Uncouth Reflections

Egalitarianism Question

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Shouldn’t the anti-stereotyping crowd be more worked-up than they are about the habit bookstores have of segregating some magazines into “Men’s Interest” and “Women’s Interest” sections? Isn’t it unfair to make — no, to impose — the claim that one group of people (“men”) is mainly interested in hot babes, gadgets and sports, while another group of people (“women”) is fascinated by weight loss, food, makeup and fashions? How are men and women who don’t conform to these stereotypes supposed to feel when they pass by a magazine stand? And where is the section devoted to magazines for the Trans set anyway?

What we have here, it strikes me, is an ingrained cultural habit as onerous as dressing girl babies in pink and boy babies in blue. What I want to know is: Where are the protestors?

Related:

Does Google’s auto-complete search feature need to be censored?
HBDChick explains the main reason why we should always expect different populations to have different bundles of strengths and weaknesses. To cut to the chase: “Thanks to natural selection, genetic differences between populations having had long histories of developing in different types of environments are inevitable.” Simple as that.

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Personal reflections, Politics and Economics, Sex | Tagged gender, magazines, politics, sex | 1 Comment

“Margot at the Wedding”

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Let’s tick the boxes:

absent mothers, actors blubbering, adult ADHD, adultery, anxiety, Asperger’s, Barely Legal, “Before you gave me your sweater I didn’t realize I was cold,” betrayal, borderline personality disorder, child abuse, college professors, croquet, divorce, early admission to Harvard, estranged sisters, fainting, father-daughter relationships, the Hamptons, Harper’s, hints of incest, ironic mustaches, ironic t-shirts, jump cuts, “Just then I felt so much love for you,” Manhattan, masturbation, near drowning, neurotics, New Yorker short stories, New York writers, no plot, NYU, OCD, panic attack, pedophilia, pills, R.E.M.’s Murmur, redhead Lolita next door, secret pregnancy, sexual abuse, shitting your pants, sibling rivalry, slackers, Stanford, symbolism, underlit night scenes, Vermont, walks in the woods, wannabe musicians, white wine, Williamsburg, Woody Allen’s serious movies

This movie fucking sucks.

More

The New Yorker fellates writer-director Noah Baumbach. At least I’m assuming they do b/c there’s no way I’m reading that.
In this interview, Baumbach does his Woody Allen impression and Greta Gerwig says “la di da.” I’m not joking.

Posted in Movies | Tagged I can't believe I watched the whole thing, Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nicole Kidman, Noah Baumbach, SWPL | 9 Comments

“Footnote”

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

I found this Israeli movie, which is like a family tragedy played as half-farce, to be messy and precious in ways that don’t really suit what’s best in it. But the characterizations — mostly of egotistical academics — are terrifically sharp, and it bounces off the brainy-verbal aspects of Talmudic scholarship in ways you don’t see coming. (While I can’t say I’ve ever longed to see a movie nail the peculiarities of academia in quite so accurate a fashion, I won’t deny that I appreciated the effort in this instance.) A scene in which the father uses his Asperger-y skills to suss out his son’s role in duping him is particularly good; it provides a thriller-style set-piece, and it serves as both a narrative summing up and a revelation of character (it grants us what no one else in the movie has — direct access to the old man’s brain). Director Joseph Cedar is a whiz at using cross-cutting techniques and compressed, multi-layered compositions to suggest the plate tectonic forces at work below the crust of professional and familial relationships. It helps that the actors are so persuasive. In particular, leads Lior Ashkenazi and Shlomo Bar-Aba make for a compelling contrast: the former is as open and sanguine as the latter is hermetic and perpetually aggrieved.

