Ars Marginal has a look at racism embedded in the elven race.
It continues to remind me: whenever you have a book, comic, TV show, etc. that is based on races having race culture, you're basically going to be creating a rorshach for people to project their own racial views onto. Because the fantasy/sci-fi culture of people being near-wholly defined by their race is, basically, a hold-over from pre-1950s racism.
It's very, very difficult to avoid -- whether it's Star Trek (Klingons are angry! Ferengi are greedy! Klingons are dark-skinned! Ferengi are basically Jews!) or Lord of the Rings or whatever, most of these fantasy or science-fiction sources seem to proceed from the idea that creatures of the same race are basically the same (with the occasional exception). It's the racial version of one-climate planets (Endor the Forest Moon! Hoth the Ice World!).
And back to the elves: sure, elves are basically racial supremacists. Except so are dwarves in most popular conceptions. And so are goblins and orcs. They all hearken back to the medieval idea that your race was good and everyone else were monsters who raped your children. Supremacists all.
Friday, June 3, 2011
RESPONSE: Because It Sold? (cont'd)
I still haven't read that train-wreck of a Mamet book, but here's a nice quote someone pulled from it:
Projection much?
For, at least, one could say of Hitler and his assassins, that they enjoyed their anti-Semitism. But the Left proceeds, from day to day, in a sort of sad, wistful fury at all the things of life not recognized in its cosmogony.
Projection much?
LOCAL: No! Not my Zip Code!
They're taking away my zipcode:
Damn it, this is my favorite zip-code I've ever had. Don't take it from me!
Williamsburg’s waterfront will be cut out of the fashionably skinny 11211 ZIP code and saddled with the uglier 11249 postal code next month thanks to a booming residential and business population.
Damn it, this is my favorite zip-code I've ever had. Don't take it from me!
RESPONSE: Deadpan News-Readers
Sometimes there's too much opinion on the air. Sometimes reporters are overly deadpan.
Here's a reporter doing exactly the right balance between the two:
That would have been the perfect solution to this situation:
Here's a reporter doing exactly the right balance between the two:
That would have been the perfect solution to this situation:
NEWS: More Releases!
I love me when a good primary source becomes available -- all the history books in the world don't compare with reading the actual CIA manual advocating torture.
In that vein, President Obama has declassified the President's Daily Brief regarding Soviet Space Flight in 1968. This is in line with his executive orders that no information may remain secret forever -- an idea that sounds dead-simple but is actually a huge break from previous precedent in the intelligence business.
In that vein, President Obama has declassified the President's Daily Brief regarding Soviet Space Flight in 1968. This is in line with his executive orders that no information may remain secret forever -- an idea that sounds dead-simple but is actually a huge break from previous precedent in the intelligence business.
RESPONSE: Art and Science
I love the title on this New York Times article on the World Science Festival: A Double Helix of Art and Science:
There aren't nearly enough connections between the arts and scientists. The stereotype of left-brain / right-brain divisions between the two is not great. I'm not talking about plays about sciences (although that's not a bad idea either, is it, Michael Frayn?), I'm talking about actually using arts and sciences together. I recently spotlit one artist bridging art and technology; I think there's more that could be done taking arts to sciences, or sciences to art.
I take a lot of artistic inspiration and ideas from WNYC's Radiolab. I can't help but get artistically inspired by Neil Degrasse Tyson. The creativity and interest in how science and human life actually interacts that some of these scientific ambassadors bring is something we should reflect and bring to them.
(P.S. This post took longer to write than I expected because I googled something related to it and found a whole bunch of cool-sounding science podcasts. Science here I come!)
The panel is one of 50 events at the five-day World Science Festival, the annual smooch-fest between science and art. The festival began on Wednesday night at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with a gala reading of Alan Alda’s play “Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie,” about that Nobel Prize winner, who, as a widow, was pilloried for having an affair with an unhappily married man who had been her husband’s student.
There aren't nearly enough connections between the arts and scientists. The stereotype of left-brain / right-brain divisions between the two is not great. I'm not talking about plays about sciences (although that's not a bad idea either, is it, Michael Frayn?), I'm talking about actually using arts and sciences together. I recently spotlit one artist bridging art and technology; I think there's more that could be done taking arts to sciences, or sciences to art.
I take a lot of artistic inspiration and ideas from WNYC's Radiolab. I can't help but get artistically inspired by Neil Degrasse Tyson. The creativity and interest in how science and human life actually interacts that some of these scientific ambassadors bring is something we should reflect and bring to them.
(P.S. This post took longer to write than I expected because I googled something related to it and found a whole bunch of cool-sounding science podcasts. Science here I come!)
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