Month: October 2013

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.

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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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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.

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by Doctor Science

Part of the fannish web blew up this week because of an interview with Lino Disalvo about Disney’s upcoming animated movie, Frozen. One thing that’s different about Frozen is that there are two female leads in the “Princess” position (critical for Disney marketing purposes), Elsa and Anne. Disalvo said:

Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, ’cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they’re very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna (Kristen Bell) being angry.”

Many people have taken serious umbrage at the implication that animating girls is *hard* because they all look alike, or something — especially given that the two female leads in Frozen look a *lot* like Rapunzel from Tangled:

I had the feeling that Disalvo was trying to say something specific that he couldn’t articulate, so I asked for help. A reader who’s a professional animator explained:

What he’s trying to say is, in every Disney movie I can think of, all of the women are very contained and “pretty.” It’s more how seriously you want the audience to read the character.

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by Doctor Science

At this point, all Democrats and a sprinkling of Republicans call the House GOP’s threat to not raise the debt ceiling “hostage-taking” or indeed “economic terrorism”. When Obama absolutely refuses to negotiate about the debt ceiling, then, we think “that’s right, we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and nod firmly.

Breaching the debt ceiling would mean defaulting on the US’s obligations. It’s not about refusing to run up more debt, it’s about refusing to pay debts we’re already run up. The results would likely be catastrophic, for the US and for the rest of the world.

Obama *did* negotiate with Republicans to avert a 2011 debt ceiling breach, but it was really ugly. He seems to have hoped that it was a one-time thing, but Republicans clearly didn’t feel that way.:

[Senator (R-KY) Mitch] McConnell said he could imagine doing this again.

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” he said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.”Now the Republicans have taken the same hostage, again — as could have been predicted by anyone who’d ever heard of Danegeld.

The thing is, though we may say “don’t negotiate with terrorists”, that’s complete (and dangerous) bull. If someone takes hostages, *of course* you talk with them. You negotiate because calming the situation and getting the hostages out alive is far more important than “standing firm”.

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