April 23, 2008

Toooooooo Many Questions

I saw someone answer these over at Cre8Buzz and since I enjoyed reading Piper's answers, I thought I'd answer them, too. I actually wrote the answers yesterday, but then managed to be too busy to actually post them until this morning. Yes, I am a dork.

Have you ever had mono?
Nope.

The last place you were (besides now)?
Hmm, in the house or out of the house? Last place I was in the house was the kitchen to do my breakfast dishes. Last place I was outside of the house was out and about for our seven year wedding anniversary last night. (She wanted Red Lobster. Then I got to go to Toys R Us.)

Do you remember anything from being 3?
A LOT, actually. But my favourite memory from being three is this:

We lived in Albuquerque for three months when I was three, and my mother was terrified of the "dirty indians." One day, she decided we'd go shopping up in Santa Fe, in this mall that she'd heard so much about. Turns out, it wasn't the kind of mall she was expecting and as we wandered from "garage sale to garage sale" (she didn't approve of the folks who laid their stuff out on blankets), I grew increasingly more fascinated. We paused to look at one man's booth and I began asking questions. "What's this? What does it mean? Why does it look like that?" He was quite patient with me and I think somewhat bemused. Mom, however, had wandered off, blithely assuming that I was paying attention to her rather than her paying attention to me. She came back just in time to hear me tell the man, "When I grow up, I'm gonna be an Indian, too!"

How many times a day do you drop your cell phone?
.00001 Seriously. It's pretty freaking rare for me to drop it.

The top three things you spend the most money on?
Mortgage. Electronics/Computers/Software. LEGOs.

Last food you ate?
Grilled Steak Taco from Taco Bell. 2 of them. For breakfast. (Bought them yesterday cuz there was nothing left to eat in the house.)

First thing you notice about the opposite sex?
This is a trick question, right?

One of your favorite songs?
ONE????
Oh bleeding hell. Well, at random, first one to pop into my head is: Unwell by Matchbox 20.

The school you attend(ed)?
Kindergarten, first grade - Austin - Pillow Elementary
Second grade - Austin - St. Louis Catholic school
Third grade - Austin - Pillow Elementary
Third grade through sixth - Arlington - Butler Elementary
Seventh, 1 semester of eighth - Arlington - Nichols Jr. High
Second semester of eighth, ninth - Arlington - Shackleford Jr. High
High school - Arlington - Lamar (there was a threat to move to Singapore my junior year, but we all told Dad hell no.)
Undergrad - University of Texas at Arlington
Grad - University of Notre Dame

Your cell phone provider?
Nextel. We get a discount through my other half's workplace.

Favorite store in the mall?
Ewww, the mall??? GROSS!
If I have to pick something, I guess Hot Topic. Or the Build-A-Bear shop.

The longest job you had?
I taught for 9 years, I guess that was the longest of the two professional jobs I've had.

What do you smell like?
I have a really really really really crummy sense of smell. So, I'll go with the oddest smell that I enjoy: road tar. Smells kinda like bacon frying to me.

The biggest lie you've ever heard?
I've heard so many doozies, it's hard to pick one. I suppose it would have to be when a certain person told me that he and I were saving the world, only it was a secret.

The last time you cried was because why?
When I was in fifth grade and my great-grandmother died.

In your opinion, do long distance relationships work?
They can.

Do you drink coffee?
Ewwww. Umm, I mean, hellz no.

What do you wanna say to your most recent ex?
I hope that one day you are comfortable with who you are and can quit looking for a personality in other people. I hope you find peace and happiness.

What do you remember from being 19?
A lot! Getting chicken pox for the second time; moving out of my parents' house; the first apartment; my first cat; working until midnight and getting home to listening to my ex say how many times my mother had called (starting at 10 p.m.).

Favorite color(s)?
Green.

First person on your missed calls list on your cell phone?
Don't think I've missed any this week.

Who is the last text message from?
I refuse to do text messaging.

How many pillows do you usually sleep with?
Two. A regular pillow and my "baby" pillow. I actually kept the "baby" pillow that my grandma made for me until I was in my 30s. By that point the, fiberfill stuffing was ... well, hard as a rock, lumpy and impossible to get comfy. So, I made another one to the same specs and placed a few pieces of the fabric inside with the stuffing of the new one.

Yeah, I'm overly sentimental and attached to things like that.

What are you wearing now?
Green Addidas t-shirt and dark blue running shorts.

