04w09:1 Jesus Harry Potter Christ Posted February 23rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 9 number 1 (jesus harry potter christ) ——————————————————————— Boobs, blood and Bible-bashing | John Patterson http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1151479,00.html “Here we go again with the same old hypocrisy. Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which features a fair acreage of flesh, and whose politics are avowedly of the 1960s left, gets slapped with an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board, thus guaranteeing a drastic narrowing of its audience and a lowering of its profitability. Meanwhile, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a medievally reactionary Bible-basher drenched in the literal blood of the mythical Lamb, featuring extensive, non-sex-related applications of scourge and lash, close-ups of nails being hammered through flesh, and a bloody spearing or two, gets pushed out to 3,000 screens nationwide under the more inclusive R-rating, which means newspapers will carry its ads, and children will be allowed to see it. ” Eichmann in Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the banality of evil. | Julian Sanchez http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1568/6_35/109085444/p1/article.jhtml “Umbridge and Fudge may be power hungry, but their malevolence is not the raw nihilism of a Voldemort. Umbridge is particularly insufferable precisely because her transformation of Hogwarts into an increasingly regulated panopticon is motivated by an apparently sincere self-righteousness. A central theme of The Order of the Phoenix, then, is what Hannah Arendt called ‘the banality of evil.’ The bureaucrats are doing good by their own lights, following orders. Former Hogwarts prefect Percy Weasley is a case in point. In the past, Percy served as comic relief, a stuffed shirt whose obsequiousness toward authority figures was matched only by his imperiousness toward younger students. Now Percy is a Hogwarts graduate and assistant to Minister Fudge, and his blind affection for his masters leads him to join the smear campaign against Harry. The transition from buffoonish to sinister is seamless. ” It’s all Greek to Harry Potter | BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/3469023.stm “Mr Wilson said writing the book had its challenges. ‘Everybody asked me, what’s the Greek for Quidditch? ‘What’s the Greek for bludger and snitch and all these other technical terms that JK Rowling has invented?’ […] The classics teacher showed the ancient Greek version for the first time this week at Scott School in Bedford, where he read to the children. One of the pupils told BBC Look East: ‘I didn’t know what he was saying, but I did recognise a couple of words and it did make us laugh.’ ” Mel’s Maligners | George Neumayr http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6170 “Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is provoking religious slights — on Christians. Diane Sawyer’s Primetime interview with Gibson dripped with an insulting condescension toward Christianity, a condescension liberals would regard as bigoted were it aimed at Judaism or Islam. Sawyer, brows furrowed, looking almost in a state of physical pain, felt free to question Gibson’s faith with a surely-you-can’t-believe-that? air. As Gibson spoke about such things as his belief in the Devil and the Holy Spirit, Sawyer’s face registered a wincing incredulity. She looked like a horrified anthropologist who had just stumbled upon some grotesque religious sect. […] Talk show hosts usually coo over the convictions of artists and believers. Not so with Gibson. His convictions are so in need of correction that Sawyer, suddenly an art monitor, demanded to know why he didn’t make a different movie. ‘You could have made a life of Jesus,’ a nice and fuzzy movie without the crucifixion, Sawyer told Gibson.(The fatuousness of Sawyer reached its bottom when she referred to the movie as an ‘anti-date movie.’)” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 23 February 2004 @ 2:49 PM
04w08:2 Tommy Toomuch Reality Posted February 18th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 8 number 2 (tommy toomuch reality) ——————————————————————— eBay auction of ‘eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nieeine’ on hold | Ian Demsky http://tinyurl.com/2hl8s “The phone number popularized by 1982’s one-hit wonder Tommy Tutone – Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nieeine – rings into a Murfreesboro used-car dealership in area code 615. Tuning in to national attention for the auction of New York’s 212 version of the number on eBay, the dealership put its number on the Internet auction block Monday. […] The bizarre convergence of ’80s pop culture and offbeat Internet auctions made ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday. Before the auction was canceled, New York’s ‘Jenny’ was going for more than $200,000. ” My Big Fat Obnoxious Prank | Joy Press http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0407/tv.php “Somehow we’ve grown accustomed to violation as prime-time entertainment. Violation of privacy – not only do we contend with security cameras in public spaces, the invasive threat of the USA Patriot Act, and cell phone users covertly snapping photos of people, but we also have hidden TV camera crews prowling through once anonymous city streets, looking to catch us at our most vulnerable. And violation of trust -more and more reality shows weave blatant deception into their basic premise, throwing unwitting victims into situations that range from the surreal and embarrassing to the downright traumatic. […]Critics may mock hidden-camera shows as the lowest rung of reality schlock, but the daddy of them all – Allen Funt’s Candid Camera -began with noble intentions. Funt believed that by secretly filming, he could reveal how average people respond to societal pressures and conflicts. ‘The worst thing, and I see it over and over, is how easily people can be led by any kind of authority figure,’ Funt once said. […] As McCarthy points out to me, ‘Networks have standards-and-practices offices to oversee things like swearing and sexuality and violence, but there’s nothing comparable to the institutional review boards that looks at the ethics of these programs.’ It’s left to the shows’ producers to think about where to draw the line – or not. ” Long urls made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 18 February 2004 @ 1:21 PM
04w08:1 Nazi Porn Posted February 17th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 8 number 1 (Nazi Porn) ——————————————————————— High-definition porn has arrived. That’s bad news for HDTV. | Brendan I. Koerner http://slate.msn.com/id/2094788 “The HDTV microscope could kill the fantasy that the adult industry peddles. Hollywood is already learning this lesson the hard way: HDTV has revealed that some glamorous stars look a lot more pedestrian than we’ve been led to believe. And the makeup tricks that protect the aging and less-than-perfect are easy to spot in HDTV. When technology pundit Phillip Swann first saw the Charlie’s Angels movie in HDTV, he was taken aback by Cameron Diaz’s appearance. ‘Diaz looks like a different person,’ he marveled in the pages of Television Week, noting that her face has been ravaged by acne over the years. ‘She’s still very pretty. But to be very frank, I doubt that she would make People’s ‘Most Beautiful’ list.’ ” The Eloquence of Pornography | Laura Kipnis http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/eloquence.html “Pornography should interest us, because it’s intensely and relentlessly about us. It involves the roots of our culture and the deepest corners of the self. It’s not just friction and naked bodies: pornography has eloquence. It has meaning, it has ideas. It even has redeeming ideas. So why all the distress? […] Despite knowing this, it’s difficult to envision contemporary pornography as a form of culture or as a mode of politics. There’s virtually no discussion of pornography as an expressive medium in the positive sense — the only expressing it’s presumed to do is of misogyny or social decay. That it might have more complicated social agendas, or that future historians of the genre might produce interesting insights about pornography’s relation to this particular historical and social moment — these are radically unthought thoughts.” Porn und Drang | Luke Harding http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1146258,00.html “Before submitting his manuscript to his publisher last summer, Kunkel had researched long and hard into one of the most subterranean aspects of the Nazi era – a series of erotic home movies known as the Sachsenwald films, shot secretly in 1941. Officially, pornography was forbidden under the Nazis; in reality, however, the films were not only screened privately for the amusement of senior Nazi figures, but were also traded in north Africa for insect repellent and other commodities” The death pit | Janina Struk http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1131825,00.html “Finally, whether the scene was photographed at Sniatyn, Bochnia, Sniadowo, Lodz or Drohobycz – towns hundreds of miles apart, or in Latvia or the Soviet Union or somewhere else, and whether it was taken in 1939, 1941, 1943 or 1944, we do not know. So what does it tell us? In a sense, it says everything. That the Germans and their collaborators took photographs of their crimes to keep as mementoes and trophies. That brave resisters smuggled such images out of their occupied countries to provide evidence of Nazi atrocities. That the Holocaust has at times been promoted, at other times suppressed, as a central story of the second world war. That the death pit image has been made to serve the propaganda purposes variously of the Nazis, the resistance and the Warsaw pact. That curators, documentary makers and publishers have been remarkably promiscuous and cavalier in their appropriation of it as evidence for whatever story they intend. But in another sense, it tells us nothing. We have no certain knowledge of the perpetrators and the victims. Of the lives of the old man with the shoe and the young boy with the hat whose last moments we presume to witness, we will never know anything ” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 17 February 2004 @ 1:30 PM
