Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rob C on March 09, 2018, 06:26:21 am
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In the Ultima Hora newpaper today.
I would have loved to have copied the cartoon, but you know, copyright etc. so just to paraphrase the copy:
"Billions of unwashed dishes, millions of unmade bads, and this is called a success?"
I won't even attempt to translate the placards on the streets with diagrams of what goes in and what may be allowed to come out of you may know where!
Thank God it's only for a day; worse than Christmas or even Catalan Independence.
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Rob, I need some clarification. Are you saying that a woman's place is only in the home doing the cooking and cleaning? That is what comes across to me.
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I got on my most feminist granddaughter about "International Women's Day." She fired back that there's also an "International Men's Day." So I checked it out and found this:
International Men's Day is an annual international event celebrated on 19 November. ... It is an occasion to highlight discrimination against men and boys and to celebrate their achievements and contributions, in particular for their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care.
Well we certainly need that, and the UN is happy to supply it, just as they're happy to supply "World Toilet Day" on November 19th. (Note that both "days" coincide, which makes me wonder if that's accidental.)
I think we should petition the UN to declare an "International Bullshit Day" to celebrate all the BS being slung around by politicians on other "International" days.
Several years ago in Colorado Springs I photographed a "Parade for People Who've Never Been in a Parade." That sort of echoes the rest of this crap.
Oh, my heart. . . stop bleeding.
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Several years ago in Colorado Springs I photographed a "Parade for People Who've Never Been in a Parade." That sort of echoes the rest of this crap.
Oh, my heart. . . stop bleeding.
If you're that unhappy about never being in a parade, bring a pallet beer to Philly on Jan. 1st. Any Mummer's club will be more then happy with the donation and let you march with them.
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Somebody should have told these folks, Joe.
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Well, I wash the dishes and make the beds, but I have been known to slack off on my duties to go and whoop a bit about how great my wife is.
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Rob, I need some clarification. Are you saying that a woman's place is only in the home doing the cooking and cleaning? That is what comes across to me.
Alan, I need some clarification: are you saying that my translated quotation is my own statement?
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Alan, I need some clarification: are you saying that my translated quotation is my own statement?
My BAD. Missed that it was a quote from the paper.
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Somebody should have told these folks, Joe.
Get a half a case in each of those and they'll fit right in with the Mummers.
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All that collective effort, and after the worldwide fiestas, what, exactly?
Life will continue as ever it has, blindly, fairly, unfairly, in great comfort as in unthinkable horror.
That's what life is, and no fighting bull will ever tell you differently. Even fat, spoiled little dogs die of pleasure and greed.
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The thing is, Rob, change is possible, and it does happen. Not, I suspect, for the reasons we think, but the part where "lots of people" in some sense are seen to believe things ought to be different does seem to play a role.
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The thing is, Rob, change is possible, and it does happen. Not, I suspect, for the reasons we think, but the part where "lots of people" in some sense are seen to believe things ought to be different does seem to play a role.
Look at the role the kids of Florida did in forcing the NRA supported legislature and governor to enact some reasonable gun control laws this past week.
It's going to be interesting to watch the US elections this November. There are lots of women running for office throughout all the states in record numbers. Of course it always comes down to who will vote and if the turnout is high there could be some surprises for the Republican Party.
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1. Look at the role the kids of Florida did in forcing the NRA supported legislature and governor to enact some reasonable gun control laws this past week.
It's going to be interesting to watch the US elections this November. There are lots of women running for office throughout all the states in record numbers. Of course it always comes down to who will vote and if the turnout is high there could be some surprises for the Republican Party.
1. Absolutely, but you have to bring in reality: reality is that no matter what age or mental parameters are decreed for the buying of arms, these damned things already exist in millions of homes. You don't have to be a genius to know how to raid your parents' gun locker, especially if you figure you probably won't be coming back home. Any old bat or axe will open that treasure trove wide.
IMO, guns, as in hunting, should only be available to country folks who can prove that they have legal access to a safe(ish), recognized farm or hunting area.
You don't need a machine gun of any sort to get a deer, and a relatively short-range shotgun will catch you that bird you want to eat. If you don't want to eat it, why in hell would you take its life?
