Random Thoughts XIII - Radioenergopithecocracy

[Farm Boy]

darnkidsthesedays

 

[Birdjaguar]

A new book:

A juicy new book explores the cultural history of the backside

In "Butts: A Backstory," journalist Heather Radke addresses how big of a role our rears play not just in our relationships with our bodies, but in the cultural, social and gender-specific experiences that define womanhood.

www.cnn.com

 

[Kyriakos]

@NovaKart , hopefully you weren't in the areas hit by the earthquake.

 

[amadeus]

“Are you man enough?”

What happens to the question if you believe in a gender binary? Then you are either a man or a woman, so the question is always going to be determined by chromosomal forces rather than will or courage.

Am I man enough?

Yes, I am a man.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything. Certainly not anything courageous.

 

[amadeus]

If buffalo wings are that spicy naturally I can see how we almost killed them all off.

 

[Kyriakos]

“Are you man enough?”

What happens to the question if you believe in a gender binary? Then you are either a man or a woman, so the question is always going to be determined by chromosomal forces rather than will or courage.

Am I man enough?

Yes, I am a man.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything. Certainly not anything courageous.

It's just a lame question ^^
Man isn't about type of man. Generally, for biological men, it should mean you have male genitals and are ok with that. The rest of the traits aren't fixed; your body type can be thin and without broad shoulders or other over-masculine secondary attributes (personally I dislike broad shoulders and thankfully don't have them ^^).

 

[Hygro]

Number of pages of cfc OT threads is the year

 

[Gori the Grey]

You should make a thread on that.

And then eight others.

 

[Narz]

A new book:

A juicy new book explores the cultural history of the backside

In "Butts: A Backstory," journalist Heather Radke addresses how big of a role our rears play not just in our relationships with our bodies, but in the cultural, social and gender-specific experiences that define womanhood.

www.cnn.com

If it's got some nice photos it could be a good coffee table book

 

[Kyriakos]

Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall - Public Books

Isaac Asimov loved large numbers. He was born a century ago this month, and when he died, in 1992, he was both the most famous science fiction writer in the ...

www.publicbooks.org

It's an article once posted by Hobbs here, but I only now read it (it's brief, so likely wouldn't belong in the book page).
Though the negative view about Asimov on account of his behavior is valid, I found it ridiculous that the author used a number of quotes from a Borges story to do that, more so to come to the (rather logical in Borges' story case, rather absurd in this one) conclusion that Asimov's bad social behavior should mean his work is to be dismissed: "“Perhaps Shih Huang Ti walled his empire because he knew that it was fragile, and destroyed the books because he knew that they were sacred books, books that teach what the whole universe teaches or the conscience of every man. Perhaps the burning of the libraries and the building of the wall are acts that in some secret way erase each other.”".
More crucially, however, that is not the sentiment in Borges. There the two acts are not identified as a positive and a negative one, thus their mutual possible negation is also not against Shih.
So, overall, I viewed this article as bad, due to the gimmick in the center. He could have said exactly the same things against Asimov's behavior, without this false parallelism to the Borges story.

 

[Farm Boy]

(Now this is a tangent: I actually love, in RL, describing myself as "gruntled")

That is pretty good, once I actually thought about it instead of glossing over.

 

[Gori the Grey]

So, Farm Boy's post makes Gori think, "What the hell is the root word in disgruntled?"

Answer: grunt, the noise made by swine.

Then why dis?

The following could go in TIL; dis- can serve as an intensifier as well as a prefix that negates:

With verbs having already a sense of division, solution, separation, or undoing, the addition of dis- was naturally intensive, ‘away, out and out, utterly, exceedingly’, as in disperīre to perish utterly, dispudēre to be utterly ashamed, distædēre to be utterly wearied or disgusted; hence it became an intensive in some other verbs, as dīlaudāre to praise exceedingly, discupĕre to desire vehemently, dissuavīrī to kiss ardently. In the same way, English has several verbs in which dis- adds intensity to words having already a sense of undoing, as in disalter, disaltern, disannul.

effin language!

 

[Farm Boy]

And here I was just thinking grunts were mostly positive and squeals mostly the negative.

 

[EgonSpengler]

"Promises, Promises" by Naked Eyes is not a cover of the Burt Bacharach song of the same name; "Always Something There to Remind Me", otoh, is.

 

[Kyriakos]

So, Farm Boy's post makes Gori think, "What the hell is the root word in disgruntled?"

Answer: grunt, the noise made by swine.

Then why dis?

The following could go in TIL; dis- can serve as an intensifier as well as a prefix that negates:



effin language!

Likely from the Greek "dys", as in dystopia?

 

[Gori the Grey]

And here I was just thinking grunts were mostly positive and squeals mostly the negative.

The study you cite suggests something very much like that: that lower frequency noises (what I think we'd call grunts) are strongly associated with positive events in a pig's life, while higher-pitched ones (what I think we'd call squeals) are associated with negative events.

But the way the OED lays it out, when it comes to humans adopting that sound, grunting has as a second meaning "to complain" and the dis- here just intensifies: really complain.

So, I think that when grunting was connected with human noisemaking, all of that frequency nuance was lost, and it was just taken as complaining.

So 1) I can't make my "gruntled" joke any more, because what I had intended to communicate by it was "I'm non-disgruntled" (got nothing to complain about)

And 2) I'm coining dissquealant, so we can get some porcine precision into these matters.

I do like learning that in Latin one can dissuaviri: kiss ardently, really kiss. English needs that, but diskiss wouldn't get us there, I don't think.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Does that mean you can use "disgrunt" as a verb?