04w07:4 Happy Valentine's Day Posted February 14th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 4 (Happy Valentine’s Day) ——————————————————————— This is your brain in love | Carlene Bauer http://www.sophists.org/article146.html “So here are the basic characteristics: You lose a sense of self, your edges become porous — this person almost invades, but it’s a very pleasant invasion. Then there are mood swings — real giddiness and ecstasy when things are going well, but if you don’t hear from him via e-mail or phone, there’s despair. But the main characteristic for me is obsessively thinking about the person. When I was interviewing people to put into the fMRI machine, the first thing I asked them was how long they’d been in love, because I wanted them really crazy — I wanted them in the beginning stages, because these machines are expensive, they’re time-consuming for everybody. So they had to be absolutely nuts…” I get a kick out of you | The Economist http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2424049 “[…] Understanding the neurochemical pathways that regulate social attachments may help to deal with defects in people’s ability to form relationships. All relationships, […] rely on an ability to create and maintain social ties. Defects can be disabling, and become apparent as disorders such as autism and schizophrenia—and, indeed, as the serious depression that can result from rejection in love. […] For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. ‘It is fascinating to reflect’, the pair conclude, ‘that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex.’ […] Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. ” Good Vibrations | Judith Warner http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17404-2004Feb5.html An article about Love and Hope, reviewing the work of Helen Fischer, described in the articles above, and Jerome Groopman’s The Anatomy of Hope : ” ‘There is an authentic biology of hope,’ Groopman writes. ‘Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation — the key elements of hope — can block pain by releasing the brain’s endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine. In some cases, hope can also have important effects on fundamental physiological processes like respiration, circulation, and motor function. During the course of an illness, then, hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction in which each link makes improvement more likely. It changes us profoundly in spirit and in body.’ NOTE: This article requires registration. Use login: ‘ajreader@artsjournal.com’ password: ‘access’ (courtesy of http://www.artsjournal.com)” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Saturday 14 February 2004 @ 3:42 PM
04w07:3 Text Messaging Posted February 13th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 3 (text messaging) ——————————————————————— ‘Yo, can u plz help me write English? | Steve Friess http://www.stevefriess.com/archive/usatoday/internetlingo.htm “Carl Sharp knew there was a problem when he spotted his 15-year-old son’s summer job application: ‘i want 2 b a counselor because i love 2 work with kids. ‘That night, the father in Phoenix removed the AOL Instant Messenger program from the family computer and informed both his children they were no longer to chat with friends online. […] Writer David Samson of Beverly Hills, Calif., notices the same problem. Teenage fans of his humor books e-mail him and show little regard for formality. He cites one note: ‘yo mr dave can u plz write me a funny speech about any animal cause i need it for school.’ ‘They seem to avoid every rule I was ever taught about how to get a response from anybody, especially an adult,’ says Samson, 51 … ” MSN Spoken Here | Charles Foran http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/01/13/1755252&tid=1 “Two qualities of text messaging make it unique. First, where most street argots are particular to a society, this one is fast becoming universal. Its ‘street,’ so to speak, is a vast one — the World Wide Web. Second, for all its resemblances to oral speech, text messaging isn’t spoken. It is written and, even then, hardly in the traditional sense. It exists solely on the computer or cell-phone screen, and is meant to be as ephemeral as an unrecorded, real-time conversation. ” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Friday 13 February 2004 @ 5:34 PM
04w07:2 Homosexuality Posted February 10th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 2 (homosexuality) ——————————————————————— A Love That Dared To Speak Its Name | John Loughery http://tinyurl.com/3bdjm “Graham Robb, who teaches at Oxford and has written three excellent biographies of 19th century French writers (Balzac, Hugo, Rimbaud), obviously thinks there is. Strangers is the interesting but sometimes quirky result of his broad quest for traces of ‘homosexual love’ in the years spanning Napoleon’s rise to Queen Victoria’s death. Not surprisingly, this readable book, mercifully unburdened by academic jargon, is bound to be instructive for anyone with a serious interest in 19th century European society” Nuances of gay identities reflected in new language | Rona Marech http://tinyurl.com/35ub3 “With the universe of gender and sexual identities expanding, a gay youth culture emerging, acceptance of gays rising and label loyalty falling, the gay lexicon has exploded with scores of new words and blended phrases that delineate every conceivable stop on the identity spectrum — at least for this week” Universities heed the call for genderless washrooms | Caroline Alphonso http://tinyurl.com/3hbyk “Under a new initiative to provide equitable services, student unions of at least two Canadian universities — Concordia and Simon Fraser — are in talks with their administrations about where to build special washrooms this fall for the transgender population on campus. And at McGill University, a gender-neutral washroom is being designed for the first floor of the student centre. […] …student unions say they have felt increased pressure from transgender students to build specific gender-neutral washrooms on university grounds. Being transgender is defined as having personal characteristics that go beyond traditional gender boundaries and sexual norms. Some transgender people may have undergone surgery to become a member of the opposite sex. ” Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name | Dinitia