How many pets do you own?
Two miniature dachshunds (Scraps is 6 and Scout is 4). Four cats - blended family there - my other half had two when we met and I had two. (Tux is 13, Mishu and Gabby are around 11, Rio is 9) A betta fish named Flash. He is the most stupid and irritating betta I have ever owned.

What are you doing tomorrow?
The same thing we do every day, Pinky.

Can you play ping pong?
Duh. Wait, do you mean competitively? In that case no.
My favourite set is still my Nerf ping pong set.

Favorite food?
Mexican.
I will do damn near anything for really good guacamole. Place some of that in front of me, and I think I would probably continue eating it until my stomach exploded. I have no will power when guacamole is in front of me.

Do you like maps?
I have always adored them. They fascinate me.

Do you like strawberry banana smoothies?
I have never had a smoothie. They don't really sound good to me.

Have you ever attended a themed party?
Nope.

Have you ever thrown a party?
Mmmm, a couple of house-warming parties. Otherwise, no.

When did you wake up this morning?
3:40 a.m. as usual. The other half has to leave the house at 4:30 a.m. to make it to work by 5 a.m.

The best thing about winter?
Ewwwwww. Winter SUCKS.
I guess going snowboarding is the best. But we didn't even get to do that this year.

Last time you were in trouble with the cops?
Never.

What color underwear are you wearing?
Grey.

Do you think Ryan Sheckler is hot?
Dude, he is a mad skater! Love him. Hot? Dunno, I'm not really the person to ask ....

What are your plans for this weekend?
The same thing we do every weekend, Pinky.

How many days is it until your birthday?
196
And it's ruined already. Stupid fooken election wrecking my 40th.

What do you want to be when you "grow up"?
A kid.

Are you on a laptop?
I'm using one. But if I was on it, it would probably break.

Are you smiling?
Too sleepy for smiling. Besides, I'm concentrating on this. Duh.

Do you miss someone right now?
Of course.

Are you happy?
Relatively. Be happier if I had a damn job, though.

Have you ever been in the hospital for an emergency?
Twice. First time I was 13 and the neighbor's dachshund bit me whilst I was babysitting the kids. On the upper lip. Perforated the inside, even. Ow.
Second time was for a severe asthma attack.

Last time you ate chicken?
Yesterday. I love chicken.

What jewelry are you wearing?
My LiveSTRONG bracelet.

What are you going to do after this survey?
Go back to bed.

Song you're listening to?
The dogs snoring.

The car you were in last?
My Civic.

Do you like avocado?
Duh. It's the main ingredient in guacamole.

How long is your hair?
Dunno. But I'm getting it cut today. (It's above my collar, but I'm not gonna frigging measure it. Geez.)

What's on your mind right now?
This survey?
Getting a job.

Last show you watched?
Deadliest Catch.

Last thing you drank?
Diet Vanilla Pepsi, the nectar of the gods.

Where did you sleep last night?
In my house. Umm, duh.

Bonus Question ... What is the one phrase you say to your kids, animals, other half that you never thought would be a regular addition to your vocabulary?
Scout, quit trying to bite his weenie!
(The younger of the two dogs, who is also the girl, plays dirty!!!)

When was the last time you smiled?
A little while ago. Watching the dogs play and wrestle. Smiling at the other half as she left for work.

What did you say last?
Yeah. (She wanted me to lock the door after her, since her hands were full.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:23 AM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

April 13, 2008

Gender: M / F / ? (part 2)

Continuing from Thursday's discussion about the differences between biological sex and cultural gender-roles:
So it does seem that throughout our human history, there have been quite a fair number of individuals who did not fit into the cultural gender role specified by their biological sex. I am not discussing sexual orientation, which to me, is a separate (although related) issue.

What strikes me about all of this is an issue which has always irritated me and is demonstrated most aptly by a modern example: the About Me box prevalent on every website with any real level of personalization. You can see the problem if you surf through Blogger blogs, MySpace, Friendster or the like. Some people have short, pithy About Me boxes - either their world is easily classified and categorized, or they've given up in frustration. Other people have About Me boxes which trail from the top of the page, down below the fold and then some, a long, skinny tail attempting to balance everything that person is.

The reality of humanity is that we are rarely easily categorized. People are so very much more than their religion, their race, their nationality, their ethnicity, their profession, their marital status ... and more than their sex or their gender.

