Friday, March 17, 2006
Blame and exonumia
First and foremost; Happy St. Patrick's Day!! If you're reading this on the actual day, I hope you enjoyed my Java holiday thing; if you missed it, fear not, as always it'll be back for the next holiday. Whether you're Irish or just like to take advantage of the cheap green beer available on this date, I hope you had some good luck today... and pinched anyone who wasn't wearing green. ;-)
I wrote extensively on how we place blame on the wrong people in my post of 1-5-05; a couple of things I recently saw on TV got me thinking about the topic at length again:
1) On an episode of M*A*S*H, a general gave them an officers' club, which was supposed to be for officers only. Hawkeye and BJ, who have no shred of officer-ishness about them and have always treated enlisted personnel as equals, instantly start protesting the idea of exclusivity, and are very open about doing so. The enlisted personnel, meanwhile, are making a pointedly nasty display of reverse exclusion... to Hawkeye and BJ, even after they make it repeatedly clear that they're fighting FOR the enlisted types to be allowed in the club. HUH? Why are even Radar and Klinger, who owe Hawkeye and BJ the most, snubbing THEM instead of those who APPROVE of the club being for officers only? Why risk offending and alienating their only FRIENDS in the matter? Why WANT to? All I can figure is that this is a case of assigned guilt by association plus the awareness that it's safer to insult those with power over you who are also your friends plus lack of analyzing things logically plus a big dose of "human nature sucks."
What was especially interesting to me was that Hawkeye and BJ, instead of reacting with the expected "We're trying to help you, and you're spitting in our faces, so now we're going to STOP sticking our necks out for you," instead anxiously assured the enlisted folks that they were trying hard to rectify the situation, and they in fact keep working at it until it's fixed... or is it that only *I* would have expected them to react to ingratitude with the cessation of their desire to plead the case of the ingrates, because that's the cause and effect way my own mind works, and everyone else expected them to act in the way that'd make sure they were all buddies in the end even though the "other side" couldn't be bothered to act that way? hmmmmmmmmm
In any case, the point to be made here is; if you feel offended by a person, or persons, within a given group, your blame for the offense should go ONLY to those who actually took offensive action, and those who supported them in that action, NOT to everyone in the group, and certainly not to members of the group who have been good to you and/or are on your side... not only is it WRONG, but it can cost you allies and friends.
2) In an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," Ray upsets Amy when she (foolishly, admittedly) tries to talk to him while he's watching a game on TV and he blows her off. Instead of confronting HIM, she goes home and attacks poor Robert (guilt by association again, since he's Ray's brother); as is typical, Robert, who is totally well-meaning and inoffensive, ends up mis-speaking and incriminating himself, leaving HIM in the doghouse when he wasn't the wrongdoer. They see Ray the next day, and Amy actually manages to confront him... in a way with none of the rancor she showered upon the innocent Robert, of course. When Robert protests that Ray, having upset Amy and caused HIM a great deal of grief, essentially got off scott-free, Amy pooh-poohs his concerns, and Ray smugly tells him that he and Amy have talked it out. The scene hurts to watch, both because it's sad to see Ray in effect undeservedly getting the better of Robert once again, and because I know all too well what it feels like to see a wrongdoer skipping merrily away from the mess they made while the virtuous get the short end of the stick. Luckily, Ray is a bungler, and blurted out ANOTHER insult to Amy as her reward for not kicking his butt like she should have; that should teach her how to apportion her rage more appropriately next time, but it probably won't.
What WE can learn from the situation is that it's NOT ok to fling blame around to whoever's nearby just because you bottled up your anger around the person who earned it and are itching to let loose; while it IS correct to toss some blame on a loved one who fails to be supportive of you and to condemn the wrongdoer, goading an innocent person into saying something you can jump on them for is an ethical and karmic no-no. We can also learn that, if you manage to stiffen your spine and confront the source of your upset, don't just mention the problem and then forgive them; either make it clear that they did wrong and better not do it again, or you're totally wasting your time... worse, you're demonstrating that you're a completely safe target for mistreatment.
