The Slacktiverse

The meaning of Memorial Day

Today (May 28 2012) is Memorial Day in the United States. According to the (American) Department of Veteran Affairs website: Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while in the military service.

In the Netherlands Dodenherdenking is a day of official remembrance of those that have died in the service of The Netherlands, from the outbreak of World War II and in conflicts since, both civilian and military.

On the Australian War Memorial website Remembrance Day is described as follows: marks the anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each year Australians observe one minute silence at 11 am on 11 November, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.

Questions:

1) Do you think that we should separately remember/mourn the deaths of civilians in war?

2) How do we honour the service of those who fought for their countries/peoples without mythologizing/demonizing those involved?

--mmy

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

This week in The Slacktiverse, May 26/27 2012

The Blogaround

This week, Storiteller contemplated the many ways biking reverberates throughout communities. In National Bike Month, Week 3: Ride of Silence , she describes her participation in a ride meant to honor and remember bicyclists lost to bicycle-car accidents. A few days later, she pedaled her way to work, along with 12,000 other people in the region. Although it was Bike to Work Day, she made an unexpected pit stop on the way home to get a book signed by author John Scalzi.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Painted Waitresses
(Trigger Warning: Rape, Surgery, Cancer, Choice, reference to BDSM)
Bella is sitting in the car with Edward while Edward calms down after rescuing Bella from a situation of possible gang rape.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Hunger Games: A Question of Agency
(Trigger Warning: Death, Agency, Reproductive Rights)
I've decided to run a Hunger Games deconstruction to post on a non-regular basis. This will not be a line-by-line deconstruction like Twilight and will not precisely be a read-a-long like Narnia; it will be a thematic deconstruction by chapter with the assumption that everyone is already familiar with the books. Spoilers lurk herein.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: Savior White, Savior Bright
(Trigger Warning: Genocide, Othering through Romanticization, Nazis)
The Pevensie children have rescued a dwarf.

Kit Whitfield continues her analyses of famous first sentences. This week: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

This week Laiima wrote about pattern complexity in plaids and paying heed to me.

chris the cynic reports: This week I wrote a post [Noninteracting Magisteria and the Bechdel Test] about the way female characters in The Avengers and Firefly have roles that don't bring them into contact, which also touched on how few female characters there were in The Avengers. I returned to .hack//Sign with a post starting on Episode 3 Folklore. I wrote a silly post about the various versions of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and a rambling post about Godzilla versus the Sea Monster. I also made an index of what I posted in the month of March.

Nick Kiddle writes: I have a post this week about my return to the joys of blood donation now that a relaxation of rules makes me an eligible donor once more.

Michael Mock reports: This week at Mock Ramblings, there's some big-ish news. At least, I think it's big news. Hope so, anyway. Back in December, I wrote a post aimed at Christian Parents of Atheist or Agnostic Children. In the months since, it has received a modest-but-steady stream of page views and fresh comments. This week, by reader request, I joined with Matt Mikalatos, author of My Imaginary Jesus and Night of the Living Dead Christian, to create a Facebook support group for parents whose children had left the faith (or parents who find themselves in comparable situations). The group is here. So far it's still tiny, but if anyone here is interested in joining - or helping out - you'd be very welcome.

Other weekly ramblings include an explanation of The Wombat Massage, the first section of a new fantasy writing project called Into The Game, some thoughts on Music Festivals and Ableism, and the second installment of Pimp My Art Friends.

yamikuronue reports: Last weekend we saw the first post in a new series called Decon Vs, in which my partner Chaos deconstructs two sports anime, comparing the way they handle characters and plot pacing and so forth. A new post in that series will be queued up for this weekend as well.

Monday and Wednesday both saw RSS Quickies posts from Real Simple Magazine's website: one on cleaning and one on children viewing pornography online. There was no TPD this past week, but Easily Amused examined the dark side of Hubert's character.Friday had another Life Lessons, this time on the phrase "everything happens for a reason".

