"You're supposed to be a delicate white or a delicate Latina girl."/"I'm a mixed girl."/"Ok well."

Horrific people in the news. Never heard of them before. Old man with no decent right to be jealous is jealous of his arguably beautiful, inarguably younger girlfriend. Somewhat young woman lets the whole world eavesdrop on her pathetic argument with a repulsive billionaire.

"@Voxdotcom… has no idea of what Japanese popular culture is like, does it? Somebody needs to start calling this Vox-shaming, or something."

Says Moe Lane, linking to my post "Avril Lavigne picked a bad week to go all racist" and something David said in the comments: "If examined closely Japanese popular culture would explode the brain of the average political correctness warrior in the USA."

"If Vox wants to criticize cultural appropriation [then] it should find writers who are a little less provincial and a little more experienced with the culture in question," says Moe Lane, embedding "a not entirely atypical example... chosen partially because the artist (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) is both popular and known for her adoption of Western styles and themes – but mostly because it is, by our standards, highly insane," and I have watched this astounding video, which had me alternately laughing and saying "Oh, no!"



That was truly mindbending... a great escape from the dreary, daily American chidings about what is and is not appropriate.

ADDED: In the comments yesterday Mary Beth also pointed to the "PonPonPon" which she said was "pretty popular on the internet despite its racism." ("Skip to the 34 second mark to see what I mean.")

The trout lilies are in bloom again.

Such a strange flower...

Meanwhile, at Meade's, "I once got lost, but now I'm found...."

"Celebration, below its twee veneer and even below its shoddy craftsmanship, is a pretty sustainable idea...."

"... Public spaces, walkable streets, downscaled housing, and good schools, all within a compact downtown. Even its critics have to admit that it's better than swampy, sprawling hellscape that lies just outside of it, dripping with strip malls and sweaty drive-thrus."

So why don't we think of it as a success? For one thing, the mere whiff of utopia sets our teeth on edge these days. After a century of high-profile failures—from Fordlandia to Helicon Home Colony—most of us can't shake the idea that behind those neocolonial shutters lurks something sinister, whether as simple as tax evasion or as truly nightmarish as a violent cult. In other words, Celebration is not only a victim of its own marketing, but a victim of a public that perceives planned communities as deeply creepy....

That's healthy isn't it, our suspicion of planned communities?  We perceive them as creepy because excessive planning, imposed on us by experts who purport to know how we should live, is creepy.

By the way, the word "creepy" originally referred to slow movement, then to the feeling that one's flesh is moving — the feeling of horror or disgust — so that you would say, for example, "I feel somehow quite creepy at the thought of what's coming." (That's the oldest usage in that second sense found by the OED, from a 1831 work called "Cat's Tail.) Only in the late 19th century did "creepy" come to refer to the things that cause your flesh to creep.

1883   ‘G. Lloyd’ Ebb & Flow II. xxxiii. 236   The whole place seemed lonely, and, as Mildred whispered to Pauline, ‘creepy.’

I get the feeling that "G. Lloyd" was portraying Mildred as misusing the word, like the way, years ago, an author might make an uneducated character say "nauseous" for "nauseating." (But the progression of the word "nauseous" goes in the opposite direction from "creepy." "Creepy" went from describing how bad you feel to describing the thing that makes you feel bad, but "nauseous" went from describing the thing that makes you feel bad to describing your bad feeling. That made it considerably more humorous to make a dumb character say "I'm nauseous" than for Mildred to say that the place is "creepy.")

The sudden, shocking death of Janis Joplin... the big Broadway show.

"I mean, shows close all the time — I get that. But what happened with ‘Janis’ was surreal," said one of the performers. But what was surreal?

"In his animal-law classes, Wise told me, he has his students consider the actual case of a 4-month-old anencephalic baby..."

"... that is, a child born without a complete brain. Her brain stem allows her to breathe and digest, but she has no consciousness or sentience. No feelings or awareness whatsoever. He asks the class why we can’t do anything we want with such a child, even eat her."

“We’re all instantly repelled by that, of course,” Wise said. When he asked his students that question, they “get all tied up in knots and say things like ‘because she has a soul’ or ‘all life is sacred.’ I say: ‘I’m sorry, we’re not talking about any characteristics here. It’s that she has the form of a human being.’ Now I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights. I’m simply saying that it’s irrational. . . . Why is a human individual with no cognitive abilities whatsoever a legal person with rights, while cognitively complex beings such as Tommy [the chimpanzee], or a dolphin, or an orca are things with no rights at all?”

The link goes to a NYT Magazine article by Charles Siebert titled "Should a Chimp Be Able to Sue Its Owner?" I'm sure the part I've excerpted will cause many readers to want to talk about abortion.  The line — from law professor Steven Wise — "I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights" — seems to raise the topic without saying the word. It's a strangely twisted sentence, especially coming from a law professor who is highlighting the demands he makes on his students to think and speak precisely and clearly.

"I’m not saying that a court or legislature can’t say that just having a human form is in and of itself a sufficient condition for rights." There are 2 obvious negatives in that sentence and a few more fillips of semi-negation ("just," "in and of itself," and "sufficient"). The repetition of "to say" is also strange: I'm not saying that other people can't say. That's not the same as: I'm saying that other people can say. What is he saying?

Should the opposite of miracles count against sainthood?

"An Italian man was crushed to death on Thursday by a giant crucifix dedicated to the late Pope John Paul II, just days before the Polish pontiff will be made a saint in a ceremony at the Vatican."

In a bizarre coincidence, the 21-year-old man was reported to have been living in a street named after Pope John XXIII – who will also be canonised in the ceremony on Sunday, in an event that is unprecedented in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church.

