Randoms

[yeloson]

1. The Berkeley Thai Temple avoids being shut down.

Ironically the discussion I keep coming back to is the ways in which gentrification is held up as an "innocent" process, one without intent (oh intent). The way in which cultural landmarks, places where communities gather and use as anchors are always the first targeted.

Specific to this case, the "innocent neighbors" did everything from accusing the monks of putting addictive narcotics in the food to showing up to yell at the monks and then call the police on the monks. Nevermind that a Christian church could draw 300-600 people every week and not be considered a "threat".

The way in which losing only a little is a victory these days.

2. Microsoft wants to go toe to toe with Apple stores.

I foresee a lot more of their time than they expected being dedicated to trying to explain to customers that they are not responsible for your computer crashing if you loaded it with 3 billion third party apps, illegally downloaded off the internet, and turned off all your firewalls in your urges for peer to peer pr0n... They'll probably also miss the point of free internet and attractive young people as two major draws to the store.

Microsoft needs to understand how it's business model fundamentally differs from Apple and stop trying to put the round peg in the square hole...

3. Karnythia is setting up her own small press publishing house for geeks of color.

As always, if we want to have a voice, it's us having to make space for it. Too bad I'm not a fiction writer.

4. Reading up more on Moorish Spain, I'm both facepalm/lulz about the level of "BUT THE MOORS WEREN'T BLACK PEEPLE, NO SIR" which echoes really, really closely to when the British lost a few thousand soldiers to the Zulus and then suddenly tried to claim, "Clearly the Zulus had Aryan heritage". Meanwhile we got dudes teaching Spain how to be fly, with deodorant and toothpaste.

Comments

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

"Clearly the Zulus had Aryan heritage"

Thi reminds me of the academic article I read once that was trying really, really hard to prove that the Chinese didn't invent their writing system, and instead had gotten the idea of a writing system ad the basic characters from the west. The linguistics were so bad that I even I could spot the obvious flaws. It was pretty ridiculous.

That wasn't by the same flack who claimed

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

that the Tao was made up and inserted into Chinese culture by the Jesuits, on the grounds that there's a fair amount of similar stuff on the lines of doing/not doing unto others what you do/don't want done to you, and rather than say "yes, this 'fairness' business and 'don't be a jackhole' notion is pretty obviously good for communities, not surprising that we all come up with formulations of it" they had to claim that it *must* against all plausibility have been a Gift of the Christian West - I heard about it verbally first from an old conservative acquaintance, but I think it was actually published in The Atlantic, first.

Re: That wasn't by the same flack who claimed

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

That's uh... special. These are about 2 steps short of the "Pyramids given to Egyptians by aliens" kind of theories, aren't they?

The inability to accept people make cool shit without it destroying (their) personal sense of self-esteem is pretty damn sad.

Special" is the word...

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

I found it online (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99apr/9904confucius.htm), and it's actually even *worse* than I remembered - it's Charlotte Allen, who has surpassed "bag of hammers" to qualify for the "stump" championship class - AND she's claiming that it was Confucius who was a hoax concocted by Jesuits.

Frankly, I think that the "Aliens built the Pyramids" people are a little more in touch with reality - or I would, if I didn't know that there is (really!) a non-zero overlap between the conservative Christian crank squad and the Ancient Astronauts crank squad. (Bible-based UFO conspiracism - it's out there, in every sense of the word.)

The inability to accept people make cool shit without it destroying (their) personal sense of self-esteem is pretty damn sad.

What made it all the more bizarre is that I didn't think I was saying anything *too* daring at the time (& to that particular audience) by suggesting that Western Christians could learn something from Chinese thinkers because yanno, C.S. Lewis said the exact same thing WITH FOOTNOTES and these same folks were always praising him, so where did it suddenly become a Calvinball moving target of ideological purity? It was a "buh WUT?" moment for me, all right.

Re: Special" is the word...

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I'm going to -not- read that for the sake of my bloodpressure right now and just file it in the same category as the guy who claimed tofu was making people gay through it's "feminizing" effects (Yes tofu increases estrogen. But we all have it. Headdesky!)

What's mostly entertaining about the moorish spain stuff is that I've also come across accounts of the Vikings calling them "Blammen" AKA Black Men... The more I look the deeper the denialism.

oh yeah, Sadly No had a field day with him--

[bellatrys.livejournal.com]

I swear, every time you think "this is the stupidist thing EVAR," somebody goes and tops it. (I also knew someone who claimed that watching Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood made boys gay. Ah, The Patriarchy, you crack me up with your insecurities...)

What's mostly entertaining about the moorish spain stuff is that I've also come across accounts of the Vikings calling them "Blammen" AKA Black Men... The more I look the deeper the denialism.

Well, the Vikings got all around - they regularly temped for the Byzantine emperors, meaning they would have encountered everybody in the Mediterranean basin! And it's always amazing how on the one hand you get these claims of No Cultural Connections! from the Western Culture Purists (there may be similar ones on the Asian side but I haven't run into them) even while they blither unreflectingly about "trade routes" - uh huh, so just what exactly were people trading, and how were they doing it, if they had no contact/words in common? How *did* peacocks end up buried with Viking chieftains, and Athenian pottery dedicated in Nubian temple treasuries? It's not like it's a Mystery, now!

Re: Special" is the word...

[kitsuchan.livejournal.com]

That is really, um, something. The article I read wasn't by the same person... it was kind of old and had run in some academic journal. I've sorta blocked the whole article from my mind, and instead mostly remember Victor Mair's attack on how stupid the whole thing was, and also on how stupid Jared Diamond was with his "China is a linguistic monoculture and will totally streamroll everyone" argument.