It's not rocket science to figure out who deserves blame in any given situation, and how much blame they should get; under no circumstances is there any excuse for blaming the blameless, or for letting wrongdoers get away with it to any degree... remember, most people will treat you as badly as you permit them to, and wrongdoers only triumph if YOU let them.
What's all this got to do with exonumia? Nothing; I just discovered that term on eBay, and thought it was so interesting that I wanted to share it:
"Exonumia is the study of coin-like objects such as token coins and medals, and other items used in place of legal currency or for commemoration. This includes elongated coins, encased coins, souvenir medallions, tags, badges, counterstamped coins, wooden nickels, credit cards, and other similar items. It is related to numismatics, and many coin collectors are also exonumists."
"Items such as bus tokens (transportation tokens), bar or pub tokens, and casino tokens or chips are some of the more common forms of exonumia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exonumia
Cool, huh? When you think about it, there's a TON of stuff like that around, and alot of it has stories behind it; that, to my mind, makes for a really interesting collection, although one with a steep learning curve. Take a look at some of what's out there
http://coins.listings.ebay.com:80/Exonumia_W0QQfclZ3QQfromZR11QQsacatZ3452QQsocmdZListingItemList
There's about 23,000 auctions in that category as of when I'm writing this; I'm fascinated that something I'd never heard of before has so much eBay activity. Some of that stuff looks pretty neat; I can't start on another collection unless I buy a warehouse to hold it all, though, so the exonumists have nothing to fear from me... YET.
I wrote extensively on how we place blame on the wrong people in my post of 1-5-05; a couple of things I recently saw on TV got me thinking about the topic at length again:
1) On an episode of M*A*S*H, a general gave them an officers' club, which was supposed to be for officers only. Hawkeye and BJ, who have no shred of officer-ishness about them and have always treated enlisted personnel as equals, instantly start protesting the idea of exclusivity, and are very open about doing so. The enlisted personnel, meanwhile, are making a pointedly nasty display of reverse exclusion... to Hawkeye and BJ, even after they make it repeatedly clear that they're fighting FOR the enlisted types to be allowed in the club. HUH? Why are even Radar and Klinger, who owe Hawkeye and BJ the most, snubbing THEM instead of those who APPROVE of the club being for officers only? Why risk offending and alienating their only FRIENDS in the matter? Why WANT to? All I can figure is that this is a case of assigned guilt by association plus the awareness that it's safer to insult those with power over you who are also your friends plus lack of analyzing things logically plus a big dose of "human nature sucks."
What was especially interesting to me was that Hawkeye and BJ, instead of reacting with the expected "We're trying to help you, and you're spitting in our faces, so now we're going to STOP sticking our necks out for you," instead anxiously assured the enlisted folks that they were trying hard to rectify the situation, and they in fact keep working at it until it's fixed... or is it that only *I* would have expected them to react to ingratitude with the cessation of their desire to plead the case of the ingrates, because that's the cause and effect way my own mind works, and everyone else expected them to act in the way that'd make sure they were all buddies in the end even though the "other side" couldn't be bothered to act that way? hmmmmmmmmm
In any case, the point to be made here is; if you feel offended by a person, or persons, within a given group, your blame for the offense should go ONLY to those who actually took offensive action, and those who supported them in that action, NOT to everyone in the group, and certainly not to members of the group who have been good to you and/or are on your side... not only is it WRONG, but it can cost you allies and friends.
2) In an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," Ray upsets Amy when she (foolishly, admittedly) tries to talk to him while he's watching a game on TV and he blows her off. Instead of confronting HIM, she goes home and attacks poor Robert (guilt by association again, since he's Ray's brother); as is typical, Robert, who is totally well-meaning and inoffensive, ends up mis-speaking and incriminating himself, leaving HIM in the doghouse when he wasn't the wrongdoer. They see Ray the next day, and Amy actually manages to confront him... in a way with none of the rancor she showered upon the innocent Robert, of course. When Robert protests that Ray, having upset Amy and caused HIM a great deal of grief, essentially got off scott-free, Amy pooh-poohs his concerns, and Ray smugly tells him that he and Amy have talked it out. The scene hurts to watch, both because it's sad to see Ray in effect undeservedly getting the better of Robert once again, and because I know all too well what it feels like to see a wrongdoer skipping merrily away from the mess they made while the virtuous get the short end of the stick. Luckily, Ray is a bungler, and blurted out ANOTHER insult to Amy as her reward for not kicking his butt like she should have; that should teach her how to apportion her rage more appropriately next time, but it probably won't.
