Person-first language. "Boy with brown skin" doesn't raise eyebrows (of people with brown skin, at least) and we say it all the time with Mara. Plus once you're in that habit, it's too long for the kid to want to say in a casual way anyhow.
I won't hijack your thread yet.
Heh. I of course knew this was a Thorn bat-signal. But that's a good rule of thumb for starting out.
The key, or so say the Nurtureshock people, is to acknowledge early and often that people really are of different races and come in different skin tones, and explain how important it is to treat people differently. Pretending that everyone is just the same or being reluctant to talk about the issue or dismissing the kid's reaction just makes them more inclined to identify with their own group. Also Thorn's advice seems good.
Hmmm, "how important it is NOT to treat people differently."
Part of what makes 'Brown kid' clank is the assumed rarity of the characteristic -- it only works as an identifier if it wouldn't make half the playground turn and look, so it assumes there's just one brown kid in sight. Not that that gets me anywhere, I'm just picking at what is wrong with it.
Which was true in the pool at that moment - he was the only black kid, although there were a couple of Hispanic kids and Asian kids.
Being more specific might not help. Using Pantone numbers seems wrong.
I was thinking along the lines of 5, in comparison to the Messyface example, assuming both pick out one person in that instance. Having a messy face is something changeable, whereas skin color isn't. It isn't awesome to comment on other people's bodies in general: Hey Fat Lady! Hey Red Hair!
Here is some Nurtureshock advice.
I was thinking along the lines of 8, but wanting to tease it out entirely. Do you say "It's not nice to call someone a nickname about something they can't change"? I suppose the key is permanent/biological features vs. choices. I wouldn't want her criticizing someone else's clothes, though. And people compliment her and Hokey Pokey's curly hair constantly, which muddies the explanation.
And here's a longer excerpt -- Austin focused!
Do you say "It's not nice to call someone a nickname about something they can't change"?
Religion.
I think you should say, "People come in many different skin colors, but it's not polite to call them by their skin color."
As an aside, addressing people by their physical characteristics (including race) is really common in Latin American countries.
"Oye, Flaco/Gordo/Negro/Mulata/Guera/Chinita . . ."
So much of life with small children is getting them to not be unintentional assholes.
So the link in 9 basically just says you should start drawing their attention to people's skin color and prevent it from being a taboo topic. (Which is not how I handle gender - I do not draw her attention to who is a boy or a girl, and would prefer to let her bring up the conversation, which hasn't happened much yet.)
I dunno, though. Physical nicknames are intimate, but they don't seem to me to be always out of line: Lefty Ginger Whitey(I don't think you hear this one anymore, but it used to be a common blond-kid nickname) Slim(Flaco) whatever. I wouldn't want to risk conflating "Don't do that, it sounds racist" with "Don't do that, physical nicknames aren't okay" if the kid is going to run into physical nicknames that are happily accepted by the nicknamee.
This is tricky. I think Thorn & Blume have the right idea.
On the other hand, I have an amusing memory of someone trying tactfully to describe a black grad student to someone who was looking for him but who hadn't met him without using the word "black." HP would have come up with something better than "the uh, tall, uh, man, uh, with glasses?" (Philosophy is, sadly, overwhelmingly full of white guys who wear glasses.)
This is tricky. I think Thorn & Blume have the right idea.
On the other hand, I have an amusing memory of someone trying tactfully to describe a black grad student to someone who was looking for him but who hadn't met him without using the word "black." HP would have come up with something better than "the uh, tall, uh, man, uh, with glasses?" (Philosophy is, sadly, overwhelmingly full of white guys who wear glasses.)
For talking about skin color, Shades of People is a great children's book. I think one specific thing that's often not obvious to people who don't have a ton of experience with black families is how common it is to have a wide range of skin tones and hair textures within one family, and that's something that gets touched on here.
16: I probably would not have brought up gender much (except for the thing about different families having different parental gender configurations) except that Mara still is inconsistent about gendered pronouns, so we're constantly saying, "And is Mama a boy or a girl? Right, so SHE...." However, I don't think the two are analogous because our culture (apologies, AWB!) is all about not talking about race in a nuanced way, whereas kids get clubbed over the head with boys do this/girls do that. I'm sure you'll push your kids to recognize that of course girls can be firefighters when they grow up, but keeping them from stereotyping based on race requires being able and willing to talk about that with them.
Oh, the other book I recommend to everyone is The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism, which is a fantastic look about how preschool-aged kids learn about racial differences and the taboos about talking about them and adults write this off as a period of colorblind innocence, which it totally isn't.
I don't think the two are analogous because our culture (apologies, AWB!) is all about not talking about race in a nuanced way, whereas kids get clubbed over the head with boys do this/girls do that.
That's an excellent point. Race is often about what's left unsaid, whereas people love to boil down girls and boys to their essential differences.
I have been in that situation (that is, felt tactless using a racial description, but idiotic not using one), and what feels better to me is to actually talk about skin tone. Identifying someone as a "Tall black guy with glasses" sounds more off to me than saying "Tall darkish-skinned black guy with glasses and a shaved head" because the first sounds like you're identifying someone purely by membership in a racial group while the second sounds like a physical description.
Hmm. The former of those sounds much smoother to my ear, just calling him "tall, black" outright, in the context of other identifiers. The second sounds like "I'm nervous calling him black because of my white liberal guilt."
"Tall black guy with glasses" is fine. Tying yourself up in knots about pretending that race isn't there when it is is ridiculous.
I dunno, though. Physical nicknames are intimate, but they don't seem to me to be always out of line: Lefty Ginger Whitey(I don't think you hear this one anymore, but it used to be a common blond-kid nickname) Slim(Flaco) Nig
"Calling 'brown kid' might make him uncomfortable, sweetie. If you can't remember his name, just call him Chocolate Thunder."
Interestingly, both my brother when he was very young and both of my sons at similar preschool ages were very adamant that people who looked like them were not "white" but "peach" (as per Crayola) and would explain it in very deliberate, full-of-pity "jesus, but grown-ups are dense" voices to anybody who made the mistake.
25 to 23 last. Semi-seriously, I actively try not to worry about sounding like a white liberal who is sometimes uncertain about race. There's a tendency (or, at least, I have a tendency, and I think other people share it) to want to thread a needle, where if you don't pay any attention, you may sound racist, but if you're too cautious, you sound like a GWL. What I decided is that if I say something racist, I risk actively hurting someone. If I say something that makes me sound idiotically GWLish, I just look like a clown. And you know, I look like a clown at least one time out of every five I open my mouth, so I'm not going to worry about something else that makes me look like a clown.
I have a specific memory of doing 27.2, and my kid has said the same thing.
I do have a visceral reaction of discomfort at the idea of pointing out skin colors to Hawaii, like the parents in the two NutureShock links. It really does feel like you're introducing divisions rather than erasing taboos, (although I'll forge ahead anyway.)
("What color is the kid on this page?" "Look how they're friends, even though one is Asian and one is black!" It all sounds so racist.)
I've long thought that physical nicknames are the mark of a peasant culture. An early step in sophistication is when no one gets called Stumpy or Gordo or Red.
I would also say "tall black guy" if race is the obvious identifier.
In the more embarrassing other direction, at three or so I informed a YMCA coach that he and people who looked like him should be called 'brownies'. I don't know if I just didn't know the word 'black' in context, or if I was disagreeing with it.
And people compliment her and Hokey Pokey's curly hair constantly, which muddies the explanation.
Right! And it also seems like sweeping things under the rug to say that racial identification is just the same as hair color or height or somesuch.
And should I just point out skin tones? Or do I bring in ethnicities and address who is culturally black or Hispanic?
30: Hammering on my point from 28, I think your visceral reaction is confusing (understandably, viscera aren't very bright) fear of sounding racist with fear of sounding like a GWL. Sounding like a GWL isn't ideal, but it is pretty harmless.
I really think it is so much worse to have a big problem saying "tall. black guy with glasses.". OMG don't mention his race! Maybe if we all pretend not to see it it won't be there! He may never have noticed it! How is this not way more racist than acknowledging the obvious difference, not being a jerk about it, and moving on.
27: How much younger is your brother? I would've expected him to insist on "skin tone".
31: Unless we're calling NYC in the fifties and sixties a peasant culture, I think moving away from the physical nickname is at the least a late stage in sophistication.
Also, do I mark some aspects of the conversation as "Private"? She's allowed to make poop jokes at home, just not at the dinner table, school, or birthday parties, so there's a sense of what's ok to say at home and what's ok to say in public. Nothing is jumping out at me as a guideline for marking some things "private", but obviously there are lots of embarrassing things that a kid could say in public.
How much younger is your brother?
He turns 40 next month.
This is a cool story about (older) kids and race.
36: So much worse than what? It's somewhat worse than someone who gracefully and without discomfort gives an accurate description including a racial identifier, but it's a bunch better than someone who gestures at "the dot head over there with the backpack".
Someone who gets sketchy about pulling out the racial identifier is being silly, but is actively trying not to sound racist -- their intentions are in the right place. Calling them racist for being silly about it seems like overkill, and like mindreading.
And when do you start introducing the historical background?
27: I did the same thing, and I am most definitely brown (crayola and otherwise).
I think 13 is the best advice for now, though I would add hair color and eye color too. You could say something about how it can make someone feel shy or hurt that people don't remember their name.
We're trying to define what's okay in a very particular abstract way, but do kids think that abstractly? So why conflate categories that aren't yet conceptually related in her head when you can deal with them on an as they come, on a concrete basis. Later you can have the 10/12 basis. 10 seems like it's jumping the gun a bit. .she's not critisizing anyone, she's just calling out for them.
I suppose around MLK day, or if there's an opportune question.
Or rather "flesh toned".
The really big crayon boxes include "Swarthy" and "Melanotic".
22: Isn't HP only three or four? It's probably enough for now to say that she should say "excuse me" or use someone's name if she's trying to get their attention. Nicknames are for people you know, but it's polite to use people's names unless you know nicknames are okay.
I think the historical background could come around MLK day, but it's not really necessary to (and will confuse) the basic conversation, which is that "yes people are different but it's not polite to call them by their skin color."
I can't quite remember what it was called, but I just bought Newt the ethnically integrated skin-tone variety modeling clay pack for a diorama (not, actually, to be used for skin-tones) -- five colors from dark brown through peachy. They must have done a good job, because whatever they called it was unambiguous but I don't remember it as funny.
The really big crayon boxes include "Swarthy" bad guy and "Melanotic".
I mean, yes, there's a whole lot of problems with race in the country, but as far as HP is concerned, it would be just as much of a problem if she were yelling "hey fatcheeks! fatcheeks!"
but it's not really necessary to (and will confuse) the basic conversation, which is that "yes people are different but it's not polite to call them by their skin color."
Is this the entire conversation? The NutureShock links make it sound like I should be bringing up race a whole lot more.
Topically, I was party to an explanation of a programming concept earlier which began "Well, Alan Turing... you know, the gay guy?"
48: Right, she just turned 3 in April.
I had a student turn in the Wikipedia entry on Alan Turing with all sentences about his sexuality edited out. I specifically tore into him for whitewashing history, along with generally plagiarizing.
I had a student turn in the Wikipedia entry on Alan Turing with all sentences about his sexuality edited out.
That's hilarious.
||
Not topically, this summer's crop of undergrad programmers seem vastly more capable than last summer's. Much harder for me to make an ass of myself when I'm not trying to teach people who don't know what a directory is!
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fatcheeks!
Still available as a pseudonym.
27.2 We say "Your skin is brown and people with brown skin and curly hair who come from people who come from Africa are called 'black'" and she hasn't had any trouble recognizing that her new best friend, who arrived recently from India, has brown skin but is not black. Her sisters with chemically straightened hair kind of cause a probably with the curly hair part of that, but so far she hasn't complained and seems able to understand black, non-black brown, black/mixed-race, and white (which looks peach or pink but is called 'white') skin.
Heebs, have your kids taken my other piece of constant cultural advice and watched BABIES? It's helpful sometimes to be able to talk about things taking place "near where baby Bayar is from" (Mongolia) occasionally or "like Ponijao's mom does" (Namibia) all the fucking time, like please don't lick your babydoll's face just because Ponijao's mom does and give me a break I'm a middle-class white person, okay?
Hawaii recently pointed at my pubes and asked me why I have fur on my butt.
(She often calls her vagina her "front butt" and just treats the whole region as one long crack.)
54: I think that's right -- that kids shouldn't think it's taboo to talk about someone being black or Asian or Hispanic or whatever. Like Halford says in 36.
So, two conversations -- talking about race in the kind of way that makes you viscerally disturbed because you feel like it's taboo to draw attention to racial categories is good, because the kid's going to pick up the racial categories on their own and just get tense about them if you don't give permission to talk it about like anything else.
And the second conversation is that it's rude to use racial/skin-color terms as nicknames or modes of address. The second conversation can be totally arbitrary, you don't have to get into what's racist about it, manners are always arbitrary.
My teacher through grades 1-6 (Montessori) recounted, I think at a dinner party years after my time there, how she had watched a movie about the Jim Crow era with her [grand?]child, and in talking about it afterwards discovered the child was under the impression that our school was currently segregated.
That's good advice, breaking it into two separate issues.
Was it? I mean, obviously not de jure, but lots of schools are de facto.
Not de facto in the "unwritten rule" sense, but I can't remember any black people there. Maybe one in later grades.
