Month: October 2013

What is like “Hamlet” for other languages?

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by Doctor Science I first read Hamlet in high school, and still remember that my first reaction was, “it’s full of clichés!” — because every page was full of hackneyed turns of phrase. And then I hit Hamlet’s soliloquy, and every line was “a cliché”, already familiar to me. I realized, of course, that this … Read more

Conservatives’ knowledge of Obamacare isn’t

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by Doctor Science

— isn’t knowledge, I mean.

One of the great frustrations I have in talking with people who get most of their information from the Right Wing Media (the Limbaugh-Fox News-Drudge axis) is that so much of what they know is untrue. Stories, data, ideas get repeated over and over, reflected in their Hall of Mirrors, but that has nothing to do with whether they’re true. It’s memes all the way down.

What-Does-the-Fox-Say-smithsonian

Speaking of memes and government, the good people at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum made this, based on Disputed Game (1850) by Massachusetts wildlife artist Thomas Hewes Hinckley.

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The Case of the Invisible Diamonds

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by Doctor Science

This week in the Dept. of Now For Something Completely Different: I’ve been wondering why, though diamonds have been popular among upper-class Europeans for centuries, they rarely appear in European portraits.

I can see you’ve got an open thread cued up, LJ, but since it’s no longer Friday where you are I’m going to post this anyway. Feel free to use it as an open thread if you feel like it.

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Why Is Lighter “Better”?

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by dr ngo My attention was drawn to an Indian forum on whether dark-skinned people face prejudice all over the world (with particular emphasis on the USA and India, unsurprisingly). My answer to the original Facebook query was, of Facebook necessity, brief: Pretty much. If you look at it in terms of historical developments, "civilization" … Read more

Please stop calling the Tea Party “crazy”

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by Doctor Science Speaking as someone with a mental illness, I’m getting really tired of people saying that the Tea Party wing of the GOP is “crazy” (e.g. the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek). In the same vein, I’m pretty damn irritated by invocation of the Crazification Factor. Just, no. You don’t get to mock … Read more

Why we love the World cup Friday open thread

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by liberal japonicus Because you get lines like these: but the team delivered when it mattered most, beating Montenegro on Friday before dispatching Poland on Tuesday behind goals from Wayne Rooney and the captain, Steven Gerrard. Because you know it is do or die when you are facing Montenegro. Discuss.

NJ Senate Special Election and US Default Watch

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by Doctor Science Tomorrow’s another looooong day for me, as I work the polls for NJ’s Special Election to fill the late Frank Lautenberg’s Senate seat. I voted by mail more than a week ago — for Cory Booker, of course. I can certainly understand why many of my fellow Jerseyites feel as though Booker’s … Read more

Not a bubble, a hall of mirrors

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by Doctor Science

The last time we discussed the way conservatives tend to get all their news from Right-Wing Media (RWM), people mostly used the word “bubble” or “cocoon”.

For me, both metaphors don’t quite hit the nail on the head. The point about a bubble is that it’s fragile, it inevitably pops. The point about a cocoon is that it’s temporary, a place to be safe while you grow up. The teenagers I know call our town “The Bubble”, because it’s so sheltered compared to the wide world — but they all know they’re going to be leaving The Bubble very soon, breaking out of this cocoon to flutter free.

I’m still fumbling for the right metaphor, but for right now I think of the RWM ecosystem (noösystem?) as a hall of mirrors, where everywhere you look you see a reflection of yourself.

Da-vinci-mirror-room

Mirror room built for the Da Vinci, the Genius traveling museum exhibition, based on one of his sketches. [source] The mirror room was just an idea for Da Vinci, a way to see all around an object (or one’s self): the technology of his day couldn’t come close to creating mirrors of this size. For all his genius, he probably didn’t realize what the experience of being in such a room would be like, the dizzying way reflections of your reflection would stretch off to infinity.

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