Let's not even think about pistols beyond their use as tools for home protection.
Glossing about with the varnish doesn't do it.
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The thing is, Rob, change is possible, and it does happen. Not, I suspect, for the reasons we think, but the part where "lots of people" in some sense are seen to believe things ought to be different does seem to play a role.
You are right.
I want change too, so they kindly invented the lottery a long, long time ago. But that change is still not here.
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Limiting gun ownership to people 21 and over is going to go down with a thud in the courts. Suppose I'm 20 years old, a trained navy seal. I go home on leave to Florida and I'm not allowed to own a rifle? Ain't gonna happen.
The problem is that the media have brought forth kids and parents who have a legitimate beef saying "We need to do something!" Well, they're right, and the Florida legislature has "done something." That something, or at least part of it, will go down in flames, but the politicians can say they've done something. What's actually going to work is the movement to arm teachers who are willing to go through the necessary training. Once schools no longer are "gun free zones," things will settle down a great deal.
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Damn it, Alan, why did you have to say "NRA"? It just opens the door for the same old stupid pointless gun debate, and now another thread is about to go down in flames.
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Limiting gun ownership to people 21 and over is going to go down with a thud in the courts. Suppose I'm 20 years old, a trained navy seal. I go home on leave to Florida and I'm not allowed to own a rifle? Ain't gonna happen.
The problem is that the media have brought forth kids and parents who have a legitimate beef saying "We need to do something!" Well, they're right, and the Florida legislature has "done something." That something, or at least part of it, will go down in flames, but the politicians can say they've done something. What's actually going to work is the movement to arm teachers who are willing to go through the necessary training. Once schools no longer are "gun free zones," things will settle down a great deal.
My daughter is a teacher, dealing every day with kids at pre-university age, just before they quit the system, often for ever.
How do you imagine she, or any other person is going to handle having the added stress of guns to contend with? The kids themselves make her require eyes in the back of her head.
Then you have to face the concept of responsibility and collateral damage in the case of an actual event ever taking place. Have most people the slightest idea of just how aggressive and confrontational parents often are, even if only as an oblique reaction to their own domestic failure to maintain discipline and student attention to homework, with the guilt that brings which has to be diverted at any cost? Imagine the parental reaction towards a teacher if an innocent child gets shot by that teacher, and let's face it, policemen, all trained, often produce plenty of collaterals!
So, teachers may be forced into a position where they have to become gun-toting cowboys or what: lose their job or get paid less than said gunslingers, and then at what age do those happy guys and Annie Oakleys get fired because their sight is failing...?
As for zones no long being gun-free, I think that will, if anything, provide the gun crazies with an ever bigger thrill: they can imagine they are in a war!
Nope, at most, and on the assumption that civilians with guns will be here to stay, the only route out of this mess will make Mr T a happy man: prison-grade walls around all schools; gates with armed police and search devices. All so that a law made in the day of the blunderbuss may be held equally applicable to the weaponry of today!
A sane person could not make that up.
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Damn it, Alan, why did you have to say "NRA"? It just opens the door for the same old stupid pointless gun debate, and now another thread is about to go down in flames.
Why is it about to go down in flames? What are you contemplating doing?
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Rob, Gun Control is 1. wildly off topic, 2. is a debate that goes nowhere, and 3. a debate that tends to turn both political and nasty almost immediately.
Yes yes I'm sure it's all my fault and it totally would have been a civil and informative debate if only I hadn't etc. Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
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Limiting gun ownership to people 21 and over is going to go down with a thud in the courts. Suppose I'm 20 years old, a trained navy seal. I go home on leave to Florida and I'm not allowed to own a rifle? Ain't gonna happen.
And why not ?
British SAS have been jailed for exactly that ...
The problem is that the media have brought forth kids and parents who have a legitimate beef saying "We need to do something!" Well, they're right, and the Florida legislature has "done something." That something, or at least part of it, will go down in flames, but the politicians can say they've done something. What's actually going to work is the movement to arm teachers who are willing to go through the necessary training. Once schools no longer are "gun free zones," things will settle down a great deal.
You crack me up, Russ.