What WE can learn from the situation is that it's NOT ok to fling blame around to whoever's nearby just because you bottled up your anger around the person who earned it and are itching to let loose; while it IS correct to toss some blame on a loved one who fails to be supportive of you and to condemn the wrongdoer, goading an innocent person into saying something you can jump on them for is an ethical and karmic no-no. We can also learn that, if you manage to stiffen your spine and confront the source of your upset, don't just mention the problem and then forgive them; either make it clear that they did wrong and better not do it again, or you're totally wasting your time... worse, you're demonstrating that you're a completely safe target for mistreatment.
It's not rocket science to figure out who deserves blame in any given situation, and how much blame they should get; under no circumstances is there any excuse for blaming the blameless, or for letting wrongdoers get away with it to any degree... remember, most people will treat you as badly as you permit them to, and wrongdoers only triumph if YOU let them.
What's all this got to do with exonumia? Nothing; I just discovered that term on eBay, and thought it was so interesting that I wanted to share it:
"Exonumia is the study of coin-like objects such as token coins and medals, and other items used in place of legal currency or for commemoration. This includes elongated coins, encased coins, souvenir medallions, tags, badges, counterstamped coins, wooden nickels, credit cards, and other similar items. It is related to numismatics, and many coin collectors are also exonumists."
"Items such as bus tokens (transportation tokens), bar or pub tokens, and casino tokens or chips are some of the more common forms of exonumia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exonumia
Cool, huh? When you think about it, there's a TON of stuff like that around, and alot of it has stories behind it; that, to my mind, makes for a really interesting collection, although one with a steep learning curve. Take a look at some of what's out there
http://coins.listings.ebay.com:80/Exonumia_W0QQfclZ3QQfromZR11QQsacatZ3452QQsocmdZListingItemList
There's about 23,000 auctions in that category as of when I'm writing this; I'm fascinated that something I'd never heard of before has so much eBay activity. Some of that stuff looks pretty neat; I can't start on another collection unless I buy a warehouse to hold it all, though, so the exonumists have nothing to fear from me... YET.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
TV tidbits
I have a TV remote of which I'm almost psychotically fond; it's a novelty kind that was only made briefly some years ago, and everyone comments excitedly on it when they 1st see it... it's one of my best geek toys. A couple of days ago, it DIED; I assumed that it was a battery issue, but replacing them didn't fix it. Thoroughly bummed out, I did a search for it on eBay; when I discovered that nothing like it existed there, or anywhere online, I was BEYOND bummed. When I was still doing desperate Google searches in an attempt to find a remote even vaguely similar to mine, I did something I've never done before; I clicked on an ad in the sidebar of the search page. I know, I know, but I did it because it promised that the site would have every kind of discontinued remote-"Original Replacement Remote Controls All Brands...All Models...All The Time." They LIED, of course, as they didn't even have my BRAND much less my model, but they had something even better:
"Dead" Remotes Can Be Saved
How to Re-Start Your "Dead" Remote Control
This only takes about a minute and will restart 1 in 3 "Dead" Original Remote Controls. Good Luck!
Step 1 - Pull the batteries out of the remote and leave them out until Step 4.
Step 2 - Press and release each and every button one at a time on the remote control until every button has been pressed and released at least once!
Step 3 - If your remote has slide switches, you must move the switch to each position then repeat the button pushing in Step 2. (When you're done, be sure to put the slide switch in the correct position to operate the unit the remote came with!)
Step 4 - Put the batteries back into the remote, being very careful to install them correctly. New batteries should be used if you're not sure about the old ones.
