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Troubles, I have them
Mar. 31st, 2010 04:13 pmToday, on the radio, I heard someone talking about how her family kept the Sabbath. (This was in the context of Passover traditions in different families.) She said something like "well, we do turn on lights and drive the car and have adventures and all that. Our rule is nothing electronic." I am sure she meant this to mean video games, computers, televisions, and so on, and did not mean she didn't use her microwave or the car she just said she drove, not to mention those lights she turns on.
I've filed it away with the many times someone has said to me that they didn't want any chemicals in their body. One particularly egregious example was a villification of "ascorbic acid," because that sounds scarier than vitamin c. A paralell is the awful "corn syrup can't be bad because it comes from corn!" commercial, which is an argument I can make about how heroin can't be bad because it comes from opium, a plant.
I am perhaps more disturbed by these - slips? mistakes? misunderstandings? - than I should be; I feel like they're part of a larger trend which makes a distinction between nature and science - an odd distinction to someone who has studied science. This false dichotomy also tends to color one good and one evil. It's an update of God's Will versus witchcraft, but much less examined a thought.
My sister, as I mentioned, is planning a move to a mountainous part of South America, and when I was on the phone with her, she started to worry that she wouldn't know how to cook when she moved, because cooking is different in the mountains. I explained that the only thing she needed to worry about was the boiling point of water, and this has to do with the relationship between pressure and gasses, not with properties of heat - a hambuger is going to work the same, or pie; just not soup.
It upset me quite a bit that she didn't already know this, although not upset with her - she at least remembered there was something different and was going to look it up, in the same way I might need to look up a currency conversion or how many tablespoons are in a cup. It upset me because it felt, again, like a view of the world through magic - we are in the mountains, and must make a different deal with the gods for fire. I'm probably blowing this out of proportion, but I haven't been able to shake it weeks after the fact. (I have not mentioned this to her, since it's not really about her.)
Ciro and I are both sleeping badly, partly as a result of interrupted sleep patterns and partly because we are both naturally restless. It is sort of nice that we are both sleeping badly, as I think there would be resentment otherwise, but I also worry that we are setting each other off. It was easier last week, when we could placate ourselves with Season One of Friday Night Lights; the pilot of the second season was so I-Know-What-You-Did-Last-Summer awful that we've decided to skip to season three, but we haven't had the energy. Our trust was broken. We may officially declare the show has only one season (which does finish off nicely), in the same way we deny the existence of the Star Wars prequels. (And the studio edit of A Touch of Evil.)
In other news, I am in a continuing battle with the U.S. Postal Service that I may soon escalate to my congressional representative. This is not about suspension of Saturday service, which I think is a perfectly fine idea in an era of e-mail, faxes, and telephones.
( Read more... )
I've filed it away with the many times someone has said to me that they didn't want any chemicals in their body. One particularly egregious example was a villification of "ascorbic acid," because that sounds scarier than vitamin c. A paralell is the awful "corn syrup can't be bad because it comes from corn!" commercial, which is an argument I can make about how heroin can't be bad because it comes from opium, a plant.
I am perhaps more disturbed by these - slips? mistakes? misunderstandings? - than I should be; I feel like they're part of a larger trend which makes a distinction between nature and science - an odd distinction to someone who has studied science. This false dichotomy also tends to color one good and one evil. It's an update of God's Will versus witchcraft, but much less examined a thought.
My sister, as I mentioned, is planning a move to a mountainous part of South America, and when I was on the phone with her, she started to worry that she wouldn't know how to cook when she moved, because cooking is different in the mountains. I explained that the only thing she needed to worry about was the boiling point of water, and this has to do with the relationship between pressure and gasses, not with properties of heat - a hambuger is going to work the same, or pie; just not soup.
It upset me quite a bit that she didn't already know this, although not upset with her - she at least remembered there was something different and was going to look it up, in the same way I might need to look up a currency conversion or how many tablespoons are in a cup. It upset me because it felt, again, like a view of the world through magic - we are in the mountains, and must make a different deal with the gods for fire. I'm probably blowing this out of proportion, but I haven't been able to shake it weeks after the fact. (I have not mentioned this to her, since it's not really about her.)
Ciro and I are both sleeping badly, partly as a result of interrupted sleep patterns and partly because we are both naturally restless. It is sort of nice that we are both sleeping badly, as I think there would be resentment otherwise, but I also worry that we are setting each other off. It was easier last week, when we could placate ourselves with Season One of Friday Night Lights; the pilot of the second season was so I-Know-What-You-Did-Last-Summer awful that we've decided to skip to season three, but we haven't had the energy. Our trust was broken. We may officially declare the show has only one season (which does finish off nicely), in the same way we deny the existence of the Star Wars prequels. (And the studio edit of A Touch of Evil.)
In other news, I am in a continuing battle with the U.S. Postal Service that I may soon escalate to my congressional representative. This is not about suspension of Saturday service, which I think is a perfectly fine idea in an era of e-mail, faxes, and telephones.
( Read more... )
