People Have Answers

Wise people have questions.

Empathy

Empathy is at once an emotional predisposition, an exercise in faith, and an accomplishment of abstract reasoning. True empathy may be a monstrous thing, but so is humanity.

A Riff On Lysenkoism

I realize this is from 2009 (a weird year for yours truly, as well as for many others, I hear tell.) And it's enough to make even me paranoid (would I already have readers were I a center of attention?) Anyway, I wonder how these programs have appeared domestically...

In the latest outgrowth of the debate over military sponsorship of social science, members of the American Anthropological Association have voted to strengthen language in their code of ethics against research conducted in secret.

Among other things, the new amendments declare that clandestine fieldwork constitutes “a clear violation of research ethics” and that anthropologists “should not withhold research results from research participants when those results are shared with others."

Have you been the subject of field research?

Sadly

I'm firmly convinced that violent crime goes under -reported in San Francisco. I think there's a shadow agreement among journalists and our rulers that accurate news might dissuade tourists, and not even the Examiner, with it's lurid and scintillating crime blotter, tells the whole story. It's silly, really, because most violent crimes are committed by people who aren't usually criminals -- your average murder victim is done in by someone in their social circle in the heat of passion, I'm pretty sure. Most career criminals and ne'er-do-wells of San Francisco are in business, and violence serves business very rarely. The complaints Tenderloin residents make are about violence being brought in from the Bayview and Oakland (with a nod to neighborly gossip overheard about so-and-so sticking her man or that tweaker who got run up on.) I mean, look at Miami: do they hurt for money? And everyone knows that city is rife with murderous monkeyshines.

Then again, I could be proven wrong by statistics compiled by the federal government, if I cared to do the research. But I prefer to be lazy and assert that said statistics would be gathered from the locals, anyway...

Moving From Facebook

1. Decided on The Hollow Man, but I do like The Patchwork Man. We'll see (or not.)

2. A day of beginnings is a pessimistic day.

3. The concept of a Quaker doing hardened, salty seadog drag, complete with a wooden leg replacing one lost in to his line of work, is hilarious when you think about it.

4. File under "frightening," cross-indexed with "farcical": gentrification of the Tenderloin, mid-Market and the 6th Street corridor is a consciously directed and planned act by control freaks with access to too much money. Such an ungainly process...

5. Keeps this list from stopping at a number frequently associated with death in Japanese culture.