Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 22 FEBRUARY 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
I CHOSE THIS WAY
London cabbies have to acquire something called “The Knowledge” in order to be licensed. It takes a year of intensive training and study. London’s inner byways were designed for pedestrians, not vehicles. In addition, to keep down congestion, the maze is rife with one-way routes and roundabouts. Cabbies have to know not just the streets but also the businesses that line them. It’s a daunting feat of memory.
So, several years ago, they were a natural population for brain study: Did cabbies experience a quantifiable change in their hippocampi, the section of the brain that is believed to reflect memory, especially spatial memory? The scientists were foresighted enough to scan the brains of those who intended to become cabbies, pre-study, as well as those beginning their careers and those with years of experience, in addition to a control group of non-cabbies.
The results were striking. The hippocampi of cabbies altered with the inception training and became more markedly different the longer they plied their trade. In addition, the change was somewhat permanent: Brain architecture remained changed after they retired from driving.
So, are cabbies “born that way”? Is it possible that those with enhanced hippocampi somehow magically find their way into cab driving? Or is the more likely, rational explanation that our brains are fantastically plastic, our best evolutionary edge, and physical structure changes in response to persistent behavior and acculturation?
What if being a cabbie was considered immoral by the dominant intolerant religion? Would there be a subgroup of cabbies arguing that, in fact, they had been “born this way” and therefore please please don’t hate us, it’s not fair. (Ignoring the fact that almost all oppression is based on physical discrimination or circumstances of birth and rearing over which the target group has no control – but that truth has never mitigated against oppression, not in the long historical view.)
Gender is a construct and a choice. So is class, race, religion, and sexuality. It’s a choice many of us make so early that it feels like a state of birth. It can be a choice of going along with extreme cultural pressure from the adults we depend on for survival, or it can be a choice of resistance. Either way, we deserve the empowerment that would accrue to us from claiming it as a choice – and demanding respect for ANY such choice, whether it’s the popular one or not.
I have yet to speak honestly with a straight person who did not heroically resist gender and sexuality boxes in some way as a child, fighting for a wider horizon of expression. We ALL have photographs that reveal such resistance. Why do we fence ourselves away from this superlative group of allies: The entirety of humanity.
Our brains are the result of human culture as much as they are the creators of it. It’s a constant give and take. I want to see little children singing songs that exalt the power of “I CHOSE this way”, and adults celebrating them for it.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 15 FEBRUARY 2011
Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.
Monday, February 14, 2011
LOLCATS VALENTINE'S DAY ROUND-UP 14 FEBRUARY 2011
Here's a special edition of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. Not a real LOLCat in the bunch -- all either larger felines, other critters, or the odd inanimate object.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
HUBBLE THURSDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2011
Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.
MODERN DECLARATION
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never
having wavered
In these affections; never through shyness in the houses of the
rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these
loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having
grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of these
loves;
Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by
a conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers
of their alert enemies; declare
That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
interest wins the war;
Shall love you always.
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