food related at all, like national forests. (Allow sensible grazing and dead-wood-removal/thinning on national forests, watch horrific forest fires drop way down; get the local folks in charge of replanting after a forest fire, instead of imported “but the college said—–” folks, and watch it get even better as local grasses grow instead of fireweed and mouldy straw.)
This is a pet peeve of mine about the locovore/vegetarian/youeattoomuchmeat movement folks. Even things like grazing on corn fields after the corn ears are removed beats trying to compost it, and if artificial fertilizers get too expensive then dairies and such are your best friend.
(My mom has a lot of locovore/”organic” friends because of the bull lot’s shit list. She scrapes the bull field after each winter, lets it cook for two years to kill off weeds and such, then gives it away for the price of the gas involved in filling a trailer. Has the side-benefit of being a warm place for the bulls to lay when it’s below zero– snow never stays on a manure pile.)
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Foxfier, it sounds like your mom may be one of the only people who, when she says “You’re on my shit list”, gets this taken as a compliment by the person she’s addressing. :-)
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She chose it exactly for that response. :)
Gets an impish glee out of perverse but accurate descriptions like that… even though she’s horrified when it disturbs folks, if they recover it’s the best high ever!
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“Livestock is most effective for using marginal land that cannot be reasonably re-purposed for growing human food– it can also be very effective for managing areas that aren’t food related at all, like national forests. (Allow sensible grazing and dead-wood-removal/thinning on national forests, watch horrific forest fires drop way down; ”
“Fire is natural, it is a good thing, it burns off the excess dead wood and replenishes the soil, and provides food for bears and wolves”
Yellowstone Park Ranger;
said during the huge fires of 99 or 00 (forget which year) that burned most of Yellowstone, as well as large portions of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and large areas of both private and public lands in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Incidentally burning so hot as to sterilize the soil in many places rather than replenishing it.
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. Incidentally burning so hot as to sterilize the soil in many places rather than replenishing it.
I’m worried that’s where Vathara is going with Embers.
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Humpty-Dumptyism? Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.
On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 11:49 AM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > SPQR commented: “”… half of them insisted on reading me as saying I > was all right with sexual ASSAULT. This lack of reading comprehension > concerns me. ” Its not a lack of reading comprehension. Its an intentional > degradation of language to mean whatever they say. ” >
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[Like] No point in giving the enemy the benefit of the doubt.
M
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Here’s another idiocy. It is “sexual harassment” if a guy has sex with a drunk girl even if she’s willing to do it again later. IE she’s willing to get drunk with the guy (and have sex) a second time. [Frown]
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Sorry, that should have been “sexual assault” not “sexual harassment”, but it’s still idiocy.
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Yep. That’s “rape” — they’re actually advising guys to get consent in writing. (I wish I were joking.)
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They are trying to push the sexes as far apart as possible so that there will be as few kids born as they can manage. If you brainwash girls into being scared of and unprepared to deal with boys it could very well happen.
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It IS happening.
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and then they wonder why the “good” boys aren’t interested in commitment or anything else. The one sure thing about “one handed web browsing” is that there’s no way anyone can get you for rape or harassment. If you’re a smart young man who can avoid thinking solely with his penis when in the presence of attractive young ladies you’ll be doing the risk/reward calculation and deciding that it ain’t worth it. Meanwhile the drunk jocks who have less brain are uninhibited and getting all the girls.
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Over the weekend the NY Times “Fashion” section had a lengthy article on the “Hook-Up Culture” in today’s colleges. Glenn Reynolds linked it
which means it is accessible without going through the Times’ paywall. The article is long and depressing, presenting a dismal portrait of Type-A coeds deliberately choosing to hook-up with guys whose personalities ensure they (the coeds) will form no emotional attachment to those who scratch their “itch.”
Toward the end of the article it does discuss the downsides of these arrangements and the sexual exploitation of the young women, who often find it easiest to provide oral gratification to avoid copulation. Nowhere does the article explore the messages being conveyed to men about women, nor the futility of trying to be “nice guys” that is inherent in a culture in which women actively avoid relations with nice guys. It also fails to consider that the women who are “scratching their itches” are exploiting their male partners in a way which the enlightened journos of the Times would deplore if roles reversed.
As said, an article informative in all sorts of ways its authors and editors do not intend.
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Yeah I saw that.
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I’ve long noticed that what liberals hold up as “Womens Issues” are really all about making liberal women more sexually available to liberal men, without the consequences and responsibility. And mostly it revolves around convincing them that this no-strings sexual availability is somehow good for them.
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This is why liberal pro-abortion organizations have always gotten a major chunk of their funding from Playboy.
check out “bro-choice” if you want to know
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Offered without further comment:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2013/07/st_joes_title_ix_and_procedura.html
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Why would you be joking?
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…they’re actually advising guys to get consent in writing.
What good would that do – is not consent-while-intoxicated challengable under contract law?
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The student union needs to provide a contract template for the students, enabling them to specify the terms of their agreement regarding specific acts agreed to (or expressly forbidden), number of such acts and positions permitted, with specifics as to the details of the interactions and external devices permitted.
Somebody needs to draft and post such a contract on their web site. Great merriment would ensue.
BTW, are not student unions, by failing to provide this essential item along with condoms, complicit in any malfeasance and subject to liability for damages?
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Google “sexual harassment consent form.” It got passed around in the late nineties when I was in high school.
I’m pretty sure passing these out would now, in itself, constitute harassment in the minds of some.
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Only when men hand them to women. When women hand them to men it’s empowerment.
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Sarah, my standing advice to all men is to have video / audio surveillance at all times. I don’t mentor female subordinates / co-workers. Ever. I don’t socialize with them. It simply isn’t worth the risk.
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OH, OH!! I have a great idea for a new business, I will copyright a consent form, printed on water resistant paper in handy wallet carrying size. I can probably sell them in boxes of fifty just like checks. The guy can pull out his wallet, hand the girl he is trying to pick up in the bar one, and ask her to sign and date it before he gives her a ride home, please.
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I saw that in the military in the 90s, which made it harder for a real sexual harassment suit to be filed.
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Perhaps more to the point, even if he is just as drunk, or drunker.
Women lose responsibility if drunk, not men. Presumably only in bed, too — I doubt a woman would get off on a DUI on the grounds she was drunk.
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But when they hit their twenties and suddenly they have to grow up and face reality they…too often…want their mommy. As the Occutard movement for many mommy is Big Government. And that’s really all the explanation needed as to why.the schools do what they do.
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I will echo Celia– Words fail…..
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It sounds like they were doing their best to inculcate the girl with shame for having her butt touched. In the “Of course you shouldn’t be ashamed to be such a weak victimized victim! But you should be demonstrating that you’re horribly traumatized and we won’t quit asking you invasive questions and let you go back to normal until you cry!” mode.
I will say that a fair amount of boys that age and younger do want to flip a same age girl’s skirt up, unless they have sisters. Sometimes they’ll yank a girl’s halter top off, but usually that’s more being a jerk than being sex-driven. But yeah, I’d take the latter a bit more seriously than the former, but either one would basically be a case of the stink-eye and a brief scold, not making a federal case out of it.