The teacher in question was the school's founder and leader, and she was rather shocked and humbled at hearing the kid say this.
Kind of the problem with the 'colorblind' approach, isn't it. If you don't even see race, you don't see segregation either.
Huh. Flesh was renamed Peach in 1962. Why do I remember this as a thing?
Pretty sure I remember Flesh too! Maybe in an off-brand set, or in markers or something?
68: I agree. And 61 is brilliant, in part because Babies is great. But it's also good, I think, to roll things out slowly. HP's three. Noticing that people have different skin tones is what she's going to do, and learning what names go with what concepts is still pretty much par for the course at age three.
asked me why I have fur on my butt
"Because I'm not in my 20s."
My son and I have markedly different skin tones, even though we are both "white" -- I am ruddy and freckled, he's got more of an olive undertone. I do a lot of putting our arms, or faces in the mirror, side by side and admiring the contrast. "You're a yellow rose and I'm a pink one." I also praise his skin because it doesn't sunburn, and we talk about what skin colors he thinks needs more or less sunscreen. (Yes, I know black skin can burn, my point is to get him to see differences matter-of-factly.) He's 7, so we've had the slavery discussion, and Star Wars (The Phantom Menace) has helped with some context not dependent on race.
we talk about what skin colors he thinks needs more or less sunscreen
Whenever we talk about sunscreen or sunburn, Kraabniece #3 likes to announce that she has more melanin in her skin than the rest of the family.
Yes, exactly. I have a sister who's even more olive than my son, so variation within a family is right there to be observed -- all I need do is verbalize it. We'll get into the social implications of race gradually; right now I'm going for "People come in different colors -- no big deal."
When she discusses slavery, heebie can tell the HPs that they are descended from slaves too. As Jews we are proud of this.
Pfft. If you're so proud of it, why haven't you done any slaving in the past 3,500 years.
My sensibilities are probably skewed by having grown up in a relatively hostile environment, but "brown kid" seems fairly anodyne to me. "Brown" is used as a self-descriptor by actual brown people, it doesn't have any aggressive or passive-aggressive freight as a racial slur, it even has positive connotations as a whole. He should still call the kid by his actual name instead of effectively saying "Hey you!" but apart from that he's not in racially charged territory.
You're in racially-charged and needing-a-talk territory when kids start passive-aggressively "joking" with each other about race and ethnicity. Usually that's a sign of actual underlying racial tension and a behaviour that will leave actual scars.
82: Sadly, that's not true.
Also, proud may be the wrong word, but when we sing on Passover, "We were slaves! We were slaves!" it always sounds like we're happy about this, but that maybe because most of us don't know enough Hebrew to know what we're saying.
When I was younger and a student I worked a series of crappy retail jobs.
Once, at the record store where I worked, a young kid, maybe three, who was black, came up to me and asked if I knew where his uncle was. There were several men in the store, all of whom could've been the kid's uncle, so I asked him what his uncle looked like. This may not have been the most useful question to direct to a three-year-old, but it's what I asked. The kid looked at me for a second, and then said, "um . . . he's brown."
Later, when I worked at sneaker store, we were not paid on commission but we were expected to meet a certain dollar amount in sales to justify our employment. To give credit to another employee, the person operating the register might need to identify the clerk who actually assisted the customer, and enter that clerk's ID number accordingly. We all, especially the employees who happened to be black, found the lengths to which some white customers would go to avoid identifying someone as "black" to be pretty amusing. "Uh, the bl . . . uh, kid. Over there, in the uniform. With the arms." Then again, other people would just say "the black guy" and for no good reason it always sort of clanked to my ears.
"We were slaves! We were slaves!" it always sounds like we're happy about this
You could be happy in the "once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see" sense, I guess.
You could be happy in the "once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see" sense, I guess.
That's the general idea behind that part of the seder, yes.
Was blind till my boyfriend was secretly my eyeball donor, at which point I left him to go see the world.
87: I disagree slightly -- I would say the main point is that we identify with our ancestors that were slaves. So, what I interpret as "happy" may be more about being emphatic in declaring our oneness with our slave-ancestors.
Of course, I'm being silly -- it sounds happy, because we're all drunk and it's a fun catchy tune.
84.1: But not all at once, like back in the day.
I would say the main point is that we identify with our ancestors that were slaves.
Right, but we're also thankful to God for setting us free, hence the joyous rather than somber tone.
Although the story also says that if you were a dick he would have left you and your descendants to be slaves forever.
"We were slaves! We were slaves!"
We were slaaaaaaves
So let's set the world on fiiiire
We can burn briighter
Than the suuuuuuuuuuuuun
87: My familiarity with seder details is pretty minimal. As is probably apparent.
You would think God would share some of the blame for the enslavement in the first place.
95 is like a glimpse into an alternate universe where Nat Turner was the lead singer for a terrible indie rock band.
96: Like your use of a Christian hymn's lyrics to illustrate a seder?
You would think God would share some of the blame for the enslavement in the first place.
Shockingly, this aspect of the story gets basically no attention in the official telling.
Looks like you can still buy a "flesh" marker. It's color R02. And right below it, Baby Skin Pink. Crikey.
Man, those are not the only color names that suck in that set. See also "Yellowish Shade"! And "Light Crockery Blue"?? Yeah, I'll give you some light crockery.
96: Since my entire annual practice of Judaism begins with the blessing of the first glass of wine at the Passover Seder and ends with "Next Year in Jerusalem" at the end of the seder, I consider myself an authority on the topic of seders.
I'm also extremely logical.
Exodus, including the "slaves in Egypt" story, is almost certainly entirely fictional with no basis in reality. That seems a bit embarrassing for the "criteria of embarrassment" (which says you should have the most confidence in parts of the New Testament which would be embarrassing for the movement, like Jesus's being a follower of John the Baptist, or the crucifixion). Being slaves in Egypt is embarrassing, but it's not true.
61: Babies is such a great movie. I had to make an effort to not coo at the screen.
103- wow, you make it through all the post dinner stuff? We usually get to the food and maybe pay the kids to return the dessert matzah.
Right, but we're also thankful to God radical community organizer Moses for helping us to setting us set ourselves free, hence the joyous rather than somber tone.
As I think about it more, it actually is pretty weird that the Bible doesn't say anything (IIRC) about what God was doing while the Egyptians were enslaving the Israelites. It just goes from "Joseph is super-powerful and popular" to "Joseph dies and a new Pharaoh shows up and enslaves everyone" without talking about what, if anything, God thought about this or why He let it happen. This is in striking contrast to the later parts where all the prophets chime in on exactly what the kings of Israel did wrong to incite God's wrath and the destruction of the Temple. Maybe this reflects a theological shift over time; there are certainly other differences between these books that do.
People give me weird looks sometimes when I describe someone as "a white guy, tallish," etc..
Exodus, including the "slaves in Egypt" story, is almost certainly entirely fictional with no basis in reality
Is the archeology etc really good enough to make that strong a statement? I find this very hard to believe pretty much for the reasons you give.
109: It's sort of like God didn't become wholly invested in the Jews as his "Chosen People" until after Mount Sinai.
It's clear that aliens built the pyramids, but that doesn't prove there were no enslaved peoples in Egypt at the time.
112: Well, he parted the sea for them and stuff. That was something.
You would think the hieroglyphics would have recorded something or other about the Nile turning to blood and everyone's first-born son dying. That kind of thing, people notice.
106: It's at my sister's house -- they're fanatics. We also have a tradition of singing all the verses of the long songs at the end.
115: The Egyptians would have wanted to cover that up.
117: Seems like there would have at least been some mass graves that would have survived.
114: I like the image from "Mary, Don't You Weep": "He smote the water with a 2' x 4'."
Sorry to interrupt the Jewish and Jew-curious comments, but Jackmormon's 110 is great and very pertinent to heebie's original question. If you teach your kids that white is unmarked by only mentioning race or skin color when you're mot mentioning a white person, well, that's what you're teaching them. I know if I had a white kid, I'd try to be mindful to talk about people being white. (And Val told her mom recently, before the one time I saw them since they left our house, that "Thorn says it's okay to talk about skin color." so I guess I did something right!)
Godly upside risk, mortal downside risk.
and everyone's first-born son dying. That kind of thing, people notice.
The same problem vexes the story of the slaughter of the innocents under Herod.
115: The coverup is worse than the crime.
A framework that I've generally found helpful for talking to my kids about the complex intersections of etiquette, history, appearance, and difference is talking about what is and isn't the most interesting thing about someone. The most visible thing (X is in a wheelchair, Y is African-American, Z wears a headscarf) might not necessarily be the most interesting thing about X, Y, or Z, and if you focus too much on that thing that makes them different from you, you miss out on finding out all the other interesting things about them. Besides X, Y or Z might not think it's all that interesting themselves (they might--but then that's another interesting thing to know about that person). Doesn't quite solve the "Brown Kid" problem, but it might be a way to start explaining to a kid why it could be a problem.
123: Its possible the Bible exaggerates.
111: There's surprisingly good records of Egypt going back really far, but you have to be a bit tricky because Egypt might only record it's successes. (I mean, you'd still know if there was a plague on the first-borns, but you could imagine Exodus was true in outline but that the plagues were later inventions and that Egyptians didn't bother recording stuff about some slaves.)
Instead, as I understand it, the main argument is that you can trace the development of Israelite culture locally in Canaan, and there just wasn't a massive invasion anything like what is described in Joshua. For instance, many of the cities destroyed in Joshua did not exist at the time. So everything before that has to be made up.
Furthermore there's just basic problems like Hebrew not being a written language until centuries after Exodus is supposed to have happened.
For instance, many of the cities destroyed in Joshua did not exist at the time.
Maybe Joshua was very, very good at his job.
The link in 202 has a bunch more "skin" colored markers and none of them look like nonwhite skin colors to me.
E00 "Skin White"
YR61 "Yellowish Skin Pink"
E95 "Flesh Pink"
The colors that one would use for nonwhite skin all have non-skin names. "Brick Beige", "Chamois", "Sand", etc.
Unrelatedly, I have never seen champagne the color of E71 "Champagne".
On the racism and kids thing, I think it's important to realize that this situation is just not that big a deal. Everyone's a little bit racist and kids say awful things without realizing it all the time, and really "brown kid" just isn't very offensive compared to what a kid could have said. It's more important that your kids become comfortable around black people than that they learn how to be PC, so you don't want them feeling self-conscious around black people in a way they wouldn't around white people.
They have big floods there.
Presumably this is one of the reasons the Egyptians had a very well established tradition of burying people out in the desert.
You wouldn't believe how much trouble they went through to make sure the corpses didn't float away.
Instead, as I understand it, the main argument is that you can trace the development of Israelite culture locally in Canaan, and there just wasn't a massive invasion anything like what is described in Joshua.
This is my understanding as well, but it's important to note that a smaller migration from Egypt wouldn't necessarily be visible in the archaeological record. That is, the story as told in Exodus and Joshua is very unlikely to be true as such, but there could still be some historical event underlying it that got embellished later. That said, I don't think there's actually any other evidence beyond the Bible suggesting that this is the case, so Ockham's Razor suggests that the most likely answer is that it's all fictional.
Ockham's Razor suggests that the most likely answer is that it's all fictional
Well, Ockham's Razor says we should prefer the simplest explanation, but saying that it's all fictional doesn't really explain anything at all.
Well, since nothing is ever truly original you'd expect even something intended as pure fiction to have some ties to reality. Certainly Egypt was a very important player in the region, so probably the most likely thing is that there's some tenuous relationships between Exodus/Joshua and reality.
132: Yeah, pretty much nothing a preschooler says is going to actually be offensive unless they're mimicking adult racial slurs -- this is a manners issue, but not an urgent one.
"Brown" [...] even has positive connotations as a whole.
there's some tenuous relationships between Exodus/Joshua and reality.
Yay! My ancestors were slaves after all!
You should already know that 141 was me.
I'd say that the right tack here is to make sure that sometimes your kids are sometimes in situations where they're the unusual one racially, and that'll make it easier for them to empathize about why it might feel weird to have someone say "hey white girl."
Given the passage of time, I'd expect that if there were some Israelites who were slaves in Egypt who had descendants they'd be ancestors of just about everyone of European or middle eastern descent, the same way in which every person of European descent can claim Charlemagne as an ancestor.
Furthermore there's just basic problems like Hebrew not being a written language until centuries after Exodus is supposed to have happened.
Hmmm. Has anybody considered the possibility that God handed Moses the tablets and Moses looked at them and said, "Well, that's cool, God, but what do all those funny squiggles means?"
Alternately, the original ten commandments could have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
111: The records of Egypt are, actually, surprisingly shitty as history. Outside of a few extraordinary rare finds of papyri and diplomatic correspondence in cuneiform, the bulk of what survives is funerary and monumental in character and prone to stereotypical, ahistorical and anachronistic representations of the Pharaoh. (The ancient Egyptians were more concerned with propagating the self-image of a particular reign than with writing history, so different kings would happily appropriate each other's monuments and achievements, making it a very confusing and daunting task to assemble an actual chronology.) So, it's still pretty hard to decisively resolve big questions of Egyptian history like who exactly the Hyksos were.
However, more than enough records have survived from the reign of Ramesses II for it to be very weird for a supposed event like the Exodus -- or anything close to it -- not to have found mention in any of it. And there are indeed still enough archaeological records for how Egypt's monuments were constructed to make the story of Hebrew slaves being the primary workforce increasingly implausible.