The man, named as Marco Gusmini, was posing for a photograph with a group of friends in front of the 100ft-high cross when it suddenly collapsed.

(There's a photograph of the fallen crucifix at the link, where the article mentions the unusual bending forward of the sculpture in its intact condition, which you can see here.)

"U.S. Reporters Grill Obama in Asia: Did You Like Your Green-Tea Ice Cream?"

The state of journalism today.

The President later burbled about it to the Empress.

ADDED: The "it" in "burbled about it" is ambiguous. Here's the reported colloquy with the Empress Michiko:

“The press was asking if I enjoyed the green tea ice cream,” Obama said.

“Did you enjoy it?” the empress asked.

“Yes, absolutely,” he replied.

I've made a multiple choice question in the style of the new SAT approach to understanding words in context.

What does "it" mean in the phrase "burbled about it"?
	The green tea ice cream, which Obama indeed liked very much.
	The extreme tameness of the question from the press about his enjoyment of ice cream.
	The new Japan-based video from Avril Lavigne.
	The gift to the Democrats that is the fallen folk hero Cliven Bundy.
	The way one after another dream has come true for "Dreams" author, Barack Obama.
	The title of Stephen King's coulrophobic novel.
	A character on "The Addams Family."
	The Empress was beginning a game of tag.
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NYT editors embrace what they call "Wise Controls on E-Cigarettes."

Because when it comes to puffing on e-cigarettes: "Nobody knows what the net impact of all this would be on the nation’s health." And: "Dozens of studies are underway to find out."

If you're less of an enthusiast for nannyism, you might think that the studies should come first and that ignorance — nobody knows! — is an insufficient foundation for government action.

But think of the children:

Some nonsmokers might become addicted to nicotine after smoking e-cigarettes and move on to regular cigarettes. And young people who smoke only e-cigarettes can still suffer damage to the developing brain. 

It's not just young people, of course. I "smoke" e-cigarettes for fun sometimes, and I'm not and have never been a member of the Communist Party smoking public.

Turtle, without and with duck.

(These photos are by me, not Meade. These are not dogs!)

"It was neither psychic nor much of a massage... He was more like a $250-an-hour life coach who happened to have good hands..."

"... which he ran lightly over my arms, legs, lower back and abdomen. He said he did this to get a better read of my energy. And when he was done, he reported, 'There’s nothing wrong with you, Jeremy.' He reassured me I was just sensitive."

ADDED: In this week's episode of Skeptoid — #411 — Brian Dunning returns to what was the very first topic of the long running podcast: the human body's energy fields.

"People in Madison are ready to talk about race. It isn't fun, but it is necessary."

"Madison has to prove itself as liberal and progressive right here and right now...."

Racism is inherent in people's disbelief that there is inequality in Madison. It is possible to be progressive and ethical and still have racist tendencies. You cannot get rid of those racist tendencies by ignoring them. It might make you vulnerable and it might make you feel bad about yourself for a little while, but once you see the racism here for yourself, you won't be able to ignore it anymore.

ADDED: This is that thing of liberals getting after liberals for not being liberal enough. It reminds me of Phil Ochs singing "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." The liberal's desire to be loved for being liberal: 1. Is ludicrous and just makes you want to puncture the vanity, and 2. Creates great vulnerability to attacks based on almost nothing.

At the Dog-or-Hand-Puppet? Café...

... you never know quite what you are looking at.

(Photo from the best dog photoblog on the internet, Dogging Meade.)

"The next time you interact with a teenager, try to have a conversation with him or her about a challenging topic."

"Ask him to explain his views. Push her to go further in her answers. Hopefully, you won’t get the response Turkle did when interviewing a 16-year-old boy about how technology has impacted his communication: 'Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.'"

From "My Students Don't Know How to Have a Conversation/Students’ reliance on screens for communication is detracting—and distracting—from their engagement in real-time talk," by Paul Barnwell.

Turkle is Sherry Turkle, author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Ourselves."

Avril Lavigne picked a bad week to go all racist.

She's in big trouble for this:



Do you not see what's so cliven about it? Well, then, you might want to submit to Vox, the website that explains everything to the point needed by an adequately intelligent but generally pretty busy person:

Stone-faced, expressionless Japanese sidekick dancer ladies? Check. Inexplicable sushi-eating and photo-taking scenes? Check. Centering the song on a weird, creepily sexual dubstep chorus that rhymes "Hello Kitty" with "you're so pretty?" Congratulations, Avril — you've hit some kind of Orientalist Japanese Stereotype trifecta....

It's always hard to pinpoint background cultural influences on art specifically, but it makes sense that cultural penetration would produce unintentionally offensive cultural appropriation....

"RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!!," Avril tweeted. "I love Japanese culture...." In her defense, this kind of makes sense. Japanese pop does have a pretty camp vein running through it, one that "Hello Kitty" apes.

"Hello Kitty" apes? I love those 3 words together, because I can picture "Hello Kitty" Apes... just like I can picture "King Kong" Kitties, but do not market a product called King Kong Kitties. That would be racist.

Racist or otherwise culturally insensitive depictions of non-Americans have been around as long as America has.

Ironically, that Vox sentence is culturally insensitive to America's native people, who must be the subjects of the oldest culturally insensitive depictions in this portion of the globe (which has been around long before America):



But perhaps all of this is beyond what needs to be explained to the adequately intelligent, yet awfully busy inhabitants of the internet.

ADDED: The Vox-shaming continues here. 

Remember when the President called us to "a national conversation on race" and told us to "Be blunt"?

Back in 1997.

A therapeutic model of group dynamics seems to underlie the president’s initiative. We are supposed to be getting our long-hidden fears, resentments, and frustrations out in the open. "Be blunt," the president instructed [the audience at his "artfully conducted" town hall meeting in Akron, Ohio].