I have met a boy that age who was sexually driven and couldn’t be trusted around girls his age and younger, but it was because he’d been abused himself. The poor kid, God love him, gave you the creeps because he was so different in attitude from a regular boy his age. We were warned to keep an eye on him. (I was working at a day camp with a session just for kids who were in foster care for various reasons.) But we were also told to treat him normally so that he could learn how to live normally.
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Submitted for your consideration:
The tale related reflects a common problem: officials devoid of common sense. They have probably been run through required “anti-harassment” seminars, the substance of which they grasped about as well as the idiots who thought our Blogstess was endorsing sexual assault.
Overly sensitized to risks of liability they acted thoughtlessly to a situation which superficially resembled that which had been covered in the seminars they had slept through.
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We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen!
So much make-work that was generated by this incident. “Activists” can wax indignant about the budget and personnel “needs” of an “overburdened” school system. And they were just getting started: Sarah scared them off from getting the cops, lawyers, Child Protective Services, etc involved.
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I think it started off as fear of lawsuits, and it has morphed into a mindset over time that these folks actually believe.
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A reason we sent our kids to Lutheran school. The public schools are awash with weirdness. Yes, we had to send them to public school for high school (the nearest Lutheran high school was an hour’s drive into Denver – probably double that during rush hour). But by time they hit high school, they’d learned critical thinking.
I, personally, blame Marija Gimbutas and her acolytes of the Mother Goddess cult – all males are horrible, etc, etc, etc.
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Well, SHE’s on the list for a cross time strike team, (literally if I get around to writing the time wars books) BUT our bureaucracy encourages this.
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A cross-time strike team comprised of women built like fertility figures–I volunteer. We’ll wear muumuus, of course. And birkenstocks.
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I’d do it, but NOT if muumuus are part of it!
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Another volunteer here.
I can even deal with a muumuu if I’m allowed to use it as a tunic, with trousers. And it’s more or less in one color. Something dark. Have to admit I wear that type of tunics sometimes. Well, I buy all my clothing either used or from sales, so I’ll take what I can get (and what is cheapest).
Birkenstocks, on the other hand… er, would something like combat or jungle boots do? Especially the younger versions of the birkenstocks people sometimes seem to wear them too.
Okay, maybe if it’s absolutely necessary. Anything for a good cause.
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I could wear these:
http://www.birkenstockusa.com/products/women/shoes/maine/denim-suede/67208
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Okay, those are passable. But I have a hip that occasionally goes out of the socket. That combined with walking A LOT (hopefully tomorrow) means I wear Propets. Looks mournfully at latest pair. Would you believe they’re going AT THE UPPERS?
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http://www.propetusa.com/pc_product_detail.asp?key=9F4A60E1250042DBA6907DBD0D9898A2
?
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http://www.propetusa.com/pc_product_detail.asp?key=D6DEA91C4AE04139B034451B37DD3AB3
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Man, these comments look funny on the chrome browser wordpress ap….
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Okay, those look tolerable.
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Nah! Dirndls! Cute busty Bavarian gals speaking cute German with that uvular “r” and wielding horrible deadly weapons? You betcha. Mrs. Hoyt would look Bayrisch enough with some hair bleach. I betcha she could swot up the accent with a few weeks’ notice.
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“Apparently my post defining what’s harassment and what’s (mere) rudeness or boorishness caused much consternation in some quarters…”
Sounds like a Model D kafkatrap.
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Thanks. Echoed places ;)
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Echoed ALL OVER: pinged MadMike and Larry the Korrieaken over on FB.
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Oh, so you’re the one responsible for bringing that to Sarah’s attention so she could post it to FB so I could find it and share it.
Thank you.
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Yes. Joel is made of awesome. I should have tagged him but couldn’t, as we’re only now FB friends.
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“will bring everywhere the fun we’ve been having at SFWA”
‘Fraid you’ve got the tense wrong. I can’t speak for SFWA per se (since I’m not a member, I’m not eligible to be a member, I’m unlikely to ever _be_ eligible to be a member, and the way they’ve been acting lately I wouldn’t join if they invited me to and threw a “free hundred dollar bills and platinum bricks, as many as you can grab, for new members!” party at the next con) but SF and fandom more generally are _behind_ the curve on this one. This sort of thing was going on in the early ’90s out in the mundane world.
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I *am* eligible to be a member and while two years or so ago i would have joined… not after this mess.
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I dropped it over the Amazon hate. Which drives me nuts, because I’d like to drop it AGAIN — but I won’t give them money just for that…
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This illustrates a fundamental problem of organizations such as SFWA, and how they inevitably auger into irrelevancy. AKA O’Sullivan’s Law, which states that any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.
The members most willing to give their time & energy to an organization tend to be the most extreme. Their extremism will eventually drive off more moderate members through the dynamic expressed in comments above. As the extremists become more concentrated their echo chamber reinforces their extremism, exacerbating the problems.
The SFWA probably has no way to prove that it represents a majority of SF writers, nor even a significant minority. Given the nature of the field, such proof is likely impossible — you would have to be able to calculate the number of people qualified to join SFWA in order to present the active membership (however defined) as a percentage of the industry, and even then you would face problems (not all SF writers are equally productive nor of equal status; the presence of a Robert Heinlein on the rolls means more than does a John Scalzi.)
We witnessed a similar problem during the battle to pass Obamacre* when it was revealed that the AMA does not represent a majority of qualified medical doctors — it doesn’t even represent 30%, and even then there was probably not unanimous support for its advocacy. We might even conclude that the more unanimity for an organization’s official position, the more that organization has rendered itself a distilled irrelevancy.
*Portmanteau formed from Obamacare and massacre
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Shouldn’t be hard to prove, scrap Amazon’s website in the science fiction section to gather a list of authors, then see how many of those authors are members.
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Zero-tolerance at work. This is what happens when you insist that any infraction, no matter how minor, receive the maximum punishment. They do this to avoid getting sued.
And yes, they are trying to sabotage relationships between boys and girls. Remember, their operating assumption is that males are evil oppressing pig-dogs of power and privilege, especially when they express sexual interest in a female (even though your son did no such thing.) They accuse you, and that alone is supposed to pronounce you guilty.
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If your crazy accusing words mean anything you can imagine, it gives you limitless power. Until somebody decides that killing you won’t be any more trouble than they are already experiencing.
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exactly.
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I’ve been there since about 2002.
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I can’t help but be amused by the Administrator’s reaction to your suggestion of punching someone who harassed you as “violence never solves anything”, when they threatened your son with expelling him from school, and with various levels of detention. In working out various punishments for my children, I have learned that, under certain circumstances, time out or grounding from a movie can be SEVERELY violent–more so, even, than spanking. Even though no one gets physically hurt, the consequences can cut deep emotionally, and I have felt sad inflicting such things on my children (even though it was the right thing to do).
In other words, the State is Force, and when force is applied, it is violence.
Of course, the Administration wouldn’t recognize this, because they think they know best, and they refuse to acknowledge the damage they cause. In a way, their reaction of “violence never solves anything” is an attempt to claim that only they can be trusted with violence–and they would probably be just as appalled by a young woman shooting a rapist, as they would be a young lady punishing someone for sexual harassment!
Which reminds me of a quote from Jeff Cooper: “One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure — and in some cases I have — that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.”