The Exodus could still be loosely based on historical events, though, or could be a concentrated and romanticized depiction of larger historical processes. I think the going explanation in Egyptology along these lines is that its basis is in the rise of the Hyksos (who were probably Palestinian chieftains, one of whom carried the name Yaqub-her) and their subsequent fall, and possibly of much-reduced circumstances for their descendants -- if in fact their descendants were the Habiru or Apiru who subsequent Egyptians (and others) mentioned as a kind of inferior social caste of nomads, slaves, bandits, mercenaries and migrant workers in the region later on.
(I don't normally know much about ancient Egypt, but I just happen to be reading a book about it right now.)
If I was God, I would have gone with those little cuneiform mud tablets instead of those big-ass stone ones. Then maybe Moses would have had an easier time carrying them around, and wouldn't have dropped them and broken them.
Aluminum. Light, tough, and difficult to melt down and repurpose.
146, 147: Interesting! What book are you reading?
Egypt's monuments were constructed to make the story of Hebrew slaves being the primary workforce increasingly implausible.
You know, if I was some upstart tribe in a corner of the Middle East, I'd totally want to work up some plausible story about how it was really our peeps who built those giant pyramids over in that huge, famous, and ancient civilization around the bend.
I'd just point at somebody, say he has WMD, and take his shit.
150: Sir Alan Gardiner's "Egypt of the Pharaohs" in its Folio reprint as "The Egyptians." Old book, but apparently still the authoritative introductory text on the subject.
151: It would be tempting.
146: a kind of inferior social caste of nomads, slaves, bandits, mercenaries and migrant workers but every night all the men would come around, and lay their money down.
Perhaps we have different baselines of what we expected and what we'd be surprised by. I'd call 146.2 surprisingly good. I'd have expected we'd know almost nothing.
I'd heard the Hebrews-Hyskos connection mentioned before, but it would be interesting to learn more.
It's interesting that there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of David or Solomon. It just seems intuitively likely that there would have been at least some real historical king of prominence with those names.
It just seems intuitively likely that there would have been at least some real historical king of prominence with those names.
Why?
and a story in which the Almighty sided with my tribe against the superpower of the day. A harmful myth, as people keep thinking it'll happen again, and it keeps not happening.
[H]appy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us
The biblical accounts are reasonably specific accounts of particular reigns, so it would seem on the surface likely that there were real kings being referred to by the tradition, even if specific events were heavily mythologized.
Has anybody considered the possibility that God handed Moses the tablets and Moses looked at them and said, "Well, that's cool, God, but what do all those funny squiggles means?"
Reminds me of one of my favorite jokes. Moses comes down from Mount Sinai bearing two tablets. He gathers together the multitude together and says, "Children of Israel, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I negotiated him down to ten. The bad news is, adultery is still in."
There's some historical evidence of a king named David in the Tel Dan Stele. It's not unambiguous, but given the state of the historical record from that relevant time period it's not bad.
My half-assed understanding from reading up on this sort of stuff this week, is that stuff in Joshua and before has at best a tenuous connection to reality, and that once you get to Samuel it's probably heavily mythologized versions of actual people and events. I'd guess that Judges is a mix of both. The Samuel/David/Saul era stuff is tricky though, by the time you get to Josiah you're almost certainly looking at real history (though told with a strong point-of-view and with embellishments).
159: There are several hundred years of Japanese "history" with detailed stories and names and dates of emperors, believed to be completely fictional.
Reading up on Beta Israel is fascinating, because one of the two competing theories is that they're 15th or 16th century Christian splinter group, but there's a detailed "history" going back to the 4th or 5th century.
For a case where we know that things are just made up whole cloth, look at any Mormon scriptures. It's still pretty specific.
161, 162: Yeah, I think the main issue with David and Solomon specifically is just that the record for that period in general is exceptionally spotty.
Another issue with this topic is that there are very strong incentives to find any archaeological evidence supporting the Biblical account, so when an inscription or something turns up with the name of a king or whatever there's always a strong chance it's a forgery. There have been several prominent examples of this in the past few years.
155: Perhaps we have different baselines of what we expected and what we'd be surprised by.
Could be. The degree of stereotype in Egyptian monarchic self-presentation -- to the point where later reigns routinely borrowed actual historical details from earlier ones -- did come as a surprise to me.
Tel Dan Stele
"They got a name for the winners in Israel.
I, I want a name when I lose.
Call me, Uriah."
Yeah, I'm sure the ways in which its shitty would surprise me. Nonetheless, compare it to what we have in other places at the same time!
Here is a convenient list of recent suspected forgeries.
Whether or not David and Solomon existed, it seems that a united monarchy including Judah in that time period is highly unlikely. So even if the names refer to real people, you shouldn't really expect much beyond that. E.g. if there was a Solomon in that time frame he didn't build a temple in Jerusalem.
What's the first place where bilblical and corroborative history converge? Something about the Romans and the Temple? There really is still a wall there.
What's the first place where bilblical and corroborative history converge? Something about the Romans and the Temple?
Some of the later kings are mentioned in Assyrian sources. I think that's the first truly independent line of evidence confirming parts of the biblical story.
I was just reading an internet article about Babylonian records mentioning some biblical figures. Nothing about the exiles playing reggae music, but that's probably still buried under desert sands.
My ex recto thought as a teenager was that the Biblical account was a highly mythologized story from the perspective of a bit player. Of course the Egyptians weren't going to care about a minor slave revolt. They probably put down six of those before breakfast.
The Assyrian and Babylonian captivities are real, and there's plenty of stuff in the bible written roughly around the time of the Babylonian exile. (Though note that Daniel, which is the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about the Babylonian exile in the Bible, is way later and what it says about the exile is not very historical.)
Presumably someone built a temple in Jerusalem.
Presumably someone built a temple in Jerusalem.
Yes, Herod.
By the time you get to Josiah you can do things like figure out when he died to within a month using Babylonian sources.
There's no reason not to think that there was a fancy temple in Jerusalem by the time of Josiah. There are known Jewish temples (one in the Negev, one at the mountains Samaritans worshipped at, and one for a diaspora community in southern Egypt) dating back to that time period. But it wasnt until after Jerusalem emerged as a leading city that you'd expect a fancy temple there, so way after Solomon.
This thread isn't doing enough justice to the hypothesis that ancient Egypt had Jews, but not in a way we can understand anymore.
They had the sort of Jews that buried seven years worth of acorns for hard times later, right?
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I just saw the Transit of Venus! Take that, Halford!
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Isn't the Babylonian captivity just a small minority of the Hebrew population, most of them would of stayed where they lived right?
Yeah, it's complicated. Of course war is going to decrease the population anyway. But you'd expect a bunch of people to die, some people to end up moving elsewhere non-forcibly, and the surviving elites to be forcibly exiled. But I don't think any of that strongly contradicts the story in the Bible (which was written about then, so should be roughly accurate when discussing that time period).
We pointed out skin colors at story time tonight and talked about different people at daycare with different colored skin. Now I can put this whole episode behind me!
TWO BITS! FOUR BITS! SIX BITS! A DOLLAR!
ALL FOR BABYLON, STAND UP AND HOLLER!
Late to the thread, but I thought I'd weigh in. I'm all for pointing out that it is much more polite to call someone by their name, but uneasy about the idea of saying "brown kid" is bad because he can't change his skin color, or it's not polite to talk about skin color or whatever because I would be worried about giving the subtle impression that his skin color is somehow bad.
Don't I get a jaunty song or something?
There's a quick cutscene that unlocks the Graviton Gun and Thermal Vision powerups, and then you go on to the next level, Heebie Vs. Sexism.
183. Pretty much, yeah. The political leaders were carted off. The rest stayed behind, and then when the Persians sent the leaders back from Babylon to run the place for them, they said to the ones who had stayed behind, UR DOIN IT RONG! And most of the ones who had stayed behind said, "What do you know about it, you weren't even here? And anyway I don't speak Babylonian, so shut up." And they went off to be Samaritans.
Or that was how I was taught in RE in school.
Can I do a bleg/thread-hijack since the thread up the page has picked up speed?
I'm trying to think of a way to say "I'm a pretty good writer" in resume-speak. You know, someone who doesn't write things like the first sentence of this comment. I need to have a version of my resume that doesn't make me sound like I do something so specific I could never do any other job, and in particular what I want it to sound like is "I can write ALL THE THINGS!" Any suggestions?
193: "Had sole responsibility for deathless prose; put paid to the Great American Novel as required."
"Excellent written communication skills in a wide range of fields and at all levels of complexity."
193: "Effective written communication in multiple formats."
195: Or "...for multiple audiences."
Maybe I should mention unfogged, right?
"Listen up sucker! I can write you people right off the page!"
199. Good idea. "I am a regular commenter on a boutique blog that has only stopped specialising in cock jokes because it's told them all."
"My prose is tumescent with the promise of excitment."
Googling for acceptable meaningless resume boilerplate is hopeless..."writing" and "resume" bring up lots of sites about writing a resume, for example.
"Adept at churning out acceptable, meaningless boilerplate."
I actually did, one time, for fun, write an honest resume and now live in fear that I will accidentally send it out one day.
"Dogged in my persistent of excellence in written communication, Tom muttered."
"Regular contributor to an eclectic web magazine."
I had a friend who used the phrase "commanding mastery" repeatedly in his resume, which I thought was sort of wonderful, so maybe "commanding mastery of all forms of written communication"?
I think I describe my writing as 'fluent' in my resume, or I have in the past. Not sure if that communicates anything useful, but take it for what it's worth.
I'm so glad I've never had to apply for a real job.
"Fluent, sophisticated and versatile writer with a history excelling at assignments in such areas as dick jokes and discussions of opera."
Am I misremembering that the phrase "eclectic webmagazine" describing Unfogged appeared in the NYT, or something similar, at some point? I don't mean when Armsmasher wrote it in the Grauniad.
That article on the Flophouse, maybe? But I don't remember it.
We pointed out skin colors at story time tonight
Red Fish, Blue Fish doesn't count.
It wasn't from the Farhad Manjoo article.
"YOu give Money$$. Me give WORDs."
Also, stick "lucid" in somewhere.
211: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2007_06_10.html#006988
217: No, that was the Grauniad thing I mentioned. The phrase was used here for at least a year and a half before that, based on Google results, and I thought it originally came from someone external to the blog writing about the blog in a kind of clueless way. But I can't turn up any evidence for that. It definitely wasn't the Flophouse article. And it might go back even before I was reading regularly, in which case my memory is just faulty.
And it might go back even before I was reading regularly, in which case my memory is just faulty
Just the same as when the Jews distinctly remembered having the 10 Commandments written on stone tablets in Hebrew hundred of years before Hebrew existed as a written language.
I'm going to be sending out a bunch of resumes shortly myself. It seems to me what both of us should put is something with a bit more oomph than just "excellent written and verbal communications skillz" or whatever. Do you have any actual outcomes you could list, based on your writing?
Do you have any actual outcomes you could list, based on your writing?
You mean like someone took out a restraining order?
Do you have any actual outcomes you could list, based on your writing?
"My rough drafts towards a document to replace the Articles of Confederation were favorably received by my clients and formed the basis of the published version."
"Some of my limited-availability early writing led directly to the creation of the internet."
I haven't worked on a resume in nearly a decade. The thought terrifies me, but is probably also on my horizon.
Speaking of resumes (and because I thought it would be crass to stick this on the other thread re Richard Nixon's comment), I have resumed work after a very very long time. It's not much but it's a major foot in the door at probably the most prestigious institutionof its type and will look damned good on my résumé and very likely lead to other really good opportunities. What a relief. (Except for the commute, that's gonna suck till I move).
My brother, sister, sister-in-law, and I are all job searching right now, which has meant a lot of swapping resumes back and forth for critiquing and editing. (Fortunately, my SIL is all but hired and the rest of us are searching while still employed.)
I have the kind of job that's very hard to explain, especially in resume form. I really want to write, "Look, I'm smart and can write and talk and people mostly like me. If I applied for this job, it means I know I can do it, so just hire me."
I'm currently searching for jobs myself. My current position ends in September, and while I would like to stay on here that's looking pretty unlikely for various bureaucratic reasons. Luckily there seem to be tons of jobs in my field around here, some of them closer to the sort of thing I would really prefer to do than my current job. It looks like I have a pretty good shot at finding something good.
I like that two threads are now job-search threads.
In this economy, everything is job search.
221: God sneers at the notion of linear time. That was the point of Inherit the Wind, right?
I think I'm on comment 367 of my experiment to see if I can comment orthogonally to threads 500 times in a row.
Luckily there seem to be tons of jobs in my field around here, some of them closer to the sort of thing I would really prefer to do than my current job.
That's encouraging. Looking for work is never fun, but that sounds like a better situation than most.
"Created super great entry for Twitter-based seltzer contest that totally should have won. Tweet available upon request."
That's encouraging. Looking for work is never fun, but that sounds like a better situation than most.
Yeah, it's making me feel a lot better about what had seemed like a very frustrating situation.
"Created super great entry for Twitter-based seltzer contest that totally should have won. Tweet available upon request."
If you won the New Yorker cartoon caption contest, would you list it on your resume (inconspicuously, along with the miscellany at the bottom of the page)? I think I would, but I'm not sure.
I once won a "literary competition" in the New Statesman and it never occurred to me to include it on my CV. Other Interests: Once wrote prize winning Clerihew? Nah.