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Appropriating Victims' Experiences
This is serious priority inversion, and it happens all the time in real life and in literature, and it irks me so very much. I have to assume it's a symptom of Privilege; when everything in your entire life has been framed in terms of how you -- Privileged White Male Vampire -- feel, then of course a traumatic experience that happened to someone else should immediately (and only!) be framed in terms of how the Privileged White Male Vampire in the room feels about things! It's just the natural order of things, right? Privileged White Male Vampire feelings come first.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: The Patriarchy Hurts Women, Too
We live in a harmful Patriarchal society where women are frequently judged, insulted, and slandered not by their words or their positions or by their beliefs, but by their gender and sexuality. The intent is to de-personify women who commit the crime of being public figures, who work publicly for political and social change.

In case you missed this

Literata announces that she is now a legally ordained High Priestess. Yay!
Any Slacktiversians in the area of DC/Northern Virginia are invited to come celebrate with her next weekend.

Leum reports: (Trigger Warning: Rape) I've discovered Project Unbreakable. People hold up posters with quotes from their attackers and the people (family members, friends, law enforcement officials) they've told. Very sad, but also very powerful.

Things you can do

From the World Food Programme:
Ongoing drought, combined with rising food prices, is creating an alarming situation in the Sahel region of West Africa. Working together with our partners on the ground, WFP aims to reach more than 9 million people with life-saving food.
...
Will you stand between a woman or child and hunger today? $50 helps us provide food for the next 100 critical days.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

At Patheos: NRA: Switching horses mid-apocalypse

Fred Clark has posted a new post, NRA: Switching horses mid-apocalypse, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about pp. 1-4 of Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist

Excerpt:

In stories featuring intentionally flawed protagonists, we can read with the hope that these characters will eventually be redeemed. Even when, as in The Sopranos, the repeated rejection of such redemption is the central theme, such deliberately flawed characters help us to explore what the possibility of such redemption or growth might be like.

But here in this series, the authors do not allow for the possibility that Rayford and Buck might require any such redemption. In their minds, explicitly, these characters have already experienced all the redemption they will ever require. They’re not going to change. They’re not going to get any more likeable than they already are.

And where unlovely characters like Meursault, Raskolnikov, Winston Smith or Tony Soprano are never held up as role models, it seems that here the authors are constantly pointing to Rayford “That Guy” Steele and to the insufferable Buck Williams as ideals whom every reader ought to imitate.

[Fred Clark, NRA: Switching horses mid-apocalypse, May 25, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]


Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

 

Completely open thread

Guys, we really do need you to write and submit articles if you want to have anything to read.

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Board Post, May 24 2012

 

Regular Business

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in This week in The Slacktiverse May 26/27 2012.

The three sections of the weekend post are:

The Blogaround

Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website during since the previous weekend post is invited to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to TBAT. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosted by other members.

In Case You Missed This

Readers of The Slacktiverse can send short summaries of, and permalinks to, articles that they feel might be of interest to other readers.

Things You Can Do

Anyone who knows of a worthy cause or important petition should send a short description of the petition/cause along with its url to TBAT.

Deadlines

Please email all submissions to slackmods at gmail dot com. The deadline this week will be 2000 GMT on Saturday.

Urgent or time-sensitive announcements will be posted immediately rather than being held for the next regular "This Weekend" post.

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Some comments on comments

Last week's "This week in the Slacktiverse" included a link to John Scalzi's article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. In the days that followed the initial publication of that post Scalzi published an article, "Lowest Difficulty Setting" Follow-Up, about some of the comments made to the original article, some of which he deleted/moderated because they violated the commenting policy of his site. Finally, on May 21, Scalzi posted an article about the very nature of comments, "Lowest Difficulty Setting Follow-Up" Now on Kotaku + Comment on Comments.

In reading the comments to the original post, the follow-up post and the "comments on comments" post two different types of anger are visible: the first anger is aimed the content/argument of the original post; the second type of anger seems to reflect a particular form of commentator entitlement--the belief that it is always wrong/offensive for anyone to be asked to abide by a set of commenting rules even (or even particularly) by the person who owns/moderates the blog.

