Conflict

Joss Whedon “snaps” over a world where women getting murdered is “entertainment:” How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence – is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable. ...

There is an interesting article by Steven Pinker at Edge about the declining instinct towards violence. In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion. - A History of Violence I’d say we aren’t as violent. I haven’t killed anything since last night (a bug), and this very morning I drove to a building, obeying traffic laws along the way, and handed someone some green paper with a mutually agreed-upon value in exchange for food. Right now I’m in another building, using my skills in exchange for more tokens of value, which I can convert into green paper when I’d like. It’s hard to create that sort of framework without a declining instinct towards violence. ...

A sad story. I guess not everyone understands the whole Quaker college thing. Link courtesy of Automatic Writing.

Congressman David Wu (D-Oregon) warns: “Don’t let faux Klingons send real Americans to war!” Sage words, indeed. [youtube &w=425&h=350] Link courtesy of TV Squad Update: Yes, by including the video in the page, the XHTML 1.1 validation is completely screwed up.

Silly String as safety device? Brilliant! Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.

5,000 years of history mapped in 90 seconds. Link courtesy of Too Many Topics, Too Little Time.

When I run across interesting things to link from my blog, I usually send them to my Gmail account with the best intentions of blogging about them “when I get some time.” Well, that doesn’t happen as often as it should, so I’ll clear out a few items now: 5 Lamest Charlie Brown Cartoons - 10 Zen Monkeys covers the five worst Peanuts animated specials. I can’t agree with the inclusion of Snoopy, Come Home, though. Link courtesy of TV Squad. ...

Samsung has a promo video out for a sentry robot armed with a machine gun. The video is disturbing, at least partially due to overly celebratory music. The only question now is do we end up hooking the robot gun platforms to mouse brains, or to Skynet?

…there’s a Democratic majority in the House and Senate… Who could have predicted such a thing?!? :) Seriously, when I — who grew up Republican and liked Reagan in the Eighties — think the best news I’ve heard all week is that the Democrats won and Rumsfeld is out…well, you know you probably aren’t energizing the base to come out and vote for your party. I don’t expect too much of my government, I don’t think, but here’s what I hope happens the next two years that didn’t happen in the last six: ...

A selection of DPRK press releases, brought to us by NK News. June 15 Association of Persons of National Literature Formed KCNA Blasts Pro-U.S. Japanese Charlatans’ Shameless Anti-DPRK Moves Kim Jong Il’s Work Off Press in Finland U.S. and S. Korean Warmongers Flayed for Increasing Tension Samjiyon County Undergoes Facelift Sports Tournament of Artistes Held Title of ‘Prize of Honor for Twice Model Machine No. 26’ Instituted