Nandcc's Word List

People-Triggers on "The Desires and Insecurities of the 21st Century"

[Full article here.] In close-knit communities or peer groups, we tend to have a lot of social contact, and we are exposed to a lot of social feedback. Having a lot of feedback is generally healthier than having a little, because with a greater sample of information, our minds can take feedback in stride and [...]

Comment on Do We Need a Foreign Policy? by A grateful reader

This is an entertaining read, Justin, but couldn't you have done without the Islamophobia? I'm talking about your digs at "restrictions" in Iraq and Iran. From a strategic perspective, you are only helping to reinforce the neocon/interventionist narrative that justifies our invading or controlling other people by either (1) casting them as immoral (e.g., "they oppress women," they are "anti-the arts"), or (2) painting them as potential threats to us (e.g., to "our freedoms," or as alleged expansionist caliphate lovers). From the standpoint of substance, are you even justified in your implicit criticism of their rules and customes? Is Iran really so bad, for example? I think a reasonable argument could be made that the Iranian government is more aligned with the interests of the Iranian people than the U.S. government is with the American people. In other words, it's plausible that Iran is MORE democratic than the United States, its government more representative. And Is it so objectionable that a community (in Iran, Iraq, or elsewhere) should establish certain norms of behavior, even if strict? (Maybe you don't want that for the society you live in, but are shared values really so categorically bad as to demand condemnation when they manifest themselves in other societies?) As our own nation and communities disintegrate here in the United States, how can we say that we know best how to organize a sustainable society? Maybe they are wise to something that we are missing.

Sweet Success for North Center Cafe

A North Center cafe enjoys extra business through increased media attention, but knows the real key to success lies in a creative menu and a unique atmosphere. Most people don’t associate John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” with a traditional French crêperie, but that’s exactly what you’ll find at North Centers’s Crêpes à Latte. Founded in April [...]

Please (I'm begging here) consider the psychology of meetings!

It's an occupational hazard that I go to a lot of meetings. That's not a bad thing because my job is a team sport. My problem with meetings is that we often forget about psychology when we are holding meetings

Comment on The Barrage Starts Here. by FunkyPlaid

My wagons are full of arrow-holes, cast-aside scalps, and screamin' Injuns.

Wanna venture forth and reinforce the palisades with me?

Comment on Evening Lecture by Jen

continued: My motivation to looking into homeschooling is a little bit of my ego. I feel I could do a much better job then any teacher with a 20/30+ kids the class. Plus the thought of homeschooling souns like the best of both worlds. I can be at home with Clark and teach all at the same time. Other teachers aren't going to have the patience to ignore the bad and reinforce in a possitive way. I know I can do that for him, but I worry about how to help him grow socially so that he isn't a misfit. Also with the possibility of making the Army a career, I worry that Clark will be like his daddy and worry more about making new friends at schools and not focus on his school work. I wish I could have been there to take part in your lecture. I have a plan on talking with my parent's neighbor who homeschools her kids. I'll let you know what she said.

Out and Proud (well almost).

My life had to change,  but how?  Who can I ask about what I’m feeling?  I know the feelings are those of a gay person, but am I a gay person? Once in a while I would take a ride with my dad, we would go to the store or run any errands.  During these [...]

Auto industry split between Gen X and Gen Y

I was trolling through the list of list of super-new vehicles that will be at the upcoming auto show in Toronto, and two caught my eye — the 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible and the 2012 Hyundai Veloster.

Both look fantastic.

But these new debuts once again reinforce how two major demographic groups are yanking the chains of the automakers in different directions.

Camaro’s target audience is obviously the baby-boom generation. Perhaps you’ve heard of them?

Following the baby boom is Generation X, a much smaller crowd. But Generation Y, also referred to as, “The Millennial Generation,” and/or, “The Echo Boom,” is actually a very sizeable cohort.

With more and more baby-boom drivers gradually moving on to more non-driving activities, like shuffling to the washroom every 15 minutes, Gen Y-ers are poised to be the “driving force” in the market.

But just not yet. Baby boomers are still, by far, the largest group out there, and will continue to be, even after 2013, when most of them will be 60 years or older.

Not only are there fewer Gen-Y people, they aren’t as uniformly “car crazy” as their elders; many aren’t interested in driving at all, and many hold off getting cars and/or their licenses until their twenties. But among them are those who love their vehicles just as much as any previous generation.

The Hyundai Veloster is aimed squarely at Gen-Y folks. This “three-door” sports coupe will compete directly against Mini Cooper, Honda CR-Z, and Scion tC. The tC is new to Canada, but in the U.S., where it has been sold for a few years now, it has the distinction of attracting the youngest owners (medium age 24 years) of any nameplate on the market.

The original Camaro followed Ford Mustang into the so-called “Pony Car” segment, which would also ultimately include Firebird, Challenger, Barracuda, Javelin, AMX, and Cougar. Back in their heyday, these cars made a splash because they were lighter and faster and better looking than family sedans. In other words, they were the “young person’s ride” — like the Veloster is now.