I admit that I don't "get" the way in which people deal with either form of anger. If one wants to be heard (in the sense of carrying any argumentative weight) in a blogspace then it behooves one to learn the community standards of that place and if one doesn't like the way a particular person runs their own blog then it seems best to me that one go somewhere else and start a blog of one's own.

What do you think?

--mmy

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

(Nearly) Open Thread, May 21 2012

Lots of us have top tips, shortcuts, patterns, techniques and labor-saving ideas, things we've worked out ourselves or had passed down from older generations. What are your favourites?

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Updated This week in The Slacktiverse, May 19/20 2012

The Blogaround

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Appropriating Victims' Experiences
This is serious priority inversion, and it happens all the time in real life and in literature, and it irks me so very much. I have to assume it's a symptom of Privilege; when everything in your entire life has been framed in terms of how you -- Privileged White Male Vampire -- feel, then of course a traumatic experience that happened to someone else should immediately (and only!) be framed in terms of how the Privileged White Male Vampire in the room feels about things! It's just the natural order of things, right? Privileged White Male Vampire feelings come first.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: The Patriarchy Hurts Women, Too
We live in a harmful Patriarchal society where women are frequently judged, insulted, and slandered not by their words or their positions or by their beliefs, but by their gender and sexuality. The intent is to de-personify women who commit the crime of being public figures, who work publicly for political and social change.

sarah writes: This week, I celebrated my brother's college graduation and wrote a "stuff I've been reading" post

Kit Whitfield continues her analyses of famous first sentences. This week: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.

Storiteller's week was full of bike-related celebrations that included people of all ages, as she describes in National Bike Month, Week 2: Proclamation and Parties. To follow up, she led a community ride to a beautiful National Park that winds through Washington D.C. and Maryland, complete with a mini-picnic, in Ride Report: Rock Creek Ramble. Not everything in Storiteller-land is idyllic though. Slugs are nastily invading her garden and chomping down on her plants, as she describes in All Creatures Small and Not-So-Great.

Laiima writes: This week I wrote about how my colonoscopy went and investigating vocabulary becomes more intriguing than I expected

Literata shared her favorite moment from Fertile Ground Gathering, wrote about becoming a QUILTBAG ally thanks to two women in North Carolina, explained why feminists of all genders have better sex (Trigger Warning: Discussion of sex and female anatomy including language NSFW. Includes words that some people may find unsettling.), and celebrated that a poem of hers was published in the just-released anthology Mandragora.

yamikuronue reports: This week I posted about my dying tomato plant in addition to the usual TPD post (in which I was a little confused) and Easily Amused (in which I decided I think I like Hubert). Going forward, tea reviews are going to be less frequent, but stay tuned this weekend for the premier of a new guest segment.

Michael Mock reports: This week at Mock Ramblings, I started by talking about my boys in House of Idiosyncrasies, described a pleasant development in my current writing project, and a less pleasant development in Suspicious Character Reported, explained the little-known perils of buying Superhero Toothbrushes, recorded a story idea so I could come back to it later in Children's Games, and described an evening in the life of a daddy. Finally, I started a new series of posts with the aptly named Pimp My Art Friends 1: Robyn Seale.

Coleslaw writes: There is a beautiful new bridge over the Mississippi River replacing the St. Francisville ferry, since the Huey P. Long is A Bridge Too Far away for the former ferry riders to use. I wrote about two books I have read recently, You Lost Me and (warning, some graphic medical details and references to 9/11) The Woman Who Wasn't There.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: When We Like Problematic Art
Artistic analysis isn't about finding The Answer. It's not about making a list of Good Art and Bad Art and then having everyone realign their tastes to match. It's not about coming to an agreement. It's about experiencing different viewpoints and understanding why other people think differently from you

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
(Trigger Warning: discussion of rape, rape culture)
Twilight: When Rape Plays Matchmaker
And this is the seduction of victim-blaming, the idea that sensible people can agree that Bad Things just happen, like the tides or tsunamis, and there's nothing we can do about them except insist that the potential victims of Bad Things police their every little movement and action in an attempt to avoid the unstoppable Bad Thing.