Have to try and remember. I've won competitions in New Musical Express (British music rag, defunct, I think) and New Scientist too. It isn't that hard; if you actually get round to submitting your entry the odds are probably less than 20:1.
Count me in with the job searchers. DOE yanked the rug out from under me (contract was supposed to last another two years, but they killed it because of US ITER obligations), so I'm looking again. Maybe all the mineshaft job searchers should get together and form a start-up.
Job searchers who are geographically unconstrained (a relatively small group, I know) should seriously consider Alaska. The economy is way better up here than in most other places and it shows in the job market for most fields.
243: Didn't we talk about a business ghostwriting for people who need to break bad news? Don't Shoot the Messenger or something?
245: I had in mind something like "Rent-A-Procrastinator" for firms that were suffering from excess productivity, but that's a much better idea.
Don't talk about procrastination. I had a difficult family conversation first thing when I got into work this morning, and haven't done a lick of work otherwise all day.
Don't talk about procrastination until later
I had a difficult family conversation first thing when I got into work this morning, and haven't done a lick of work otherwise all day.
I've definitely had the experience of doing something challenging early in the day which requires a lot of attention and focus, and then never being able to get into a normal work mindset after that.
(My standard advice, as you know: pick a small but meaningful chunk of work as a goal. Take a short break -- make an excuse to walk to the other end of the building and back, and then come back and do that small piece. It's entirely likely that, once you've finished it, you still won't have attention for more work, but at least you will have accomplished *something*.)
I mostly gave up job searching and am now just resigned to being unhappily employed (though happy to be employed). I was actually given feedback on my last interview that didn't pan out (the third) that the big issue for the general counsel (who was primarily making the hiring decision) is that I muffed the question "What would you do if you won $50 million in the lottery a year after you started working here?" I'd initially answered "I don't play the lottery", but when pressed said something like "I don't know; I'd probably have to reevaluate my life at that point. I hope I'd be enjoying the job enough at that point to want to continue working." Which was sort of half a lie, but apparently they wanted to hear a wholehearted lie, about money having absolutely nothing to do with why I wanted to spend twelve hours a day drafting contracts for them, it's my true life passion, blah blah.
249 There are certain advantages to smoking.
250 is nutty. You don't want to work for someone like that anyway.
252: Well, he was already rich as Croesus and yet still working there. So, he wanted people who felt the same way. I can't tell if it's nutty or not. But, I actually did want to work there. Maybe I wouldn't anymore after I'd started.
money having absolutely nothing to do with why I wanted to spend twelve hours a day drafting contracts for them
So he was angling for workaholic losers who would all have mental breakdowns after 3-5 years on the job.
So anyone here know anything about pursuing jobs in academia....? I probably shouldn't be assuming "academia" generally correlates all that well with law schools.
apparently they wanted to hear a wholehearted lie
They were hiring a lawyer and needed to test your skills.
253: So either he's a workaholic, in which case you don't want to work for him. Or since he's in charge he can move enough of the unpleasant parts on to other people, in which case you would only want to stay with the $50 million if you had *his* job instead of yours.
What sort of academic job did you have in mind?
250 -- Should have told them you would bankroll a group of pseudonymous friends' plans to set up an assassination squad. And draft up the various contracts required. Because your second priority, after ridding the planet of people it is better without, is a well drafted tight agreement.
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Well, I'm back in a stupid splint & on more stupid antibiotics. I've had a stupid fever for 3 stupid days and my stupid fingers started swelling up again. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS STUPID CAT BITE ALREADY.
As you were.
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So, I have a humorous song lyric about a scientific topic that I would like to see published in a major journal. Any ideas on how to go about that? Just send it in?
258: In a perfect world? Civil Procedure Professor.
There's a civil procedure job open at the University of Missouri-Kansas City: http://info.umkc.edu/faculty-job-openings/law/.
If you're willing to move to Columbia, Missouri, you could apply to be Dean of the School of Law.
(I'm sure if you were Dean, you could approve yourself to teach civil procedure from time to time, if that's your passion.)
I doubt anything I, or most of the others here, know about academic jobs translates well to law.
Everyone I know who has a legal academic job, who didn't orient there career around an academic job from the get-go (with the sterling credentials that requires), but instead transitioned there from a firm, got their job by: knowing someone on the faculty at a local college of law, volunteering to teach a course in something related to their practice area on a part-time adjunct basis for a semester (while continuing to practice), possibly doing that for several semesters running, all the while making it known that they would potentially be interested in transitioning into a full-time professor position if one became available, and then just getting job offers. That's a sample size of three, which isn't huge, but there's enough similarity in their job paths that it seems relevant.
If I were you, though, the first thing I'd do is move to Missouri. They seem to be hiring there.
As essear says, probably any of my knowledge doesn't translate. But definitely two things you'd need to sort out is how flexible you are about location and what caliber of school you're willing to work at. In terms of getting a job at some not-so-great but local place I'd have guessed that the approach is what urple suggests. There's often lecturer positions that open up on a per-semester basis relatively late, and there you're mostly competing with people who already live in the area (especially for spring semester). Then if your classes are popular with students and you get the faculty to like you, there's some chance of a permanent lectureship.
My impression is that as law is becoming more like the rest of academics the chances of becoming an actual professor (as opposed to a lecturer) without being a researcher from the get-go are getting pretty bad.
I've been wondering if tech companies are really using/going to use those free online programming/CS course sites to recruit.
Since we're talking about colleges and law, is it normal for a public college's counsel to be the state's attorney general? I knew the AG had to sign off on union agreements, but it's a weird feeling to actually read an email that says "Since I am aware you have retained counsel, I can no longer talk to you about this matter unless given permission to do so by the AG," which wouldn't have been necessary, HR emailer, if you'd done what you said and done your investigation two months ago but you didn't and so now I guess the AG is involved. Yay.
Presumably that actually means the state AG's office, not the literal AG.
So, I have a humorous song lyric about a scientific topic that I would like to see published in a major journal.
How about an eclectic web magazine?
Is this the same Eleanor who was screwed out of an advisor because he's a secret jack-ass who is being protected because he can't be trusted around women?
Wasn't that a Lincoln? I was guessing this is the one with the spouse who was not renewed.
How about an eclectic web magazine?
I think you could even make a strong case that the Mineshaft is peer-reviewed.
Not sure when eclectic showed up, but "web magazine" was a response to the possibility that "blogs" would get regulated.
Unfoggetarian is right on the second count and probably the first. The AG himself is the one who signed off on union stuff, but that may have been because the union situation was politically tense enough it might has well have been in Wisconsin. Somehow the AG's office sounds much less overblown and weird, though this is still not going in an ideal direction. The job search isn't either, yet, but there's time and I think it might be good if she did something slightly different for a while until a better spot opens up. We'll see.
263: Willing, yes. 5 years away from able.
Not sure if w/d was coining the phrase here or referring to it. Oldest reference I can find in the last few minutes.
272: Yes. That's exactly how it works in NYS -- the AG is effectively a law firm that the various state agencies are represented by. They get sued, they write us a letter, and going forward the AG's office is their counsel.
282: That is also the earliest I could find on Unfogged (got it on DuckDuckGo but not Google). Earliest mention of "eclectic Web magazine" I can find is either from this 1999 lecture which used it to refer to Slate,
When Bill Gates, for instance, hired the wonderful magazine writer, Michael Kinsley, and made him editor of a witty, eclectic Web magazine, the intention was to charge a subscription for it - but that, swiftly, was unreality. Readers loved it. But they didn't expect to pay for it.Or another reference from 1999 preserved in a Yahoo group.
Back to race and children, I just read and enjoyed a book called Multiplication is for White People, which is getting at a lot of the stuff we discussed about heebie's education post. But the author only barely hedges about fully supporting a program that teaches kids based on theories of "Kemetic" (=black) ancient Egypt. Am I going to have to have a policy on what sorts of Afrocentrism I support and why? I mean, I was Hatshepsut for Halloween and I'd totally support Mara if she wanted to follow in my footsteps, but....
You asked for, ideally, a job as a Civil Procedure Professor; I gave you a link to a posted job opening for a Civil Procedure Professor. I feel as if I have done my part. I can't guarantee the job will still be open in five years; I rather doubt it will.
285: I'd say you should feel as comfortable rejecting spurious race/nationalistic myths based on "Afrocentrism" as you would be with any other form of spurious race/nationalistic myth-making. That there's an understandable impulse underlying it nevertheless doesn't make "Afrocentrism" of the Martin Bernal variety any more intellectually reputable. Likewise it's possible to treat, say, variants of Rastafari with respect without having to accept all their claims about Africanness or Haile Selassie.
The worthwhile caution is to remember that not all Afrocentrism is based on tenuous claims about how the Egypts were really "black Africans" who taught Europe everything it knew. There are varieties which simply offer up "Afrocentric" viewpoints as a situationally-appropriate framing device -- the kind that says that when talking about Africans and their history, for instance, it's probably a good idea to try to work from the inside out instead of from received colonial assumptions -- which are far less toxic. (The complicated part is that these variants can often arise in combination.)
Not all "Kemetic" revivalism is Afrocentric or black nationalist, by the way. Some forms are a variant of New Age wiccanism, others hew closer to or at least began with reconstructionism (and so there's the notion that the term Kemet, "The Black Land," is supposed to refer to Nile-fertilized soil, an idea that arises from Egyptology).
tenuous claims about how the Egypts
Uhhh, "the Egyptians"...
Thanks, Lord Castock. That's a better answer than what I deserved for being flippant in the question and is pretty much what I'd have said if someone had asked me. I actually heard Martin Bernal speak back in college and it's not that everything he says is ridiculous or ahistorical, just that I don't think the details that do seem true add up to what he wants them to.
It's just frustrating because like having a familiarity from a young age with some of the characteristic black church things, I do want her exposed to some of the Afrocentric groups around here, but in both cases it seems a little jerky and/or colonialist that I am putting in caveats about the parts I don't believe or privilege. I put a picture book back on the library shelf in part because the last section was about how it's awesome to be black because you're descended from African kings and queens and that rubbed me the wrong way because kings and queens aren't actually better people or anything, but probably I was unfair and it's just analogous to reinforcing that she's beautiful in a dominant culture she'll eventually remember thinks she's not. But she and I should finally start African dance this weekend and that may help me feel like I'm finding the right way in for us.
I actually have a few friendly acquaintances who follow kemetic paganism, though most of my black pagan friends are involved with Orisha stuff.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that I recommend the book to people interested in how to teach underserved kids but with the caveat that it's highly anecdotal and includes an anecdote about how the ancient Egyptians looked like some kid's Uncle Jimmy that might turn off a lot of readers here.
286: Indeed, it looks to have already been filled. Still, it's the thought that counts.
Oh shit, I should have asked my how to hire legal talent question in this thread? Di, come over to the Citizens United thread. Or I'll be forced to repost here.
I put a picture book back on the library shelf in part because the last section was about how it's awesome to be black because you're descended from African kings and queens and that rubbed me the wrong way because kings and queens aren't actually better people or anything, but probably I was unfair and it's just analogous to reinforcing that she's beautiful in a dominant culture she'll eventually remember thinks she's not.
This amused me.
Partly because I took Hawaiian Punch to the dentist yesterday and the whole thing was non-stop "You're a BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS! Let me see your SPARKLY teeth!" which is probably the most efficient way to warm up a three year old girl.
I wonder how many good hard bites a kiddie dentist takes in a week. Maybe I'll ask next time we go.
The enamel on her back four molars didn't form correctly, and she's got cavities in 3/4 of them, and has to go back next week for a long visit. They recommended conscious sedation, ie Demerol. Poor sweetie.
I mean, she gets new teeth, but the molars hang around for a long time.
The part I thought was amusing is that they let parents hang out with their kid while the Demerol is kicking in, but not in the actual dentristry room, and the reason they give is "We feel it is important to form a relationship directly with the child and get to know them as an individual." Mm-hmm, you don't want me back there so that you can get to know my drugged-up kid as a special snowflake?
I take my kid to the same kids dentist I went to as a kid, and god damn if he doesn't still have the Frogger machine where you can play endless free games of Frogger. I keep trying to find excuses to take her to the dentist.
Film her all high and put it on youtube on the off chance you'll then be able to quit your job and make a living selling t-shirts of your kid on demerol.
Isn't there a line for the Frogger?
Sure. Sit down and wait for me to finish playing my 17th game, seven year old.
Actually, sadly, there were plenty of kids there the last time I was there but no one was playing Frogger except me. It's clearly a nostalgia item designed to bring in parents.
The kids probably all have those hand-held games that I want to call Gameboys because I keep forgetting the name of the current system.
Poor Hawaii! I've complained about Mara's dentist before and they do the Magical Princess Chair thing. She still screams and bites a little, though it gets better every time. And no cavities, though I have to have conversations with the dentist about whether I think she's chewing rocks when she eats small rocks or just swallowing them whole. I know she chews the sticks, at least. Maybe she's secretly Paleo and misunderstands cave food?
305: Or just needs more minerals and fiber?
(This is probably already obvious to you, but have you ruled out accidental nutritional deficiencies? I have a friend who had a chewing on ice habit until sometime in her 20s, when she discovered she had pica and needed more iron.)
Sorry in advance if you already talked about this and it's in the archives somewhere.
