Oh my god, Richard Gere. Richard, when they start struggling and pushing you away, particularly if you're being filmed, honey, just let go. argh. damn.
http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/entertainment/13181267/detail.html
And, it being India, of course they're going after the woman. This whole thing just makes me slightly ill.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Fear of Flying
In yesterday's NYTimes there was an article about the decline in numbers of people taking flying lessons. The subject, it turns out, is a powerful example of gender politics. And it brings up something I had not thought about before. When, in the early 70s, everybody was trying to get women out of the home and into the workforce, the first thing that sprang into my twisted mind was, "Gee, double the workforce; now everyone will earn half as much." I forgot to consider the effect of this huge influx of female thinking on, well, everything, including what people do in their spare time.
The writer is talking about the drop in numbers of people who are learning to fly as hobbyists. It's a significant drop. After citing figures, the writer is trying to find the cause of this decline in interest. It's surprising since if you think about it, current trends favor hi-tech toys (though I think that there's a general trend, which isn't mentioned, toward staying at home and surrounding yourself with this expensive stuff).
Here's a quote from the article:
Ironically, an increasingly technological society is turning its back on a high-technology pastime.
The article doesn't (dare) draw a correspondence between the two "problems": Fear and female influence. I think there definitely is one though. Our conditioning, as a society up through the 60s, was based on a perfect nuclear-family mythos, where the little woman's job was to be the brakes, and the man's job was to be the gas. I have to say that the overwhelming majority of women I know have little use for the big male ideas, like space exploration, or building great huge giant phallic edifices that thrust themselves through the cloud cover.
I am not saying women are chicken at all. I'm suggesting that women have been conditioned to be the brake pedal, the crossing guard, the person who says, "Put that down; you'll poke somebody's eye out!" "Look both ways before you cross the street." "Don't run with that! You'll fall down and stab yourself!" "Go wash your hands; you don't know WHERE that's been!" And now a whole bunch of them (us) suddenly have a powerful voice in government and business and modern thought. And just look at the way advertising has mutated in response. I'm not saying it's not a good thing, necessarily, but it bears scrutiny. Women have been conditioned to be risk averse. It's also very scary to be out and participating in an arena from which your mothers and role models were banned. I have to laugh when I hear women say things like, "Thank god that equality thing is settled." Is it now? Then how come we only make $0.75 for each dollar a man makes? Anyway.
Ecological bad influences and fuel expenses aside, both of which, by the way are fixable, women have not been conditioned like men have to view flying as a thrilling metaphor for freedom. It strikes, I think, so many of us as a waste of time. "You're going flying when people are dying by the thousands in Africa? You heartless selfish monster!"
Like I said I don't know how to think about this, but I know I've definitely spent some time in recent years deploring what I see as a loss of courage in American society. I know that's a judgmental thing to say, but just look at how successful the Bush administration has been at getting its policies through by the simple expedient of screaming "OH MY GOD TERR[OR]ISTS WILL BOMB THE GRADE SCHOOL DOWN THE STREET TOMORROW IF YOU DON'T PASS THIS LEGISLATION!" every other day. For the past six years, we've all been jumping at shadows and trying to peer around corners miles in advance and generally quaking in our boots. It's just weird. I think it's a response to the increased anxiety that human beings experience when they are thrust into unfamiliar situations.
I know there are large numbers of men who feel this way too. I think it's easier for them to admit to it now that there is an alternative to the once-pervasive idea of what maleness entails.
The article goes on to quote this flying instructor on the difficulties he faces trying to teach women to fly:
I acknowledge however that there is a powerful and successful outfit who is teaching people stuff all the time using the yelling method: Our Armed Services. I am not the person to write on the changes that military training has had to make in response to the influx of women, but I bet it's had to adapt.
At any rate, I don't think I like the idea of our abandoning those big, impractical, thrilling enterprises. I remember I didn't like the way they were glorified. And the injunction to "be a MAN" is not as effective as it once was. But I find myself missing thoughtful bravado in a world where everyone is hellbent on planning out his/her entire life in his/her Daytimer, and doling out his/her time in stingy little driblets, as though it were the last few drops of water in a cloudless desert.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot.html?em&ex=1177819200&en=3d74feb7e7e3bc73&ei=5087%0A
The writer is talking about the drop in numbers of people who are learning to fly as hobbyists. It's a significant drop. After citing figures, the writer is trying to find the cause of this decline in interest. It's surprising since if you think about it, current trends favor hi-tech toys (though I think that there's a general trend, which isn't mentioned, toward staying at home and surrounding yourself with this expensive stuff).