But in 2011, these pony cars are strictly a middle-aged person’s proposition, and only for those with certain aesthetic sensibilities and generous credit lines.

It’s obvious the Veloster and other modern sports coupes do a way better job crossing over to other demographics. They’re lighter, more space and fuel efficient, and more affordable. So let’s keep them coming, and maybe ease off a bit on the nostalgia trip.

By the way, about 6,000 people in Canada are now over the age of 100. The number of people expected to become “Centenarians” over the next 20 years is expected to triple. They are the fastest growing demographic age group in the country. I have no idea what that means for the auto landscape, except that you might have to wait longer for the pedestrian traffic to clear at certain crosswalks.

Ethics

I’ve decided to start blogging along with my studying for the level 2 exam of the CFA program. Hopefully this will provide me with a little more structure and help reinforce the topics that I have to cover through my … Continue reading →

Hague reveals fears for Middle East peace process

The foreign secretary said there is a legitimate fear the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and become a "casualty of uncertainty in the region"

The Middle East peace process is in danger of falling victim to the revolutionary tide sweeping the Arab world, foreign secretary William Hague has warned.

Speaking on an emergency tour of the region, Hague also urged Israel to tone down its "belligerent" language in the wake of the uprisings which have spread from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond.

The intervention came as the situation in Egypt intensified, with thousands of protesters again on the streets of Cairo demanding President Hosni Mubarak's immediate departure.

In an interview with The Times en route to Jordan, Hague said: "Amidst the opportunity for countries like Tunisia and Egypt, there is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and be put to one side, and will be a casualty of uncertainty in the region."

He added: "Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change will complicate the process still further. That means there is a real urgency for the Israelis and the United States.

"Recent events mean this is an even more urgent priority and that's a case we are putting to the Israeli Government and in Washington."

Hague responded to pronouncements by Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been urging his nation to prepare for "any outcome" and vowing to "reinforce the might of the state of Israel".

"This should not be a time for belligerent language," the Foreign Secretary said. "It's a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process."

Despite two weeks of steadfast pressure, Egyptian protesters have not achieved their goal of ousting Mubarak. Yesterday, thousands of civilians - including about 5,000 university professors and teachers - packed Cairo's Tahrir Square to continue their demonstrations calling for the president's removal.

In Alexandria, the country's second largest city, 18,000 people crammed into the main square, while some 3,000 service workers for the Suez Canal also demonstrated in Suez city.

Around 8,000 people also chanted anti Mubarak slogans in the southern city of Assuit.

The beleaguered president has refused to step down, insisting on serving until elections in September.

His regime offered more concessions to the protesters in hopes of appeasing them while keeping as firm a grip on power as it possibly can.

Vice president Omar Suleiman, who is managing the crisis, offered to set up committees to propose long-sought constitutional amendments and monitor the implementation of all proposed reforms.

Mubarak also ordered a probe into last week's clashes between the protesters and government supporters as well as mass detentions of human rights activists and journalists.

Google Docs and the Amazing World Wide Web

Hi everyone! I had seen a YouTube video that showed how three people used Google Docs to make an animated video. It was incredible! After our discussion today, I couldn’t help but think of this video as we discussed the many benefits of Google Docs compared to the other sites we used. I absolutely love [...]

Compulsion about the Star Driver Puzzle - Vanishing Age

Star Driver is kind of like a fable. People in the show act out stuff, in representation of higher concepts and ideas, in service of themes. Or at least, that is how it is represented with characters larger than life and brighter than a shooting star. Or something. The problem is these characters all clearly [...]

A Social Media Expert's Guide to Keeping Track of Reality

Wrote this post by hand to reassure myself that I still know how! And to reinforce reality. The further I go down the rabbit hole of social media, the more I realize how endless it is. it is like an undiscovered tunnel system extending infinitely deeper than anyone can possibly map. You can get lost [...]

SEQUENCE & BOOK

Karen Hanmer Homework: Wednesday- February 9 The past redoubles itself.  Has everything already happened? -Sylvia Plachy Objective: The objective of this exercise is to order the images of your Memory project into a sequence. The sequence will be expressed in a book that can unfold with a narrative or a non-narrative structure. Method: Sequence n [...]

Raymond Davis, Murder and Vienna Convention 1961

Raymond Davis, Murder and Vienna Convention 1961 This ia a Pakpotpourri Exclusive   By: Yasmeen Ali You cannot open the TV, nor read a paper without more and more of news on Raymond Davis and his act, that has created international waves, promising to plunge Pakistan and America relationship in a tangle. A great deal has [...]

Comment on New “New, ‘Warrior Children’ Thread” by Doug Sowers

Thanks Ben, excellent point. I think that may reinforce my church discipline idea, no? Regardless, Jesus wasn't embarrassed about the DP for children, amen? Whatever Jesus was getting at, one thing is for certain, he wasn't acting like he felt the law was outdated or had been abrogated.

