My grandmother contracted rubella soon after she was sure she was pregnant. Her doctor offered to pass on the name of someone who wasn't too fussy about the legal status of abortion. My grandmother decided that the risk of potentially having a brain-damaged child was lower than the risk of an illegal (UK, 1947) abortion, so gave birth to my mother a few months later. Not brain-damaged, but severely to profoundly deaf. (My grandparents then spent the next eight years trying to convince the medical establishment that their oldest daughter had a hearing problem, and wasn't just "a bit dim, dear", but that's another story.)
Also, my other grandmother was a paediatrician, qualified in 1940. You can bet your boots her grandchildren were all fully immunized! I didn't have the option of mumps or chicken pox, presumably I was born too soon, and I had both diseases mildly in childhood. My father was unfortunate enough to catch mumps from us and was bedridden and in severe pain for several weeks. To make it even worse, that outbreak coincided with my youngest sister's birth, so my mother dealt single-handed with a new-born baby and three sick under-fives when he was suffering too much to help.
Interestingly, my grandmother the paediatrician advised us not to get the whooping cough vax; she figured that the disease was close enough to being elimated that the vaccine was riskier than exposure. (She'd dealt professionally with the nasty aftermath of a bad vaccine reaction, I think.)
The first grandmother started getting recurring shingles a few years ago. It's pretty miserable, and her odds of losing her sight to a future bout keep increasing. Probably she was exposed to the virus when we had chicken pox as kids and she was helping out.
SamChevre @93: I'm not sure that's fair. I am not "out to get" Dominionist Christians; if they want to enact gender roles in a particular way, that's up to them. I don't want them to be able to impose those gender roles on people who are not part of their sect, but I don't want to punish them in any way for living according to those (in my mind, wrong) principles. That's what democracy is for.
Also, I don't understand why you think it's a problem that there are people who think man is made in the image of God. There's a major Israeli human rights organization called "B'tzelem", which means in the image; their idea is that since people are made in the image of God, they are deserving of the highest respect and are not just things to be used and discarded for a political goal. I mean, ok, it's theistic language, but it is certainly a belief can have positive effects on people's actions. What negative consequences come about from Christianists believing that man is made in God's image? Do you mean because they only believe that men are god-like, and not women? Or that they harm animals and the environment because of giving divine status to selfish human interests?
The triplet I usually is sexy, sane and single; sexy is presumed to include smart in my set. But the really desirable people are already snapped up by someone more assertive than the speaker. I think this works rearsonably well for geeky complainers of any sex, gender or orientation.
A slightly less frequent one is "smart, sensible, sane", but I don't think that's about dateability, it's more about the prevalence of people who are highly intelligent but lack any practical common sense (myself included). Or who have major social difficulties and self-esteem problems, probably as a result of intelligent people getting bullied so much in our culture. I've met just a few people who have deliberately picked partners less intelligent than themselves because they manage both sensible and sane at the same time.
My pet peeve is otherwise good SF writers who don't know basic biology. It's fair enough that there's a lot less plausible biological speculation than plausible physics (or these days computing and IT) speculation, that's just the way the genre is. I don't think my standards are excessively high, I'm not saying that anyone without a thorough grounding in my professional field is a barbarian. I think that knowing the difference between bacteria and viruses, or between DNA and proteins, should be a part of basic general education. They certainly should be obvious to someone who's curious enough about science to make a career writing hard SF.
Also, I've just finished a certain recent, acclaimed SF novel by an established writer who appears to be unaware of how babies are made, at a level that would be worrying in an American teenager coming out of an abstinence curriculum.
I have a lot of stuff, I'm pack-ratty. But I don't think there's any single item that I'd risk my life to save from a fire. If I had to run away, I'd pack practical essentials, nothing of sentimental value. I don't own any tools because I don't make anything; it's one of the things I most dislike about myself, but I'm not creative at all. Such heirlooms as we have are in my parents' house, they never make it as far as any of the temporary digs where I've lived since leaving home.
Possible candidates are a pocket-sized photo album with a few of my favourite shots from my teens (including a photo of my first ever electrophoretic gel), and a Frodo miniature that the love of my life painted for me. I have a teak apple full of trinkets with histories, so I might take that, just because everything is together and it's easy to grab.