So, what is it to be male or female in terms of expected gender roles? Well, obviously this changes from culture to culture.

My first-year college students, some 5-8 years ago, had to read a seminal article discussing how gender expectations led to male and female students learning and behaving differently in the classroom. When it came time to discuss the essay in class, the students immediately let me know exactly what they thought about the article: it was hopelessly out of date.

It was one of those moments in teaching that you can't plan, but when they happen, you wish you'd had a video camera to record the whole thing.

The students began by all agreeing that such preferential treatment of boys over girls simply didn't happen any more. It very quickly morphed into "boys and girls are better in different areas because boys and girls are interested in different things."

Girls don't like math.
Boys don't like reading.

As the students made these generalizations, I could see some of them starting to squirm in their seats. However, as first-year students, not all of them were willing to "take on" the entire class and it seemed like everyone else was agreeing.

And then one of the male students said, "Well, you can tell boys and girls are different just by what they play with when they're little. I mean, girls don't like to play with cars or get dirty or climb trees."

Before he could go on, there were a couple of mini-explosions across the room.

We spent the rest of the class having a great discussion on gender-roles and how those often differ from the reality of individual personalities. With a class that included several female engineering students, several international students and a couple of males in "non-traditional" fields, there was a lot of sharing of stories. My students left the class that day, still discussing the issues - a happy and semi-rare day for a required first-year course.

I think many people in the western world have come to the conclusion that it is not necessarily a trait of males to want to have a career. It's not necessarily a trait of women to want to stay home with the kids.

So, while some traits might be more prevalent in men or in women, they all seem to have not just exceptions (which implies they are not common) but that these traits might be tendencies, whether hard-wired or learned.

So what does hard-wire the male and female brain to be different?

Some research indicates that men use more grey matter, leading to a tendency toward more information processing; women tend to use more white matter, leading to more connections between various processing centers.

So, those people who say men and women think differently are right - in general. The problem is that there are always biological exceptions which muddy the waters.

For myself, I cringe when any survey asks me: M or F. I am not that easily categorized. They are not usually asking for my biological sex as that rarely matters in a survey. They are often asking for gender and I don't think that the majority of people in the western world truly fit into the expected gender norms. I know too many men who are "too sensitive" and too many women who enjoy the outdoors "too much." And if a researcher is simply quantifying us by M & F we're going to get pink Hello Kitty compound bows sized for a woman - which might make some of my friends happy (you know who you are!!), but which would just piss me off to no end.

Ultimately, what makes us what we think of as male or female is more complicated than our biological bits and there's a lot more overlap in both directions than M or F would indicate on a survey. As a species, we are programmed to look for patterns and to put everything into hierarchies. The problem is, most of our methods of classification are too simplistic to truly encapsulize who we are. There is no better example of this phenomenon than Thomas Beatie - someone born female, but felt like a man. So, he had his breasts removed, began the testosterone therapy ... but stopped short of a "full" sex change, citing that one day he might want to bear a child.

Is Thomas a man or a woman? Biologically, the answer is fairly simple as we sex people by their genitalia. However, if we were able to look at all of Thomas's systems, would we find all the hallmarks of female, or would we find female knees and reproductive organs, but a male brain?

Is the woman who is outside more than inside, who hunts deer and delights in dune buggies more male or more female?

And ultimately, does it really even matter? Aren't we simply ourselves?

Why should the exterior trappings of male and female dress or appearance matter to anyone short of potential mates? Why do we care?

In online communities, I try to not say if I'm male or female because I feel the question is far more complicated than the simple biological answer. I catch flak for it and I don't particularly care. If there's a shoutbox or live chat feature to the community, I generally find myself the center of a controversy - is "ender" male or female. People get angry when I won't answer the question. Eventually, I pose one question to them: "If I'm not looking to date you, why do you care? I am still the same person I was before the debate started here. Why does it really matter?"

So far, no one has been able to answer that question ... and they have all (so far) decided that it doesn't matter after all. They're still curious, of course, but we are an intensely curious species - and that's a good thing.

[Some further reading:
from the BBC
from

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:10 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Struggles | Stumble

April 10, 2008

Survey Asks - Gender: M / F / ?

It's a question that sounds ridiculous and yet it is one which has plagued me all my life and turns out to be more complicated than it sounds.

What is it, really to be male or female, man or woman?

