Accismus

Tibetans are getting stale on the Dalai Lama’s insistence on nonviolence.  This article says that nonviolence worked for Gandhi and others, and ends with this uplifting quote:

This week’s talks are unlikely to yield much, if any, progress, and could push more Tibetans to the boiling point. But listen to Gandhi again: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.”

Hmmm.  Do you agree with Gandhi’s assertion?  Discuss.

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You don’t see many critics around these days.  Is it because there are no longer non-participatory enthusiasts of the arts?  Or is that a good thing?

Trying to maintain critical distance today is thus a practice in self-alienation. The distance might as well be infinite. The proclamations might as well be made in outer space. So we need another metaphor. If criticism isn’t about distance anymore, maybe it can be about closeness. I’ll tell you what makes sense about closeness right away. In today’s cultural world, a bird’s eye view of the situation doesn’t get you very much. There is nothing to sort out from up there because there is simply too much culture in too much variety. The distance, the desire to categorize and judge, is overwhelmed by the very pluralism it seeks to understand. The only solution is to get down into the mix and participate. You need to grab works of art and hold onto them tightly. Stepping away from them even a little bit is to risk losing touch altogether.

Well, I don’t know.  I can say that the New York theater scene, at any rate, is in desperate need of more objective gatekeepers, and I think a large part of the problem is that anybody who goes to theater here is trying to do theatre here.  I would say more, but I don’t want to burn any bridges.

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Now, here is some criticism I can get behind:

Gladwell dresses up all of his “realizations” in fancy clothes and too much make-up. He gives himself powers that he doesn’t have. He pretends to have sorted things out that he hasn’t sorted out. He imagines a possible control, and pretends that he has achieved that control. All the while telling people, whispering into their ears, precisely the kinds of things they would like to believe. And then (it must, I’m sorry, be said) he goes on wildly lucrative corporate speaking engagements spinning out the same titillating stories combined with his shoddy conclusions. I even kind of hate, I must confess, the way he looks. His hair all scruffed up just so. His cute little suits. It makes the skin crawl.

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Also in popular things that I have an irrational hatred of, Facebook has done away with the singular “they”:

Confronting complaints of ungrammaticality from speakers of English and untranslatability from speakers of other languages, Facebook will now be more in-your-face about choosing a gender identity. If you haven’t filled the information out on your Facebook profile, you’ll now get a prompt asking if you want to be referred to as him or her. But they’re not getting too insistent on sexual dimorphism, since users can still opt out of the gender choice, in response to what Gleit calls “pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting.”

Folks, I’ve finally joined Facebook.  After adamantly refusing to join, and telling everybody who brought it up to me (repeatedly) that I would never, ever join, and that was final, I’ve gone back on my resolution and set up a profile.  I resent the hell out of it, but I got sick of inviting people to things (my party, an upcoming show), and them being like, ‘Oh, well, I’d love to come – are the details on your Facebook page?’

Fuck all of you, and your stupid social networks.  There damn well better not be yet another must-join new one a month from now, or I’ll…resentfully set up a profile on that one, too.

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The perils of replace-all:

Apparently, if you are bothered by gay people, you like calling them homosexuals, which is clinical and gross sounding, as opposed to “gay” which sounds happy and fun-loving. An impressionable child would surely have much less interest in becoming a “homosexual” (snooze) than a “gay” (woohoo!). So, right-wing news site OneNewsNow.com does a quick replace all on stories from the AP. Guess what, though, sometimes the word “gay” appears in a non-sexual context. Like, say, Tyson Homosexual (née Gay), who just qualified for the Olympics in the 100 meters, or Memphis Grizzlies’ forward Rudy Homosexual (née Gay), who often gets great penetration in the paint.

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The rise of the nerds:

From the late 19th century onward, it was more or less accepted that the ideal purpose of American education and parenting was to produce athletic, popular young men and women, the sort who end up in business, law, or politics. But sometime during the 1980s it began to be a lot harder to dismiss the awkward kids with thick glasses, obsessive interests, and no social skills.  . . . As computers began to play a larger role in business, education, and life in general, the former class presidents were learning that the former class geeks held everyone’s future in their hands. Soon one nerd (Alan Greenspan) was running the economy, another nerd (Al Gore) was running for president, and two unbelievably rich nerds (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) were changing the ways a lot of us lived and worked.

(via 3QD)

The article focuses heavily on male nerds.  I don’t always get on well with male nerds, as I often find them to be immediately dismissive and condescending toward attractive women.  We were all unpopular in high school, but there are more constructive ways of dealing with it than being a triumphant asshole to anyone who reminds you of those who once rejected you.

Speaking of, when scientists attempt to study humor:

Blindfolded subjects are tickled by experimenters who they are told are machines. The sexual banter in an all-night diner in upstate New York is surreptitiously observed. People study cartoons with pens stuck in their mouths (to contract the facial muscles associated with smiling). An experimenter “accidentally” spills hot tea on herself when a jack-in-the-box erupts nearby. One Boston psychologist, the co-author of a paper entitled “A Threshold Theory of the Humor Response”, published in The Behavior Analyst last spring, understandably felt obliged to state in a footnote that her surname really is “Joker”.

(via A&LD)