 

[Gori the Grey]

You can now.

But do it when you're really happy.

When you're distressed, you're to dissqueal.

My other favorite way of annoying people in this fashion is to speak of the weather as "clement." That's a flat-out word in its own right, of course. We just never tend to use it about the weather. (And lately not even about merciful actions, since we mostly don't talk about those; judges, I guess, can "grant clemency." But even then we don't call them clement.) Only make a point of indicating when it's inclement. (So gruntled are we as a species.)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall - Public Books

Isaac Asimov loved large numbers. He was born a century ago this month, and when he died, in 1992, he was both the most famous science fiction writer in the ...

www.publicbooks.org

It's an article once posted by Hobbs here, but I only now read it (it's brief, so likely wouldn't belong in the book page).
Though the negative view about Asimov on account of his behavior is valid, I found it ridiculous that the author used a number of quotes from a Borges story to do that, more so to come to the (rather logical in Borges' story case, rather absurd in this one) conclusion that Asimov's bad social behavior should mean his work is to be dismissed: "“Perhaps Shih Huang Ti walled his empire because he knew that it was fragile, and destroyed the books because he knew that they were sacred books, books that teach what the whole universe teaches or the conscience of every man. Perhaps the burning of the libraries and the building of the wall are acts that in some secret way erase each other.”".
More crucially, however, that is not the sentiment in Borges. There the two acts are not identified as a positive and a negative one, thus their mutual possible negation is also not against Shih.
So, overall, I viewed this article as bad, due to the gimmick in the center. He could have said exactly the same things against Asimov's behavior, without this false parallelism to the Borges story.

I wish you'd posted it in the book thread, since Asimov wrote a lot of books, and many of us have read at least one of them, if not dozens. It's relevant.

In his own autobiography (which required 3 large volumes; I've read the first two twice over the years), he makes no apology for the state of his first marriage. It seems the only good part of that was his daughter; he made it clear how much he doted on her. As for his behavior around women...

There are always men in any kind of social demographic who think women don't mind being touched, so Asimov is hardly unique even in science fiction convention settings. There were a couple of guys I knew back in the '80s and '90s. One of them was known as "Huggable Steve" - he liked hugging people. Yes, I got a hug from him. But the thing about him is that he always asked permission first. He never just went up to someone and hugged without getting consent. The other... thought he was <your deity of choice's> gift to women and would go up to women and rub their backs - whether they'd consented or not. He never asked permission, just assumed it would be okay and welcome.

The first time he tried it with me, I moved away to indicate 'don't touch.' The second time, I told him, "I don't like that, stop." The third time... fortunately was in a crowd of people, so there were lots of witnesses. I told him clearly, "I already told you not to touch me. Yet you're doing it again. If you do this again, I will call con security." Since he had been spotted doing these back rubs all over the place all weekend, not asking permission first, I think he'd have been thrown out of the convention. That was in the '90s and security was more serious about people's personal space being respected.

He got upset, claiming that "nobody else minds." I told him that didn't matter; the fact was that I minded, had told him so, he didn't listen, and I meant what I said.


Now, for Asimov. I never met him, but I did get to meet and chat with Frederik Pohl. I found him polite and friendly, and he gave off "old-fashioned grandfather" vibes, at least to me. The book I'd asked him to sign was his own autobiography, The Way the Future Was. It was a bit of a memory lane for him as he took a few moments to look at the photos of himself and his family when he was a kid. We had a nice conversation while he signed it, and then his wife and my roommate came in. He said, "I gotta go, gals, I have another panel in a couple of minutes." So he left, and his wife (his 5th wife and about 20 years younger by my guesstimate) started fuming at the word "gals."

I tried to calm her down, explaining that it's one of those generational words that he'd have grown up with and wasn't intended as a put-down. Yeah, he could have said "ladies", but whatever. I prefer "gals" to "guys" or "dudes" (you can't convince me those are acceptable ways to address a group consisting solely of women).

(Fun fact: Frederik Pohl and Judith Merril were married; she was his first wife, if memory serves)


Non-consensual touching is not okay. I wouldn't have been happy to have been grabbed by Asimov, or anyone else in that manner. Does that mean I'm going to toss his books in the dumpster? No. If I can enjoy Mel Gibson's Hamlet, knowing what I know about his offscreen life and attitudes, I can keep Asimov's books in my library.


My assessment of this "article" is that it lacks proper references. I have no idea where he gets his information from - anything at all from Asimov's own autobiographical material? And wtf does this have to do with the Great Wall? Asimov had an overinflated ego, but he never sought to destroy other people's work, that I know of.

 

[Farm Boy]

The study you cite suggests something very much like that: that lower frequency noises (what I think we'd call grunts) are strongly associated with positive events in a pig's life, while higher-pitched ones (what I think we'd call squeals) are associated with negative events.

But the way the OED lays it out, when it comes to humans adopting that sound, grunting has as a second meaning "to complain" and the dis- here just intensifies: really complain.

So, I think that when grunting was connected with human noisemaking, all of that frequency nuance was lost, and it was just taken as complaining.

So 1) I can't make my "gruntled" joke any more, because what I had intended to communicate by it was "I'm non-disgruntled" (got nothing to complain about)

And 2) I'm coining dissquealant, so we can get some porcine precision into these matters.

I do like learning that in Latin one can dissuaviri: kiss ardently, really kiss. English needs that, but diskiss wouldn't get us there, I don't think.

You may be forgetting an important context for grunting.