In case you missed this

Amazon.com Announces the Most Well-Read Cities in America[The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.]
See also: D.C. Suburb Tops List of Most "Well-Read" U.S. Cities (Slate.com)

This week Reporters Without Borders published the PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011/2012. There has been quite a bit of movement in the list since last year's was published.

(Trigger Warning: Frank description of conditions in prisons and the difficulties of gender reassignment)

She’s the only jail guard in the history of the province — and perhaps the country — to undergo a sex change and continue on the job.
....
She said she knows she can lessen the pain of others by showing how she confronted her own pain and fears.
“God made me who I am because I have a mission to educate people. To help people behind me, following in my footsteps.” From Andre to Andrea: Don Jail guard thrives on job after sex change, The Toronto Star, May 15 2012.

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is John Scalzi writes an explanation of privilege using a gaming metaphor and pointedly not using the term 'privilege'.

Things you can do

The Global Fund for Women plays a leading role in advancing women’s rights by making grants that support and strengthen women’s groups around the world. We mobilize and redistribute resources that enable women to develop creative solutions to local, regional, and transnational challenges. We bring grantees and donors together in an international network that promotes women’s action for social change, equality, peace, and justice worldwide. You can donate to the Global Fund for Women here.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

At Patheos: NRA: It was the worst of books

Fred Clark has posted a new post, NRA: It was the worst of books, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about pp. vii-1 of Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist

Excerpt:

Jenkins would have been better off taking a cue from Snoopy and ripping off Bulwer-Lytton instead of Dickens: “It was a dark and stormy apocalypse.”

Or maybe borrowing instead from an American classic: “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of Tribulation Force, but that ain’t no matter.”

We could play this game all day:

• In a plane in the sky there lived a pilot.
• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single Antichrist in possession of global power, must be in want of two assistants.
• This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly odd white men on a planet which was dying fast.
• Call me Nicolae.
• There was a man called Rayford Eustace Steele, and he almost deserved it.
• Real, true Christians are all alike; and every sinner is sinful in the same way.
• God is a sick god … god is a spiteful god. I believe there is something wrong with god’s liver.
• Only the real, true Christians would have believed, in the last years of the 20th century, that this world was being watched by a divine intelligence greater than humanity’s; that as people busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, even more narrowly than a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
• You better not never tell nobody ’bout God.
• A screaming comes across the phone.
• Hattie, light of my life, fire of my loins.

I hope you’ll add to this list in comments below.

[Fred Clark, NRA: It was the worst of books, May 18, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]


Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

 

(Nearly) Open Thread, May 18 2012

Fred Clark just resumed his Left Behind posts--which got us wondering about two things.

1) How many others were surprised by some of the changes in the publication of the updated first volume of the Left Behind series? This re-release incorporated the political and technological changes that had taken place since the original publication of the first book of that series.

2) Is there any other book you know of that has had an edited/altered re-release and, if so, what do you think of result?

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Board Post, May 17 2012

 

Regular Business

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in This week in The Slacktiverse May 19/20 2012.

The three sections of the weekend post are:

The Blogaround

Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website during since the previous weekend post is invited to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to TBAT. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosted by other members.

In Case You Missed This

Readers of The Slacktiverse can send short summaries of, and permalinks to, articles that they feel might be of interest to other readers.

Things You Can Do

Anyone who knows of a worthy cause or important petition should send a short description of the petition/cause along with its url to TBAT.

Deadlines

Please email all submissions to slackmods at gmail dot com. The deadline this week will be 2000 GMT on Saturday.

Urgent or time-sensitive announcements will be posted immediately rather than being held for the next regular "This Weekend" post.

---

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



(Nearly) Open Thread, May 16 2012

What aspect of international politics do you think is worst reported in your local media?

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.