From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V11 #17 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Sunday, January 13 2002 Volume 11 : Number 017 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: the angel in the house [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: If you think the iMac looks silly.... [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: a staunch moment of libertarianism [Capuchin ] 2001 and old computers ["Gary Sedgwick" ] Re: 2001 and old computers [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Drakes ["Rob" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 01:04:57 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: the angel in the house On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, The Great Quail wrote: > Viv writes, > > >In my opinion (and possibly only there), viewing women as anything less > >than human (demons, animals, forces of nature, angels) is in a very real > >sense _hatred_ of women as women. It is an effort to make them conform to > >a certain world view by stripping them of their humanity and pasting > >something else on top of it. > > But that is not what *hatred* means. You are, in essence, making a > judgment call on the motivations behind a wide field of actions with > little or no data. Essentially, I would agree, because: > The meaning of words may indeed shift, but we have to agree that the > signifier does indeed signify something, or dialogue is crippled. In > other words, a definition is something that a collective must agree > on -- a single person cannot define an existing term, only "redefine" > it incorrectly. Otherwise language becomes even more useless for > communication. and > attempt to apply it against agreed convention will probably lead to > a higher noise/signal ratio and thereby obscure the otherwise valid > points you may be trying to make. Plus: > Neal Stephenson is demonstrably sexist, but not demonstrably > misogynistic, and to say that he "hates women" probably does more > harm than good. And I think this distinction is very important. Not having read either _Necronomicon_ or _The Diamond Age_ for a year or ttwo, I can't remember them clearly enough to judge whether his portrayals are sexist (although it sounds to me like they are), but to use the term "misogyny" implies that they are so not out of (say) misunderstanding but out of outright hatred. And the problem there is: what one does about it - if one is, say, a feminist friend of Neal Stephenson's - is vastly different if one assumes misunderstanding vs. if one assumes hatred. And acting on the second assumption will almost surely backfire if the first is more accurately the case. > Well, there is an argument -- and I do not subscribe to it -- that > terms like sexism and racism have and institutional/social vector, > and involve positioning in a power-based hierarchy. I may appear to be contradicting the collective view of language I and Quail espouse above, but I rather wish people used different terms to describe personal animosity toward people who are not like them, muddleheaded misudnerstandings of people who are not like them, and institutional structures which favor certain social groups at the expense of others regardless of the personal views of those people acting as instruments of those structures. All three are real and harmful phenomena (and clearly, the last named is what Quail describes above - and certainly is far likelier to be, say, male-against-female than vice versa) but must be worked against in rather different ways. [In this view,] > Black man in America cannot be racist, and a woman cannot be sexist. > The Black may hate whitey, and the woman be a bull dyke from hell; > but they lack the power structures to support their prejudices and > make them into an "-ism." And while the black man and "bull dyke from hell" you describe are certainly reprehensible from any ethical standpoint I'd endorse, it's also true that their views are far less likely to be amplified via social institutions and thereby cause th massive harms that the reversal of those racial and gender/orientation (respectively) vectors are likely to do. Instead, they'll only piss off the particular individuals they come into contact with. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey, pissing off individuals he comes in contact with online since 1994 J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Californians invented the concept of the life-style. ::This alone warrants their doom. __Don DeLillo, WHITE NOISE__ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 01:09:35 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: If you think the iMac looks silly.... On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Fric Chaud wrote: > Am I the only one who realises the world has gone mad? Yes. If you will tell me where you live, I will bow down in your direction at regular intervals. The reins of all political and corporate power are yours. - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html Today's Out of Context Quotation: ::"I mean, I castrated pigs and dipped snuff when I was younger":: ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 05:43:55 -0800 From: "Russ Reynolds" Subject: I'll wait till they're reissued Check the prices on these Harrison CD's! I'm pretty sure those out of print items were all listed at standard prices a couple of months ago. http://www.secondspin.com/buy/artist.cfm?SID=695973727044&Artist=Harrison%7C %20George Supply and demand, I guess--but does anyone really want to pay 50 bucks for Gone Tropo?? - -rUss np: Dylan/Bringing It All Back Home Neil Young/Live Rust Soft Boys/Underwater Moonlight dB's/Stands For Decibels Yardbirds/Ultimate ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 10:16:59 -0500 From: "Fric Chaud" Subject: Re: More geekery On 11 Jan 2002, at 10:11, Christopher Gross wrote: > Fric, it seems like the thing that really burns you is Apple's > "Pentium crushing" comment. Can't you just accept this as ordinary > marketing hyperbole, like when Microsoft says Windows is reliable and > easy to use? I have never thought otherwise. I don't believe either gets crushed in a P4/G4 contest. Somebody on this list did try to explain to me that "G4 does crush P4 in a lot of ways". It sounds like some take the hype seriously. I made a joke about it. Now I'm stupid, ignorant or prejudiced. - -- Fric Chaud ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 13:01:36 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: a staunch moment of libertarianism On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, steve wrote: > More, because Conservatives are all about Power and Control. Uh, Liberals (capital 'L', as in the Democratic Liberal Congress [formerly Democrats For Nixon], etc.... not folks who actually support liberty or Classical Liberalism) are all about Power and Control, too. > Besides, most Liberals are really not very good at hate. Oh yeah? You should have seen the reaction we got at the Gore rally here in October 2000. There was HEAPS of hate dumped on us for reminding them of facts they'd prefer to see forgotten. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 02:48:04 -0000 From: "Gary Sedgwick" Subject: 2001 and old computers This should be difficult to beat... I've still got a ZX81 gathering dust in the attic at my parents' house, complete with 16K RAM-pack and velcro (essential to stop it falling out of the back of the computer). What a machine - 1K of memory, and a special "fast" mode which basically turned the screen off until you went back into "slow" mode. 2 amazing things about it I remember - 1) someone actually wrote a chess program that could fit into the 1K RAM, and I didn't hear of anyone winning against it on the highest level; and 2) even though the ZX81 didn't have sound, I once typed in a machine-code program from a magazine that proclaimed "Sound from your ZX81!". Someone had found that by turning the volume up on the TV (the ZX81, not having sound, just produced white noise), and flashing black and white screen up at varying frequencies, the interference could actually be used to generate pitched notes (of white noise, granted). As I mentioned before, 2001 was a pretty bad year for me, but it was also *weird*. I'm sure something was going on with the planets or something - take a look at: http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,632030,00.html Gary ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 00:05:59 -0600 (CST) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: 2001 and old computers On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Gary Sedgwick wrote: > This should be difficult to beat... I've still got a ZX81 gathering dust in > the attic at my parents' house, complete with 16K RAM-pack and velcro > (essential to stop it falling out of the back of the computer). What a > machine - 1K of memory, and a special "fast" mode which basically turned the > screen off until you went back into "slow" mode. I have a computer from 1963 with 2 bits of memory. It's a metallic disk about 1/2" across with two modes. It's got a foolproof decision-making heuristic that's powered by gravity, but it needs to be tossed in the air first. It was manufactured in great numbers by the U.S. Mint. I'll sell it for, oh, a dollar. Cash only. - --Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::I suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called "Coach":: __William Gass__ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 12:04:35 -0000 From: "Rob" Subject: Drakes Seeing Gabrielle Drake at the theatre last night prompts me to mention something I spotted on NME last week, there's to be some 'new' Nick Drake material officially released later this year. According to the NME it's material that predates Five Leaves Left and has been available as bootlegs. The NME article is at http://www.nme.com/news/story.htm?ID=100303 - -- Rob ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V11 #17 *******************************