307: Her diet is really great and blood tests have never found any deficiencies. It seems to be a combination of genetic predisposition and early neglect/hunger. I'm an anemic ice-chewer and so I'm somewhat sympathetic, but I'm still trying to get her to stop. I used to reassure myself it could be worse after hearing her brother had eaten the whole sole of a flip-flop but then I caught her with one in her mouth the other day. It escaped with just a few teeth marks. She definitely has pica but it seems to be more the self-soothing kind than the nutritional kind.
My wife is somewhat terrified of dentists, and blames part of it on one childhood dentist who was a bit too pushy with the nitrous. "Good girls wear the PRINCESS MASK!"
308: No worries! I'm considering asking the Mineshaft about what they think food tastes like to her since she seems to never have had a sene of smell, but I'm sure I'll get knocked for not taking her to a doctor to figure out whether she actually doesn't. But she has a doctor phobia and I've got increasingly sure the whole time she's lived with us that she can't smell but can taste in some ways. (So baba ghanoush tastes "like lemonade" and she really does seem to find ice cream and sour cream indistingshable even now that her vocabulary is good enough to differentiate. I think she mostly judges food based on looks, but there must be other aspects of it as well.)
310 sounds like the opening of a Joss Whedon movie or something. Yikes!
she really does seem to find ice cream and sour cream indistingshable
Huh, I would think the texture differences would make them distinguishable. Maybe being attuned to food texture is something she'll key in on as she gets older.
290: includes an anecdote about how the ancient Egyptians looked like some kid's Uncle Jimmy that might turn off a lot of readers here.
Huh.
Gee, I seem to be fond of the interjection today.
311, 314: Or the temperature difference.
317: Maybe her fridge is set too cold.
311: I assume you've already tried eating with a nose clip on to get a sense for how it tastes to her?
It might not be a perfect replication, for example if she's missing something that the taste buds and smell sensors both use, but it seems like it would help.
310 sounds like the opening of a Joss Whedon movie
Or Blue Velvet.
Although ice cream versus sour cream sounds like trouble with sweet and sour, which definitely live on the tongue.
I had a friend who lost her sense of smell as an adult, and she said food tasted kind of disgusting as a result. But that may have been a result of losing the sense, rather than of never having had it. She turned to spicy-hot as her main source of interest in food, and then eventually her sense of smell came back.
the Frogger machine where you can play endless free games of Frogger.
Sequence of reactions to this:
1) Surge of delight
2) Shame
3) Curiosity about possible existence of Frogger app
4) Realization that Frogger app would not be same as Frogger arcade game
5) Realization that the actual difference would be me not being eight
6) Downloading of Frogger app
320: Blue Velvet meets Little Shop of Horrors.
Martin Bernal is a longtime family friend and about the nicest, mild-mannered scholarly British guy you could meet, so it's always been weird that he is the face of SCARY AFRONATIONALISM.
I don't love my job, but I'm not looking for work right now. It's reliable, and low-stress, and a low-stress job seems particularly important these days. However, I've bookmarked this thread so I can refer to 193 and its responses when I do update my resume.
326: He is super nice and helpful and gentlemanly! (He also presents his work differently to different audiences [well, duh], in ways that if one wanted to be ungenerous one could call cynical. Or something.) Also! Alan Gardiner's grandson!
Blue Velvet meets Little Shop of Horrors.
DON'T YOU FUCKING FEED ME, SEYMOUR!
Has anybody actually read Black Athena? I haven't, so I find the whole thing a bit confusing, since the claim that the Greeks were influenced by the Phoenicians and the Egyptians must surely be pretty non-contentious in its simplest form. So what does Bernal claim additionally that sends people like Lefkowitz off on one?
I did not know 328.last at all. Cool! He was gracious and entertaining when I met him, but the talk he gave was pretty wishy-washy, as I recall.
As far as what Mara can taste, I think it's more similar to people who see the world in grayscale from birth than like just tasting with a blocked nose with taste preconceptions. She tastes sweet = like honey, spicy = spicy like a pepper, sour = like a lemon or lime or grapefruit, sweet/sour = like lemonade, bitter = like an olive. I know she recognizes and likes salty foods but doesn't have a catchphrase for them beyond "delicious." So far, almost all foods fall into one of these groups and her dislikes have to do with texture or color (preferring yellow to white cheese, for instance.)
330: I read a little bit of volume 3 that I needed for my thesis resaerch and found the etymology stuff fascinating, but as questionable as ancient etymology always is. I should probably read the whole thing.
(Forgive me if I comment a lot today. Just found out my dead car is not worth salvaging and I'll need to buy one, which is sending me into a tailspin of anxiety and uncertainty and impostor syndrome.)
Thorn, you are worth having a car die on you. Believe in yourself.
Buying a car is kind of fun except for the whole money part of it.
I read Vol. 1 an age ago (1989?). Lefkowitz et al. don't love that part of his thesis is that classics as a discipline was essentially created in the late 19th century by a bunch of deranged racists, and so any conclusions reached or disciplinary boundaries created by those folks have to be understood as deeply informed by that racism.
The best person on this whole fight is Mo/lly Myer/owitz L/evine.
Thorn, what kind of car are you looking for?
classics as a discipline was essentially created in the late 19th century by a bunch of deranged racists
Well, if he uses that kind of language it's going to provoke a reaction, innit? But strike 'deranged' and substitute 'early' for 'late' and again it becomes only slightly controversial. Of course 19th century classists were racists; they were UMC white men in the 19th century, QED.
But even so, they can't have failed to notice that, e.g. the Greeks used a version of the Phoenician alphabet for all their written communication. In the middle of the last century there was a period in Greek history which was described in all the textbooks as "The Orientalising Period" (roughly c. 8-7) because of the huge scale of cultural importation from western Asia. That was totally mainstream, even then.
337: I don't fucking know! A cheap one. The one that died was a '94 or '93 Camry, if that tells you anything. There's a 2004 Sienna that seats 8, which would be useful since I have guilt after the seatbelt discussion about letting either a tall thin or medium-height stocky 6-yr-old sit in my front seat, but there's no other way to transport Mara and her siblings/cousins as is. And I'd like us to have more kids someday and definitely don't want to have to buy a new car to accommodate that, but what if we don't and I'm stuck with a van? I can't afford a newer Prius and don't want the risk of an old one. Station wagon recommendations would be welcome, I guess. I just hate having to talk about money and think about debt (and my debt level is low for my age) and make phone calls to people selling cars and all that.
339: Come on, Thorn. A Suburu. You know this.
I'm loking at Subarus for reasons other than the stereotype, but they sem awfully SUV-heavy and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
My 15-year-old car is desperately in need of repairs that will cumulatively cost a few grand, which I've been putting off partly because I don't want to spend the money but even more because I can't decide if it's worth investing a few grand in a 15-year-old piece of shit. OTOneH, a few grand would probably keep the car running in top shape for several more years, at least, and is a lot less than I'd probably spend on something newer. OTOtherH, it's a piece of shit, which I inherited from my wife and have never liked in the first place. If it were a car I liked, there's no question I'd invest the money to keep it running. Which makes doing anything else feel vain and irresponsible.
Kia Sedona 8 seater is cheaper than a basic Camry new.
Definitely go station wagon. [not a Rec for Thorn] this guy in my building has a weird custom built BMW M5 wagon. I am totally fascinated by this car in all ways.
Urple, I told you to use your inheritance on a preorder for a Focus ST, but you probably put it into prudent savings like a bitch.
342: What I should do if I were a good person is buy the car she doesn't like off Lee so she can buy something she would, but I don't like her stupid Infiniti either and it feels too wide when I drive it.
The passenger door frame is badly dented from where my wife ran into a brick wall about five years ago. I would make fun of her about this, except I'd run into the same brick wall a few years earlier. (In my defense, I was half-drunk at the time, whereas she was stone-sober. She thinks this is a weak defense.) We'd had the door repaired when I hit the wall, but after the second time we just said fuck it.
I've been very happy with my Kia Forte, but it's not a wagon. I don't have direct experience with any other Kia models, but the discontinued-in-2010 Rondo seats seven (while more wagon-sized than van/SUV-size) and got decent reviews.
Based on my experience with just the one VW Jetta wagon, I would not recommend it. The repairs have been frequent and varied.
Definite no on the 2002 Passat for your needs. Likely to be very repairy.
I actually quite like the Outback wagons (or are they considered "crossovers" or some shit?) but the Imprezas get far better mileage.
I drive a Subaru Legacy. I wouldn't say I've been overly happy with it, given all the thousands of dollars in repair work it's needed, but it was already very old when I got it. My mom has a Forester that she likes a lot, though.
We're in a recession characterized by low demand and extremely low interest rates. I think the price of used cars may still be boosted by the post-Cash-for-Clunkers shortage. If there ever was a time for frugal people to buy a new car, this seems like it would be it.
352: I was Subaru from 1979-2009 but my last Outback pissed me off and they lost me.
Yeah, I had a 2000 Legacy wagon in NY and while the ride was a little rough, it was a good enough little guy.
352: And there are Impreza Outbacks too! I hate cars so much. None of this makes sense to me. I should probably go read a book and eat lunch.
I'd rather pay a low, manageable amount now than have the stress of payments for a new or near-new car and then dip into savings for fixes as needed. This car managed for 4 years or so under a no-extreme-measures regime. But probably this is because I don't think I deserve good things or something psychological.
Honda Civic must be too small for what you need but very few maintenance issues. Some ppl I know w/ multiple kids like the Mazda 5.
Honda Civic must be too small for what you need but very few maintenance issues. Some ppl I know w/ multiple kids like the Mazda 5.
I'd rather pay a low, manageable amount now than have the stress of payments for a new or near-new car and then dip into savings for fixes as needed.
Definitely don't get a new car. A used Subaru is probably a good choice; my problems notwithstanding, they're famously reliable. In fact, the kinds of problems I've had have mostly only cropped up because the thing has continued to run long past the point where most other cars have died from more common causes.
Thanks, all. I'm going to step away from the computer but I really am grateful for all the advice, even if I don't end up using most of it. Just having car names to google helped a lot, as did not having anyone make fun of me for not being a competent adult. I've been so happy with Toyotas, but could see myself heading in the Subaru direction too and would never have thought to look at Kias without this advice. I wish I knew what was going to happen to our family in the next year or to so I could make plans based on that, but oh well.
Mazda5 is a good choice. I am anti Subaru, partly for irrational reasons but I really do think they provide poor value per dollar and are coasting on an undeserved reputation. Pretty much any normal car you buy newer than about 2007 will be plenty reliable -- cars are very good these days. Financially, your best bet is usually a late model used car you plan on keeping for 10+ years.
Used Ford Flex would be a good choice.
I went to the bar where I know my mechanic always eats/drinks lunch to eat my own. He says I want a used Subaru wagon, which I think is about right. I'm assuming the "used" part mitigates some of what Halford is saying, but I'll also look around since local used Subaru wagon selection is not the world's greatest. But the mechanic (who's my parents' across-the-street neighbor and we ascertained has known me since I was 5) says that repairs are generally minimal, teo notwithstanding, and parts prices are mid-range.
that repairs are generally minimal, teo notwithstanding
Yeah, my situation really is exceptional. Mine is a 1993 with 200,000 (mostly city) miles on it. Get one newer than that and you'll be fine.
repairs are generally minimal, teo notwithstanding
Yeah, don't let that reckless fucker drive your car. He'll put you in the poorhouse.
My brother-in-law hit a deer with a Subaru but that probably wasn't the car's fault and he really loved that car.
Our Outback has been fine ('98 with 150K miles) but the next car we get is almost certainly will be a used Honda minivan. The dimensions aren't really that different from the Outback and they get the same mpg but with a shit ton more space and power.
Lots of people around here drive Subarus. I don't know if they're coasting on an undeserved reputation, but I keep being told I should buy one for the AWD in the winters. Unsolicited -- people seem to like them a lot.
I grew up watching my parents pour money into old clunky cars. It put all of us kids off of a) used and b) American cars, which is totally unfair as the problems of a 1985 Oldsmobile wagon are unlikely to be those of a post 2008 car.
Teo can drive my wagon anytime, laydeez. Now I'm worrying that I don't really want a wagon since it doesn't give me any more seating than something like another Camry, does it? Augh.
Ha, they are a lot more popular up here than in So Cal. The AWD really does help for that snow driving.
Lots of people around here drive Subarus.
They are extraordinarily popular in Alaska. The mechanic I go to specializes in Subarus, which is really quite remarkable when you consider how rarely they break down.
The 1970 Pontiac Catalina wagon has a third row of seats, if you want something clearly larger than a Camry.
I went to the bar where I know my mechanic always eats/drinks lunch to eat my own.
If he passes this tipping point and just starts drinking lunch, I recommend finding a new mechanic.
Now I'm worrying that I don't really want a wagon since it doesn't give me any more seating than something like another Camry, does it?
Not more seating, but more space for hauling other stuff. If having more than five seats is a high priority a minivan would be a better choice than a wagon.
Now I'm worrying that I don't really want a wagon since it doesn't give me any more seating than something like another Camry, does it?
If you can try test driving one of those Honda vans. I tried one and it drove and handled much more carlike than I was expecting. A far cry from the old Ford Econoline van my parents had.
I can attest that everyone in Boulder, CO drives Subarus.