Posted in Movies, Performers | Tagged Film, Footnote, Israel, Joseph Cedar, Judaism, Lior Ashkenazi, movies, Shlomo Bar-Aba | Leave a comment

Linkage

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

GQ presents its list of the 21 books from the 21st century every man ~~who wants to bang an NPR listener~~ should read. The intro says they spent “months” creating the list which is surprising given that it has all the usual suspects. Not one genre work? And what’s with this assumption that the only “books” that seem to count are novels? They couldn’t think of a single piece of nonfiction?
Los Angeles’s Sixth Street Bridge — made famous in films such as Grease, Repo Man, and Terminator 2 — has “concrete cancer” so it must be torn down. Take a look at the replacement. Can someone explain to me why they shouldn’t just rebuild the original design? Speaking of garbage, real estate billionaire Eli Broad is building an art museum next door to the Walt Disney Concert Hall and here’s the new federal courthouse proposed for a couple blocks away. When will the public get sick of this antiseptic-white, swoopy-melty shit being foisted upon us?
To get the bad taste out of your mouth, here’s a gallery of charming (i.e. human-scaled and decorative) side streets from around the world.
Best Photoshopping Ever?
For all I know, in vitro meat will prove to be a godsend because it will one day allow the consumption of high-quality protein around the planet without all the inhumane and negative environmental side effects from CAFOs. But given the health, nutrition, and medical establishment’s track records over the past 60 years, excuse me if I’m skeptical.
Speaking of Ed Jagels and Bakersfield, let’s check in and see how things are going there.
While many are justly outraged over the DOJ monitoring the AP’s phone calls, the problem is likely much bigger. This Wired cover story about the NSA datacenter being built in Utah is worth revisiting.

Posted in Architecture, Art, Books Publishing and Writing, Linkathons | Tagged Big Brother, in vitro meat, Los Angeles, Photoshop | 5 Comments

Real Men Don’t Like Marxism

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Epaminondas

epiminondas writes:

I lift weights. So sue me.

Posted in Politics and Economics | 1 Comment

The Glamour of Farming

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

During this year’s Super Bowl, only one ad caught my attention. Take a look:

Continue reading →

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Commercial art, Food and health | Tagged Advertising, agriculture, farming, Modern Farmer, Monsanto, Virginia Postrel | 6 Comments

Linkage

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

I got a kick out of this Steve Sailer piece on the Niall Ferguson-John Maynard Keynes controversy.
Hoping to eventually pick up this new release from TASCHEN. I love TASCHEN. I just wish I wasn’t too much of a cheap skate to buy most of their books.
Should we pay people to cook at home? Not sure I understand the concept. Home cooking is already incentivized — it’s cheaper. Often healthier, too. And yet people aren’t doing it. Would taxes change that?
A taste of the horror that is toy shopping with a feminist. Somehow, this woman thinks that boys playing with lawnmower toys and girls playing with shopping cart toys will consign her daughters to a lifetime of servitude.
In the wake of a the Boston Marathon bombing, a terrorist act by a couple of radical Muslim immigrants, the Southern Poverty Law Center has sounded the alarm about homegrown militia groups, which have recently increased by 100 million percent or something along those lines. Lest we forget, the linked piece reminds us that the SPLC is a non-profit organization. Founder Morris Dees seems to be living pretty well on those non-profits. (H/T Jack Donovan)
If you’re a big, important person — in Moldbuggian terms, a pillar of the Cathedral — and you get in some trouble, what you’ll want to do is organize a committee or a board or a review of some kind. Then you’ll want to staff it with other Cathedral pillars who are more or less sympathetic to your aims and biases. These folks you appoint will love the exposure you’ve given them — they’ll be honored to be looked to as experts and above-reproach investigators. And when they assign their underlings to investigate your activities, they’ll likely find . . . not a whole lot — especially if they don’t even bother to question certain key actors. (As our president knows, when faced with hard questions, the best defense is to never allow yourself to be questioned.) From that point forward, whenever the press — another arm of the Cathedral — asks one of your mouthpieces about the controversy, he can wave his hands and say: “Doncha know that was looked into by a highly respected team of important and prestigious so and sos? This issue has been put to bed. What are you stupid or something?”
Bitcoin for boobies.
I’m pretty sure the rise in obesity correlates pretty closely with the rise in the popularity of fake butter (i.e., margarine). But we’re not supposed to notice that. We’re only supposed to know that butter is bad, like whole milk and red meat and eggs and lots of other stuff that people have enjoyed eating for thousands and thousands of years. We’re also supposed to know that the government encouraging us to eat around 87 helpings of carbs every day has nothing whatsoever to do with obesity and diabetes. I’m glad I know all this stuff. It’s good for me.
All your database are belong to us. I wonder: Will this be the Trojan Horse that big government needs to regulate the internet in a more stringent manner?
It’s funny how easy it is for people to read the emotions of other mammals. This video is a case in point. I can see that the cat is feeling relaxed and pretty happy, and that he’s looking to engage in some friendly cuddling. The owl, though — I have no fucking idea what’s on his mind. Birds and reptiles are just really goddamn alien.
Related.
Just how accurate are wine tasters? I’m sure there are many who are quite good at what they do. Still, it seems to me that being an “expert” — in any field — comes down to being able to convincingly act the part.
Related: An incredible story from last year involving wine forgery.