Step 5 - Try the remote.
http://www.remotes.com/remotes/servlet/rs?a=Display&contents=help_deadremote&uid=A1142329616062
And it WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)
My husband explains WHY it worked this way; "charge might have built up on unused buttons, or some buttons might have shorted, and pressing them would release it." A friend that I'd emailed about the problem belatedly told me that taking the batteries out of a remote for a while and then putting them back in will also sometimes work; my husband said that that would fix it if the memory was corrupted. I don't know enough about this sort of thing to tell if he's coming up with clever analyses or if he's making it all up to sound like he's a tech stud, but he DOES seem to have some sort of special powers where electronic devices are concerned, so he's got an obvious "feel" for them; I wrote on 12-15-05 about how non-functioning things will start working as soon as he touches them, or even as soon as he comes into the room, and how when the cable was dead for 15 minutes it came back on instantly when he approached the TV... and then more recently, a dead bulb flared back to life, and stayed alive, when he walked up to it (!!!)... so, I give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, I figured that by posting about ways to fix a remote I might help a few people who love theirs like I love mine... and that I'll get good "remote karma" that'll keep mine working.
The other TV-related thing freaked me out even more. I finally got to see the brilliant animated film by Hayao Miyazaki... actually, EVERY anime feature he does is brilliant, so that's redundant. Let's just say that I saw his latest spectacular must-see movie, "Howl's Moving Castle"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=165679&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
and the 1st time Howl the wizard appeared, I had a reaction that astounded me. Howl is tall, willowy, and graceful, with long, shaggy blond hair, huge, intensely blue eyes, delicately beautiful features, a dramatic cape of pink and gray, and long sparkling earrings; in other words, he's a cleaned-up version of the androgynous musicians I've loved since seeing them on MTV in the 80's, and in the 1st fraction of a second after his image appeared on the screen I had, so help me, an "oh BABY!!" type reaction... it vanished almost instantly, but when I said to my husband "Did you SEE him? I'm in LOVE!!" I was only half-joking, because no matter how fast my conscious mind clamped down with a "he's just a well-drawn animated character," the original reaction was THERE.
I've always been at a loss as to why there are so many images of anime and video game "hot babe" characters available on posters and calendars and such; oh, I know what guys want those images FOR, eg for the same reason they want ANY sexy images, but I never grasped WHY they'd want an image that wasn't a photo or even photo-realistic artwork, because, however beautiful and fantasy-based the girls are, they don't look enough like real human beings to trigger the biological response... or so I'd thought. I'd assumed there was some amount of fetishism involved, and maybe there is in many cases, but now I have to accept that your brain CAN treat an animated image as if it were a real human image; I've got no urge to start buying posters of Howl, but my reaction only differed in degree from what the men who DO want to have images of animated characters feel, not in kind. I still don't see how anyone could hold onto that oh-baby feeling once their mind snapped back to the reality of "just a cartoon," but that's trivial compared to the existence of the feeling in the 1st place; I'd be REALLY interested to know what sorts of non-photographic images can have this effect, and what the cutoff point is beyond which an image is too "unrealistic" to exert any power... where, in the spectrum between highly realistic art and stick figures, does the zone begin where there are insufficient cues to activate the hormones?
I'll be curious to see if this sort of reaction happens to me ever again; as one of the guys doing commentary on the DVD pointed out, in America we don't have an "archetype for an effeminate male character," by which he's rather uncharitably referring to Howl's being beautiful rather than muscular and chiseled as male animated characters that're supposed to be good-looking always are in American animated tradition, so it's entirely likely that I won't ever see another suitable character to test my reaction to. Still, it's got me thinking, and if I ever have any free time again I'll try to hunt up some fantasy artwork with varying degrees of "reality" and see if any of the male characters spark any hint of reaction.
And they say women aren't visually stimulated...
"Dead" Remotes Can Be Saved
How to Re-Start Your "Dead" Remote Control
This only takes about a minute and will restart 1 in 3 "Dead" Original Remote Controls. Good Luck!
Step 1 - Pull the batteries out of the remote and leave them out until Step 4.
Step 2 - Press and release each and every button one at a time on the remote control until every button has been pressed and released at least once!
