TBTM20100812

What are men good for? (Absolutely fascinating article)
Re-reading Star Wars in the light of the prequels
Knowledge floats (or, why it’s good to have blogs)
Wikipedia’s lamest edit wars
Is this what our crisis will wash away?
The top ten quotes by Confucius (I wonder what the top ten quotes from Jesus would be? Hmm… there’s a meme there)
Liquid wood

4 thoughts on “TBTM20100812

  1. Re hipsters piece: do you mean that the hipsters will be washed away, or that writing snarky pieces about counterculture movements labelling them as derivative, nihilistic and degenerative* will be washed away? Both, I guess.

    *Have there been any counterculture movements that have received similar epithets?

    What are men good for was an interesting hypothesis, but like many such grand hypotheses, struggles with certain details, for instance, the fact that women are systematically paid less for the same work (so high earning men pulling up the average are irrelevant, and so are the number of hours worked). It would have also benefited from some more historical analysis of developing attitudes towards women and children, which are far from uniform as he suggests (I haven’t checked the author’s name, but don’t need to in order to surmise that he’s male).

    The concept of spheres of culture and necessity and the virtues and relationships required by each is an interesting one, though more usually discussed under the language of “public” and “private”.

    This hypothesis accounts well for male monastic orders, but requires more work to accommodate female ones.

    Nonetheless, overall, it was indeed a very thought-provoking piece.

  2. Do you mean ‘haven’t’ re the hipsters piece? I was just thinking it had a ‘fin-de-siecle’ feel about it. As for the men article – I thought it was weak in some ways, eg no references to chase up, but it really made me think. I’d particularly like to know where he got the genealogical information from.

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