The single strangest reaction I’ve seen thus far to the devastation of Sandy comes from Laura Wood, the genteel bigot and feminism-hater who blogs as The Thinking Housewife. After looking through a gallery of photos on the Daily Mail showing some of the damage in New York city, Wood suggested that the real problem is that New Yorkers aren’t wearing cheerful enough clothing:
THESE Daily Mail photos of New York City after the hurricane remind me of just how ugly the streets of Manhattan are, with almost everyone dressed in drab, uninteresting clothes that rival the uniforms of Maoist China for their homogeneity and lifelessness. America is one of the most aesthetically impoverished nations in history. I wonder how many thousands of people are on medication because they are depressed by their own clothes and their ugly, hostile environments, surrounded as they are by impersonal denim, sneakers with tire treads, plastic-covered down jackets, billboards with oppressive smiles, and the austere, chilling cliffs of modern skyscrapers. This is the environment of a people that idolizes equality and sameness. The only way to survive amid such poverty is to possess an interior castle, a place of tapestries and mahogany where denim and sweat jackets are nowhere to be seen.
Just make sure this castle of yours isn’t reduced to rubble by 85 mile-an-hour winds and flying debris.
Speaking of New York, here’s an interesting (if a bit shaky) video of a walk through that city’s dark streets after the hurricane hit.
*bzzt*
That would be neither person. What have I won?
@CassandraSays
Lol, what could be toxic about a worldview that writes off roughly 1/4 of all human beings who have ever lived?
Diogynes : Well, OK, maybe, but that was in China so what does that have to do with European people like us?
Me : (Eyebrows go right up into the hairline)
Haha it’s not like Chinese material culture ever impacted the way the rest of the world lives! It’s so great how paper was invented in continental Europe so we could have toilet paper.
Of all the cultures to try to handwave away as irrelevant to the rest of the world, China? Really?
PS I’m drinking tea right now. Totally invented in the late 19th Century by a nice English gentleman.
The Conquistadores, with their guns, folded steel armour, compasses, and lateen sails really showed the superioirity of Western inventions.
What is it with trolls and admitting they got things wrong? It’s not a big deal. Everybody gets things wrong now and then. Take your lumps and learn from it,
For example: the Chinese (and also, IIRC the Egyptians) had Pythagoras’ Theorem (square on the hypotenuse, etc), not Pythagorean Theory which is a different kettle of fish altogether: (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism ) If you want to play the philosopher, precise terminology matters.
Also, “we’re talking about Victorian Europe so China doesn’t count, but ancient Aramaic texts are totally relevant”? Come on, now. And be honest, when you say you read a 200 year old Aramaic text, you mean you read it in translation, don’t you?
BTW totally random fact that I ran across – one of the oldest types of tea (and one of my favorites), Dragonwell/Lonjjing, is from the same area in Zhejiang Province that gave us West Lake soup.
(By oldest type I mean oldest type to be officially recognized by an Emperor. The actual history goes back much further than that.)
@Bodsworth, Well, most 2000 year old Aramaic texts are part of the Hebrew Bible, which, as we all know, is the foundation of the Protestant Work Ethic that made the modern world possible, so of course they are vastly more relevant than the most populated region in the entire world.
@Cassandra
I’ve totally been to Longjing Village. I didn’t know until then that it was possible to get sick from caffeine overdose, but it apparently is.
Nepenthe, I guess that makes you a uniforn.
Ugh, then call it by its Chinese name. That did come first.
Cassandra, he offered the information to us.
And I know I’m Eurocentric. But unlike others, I admit it. I was born in Asia, and grew up on 3 continents, and it sometimes does frustrate me that a few guys in Saville Row set the standard for how men dress worldwide for instance, but that just is the way it is. The reality of our situation is that the way we think is shaped by the culture we grew up in, and that culture in my case was predominantly Western.
Its not that China is irrelevent, its that what happened to China is viewed from a western viewpoint. I can illustrate this with a pretty simple question. What affects the way you live your life today the most? The Fall of the Han Dynasty, The Sassanid Empire, or the Fall of Rome?
All of the above?
@ Ugh
I’m so jealous. I think if I got to visit one of the regions that produces my favorite teas I’d end up like Tweak from South Park. I love Chinese black teas too, which just makes it even more dangerous.
This is the internet. Don’t ever assume that just because you’re having a conversation with someone in English that means that they grew up in a Eurocentric culture.
(The rest of your little Eurocentric lament is too pathetic to be worth engaging with.)
Ugh, people who do it today do so because of the influence of Mohammed. No doubt Mohammed himself was influenced by the culture of his day, but if you want to attribute reasons, it would be to him.
Cassandra, I’m not European.
And papyrus was an Egyptian thing too.
@Diogenes
Lol, history does not work that way.
Maybe if Rome hadn’t fallen apart then it would have fallen apart in the 1800s and given rise to the same colonial nation states that exist today. Maybe if the Han Dynasty had stayed together it would have had an even more significant trade imbalance, causing the collapse and eventual colonization of Europe. Maybe the Sassanids would have ended up conquering Europe and we’d all speak Persian derivatives. Who knows? Human history is not composed of isolated chains of causality (from Rome to Middle Ages to now). For all we know the Bantu migration was the world’s most significant shaping event.
Citation needed. I’m pretty sure people do it today because they like to have clean asses.
Haha yeah, try wiping your ass with (or writing on) papyrus and see the benefit of Chinese material culture for yourself.
Papyrus is not the same as paper. There perform a similar function, and they’re certainly etymologically similar, but they aren’t the same thing.
Well, except for the 6-7 billion people who do not have an exclusively Western viewpoint. Not them, but who cares, amirite?
Religion doesn’t either.
(Points up at latest Diogynes brain droppings.)
Sir Bodsworth
If I were a troll, I would be the worst one ever. I’m fairly polite, honest, and before I began posting regularly, I sent an email to Futrelle telling him that I do intend to follow the rules of the board.
And, no, I didn’t read a translation. They have them, and I use them, but I can get along with a single dialect of Aramaic from a specific era if its written in a script I know how to read already.
Well, I know I’ve read the classic Aramaic treatise “How to Wipe your Ass.”
I’m curious about what you’re attempting to accomplish here, Diogynes, since so far all you’ve really managed to do is convince everyone here that you’re kind of an idiot.
lol, he doesn’t even read transcriptions! He reads the actual original text, presumably straight off the stone tablet.
Diogenes, do any of these ancient Aramaic manuscripts have names or anything, or could you point us to pictures of them?