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Gun control:
The idea that a woman found raped and strangled with her pantyhose is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker wound up with a bullet hole.
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I’ve been seeing the same sort of arguments made about Zimmerman– like there’s something inherently less moral about defending yourself with a gun than being beaten to death.
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There are apparently people who cannot (or, more likely, refuse to) distinguish between innocent life and other. They appear to believe that if someone is actively trying to kill you, then taking their life makes you just as bad.
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It goes beyond that, there are apparently people – like “Nurse” Bloomberg – who thinks its worse for a lawabiding citizen to kill a goblin with a firearm in defense of himself or his family than for the goblin to do so.
Because “Nurse” Bloomberg is spending lots of money – some his and some yours – to stop the former but not the latter.
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No people in the world knows collective eulogies as well as the Jews do. But we have no intention of going down in order that some should speak well of us.
Golda Meir
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I think you’re missing something here. They believe it’s better to be a victim than to be responsible and defend yourself.
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To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
We know which side they encourage us to come down on.
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So many people consider this bit as contemplative… since it is about Hamlet Prince of Denmark and I know the bloodline (grin), I believe that it is a defiant anthem… to be or not to be… falls on TO BE
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Best of all is to be a “victim” aggressor, and worst of all is to defend others.
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If you only could read some of the comment threads to the stories about that case published on the net versions of Finnish newspapers.
Or perhaps better not. Although there were surprisingly many commenters who tried to tell the facts: that this was not a case of a white man (of course all the white supremacists are perfectly happy to defend one of their own and Z is obviously one of their own…) killing a sweet kid who was just trying to get home, after he ran the kid down. And that this had nothing to do with ‘stand your ground’. More than a half seem to have exactly that idea – kid was shot based more on suspicion and because Z thought just him being black made his suspicious, or if there was a confrontation of some sorts Z got away with it because ‘stand your ground’. Because that was exactly the impression local news stories mostly gave.
And then there were the handful of commenters who, while admitting that maybe Zimmerman did shoot in self defense and had a reason for it were angry that he killed. Should have only shot to wound, you know. Foot or arm or other non-lethal target. No need to kill the kid even if he was acting violent, Z should have chosen where he pointed the gun with more care.
*sigh*
Maybe I should think of my blood pressure and avoid reading the news, and those comment threads. It’s usually worse with American news too because you have enough easily found alternative news sources that it’s easy to start checking things. A lot harder to find the facts when it comes to local news, and while that of course makes me wonder how much manure we get fed in those that is more often just a suspicion rather than proven fact and so makes me a bit less pissed.
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Not that it’d sink through, but did you check out legalinsurrection.com ? They had a guy on-site live blogging it.
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With the time difference I couldn’t really follow the live part, but I have been reading some on that site.
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Good analysis of the prosecution here: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/alan-dershowitz-vs-angela-corey.php
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A good overview of Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground.
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Thanks for the links.
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The whole “shoot to wound” nonsense comes from watching too much TV.
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Mostly. Here we have had a few cases where the police have stopped somebody by shooting to wound (or at least claimed it was done on purpose afterwards), and actually managed both to stop him and not to kill him – when the cops were a good distance away, in cover and there were lots of them on scene, and the bad guy was some lone nutcase. Add to that combination – lots of movies and TV, a couple of real cases – also it’s easier to believe here because there is no serious training available to anybody but the police, since we can’t carry.
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“Officer, the department has spent thousands of Euros on your advanced sniper training. You had your laser sight on the target in clear view and excellent firing conditions and you took your shot at the recommended distance for your weapon and only nicked the target? How do you explain this?”
“Um, i was trying to … um … to … err … to wound him, … yeah, just wound him, sir?”
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:D
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Thankfully I had just put my coffee cup down or I would have had a snootful.
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“I is a great believer in peaceful settlements,” Jik-jik assured him. “Ain’t nobody as peaceful as a dead troublemaker.”
— Keith Laumer, Retief’s War (1966)
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Someone should have asked the Administrators how they proposed to enforce their decisions without someone resorting to violence?
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None so blind as those who actively choose not to see. But when they take your words and twist them to validate their warped view of reality it does tend to irritate we rational types.
Been my experience that if you counter their blathering with logic and reason they simply get louder and more shrill and accusatory. This can be great sport, but for me at least wears rather quickly. And when they do in fact have some hold on you, or more seriously on your kids, there is a very strong temptation to invite them for a long walk in the woods resulting in you returning alone.
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You miss the point: they are not responding to what you said, they are responding to what they know you meant. All your protestations to the contrary are simple denial of the facts and reinforce their interpretation as valid.
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The ability of the average progressive to read minds from a distance is stunning. Often, they know more about what you’re thinking than YOU do.
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The most dangerous people in the world are stupid people who are certain they are right. Once they reach a critical mass in terms of a percentage of population, you’re screwed. Even worse, you can’t fix stupid.
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Fix, no, eliminate, yes. It may entail some sacrifice or risk on your part, but you always have an alternative. That might be moving to another city, state, or even country, or homeschooling to get your kids out of their clutches. Or in extremis the violent overthrow of those idiots who have managed to lie, cheat, steal, or bribe their way into power. After all it did work for us almost 240 years ago and the Fathers were quite explicit in their belief that it should always be kept as a last but most effective resort.
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You might not have a choice. A couple is unable to get refuge in the United States because Germany is threatening to take their children from them for homeschooling. Interfers with Volksgemeinschaft you know. (Yes, that was the era where the law was passed.)
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Sure you can, with men it’s just a quick little snip at the right place and — voila! — all fixed. It is harder to do with women.
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Unfortunately, given the … ah… genetics of intelligence, that would just be cruelty for no purpose. Besides, again, it’s the OTHER SIDE that believes in eugenics.
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Admittedly it doesn’t fix the stupidity, which is a learned characteristic rather than innate.
But given the long ugly history of Eugenics in America, including forced sterilization of the mentally incompetent, that pun was one I was not going to resist.
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Yup. Most agree these days that the genes for smarts are on the X chromosome. I think it should be public policy to encourage and subsidize Smart Girls to reproduce.
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No chance, we have F*all for either fashion or taste in men.
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Well that could be considered an advantage. Seems to me fashion is designed primarily for the benefit of other women, since most hetero men have approximately the same degree of fashion sense as they do taste in men. Since hetero men are what you need to attract to reproduce I don’t see that fashion sense nor taste in men is highly important.
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God, I really hope so.
I am deeply in the emo zone tonight.
Scared because my sister is Fashion with compassion ground zero, but can’t find a decent guy— and I found a couple of false positives before I found a match geek.
From my brother, it’s hard to find a mate without signaling.
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And even harder when the object of the signal is half or more afraid that if he even acknowledges the signal he’ll find out it’s from a Q-ship….
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Dear– and I mean this really, not as some sort of formalism– geeks:
Geek girls like me– those who want a mate, not uber-sexy but will KILL and die before they betray you— aren’t always obvious. You may have even had “what girls want” conversations with us.
Treat us like real friends, and don’t freak out if we’re OK with a kiss, and you have us.
God, I wish I could set folks up.