Seriously, consider who profits from this "rural versus urban" meme. Romanticizing small-town America, with all its associated anti-intellectualism, homophobia, covert racism, and using "liberal" as a slur leads to exactly the consequences described in the "Everybody knows" thread. People who are hurt by those "real American" comments getting defensive and coming back with comments about hicks, rednecks, flyover states &c achieve nothing except lending strength to the slander that liberals think they're better than those dumb poor people. And that leads to said "dumb" poor people repeatedly voting against their economic interests for people who at least pretend to respect their culture, which can of course only be attributed to inexplicable stupidity on the part of such voters...
Plus, this kind of discussion hurts people. I've seen several political threads turn nasty precisely because there are ML readers who live in red states or come from poor rural backgrounds.
Michael at 145, that was uncalled for. JJ Fozz has been causing trouble, but could you please find a less offensive way to insult him? Please?
[I hope this doesn't end up derailing; please read the link before you argue with me. The problem is not "bad language", the problem is making the world an even less safe place for the most vulnerable people.]
abi, you've convinced me that this particular blacklist is going to be a force for good, even if my immediate reaction is that blacklists just cause bugs. (Anyone remember when LiveJournal tried to block searches for users interested in depression?)
Berk is half my surname. This led to some annoying incidents in primary school, but I think it's more annoying when I can't enter my own name into a system because it's considered offensive! So I have much sympathy for all the people with Porn or Fuk or Wang in their names. But for abi's application I think blacklisting it wouldn't be a disater; as long as the list didn't ban Berkshire itself (or Berkeley, for that matter), the only time you'd really need it for a tag would be in searching for a particular theorem in medical statistics, which is pretty obscure.
Serge, I really like the gallery project. I don't need to know what people look like, and I'm not particularly visual, but there's something nice about seeing faces that go with all these fascinating thoughts. Here's a recent pic of me, if you'd like to add it to the collection.
abi @27, that's beautiful, thank you. The ultimate revenge on an elitist (racist, homophobic, etc) scumsucker is the total equality of death!
I'm similarly inclined to hope for mercy even for the truly evil. dido @151, thank you for being part of that mercy, and in this life, practically, putting yourself on the line to repay evil with kindness. Which is far harder than a pious wish for divine mercy after someone is safely dead, and I am somehow comforted to know that a world that contained Buckley also contains people like you.
About de mortuis: I agree that it is morally important not to whitewash political figures because of their death. History matters, and making sure that future generations hear the truth about past evils is far more important than any kind of prissy politeness. At the same time, I think rejoicing in someone's death diminishes the rejoicer, and doesn't do anything for justice (either hurting the deceased wicked person, or helping his victims).
Good people and evil people die, and everybody else in between, and evil people are just as likely to die well as good people to die in misery and pain. So it doesn't make sense to see death as a punishment (or a reward either). Perhaps the cause for celebration is that the world no longer has that evil person in it? But that's not an idea I find comforting.
EClaire, I'm very partial to Vienna Teng's Lullabye for a stormy night at the moment. It's pop rather than folk or show, but it's the kind of pop that is aware of classical roots; Teng is a pianist in the Tori Amos mode. And very definitely not dumbed down or insipid.
Yeah, Living God is a common biblical term for God. I don't associate it with either wishy-washy progressive religion or with scary fundamentalism, but with Sephardi religious poetry, this sort of thing:
My soul's athirst for God, the living God
My heart, my flesh, to praise the living God
One God, creator, saying "I am life
No one may see me while he's yet in life"
My heart and body praise the God of life
In wisdom God created by a plan
Profound beyond the vision of all life
My heart and body praise the God of life
Who now is just, we who compare to dust?
In truth none just can be found in this life
My heart and body praise the God of life
I join my praise to praise of every mouth
Your hand reach out to give food to all life
My heart and body praise the God of life
(With apologies to Ibn Ezra for not being up to reproducing quite all his internal rhymes!)
