(no subject)

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 05:57 pm
hummingwolf: Part of a julia fractal in colors of fire and smoke. (Fire-flavored fractal)
From Slacktivist: "Only a crazy person would take what we say seriously."

Every few years, tragically, some poor confused bastard fails to realize that it's all a big game, a pretense, a lie. He takes them seriously and he takes their words seriously and he behaves as someone who believes what they say. So Paul Hill murders a doctor in Florida. Eric Rudolph bombs the Atlanta Olympics. Scott Roeder guns down a doctor in church.

And each time this happens all of the people who have, for years, been suggesting that such violent resistance is obligatory recoil in horror at the sight of someone treating their words as anything other than the disingenuous lies they were always meant to be.



You know, I was thinking when I woke up this morning that with all the news coverage about Saturday's shooting, Julian Assange must be feeling terribly left out. So when the first thing I heard after turning on the news radio station was that Julian Assange had compared himself to Gabrielle Giffords, I greeted the news with a certain lack of surprise. Then again, given what Sarah Palin and other rightwing superstars have said about the Wikileaks crew, the statement may have a point. It's a point hidden underneath a gigantic, bloated ego, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

Two Links

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010 04:20 pm
hummingwolf: squiggly symbol floating over rippling water (one)
Sometimes people online will link to a comic strip and tell you, "This is the story of my life!" Well, yeah, this is the story of my life. Thank you, XKCD.

In other news, The Doctor has been following the news: Wikileaks, Cablegate, the media, and you.
hummingwolf: squiggly symbol floating over rippling water (Heart 2)
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, now apparently also known as Singles Awareness Day! You know what that means, don't you? It's time for The Cap'n's Unfortunate Valentine's Cards!

If you've never visited that link before, do go. It's sure to make you feel better.

If you still want to send someone a Valentine after that, my advice is likely too late this year, but next year you may want to send this love note or possibly this card for the holiday.

And from today's [livejournal.com profile] livesciencefeed: Love letters in ancient Rome were all about pain. Well, really, what else would they be about?


And this [livejournal.com profile] languagehat link is going here because Borges = Love: The ANTI-BORGES.

2 Evening Links

Monday, December 14th, 2009 07:57 pm
hummingwolf: Current Mood: Girly. Animated sparkly pink icon. (Girlymood)
Looking Forward to 2010. "The 1910 film Looking Forward, directed by Theodore Marston, imagines a crazy dystopia where women rule the world. Because, as this film accurately predicted, women naturally became a political majority after getting the vote." [/adds [livejournal.com profile] paleofuture to reading list.]

And, via [livejournal.com profile] supergee: Why James Chartrand Wears Women's Underpants.

Linkies

Thursday, November 29th, 2007 07:55 pm
hummingwolf: Drawing of a creature that is part-wolf, part-hummingbird. (Hummingwolf by Dandelion)
First: If you are a LiveJournal user and you don't follow [livejournal.com profile] news, you probably should. Anyway, the most important bit is that LiveJournal now has new settings & flagging tools for "adult content," which you can read more about here. Note that by default, your search settings are "Use Moderate Filtering"--filter out explicit adult content. My guess is that many of you, when you do use the search feature, don't want to filter any results out at all, so it's a good idea to go to your viewing options (settings) page and change that.

Right then. In news unrelated to LJ, but related to the late great TV show Firefly: "I, Malcolm" by Nathan Fillion. Oh, Captain! (Link via [livejournal.com profile] musesfool.)

Unrelated (or at least not directly related) to any Joss Whedon show, [livejournal.com profile] nancylebov links to The Fantasy of Being Thin. The essay begins with this quote:

Obese patients are often encouraged to believe that weight loss is an appropriate way to combat depression, save a failing marriage, or increase the chance of career success. The irrationality of hopes pinned on weight loss is so striking that dieting might almost be likened to superstitious behavior…. Passing from childhood into adolescence, leaving home, marrying, starting a new job, having a baby, experiencing marital difficulties, adjusting to children leaving home, and growing old — all these life situations may become unexamined reasons to diet. In other instances, concerns over weight mask even more serious problems.”

-Wooley and Garner, from “Obesity treatment: the high cost of false hope,” published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 91, no. 10, 1991.


Many of you will recognize that the essay applies to more than just dieting. "Because, you see, the Fantasy of Being Thin is not just about becoming small enough to be perceived as more acceptable. It is about becoming an entirely different person – one with far more courage, confidence, and luck than the fat you has." Replace "being thin" and "fat" with, oh, "having a college degree" and "being a college dropout" or whatever other combination of words applies in your life.
hummingwolf: Mathemagical animation made out of string. (Incredible String Thing)
A Source Critisicm of Richard Dawkins, which will likely be entertaining to some of you and utterly confusing to others of you. This was linked to by Andrew Rilstone, comics fan, C.S. Lewis fan, Dr. Who fan, and general geek, who has been doing a fun job of picking apart Dawkins' God Delusion in his series
A Sceptic's Guide to Richard Dawkins. Unfortunately, as with so many blogs using tagging systems, this shows you the most recent post first and the first post at the bottom of the page, which is a bit annoying since most of the posts are rather long and his blog doesn't use cut tags. Douglas Adams fans may appreciate the entries more than most people, or at least appreciate the entry titles more than the less well-informed.

our daily breast

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 09:14 am
hummingwolf: squiggly symbol floating over rippling water (one)
Via [livejournal.com profile] squidpiggy: Stephen King "considers the story of Anna Nicole Smith, the little girl who became a princess"--as well as the stories of other famous young women: A Modern Fairy Tale. Makes me want to go listen to my Carpenters albums and eat something fattening for Lent.

Reality related to that fairy tale, via [livejournal.com profile] mister_wolf, who was looking for good, realistic references to help him with his artwork: A gallery of normal women's breasts. Not safe for work unless your work requires you to look at women's breasts, but a site with lots of non-sexualized pictures of people who don't live in fairy tales.

(no subject)

Sunday, June 2nd, 2002 10:14 pm
hummingwolf: squiggly symbol floating over rippling water (Default)
Just this morning I was thinking of some of the advantages of hanging out with weirdos. Among other things, people who know they're strange, folks who realize they're far from the mainstream, unlike "normal" people, tend not to expect me to think the way they do. They usually recognize that my disagreement with their views of reality is neither a personal insult nor evidence that I should be committed to a mental institution--though many of them, just like those who consider themselves normal, assume as soon as I agree with their proposition X that I'll also agree with propositions Y and Z.

Of course, there are other reasons to associate with the beings out in left field. For one thing, they often have something to say. Which is why I was pleased to see at the library today the article The Way of the Wacko, which I could almost love for the title alone.

[2006 edit: article now here.]

~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, I'm still really, really tired.

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