Comment on Northern Lights, Chapters 5 and 6 (Home and Gender) by ddkohl

Mel’s comment helps, but there are a few points I want to clarify before we move the heck on and discuss something else. - Yup. - It’s a perfect monomyth and, unless something entirely new and created in this text happens, it will remain so. The main alternative to the classic monomyth is the American monomyth, as identified by Jewett and Shelton-Lawrence in 1977. That variation is fundamentally different and, actually, represents a psychologically-dysfunctional journey. I draw attention to it only because it is far more popular in modern pop culture than the classic monomyth; I’ll leave actual discussion of it to some other time and place. - In terms of literary analysis, that’s about right. It has other uses, but none that I want to go into here. - I don’t believe Pullman is using the monomythic structure intentionally. I’m sure he’s aware of the theory, but I don’t think it was on his mind as he wrote. It’s far more likely that he’s just writing a hero’s quest story, which means that the monomyth is present. That’s how the monomyth works: it appears as a natural projection of a particular set of cognitive functions. Those who try to write to the monomyth tend to end up with stilted, obnoxiously contrived crap. Nicholas’ mention of Star Wars provides a good example—although Lucas changes his story every few years, most of the time he claims not to have learned of the monomyth until after the first movie was already filming. He stayed relatively hands-off (for him) on the next two, but, thanks to a friendship with Joseph Campbell brought about by the series, he later wrote the prequel trilogy entirely to the monomyth, and it turned out about as well as that ever does. The monomyth is like breathing—you do what you need to do to tell your story, and your subconscious will take care of the mythic content. When you let your conscious mind take over the control of subconscious activities like breathing or walking, everything goes to hell—same thing with narrative. Probably the most important point I have to make is that you can’t subvert the monomyth and tell a hero’s quest story. It doesn’t work. It would change the genre. As an example, most dystopian novels are monomythic until you hit the final stages, at which point the Hero is in some way revealed to be unequal to the task of revitalizing the world, and so is not truly a hero. The world (and, often, the non-hero protagonist) continues to die—or, at least, stagnate, which is the symbolic equivalent. It’s also difficult to deviate from it, since the entire point of the monomyth is that it is malleable enough to accept a wide variety of functionally-consistent forms. The aforementioned American monomyth, though significantly different in several ways from the classic, psychologically healthy, version, is still a monomyth. There’s a lot more that I’d like to clarify and correct, but these are the most important points. However, I do want to point out that, by the end of chapter nine, we’ve already gone through two monomythic cycles in this novel. These two cycles also unite to form a single, larger, monomythic cycle, which forms the first part of what I believe will be the monomythic cycle of the novel as a whole, which, I believe, will be, functionally, exactly that same first part in regard to the monomythic cycle of the entire series. This multi-level effect is fairly common and useful in analysis, as the comparison of multiple cycles helps highlight and reinforce the central themes of the narrative. Still, I’ll leave it at that for now and find somewhere else to go into this in more detail for anyone who’s interested, as I suspect a concrete example will help you understand the monomyth and the ways in which it can be useful a bit better. But, for now, I’m tired of writing and you’re tired of reading.

Volver

Pedro Almodovar is one of the big, big stars of modern foreign cinema, and along with names like Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, he is one of the serious auteurs showing why Spanish language cinema is, in my opinion, the the king of foreign cinema. If there is one over-riding theme [...]

NPR Wrap Up

In order to begin posting on Huffington Post, I’m going to skip the weekly questions from the end of January in favor of just doing the wrap up for NPR. So, here we go! What is NPR good for? NPR is great for a diverse and wide range of topics. So many topics, in fact,

Comment on What Is An Atheist? by Wind Horse

Hello there friends, It seems to me that an atheist is someone that despairs of any symbol system's ability to mediate a relationship to the mystery of life and usually reinforce this stance by then claiming that there is no transcendent realm anyway. Having dismissed the possibility of any mythology and ritual of connecting with Ultimate Mystery by refusing to investigate further they reinforce their conclusion that there is nothing there. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that humans are capable of living without a mythology or symbol system and consumerism is only too happy to fill the void. Sure, the church and other religious institutions have a lot to apologize for but they are the only keepers of any sort of mythology and symbolic access to the transcendent. They are the only places so far that will dare to proclaim that death is part of life and enact this ritually. The development of our human consciousness depends on the insight that we live in some sort of enchanted universe. In today's religious smorgasboard it seems that non-theists and theists alike can find some mythology to tap into if they choose. It is perhaps time to stop giving so much energy to how these institutions fall short and begin paying attention to the reason that they are not going away. The project of religion is not making "nice" people it is facilitating an encounter with the fire and flame of Life. As the mythologist Joseph Campbell once said, "I don't have faith, I have experience." Let's talk about experience.