I have a 2002 Subaru Forester with about 90000 miles on it. It hasn't really needed anything except minor/routine repairs. Up in British Columbia, it was nice to have with the weather and all - I had a landlord who was in the auto parts business and he really spoke highly of Subarus - but down in southern California it does seem like a lot of the features aren't really necessary.
372: My theory is that they're a relatively inexpensive AWD-standard option so it becomes the choice of a lot of non-natives after moving here.. Still, when you go out for coffee with faculty and you come into the parking lot and the question is "so which Subaru is yours?" it's pretty funny to me.
I'm talking myself down from the not-enough-seats thing. We only have one child and if we get another it will be because we thought about it and chose to or because Mara's mom has had another baby, either or even both of which would work with a wagon. I don't really want to supervise more than three of Mara's siblings/cousins plus her at a time anyway, so I don't need to be able to haul them all. And having enough storage to make runs to Home Depot or Ikea or even just the farmers' market sound great. There's a manual 2003 Outback for a good price that I think will be what I look at first.
I have a 2000 Passat. Held up pretty well until I broke (and it was my fault) a gear this winter. And it needs some front end stuff done. Nothing is cheap.
The wife has a 2000 Grand Cherokee. POS, imo, but it'll carry a kayak, canoe, 12' surfboard, 4 bikes, plus 4 largish people, gear, and a dog.
Please tell me you put the canoe on the roof.
Suburus were also all over the place in norther NY.
We just got a Nissan Leaf, and are loving it. It is larger and handles better than any car I've owned, and it has had little or no impact on our electricity bills. (They are up ~$20 from the same time last year. On the other hand they are basically the same as the electric bills from the months right before we got the car.)
A recent Union of Concerned Scientists report compared the greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity generated for electric cars to the greenhouse gasses emitted by various conventional cars. They say that a Leaf driven in our part of the country is responsible for as much greenhouse gas as a conventional car that gets 45 MPG. Coincidentally, this is what our old car gets, but our old car is significantly suckier.
Moved out here with the canoe on the Passat. Which was fine until we got blown off the interstate by a crosswind just past Anaconda. When we first got the boat, I had a bug; we'd usually use the other car, but from time to time it made sense to go with the bug.
Please tell me you put the canoe on the roof.
You've got some hella weird taste in porn, Moby.
I like our Honda minivan so much that I'd consider getting another one for myself, if having two minivans wasn't obviously absurd.
You never know. Maybe you'll have ten more kids.
I'm talking myself down from the not-enough-seats thing.
Good for you! Now talk down my wife. She's convinced she needs a minivan because a handful of times a year there are 5-6 of us going somewhere at the same time. I keep trying to tell her that it would be cheaper just to take two cars on those rare occasions rather than gassing up something that's bigger than she needs for 99% of her driving, but that logic is lost on her.
||
iPhone was stolen. What do I need to do besides file a police report? Change certain passwords?
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389: they get reasonably good gas mileage.
Did you set up iCloud? You may be able to remotely wipe it if you did. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/find-my-iphone/id376101648?mt=8
The way "find my iPhone" works from a computer is you go to iCloud.com log in and click the "find my iPhone" button. Note that it will only work if your phone is running a recent version of iOS and iCloud is activated on your phone. And it can't do anything while the phone is turned off. But it only takes a minute so it's worth trying.
To lock the phone, put a message on the phone ("Fuck you thief, I've called the cops and know where you live now!"), or wipe the phone once it's located, click on the green dot, then click on the i, and then do what you want to do. (Note this also works for finding lost phones, you can get the phone to make a noise even if its volume is off.)
I did that and then they cleaned it do that it was untraceable.
Ah well, worth at try. Sounds like it's a pro then.
Speaking of race and children, why are all the little white boys named "Henry" all of a sudden? Better than all of them being named Jack, Sam and Max, I suppose, but not by much.
Now I am really pissed off though. I have had stomach problems all week, work sucks, it's too damn hot and I'm getting allergies. Plus my birthday cake was a lot more expensive than I was expecting. Hmph.
Happy Birthday, cake-haver.
I think that should be "cake eater," which I was recently informed is a term used in Minnesota with the meaning "rich person."
They don't have an Lotus in Minnesota.
399: Primarily "person who lives in a particular fairly rich town".
Speaking of race and children, why are all the little white boys named "Henry" all of a sudden?
I have absolutely no idea, but it's a weird name, I'll grant you that. It has no flavour, no ... wait, are they all afraid to seem offbeat in any conceivable way? I don't know. Henry isn't even a variant of anything that I know of, and doesn't admit of a nickname.
Oh, except "Hank", I guess. No comment.
Um, don't we have a prominent contributor to this blog with a little white boy named "Henry"?
401: Huh, now that I think about it that was indeed the context in which its use was illustrated.
399: It's also used locally to denigrate the Washburn High School sports teams, the Millers, as they derive their name from the famous flour milling family, and because Washburn used to be pretty much the richest high school in town.
403: Actually, since my father's name is an ethnic variant of Henry, I don't really mind it so much. It was just amusing to be at an event with a lot of grups and have them all calling out to their little Henrys. (One Henry had an older brother Theo, which would be awesome if it was short for Theolonious or Theofanis or something. Or Theodoric, that would totally kick ass. Next male Unfogged baby should totally be named Theodoric.)
Oh, except "Hank", I guess.
Also "Kiki" (short for Enrique).
Harry, Henny, probably lots of other ones for the other ethnic variants.
403: I didn't know, or remember, that. It's as fine a name as any other, obviously. I was fooling around. I'm not really on board with name scoffing in general. I have friends named Sky (Schuyler) and Sam, which are pretty plain, along with Andromeda, not so plain, but whatever.
Used Ford Flex would be a good choice.
This is exactly what I want.
I like Henry on little white boys. I agree there are a lot of them but they're all people I like! It seems like a sweet old grandpa's name, a name you would have thought was lame when you were a kid, but now you're older, and you appreciate grandpa.
The old-lady names have come back into style too. Violet, Olive... It's like a reaction to when all the kids had gender-neutral place-names?
I admit that when a good friend named her first-born Matilda, everyone was given pause. Things have worked out fine, though.
411: That's what the cool moms drive here.
I can attest that everyone in Boulder, CO drives Subarus.
Subarus are really the Tevas of cars.
I just read 411 like it was a boy's name recommendation (Used Ford Flex Geebie ??), and STRONGLY DISAGREED with it!
But I agree with it as a car recommendation. I rented a Ford Escape recently and thought it was A-OK. Yay America!
415: I want to be a cool mom. Flexes are the Macbook of minivans.
Also I like the name Henry. Also I can't think of which frequent contributer might have a son named Henry.
I might have a son named Henry in that I have a son and I don't think I've put his name here.
What makes you think you're a frequent contributer?
Comments are contributions, sort of.
420: I was going to say, It might be Moby Hick. Looks like I would have been TOTALLY RIGHT (in that it might be).
My ex-boss's son's name is my dad's name. That blew my mind. Partly since a boss is a father figure, so, whoa. And partly since I don't know any other people born in the U.S., younger than my father, with my father's name. I think this is literally true. It's not Adolf though.
The food drive calls expired cans of pinto beans a "contribution." I assume the word means "something we'd refuse except that takes more work than doing nothing."
Comments are contributions. I was questioning your frequent chops. But kiddingly.
419.last: Someone reading might have a son named Henry, and that's all that matters. So (cue Sesame Street style lesson) don't be mean if you don't mean it.
A friend named her son Edward recently, and refers to him as Edward -- it's after her father, who died young -- and hey, it has a certain elegance.
403: I also have a little white boy whose name has not appeared here. It's not Henry, though.
I too have a little white boy not named here nor named Henry.
427: No, I'm just lagging behind comments. I was being mean in 402. I'm talking to myself. But also to the general name-slagging conversations that happen around here once a year or so!
In fact, I have a lot of things not named Henry.
The old-lady names have come back into style too. Violet, Olive...
I'm eagerly awaiting the resurgence of Mildred and Gertrude.
I could list them. But it would be more efficient to list the things I have which are named Henry, and then take the complement.
His name is in a box with a sample of a radioactive ion. If that ion decays before we open the box, his name will be Henry.
I have something named Henry, but it's not my son.
I don't have a name yet for my NEW CAR (trying to get the thread to fold back in on itself like a ... Klein hat or something).
But I don't think it's a Henry. I don't know if it's a boy or a girl even.
Generally I call all my cars Bessie, but this one is no Bessie. It might be like a Vince????
Because it always comes through with the big hits.
It's like a pretty weird car! It's a Volvo C30 and it is newish and red. (Totes losing anonymity with this - they're kind of unusual around here, though I saw more in California - maybe it'll suck in the snow, if it ever snows again.)
So far I am very happy with it. It's a bit frivolous and unique, speedy but gets decent mileage, the back seat folds down for my dog to ride in back. Sunroof. Put some music on. Yay. Nice change of pace from 17 year old Bessie who is, I understand, doing donuts in a beautiful meadow now.
Definitely not a Bessie. Maybe a Henrik?
These are some great suggestions and I will see how they go over!!!
I like Kiki because she sounds capricious.
Has anyone seen all these ridiculously over-compensating Dodge Chargers around and thought of the Russian cops' car in Virtual Light? That's my referent.
Actually, all meanness and sarcasm aside, I'm in favor of devolving back to traditional white people names for little white kids. Of course, that could include "Lotus", after Coffman Union's namesake. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing "Vernon" and "Earl" and "Harold" and "Percy" coming up as often as "Oliver", "Ethan" and "Mason".
I don't see how any Volvo could be a Vince. I'd go for Clyde, or Maeve, which have more dignity. Henrik/Kiki is good.
"Kiki" is the Tagalog cognate for "chi-chi" in Spanish, right? That's what my Filipina friend said, at least. I went to HS with a Filipina girl who went by "Kiki", which she thought was odd.
Also, I really don't mind grups as parents. If I mock, it's only because I recognize the idiosyncracies of that group in my own damn self.
I sort of want a Dodge Charger for reasons not unrelated to horrible tv from my childhood.
I'm actually already reserving Ursula for in case I have a daughter who I carry in a sling and we wander the earth! Like just in case of that.
452: Yeah, the Volvo aspect is tricky. Actually I was at my mechanic's with Bessie and I was like "thinking of giving up on the old girl..." and he was like "Don't do it!!" and I mentioned the C30 and this woman waiting there was all "Oh is that the one that's not really a Volvo?" And I was like, fuck you guys! What's really a real anything, anyway, guys? And anyway see you around, never!
I did see somebody drive a new one into a pillar at a gas station. That bumper popped apart so easily at such a low speed. You'd never be able to jump it over a creek and keep driving the way you could with the original version.
Have I ever mentioned that ursyne is one of my favorite commenters? Because she totally is.
I've got a hat, not a visor. I drink Budweiser.
Have a son, who is not only taller than me, but is not named Henry. It's my middle name, though, and I'm married to an Ursula.
ursyne is reminding me of my high-school friend who named everyone's cars. The '89 Camry I drove was "Charlie." I forget the name of her Honda Civic. I feel like it could have been "Bessie" but that would be weird, because ursyne doesn't appear to be my high-school friend.
Also wondering why I'm awake at 4 AM after three hours of sleep. I didn't have that much caffeine.
407: As the prominent contributor who's given birth to a fairly large Henry (who we do call Hank on occasion), we had an unsettling experience with the Spanish-language nickname mentioned. When our Columbian babysitter called him that, it sounded more like KEE-kay than KEE-kee, which is how you'd think you'd pronounce Kiki. But we never thought about how it was spelled, until she got him a birthday card, and we had to have a talk about how it's a lovely nickname, and it's completely fine delivered orally, but please, don't ever write "Kike" on anything ever around English-speakers.
And no offense taken at the Henry-slagging. We were at the front end of the wave (he's turning eleven) and I was going for a pleasant, ordinary name that wouldn't be terribly common. And then everyone else started naming their kids Henry. I blame all of them.
Next male Unfogged baby should totally be named Theodoric.
No, Theophylact, after Theophylact the Unbearable.
Who dares bear an unbearable baby?
Same babysitter called him El Alemán for being blond, stompy, and imperious. (It got started when he was hammering on a friend's apartment door when he was about two or three, shouting their name and demanding that they come out.)
I admit that when a good friend named her first-born Matilda, everyone was given pause.
Matilda is a pretty fucking hip name these days, though a bit past its hipster prime. A very cool cafe/bar in Berlin with this name opened almost 8 years ago.
Yeah, Matilda and Imogen rode into mainstreamitude by the grace of Michelle Williams and Julia Roberts.
The old timey name craze is a thing in Germany, too, and it is interesting to see the name differences. Friends names their kid Agnes.
467 is me, swapping up "Henry" for "Noah".
Things I've noticed about N. European naming:
1. Everybody in Germany seems to give their kids (esp. the boys) Danish names.
2. Everybody in Denmark seems to give their kids hyphenated first names.
If you named a boy "Official Bikini Inspector," his driver's license would match his t-shirt and he might get more respect at the beach.
Cassie's preschool class includes two boys named Sirr and Mimmo (pronounced MEE-moe). I do not think they will run into many others.
This conversation always reminds me of that bit in The Blessed Damozel:
'We two,'she said,'will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily,Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.'
I mean, Gertrude?
Everybody in Germany seems to give their kids (esp. the boys) Danish names.
All over Germany, or just in the north? People in the north are definitely more likely to give their kids Scandinavian names. Per, Brit(a), Annika, Björn, etc.