Smith http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/arts/07GAY.html?pagewanted=print&position “Among birds, for instance, studies show that 10 to 15 percent of female western gulls in some populations in the wild are homosexual. […] Among mammals, male and female bottlenose dolphins frequently engage in homosexual activity, both in captivity and in the wild. Homosexuality is particularly common among young male dolphin calves. […] Male and female rhesus macaques, a type of monkey, also exhibit homosexuality in captivity and in the wild.” (Note: May require a free one-time registration, which is worth the hassle since you won’t have to do it again – Tim) The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard | C.W. Moeliker http://www.nmr.nl/deins815.htm “On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass fa�ade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an �Attempted Rape Flight� that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.” (Winner of the 2003 Ig Nobel Award for Biology). Long urls made short using TinyUrl (www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 10 February 2004 @ 1:21 PM
04w07:1 Private Parts Posted February 9th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 1 (private parts) ——————————————————————— Privacy and Deviance | HP Laboratories http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/deviance/index.html “Privacy is a central issue of concern in the information age. Because of the ease with which data about individuals can be obtained, aggregated and dispersed, information technology can broadcast an individual’s secrets to unintended recipients who in turn can use it in ways that the individual no longer controls […] Our conjecture and motivation is that people are willing to reveal information whenever they feel that they are somewhat typical or positively atypical compared to the social group […] In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted experiments that revealed the true value that people place on their private data. Specifically, we tested whether deviation from the mean is the dominant factor in dictating how a person values a piece of information. We find with great significance (in excess of 95% statistical confidence) that the further a private piece of information deviates negatively from the mean, the greater the price demanded for that information. Furthermore, we find that small deviations in a socially positive direction are associated with a lower demanded price.” Experiment: To Become a Photographer of Female Nudes | Grant Stoddard http://www.nerve.com/regulars/ididitforscience/nudephotography/index.asp?page=1 ” ‘Look, if you ask nicely, it’s amazing what people will do. Be up front, confident and respectful and see what happens. ‘ ‘But you have a ready-made harem!’ ‘But you have an accent,’ he reasoned. ‘ You’re miles ahead of the game.'” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 09 February 2004 @ 4:06 PM
04w06:2 Dogs vs. Cats Posted February 3rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 6 number 2 (dogs vs. cats) ——————————————————————— A Potpourri of Pooches | Peter Tyson http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/dogs/potpourri.html “Dogs are diverse largely because of artificial rather than natural selection, because of us rather than nature. But just how much of their variety can be laid at our feet versus Mother Nature’s remains unclear. Charles Darwin suggested that one reason dogs are so variable is that they must have arisen not just from wolves but from other canids like jackals and coyotes as well. But recent genetic studies conducted by evolutionary biologist Robert Wayne and colleagues at the University of California at Los Angeles revealed that the mitochondrial DNA of dogs and wolves is very similar, while that of jackals and coyotes is distinctly different. Astounding as it seems, all 400 or so recognized breeds today descend directly from the wolf. ” Infected rats make easy cat snacks | Matt McGrath http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/850556.stm “A parasitic infection in some rats alters their natural behaviour and makes them easy prey for cats, research shows[…] ‘None of the other parasites I’ve ever looked at have had any of these effects upon behaviour,’she said. The parasite is also widespread in human brains, but does not cause a problem unless the immune system is compromised. (Article date: 25 July 2000) Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality | Jonathan Leake http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-826557,00.html “They may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities […] Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the ‘sex kitten’ effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun-loving and possibly more promiscuous.” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 03 February 2004 @ 2:46 PM