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Talking about stuff that REALLY interests you both works too. And really talk. If she’s not smart enough for that, she’s not the girl for you. Dan wooed me with mathematics, Space exploration, history and metaphysics. Then he proposed out of the blue (we hadn’t seen each other in four years. our courtship was ALL over the phone) and I couldn’t say no. (And mind, I had practice. I’d turned down eight guys before.)
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My hubby woo’ed me with electronics ;-) and beaches in Pensacola, Florida. We would do things together and read together. He was the first man in my life that wasn’t volatile. I like that — a lot.
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“not uber-sexy but will KILL and die before they betray you”
No offense, but anyone who doesn’t recognize “uber-sexy” in that description doesn’t deserve to breed. And particularly doesn’t deserve to take a geek girl off the market.
“God, I wish I could set folks up.”
Who says you can’t? I’m betting there are plenty of folks who’d be grateful for it.
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Because I utterly lack skills at getting folks to talk to each other….
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Skills don’t necessarily enter into it. Create a social situation (eg board game night at Foxfier and TrueBlue’s place), invite them both, make introductions. Even if you can’t manage more than that, you’ve brought them in contact, and as the good captain says, “That ain’t nothin’.”
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Would work better if anybody was close enough to do boardgame night!
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Physical distance is a major obstacle, yes. If they are geeks of one stripe or another, there are ways to create online social situations (multiplayer, G+ hangouts, etc.) but they are not nearly as effective for your purposes, I think. Maybe it’s the lack of pheromones. :D
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Where’s Smell-O-Vision when you really need it?
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Could probably manage a board-game night via google hang-outs or skype. But it would be logistically painful.
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Obviously, we need a geek matchmaking board comprised of friends and relatives. Or to be specific, mothers. I should be able to log on, see where geek candidates are gathering, and send my children along. Concealing the whole purpose of the gathering, of course.
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Best stick with “friends and relatives”, though. Especially “friends”. I’d hesitate to imagine what sort of luck I’d have had, in whatever kind of forum my mother would have inhabited or reccomended. No such construct would plausibly have included my wife…nor would any construct inhabited by my mother-in-law have plausibly included me. :)
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Go along, dear. They have a sale on calculators. yeah, that’s it.
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The ubiquitousness of high speed internet aside, I think a good ploy would be to tell them that there is a LAN party.
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Will there be an open bar?
http://notinventedhe.re/on/2013-7-16
On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 7:06 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> ** > Wayne Blackburn commented: “The ubiquitousness of high speed internet > aside, I think a good ploy would be to tell them that there is a LAN party.” >
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Broaden it to geek friendly mates, too; one of the happiest married geeks I know just has a wife that accepts gaming as a hobby.
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Sometimes both.
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Actually it’s more complicated than that. Yes, they are there, but… there’s a whole matter of epigenetics. And then there’s the distressing fact that geniuses and morons tend to be very close genetically and often come from the same parents. (This is readily observable if you come from a village and, btw, teachers in schools with both my kids must have experience of this enough to ingrain it, because since #1 son is brilliant, they treated #2 son like a moron and expected him to be one. When he goes to schools his brother never attends, this effect is not visible.)
Subsidizing smart girls to have kids would be an improvement on the current policy (big time. It is my belief birth rates are already in free fall) but sterilizing morons would be bad because you’re preventing the potential emergence of genius. (Intelligence is a series of genes, not one, and whether you get a genius or a moron depends on ONE gene being flipped a certain way.)
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Curiously, one can read the Honor Harrington novels as a fight between good eugenicists and bad eugenicists. The good ones being from Beowulf, the bad ones being Mesans, which rhymes with Masons. Heh. I mean, Honor is genetically enhanced to be super strong and scary-smart, and is a natural-born killer, which last she keeps under tight (usually) control with her strong Christian conscience.
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Of course Honors mother left Beowulf because she didn’t want to deal with the ‘good eugenicists’ telling her what to do.
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Well, her fellow Beowulfians could not force her to do anything. The Mesans could force people to do something. What she was objecting to was “social pressure” to “behave”.
I think she would agree that there’s a difference between “social pressure” and “legal pressure”.
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I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
I won’t go on a rant….
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Do it!
Do it!
Do it!
You know you want to!
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OK! Maybe later. I’m just waking up.
;-)
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Emily! Do not encourage Josh K. He’s encoura… incorrigible as is!
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“Who me???”
Said, while looking over both shoulders to see if anyone else is standing close.
I would never go on and on and on about the stupidity and lack of common sense in our public school system, or the inbreading of said stupidity that these same teachers will teach the next generation of teachers.
I don’t think we have to worry about idiocracy happening, because at some point, I feel, it will go supercritical forming a blackhole of stupid powerful enough to suck us all in.
Ahhh…. much better. I’m done now.
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(I can’t resist) Why do you want to cover stupidity with bread? At least in the open you can see it.
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Because anything is easier to swallow if it is deepfried?
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I can rant, and I can edit my spelling (kind of), but not a the same time. Plus what Bearcat says has merit.
:-)
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She incorriges me all the time….. ;-)
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It’s a wifely duty to incorrige your husband
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But I thought he was already incorrigible!
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Those of us who ARE on low-carb diets should grab our bag(s) of pork rinds, or as they call them in the more Anglo parts of Fairfax County, chicharrones. ;)
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I need to try out that recipe for low carb short bread again and put it up at pjm lifestyle. They were too crumbly last time. I’m also trying to figure out lowish carb pinneapple upside down. (Can’t do low-low, because… pineapple.)
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For the pineapple upside down, what would you think of using the bread substitute I saw the other day, that is made from cream cheese, eggs, salt and cream of tartar? I haven’t tried it, but it sounds interesting. I saved it to my Google Drive folder:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_wS9EKtxK4ZsYfV2JSQZNb5dv3NHzzo6rKeJUuSvSzo/edit?usp=sharing
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I use a walnut and protein powder base, but that is interesting.
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The marsupial invasion continues …
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Ya know, this blog really needs an armadillo . . .
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No! Not an armadillo.
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I’m sure Jeff Goldstein over at proteinwisdom won’t mind if you borrow his panzer rat….
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I’ve fed him enough Guiness over the years to earn it.
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Has that thing danced YET?!
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Oh no. that will only attract the penguin.
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What’s wrong with penguins?
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Ah. You don’t know Evil Penguin.
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I’ve met him. He’s not that evil.
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This is true. He’s not evil. He does have a thingy in the brainy, though!
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And which of us cannot say the same? To be fair, at least I have not been elbow-deep in enough corpses yet. The none I’ve been elbow-deep in are plenty enough for my delicate sensibilities…
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aye. Mine too.
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Aye, none of us have been elbow deep in enough corpses yet. Still, we should not let that stop us!
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He’s a Goa’uld Penguin?
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Good heavens…
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I am too evil!
The fact that you people do not recognize the level of my evilness just reiterates how evil I am! Only truly evil people hide their evil like I do.
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… did he just kafkatrap himself? *stunned*
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He’s good that way.
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I am sorry, your phrasing renders your intention unclear. When you say “I am too evil!” do you mean
a) I am evil to an excessive degree
or
b) I am evil, in spite of what others have claimed
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Or, of course, both.
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He’s not evil. He’s semantically confused.
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Oh, I recognize it, EP: I’m just unconcerned.