Here's a quote from the article:
Ironically, an increasingly technological society is turning its back on a high-technology pastime.
One problem is fear, in an era when people describe their cars by the number of airbags, not the number of horses. In small planes, the statistics show that fatal accidents per 100,000 hours of flight fell by one-quarter in the decade ending in 2004, but some people in aviation fear that tolerance for risk is falling even faster.
ANOTHER is the shift of income and family decision-making to women. Industry leaders try hard not to sound like a former president of Harvard and attribute anything to innate skill, but women simply do not take up flying as frequently as men do.
“There’s been a big sociological and psychological change in the families of today, in where the discretionary dollars go,” said Phil Boyer, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. When the husband told the stay-at-home mom of the 1950s that he was going to spend a Saturday afternoon taking flying lessons, she acquiesced, he said. Today, he said, in a two-income family, she is more likely to say: “You are not. That’s your day to take Johnny to the soccer game, and what the heck are you doing spending our hard-earned money on flying lessons?”The article doesn't (dare) draw a correspondence between the two "problems": Fear and female influence. I think there definitely is one though. Our conditioning, as a society up through the 60s, was based on a perfect nuclear-family mythos, where the little woman's job was to be the brakes, and the man's job was to be the gas. I have to say that the overwhelming majority of women I know have little use for the big male ideas, like space exploration, or building great huge giant phallic edifices that thrust themselves through the cloud cover.
I am not saying women are chicken at all. I'm suggesting that women have been conditioned to be the brake pedal, the crossing guard, the person who says, "Put that down; you'll poke somebody's eye out!" "Look both ways before you cross the street." "Don't run with that! You'll fall down and stab yourself!" "Go wash your hands; you don't know WHERE that's been!" And now a whole bunch of them (us) suddenly have a powerful voice in government and business and modern thought. And just look at the way advertising has mutated in response. I'm not saying it's not a good thing, necessarily, but it bears scrutiny. Women have been conditioned to be risk averse. It's also very scary to be out and participating in an arena from which your mothers and role models were banned. I have to laugh when I hear women say things like, "Thank god that equality thing is settled." Is it now? Then how come we only make $0.75 for each dollar a man makes? Anyway.
Ecological bad influences and fuel expenses aside, both of which, by the way are fixable, women have not been conditioned like men have to view flying as a thrilling metaphor for freedom. It strikes, I think, so many of us as a waste of time. "You're going flying when people are dying by the thousands in Africa? You heartless selfish monster!"
Like I said I don't know how to think about this, but I know I've definitely spent some time in recent years deploring what I see as a loss of courage in American society. I know that's a judgmental thing to say, but just look at how successful the Bush administration has been at getting its policies through by the simple expedient of screaming "OH MY GOD TERR[OR]ISTS WILL BOMB THE GRADE SCHOOL DOWN THE STREET TOMORROW IF YOU DON'T PASS THIS LEGISLATION!" every other day. For the past six years, we've all been jumping at shadows and trying to peer around corners miles in advance and generally quaking in our boots. It's just weird. I think it's a response to the increased anxiety that human beings experience when they are thrust into unfamiliar situations.
I know there are large numbers of men who feel this way too. I think it's easier for them to admit to it now that there is an alternative to the once-pervasive idea of what maleness entails.
The article goes on to quote this flying instructor on the difficulties he faces trying to teach women to fly:
Mr. Boyer’s association is trying hard to make flying more appealing to women, including offering training in how to read aviation maps, talk on the radio and provide other help in the plane, and maybe transitioning them to earning a license themselves. But 95 percent of the students are still male, he said.
At the airport in Smoketown, Matt Kauffman, the chief flight instructor at Aero-Tech Services, the only flight school here, said that the training system had not adapted itself to women. “Women learn differently from men,” Mr. Kauffman said. “If two men go up, they will scream and shout, and a transfer of knowledge occurs, and we’d get back on the ground and go have a beer, and life is good,” he said. “If you yell at a woman, she’d start crying, and she’d never come back.” He would like to hire a female flight instructor but can’t find one, he said.
