In this followup to a comment in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jmaynard's journal, there is a link to a very interesting review of the design of the human eye. But that's not all. There is a series of essays which are quite interesting.
Of the many, a few really got my attention (these are my titles, not the author's):
Science and Engineering (and Theory vs. Conjecture)
Malaria, Sickle Cell Anemia, and Evolution
I don't have the cash to buy political favors or to court high society respectability, but my dog likes me and she's a higher class of people anyway. — Lee Pitts, Western humorist
A while ago I posted a bit on how there are different perceptions of some words than what there really ought to be. Now rillifane has pointed out this article which sums up the differing attitude about the name cowboy far more effectively than I did. The bit about the perception of frontier is also worth noting. Of course, the really important message isn't about a couple words. It's about an attitude.
I wore one of the Red Shetland t-shirts today. I expected I'd eventually get some comment about it, and I did. I just got something I hadn't been expecting. The shirt I wore had this image or pair of images on it. The left (part of the) image is on the front and the right (part of the) image is on the back.
At the restaurant tonight, a lady spotted my shirt as she was leaving and proceeded to misread it, repeatedly, "Whatever don't kill you..." and I obliged and stood up, turned around (and brushed my hair out of the way) "...maims you!" One would expect that be that and a chuckle had. Nope.
"Is that an anti-hunting shirt?" "No."
"Is it about Iraq?" "No."
"Is it an anti-war thing?" "No."
...and some of this repeated with variations on the theme.
I was finally able to explain that there is a saying "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and it really isn't true. Then she claimed jmaynard and I were too deep into philosophy for her or some such. One of the younger members of the party seemed to get it right off, or at least appreciated the artwork showing Red Shetland. I doubted I had time to explain anything about the character Red Shetland.
Last night I was listening to another CD in the Spike Jones box set I bought this past Saturday. There was a tune I heard on the Dr. Demento show, but had forgotten the title. This tune, Black Bottom has no vocal but it does have a joke of sorts in it. The joke depends on knowing one way that a record can fail or be damaged. There is a point where a bit of the music repeats several times fairly quickly, and then there is a *thump* like someone hitting something, and then the tune proceeds. When that was recorded the joke worked because everyone knew what it was.
People of a certain age (I don't know the limit on that) will get joke immediately upon hearing it. I suspect that some people now might never have encountered that problem and might not have picked up on it from cultural references and wonder what that was all about. If that's not the case right now, I expect it will be in not all that long a time.
I've read a few older (well, they're older than I am) books, which I generally find more informative than many recent books. But sometimes an assumption is made that "everyone knows that" which throws me as I, several decades later, have no idea what is really meant since I'm missing that critical "common knowledge."
Another example is a bit in some old movies. One bit that I recall seeing was someone hearing a shot, except it wasn't a shot. It was a light bulb breaking. Today, that doesn't make much sense. Sure, if you broke a bulb it would make a noise. But you wouldn't mistake it for a shot. The technology changed is what happened. For some time now, light bulbs have been filled with gas. With the pressure about the same inside the bulb as outside, if they break, they just break. Those early bulbs weren't gas-filled but held vacuum. When they broke, the atmospheric pressure pressing in caused a sharp implosion. That implosion is as good as an explosion as far as the kind of sound it made.
Those sort of things makes me wonder what I'm missing or not getting because of the "everyone knows that" assumption not working. I also wonder what that is taken for granted now will seem oddly unexplained in the future.
Every once in a while I see some mention of the fictitious Cliff Yablonski and all the folks he supposedly hates. I skimmed the pages of Cliff's hatred a couple times. Some pictures were nasty. Some were just odd. Some weren't bad at all. And some maybe just dorky. It's quite a contrast between the pictures and the ranting captions.
The captions bring to mind a person angry at everything and evidently incapable of happiness, save perhaps at the expense of others. The pictures, however, often show people enjoying themselves. Many of these folks aren't happy because they just won a Nobel or Heisman, or because they have an ideal body shape, or because they are engaging in some popular activity. That isn't Yablonski-rant material. What is shown is people having fun or just being happy despite not being in perfect shape, having fun even though their activity isn't one popular with the masses, being happy even though they may never even be considered for this or that award, physical or academic.
Cliff is a fiction, of course. And I suppose it might amuse some to read his rantings. But it's the folks who are shown as his targets that are having the last laugh. In fact, they're even having the first laugh. Rather than complain about other people's lives, or even their own, they are living theirs. They may not be perfect, but they seem to be getting by a lot better than "Cliff" is. There are many, too many, Cliff Yablonski types. I have to wonder if "Cliff" isn't meant as a parody of those who seem incapable of bringing themselves up, and so try only to cut others down.
If one jumps off of a cliff, one should have ( wings )
Remember grade or elementary school? It was probably grades 1-6 or maybe 1-5. Chances are you arrived in the morning, went to the right room, and aside from recess, lunch, and gym, stayed there for the day. So did the teacher. Maybe there was another person who came in for music or art once a week. But it was a one-room thing with a class of similar age and one teacher who taught all subjects, save a couple.
The interesting thing there is how simple and normal it seems. And that a change at grade 6 or 7 is also considered normal. See, all the kids in the elementary classes are expected (or at least used to be - no idea how it is now) to keep up more less together. And one adult was all it took to teach a class, even with varied subjects. One adult could handle it - and kids were expected to be able to as well.
Yet at grade 6 or 7 things changed. Junior High, or Middle School, depending on where and when one went to school had a different form. No more staying in one room, now it was shift around every hour or so. Sure, there was this concept of a "home room" but it really meant nothing. That was just the place one started the day and passed a bit of time before the real classes started.
Now, the kids moved from room to room, but the teachers pretty much stayed with a room. A teacher had a room. A student had a locker. Unlike before when the kids and the teacher shared the room, and each had a desk of their own. It went from a feeling, if false, of ownership to a timeshare.
Also, the teaching was distributed across several adults. Yet the learning was still done by a student who was expected to keep up with all of it. Ponder that for a moment. What does it say? It says, when thought about, that the kids are expected to keep up with a range of subjects even though no adult teacher is expected to. Okkay, nice compliment for the kids, but rather damning of the teachers, isn't it?
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