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Worry not. If he rises again, the dog will outsmart him again. :)
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no armadillos near me, can contribute a squirrel tho.
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Dear, we live in TX, I promise there’s an armadillo within short driving distance.
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There’s one down in San Antonio, on it’s back, with all four legs sticking up in the air. It’s masquerading as a sports stadium, though… I think they call it the Alamodome.
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*snicker”
And it’s just off the edge of the highway, too.
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I had to google that. Looks like an interesting critter.
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My aardvark will bring one along if you like, since one hangs out with it.
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Tell your aardvark to leave its ants home please.
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On display: one very sniffy aardvark. He came by and checked out this blog and removed all the ants while Sarah was away.
He brings bonbons, not ants.
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Plus, of course, armadillos.
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Virginia?
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“If you have kids, and you can get them out of school. If you can’t, make sure you de-program them at home.”
That’s a key sentence. I was too busy directing labs to home school my daughters, and my wife would not. The waiting list for the good private schools was over two years. Thus, we bought a house in the best school district. The schools still sucked. They were academically weak by my standards. (I blame that on the nationwide refusal to group kids by ability as they did 40 years ago. How can teachers do well when that have 30 students with IQs ranging from 75 to 150?). The schools did get an A for excessively bureaucratic administration that included zero tolerance policies. There was lots of left-wing and eco-nut propaganda. The history texts seemed unrelated to actual history. The math texts used bizarre, complex theories to explain simple concepts. Most of the science teachers didn’t understand the scientific method. The teachers and the science textbooks conflated technology and science (just as most of media does).
We all talked about school and school admin issues nearly every evening. I looked at what the girls were studying and corrected the many mistakes of the textbooks or teachers. This process extended into college for my younger daughter who commutes. The public schools did not win: both my girls are rational skeptics. Ironically, my older daughter will become an elementary teacher. (At a private school, we hope.) She’s had a tough time with some of the idiocies being taught. (The “professional educators” have a zero tolerance policy for being questioned or challenged.)
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I once taught at the first technical school to instruct in my field. We were affiliated with a local university, and kids could take our courses and get university credits for them. After I wrote the curriculum for an advanced course, and had it approved by the state board of regents, I was informed that the school had to let me go because I did not have a high enough degree OR a degree in education.
This was after the founder of the school had been eased out.
I asked the then head of the school who would teach my courses since I believed I was the only one with experience in the aspects of the field I was teaching. He told me that he would teach my classes. I asked him if he had any experience in the subjects in question and he said “That’s the difference between us. I am a Professional Educator!” He obviously felt that as a Professional Educator he did not need to understand the subjects he was teaching.
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Sadly, that is one of the basic precepts of modern “Educational Theory”. You don’t need to know the subject, you only need to know HOW to teach.
Not sure whether the lack of knowing the subject is the worst, or if it’s the fact that they actually don’t know how to teach.
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Yes.
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And it’s a good thing they did that too. Otherwise how would I have had my first college job of being someone who actually knew the subject, teaching kids the subjects they “learned” from people with “education degrees.”
I mean, if they had actually known the subject rather than “how to teach” I might have been out of a job!
Do I need a sarcasm tag for that?
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I luuuuuv the well-meaning advice I keep getting about “oh, take part-time education classes to get your certification and [public school district] will hire you. You can do it co-op and teach part-time for the district while you take the classes at night.” Because there’s nothing I want to do like pay for night classes out of my own pocket so I can get a BA in Education while spending my days with students I can’t discipline and who are larger than I am. I’m not that desperate yet, even assuming that the district would hire me once they saw that I have a doctorate in a field.
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Nonsense! Our nation’s classrooms are laden with 17-yr-old children desiring nothing more than skittles and tea, absolutely no threat to nobody nowhere nohow. Our president, attorney-general, leading journalistic institutions and the NAACP all say so.
And every one of thos children is a model citizen, too!
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and if you suggest otherwise, you are a racist troll and should be banned.
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Reminds me of my own issues dealing with the school system. Not able to take my daughter out (if I could just get to the point of making oh, say $50,000 a year by writing for a couple of years while working my day job, that would let me get the mortgage paid off and then I could drop the day job and just live on the writing income, with my wife’s job providing us health insurance, but no, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for the time being) so I have to give her two sets of lessons–one being to correct things missing, or outright wrong in the schools, and the others in how to deal with the problems of the school system itself.
Example of the first case: I was going over my daughter’s grade report and saw “government: knows that the purpose of government is to provide services at public expense.”
What?
So I get my daughter and we go over a brief summation of the Declaration of Independence, “that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” and so on. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” being the basic rights. From there we go on to working our way in bits through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (Not the actual text at her age, but covering the basic concepts bit by bit–with pop quizes given while we’re out and about).
And a couple of examples of dealing with the school system itself.
Background for the first: A little under a year and a half ago we lost a beloved dog to, well, there were specific reasons but what it really comes down to was old age. A few months ago, my daughter, Athena, comes to me nervous and tells me that she’s seen Yatta-chan (the dog) standing in the hallway. She said she was afraid to tell me because she was afraid I’d make fun of her.
Absolutely not.
We talk. I tell her that I don’t know, but it’s possible that Yatta-chan has a spirit that lived on after his body died and perhaps he had come back to watch over her. Look, I’m an agnostic. That doesn’t mean I don’t consider the possibility that there might be more than the physical and that the world is not limited to just what I can see, touch, and understand. I’m willing to credit that she saw what she saw whether it was something “real” or just an overactive imagination. Not my place to say, really.
In any case, a friend warned me that I needed to explain to her that if a counselor or teacher ever asked her “do you see things that other people don’t,” then the answer is “no” in no uncertain terms.
So we had that talk. And occasionally we review it to make sure she still remembers.
The other issue was, in some ways, more serious. One of the boys at her day care was hitting her. Previous policy in such situations (to avoid creating more problems for her) was to get away and get an adult to deal with it. She told me that in this case she could do neither.
So, self defense training time.
I start to teach her to defend herself with the understanding that this is only if she can’t get away and/or get an adult to deal with it. I teach her an “open hand” (not fists) guard position (that it happens to be a standard fighting position from judo helps, but mainly it doesn’t look aggressive like clenched fists would) and the style I’m teaching her used palm heel strikes up high and “spear hands” down low (coming in quartering on the diagonals–very effective) all of which _looks_ less aggressive than punching and kicking. The idea is to help her defend herself while reducing the chance the school will come down on her as the “bad guy”. (Old saying “the best bean paste does not always smell like bean paste.” In this case “the best fighting does not always look like fighting.”)
With this as a basis, I plan to teach her more as time goes on.
And in the case of, despite everything, she does get in trouble with the school because of this, well, the school won’t think they’ve tangled with a pit bull. No. They’ll think they’ve tangled with a honey badger.
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It sounds like you’re doing what we did with the boys. Same reason. I couldn’t work — not worth it for the jobs I could get. I’d spend it all in daycare. To ramp up translation would take as long as to ramp up writing — and write and I didn’t make enough for private school. Also, not really impressed with those. And teaching at home… I thought I couldn’t do it. (I might have been wrong.) So… we deprogrammed.
