September 2024 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 296 other subscribers
Why do people compare a woman’s body shape to fruit?
… Do we, Kat? I mean, pear-shaped we do say, yes, and the body shape is old (1815); the “things went wrong” meaning is much later, and may (may) be unrelated: Pear-shaped.
But banana-shaped? I haven’t heard that. I have heard “flat as a pancake” instead, and pancakes aren’t fruit. Apple shaped? I haven’t heard that either. I have heard hourglass-figure, but hourglasses are also not a fruit.
And of course there’s real cultural difference at play here. Korea has the whole peculiar trend of using letters of the Latin alphabet to classify body shapes: S-Line, V-Line, and 19 More Korean Body Lines
Two things going on here. The impetus to classify female body types is tied up with the… dare I say objectification? of women. Commodification, certainly. Women are evaluated for desirability according to specific ideals of body shape, and are therefore classified according to how they meet or fail to meet those ideals of body shape.
Why fruit? Well, why letters of the alphabet? Accessible, recognisable shapes, preferably like Kathleen Grace said with connotations of sensuality (which fruit have)—although that is not mandatory, as Korea shows (and so do hourglasses).
Why is The Bachelor / The Bachelorette so popular? Why do people like watching the shows?
Originally Answered:
Why do people like to watch The Bachelor?
I’m sure I’ve seen this question somewhere else already, but I’m on my phone, so I won’t go hunting to merge.
The Bachelor draws on a potent combination of factors, although the proportion of factors seems to differ by country. The Australian Bachelor and Bachelorette are very different from the US versions.
- People love to watch a competition. Especially when they can empathize with a competitor. And the editing of reality TV encourages you to empathize with one party and vilify the other. The latest Australian Bachelor was won by if not a villain, certainly not the person edited to look best. I’m still not sure whether that was an act of genius or stupidity.
- People like to watch romance. The audience is very well aware how artificial the romance is, and how it has been gamified. But again, the editing is usually skillful enough to commit some suspension of disbelief. At least, until you get to the group dates. But the group dates are about gladiatorial competition, not romance.
- People like to watch a bunch of attractive people on TV making out. This seems to have been a change of emphasis even between seasons of the American Bachelor, with the latest season doing more sex. Perhaps surprisingly, no sex is allowed on the Australian Bachelor.
- People like to watch car crash TV. That forms a package with the gladiatorial combat aspect of the bachelor. And the producers certainly stoke the mix of paranoia, delusion, competitiveness, and inebriation that leads to car crash TV. Of course many of the competitors are complicit in that, and they know it will get them their own notoriety.
How do people deal with “unfortunate” last names?
You’re not hinting that my last name is unfortunate there, Michael, are you? 🙂
I haven’t suffered all that much for it. Certainly not as much as some respondents. If someone carries on about it, I inwardly (or maybe even not that inwardly) roll my eyes, and move on. I used to be nicknamed Nick Squared, and I took no offence at that. A couple of decades ago, someone said to me that I would not be as obnoxious as I am if I didn’t have that name. I chose to take that as a compliment.
My reactions when someone expresses surprise at my name are: either to point out that I’ve got three cousins with the same name, so there’s more of me where that came from; or to exclaim that they loved me so much that they named me twice. Just like New York, New York.
How can one use the word “Quora” in a limerick?
In Sodom, we know from the Torah,
the sinful did dwell, and Gomorrah.
When guests came to visit,
they’d leer: “How exquisite!
What to do to them? Oh! Let’s ask Quora!”
Can you recite a poem, sonnet or any literary device in the languages of your choice?
Poem #1
My favourite Esperanto sonnet—which actually dissolves the very form of the sonnet; see:
What is your favorite phrase or line from a poem not in English?
Mi, dezirante ĉerkon
(kapitulaci,
ekshipokrito laca,
ĉi ŝakan ŝercon),
pluportis mian serĉon
ĝis la palaco
de ĉi korpo kuraca,
en kies riĉon
mi kitelumas
pli pace miajn ostojn
ol feton lulas
la utero; kaj ekson
mian ĝi teksas
en naskon.
I, wishing for a coffin
(to quit,
a tired ex-hypocrite,
this joke of chess),
continued my search
until the palace
of this healing body,
in whose riches
I besmock
my bones more peacefully
than the womb lulls
the fetus; and it weaves
my expiration
into birth.
Poem #2
You want obscure? Here’s obscure.
Petrarchan sonnets, written in Cypriot Greek in the mid-16th century. ΟΙ ΡΙΜΕΣ ΤΗΣ ΑΓΑΠΗΣ: ΜΑΣΑΙΩΝΙΚΑ ΕΡΩΤΙΚΑ ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΙΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΥΠΡΟΥ – THE RIMES OF LOVE: EROTIC MEDIEVAL SONGS OF CYPRUS
I don’t pay much tribute to my father’s, Cypriot side of the family: I wasn’t brought up there, I wasn’t passed on much of it. Apart from a very slight Cypriot accent in my otherwise Cretan- and English-flavoured Greek. So, to my Cypriot peers here: please accept this, by means of apology.
