Books to add to the summer Reading list
The Technology of Orgasm – by Rachel P Maines. A study of women’s Hysteria and the rather odd treatment they had for it back in the day – manually stimulate the patient to orgasm. It was viewed by doctors as nothing more than a chore – what the patients’ thought is not as well known so when a mechanical device was invented (the vibrator) they jumped on it so to speak.
Books like this amuse me because they remind you that while science and medicine are wonderful things – they are human endeavors and humans are pretty strange lot. And it’s a study in how social mores can just lead people right off the cliff.
Stephen Jay Gould once said about this kind of thing saying we shouldn’t make fun of the past opinions saying the danger is that we can view the past as a land of buffoons compared to the modern era. I’m confident that we are still the land of buffoons – hell any look at the evening news will tell you that. Heavily armed and dangerous buffoons but buffoons none the less.
Speaking of Buffoons:
Mitt Romney is getting some heat because in the mist of a long and unfocused babbling answer to a question said that his sons were serving the country by working on his campaign not enlisting in the army. It’s one of the reasons Mitt isn’t qualified to be president. He’s a god awful liar.
Rudy mean time, operating on an Ego that simply can’t keep its mouth the hell shut said something to the effect that he was a ground zero as much as the rescue workers were. The exact quote is "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers”
It’s hard to put into words just how insulting and arrogant and flat out dumb this statement is.
Standing there with some local doing a photo op is not the same as going down getting your hands dirty and breathing in that muck until you can’t move anymore crashing for a few hours at St. Paul’s and then doing it again. Or in the case of my cousin (a fireman) working 3 days at the house and then two days at ground zero over and over again.
The man’s a shameless attention whore. (and that’s one of his good points)
Meantime W came out and talked up the economy, especially the housing marking saying there will be a soft landing. He doesn’t know that, nobody knows that. They just figure that if enough people say it – it will reassure people and it will happen. We’ll see. It hasn’t worked much in the past but it’s a popular thing to do.
Stock market as of 2 pm or so continues grim slide. The trouble with a credit crunch is that if you can’t borrow money and you need it, you have to something. So if you’re a person you sell something – guitar, clock what have you, if you’re a corporation you dump some stock on the market cause you need the cash. This of course is not counting the entire sub prime mortgage market that is beginning to look like Savings & Loans, the Sequel. That is going to cause much suffering.
Was going to write about the film Ring of Terror – which is – wait for it – terrible but this will have to wait, work matters press on. Suffice to say not enough happens in the film to justify a 30 TV show never mind 70 minutes of well nothing at all. This is not an example of the Theater of the Incoherent like say plan Nine is, this is film néant, the Cinema of Nothingness because nothing happens, nothing at all – the entire movie consists of padding. Along with real bad acting and painful dialogue.
Well as I said, later for that. Sorry.
Books like this amuse me because they remind you that while science and medicine are wonderful things – they are human endeavors and humans are pretty strange lot. And it’s a study in how social mores can just lead people right off the cliff.
Stephen Jay Gould once said about this kind of thing saying we shouldn’t make fun of the past opinions saying the danger is that we can view the past as a land of buffoons compared to the modern era. I’m confident that we are still the land of buffoons – hell any look at the evening news will tell you that. Heavily armed and dangerous buffoons but buffoons none the less.
Speaking of Buffoons:
Mitt Romney is getting some heat because in the mist of a long and unfocused babbling answer to a question said that his sons were serving the country by working on his campaign not enlisting in the army. It’s one of the reasons Mitt isn’t qualified to be president. He’s a god awful liar.
Rudy mean time, operating on an Ego that simply can’t keep its mouth the hell shut said something to the effect that he was a ground zero as much as the rescue workers were. The exact quote is "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers”
It’s hard to put into words just how insulting and arrogant and flat out dumb this statement is.
Standing there with some local doing a photo op is not the same as going down getting your hands dirty and breathing in that muck until you can’t move anymore crashing for a few hours at St. Paul’s and then doing it again. Or in the case of my cousin (a fireman) working 3 days at the house and then two days at ground zero over and over again.
The man’s a shameless attention whore. (and that’s one of his good points)
Meantime W came out and talked up the economy, especially the housing marking saying there will be a soft landing. He doesn’t know that, nobody knows that. They just figure that if enough people say it – it will reassure people and it will happen. We’ll see. It hasn’t worked much in the past but it’s a popular thing to do.
Stock market as of 2 pm or so continues grim slide. The trouble with a credit crunch is that if you can’t borrow money and you need it, you have to something. So if you’re a person you sell something – guitar, clock what have you, if you’re a corporation you dump some stock on the market cause you need the cash. This of course is not counting the entire sub prime mortgage market that is beginning to look like Savings & Loans, the Sequel. That is going to cause much suffering.
Was going to write about the film Ring of Terror – which is – wait for it – terrible but this will have to wait, work matters press on. Suffice to say not enough happens in the film to justify a 30 TV show never mind 70 minutes of well nothing at all. This is not an example of the Theater of the Incoherent like say plan Nine is, this is film néant, the Cinema of Nothingness because nothing happens, nothing at all – the entire movie consists of padding. Along with real bad acting and painful dialogue.
Well as I said, later for that. Sorry.
Peace, Love, Buffoons
Yes that's Diana Rigg again - it's been a long week.
posted by Unknown at 11:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home