Re: Clowns/Irishmen
I read it somewhere in print, years ago, and couldn't swear to the credibility or correctness of that source. It sounds like Mr. Macdonald (unsurprisingly) knows a lot more about clowns than I do, and I might well be wrong.
When you look at certain known clown features in the right light, (red hair, red nose, stumbling walk, ill-fitting patched clothes) it does look rather suspicious (African-American alcoholics don't typically have red noses, for instance).
But I know little about clown history, and it's quite likely that I'm wrong here if, as has been suggested, some of those features come from different clown types (that is, one kind of clown is drunk and another has a red nose, and it wasn't until later when things got more muddled that it became possible to interpret the red nose as a sign of a light-skinned alcoholic).
My reason for making the analogy was just that I have a choice of whether to apply that stereotype to myself or not, and practitioners of ceremonial magic have a choice to consider themselves "witches" or not*, but the other analogies given (minstrel shows and Jewish stereotypes) are applied to people who cannot easily escape that application, and moreover are much more severely punished for belonging to those groups. So it felt creepy to me. Like I was covering my own mild historical indignation in the genuine present-day suffering of others.
*I count among my friends people who follow very similar systems of belief and practice, yet some of them say "wicca" or "witch" or the like, and others are careful to say "Thelema" or "ceremonial magic." Which is to say that whether you identify yourself as witchy or not is a different decision from what belief and practice you pursue.
I should maybe say that I'm in Xopher's camp, not "dave's." I thought this was a particularly interesting situation because some people early in the thread did in fact seem offended by a caricature that they or their ideological forebears intentionally stepped into. I think that's odd and interesting, but not silly or wrong.
I think this is categorically different from minstrel shows or blood libels. People still die every year over those old lies and hates. This is much more like the history of the circus clown as a racist caricature of an Irishman. I am Irish-American and I'll from time to time make a noise about that, but in between the time when that stereotype was current and the present, my people became whites who happen to be Irish rather than Irishmen and women, and so I have a choice to simply ignore it.
As Jacque and Tom point out, there's some nasty history behind the fiction-witch too. It's not an awesome bit of folklore that we must protect or anything. If you don't like it, I can see good reasons for that.
Doesn't this general kind of pretend-witchery actually predate the modern witch-identified religions by several hundred years?
I mean, pretend-witches roughly like this one are at least as old as Macbeth, right?
Wicca et al mostly evolved out of English ceremonial magic during the 20th century, and there is more or less no historical evidence that the 20th century practitioners are inheritors of any living tradition of witchcraft or pre-Christian religion.
(If you hold as a matter of faith that your practice or beliefs are descended from an older tradition, I will not argue with you. I respect your faith, just as I respect the faith of those who believe that Jesus said and did the things written in the Gospels. But on both matters the actual evidence is not sufficient to make it a historical rather than a personal truth, and "I believe" is not the same as "I can document.")
There probably was a tradition of witchcraft and 'cunning folk' in England at that time, though I'm not an expert on that subject. However, that tradition died with its last practitioners, and what record we have of it is rather different from the shape of early Wicca...
Raphael-
Mainly houses with bad furnaces.
Lance @ 9
Now I'm captivated by a mental image of John McCain hunched over a table making ties out of his trophies.
Emily @ 36
I wasn't meaning to yell at you, I don't think. As you say, we're on the same side. I think you're joking (maybe?) but if so it was lost in translation to text or back out of text into my head.
While my anger over the topic obviously shows through in my post, the only people I want to yell at are those who made these laws and policies, and those who, out of fear, support them, while sending more and more of their fellows to prison (also out of fear, one assumes). The section you quoted even identifies that: "if you're afraid..."
You've identified yourself as not belonging to either of those groups, so you're out of the yelling radius on this one. I apologize if my anger bothered you anyhow, but I hope we can get turned around and be angry at the same folks.
Torrilin @ 9:
Here in Washington, your right to vote is restored when you get out of prison.
Well, no. It's restored when you're done with parole and probation and have completely finished your sentence.
Well, no. It's done when you get the department of corrections to certify that you've finished your sentence.
Well, no. It's done when you've paid every fee associated with your trial and sentence, and gotten the state to give you paper showing that.
Now, I could probably make that happen for myself if I needed to. But really, you're done with parole, do you really want to go back in to see your parole officer? And then your parole officer's boss? And then pay fees from before you even went to prison? And then convince the voter registration folks that you've really got everything?
The laws on the books don't tell the whole story.
They've gotten it so it's about as hard for a felon to vote as it can be and still let them say "Sure, anyone who's served their sentence can vote." A local newspaper did a piece on it a while back, turns out there are a whole lot of folks around here who should be able to vote, but got turned away at some stage of that process and didn't fight hard enough, or who couldn't afford the interest on some damn fee from their trial, years back.
Given that Washington State has one of the least-proportionate prison populations in the country, this ends up meaning that our state government systematically denies black people the franchise. It's not illegal, exactly, but it's pretty shady.
The fact is, the state knows you've served your sentence. They know it well enough that they don't issue a warrant for your arrest, well enough that when a cop runs your license he'll see that you've put in your years and you're done.
Could something slip through the cracks? Sure. But really, if you've served it well enough that they won't arrest you if you walk in the station and slap your record on the desk, you've served it well enough to vote, unless maybe they don't really want your kind voting in the first place.
It's a bit like the no-fly list: too innocent to arrest or even detain and question, but far, far too guilty to ever be allowed to fly or vote.
I'm of the opinion that we should let everybody vote, and if you're scared that the Hon. Representative for Riker's Island is gonna mess up your legislature, well, maybe you shouldn't be sending so many people to prison.