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I read the first part of your reply thinks to meself, I didn’t learn things like that, but then I read. So maybe I did and I just saw past it? Or maybe as I alluded to above, I am now actually cognizant of what some of the stuff means?I swear is there a breakdown of whats what? Or maybe it is generational- I mean my brother already knows how to work the iPad and iPhone. Only reason he can’t work the tv is he’s too short. I recall the gameboy color as awesome, but I still watched cartoons on a Saturday morning (now do they do that?)
Oh well back to looking at Instapundit
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“Understanding government exists to provide services at public expense” was the actual, literal (perhaps slightly paraphrased since I don’t have it in front of me at the moment) line item on the report card.
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Wow, yeah nothing like that. At least not for me.
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Technically government does exist “to provide services at public expense.”
Protection of individual rights is a service. It is appropriate that the public fund such a service.
That is probably not covered in the course. It is probable that the rights they avowedly defend are probably ones which would astound this nation’s founders, and the expense entailed would appall them.
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Absolutely – self-defense techniques are no-end useful. My Dad taught us some of them, and he had this book – in the original WWII era binding – http://www.amazon.com/Get-Tough-W-E-Fairbairn/dp/0873640020 (he left it to my daughter the Marine as a memento) and my brother and I read it with great interest, and even practiced some of the moves on each other … although carefully, since many of them are seriously maiming. It is the greatest compendium of dirty tricks fighting known to man – or woman, and I highly recommend it. (I caught my bro in the crotch with my knee once, when he was eight and I was ten … I swear, doubled him up. He has never fathered children that I know of, and I am almost sure that this incident had NOTHING to do with it.) Just as I would go automatically to some of Dad’s snakebite remedies in a moment of crisis – I would go to those moves that my brother and I practiced as children.
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This would be the same Fairbairn the knife was named after, right?
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Yep, that very one. The dirty fighting moves were very effective, too – we had to power down about 80% or we would have maimed each other.
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Oh no no.
Policy is you never hit first, you always hit back. Ice cream if you win.
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Someone mentioned the CoDominium series or a book in it the other day and I just got around to searching on wikipedia. Are those good? Seems I should like them, in theory. Ok let me rephrase- or those worth picking up considering the usual vane of military sci fi books recommended so far?
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Yep. They are.
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You might find them a bit dated, but if you can stand that, the stories are very good.
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CoDo books are by Dr. Jerry Pournelle who is absolutely fabulous!! He blogs at Madhouse Manor. All his stuff is good. He has written a bunch of Stuff w/Larry who is also excellent. If I’m not mistaken they wrote Ringworld.
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No, Ringworld was solely Larry Niven.
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The Mote In God’s Eye, OTOH … as also Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall.
Rule of thumb: ALL Larry Niven is worth the time spent reading it. All Jerry Pournelle is worth reading.
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Chaos Manor! You guys are worse than I. Other than that I second everything.
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Notice that Dr. Pournelle has currently linked to our hostesses’ Alas SFWA column with some praise for the author – this from a pro who sought to leave his own stamp on SWFA.
The CoDominium back story is universally acknowledged to be alternate history by now but the willing reader can retcon to arrive at the same point. Further there are many people – the technical term is idiots – who appear to believe that Dr. Pournelle thinks the CoDominium time line would be a good thing.
I’d suggest reading the nonfiction such as A Step Further Out where Niven’s preface says correctly “Jerry Pournelle is out to make the whole world rich” Ties right in with today’s post here: The Future Is Yours To Dream
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Hey! Checking out Dr. Pournelle’s web site looking for the link to this “Alas SFWA” (and finding out it’s over at PJ and not here which is why I wasn’t finding it here) also led me to discover that he published a recent letter of mine (also on the Sexual Harassment issue). Coolness:
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/
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It may be of interest to read Dr Pournelle’s comments in their context: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=14634
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Cool I shall have to check them out. Mind you all my reading list is growing exponentially. I had to make a list on amazon just to get it out of my head.
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Trav, see here: http://www.baenebooks.com/p-574-codominium-future-history-bundle.aspx [Wink]
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Sweet thanks. bookmarked.
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The Larry I mentioned is Larry Niven.
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There are times I wish I was going to school now, so I could get what I most wanted from the school district: Expelled.
Then I move to the Charlotte area, get a job with one of the big NASCAR teams, and bootstrap my way into a driver’s seat, or front-office position.
Oh, by the way: Given the recurring tales of the thundering stupidity and ignorance of the Urbanite untermenschen running schools these days, how can anyone possibly believe these cretins have *any* value, save as “don’t let this happen to you” examples?
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Unintended consequences all around.
It makes it hard to convince girls that they have any kind of personal power when it takes an entire bureaucracy to safeguard their… what are the bureaucracies guarding, again? Aren’t these the same institutions that pass out contraceptives? No wonder kids / society / both genders are messed up.
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I’m glad I’ve found your musings, but wish I actually knew some women LIKE you. Passionate but not pushy, with great experience in the REAL world. And supremely (abnormally) normal. Keep writing for us all. Thanks loads.
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I usedta know at least a few wimmin like Mrs. Hoyt. I think of my Mom, and my first-grade teacher, and my high-school Latin teacher, my Algebra II teacher. They are all long since dead, alas. I meet some on the ‘net, but in real life, sadly,
I See Silly Bimbos. Doesn’t matter at my age, but I feel sorry for the young men these days, many of whom have never met an actual competent woman who is nonetheless feminine.
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I can testify with certainty to the existence, in the universe, of five of them. I’m married to one. Our Beloved Hostess(tm) is another. Two more are married to friends of mine (in one case, I knew the husband first, and in the other, I knew the wife first, but in both cases I count each partner as a friend today). One is single, and seems likely to stay that way, unfortunately.
Only one is under 30, and it’s not the one who’s single.
There may be others. In fact, assuming that these five are actually the only ones in the universe would probably be a bad bet. But I wouldn’t stake my life against it, and in today’s sexual marketplace I wouldn’t go back to being young and single for all the money in the world.
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I know of two such single, under thirty (I think – I have trouble enough remembering my age to not bother with others … except as variance from mine), daughters of friends (and friends of daughter) who probably qualify. Given my small circle of non-virtual friends and associates, I do not think the number remarkably small.
One reason they qualify is a lack of interest in being in “the sexual marketplace.” By eschewing the contemporary market behaviours or modern femininity (note: that word encompasses the word “nini”) they have instead acquired a range of skills and experiences making them well suited as wives and mothers, rather than playmates. But in the current sexual marketplace, playmates demonstrate that Gresham’s Law applies to more than just coinage.
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“Gresham’s Law applies to more than just coinage”
Exactly.
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I just finished reading Anne Bishop’s Dark Jewel series again. Does anyone else reads her books? Her premise (it is a sort of matriarchal book because the Queens rule and the Warlords serve– with protocol) is what happens when the trust between male and female has been damaged. It is fascinating story… and very dark. I read it again after the conversations here about the deliberate damage to male/female relationships. She shows how just two long-lived people taint the “Blood.” The parallels to what has happened already in our world is striking.
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Sorry– Sarah– I always feel guilty when I talk about someone else’s books here.
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NP. Kate reads them. Not my thing, but hers.