We know, of course, the biological bits which make someone a man or a woman. We know there are people born with the sexual organs of both, making the biological definition of man and woman a little bit more complicated.

If someone can be born both male and female in terms of biological bits and pieces - sex - why do we seem to find it so difficult to believe that there are people who are born with a social construct gender path which does not necessarily match their biological sex?

Let me back off of that question for a moment and discuss the difference between sex and gender. Obviously a person's sex is a matter of factual record. You either have a penis and testicles and an "overabundance" of testosterone, or you have a uterus, vagina, ovaries, your breasts develop and an "overabundance" of estrogen. And then, of course, you get people who are born with both sets of sexual organs and a cacophony of hormones.

But it's pretty obvious how to differentiate man and woman. Factual, even. Examine the reproductive bits, classify as M or F. Easy.

Gender, on the other hand, is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Each society defines gender and since there are two visually and easily identified sexes, most, but not all, societies have simplified gender to match sex.

Now we have the first complication in what I see as our modern viewing of sex and gender. Many people insist that sex and gender are, indeed, one and the same. They often claim that it has always been so and to suggest otherwise is an unnatural and modern perversion of humanity. However, if we look to the ancient Greeks, we can see that there were shades of grey both within the gender of Greek males and, of course, within their sexual preferences. Those who rigidly insist that Male and Female gender is defined by Male and Female sex, have a tendency to dismiss the Greeks as perverted and sick.

Yet these are the same people who insist that suggesting sex and gender are not necessarily the same is a modern concept. Ancient Greeks, I propose, are dismissed simply because they do not fit into the paradigm of the rigid Sex=Gender people. The ancient Greek and Roman golden period did have its share of what we classify as debauchery and perversion - but they also gave us the concepts of democracy and many of our ideals of fair governing - along with a history of what demagoguery and tyranny and imperialism can do to a country.

I think it's disingenuous of us to dismiss what we dislike simply because we disagree with it.

Historical and cultural indications that gender as a social construct is NOT a new idea:
• Man-hearted woman: Agamemnon by Aeschylus
• Revolutionary war: the example of Robert Shirtliffe/Deborah Samson - a female who enlisted in the American forces and fought through a great portion of the war - as a man, because that was the only way to be able to act as she felt called to act.
• In the Sioux tribe, gender was not completely cut and dry. Some men were thought to be blessed by the moon during their vision quest and they lived as women - and were thought to be quite clever people - there was no cultural negative repercussions for being such a person. On the other hand, some men who showed cowardice in battle were punished and ridiculed by being forced to live as women - the lesson here being that you could be called to a different gender by something outside yourself - or you could act in a manner which didn't correspond to your call or to your biological sex, and be ridiculed for that.
• Many Celtic tribes did not particularly have the same gender role expectations that we think of today. Women were leaders, fighters and generally the equal of their male counterparts.
• Some Eskimo tribes had women who resisted the marriage and child-bearing expectation of their sex, and it was not uncommon for these women to "live as men" in terms of the expected gender role - they hunted and they dressed as the men did without societal repercussion.
• Likewise, many Native American tribes had men who lived according to the expected societal gender role of women - dress, behaviour, et cetera.

But if all of these "primitive" cultures included gender-role-swapping, why isn't that in the history books? Well, according to Caitlin Howell:

Many of the accounts are written by missionaries who unrestrainedly express their disgust with homosexual and cross-gender individuals. One Jesuit priest wrote, "...men were seen to wear the dress of women without a blush, and to debase themselves so as to perform those occupations which are most peculiar to the sex, from whence followed a corruption of morals past all expression... these effeminate persons never marry, and abandon themselves to the most infamous passions, for which cause they are held in the most sovereign contempt." (Katz 290)

It is likely that white disapproval of homosexuality caused Native American homosexuals to disguise that part of their identity, and tribes gave white anthropologists and ethnographers the possibly mistaken impression that they shared their disapproval.(Blackwood 28)

In other words, what made it into writing was the "modern" or victorious society recording their disgust at the "primitives." Also, since the disgust was so vehement, and the missionary culture so pervasive, the original culture felt it necessary to bury their gender definitions in order to reduce battles and tensions.

I'll end today's post by saying this: despite the modern attempt to define the societal gender-roles of male and female quite rigidly according to biology, this does not appear to be a universal truth, but a cultural tendency. Some cultures (modern and ancient) have very strong societal constraints put on males and females. Other cultures may define male and female roles strongly, but allow a fluid meaning of male or female and not restrict that meaning to biological sex.