Just convinced you were either Wyatt Earp or Stagecoach Mary in an earlier life ... [/leg-pull]
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Chaps, this topic did not begin with any connection to guns or gun ownership and should not have drifted into that area.
Have a care, please.
Jeremy
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While the mechanics of social change remain pretty mysterious, one of the underlying elements is "what is normal" -- people want, generally, to be normal, to be, to think, to behave in the ways that "normal" people, or "average" people in their society do.
Take one small instance of a behavior that is relevant here. Consider an attractive woman who works in a retail or retail-like context frequented by men. Perhaps she sells shirts. Perhaps she's the marketing director at a high tech firm, who staffs the booth at the trade shows. Invariably this woman will be able to tell you endless stories of men who felt it appropriate to touch her. Usually something benign like placing his hand on her shoulder or in the small of her back.
These men are doing this, mostly, because they want to touch her. They know they can get away with it because she wants to keep her job and sell them a shirt, so she's unlikely to create an awkward scene by requesting that the hand please leave even, though, as a general rule, she would prefer to not be touched. You can argue that it's her fault for taking a job selling shirts, but a) your argument, whatever it is, is silly and b) that's a different discussion.
This is not "frequent", this is not "common", this is universal.
Ok, so, how does this change? It changes when men, as a general rule, feel that such behavior is "icky" or "just not done" or "simply not cricket" or whatever. They still want to touch the pretty girl, but they don't, because it's abnormal, it's what weirdos do and the one thing they're sure of is that they're not weirdos. Or at any rate they don't want anyone to think they are.
How does THAT change? That perception of what "normal" is?
That's a bit mysterious, but people acting out on the street probably has a non-zero impact.
Interestingly, photography and art play a role. If people are constantly touching shopgirls in movies, in adverts, in magazines, in books, then the standard for "normal" is arguably that touching shopgirls is fine. Do photography and art merely reflect the current zeitgeist? Are they merely a record of what is currently "normal"? Or do they actually affect the social consensus? I think it's a bit of both, but you can certainly find arguments on either side of that.
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Chaps, this topic did not begin with any connection to guns or gun ownership and should not have drifted into that area.
Have a care, please.
Jeremy
Well said, Jeremy. Please take note of where guns entered the discussion.
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Chaps, this topic did not begin with any connection to guns or gun ownership and should not have drifted into that area.
Have a care, please.
Jeremy
Jeremy, life is not about tight little boxes; tight little boxes are precisely what people wish to escape, and that a site such as LuLa can provide that escape is to be celebrated, not restricted.
I began this thread, I think, (but that's hard to determine on my little iPad at this juncture) and I feel not in the least offended that it drifts this way and that. Some may have obsessions about getting close up and personal with shop assistants, but hey, in the day of Internet sales and vanishing real shops, their time is short and getting shorter.
Guns and the like are, fortunately, not of immediate concern to me, though I'm happy the local cops have them, and as long as I behave in the so-called normal manner of the good citizen, they probably won't be pointed my way.
That said, I'm intrigued by amolitor's claim that 'normal' people desire to emulate the rest of the pack. I have never felt like that in my life! And I do consider myself normal as compared with abnormal. Mostly, I hate the friggin' pack and do my utmost to keep a safe distance between it and my dear self. Good grief, normal sounds as exciting a lifestyle as life in a bowl of cold chicken soup. Too long in that, and you would just pull your head below the surface and inhale deeply.
Heysoos, I might as well have taken up knitting as career if I craved normal - if knitting is morally normal that is. That might need official clearance...
:-)
Rob
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Rob's got a point, as usual. But I'm going to drop out of this one so I'll have time to petition the UN to declare International Bullshit Day, a day upon which we can celebrate threads like this one.
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There's actually pretty good hard science on this, Rob.
While the punk rocker with the pink mohawk and the safety pins through everything fancies himself a violator social norms, he still follows 10,000 different ones a day. He drives on the defined side of the street, pays for his pints, does not swear at the old lady crossing the street, and so on. Or at any rate, for every one of those he breaks today, he follows 100 others without even noticing it.
More importantly, there is excellent research on how stated "social norms" can direct behavior in the large.
