Stuff

Going through my overflowing box o' filing. Found a dead interesting article from last year's NYT: From a Mushroom Cloud, a Burst of Art Reflecting Japan's Psyche. (Grab a login and password from bugmenot.com if you don't want to register.)

"Mr. Murakami holds that these traumas [atomic bombs and American occupation] have created a lot of displaced emotions - anxiety, shame and a pervasive sense of impotence - that have found their outlets in popular culture... These feelings are reflected in two opposing tendencies. One is a fascination with violence and power, visible in the building-crunching monsters and mushroom-cloud explosions frequently used in Japanese animation. The opposite pole is an infantalizing sense of powerlessness that is played out in the obsession with what is called kawaii, or cute, as exemplified by Hello Kitty and other irresistible characters."

Another from the filing

Supremacy Crimes, by Gloria Steinem. "This is not about blame. This is about causation." A challenging short essay.

The Pip and Jane Chronicles

Yet more from the filing. I laughed myself stupid when I first encountered these and they still kill me. In the second installment, the author has actually counted the number of exclamation marks in each of P&J's novelisations, eventually proving through Skience that "The Ultimate Foe is approximately EIGHTEEN AND A HALF TIMES WORSE than Remembrance of the Daleks!!!"

#1: Where Their Ideas Came From
#2 How Many !! Marks Make a Tonne

ETA: I left out the funniest one! Part 3: What They Wrote On Their Day Off

Aaaand another one

Muslims and Jews: Common Ground. I found this Washington Post article very helpful - it explains how both sides of the Middle East conflict see themselves as the victims, and the ones in danger.