"Post Toasties were previously called Elijah's Manna (c. 1904) until angry clergymen protested the name; its name was changed in 1908."
My son is spending an awful lot of time with a girl named Tesla, and from their graduation, I know there's at least one more Tesla in the class. For a long time, and probably still, Germans couldn't make up names, but had to use approved names from a list. My daughter's middle name, Hope, is not on the list. We certainly heard a lot about that. Maybe will the Wall down and the danger of Russian invasion past, their willing to let parents make choices offlist.
You also get Frisian and low German names a lot more in the north: Wiebke, Inka, Heiko, Hauke, Elke, Gerrit.
482: This is just from what I see in the media, so it's not usually obvious what region they're from.
485: What did Elijah have to do with manna?
Actually my son's soon to be roommate was born (we see from Facebook) in Germany, and his name is Quincy. He's a black football recruit from Washington state, so maybe he was born under American jurisdiction and not German. We'll find out in August, I'm sure.
I went to college with an upper-midwestern Elke. Never met any Wiebkes though.
486: My analysis was that it's more about a number of traditional male German names having unsavory associations.
490: And I went to HS with a fellow of South Asian extraction named "Quintus". I don't know if he was actually the fifth kid or what though.
My analysis was that it's more about a number of traditional male German names having unsavory associations.
Do you have grounding for this? I was under the impression that there were also other countries with lists or at least guidelines for allowed names.
Oh! Other German kidlet I know is named Florian -- which, I was told, is a common name for some part of Germany (in the south I think) and St. F. is the patron saint of firemen? Or something?
494: No, perhaps I was unclear: I meant that the parents' choices were influenced by that, not the decision about what names could be on the list. I had assumed that Adolf, Hermann, Horst, Otto, etc. were still perfectly legal in Germany, just not as popular as they would have been pre-war.
495: possibly named after the Kraftwerk founder?
Not that I have a bunch of German friends, but the only "Adolf" that comes up as a friend-of-a-friend on FB is a black guy from the South. That must have been an interesting childhood.
I had assumed that Adolf, Hermann, Horst, Otto, etc. were still perfectly legal in Germany, just not as popular as they would have been pre-war.
Adolf yes, but Otto? Because of who, Skorzeny?
I had assumed that Adolf, Hermann, Horst, Otto, etc. were still perfectly legal in Germany, just not as popular as they would have been pre-war.
And yet Heinrich seems to have done just fine post-war, at least judging by the number of Heinrichs I know who would have been born in the 50s. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that other than Adolf, most names made it through the war without that much baggage. They might seem more ominous to non-Germans because they only hear them in the context of Evil Nazis, but they're still pretty normal names. If they're not used as much any more, it's more because of unfashionability.
And to come back to the OP, when i mentioned the roommate to my parents, I didn't mention race. No sense opening a can of worms -- if the kids end up friends, they'll find out if they meet the guy (not impossible if everyone goes to Vancouver Island for a summer weekend, for example) but colorblind (or mute) works until then.
I mean, Gertrude?
In these parts "Our Gert" is an archaic synonym for "Her indoors" or "The old girl". Not recommended.
Right, I was just speculating. Obviously, that is not as redolent an association.
501: In the United States, you never see kids named "George" any more.
But what makes a name fashionable or unfashionable? It doesn't seem unreasonable that unfashionable could be in some part due to a negative association, even if it wasn't a strong one.
Everybody in Germany seems to give their kids (esp. the boys) Danish names.
Mumble Schleswig-Holstein question mumble.
I mean, look at, say, "Orville" in the US. You've got Wright (very positive), Faubus (very negative) and Redenbacher (kinda silly). So even though it's an old-timey name with a "v" in it, I wouldn't expect to see many little Orvilles running around, at least not until Wright is the only one people remember.
And Whiillllburrrr probably won't make a comeback until after the Baby Boomers all kick off.
508: Eh, I'm still not convinced. The names you mentioned don't sound like EVILNAZI!1!!, just more fustily old-fashioned.
Seriously, how many Germans know who Otto Skorzeny was?
I guess all these quaint British phrases are supposed to mean "an old lady".
People's notions of which Nazis are famous seem to be all over the map. I don't know who "Horst" is supposed to be. "Reinhard" comes to mind first for me.
"Heinrich" is obviously one of the most common German names, at least at that time, and therefore not as tainted by individual malefactors as "Adolf".
514: I have a friend, a few years younger than me, from a slightly more working-class, white ethnic background, who refers to his wife (who is much more professional class) as "my old lady". Which just seems very silly to me, even as a deliberately ironic anachronism.
515.2: Horst Wessel, the Nazi pimp, immortalized in the Horst Wessel Lied.
515.2: It comes up, from time to time.
Hey, everybody who likes comix is aware of Jason Lutes' Berlin, right? It's frustrating to follow, 'cause he only does an issue once ever few months (if you're lucky), but it's one of the best graphic novels I've ever read. There's one issue that is centered on the events surrounding Horst Wessel's killing.
330: Has anybody actually read Black Athena?
Yes, and I recommend reading this (an anthology of heavy drubbings from specialists in the fields Bernal was making claims about that Black Athena never recovered from). Bernal basically represents a school of Afrocentric history as speculative, sloppy and distorted as the Eurocentrism it critiques.
Imogen rode into mainstreamitude by the grace of every bearer of the name I've ever met being graceful and beautiful.
520. Yes, the names I recognise in that book look pretty solid. But it still doesn't tell me what Bernal argues that is so objectionable. As I said yesterday, it's non-contentious that the Greeks were heavily influenced from western Asia - they themselves understood that - and it doesn't seem unreasonable to hypothesise some Egyptian influence given that they'd been trading with Egypt since the bronze age.
What I don't grasp is whether Bernal is simply over-emphasising marginal effects that ought to be in footnotes to brief papers rather than popular literature, or if he's actually inventing stuff out of whole cloth.
521. You haven't met Mrs y's niece, clearly.
I presume 'Horst' is Horst Wessel, although for me the first thought is: Horst P. Horst.
Famous for the 'Mainbocher Corset' among other photographs. A photo a lot of people will recognise, I suppose.
522: I don't know how well wikipedia represents the scholarly criticism, but it suggests that the main objections are linguistic -- that Bernal traces a lot of Greek vocabulary to Egyptian and other African languages in a way that doesn't hold up. I haven't read Black Athena or any of the criticism, but that would make sense as an area that's both very easy to make up plausible bullshit that's convincing to a lay reader in, and that's possible to fairly solidly discredit on the basis of other scholarship.
522: He goes far beyond claiming heavy influence. He claims that Greek civilization more or less directly developed from near eastern (especially Egyptian) civilization, via invasion and/or mass colonization. Which he pretty much admits is contradicted by the reasonably rich material record from the relevant period, but something something mythology something and anyway you can't really prove anything from the archaeological record so why would anyone defend a story constructed by 19th century racists? (That's really only a slightly unfair compression of his position.)
OK, so it's plain nutso on a scale slightly beyond Thor Heyerdahl but possibly just short of Erich von Däniken. That's all I wanted to know.
525: Yes, this exactly. Lots and lots of etymologies that (apparently, this isn't something I know anything about) are terrible. You thought Aphrodite came from "aphros" (foam)? WRONG. It's from the name of blah blah I don't even remember.
It still really isn't Chariots of the Gods, though.
528: It's obvious, isn't it? Aphrodite derived from Afro.
527 makes me want to see more of chris y's nutso scale.
1. Germany is a western country.
2. Western civiliation started with the Greeks. 3. Greek civilization can be credited to Egypt.
Therefore, Africans are to blame for the Nazi regime.
It still really isn't Chariots of the Gods
Few things are, I'm relieved to say.
Imogen rode into mainstreamitude by the grace of every bearer of the name I've ever met being graceful and beautiful.
A girl of that name and description I knew once was known as Infrared Imogen, on the basis that she was hot.
Is Velikovsky out past von Daniken?
And frankly the hysterical response from some quarters said far worse things about them then anything Bernal wrote did about him. (Yes, Mary L., I'm looking at you.)
I'm shocked that "Imogen" is a popular name. Is that true? The only people I've ever heard of with that name are Imogen Heap and one of the unkempt and ill-mannered kids in "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever". For the former I thought her name was a pseudonym to make her sound distinctive and old-timey.
535: definitely. Actually breaking the laws of physics beats wild theorising about alien visitors.
537: I think it's useful to break down nuttiness into deliberative nuttiness, forensic nuttiness and epidiectic nuttiness.
"Catwoman is a terrific movie!" is epidiectically nuts.
"Spacemen built the pyramids!" is forensically nuts.
"Nuke Japan! Nuke the Gulf!" is deliberatively nuts.
I'm not sure that you can really compare them; they're apples and oranges.
539: it's like that list I posted the last time we did this. If you yelled out Imogen! at a Kankakee daycare probably no one would answer. Prospect Park and halfordville is something else again.
I have or had - not sure if I could put my hand to it now - a copy of a book self-published in the 1970s which claimed that the Emperor Nero had not committed suicide in 68 CE but had gone underground as an itinerant poet and toured the empire anonymously inspiring a good proportion of silver Latin poetry.
But that wasn't the best bit. The best bit was either the back cover, which proudly advertised his prior publications proving that Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford, or the unqualified and unsupported assertion in the Introduction that the Achaemenid Persians were ancestral to the Germans.
I would give the whole thing 6 out of 10 on the nutso scale. To get an 7, you need to invoke extraterrestrials, going up to 8 if they're in league with any human agency. 9 or 10 involves asserting the historicity of Atlantis or Lemuria or both (When you think about it, these are actually more impossible than extraterrestrial visitations). Hollow earth theories get a 10 all the time.
522: Aside from what others have already noted, Bernal also constructed a highly speculative meta-narrative of Western scholarship which had the "Ancient Model" -- which was supposed to have preserved some vestiges of his "Afroasiatic roots" hypothesis -- being superseded by the racism- and Romanticism-driven "Aryan model." This meta-narrative, like most of the rest of Black Athena, fared poorly on contact with scholars knowledgeable of the source material.
It was basically a consistent theme throughout the whole work. Actual Egyptologists were perplexed by his archaeological claims about supposed Egyptian settelement in the Aegean; practising linguists right away saw the crankery in etymologies that threw out the Comparative Model in favour of superficial "look-alike" speculation; et cetera.
I think what really pissed Lefkowitz off specifically was that she was a teacher of archaeology, and found herself having suddenly to de-program undergrads who had come into contact with Black Athena and thought they knew what was "really" going on. On that score I'm not too sympathetic to claims of supposed "hysterical response" like oudemia's in 536. (Bernal also obviously did get up the nose of some actual racists, of course; it's a shame he didn't do so with some actual facts.)
543: Somewhere in a box in the attic I have a half-dozen or so unsolicited manuscripts proving, e.g., that Linear A was an Iroquois dialect, or that the Phaistos Disk is closely related to a modern East Asian language (can't remember which specifically). I would have put these higher on the scale, but I guess the lack of extraterrestrials has to count for something.
I can't find it anymore, but I wrote a thing on the Phaistos disk for a children's magazine and received *deeply unhinged* letters from the public ever after.
the historicity of Atlantis or Lemuria or both (When you think about it, these are actually more impossible than extraterrestrial visitations)
An advanced civilization calamitously disappearing doesn't seem that impossible.
Everyone should read "The Marginalization of Martin Bernal," by Molly Myerowitz Levine, which appeared in known crank hotbed of extraterrestrial lunacy and Afrocentrism Classical Philology.
546. Great stuff. I have an original copy of this gem, which sounds right up your street. Why do people send you this stuff?
I mean, how long could traces of a Troodontic city-state survive, anyway?
An advanced civilization calamitously disappearing doesn't seem that impossible.
It's the geology that gets 10/10.
551: that's great. They don't send me this stuff anymore, and they never sent it to me personally; but once upon a time I was involved in a bronze age Mediterranean studies organization that was a natural target for such manuscripts.
This all reminds me that once upon a time I worked with the author of this Atlantean travesty, who was otherwise, to all appearances, a very smart and sensible geoarchaeologist. But I guess the book earns him a 9 on the crank scale. (Actually, the book, nutty as it is, isn't that nutty; there's no actual lost continent, for one thing.)
Quite. Advanced civilisation disappears calamitously? 1-2 at most. Entire continent disappears calamitously? 10.
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1996/96.04.05.html
That's Bernal responding to Lefkowitz. He does pretty well for himself, and especially at knocking her down, but I'm more than willing to pronounce a plague on both houses. And really, now, can't everyone agree to drop the term 'stolen' to describe when one culture is influenced by or imitates another? The elites of Russia didn't steal French from France, etc. etc.
(I have stolen the etc etc formulation from Thailand, I admit it.)
Pfft, you guys just aren't thinking in terms of geologic time scales.
When I worked at a place with the world's largest collection of astro /lab \es, there were apparently cranks who'd occasionally turn up convinced that the spherical one they had was some sort of world-historic artefact that would unlock the somethingsomethingetc. Admittedly, it does sort of look like something from a Guillermo del Toro movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spherical_astrolabe_2.jpg
(I was going to say Mongolia, since it should be heard in Yul Brynner's voice. But have learned just now that the actor's grandfather and namesake, Jules Bruner, was Swiss. The actor may yet be more Mongol than Prof. Warren is Cherokee, however.)