This last observation brought a wry smile to my face. I didn't learn to drive until I was 28, because of the way driving was "taught" in my high school, which was exactly the way this guy describes guys learning to fly. You had the driving instructor in the front seat, and a back seat full of hearty, sarcastic, loud, intimidating high school boys, all of whom were screaming at you. I find it hard to believe anyone can learn anything under these conditions, but apparently it's only me and some other people without penises. I went to exactly one driving class and never went back. I believe my exact words, when questioned, were, "Fuck that noise." I sure as hell would not spend my hard-earned money on that experience. I mean, you do not want me at the throttle of an airplane thousands of feet above the ground in the state of mind I get into when people are yelling at me.I acknowledge however that there is a powerful and successful outfit who is teaching people stuff all the time using the yelling method: Our Armed Services. I am not the person to write on the changes that military training has had to make in response to the influx of women, but I bet it's had to adapt.
At any rate, I don't think I like the idea of our abandoning those big, impractical, thrilling enterprises. I remember I didn't like the way they were glorified. And the injunction to "be a MAN" is not as effective as it once was. But I find myself missing thoughtful bravado in a world where everyone is hellbent on planning out his/her entire life in his/her Daytimer, and doling out his/her time in stingy little driblets, as though it were the last few drops of water in a cloudless desert.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/fashion/26pilot.html?em&ex=1177819200&en=3d74feb7e7e3bc73&ei=5087%0A
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Epicene
Oh my goodness, I am sometimes so disinclined to look things up in the dictionary. I have actually avoided looking up "epicene" for decades. This little entry is not going to have much point. I just want to note that I actually did look up "epicene" and what a delightful little word it is.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Some history
I came across an English tourist venture, called "The Jamestown Adventure: Begin Your Adventure Where Your Ancestors Began Theirs." It's apparently run out of Lincolnshire, and is trying to attract descendants of the Jamestown colonists. This strikes me as charmingly modest in comparison to US-ian marketing campaigns, which go after anyone who has or can get his/her hands on the requisite money.
There is a place on the Website of The Jamestown Adventure for people to post their stories. There are a bazillion posts there, including an interesting debate amongst some descendants of a man named either Kellam Throgmorton or Throgmorton Kellam on what the ancestor's actual name was. There is certainly a case to be made for either name, since it's being conducted by people surnamed Kellam AND Throgmorton.
I don't find that as intriguing as the fact that the his descendants are arguing about his name centuries later.
But what I was going to complain about this morning was that this outfit is claiming that Jamestown was the "first English speaking settlement in the United States of America." In fact, Jamestown was NOT the first English-speaking settlement in what eventually became the USA. There's Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke (1585), which is well known enough to have an annual play about the lost colony, and Popham Rock, 1607, which was one of two settlements chartered in 1606 to a joint stock company. The other site in that charter was Jamestown.
Roanoke is old news, but Popham Rock was only discovered in 1994, when archaeologist Jeffrey Brain matched up a local story of a lost colony where he was vacationing in Maine to a 1608 map of Fort St. George discovered in Spanish government archives in 1888. It's still being excavated.
I am off to see if I can find other early failed-or-forgotten English colonies.
There is a place on the Website of The Jamestown Adventure for people to post their stories. There are a bazillion posts there, including an interesting debate amongst some descendants of a man named either Kellam Throgmorton or Throgmorton Kellam on what the ancestor's actual name was. There is certainly a case to be made for either name, since it's being conducted by people surnamed Kellam AND Throgmorton.
I don't find that as intriguing as the fact that the his descendants are arguing about his name centuries later.
But what I was going to complain about this morning was that this outfit is claiming that Jamestown was the "first English speaking settlement in the United States of America." In fact, Jamestown was NOT the first English-speaking settlement in what eventually became the USA. There's Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke (1585), which is well known enough to have an annual play about the lost colony, and Popham Rock, 1607, which was one of two settlements chartered in 1606 to a joint stock company. The other site in that charter was Jamestown.
Roanoke is old news, but Popham Rock was only discovered in 1994, when archaeologist Jeffrey Brain matched up a local story of a lost colony where he was vacationing in Maine to a 1608 map of Fort St. George discovered in Spanish government archives in 1888. It's still being excavated.
I am off to see if I can find other early failed-or-forgotten English colonies.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Additions to "This Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I'd Like to Return It, Please"
One of McSweeney's lists that keeps me awake at night thinking of additions is Matthew Simmons's "This Bible You Sold Me Is Clearly Defective and I'd Like to Return It, Please."