See, for instance:
https://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=248&ArticleTypeID=22
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There's actually pretty good hard science on this, Rob.
While the punk rocker with the pink mohawk and the safety pins through everything fancies himself a violator social norms, he still follows 10,000 different ones a day. He drives on the defined side of the street, pays for his pints, does not swear at the old lady crossing the street, and so on. Or at any rate, for every one of those he breaks today, he follows 100 others without even noticing it.
More importantly, there is excellent research on how stated "social norms" can direct behavior in the large.
See, for instance:
https://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=248&ArticleTypeID=22
Thanks for that link.
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There's actually pretty good hard science on this, Rob.
While the punk rocker with the pink mohawk and the safety pins through everything fancies himself a violator social norms, he still follows 10,000 different ones a day. He drives on the defined side of the street, pays for his pints, does not swear at the old lady crossing the street, and so on. Or at any rate, for every one of those he breaks today, he follows 100 others without even noticing it.
More importantly, there is excellent research on how stated "social norms" can direct behavior in the large.
See, for instance:
https://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=248&ArticleTypeID=22
Well, I have now read the link, and the conclusion to which I came was this: to think people get paid to do this stuff!
It represents part of what I think has gone crazy with today's society. I see an almost direct link to the world of art writers and the totally artificial priorities they have made it a paying profession to pursue. It seems to me that it finds a natural, perfect home in the world of corporate-speak, team-bonding classes and days at the golf course for senior company executives to, well, you know, forge unbreakable links of everlasting corporate love. I'm led to believe that shooting fellow workers with paint balls achieves the same love. Accountants note: probably cheaper than the day at the links.
What's wrong with a nice picture of an angry, hungry bear, or of the bleached skeleton of an intrepid off-trailer? Clean graphics can't be beaten.
:-)
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Well, I have now read the link, and the conclusion to which I came was this: to think people get paid to do this stuff!
It represents part of what I think has gone crazy with today's society. I see an almost direct link to the world of art writers and the totally artificial priorities they have made it a paying profession to pursue. It seems to me that it finds a natural, perfect home in the world of corporate-speak, team-bonding classes and days at the golf course for senior company executives to, well, you know, forge unbreakable links of everlasting corporate love. I'm led to believe that shooting fellow workers with paint balls achieves the same love. Accountants note: probably cheaper than the day at the links.
What's wrong with a nice picture of an angry, hungry bear, or of the bleached skeleton of an intrepid off-trailer? Clean graphics can't be beaten.
:-)
What an odd statement. The differences in behaviour that were discovered seem to imply that the topic was worth studying. Proper signage on highways, for example, probably saves lives, so why wouldn't it be valuable to study what kind of signage works best? You may assume that you already know, but why do you assume that your assumption is correct without testing it.
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What an odd statement. The differences in behaviour that were discovered seem to imply that the topic was worth studying. Proper signage on highways, for example, probably saves lives, so why wouldn't it be valuable to study what kind of signage works best? You may assume that you already know, but why do you assume that your assumption is correct without testing it.
Why odd?
If you want odd, then come to Spain and look for the "no left turn" sign for a road where you must not make a left turn, whilst you are already driving along a narrow one-way road. The sign is not to be found facing you, on the road on which you find yourself; the sign is waiting for you, edge to you, on a pole in the mouth of the prohibited road itself, far too late to be sensible, but it certainly keeps you hunched forward, hugging the steering wheel, the better to see further into the corner you mustn't take. You only see it fully as you pass it if you haven't make the mistake of going up that street. But cyclists can and do go up any street, even if not legally.
The signs themselves are perfectly clear and internationally understandable, as with the beware the bear genre ones; just the location is loco. One would not normally place the bear sign invitingly distant from the recommended trail, would one?
Normal traffic signs and correct placement of same have been established for decades; there's no probability about it: they do save lives. It's not about my assumptions or beliefs but about a system learned (and required to be learned) in order to get a driving licence. No need there for the splitting of hairs nor of fantastical objectives!
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This has the potential to be an interesting discussion, I regret that I will not be taking part in it any further. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any specific questions or remarks, though!