(no subject)

[gwydion]

* When disasters happen, whether man made like this one or natural like an earthquake, I really only watch enough to find out what's going on. I will check back periodically, with an eye to things like updated information and what people should do if they want to help. I refuse to want the same horrible footage on loop and watch the talking heads speculate and the reporters interview each other. My feeling is, after a certain point, it becomes disaster porn or trauma, depending on your reaction. I never want real people being hard and killed to be entertainment. As a result, I spent most of the evening trying to catch up on Barney Miller and catching up on archeological news. Oddly, it was Craig Ferguson's rant that really got to me. I think because it was so personal and because it sounded like something I might say if they, say, bombed the Mummer's Parade. It seemed somehow, more human than then talking heads speculating over footage or press conferences. I don't know what that says about me.

* Reconstructing Au. sediba: http://www.livescience.com/28656-closest-human-ancestor-was-pigeon-toed.html

* I don't know how this interacts with the discovery that fish mess up dating techniques. "Pottery reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers' taste for fish:" http://phys.org/news/2013-04-pottery-reveals-ice-age-hunter-gatherers.html

* "New Light Shed On Ancient Egyptian Port and Ship Graveyard:" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130407150740.htm

* More coverage of the big London find:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/09/archaeologist-objects-roman-london-find
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22084384
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/gladiator-charm-1-900-year-shoe-revealed-in-london-dig.html

* They have discovered Pictish Ogham: http://termcoord.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/pictish-written-language-discovered-in-scotland/

* "This Picture of Boston, Circa 1860, Is the World’s Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo:" http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-picture-of-boston-circa-1860-is-the-worlds-oldest-surviving-aerial-photo/#ixzz2QbU1EFn8

* "First tests of old patent medicine remedies from a museum collection:" http://phys.org/news/2013-04-patent-medicine-remedies-museum.html

* Possible scurvy and depression link: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-humanities-medicine-combine-reveal-secrets.html

* Revising the causes of the death of the Franklin Expodition: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-acquit-tins-mysterious-franklin.html

* "Parkinson's sufferers face regular discrimination:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22149790

* "The Stars Over Teotihuacan, City of Gods:" http://www.universetoday.com/101392/astrovideo-the-stars-over-teotihuacan-city-of-gods/

* I was simply too tired to go out today. It's going to be a rough week, with inconveniently timed appointments designed to screw up my sleep cycle. Hector is still protesting my sleep, which is not helping.

* I watched Juan of the Dead yesterday, which was a disappointment. It started out fascinating in a whole bunch of ways, being a sort of Cuban re-imagining of Shaun of the Dead. It's not a remake, as it's really different in plot and tone, so maybe it's better described as containing periodic homages within a narrative talking about a whole bunch of other things. There were things I liked, like the propaganda broadcasts and some of the themes. It's trying to say a whole lot more than Shaun, for example. The huge problem with it, and something that made it very hard to watch after a while, was the rampant homophobia. They use anti-gay insults, they make lots of nasty homophobic "jokes" and while they are a rare zombie apocalypse with gay characters, this is far from a positive portrayal, and the straight survivors rather treat them like shit. I think it was more disappointing because the sequence with the group working together looked kind of awesome in a delightfully cheesy sort of way. I also fundamentally couldn't find the sidekick repeatedly killing other survivors over and over funny. I get that it's more brutal and raunchy. I get that they were aiming for a certain sort of survivor psychology and the desensitization makes sense in that context, but it made me emotionally disconnect from other themes like parent/child bonding and ultimately meant that I stopped caring whether they got killed or not. Eventually, I started rooting for them all to die. It's a shame, because I think this was really ambitious for it's budget, and I do think it's unusual, it's jut I can't enjoy watching homophobia on this level.

* The Clutch:

Comments

[psybelle]

Right there with you on the decision to avoid the disaster pr0n - I learned that lesson from the '89 earthquake. We actually had electricity, so we could watch the news - see the Marina burning, all the buildings collapsed with their second or third stories at ground level, footage of the Bay Bridge and the Cypress Structure... and watching all that led to panic attacks and mild PTSD (I was in reasonable shape before we sat down at the TV).


*sigh*

There are "mantras" for this - things to keep in mind, things to practice.

"I am no less safe today than I was last week."

"Refuse to be terrorized."

"Keep Calm and Carry On." - love the British fortitude in particular...


And I'd love for all the major news anchors to read Schneier's piece to the audience at least once a day...
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/the-boston-marathon-bombing-keep-calm-and-carry-on/275014/

Not that that will ever happen - we'll have to do it for ourselves. And the basic principle of "what you pay attention to expands" applies here: my best practice is to pay attention to the things that are precious to me, the things that bring joy to me and mine.

[gwydion]

For me, it was the first World trade center bombing in the early 90's. It dawned on me that they would keep trying until they took the World Trade Center down. I adjusted my thinking to assume a European level of occasional bombing and moved on. (I was in France the Summer in the '80's when they had a number of bombings. They hit Printemps and the train we were on when it reached Lyons (We'd debarked earlier), among other targets. I'd seen news from various bombings in the UK all through growing up and it was also the era of plane hijackings. I just went, "It was inevitable it would reach here." I grieve for the dead and the folks who lost people, but it infuriates me that people use this as an excuse to strip our civil liberties. There is no such thing as 100% safe. I'd rather keep the civil liberties, thanks.

During the anthrax mail scare not long after 911, I was teaching 8th grade social studies. It was current events day, and like half of my first class had Anthrax items. I could see they were terrified, so I tossed out the lesson plan and we talked about risk assessment. I had all the relevant figures for both weaponized anthrax (dispersal, survivability, etc.) and other common weaponized epidemic diseases in my head as I'd been doing one of my random epidemic refresher projects just before the thing hit the news. I was careful not to talk about it in a way that would give ideas. Anyway. I asked them how many states there were. Then how many counties in our state, how many school districts (which I knew from job search), how many schools in our district. Then we calculated odds if there was completely random selection. Then I pointed out that it's not generally random selection. The Anthrax letters went to politicians and media. Washington and New york were hit, but small towns not so much. Then I talked about Anthrax dispersal, and how even if by some whim they hit our particular Middle School instead of going for a target like Seattle or the Naval base, powdered Anthrax doesn't spread well without wind. The kids were much calmer at this point, and odds are they'd be evacuated long before they were at risk, and the odds are good the folks in the office would be on antibiotics before they had time to get sick. I made a joke about how as long as they hadn't been sent to the office, they'd be fine. The kids piped up with jokes of their own about being sent to the office, at which point everyone gave a big sigh of relief. I also through in figures for car fatalities and lightning strikes for comparison. (I did not tell them that while Anthrax at a big sporting event could be monumentally deadly for immediate casualties, it was small pox I'd be more concerned about as it's way more communicable person to person with a long incubation period. While it's easier to cure with modern medicine, by the time you know there's an epidemic, we could easily be completely fucked. That seemed to me like not helping, so I kept it to myself. I stuck to the envelope of Anthrax in an office MO). I figured my calm was good for them and me modelling rational risk assessment was something they could use the rest of their lives. By the time the third batch turned up, it was clear the kids had been telling folks to ask me about the Anthrax. They came in apprehensive, but calmer. They wanted the reassurance of reason and numbers, and I gave it to each group in turn. My feeling is, if you know the risk, it's easier to stay calm and carry on. It's also easier to make rational life decisions on a more mundane level from using condoms to leisure activities to careers. We except risk all the time and each make calculations about whether what we get out of it is worth that risk. My feeling is, it usually is, but we each have to set our personal bar where we're comfortable.