Step 3 - If your remote has slide switches, you must move the switch to each position then repeat the button pushing in Step 2. (When you're done, be sure to put the slide switch in the correct position to operate the unit the remote came with!)
Step 4 - Put the batteries back into the remote, being very careful to install them correctly. New batteries should be used if you're not sure about the old ones.
Step 5 - Try the remote.
http://www.remotes.com/remotes/servlet/rs?a=Display&contents=help_deadremote&uid=A1142329616062
And it WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)
My husband explains WHY it worked this way; "charge might have built up on unused buttons, or some buttons might have shorted, and pressing them would release it." A friend that I'd emailed about the problem belatedly told me that taking the batteries out of a remote for a while and then putting them back in will also sometimes work; my husband said that that would fix it if the memory was corrupted. I don't know enough about this sort of thing to tell if he's coming up with clever analyses or if he's making it all up to sound like he's a tech stud, but he DOES seem to have some sort of special powers where electronic devices are concerned, so he's got an obvious "feel" for them; I wrote on 12-15-05 about how non-functioning things will start working as soon as he touches them, or even as soon as he comes into the room, and how when the cable was dead for 15 minutes it came back on instantly when he approached the TV... and then more recently, a dead bulb flared back to life, and stayed alive, when he walked up to it (!!!)... so, I give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, I figured that by posting about ways to fix a remote I might help a few people who love theirs like I love mine... and that I'll get good "remote karma" that'll keep mine working.
The other TV-related thing freaked me out even more. I finally got to see the brilliant animated film by Hayao Miyazaki... actually, EVERY anime feature he does is brilliant, so that's redundant. Let's just say that I saw his latest spectacular must-see movie, "Howl's Moving Castle"
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?movieID=165679&channel=Movies&subChannel=sub#Cast
and the 1st time Howl the wizard appeared, I had a reaction that astounded me. Howl is tall, willowy, and graceful, with long, shaggy blond hair, huge, intensely blue eyes, delicately beautiful features, a dramatic cape of pink and gray, and long sparkling earrings; in other words, he's a cleaned-up version of the androgynous musicians I've loved since seeing them on MTV in the 80's, and in the 1st fraction of a second after his image appeared on the screen I had, so help me, an "oh BABY!!" type reaction... it vanished almost instantly, but when I said to my husband "Did you SEE him? I'm in LOVE!!" I was only half-joking, because no matter how fast my conscious mind clamped down with a "he's just a well-drawn animated character," the original reaction was THERE.
I've always been at a loss as to why there are so many images of anime and video game "hot babe" characters available on posters and calendars and such; oh, I know what guys want those images FOR, eg for the same reason they want ANY sexy images, but I never grasped WHY they'd want an image that wasn't a photo or even photo-realistic artwork, because, however beautiful and fantasy-based the girls are, they don't look enough like real human beings to trigger the biological response... or so I'd thought. I'd assumed there was some amount of fetishism involved, and maybe there is in many cases, but now I have to accept that your brain CAN treat an animated image as if it were a real human image; I've got no urge to start buying posters of Howl, but my reaction only differed in degree from what the men who DO want to have images of animated characters feel, not in kind. I still don't see how anyone could hold onto that oh-baby feeling once their mind snapped back to the reality of "just a cartoon," but that's trivial compared to the existence of the feeling in the 1st place; I'd be REALLY interested to know what sorts of non-photographic images can have this effect, and what the cutoff point is beyond which an image is too "unrealistic" to exert any power... where, in the spectrum between highly realistic art and stick figures, does the zone begin where there are insufficient cues to activate the hormones?
I'll be curious to see if this sort of reaction happens to me ever again; as one of the guys doing commentary on the DVD pointed out, in America we don't have an "archetype for an effeminate male character," by which he's rather uncharitably referring to Howl's being beautiful rather than muscular and chiseled as male animated characters that're supposed to be good-looking always are in American animated tradition, so it's entirely likely that I won't ever see another suitable character to test my reaction to. Still, it's got me thinking, and if I ever have any free time again I'll try to hunt up some fantasy artwork with varying degrees of "reality" and see if any of the male characters spark any hint of reaction.
And they say women aren't visually stimulated...
