05:35 am - QotD
[Emphasis in bold added; emphasis in underline
present as italics in original.]
"Roommate and I have a theory that if we could change our porn,
we could change the way gender works in this country. And it's not to
censure porn. That's not what it's about, it's not about
abol[i]shing kink, but it is putting it in 'kink' as opposed to
'normal heterosexual sex'. There is a difference between being a
little kinky in the bedroom, and believing that being dominated is the
role of a woman in normal heterosexual sex.
"But to go
from 'Our current porn isn't the healthiest' to 'All porn is
inherently evil' is just...no. It's like looking at McDonalds and
taking that as an example as to why we shouldn't eat. It's something
delicious, sure, but it's not something that should be accepted as
normal food, unless you wanna get diabetes."
--
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
black_regalia,
2008-03-25
06:16 am - Screwy Sleep, Random Worries, Typesetting People, and a Digression on Ignorance
I crashed from 18:30 to 19:30, woke up, watched
CSI: USN -- I mean NCIS -- then
crashed again around 21:30 and after a few almost-awake
intervals at the ends of dreams, was woken by pain around 02:45.
And I've got things I really need to do in both the morning and
the evening today (ignoring the places I really, really should
have gotten to yesterday and Monday if I'd felt alert enough
(*sigh*)). Maybe I'll manage a nap in the afternoon in between,
but how often does my body cooperate that well?
Due to paperwork glitches, my renewal application for the
state's health-care-for-poor-people got delayed (this morning's
outing has to do with straightening that out). I'd foreseen one
of the delays but not another, so I've been taking my meds less
often than I should for the past few weeks to try to stretch my
supply until I'm covered again, but I was really counting on not
having to make that work past this week. (Taking only half as
much as I should of the migraine-preventative is probably
related to the annoyingly high percentage of evenings I haven't
felt well enough to get where I needed to go lately. I'm not
looking forward to running out entirely.) So I'm really hoping
this next step in sorting things out doesn't take very long.
The comments to
yesterday's entries have been interesting; the discussion on
one has also been uncomfortably challenging -- some concepts I
though I 'got', it looks like I don't understand as thoroughly
as I'd thought. (And there's also an aspect of trying to tease
apart layers of underlying concept, word overloading and
implications, and social theory built on the concept -- to the
extent that these can be distinguished -- to try to sort out which
layers my gaps and misunderstandings are in. It'll be a lot
clearer where I should say, "I disagree and here's why," and
where I should say, "Wow, I should work on that blind spot I
had," or "Yes but here's a more tactically-useful way of saying
that," when I've got more confidence that I'm not overlooking a
third of a word's meaning or implications conventionally
abbreviated or left not explicitly mentioned because they're
considered obvious by folks who are ahead of me in the
subject.) So I've got a chunk o' reading and thinking (and
probably more challenging conversations) ahead of me there.
At the same time, the phrase "home-built
magnetic resonance imaging system", from the discussion on the
other entry, was a startling combination of words that has
inspired tool-lust. (Not that I'd be able to do much more than
play with such a tool with my current level of education
in biology, physiology, and (most important for my current
fascination) neurology, but the one cool thing about ignorance
compared to so many other obstacles is that it's so
straightforwardly curable. Well except for the
bit about living in an age when there's so much known that even
if I had all the spoons of a healthy person and no mundane
distractions I couldn't learn all of the interesting stuff in
the fields I'm interested in in a human lifespan. And the bit
where some of the stuff I want to become less ignorant about is
stuff that nobody else knows yet either, so curing that
ignorance is more complicated than looking things up online or
in libraries and working though the problem sets in each
chapter, and applying the scientific method in person is
required. (And at this point I'm reminded of the story of
George Washington Carver's conversation with God about
knowledge.[*]) But in general, curing ignorance (at least
in oneself and to, say, an undergraduate level of de-ignorance)
is a straightforward process. Not always quick or easy,
but straightforward. And in the meantime, even just playing
with an MRI could be fun.)
Finally, in response to having read the observation that
"There's no way to tell the difference between an amusing
joke and a severe level of derangement when you've delved into
the world of typesetting people.", certain portions of
my subconscious have taken up the task of figuring out all the
ways of typesetting a person and occasionally poking the answers
up to where they impinge on conscious thought.
[*] I'd guess that most of my readers are familiar
with the story, but just in case: "'I said to God, Mr.
Creator, I would like to know all about the creation of the
world.' And God answered, 'Little man, your mind is too small to
take it in. Ask something more your size. 'Then I said 'Mr.
Creator, I would like to know all about the
peanut.'"