It is, in fact, a sub-list of this to which I add most often, namely "This Bible Is Clearly Missing Entire Chapters, and I'd Like to Return It, and Also, I Believe I'm Entitled to an Explanation and an Apology."
Where's the part where. . . ?
It is, in fact, a sub-list of this to which I add most often, namely "This Bible Is Clearly Missing Entire Chapters, and I'd Like to Return It, and Also, I Believe I'm Entitled to an Explanation and an Apology."
Where's the part where. . . ?
- Jesus publicly advises leaders of nations, and suggests that they put him on their campaign literature
- Jesus helps fight recession by endorsing brand-name products
- Representative of Jesus tells Corinthians that it is perfectly okay and even advisable to withhold salvation from and refuse church membership to certain undesirables, such as homosexuals, child molesters, liberal Democrats, and their friends and family, and also, on occasion, it's even okay to beat the snot out of them
- Jesus says, "Ew, I'm not healing a homosexual, child molester, or liberal Democrat. Be off and take your friends with you!"
- Jesus predicts invention of TV and exhorts church elders to make use of new invention for fund raising and membership building
- Jesus expresses clear preference for white, English-speaking, male Republicans from the United States
- Jesus not only fails to chase moneylenders (aka bankers) from temple, but actually dons a sandwich board and roams the streets soliciting them and, in a particularly dramatic passage, declaims at length the virtues of business and greed, and calls for churches everywhere to solicit funding from commercial enterprises in exchange for blessings and pulpit endorsements.
Friday, April 06, 2007
There but for the grace of God...
My elder daughter has occasion to remind me (generally when I'm screaming about the state of education of the deaf in Arizona or the latest outrageous pronouncements issuing from the clowns in the White House) that finding things to be grateful for is key to achieving serenity. So in the spirit of being thankful for what I don't have to deal with, I present this from today's NYTimes:
In 2002, a Palm Springs man was arrested on charges related to the smuggling of two Asian leopard cats into the airport in a backpack. His traveling companion was arrested when large birds of paradise came flying out of his luggage; also in the luggage were other birds stuffed into women’s stockings and 50 rare orchid bulbs. Two lesser slow lorises, also known as pygmy monkeys, were stuffed into his underwear.
Okay, first of all, I had to read this several times trying to understand if he and the monkeys were both occupying the underwear at the same time. (I ought to have read the beginning of the article more closely, which stated that the monkeys were "stuffed down the pants of an incoming passenger." Presumably this one. I mean, how many people go through LAX with endangered small primates in their pants? Oh wait. Perhaps I don't want to know the answer to that.)
Of course, I then had to complete this compelling visual by consulting Google for pictures of the lesser slow loris and the Asian leopard cat. The loris appears to be a sweet animal, though it's nothing that I'd want in close proximity to well, pretty much any part of my body for an 18-hour flight. (picture and info here) Having traveled in the company of a baby cross country (a mere 5-hour flight), I now refuse to take any small primate anywhere involving a journey of more than an hour.
Then there is the matter of two wild (as in non-domestic) cats in a backpack. I don't know if you have a cat, but I do, and the prospect of stuffing it into a bag of any sort strikes me as a feat only the insane or extremely bored would consider. First off, feline sedation seems to be, from what I infer from the sedation instructions from the vet ("Well, you ought to try these pills out at home first, before you actually travel with the cat..."), largely a matter of dumb luck. Even domestic cats are not known for demonstrating a spirit of benign cooperation. The Asian leopard cat (picture and data here) is only an ancestor of a domestic cat. So, this would probably be akin to attempting to shoehorn two bobcats into a pillowcase. (I quote from the link: "As a rule, they [the Asian leopard cat] do not make good pets, being solitary and reclusive, rarely allowing humans to touch or handle them. They are carnivorous hunters and could represent a threat to children or other pets.") Yeah, especially when the solitary animals are intimately enclosed together for 18 hours in a backpack. I wonder what tipped customs off; maybe the blood issuing freely from the long, jagged claw wounds down the neck and shoulders of our intrepid kitty backpacker?
Or maybe it was a complaint from the poor person sitting next to the squirming bearer of the monkeys for the duration of the flight? There is just so much to think about here. I mean, I know I couldn't go for 18 hours with no bathroom break. It is fun to envision Mr. Monkeypants making use of the tiny airplane bathroom, waking his little passengers from their repose so he could relieve himself. Do you suppose he set them down on or in the sink while he... oh never mind. Oh, and what about food and water for the animals? I imagine one would get pretty thirsty all snuggled up there for the better part of a day.