555. Yeah. Nobody called J.V.Luce a nutter for suggesting that the "Atlantis legend" might be a folk memory of the Santorini eruption, even though he was pretty certainly wrong. Because the remains of Santorini are still there, being excavated.
543: Tom Holt wrote a fairly entertaining novel around a similar idea.
It looks like Bob Quinn is a mildish crank on the scale:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantean_(documentary_series)
558; now there's an old fashioned name for your kid, as used by Abelard & Heloise.
And really, now, can't everyone agree to drop the term 'stolen' to describe when one culture is influenced by or imitates another
THEFT OF IDEAS IS STILL THEFT, YOU FILTHY PIRATE. I WILL EAT YOUR STILL BEATING HEART AS PART OF MY PALAEO DIET.
While we're talking about stupid ideas about race, what's with the distinction between "race" and "ethnicity" in the census? To the extent that race means anything, it's large groupings of ethnicities based on what continent some of people's ancestors lived 300 years ago. So why is Hispanic not a race? (I mean the solution here is obvious, only have ethnicities, but I don't even understand how the current system came about.)
561. Yeah, didn't know about that one.
Which puts me in mind of a question. Does anybody know if Stephen Oppenheimer is regarded as intellectually respectable: on everything? On some things but not others? On nothing? Does anybody engage with him?
what's with the distinction between "race" and "ethnicity" in the census?
Same system with crime reporting. When you're doing the fields in the report writing software Hispanics are white race and then designated as Hispanic in the ethnicity field.
Because when it was set up, people thought of 'race' as being a biologically real way of sorting people into different groupings by ancestry. 'Hispanic'ness, while it functions socially like race, sorts some people together who would go into different boxes if we were focusing on where their ancestors lived 500 years ago. Census people could see that a light-skinned Mexican guy whose ancestors all ultimately came from Spain was 'racially' different from a brown-skinned Mexican guy many or all of whose ancestors were Native American, so they couldn't call Hispanic a race, but given that it's such a socially salient category they didn't want to walk away from it and just use race.
It is an area rich in bullshit.
Googling stuff about ancient Egypt is entertaining because Mormon apologetics stuff crops up, which is inevitably hilarious.
I think there's a semi-real distinction: "ethnicity" - here's how I act at home. "Race" - here's how strangers treat me. They don't necessarily line up.
Software Hispanics stole the culture of real Hispanics.
In other words, Mara will always be black, but Thorn is proactive in maintaining her ethnicity.
I suppose I just mean "culture" then.
||I hallucinate baby crying noises. Really vividly. It's annoying.|>
But it's silly to say that strangers don't treat people based on their being hispanic. Or that strangers don't treat south asian as different from east asian and from european. Or that people can tell the difference between a dark skin tightly curled hair solomon islander and someone whose ancestors were west african. If the question is supposed to ask "what's your skin color" you could just ask that.
It's the result of a political compromise, UPETGI9. Anyone looking for any other explanation is just not going to be satisfied.
But it seems like such a goofy compromise. Who are the people arguing against going to a purely "ethnicity" based system?
575: It's listed as the race of my grandparents on their UK passports. Nationality: British. Race: Irish.
I don't think anyone's proposed going to ethnicity-only for government records -- we have all sorts of legacy records from when race was more solidly accepted as unquestionably real, and there's been no serious attempt to modernize or rationalize it, partially out of inertia and partially because it's an area where someone's going to get pissed off no matter how you do it.
So why is Hispanic not a race?
Because there are black, white, native, and all variety of mulatto and mestizo Hispanics.
Insofar as these things matter (e.g., for things like sickle-cell), you really want a distinct racial category. But, if you're tracking things like the achievement gap in education, you probably want to treat Hispanics (i.e., both white and non-white) and African-Americans as distinct groups.
577 -- Irish is still an ethnicity. Along with a million others. Is there some reason for the US government to inquire who among us is of Irish, Polish, Slovak, Thai, Japanese, Javanese, Cherokee, Navajo, ethnicity? You'd have dozens of categories, and that's just for the few people who could/would give a single answer. Really, to get any kind of accurate measure, you'd need the ability to check more than one box.
Race, however, is a useful generalization in understanding social dynamics, and is probably worth asking in surveying population, and, because of the history of discrimination, is worth asking about in employment and educational environments.
Really, to get any kind of accurate measure, you'd need the ability to check more than one box.
With the current Census, you can check as many boxes as you want. And there is an "other" category that you can fill in as you wish (including for race).
582 -- As it should be. I would guess that most people who can choose more than one still identify as only one.
"The American Anthropological Association recommends the elimination of the term "race" from OMB Directive 15 during the planning for the 2010 Census. During the past 50 years, "race" has been scientifically proven to not be a real, natural phenomenon. More specific, social categories such as "ethnicity" or "ethnic group" are more salient for scientific purposes and have fewer of the negative, racist connotations for which the concept of race was developed."
who among us is of Irish, Polish, Slovak, Thai, Japanese, Javanese, Cherokee, Navajo, ethnicity or a NASCAR fan.
Actually, looking back at it
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/about/interactive-form.php
The form is kind of a mess sociologically. Doesn't ask about ethnicity specifically (except whether you're Hispanic), and treats individual Asian countries as distinct races.
584: The America Anthropoloical Association better come and re-write all my dataset building code if they make them change.
487: Of Germans I've worked with Wiebke was my favorite female first name. As was Henning for men. And looking it up it seems that Henning is the German equivalent of Henry, which makes sense but had never occurred to me.
This discussion threatens to lure J. Otto Pohl over from Crooked Timber to lecture us all on race and ethnicity in the Soviet Union. So no one mention his name.
Because there are black, white, native, and all variety of mulatto and mestizo Hispanics.
This is the really answer, AFAIK. I suppose Filipinos could also in theory be considered Hispanic, although I don't know if they actually are. Basically, "Hispanic" as a category crosscuts the "traditional" racial categories in a complicated way, and treating it as an "ethnicity" instead isn't a great solution but it's the one we've ended up with.
580.last is just wrong. Sickle-cell anemia is rare among east africans and south africans, both of which count as "black", while common among several "asian" populations. The peak rates of sickle-cell anemia in India are higher than in most of Africa.
And looking it up it seems that Henning is the German equivalent of Henry, which makes sense but had never occurred to me.
Surely a rather than the equivalent.
I'm sure I said that one entertaining/appalling thing about playing around with Lee's family tree on ancestry.com was looking at how each successive census taker grouped various family members by race (black vs. mulatto) and how often it changed within 10 years. It's very useful, though, to be able to rule out all the people with her birthmom's family's very common last names who are marked as white.
Our college library had a hilarious book mapping Odysseus's journey around the Caribbean, as I recall. If I had a friend with limitless money, I'd ask for a subscription to Arethusa as a birthday present. The thing I miss most about not being in school is probably lack of access to a decent academic library and the time to curl up in a chair and just read a journal front-to-back. I'm not sure if I'm having a crisis about having been out of school and in this job a decade or if this is just leftovers from the whole car thing. (I test drive a Subaru this afternoon, I think. If all goes well, that will be it. If all goes super badly, I'll buy my mom's almost-15-year-old Sierra for basically no money and postpone the decision for a while and let her buy a smaller car, but I hope that won't be the case.)
584 to 579
593: Fine, use language precisely if that's what makes you happy.
594: If your new used car breaks, just call the problem in to Car Talk on the radio.
595: Yeah, I should have known "I don't think anyone" was going to be wrong. A less wrong way to have put what I meant is that I don't think there's been an active political/governmental argument about this stuff that's led to the current forms with both race and ethnicity as a compromise -- I think they're largely the way they are as a legacy.
598: Actually, they seem pretty outgoing to me.
590: I heard that if you stand in front of a mirror mention trouble finding an academic job three times, he appears behind you.
Fine, use language precisely if that's what makes you happy.
It is, and I will!
And tells you to move to Africa.
Are there a lot of academic jobs there or something?
Apparently, for historians there are.
They're retiring.
Wait, for real? I was just telling Iris the other day that they've been on the radio forever (~30 years?), and that the brothers are far apart in age (10+ years?).
Her observation had been that what she likes about Car Talk is that they know a lot about cars, but they also say lots of funny things. Kids can be so perceptive.
I think it's for real. I've only seen it on twitter.
They are retiring in September, yes. Tom (the older one) is 74 (and has had health problems). They've been on the air for twenty-five years, I think.
The retirement is about as official as things get. And JRoth perceptively summed up the situation himself.
It looks like they've been doing the show for 35 years, and picked up by NPR 25 years ago.
Also the link in 610 has a funny part where they're quoting fans and insist on putting everyone's name in scare quotes, lest they unwittingly quote a pseudonym.
609: 35 years!!! First 10 years on Boston radio.
I was going to say, 1987 didn't seem right, since as a kid it felt to me like one of those eternal staples, but then I guess that's how everything feels when you're a kid, but no. It's been on all my life.
I'm laughing out loud at the wikipedia description of the show. They fielded a call about the Mars Rovers!
One time they diagnosed a father with the medical condition anal-cranial inversion, after he wanted help picking out a sports car for his 16 year old kid. That amused me.
||
Speaking of public radio, a Marketplace reporter friend is looking for "married couples (or engaged) who come from different economic classes." If that's you and you want to be on the talky box, send me an email to the link in the pseud.
|>
BTW, I'm suspecting that ursyne is not your first pseud. Or am I being dense?
615: Well AB went to grad school at an Ivy, while I just have a Bachelor's from a provincial technical school, so I think we count.
Does L/rry F/rt/nsky still count if he talks about back in the day?
Catching up to the thread heah... I blush at Teo's 460!
616: No, it pretty much is my first pseud - I think I commented a small handful of times as random other things here or there. Years ago.
You know JRoths in love with an uptown girl.
609: 35 years!!! First 10 years on Boston radio.
I am ashamed that I did not have this fact readily available to me. I used to listen to them on local radio, too.
Now I'm wondering who JRoth thought ursyne used to be.
My favorite call was a guy who complained that the clicking noise of his turn signal was too quiet, so he kept leaving it on. They recommended taping a cup to the clicking mechanism, attaching a string to that, attaching another cup at the end of the string, and taping it to his ear.
623: I don't know either. I just had an inchoate sense that I recognized the "voice", but that the pseud seemed (relatively) new.
But instead I've just made a fool of myself.
You've been living in your downtown world.
Nah, ursyne's been around forever. Commenting lightly, but for quite a long time.
Good. So, Thomas Kinkade pissed on a statue of Winnie-the-Pooh outside of Disneyland. What should the Commenter of Light desecrate?
630 Peeing in a public swimming pool might do the trick.
I'm thinking it needs to be some public display of writing. Maybe going to Terre Haute and throwing up on these bronzed phrases from Desiderata embedded in a brick sidewalk.
That reminds me of this story:
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/weekinreview/no-stomach-for-art.html
635: Yes, something like that. Apparently he never got around to the yellow one. But apparently he was subsequently involved with showing and "promoting" the notorious Toronto cat snuff video and appears in the documentary about it, Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat.
OK, I've finally caught up and the thread is done/sleeping. To Halford's statements about race really does exist, so we need to talk to children about it, the AAA is right: no, it really doesn't. Racism really exists and many people have race as part of their identity, but that identity may or may not be what you assume it to be by looking at them. (Is Rashida Jones white, because you can't tell by looking at her that she's biracial, where with Pres. Obama you can?) Yeah, we need to talk with kids about race, but part of what we need to tell them is that it's kind of a game that people play to think about skin color and where people's families come from; that people are different from one another and that getting to know those differences is part of learning about other people, but that there aren't different kinds of people.
On the census, in addition to the thing the teo said there is federal legislation that requires information on race and hispanic origin in order to administer and apportion funding for different sorts of programs. As a former census worker, I can tell you, without revealing any PII, that brown-skinned hispanic people in interviews would often frown at the racial options and either choose the "other" box and list their nationality (Mexican, Honduran, etc) or would select two or three of the white/black/Native American boxes, generally leaving "tribe" blank.
A great example of the silliness of race is that the Khoisan are more distantly related to other "black" people than any two non-africans (of any "race") are from each other.
Or that European and Asian genetic variation iare essentially a subset of African genetic variation.
The Malagasy people are another interesting example. They're descended from a 2K year old population roughly half of which were Austronesians from Borneo and the other half of which were Bantu.
639: My impression is that this is no longer thought to be true, in that European and Asians have Neanderthal DNA, but Africans don't.
641: Yes and no. The yes part is the work that "essentially" is doing in that sentence. There are small percentage of alleles that are possessed by Asian and European populations (including early branching populations, like Melanesians) that aren't present within African genetic diversity, among these being the remnants of Neanderthal DNA. On the other hand, this doesn't change the overall picture that the genetic diversity between European and Asian populations contians a very large area of overlap and that almost all of their diversity is contained with the much greater diversity of African genetics. We don't know how significant the Neanderthal DNA elements are, or what if anything they do in modern humans (plenty of genetic material being inactive code), but it was a genetic subset of African humans that migrated outward to colonize other landmasses and gentically they haven't changed all that much.
As a former census worker, I can tell you, without revealing any PII, that brown-skinned hispanic people in interviews would often frown at the racial options and either choose the "other" box and list their nationality (Mexican, Honduran, etc) or would select two or three of the white/black/Native American boxes, generally leaving "tribe" blank.
This tendency is particularly obvious if you look at the Census race figures for New Mexico. In 2010 15% of the state population selected "Other" for race.
