Anthropologist Mary Douglas has a nice definition for dirt, saying it is “matter out of place.” A fried egg on the plate is fine, but a fried egg all over my hands is dirty. Hyde continues to say that dirt is always a byproduct of creating order: to create a place for things means that there will be situations where things will be out of place.
(Speaking of Louis CK, he made and sold a very funny comedy special, and he gave away most of the money it earned him. Read about it here, its inspiring stuff. And it’s a great show)
The reclusive leader made the remark after South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun asked that South Korean companies operating at an industrial park in the North Korean city of Kaesong be allowed to use the Internet, Yonhap news agency reported, without citing any source.
and in discussing the issue, seemed to suggest the influence of classic city-building game Sim City in making his decisions
“I’m an Internet expert too. It’s all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired,” Kim told Roh, according to Yonhap.
Which might explain a lot about the impoverished nation – everyone knows you put the industrial zones as far away from the residential zones as possible. Sadly, he probably also learned he could bulldoze protests out of existence too.
A few months ago I got a text from a friend asking “What does ‘Namu Amida Butsu’ mean?”. I wondered why he was asking this. Then, out of no where, it occurred to me that it was the day of the one-year anniversary of his wedding. Then it made sense. I most likely wrote it in that little book people pass around at weddings and he was reading over it. So, I explained what it meant, and why I wrote it, and he replied “Thanks for that!”.
And what does it mean? Well, you can ask Wikipedia, but I suggest first, you listen to the wise words of the late, great Robert Anton Wilson
The level of hostility, snideness and general nastiness that is seen in internet comment sections is nothing new, but its only really seemed to bother me lately. It has seemed increasingly like the overall majority of comments on general news and opinion sites are of the sneering variety. Posts about religion,for instance, are invariably treated to immediate reactionary shots deriding anyone who might follow one, or a story about the Occupy movement typically is subject to comments about smelly hippies “getting a job”. I’ve taken to not bothering to read comments sections any more – as there is rarely anything of worth in there. This is not to say that I want to see a chorus of people agreeing with the post (that wouldn’t be of much use) – comments sections offer a forum for constructive debate or further illumination on the points raise or counter-points – but I don’t need to see the ubiquitous quips and one-liners that have become the norm for such places. It has got me down to some degree. I look at these comments and I dispair – Is this what the public thinks? Is this the majority viewpoint?
However, today I read a piece by John Nicholson on Football365 that made me think. In discussing the trend for minority opinions to be read or treated as the thoughts of the masses he wrote:
Look at the Guardian’s website. Massively popular, with articles read by hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people, yet look at the number of comments they attract. Regularly under a 100 made by a recurring cast of people. Even the global warming nutter vs nutter debates only attract 1500 or so. So almost no-one who reads the articles comments on them.
I realised this is true. Most web sites which would attract moderate or large readerships don’t really have huge amounts of comments relative to readership. The majority of people simply don’t comment. I thought about this a bit more; why is it that the comments sections seem to be overwhelmingly reactionary or abusive? Probably because the type of people who are reactionary or abusive simply have to have their say. The rest of us simply agree or disagree and don’t feel the need to wade in. The sneery, snide types must have their opinion heard. Others? Less so.
Of course, there is a lot to be said about how the medium itself makes it easier for people to broadcast more abusive messages – by placing the discourse behind digital screens it dehumanizes it, but this piece made me think about the numbers. That for every person who read an article only a minority chose to comment, and their motivation for commenting is possibly in alignment with their attitude.
See my elegance, dining on the periodic table called developments
The universe designs my intelligence
Drop science down a bottomless pit
Run swift through a handstand on pyramid tips
So, the other day I posted about how you are the eternal energy of the universe, and how you came out of the world and all that.
Then on the NASA tumblr I find this, in which I saw the following:
God is a kind of cosmic baby, or a galactic Raymond Briggs character. (and of course you are also God, who is the Universe, which is you….). Either way, Mr. Kubrick wasn’t far off the mark.
I have an idea for a film script about a bunch of Wall Street stock brokers who decide to set up an Occupy camp INSIDE Occupy Wall Street, to protest the Occupiers. Occupy Occupy Wall Street.
Then another group decide to Occupy THEIR camp, making them Occupy Occupy Occupy Wall Street.
This continues in a Charlie Kaufman fashion, until the entire globe is eventually Occupied. The whole world living in make-shift tents, whilst the banks, buildings, factories etc. lie abandoned and crumbling. No one remembers who they are protesting against, or why. Everyone just living a simple lifestyle, without the trappings of modern life.
Michel Gondry will direct, and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Zooey Deschanel will star.
In 2001, Drake began his acting career, playing the role of Jimmy Brooks, a character on Degrassi: The Next Generation.
…
Drake is mentioned in the 2010 television movie Degrassi Takes Manhattan, making him one of two Degrassi actors (along with Shenae Grimes) who exist within the series’ fictional universe independently of their characters.
I have a very strange enthusiasm for odd little facts I come across on Wikipedia. I think its the way they are so earnestly worded. And the fact that someone knew that fact, and added it to Wikipedia.
Readers of this blog will know I take an interest in curious Japanese phrases that we don’t have in English or are difficult to translate. I’ve previously talked about yūgen and wabi-sabi.
I was invited as a guest of this group to present what it is that I do to them. In this case, the fact that people were sitting on chairs was shoganai as we say in Japan. It can’t be helped. It’s just the way things are. What can ya do? Shoganai is a very useful and utterly untranslatable phrase.
A Wikipedia search for shoganai links to a page on ‘Shikata ga nai’, of which shoganai is an alternative.
Shikata ga nai (仕方がない?), pronounced [ɕi̥kata ɡa nai], is a Japanese language phrase meaning “it can’t be helped” or “nothing can be done about it”. Shō ga nai (しょうがない?), pronounced [ɕoː ɡa nai] is an alternative.
literally, there is no way of doing, or nothing can be done. Shoganai is the equivalent of c’est la vie, but with an important difference: where c’est la vie and its foreign variants focus on external circumstances, shoganai focuses on the inability of the actor to change those circumstances.
It makes me think of, and gives me an excuse to repost, this quote from Shunryu Suzuki
One day Suzuki Roshi said, “Life is basically impossible.” Then he got up and left the zendo. The next day a student asked, “Suzuki Roshi, yesterday you said that life is basically impossible. What are we going to do?”