Marilee, that PCR video is a delight! It's a shame it's just an advert in a way, but thanks for pointing it out, it made my day.
Susan, myrthe, Sam Kelly: between making my comment and reading how the thread has developed since then, I came upon a rather interesting essay on an aspect of pro gun rhetoric that isn't often discussed overtly. Chivalry is very much about reinforcing the power of the "right sort" of people.
Jonathan and others, I hope you'll also look at that link. If you read carefully you will see that O'Danu is herself an enthusiastic gun user (hint: like our gracious hostess) and has directly relevant experience of dealing with dangerously violent people in a civilian context.
So, let's talk about chivalry. The popular sense will do, though I'm very much enjoying the asides from people who actually understand the historical context. That "tough man protects the women and children with his big weapon" bit, how does that work out for women like me? I'm fat, mouthy, and reasonably incompetent at gender and class presentation. Even assuming that the "chivalrous" men are all excellent marksmen and unshakeable in a crisis like their fantasy images of themselves, somehow I'm not feeling safer here.
Oh, and I have friends who are named Mohammed, or who look a bit like the sort of people likely to be named Mohammed. I'm not thinking that increased numbers of "libertarian" civilians carrying guns to emphasize their political views is going to make my friends safer either.
LLA at #85, that's a fascinating account. You have a minor misconception about the genetics of colourblindness, though: your father isn't colourblind because his Y chromosome "defeated" him. He's colourblind because he has only one X chromosome, and that defective. You aren't colourblind because you benefit from the redundancy provided by your maternal X chromosome (ie you have one defective X, which does nothing, and one which works correctly and gives you full colour vision). Colourblindness, in common with many other genetic conditions that primarily affect men, is nothing to do with the Y chromosome.
I'm surprised you feel so strongly that your childlessness is a genetic benefit. It goes without saying that it's up to each individual whether to have children or not. But everybody has some genes with negative effects in some circumstances. A person who does want to have children might hope not to pass on a particular trait, that I could understand, but you almost seem to be arguing that the world is a better place for not having your hypothetical colourblind child in it.
After some hesitation, I joined my embryonic LT catalogue to Making Light Denizens. I'm livredor there, hence the hesitation since that account links to my LJ. My LJ identity isn't exactly a secret, but I'm trying to keep it at least a couple of hops away from my real name. I suspect Mary Dell's Web 2.0 octopus will devour me sooner or later anyway.
- * -
I had a Making Light dream last night. Teresa had edited an anthology of Harry Potter fanfic in verse, and I attended the booklaunch. I embarrassed myself by asking the inane question "can you tell us more about why you picked those particular works?" instead of the sensible question "why did you choose not to include any preface or discussion of the poetry in your anthology?" The panel somehow collapsed into an argument about religion, but I fell in like with another attendee, possibly my subconscious' version of abi.
Bullying is bullying, and kindness is kindness; the same human behaviours play out in any social group, the technology is irrelevant. The only important difference the internet makes in this case is that thanks to the internet we (unconnected strangers across the world) all know about the evil people who bullied Megan to death.
I'm really heartened to see that there's a younger generation here. I thought until this thread that miriam, ethan and I were the youngest people here (I'm 28). I think it's an excellent thing that there are teenagers reading this thread and experiencing the immense compassion expressed by this community. There is justified anger towards Lori Drew, but the overwhelming tenor of the thread is people trying to be as kind as possible in their different ways. Hell, I needed to see that myself.
Am I real? Vicki knows me. And, um, I've met Farah's cat... I don't think I'm the sort of person anyone would bother pretending to be; I'm too old for teenagers to trust me, and too young to claim any sort of authority or wisdom. I have a boring habit of getting dressed first thing when I wake up, so I don't converse on the internet or anywhere else in my underwear.
Off topic squee: my link is in a sidelight!!! And my name in the hover text and everything. Eeeeeee! Now I feel like I've made it. (And I've probably spoiled my chances of ever being taken seriously again with this comment.)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 3 |
| 2008 | 11 |
| 2007 | 68 |
| 2006 | 27 |
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 1 |
Total: 111 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Individ-ewe-al:
Show all comments by Individ-ewe-al.