Trapped in the snow

Is anyone else not getting updates from LJ?

The snowstorm outside is lovely, but too many parts of my body hurt.

In light of the Copenhagen meeting, here's an interesting post from last month about the stages major societal change progresses through and an argument that trying to rush a stage is counter productive to advancing.

I'm not convinced this doesn't underestimate the necessity of someone being on the fringe, pushing the Overton Window, but I suspect it does have some merit in analyzing the overall pattern. I wonder if the problem is often a question of successfully assessing what stage a change/movement is actually in at a given moment.

As long as we're on an environmental theme - two from Jared Diamond.

First, he argues in an old article that Agriculture was the worst mistake humanity ever made.

I am not going to argue his data about leisure time and art, but I do wonder if science requires a certain population density favoured by agriculture and cities to make it work. You need enough people questioning. The other question is whether it requires the levels of leisure only attainable by an elite to work. I'm not sure.

And this weekend in the NYtimes he discussed how big business is important in the environmental movement.


And to finish up: The 50 best protest signs of 2009.

Fun with Voices

I'm sure this has been around forever, but it is kind of fun to hear different words pronounced in different accents.

On Men and Women

I don't think I ever linked to this post about the "Terrible Bargain" many women feel they strike with the men in their lives.

Well worth a read.

And as long as we're on the subject, here is a manifesto for radical masculinity by Sinclair Sexsmith.

Well, it isn't really a manifesto. It is, however, a comment on the prescriptive nature of the standard gender roles and how that screws up men. It's also about the never-ending quest to find out what butch means and what masculinity can be without the misogyny.

So I have studied butch. I was not born with swagger: I learned it.I have studied butch. I was not born with swagger: I learned it. I earned it. I was not born knowing how to use a cock or tie a tie or match my belt to my shoes or court a girl or refrain from chivalry when it's not welcome or to contain something big and chaotic.I earned it. I was not born knowing how to use a cock or tie a tie or match my belt to my shoes or court a girl or refrain from chivalry when it's not welcome or to contain something big and chaotic.

Part 2 is here.

Random news roundup

The TSA is still smarting from putting a classified manual up online. For those who didn't hear about it, they "redacted" the sensitive material by blacking it out in the pdf program. As anyone who USES pdfs know, that means you can still just copy and paste the text into another document and read it.

In more news of government greatness, the infamous "Iraq can deploy WMDs in 45 minutes" may have come from a taxi driver.

The Senate has its health care bill out - tentatively - and the NY Times runs down the Senate and House bills.

Your safeword doesn't matter if your top drugs you. A former Speaker of the Missouri House has been charged with a felony after reportedly drugging a woman who had come over for some S&M play. After negotiating the safeword "green balloons", serving her allegedly drugged wine, and then beating her severely, he spent the night.

When he woke up, [the woman] says, he kissed her and said, "You should have said green balloons." He then left and hasn't returned.