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Actually it took this blog to show me why I liked the stories. ;-)
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She has a new stand-alone (so far) book out Written in Red that was good. The Black Jewels novels were a little too dark for me.
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Yes, I read that one (Written in Red) recently. Very good. She is one of those that I buy full-price. I quit buying full-price to most of the traditionally published pieces, especially the ones that make me want to through the ereader through the wall. *sigh
I have this small problem. I MUST READ. So when the books were held by the gatekeepers, I read stuff that I am not proud of reading because of this little problem.
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Yes, I have that problem too. And even with lower e-book prices, the budget still has limits (and now Baen’s prices are going up, I understand, but still, less money). How do you think I know about the Black Jewels series :) Her writing is excellent, I read the whole series, but I can’t recommend it to anyone else with a clear conscience. Written in Red I can recommend.
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Yes– it is for a mature audience. I wouldn’t recommend it for children or teenagers.
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Oh, same here, but here’s the thing — now I don’t have to! (Actually this year has been mostly re-reads, but that’s because of stupid health stuff. When I’m sick I have trouble FOLLOWING stuff, so re-reads are easier.)
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I re-read too… I find that if a book is good (good story, etc), it is better the second and third time. ;-) I keep re-reading Bujold too. lol (I’ll be re-reading yours in a few months too)
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I find that if I care about the people then re-reading, or reading sequels, is visiting old friends.
If I don’t care about them, well, that’s death to a story.
(Case in point: as a fan of the old Battlestar Gallactica series I gave the “re-imagining” a try. Shortly into the first season I realized “I don’t care what happens to any of these people”–the one “person” I cared a little tiny bit about turned out to be a cylon and, well, that was it for me. I was done with it.)
To me, that’s the core of “human wave”–people (whether “human” or not) I can care about, doing things that matter (to them if to nobody else). A story I want to read has got to have that.
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Yes–
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You are absolutely correct. A lot of the New Wave was importing into SF/F a sensibility common in world “literature” post WWI. You made people as unpleasant/nasty as you could because that was serious. That was realistic. (No, that’s an hysterical reaction, but that’s something else.) What this means is that reading those books I find myself going “I want everyone in this book to die screaming.” And then I throw the book against the wall.
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Exactly!
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That could make a very funny parody, if done well. After the Revolution, readers corner Famous Grey Goo Writer and force him/her/it to bump off the author’s “most meaningful and significantly transgressive” characters. Slowly. One at a time. Readers’ choice who goes first. [evil grin]
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I have to have someone I can root for in a book. Depressing novels that make me want all mankind to die are firmly rejected.
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Oh yes. I have even said that on panels at SF conventions.
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More than just somebody to root for, the “somebody to root for” has to at least have a chance of succeeding.
While there are many things with which I have disagreed with the late Dr. Isaac Asimov, there was one thing that really stuck with me* through the years since I read it (probably in his autobiography):
If you have David vs. Goliath in a story then David has to win. This doesn’t mean you can’t have the protagonist lose, but in those cases it has to be a more even match.
There’s no drama, no real conflict, to have the little guy simply crushed by overwhelming force.
Unfortunately, today “little guy crushed by overwhelming force” would appear to be the standard in much of “Litracha”.
*The other thing that stuck with me came from his retelling of the time he was at a party. A woman approached him, smoking, and he jerked his head back at the cloud of smoke.
She said, “You don’t smoke, do you.”
He: “Well, no, actually, I don’t.”
She: “I bet you don’t drink either.”
He: “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”
She: “Well, what do you do?”
And his reply to that has just stayed with me through the many years since I read it.
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It’s been discussed in terms of successful is giving the illusion that losing is possible but it really isn’t – mostly.
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@thewriterinblack –
You can’t just recount an anecdote like that without leaving out the power line! (The “power line” is the final line of an anecdote that carries the message, serving the same purpose as the punchline of a joke.) So what was Asimov’s response that stuck with you?
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1st date, man asked if she would like a drink.
“Oh, no! what would I tell my Sunday school class?”
He offerd her cigarette.
“Oh, no! what would I tell my Sunday school class?” she said again.
On the way home, he saw a motel. he asked if she wants to stop there.
“OK.” she said.
“What will you tell your Sunday school class?” he ask.
“The same thing I always tell them: ‘You don’t have to drink or smoke to have a good time!’”
Then there is the school cheer at Norfolk University:
“We don’t drink! We don’t smoke! Norfolk, Norfolk!
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He: “Well, madam, I fuck a lot.”
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“I have a lot of sex” — read same bio. How this squared with his wife’s idea that mostly she saw his back as he typed and the kids were miracles, I don’t know. Possibly, as I told husband while watching Pride and Prejudice and admiring Pemberley “Fortunately I live in houses better than that, in my head.” Might have been the same effect.
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What about books that upend traditional morality? I feel dirty after reading those. I don’t mean erotic stories, I mean stories where what is considered bad is good etc.
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A lot of those are simply not interesting. It’s like watching a five year old trying out dirty words for the same time. Maybe there was a frisson the first time, but I can’t even remember it. And besides, it shocks no one.
I once wrote a very pro-hunting essay and shocked my hippie teacher. I was 14. Good times, good times.
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Good. The age-old purpose of fiction is to instruct and amuse, but in particular, what fiction instructs is the sentiments. It does not tell us that courage, keeping your word, telling the truth, and paying your debts is good; it shows us these things as lovely and admirable. (I get tiresome about it here.)
Or, of course, it doesn’t. To feel dirty after them is to feel the appropriate sentiment for such works that are trying to corrupt you and at a level below your reasoning.
Avoid, avoid. That feeling is like the bitter taste of poison — a warning.
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I only review books I’ve read (at least) twice. Anyone who’s read my journal knows — that’s quite a few.
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I have, for some time, had the full intention that, if we can do anything about it, our son (plus any future kids) will never enter a public school. I personally would prefer home schooling. Samantha, my wife, would like some kinds of private school. Either way, it’s a real sacrifice of money.
I’ve seen too many news stories today, though, whose main moral is the people who run our public schools have gone completely insane. On my sister’s recommendation (4 kids, home schooled), I’m reading Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto. Sexuality, guns, economics . . . our public schools have gone completely mad.
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Reverting at this late date to some connection with the original post – Perhaps the (lower?) half readers who misunderstand don’t know what dealing with frottage means when it comes to shoving a point home?
On reflection – esprit de l’escalier perhaps?- It seems likely to me that there is some talking past each other here – to include Jerry’s reaction and the Randall Garrett story. I’ve worked security myself (keeping an eye on the art show surrounded by Vandals at Moscon) in the pre peace bonding days when weapons were common and I’d have considered the security staff capable of handling any incidents up to and including armed insurgency. In such times and places harassment doth never prosper for if it prosper…..
But I also know (am at least distantly related to……) women who have been more or less harassed at conventions only distantly related to local, regional and university related conventions of science fiction readers.
In one case a legitimate black belt JKA for another costume to go with her preferred video game based character costumes but what are you going to do when the situation doesn’t rise to a nuclear option?
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/life/116456-gaming-rape-culture-and-how-i-stopped-reading-pe/
Speaking of harassment anybody know for sure the current ownership percentages for DragonCon?