We celebrate a different non-family day on the Saturday following Thanksgiving.
It's not Dysfunctional Family day, like you're suggesting (maybe we need both), it's just about everyone being back in their home town, but usually seeing only the people they're born to. We like to get everyone away for a day to see the people they choose to love as well.
@clew, #133
Thanks! I'll see what I can dig up. I'm sure I could whip up some 3d models if I had the dedication and the patience, but until I've got some confidence in my ability to construct what I'm modeling, that's not really worth the effort. Still, it's heartening to hear from someone who thinks about this stuff in a way that's familiar to me and my kind.
@LMB geekery:
I'm fairly certain red and blue are not the Vorbarra colors. The Imperial parade uniform is really snappy, well past the point of gaudiness, and Gregor is often described as uncomfortable with that, in contrast to his (relative) comfort in more subdued Vorbarra House uniforms or civilian clothes in Vorbarra colors, and to the appearance of Vorbarra armsmen in House uniform. It's possible, I suppose, that bright red and blue WITHOUT gold braid, tassels, cavalry boots, or swords is indeed considered "subdued" on Barrayar, but I have an easier time picturing Gregor looking at home in black and silver than red and blue.
Also, Vordarian didn't make any attempt to change military uniforms when he laid claim to the throne, and when Aral Vorkosigan noticed that both sides were adding armbands to their uniforms for identification (Aral's/Gregor's troops Vorkosigan brown and silver, Vordarian's maroon and... black?) he seemed to regard that as an insult to the Imperium, not to House Vorbarra. The fact that his troops chose Vorkosigan rather than the theoretical Vorbarra colors is easily explained by Gregor being a MIA four-year-old and Aral being a famous war leader in actual field command. It's not hard to imagine that his troops thought of him, not Gregor, as their leader even though Gregor was the principle they were fighting to uphold.
Every emperor since before the end of the Time of Isolation has been a Vorbarra. I think Dorca Vorbarra the Just inherited his title, so the previous emperor must have been a Vorbarra as well. At some point prior there were non-Vorbarra emperors, but we don't know how long that was. Still, I think at present it would be difficult for a Barrayaran to imagine a Count Vorbarra who was not Emperor (an Emperor who was not a Vorbarra could easily happen if Gregor were to die without children, of course).
That's funny, I code for a living and I'm learning to sew. I'm decent on a technical level (made some pretty sharp curtains last month, buttons and hems are no problem, I can take in a pair of pants and have them come out looking right) but I'm still a ways from being confident in my ability to sit down with a pattern and make something that has any but the simplest lines. I can handle anything flat very easily, but I'm not sure where I'm at with 3d human-body stuff. Alterations, where you're changing one or maybe two lines at a time, I can do. I think I just need to dive in and screw something up really badly so I learn how to do it right the second time.
Aside to Albatross @ 58
I know what rubberhose cryptanalysis is. When I wrote that comment, the OP referenced "rubberhose cryptography." It appears Jim's fixed that, or perhaps I was hallucinating in the first place (maybe Jim will tell us which?) Please do re-read my comment in light of that, so that I look like a smartass with a little bit of clever instead of confused and nonsensical.
Also, my original point there was really that using nontrivial pen and paper crypto probably makes your ciphertext a harder point of attack for the sorts of people likely to be trying to attack it than any other link in the chain. In my life, the sorts of folks I'd be concerned about (if I had concerns, which right now I don't) are like business rivals, potentially local police, the odd reporter, neighborhood kids, personal rivals, that sort of thing. Some of those people (cops and reporters for sure) are very good at social engineering and may have considerable resources at their command for attacks on human links, but none of them tend to have cryptanalytic resources.
Your advice about class breaks is extremely relevant, however. This sort of cryptography is very useful when you have a day or even a week of messages to pass, but if it remains in use... It may take local cops six months to get the FBI to send your stuff to the NSA and have it decrypted, but once they've done that, assume that they can decrypt any further messages as fast as they need to. Further, cut that lead time in half for any country without the US's peculiar law-enforcement/intelligence rivalry, and reduce further as appropriate to the organization/country.
@Ajay #17:
I think you've pointed out the reason NOT to use the duress signal you suggest: It's much more common to forget to include your security word than it is to actually be captured, even for real spies.
Having a real duress signal makes it easy for your handlers to avoid the mistake you cite.
It's cryptanalysis that you use for reading other folks' mail (assuming you're not a gentleman or an old-timey secretary of state, that is). Rubberhose cryptography would be like beating someone up and using the number of times you hit them before they lost consciousness as the seed to your pseudo-random number generator.
And in response to the present and likely future comments on how this isn't really mathematically much better than ROT13... Honestly if you're using anything better than a Caesar cipher, your crypto is fairly likely to be the strongest link in the chain*. Think hard about whether your end is safe from black bag work, traffic analysis, etc, and whether your correspondents are scrupulous and trustworthy before you work any harder than something like this or a tableaux cipher, if it really has to be pen and paper. If you're corresponding in email anyhow, you might as well use GPG etc, but make sure you don't save the plaintext, you scrub everything, etc etc.
*Certain channels can expect technologically sophisticated attackers, but few of us ever need to think about how to secure those channels. The stuff we need to think about, usually the attacker will have more human savvy than tech savvy, and so checkbook, black bag, traffic analysis, and subornment are more likely modes of attack.
Actually, there are cases of SF being rejected as too bold. Joe Haldeman's classic 'The Forever War' was originally rejected by John Campbell because Campbell couldn't imagine American women serving in combat. Of course, another publisher took it very quickly, but it does happen.
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 4 |
| 2008 | 10 |
| 2004 | 1 |
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