And what about this man's luggage? The large birds of paradise bursting into flight from it is certainly an entrancing vision, but what I want to know is what he was doing stuffing little birds into women's stockings. Obviously this man is not one of Eddie Izzard's executive transvestites. And then what about the intended recipient of the lorises?
"So, however did you get these splendid specimens into the country?"
"I wore them in my underwear, giving them the same loving care as my own precious family jewels!"
"Oh. Oh. . . . Oh. Er ah. Ah."
"Wait. Where are you going? Come back!"
The trials of my life are nothing when compared to the challenges experienced by others. Reading about these two animal-laden travelers has made me truly thankful that neither my livelihood nor my inclinations are such that I must resort to trying to sneak wild animals through airport security.
In 2002, a Palm Springs man was arrested on charges related to the smuggling of two Asian leopard cats into the airport in a backpack. His traveling companion was arrested when large birds of paradise came flying out of his luggage; also in the luggage were other birds stuffed into women’s stockings and 50 rare orchid bulbs. Two lesser slow lorises, also known as pygmy monkeys, were stuffed into his underwear.
Okay, first of all, I had to read this several times trying to understand if he and the monkeys were both occupying the underwear at the same time. (I ought to have read the beginning of the article more closely, which stated that the monkeys were "stuffed down the pants of an incoming passenger." Presumably this one. I mean, how many people go through LAX with endangered small primates in their pants? Oh wait. Perhaps I don't want to know the answer to that.)
Of course, I then had to complete this compelling visual by consulting Google for pictures of the lesser slow loris and the Asian leopard cat. The loris appears to be a sweet animal, though it's nothing that I'd want in close proximity to well, pretty much any part of my body for an 18-hour flight. (picture and info here) Having traveled in the company of a baby cross country (a mere 5-hour flight), I now refuse to take any small primate anywhere involving a journey of more than an hour.
Then there is the matter of two wild (as in non-domestic) cats in a backpack. I don't know if you have a cat, but I do, and the prospect of stuffing it into a bag of any sort strikes me as a feat only the insane or extremely bored would consider. First off, feline sedation seems to be, from what I infer from the sedation instructions from the vet ("Well, you ought to try these pills out at home first, before you actually travel with the cat..."), largely a matter of dumb luck. Even domestic cats are not known for demonstrating a spirit of benign cooperation. The Asian leopard cat (picture and data here) is only an ancestor of a domestic cat. So, this would probably be akin to attempting to shoehorn two bobcats into a pillowcase. (I quote from the link: "As a rule, they [the Asian leopard cat] do not make good pets, being solitary and reclusive, rarely allowing humans to touch or handle them. They are carnivorous hunters and could represent a threat to children or other pets.") Yeah, especially when the solitary animals are intimately enclosed together for 18 hours in a backpack. I wonder what tipped customs off; maybe the blood issuing freely from the long, jagged claw wounds down the neck and shoulders of our intrepid kitty backpacker?
Or maybe it was a complaint from the poor person sitting next to the squirming bearer of the monkeys for the duration of the flight? There is just so much to think about here. I mean, I know I couldn't go for 18 hours with no bathroom break. It is fun to envision Mr. Monkeypants making use of the tiny airplane bathroom, waking his little passengers from their repose so he could relieve himself. Do you suppose he set them down on or in the sink while he... oh never mind. Oh, and what about food and water for the animals? I imagine one would get pretty thirsty all snuggled up there for the better part of a day.
And what about this man's luggage? The large birds of paradise bursting into flight from it is certainly an entrancing vision, but what I want to know is what he was doing stuffing little birds into women's stockings. Obviously this man is not one of Eddie Izzard's executive transvestites. And then what about the intended recipient of the lorises?
"So, however did you get these splendid specimens into the country?"
"I wore them in my underwear, giving them the same loving care as my own precious family jewels!"
"Oh. Oh. . . . Oh. Er ah. Ah."
"Wait. Where are you going? Come back!"
The trials of my life are nothing when compared to the challenges experienced by others. Reading about these two animal-laden travelers has made me truly thankful that neither my livelihood nor my inclinations are such that I must resort to trying to sneak wild animals through airport security.
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