0406:3 Space Shuttle Posted February 2nd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 6 number 3 (space shuttle) This selection commemorates the Shuttle Disaster of a year ago. Last Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press, Howard Dean criticized Bush’s economics by saying, “He’s promising a trillion-dollar tax cut and a trip to Mars,” and I had to do a double-take because it was a literal as opposed to rhetorical statement. It can be argued that the new drive to go to Mars is partially due to the gross waste of expenditure and resources that the shuttle represented, and these year old articles articulate a view that NASA is a test-pilot boys club, fulfilling the baby-boomer tendency to squander potential for a yahoo good time. The third article is from last August and discuses the bureaucratic culture which allowed the disaster to happen. At least now it can said that NASA has a legitimate goal, and future generations will not consider the cost frivolous, anymore than we consider the Moon images we grew up with as a waste of money. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Was the space shuttle useful? Not really | David Owen http://slate.msn.com/id/2078104 “The scientific investigations undertaken during Columbia’s final voyage were similar to those conducted during Glenn’s mission five years earlier; indeed, they were similar to the experiments conducted on nearly every manned American space voyage that has ever taken place. For example, eight Australian spiders aboard Columbia added to our understanding of weightless web-weaving, a subject NASA first studied aboard Skylab in 1973.” (Article date: 4 Feb 2003) Astronauts – Why they shouldn’t be heroes | Chris Suellentrop http://slate.msn.com/id/2078230 “Before this past weekend, many Americans viewed the ‘Space Age’ as a kitschy thing of the past, like AstroTurf or I Dream of Jeannie. The great scientific challenge of the day, the one the president dared the nation to aspire to, was the creation of hydrogen-powered cars. Space? Been there, done that. As astronauts boldly went where many men had gone before, we forgot how bold they were. ‘It’s a job that doesn’t have anything to do with exploring space,’ NASA’s first flight director sniffed to USA Today in 2001. The Right Stuff flyboys had been replaced with nerdy tinkerers and scientists, seemingly as carefully selected for race and gender as a Benetton ad. […]In 1981, the buzz over the Columbia’s first flight was that space travel was about to lose its glamour. And the shuttle did exactly what it set out to do. We briefly achieved the dream of yawning as rockets hurtle men and women into outer space.” (Article date: 6 Feb 2003) A harsh critique of NASA’s culture | Peter N. Spotts http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0827/p01s02-usgn.html “Until now, Mr. Chase adds, ‘NASA hasn’t been allowed to look higher than low-earth orbit for human space flight.’ The shuttle and ISS programs often appear to be ends in themselves, when they could well serve as stepping-stones to human missions to Mars or back to the moon. Such efforts also could boost broader public interest in human space exploration, analysts say, noting that while polls indicate support for the program overall, the public appears to show little enthusiasm for space trucks moving back and forth between Earth and the space station.” (Article date: 27 Aug 2003) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 02 February 2004 @ 2:57 AM
04w06:1 Posted February 2nd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 6 number 1 (it’s all about the wiring) Note: I was using an incorrect calendar for the week numbers – this is week six. – Timothy ——————————————————————— The machine that invents | Tina Hesman http://tinyurl.com/2bfn5 “Thaler, the president and chief executive of Imagination Engines Inc. in Maryland Heights, gets credit for all those things, but he’s really just ‘the man behind the curtain,’ he says. The real inventor is a computer program called a Creativity Machine. What Thaler has created is essentially ‘Thomas Edison in a box,’ said Rusty Miller, a government contractor at General Dynamics and one of Thaler’s chief cheerleaders. ‘His first patent was for a Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information,’ the official name of the Creativity Machine, Miller said. ‘His second patent was for the Self-Training Neural Network Object. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One. Think about that. Patent Number Two was invented by Patent Number One!'” Related Link http://www.imagination-engines.com/technologies/cm.htm Biology vs. the Blank Slate | Ronald Bailey & Nick Gillespie http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1568/5_34/91475038/print.jhtml “Pinker: […] The blank slate mentality is popular with people who believe that any human trait can be altered with the right changes in social institutions. It’s popular in the more radical branches of feminism, although not with the original core of feminism that stressed the drive for equity between the sexes. I think it allies to some degree with Marxist approaches to society. Not that Marx literally believed in a blank slate, but he certainly believed that you could not intelligently discuss human nature separate from its ever-changing interaction with the social environment. […] The noble savage myth is behind the sensibility that violence is learned behavior, a slogan that is repeated endlessly whenever violence is chronicled in the news. It’s also behind the Romantic idea that violent nonconformists are actually seeing the hypocrisy of society and challenging social institutions from a marginalized viewpoint, as opposed to the idea that such people are psychopaths and that we should prevent them from wreaking havoc on everyone else. [The doctrine of the ghost in the machine…] is there in a vaguer way, too, among others who fear that a materialist viewpoint–the idea that human experience and choice are products of a physical organ called the brain–is corrosive of morality, meaning, and ultimate purpose. reason: Why do you call these ideas myths? Pinker: Because they’re wrong. ” Long urls made short using TinyUrl (www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 02 February 2004 @ 1:15 AM