Posted in Animals, Books Publishing and Writing, Food and health, Linkathons, Politics and Economics, Sex, Technology | Tagged bitcoin, butter, Feminism, john maynard keynes, niall ferguson, Steve Sailer, taschen, wine | 4 Comments

Letter from China: Google Translate

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

The level of English comprehension among my Chinese students is far above the level of Chinese comprehension among American students of Chinese. But it is not great, and I have been thinking about how to make my lectures clearer. I start by slowing down. Then I methodically employ Power Point, making sure to make connections between the written word and speech since the students’ reading comprehension is often better than their understanding of spoken English.

Still there are gaps, and I realize that it is often the key word in a given slide that is the culprit. If you want to discuss philanthropy, for instance, that word plays a central role in any discussion. But that may be the very word that throws them off. So I have taken to using Google Translate.

I won’t use it for sentences since it is unreliable at that level. But it can be pretty good at words and short phrases. So I will often add Chinese characters for terms like philanthropy (慈善事业, I hope) to my slides, and it seems to do a good job getting over one of the many communications humps inherent in the situation.

From time to time, though, Google Translate will return an answer that seems curiously revealing. I wanted to find the Chinese term for “government policy”–the regular, lower-case term for the basic thing that government does as it undertakes action. When you take the Chinese term for the term and re-translate it back into English, you find you get a subtle difference:

Just a tiny difference . . .won’t hurt a bit!

“The Government’s policy”.

It is as though the term does not exist as a generic phrase. There is only the Current Government, and it has The Government’s Policy. There is no need for a general way of saying it.

Posted in Education, Technology | Tagged google translate | Leave a comment

Vocabulary Building Word of the Day

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

Here’s something I did not know. The word “gunsel” has two meanings. In its most common slang usage, it refers to a criminal carrying a gun. But in earlier convict slang, the word had a quite different meaning:

gunsel

A young man kept for homosexual purposes; (street and prison slang). A passive partner in anal intercourse.

That’s quite a . . . ummm . . . stretch. The explanation?

A plausible story of the way the word changed sense was set out by Erle Stanley Gardner in an article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1965. He claimed it was the fault of Dashiell Hammett. Together with Gardner, Raymond Chandler and others, he was a contributor to the old Black Mask pulp magazine edited by Joseph Shaw that featured naturalistic crime stories.

Can you find the gunsel?

But Shaw was dead against including vulgarisms and blue-pencilled some of Hammett’s underworld usages. To retaliate, as Gardner told the story, Hammett laid a trap for Shaw. In his next story he included the term gooseberry lay. Shaw pounced on this and rejected it, though it wasn’t a rude term at all but tramps’ slang for stealing washing off clotheslines to sell. But Hammett also included gunsel in the story, which Shaw left in, thinking it meant “gunman”.

The term derives from the Yiddish genzel, meaning little goose or gosling.

So in the spirit of connecting all the dots:

Gunsel 1

Gunsel 2

Posted in Books Publishing and Writing, Movies | Tagged gunsel, Ryan Gosling, vocabulary | Leave a comment

Long Beach Bike Festival

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

It was a beautiful day in Southern California yesterday (suck it, East coasters) and thankfully I was able to get away from the office and head down to the Pike to check out the Long Beach Bike Festival. Have a look at my snaps.