Tag Archives: race

A Weekend’s Worth of Amusement (Offset by Some Real World News)

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This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

It’s been a little trying here in the real world. Lots of not-so-great things going on if you pay attention to the news. More not-so-great things going on for some people I give a damn about. ANd my own feelings of utter stagnation really aren’t helping any.

So… To The Internet!

There’s no shortage of feel-good, restore your faith in humanity, mind blowingly cute, utterly hilarious things out there. Thankfully, a lot of those turned up over the past few days. Seems that sharing them has done more than a few people a bit of good.

Of course, there’s also the real world news stuff that I can’t in good conscience completely ignore. (Once a news guy, always a news guy.) But there’s also some genuinely good news of good people doing good things (that whole ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has been a small goldmine of creativity and good will) some even doing good things at great risk to themselves (like they guys running aid and rescue missions in the mountains of Iraq).

The world can seem to be a really nasty place. It’s what we’re sold on TV–both in the news and in our entertainment. Visible, violent conflict is exciting (when it’s not happening to you or people you know). It gets eyeballs on the screen, which means eyeballs on the ads, which means money in someone’s pocket. “If it bleeds, it leads” remains true no matter where things are showing up.

But that’s not a fully accurate representation of the world. If it were, we’d all have been dead of one thing or another long, long ago. (And anyone who thought it was a good idea to bring a child into that fully bad world would be struck down by appalled mobs… who’d only be proving how bad things are.)

We’re still here. We’re still moving forward. There are still people fighting the good fight and many, many more quietly changing the world for the better.

Little by little, if we look, the light is there, holding the darkness at bay.

It’s still up to us to look, though. At both sides. To find the balance.

Here’s the feed…

Bees, Furguson, Fictional Horrors, and Needed Distractions

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This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

I spent more time than I probably should have discussing the goings on in Furguson, MO, today.

Can’t say that before yesterday I’d really ever heard of that St. Louis suburb before, but after today it’s going to be hard to forge.

You see, there’s some massive police action going on there. That’s in reaction to some massive public action–including looting and riots. And that’s in reaction to a shooting that left a black man definitely dead and a cop reported injured.

Chains of events like this aren’t all that uncommon.

It’s a symptom of the ongoing and underlying racial and economic divides we’ve got going on here. That we’ve had going on here pretty much forever.

It’s tragic all around.

First that there’s any legitimate question that an altercation with a law enforcement officer was uncalled for or that the cop’s response was out of scale. Further that pretty much any any event between white people and people of a different race will far too often set off protests and riots.

I’d like to say “It didn’t used to be this way…” But that’s not entirely true. There is a tremendous history of those in power (who have always happened to be white, and almost always male here in the United States) abusing those of different races, genders, and sexual orientations. So much so that any “event” involving a minority has to be deeply questioned and, in many communities, serves as a flashpoint for the pent up frustrations of the population.

In Fuguson, the death sparked riots (which, in and of itself is an utterly counter-productive reaction–“Let’s mess up our own town to protest the actions of the powers that be!”). Those riots sparked a highly militarized police response (which, in some cases, was definitely called for–if you’re setting things on fire and robbing stores, the cops are kind of supposed to stop that). The problem is, because the police force itself was seen as the aggressor in the ongoing tension in the town, having them show up at even peaceful gatherings looking like an occupying military force and then moving in on the crowd isn’t going to do anything but incite resistance and more distrust.

Which is exactly what’s been happening over the past four days.

It’s a problematic and unfortunate situation that has done near irreparable damage to the community in many ways. Law enforcement and those in power are going to have a very difficult climb to even get back to the strained point of tolerance they had with the residents before this all fell apart. The residents are going to have to deal with numerous issues this is inevitably causing in their own community–when neighbors of yours are burning down buildings you shop at, there’s going to be some lingering frisson there.

And then the country, not as a whole but as a divided population of “us” and “them”, has yet another example of why they shouldn’t trust those we’ve put in power. That brings us one step closer to collapse… and that helps no one get anything positive done.

Anyway, there are 70 or so back and forth exchanges, all filled with fantastic and diverse opinions attached to the articles about it in the feed. Definitely check those out.

Also, there are baby ducks swimming in a sink.

And a dancing tree.

Just to balance things out.

Here’s the feed…

Heroes (in real life and otherwise), A Bad Way to Kill a Spider, Questionable Editorial Decisions, and Just Plain Bad News

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This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

The week continues to be… odd.

The rapid oscillation between lull and panic at the day job just kind of left my head spinning. I’d been hoping to make a bit of progress on some other projects, but one just refused to die quietly. I’m sure it will resurface again soon enough… likely right when I need to be doing something else.

That lead to the continued trend of just zoning out when I got home.

So now I’m not at all where I want to be on any number of non-day-job things (including clearing out my lingering TV episode queue from Hulu and other places). Doing nothing ceased to be actually relaxing when it became the only thing I could manage to do.

And, based on the news reports coming through various feeds, it looks like things are heating up again between Israel and the Gaza Strip area. That’s unpleasant, to say the least. Especially when, a few thousand miles away, a civilian plane seems to have been shot down by Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine.

I really don’t want any more large scale wars for a little while (at least). We still haven’t finished pulling all the way out of the last bunch of messes in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere that we were involved in.

Anyway, there’s some good news and fun stuff in the feed, too… but.. well.. yeah…

Authenticity, Spooked, For the Love of Villains, Poor Decisions Make the News, and Taking Risks

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This entry is part [part not set] of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

One of the articles today talks about how keeping our kids super safe may actually be doing them more harm than good.

It raised the question in the comment thread of just how much has the world changed since I was a kid? On a macro level, sure, lots of changes–we’ve got no more Soviet Union (and a whole lot of new countries in its place), gay marriage is a real thing now, 3D movies are the norm and not the novelty–but people are still people. How much, and in what ways, has that changed?

The biggest difference I see is the sheer level of paranoia. There was an article a week or so ago that was by a parent who was facing a lot of court costs because her kid and a friend wandered over to a nearby shopping center. They weren’t supposed to, but that’s beside the point. The point was that the person who came across these two reported very capable young girls panicked and, instead of calling the parents to see what was up, called the cops instead. That escalated quickly and has caused no end of trouble.

Forty years ago, I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened.

We’ve become so afraid of everything–especially personal liability–that, in general, we seem to be far too willing to pass things on to someone else (like the cops) in order to avoid having to deal with any real responsibility. This is the same kind of thinking that’s neutered playgrounds (I know I’m not the only one who remembers getting nasty splinters while flying off of a merry-go-round that four other kids were pushing at near sonic speed).

As today’s article says, it’s in those unstructured (and unsupervised) times of play that kids really start to figure things out for themselves. They learn self control. They learn how to work with others. They learn that trying to stand on the top of the jungle gym probably isn’t a good idea (as they bounce down among the bars). Yeah, we’d go home bruised, and sometimes there’d be a broken bone, but we’d heal and not be likely to make the same mistakes again.

But I grew up in the era of the Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger. Both things that, in retrospect were blown so far out of proportion (the first never having a shred of actual evidence to support it, the second being provably wrong as most “danger” comes from family and friends of the family). That planted the seed of fear in us. As we’ve grown up, and, in some cases begun raising families of our own, that fear seems to have sprouted and begun to strangle all the unstructured play time in the name of “being safe.”

Surely we won’t know for another few years (maybe decades) exactly what the ultimate result of helicopter parents and over-planned childhoods will bring… but I have a feeling we’re not at all going to be happy with what we see.