A.J. Budrys once said media related cons were for people who wanted the joy of fandom without actually reading. This implies something about the intended audience though I am sure times have changed beyond my understanding and comprehension.
Still it does seem to me that gamers, comic fans, furry and cosplayers are groping (pun intended) toward a mutual understanding of acceptable behavior in an age of internet trolls and accepted use of what I would consider foul language. Rumor says that being female in the online gaming world always leads to repeated unwanted language and the same thing carries over to behavior at cons that emphasize video gaming (not the game rooms at SF cons of old) and such behavior also goes along with cosplay ( actually need to create new look but don’t touch rule?!) and so it goes.
In sum perhaps what I think I know about harassment at Cons is based on my exposure to well policed SF cons and the world is talking about something else when they say Con.
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I’ve read this comment three times, and I still can’t figure out what you’re trying to get at. Perhaps there were thought processes that didn’t go into the comment? I don’t know, but it seems to skip around.
I don’t see how you get that people are talking past each other. Sarah said people are accusing her of being OK with sexual assault. That’s not speaking past, that’s completely misunderstanding the point. No one has said that sexual assault (or harassment) is OK, they have merely tried to point out that what some people are calling harassment or assault is an overreaction to something that either was not meant the way they took it, or else was not meant for them to hear (e.g. overhearing a joke between two other people and getting offended).
I’ve seen cosplayers complaining about this oversensitivity, too. One day they are posting about the real problem of harassment at cons with the “Cosplay doesn’t equal consent” meme, but the next day they are admonishing the shrinking violets out there to stop getting their panties in a bunch because guys are checking them out when they have gone to the con in a costume that shows nearly as much skin as a bikini, even when they are not being approached or touched inappropriately.
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. Rumor says that being female in the online gaming world always leads to repeated unwanted language and the same thing carries over to behavior at cons that emphasize video gaming (not the game rooms at SF cons of old) and such behavior also goes along with cosplay ( actually need to create new look but don’t touch rule?!) and so it goes.
I’ve heard it claimed as well, but I’ve got first hand knowledge– being a female that frequently uses female avatars and isn’t shy about being female– and it is either somehow massively missing me, or a bunch of stuff that is only seen as “if you’re female you’ll be harassed.” Shortest form? Trolls be trollin’.
I make use of the block function when I see people being absolute idiots to get a reaction out of folks; I don’t run into many who give me crud for being female. Maybe a handful, and they’re as likely to try to taunt that I’m not really a girl. (Much more hurtful if I hadn’t faced that in real life, thank you, for not dressing like a hooker.)
I’ve also been the victim of what I’m fairly sure was actually a young adult male who changed his “real” self to get the most sympathy, who got publicly “harassed” a lot when he was trying to parlay “her” being a girl into advantage.
(Short version: spent a weepy three or four hours talking to how he was such a horrible abused young teen boy victim, he kept leaching me for help, I took a break from the game because I am bad at saying “no, I will not give you this pretend thing I worked hard for;” when I came back, he had become a slightly older teen girl and was working the same thing angle on the mostly male guild members. Ended with a Salem type witch hunt, of which my husband and I were the first victims, and the final victim was a cross-game guild that’d been together for about eight years. After we left, they needed new targets.)
For bonus funny, my husband games as female toons, and gets hit on more than I do– including the classic “well, you’re a girl, here’s free stuff” type thing. We’ve actually joined guilds as a married couple, and folks always guess he’s the wife, to the point that when I complain about pregnancy related pains, they think it’s a joke! (Just for fun, he once used chat software to make his voice sound like a young female to match his toon. No exploitation involved, he was careful to refuse any gifts. No-one was the wiser, and he left on good terms.)
Anyways:
I asked him if he thought that gals got harassed in video games more. He said something like: “Well, yeah, of course. There’s some idiots who can’t deal with girls, and they don’t get better just because they’re on a video game.”
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Perhaps relevant to this topic:
A Brief History of Sex Ed: How We Reached Today’s Madness
Today’s sex ed curricula are based on the widely-accepted teachings of depraved human beings.
by Miriam Grossman
Once upon a time, sex education was a simple biology lesson. Students learned the facts of life, and, with those facts, that sex is part of something bigger, called marriage. Teachers explained that this was the moral and healthy way to live.
[SNIP]
Now we have comprehensive sexuality education. It includes discussion of identity, gender, reproductive rights, and discrimination. Children learn that they’re sexual from birth, and that the proper time for sexual activity is when they feel ready. They’re taught that they have rights to pleasure, birth control, and abortion.
[SNIP]
When I say that Kinsey was a deeply disturbed individual, it fails to capture the level of his psychopathology. I’ve been a psychiatrist for thirty years, and trust me, I’ve met some very strange people. I am not easily shocked.
But when I began to read Kinsey’s official biography…what can I tell you? He was—please excuse the technical jargon—a real mental case.
[SNIP]
[I]n 1960, birth control pills became widely available. With STDs easily cured, and pregnancy preventable, the only obstacle to Kinsey’s anything-goes model of sexuality was Judeo-Christian morality.
It was in this context that in 1964 Dr. Mary Calderone founded the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). This is the group behind the sexuality education guidelines published by UNESCO, aggressively promoted to nations all over the world. Calderone created SIECUS with seed money provided by Hugh Hefner.
Like Kinsey, she was on a crusade to change society. Sex education has too much negativity, she insisted, too much focus on unwanted pregnancy and diseases. The real problem, she insisted, following Kinsey, was that society is puritanical and repressed.
There were too many nos in sex ed. The approach of SIECUS, Calderone promised, would be based on yesses. Proper sex ed would teach children that from the day they’re born they are sexual beings, and that the expression of their sexuality is positive, natural, and healthy.
She told parents, “Children are sexual and think sexual thoughts and do sexual things . . . parents must accept and honor their child’s erotic potential.” She also told them, “Professionals who study children have recently affirmed the strong sexuality of the newborn.”
What did it mean, exactly, to be open and positive, and to replace the nos of sex education with yesses? What did it mean to “break from traditional views”?
[SNIP]
What’s so astonishing is that these men, these very disturbed men, using fraudulent data and theories that have been discredited, succeeded in transforming much of society. Today’s sexuality education is based on their teachings.
Once I understood who the founders were—Kinsey, Calderone, Pomeroy, Money, and others—I understood how we got to today’s “comprehensive sexuality education.” I knew how we had reached today’s madness.
It came from disturbed individuals with dangerous ideas—radical activists who wanted to create a society that would not only accept their pathology, but celebrate it!
These men were pedophiles. It was in their interest to see children as miniature adults who enjoyed sexual contact, and had the right to consent to it, without other adults, or the law, interfering.
Why would they value childhood innocence? They didn’t believe that children were innocent to begin with.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/07/10408/
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Some advice for dealing with public schools: If your child has any sort of allergy or medical condition that could potentially be life threatening, be very very sure to get a receipt or signed copy or some sort of concrete evidence from your school that you have informed them of the fact. Otherwise, if the school makes a mistake such as, say, feeding your child a food they are allergic to, absent the evidence in your hands that you informed them of the allergy, you can expect their copy of the form to become non-existent, for you to be accused of negligence for ‘failing’ to inform them of the allergy, and for all of your children to subsequently be put into foster care.
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