“Dances with Wolves in blue”—that pretty much sums up my initial response. […] I’ve come to love and hate “Dances with Wolves”, with its beautiful setting and loving portrayal of the Lakota (something new on the screen in the ‘80s) and “white savior” narrative, all of which are present in “Avatar” as well. […] it’s a abandonment of whiteness while retaining white privilege, as opposed to, say, the very much NOT romantic loss of whiteness in “District 9”.”
—Avatar | Savage Minds
December 2009
6 posts
“peace could be made between Trolls and other humans. Conversation hackers are useful. Like other hackers, they test the boundaries of a system, and they force users to devise better systems. They strain human argumentation to its limits. Dealing with Trolls forces you to sharpen your arguments and keep a cool head. Sometimes you might even learn something from a Troll. Socrates was maddening, but he helped make some concepts clearer.”
—Conversation Hackers (via Savage Minds)
“I notice that when my turn comes and I step up to the counter, the person behind me in line vectors off to the side so that they can see the postal employee serving me. […] this is America and we will be eclipsed by no one. We will not wait quietly well someone dares waste our time. We will be counted. We will be seen. That’s where that self righteousness comes in especially, as if people are saying, “Don’t you know who I am?” Because we are not just time poor, we are time proud. No one is going to waste our time. That would be diminishing and Americans will not be diminished.”
—deTocqueville at the post office :: Grant McCracken
November 2009
1 post
“
The teens who come to create terror at the Oberoi hotel are for a few minutes stunned by the scale of the place, its luxury of its appointments, the size of the computer screens. We can hear their handler in Pakistan trying by cell phone to talk them out of their astonishment and into action. “Throw a grenade,” he says. “Just pull the pin.” But the kids are simply witless. As products of the slums of Pakistan, they have never seen anything like this before. […]
Astonishment is a symptom that the categories in our heads have ceased to function. And without the smooth and unwitting operation of these categories, we are open mouthed and in the extreme case incapable of action. That at the limit is what culture is for. As the supplier of the categories in our heads, it is the supplier of an orderly perception of the physical and the social world. Thus does culture make the world make sense.
” —Astonishment, its a cultural thing :: Grant McCracken