11.
Κοιμώντα μού φανίστην να βιγλίσω
εκείνην απού πήρεν την καρδιάμ μου,
με θάρος να μου στρέψη την υγειάν μου
κ’ εγώ να ’λπίζω μέσα μου να ζήσω·
αμμέ, με δίχως περισσά ν’ αργήσω,
ξυπνώντα ποίκα στρέμμα στην κυράμ μου·
εδίπλασα ξανά την καματιάμ μου
και πάλε πεθυμώ να ξηψυχήσω.
Μμάτια μου, αφόν κοιμώντα μού διδείτε
το ’θελα να θωρούσετε αννοιμένα,
τον κόσμον πιον γι’ αγάπημ μου μεδ δήτε.
Μμάτια μου, αφόν βιγλάτε κοιμισμένα
κείνον που θέλω πάντα να θωρήτε,
μείνετε μέραν νύχταν καμμυμένα.
As I slept, I thought I saw
her who has taken my heart,
with the expectation that she would turn my health around
and the hope inside that I would yet live.
So without much delay,
I woke and turned around to find my lady;
I doubled then again my sorrow
and I wish to breathe my last once more.
My eyes, since you grant me as I sleep
what I wish you could see when you are open,
then for my sake look no more upon the world.
My eyes, since you see while sleeping
what I wish you could keep watching forever,
then stay shut, night and day.
Is University of Melbourne better for electrical engineering?
My experience in studying Elec Eng at Melbourne as an undergrad was 25 years ago, so it would be monstrously unfair of me to answer this question.
I’ll do it anyway.
See how my bio says “former Sessional Lecturer at University of Melbourne”? That was in Linguistics, not Elec Eng. 🙂
That’s on me: I enrolled in Science/Engineering because it had the highest entrance score in the state and because I liked maths, not because I tinkered with a soldering iron. (I actually did get some electronic kits back in the day, but they didn’t maintain my interest.)
But still: Melbourne when I went through was utterly theoretical—and not even Good theoretical; it was much more “shut up and learn the formula” than not. They didn’t push practical anything particularly. Everyone knew that RMIT was where you got that kind of exposure, and that RMIT had the real industry links.
Of course, I got my degree in the middle of the Keating recession, and there weren’t a whole lot of jobs about in Australia in Elec Eng. But almost every one of my peers ended up a programmer instead. Which was the Science bit of their Science/Engineering degree.
Interested to hear if that’s changed.
What misconceptions about sex did you have growing up?
Well, I’d read the children’s encyclopaedia Childcraft when I was 6. And I was pretty proud of my reading capabilities.
Childcraft had an age-appropriate elucidation of the reproductive system. And I duly read that.
Somehow, this came up on a visit with my uncle George (God rest him) and aunt Hariklia. (She goes by Iris to you beef-eating barbarians.) So they asked me to elaborate on what I had learned about the mechanics of the reproductive system.
I remember being rather miffed that they found the whole thing uproariously funny.
Misconception? Well, Childcraft spoke of spermatozoa, and it spoke of the… delivery mechanism, shall we say. But it does not speak in any great detail about the delivery vector.
So I assumed sperm was a powder.
Well, how was I supposed to know? Little spermatozoa. Directional applicator. I must have just assumed they were puffed out as particles. Like a mist or something. And I clearly did not have the command of fluid dynamics, at the age of 6, to have worked out the downsides to such a vector.
Why are some Americans so bad at geography?
Originally Answered:
Why are Americans so bad at Geography?
I responded to Nick Nicholas’ answer to What do you think when you hear the words, “United States”? with a map, to undo such questions.
I got the ball rolling, with all the questions listed in the answer wiki under How many Central and South American countries can you identify on a map?, in order to undo this question.
How many Nepalese can name the three former Guyanas? How many Slovenians can make a stab at sub-Saharan Africa?
The American education system may well be crap, not my place to pass verdict. But America’s a big country, and (correlated with that) Americans are not a people who need to know much about what goes on outside their borders, in their day to day lives.
Of course, it’s been America’s world, we’ve just been living in it. So we non-Americans expect Americans to take more of an interest in us, closer to the interest we take in them. After all, we don’t do as badly as we should at naming the States of the US. (Quick: Which Indian states are well known in other countries? How many Brazilian states can you identify on a map?) We expect reciprocity.
But that’s the thing with being a superpower. There is no reciprocity. And as Irene Colthurst would be pointing out at this point, being a superpower was the elite’s idea; the American people never truly bought into it.
What words do you overuse?
In fact. And other such parenthetical elaborates. I like to construct arguments in my prose, and in fact is my wood glue…
What is the most people that you have spoken to?
As a lecturer, 120: first year linguistics.
As a conference presenter: maybe 300, on a plenary panel.
After the first 20, it’s just numbers. 🙂