Yay communism

This article made me chuckle. I would love to hear some "conservative" or "liberal" viewpoints on it.

A new way to think about marriage.

Being gay in China tells the stories of 3 men in China about their experiences as being gay there.

Funny. So many people who are so deathly afraid of allowing gay marriage would ALSO be terrified that the government would put such a restriction on people's lives as China does.


Here's an American blogger's view on internet in China. As I have a friend currently stuck behind the great firewall in China, it isn't a myth that sites are blocked. I'm just glad that she isn't in this specific area--where she is is much more open.

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With the recent start to get rid of "Don't ask, Don't tell", I was quite happy to see this letter from a gay pilot who is in the process of being unfairly discharged. I hope that this will finally bring to light the fact that not every gay is a "flamer" and that most are just like straights in their life goals, etc--it's just who they want to be romantically with that is different.

China or England?

is a culture which has been heavily influenced and run by the methodology that everything must be done to keep anarchy from occurring?

BOTH.

England in 1660 when they reinstated the King with Charles II was a country where moderation only became the norm because they did not want the Civil War to happen again. There were NUMEROUS religious factions which would like nothing more than for English law to insist that the one religion of England be Puritan, whether it be Quaker, Leveler, or some other dissenting Protestant sect.

China in the 20th century was one in which a tyrannical government was preferred. Every time demonstrations occurred, all Hell broke loose and chaos was the norm. The Chinese do not like chaos, they are traditionally a society of order, and with 1+ billion citizens, any chaos results in the death of millions of people and a disruption in the entire economic system. It is better to give up freedoms than fear death from overzealous neighbors. At least the government is calculated risk--you know that if you speak badly of Mao you will be killed, not like with the neighbors of which you can never be sure which statement will get you beheaded.

Wow...so much done, so many thoughts

A lot has crossed my mind in the past 12 hours--it happens when you have 2 papers to write both due at 10am today. So, I'm just going to make a list of topics that I often think about but never have time to write about--today just happen to remind me of it. I'll give full blogs of them later when I'm a bit more awake.

1)Why do "common folks" give definitions to the terms liberal and conservative that are the complete oppsosite to what EVERY academic book, paper, and professor I've ever 'met' use. For example. Why do the books speak of liberalizing China when they are describing China's transformation into a more capitalistic society? Common folks would say that to be more liberal economically would mean a transformation into socialism. I guess both are techincally true if the real definition of liberal is a change in the traditional way. So I guess a better question would be not so much why they use this term to describe two very different situations, but whether there someone would dare disagree that a liberal China is capitalist (that they would call it conservative).

2)On this same note, but in England in 1650 (right after the execution of Charles I), the liberal minded parliament ruling England (they would have to be liberal minded seeing as a conservative minded parliament would have been royalist ) swung more towards the right, not nearly enough to be considered conservative. In the US, I guess it would be strange to think of conservative being royalist, but definitionally it would be correct. It sure makes me question certain people who say that conservatism is the only way to be--I don't want to be a royalist or wear skirts all the time.....But many I take things too literally, haha.

My brain is fuzzy. Maybe I'll add more topics later....or maybe this is a full blog post. I'm not sure. Leave comments and I'll add more if necessary.

Grammar Police

Everyone knows when the grammar police show up on a site. I'm sure icanhascheeseburger.com gets such a visitor frequently enough.

Well, I'm writing a paper for my English history to 1688 course (we've been given an original document that we must bring into the context of the other books we've been assigned to read for the course) and it hasn't been "translated" into modern English at all. It's from c. 1625 England about the colony of Jamestown.

So, I guess my real point for this post is my frustration that it's taking me 5+ minutes to read a single page because I must understand just what is being talked about while suffering through the different spellings, lack of punctuation, and just the general other-worldliness of the language. Where are my grammar police?!?!? [wahhahaha--why am I history major?!??!]

Here's the link to the document (pg. 259; but we didn't get the book, so we don't get that handy introduction that books.google does--cheeky professor I have) and here's the link to the book we're relating it to.

Here's a copy I just found of the original which has at least been transcribed into a modern font--but I actually think that it makes it harder to read (click the link to read it).

Palin

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8367633.stm

"She's one of us," he said simply. "We're hard-working, 9-to-5 Joes and like her we didn't go to the elite universities that other politicians went to. She understands real life and she understands America."
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Little to they realize that this is what put fire under the abuse of intellectuals during China's Cultural Revolution......