I intend to follow up this post with examples of just how muddy the waters can be ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:26 AM | Comments (3) | Blog | Stumble

March 23, 2008

Hope You Had a Good Weekend

I'm not writing this post to upset anyone nor to make anyone feel bad. I'm not writing it to attack anyone. I know some people say those things to cover up the fact that they are, in fact, doing exactly those things. I'm not one of those people. This is a think-piece, not an attack piece. :)

All through a variety of public discussion groups this weekend, I have seen one message over and over and over again. It's a wish for a good weekend. It's a wish for fun. It's a wish that solidifies a solidarity amongst a very great number of people.

But that wish also makes a huge assumption about others.

It is, in my opinion only, one thing to say Happy Easter on your blog - it's your blog and you should say Happy Easter or well wishes for a pleasant Purim, even a great Wiccan Sabbat of Eostar. It's all good. It's your blog and you should say whatever you like there with no doubt.

However, when on a general discussion board or a even a Friendster or Myspace analog, WHY do people insist on leaving comments which indicate a Christian religious preference on the profiles of friends when they don't know for sure what tradition that friend follows?

It's a nice gesture, don't get me wrong. It's never amiss to wish someone a good day regardless of what day that happens to be.

But I have dear friends who are Jehovah's Witnesses - they are Christian, but do not "celebrate" holidays. It always bothers me when I hear people wishing these friends a Merry Christmas. They, of course, are used to it. They know they are in the minority about their beliefs regarding celebrating holidays and while it gives a momentary "I'm not at the Kingdom Hall" moment, at least my friends tend to take it relatively in stride.

The same, to a certain extent, with my Jewish friends. Most of them know the wish is a genuine wish of goodwill.

However, there's always that moment of cringe. That moment of realization that your friends may mean well, but they don't get you. That moment of remembering that you're an outsider after all.

It's not a bad thing to wish someone a good day, a good weekend. But when we attach a certain personal significance, a religious significance, to it when we don't know that person's belief system ... it's not quite the well wishing we might have thought.

And I do honestly hope everyone had a great weekend and this post didn't upset anyone. It's just a little thought-piece - but one I felt needed to be said.

UPDATE:
As at least two of my commenters mentioned, there are also other reasons that wishing someone a happy Easter or hope you had a great Christmas, or whatever. If you're coming to this post from the main page, please click through to the comments and read their experiences as well. Thanks!

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:49 PM | Comments (5) | Blog | Stumble

March 14, 2008

Don't Feed the Trolls

My bedroom in high school and the first year of college, was, more often than not, pitch dark. It wasn't for the lack of trying to lighten it up - my mom bought the most sheer curtains she could find. And when I demanded "bed dressing" that matched my personality, Mom made matching curtains out of an extra set of the sheets. (White, with a stripe of rainbow down each long side ... yeah, I know. Early indicator?) Stark white walls, mostly white comforter, sheer curtains which let in the light from the street light at the corner of our front yard. But my favourite way to be was laying on my bedroom floor, all the lights out, just the glow of my "jambox"-stereo's equalizer dancing up and down. And that last year of high school when I scrounged together all of my money to buy my prized Magnavox Videowriter, I would sit at my desk, adding the amber glow of that cheesy word processor to the dim light of my room.

When my creative writing teacher first told us how he would go to an all-night Waffle House to immerse himself in the biomass (to borrow Stephenson's word), I was appalled. How could anyone write with all of the cacophony of activity and light around them? F.J. insisted that it was a valuable way to observe characters, to practice dialogue. Being far too much of an introvert, I could not really wrap my head around this enough to do it. That was about 1986 or 1987.

A few years earlier, my dad brought home a stunning new toy - a Commodore 64. He was amazed and gleeful like a little boy on Christmas morning discovering his new Red Ryder BB gun or Radio Flyer sled. He practically squealed as he opened up the package and pulled out that brick of a keyboard/computer. A whole 64k stored in this sucker! He explained to me, in one of our rare actual conversations, it used to take a machine the size of about half our house to do what this little sucker could do. I remembered one of those rooms - Dad took me to work with him once ... an icy air-conditioned room filled with huge metal cabinet-things. Punch cards. Later, rolls of paper tape.

Mom forbid the acquisition of a modem as efficiently as she'd forbidden cable television - but the boy across the street had a modem and I watched as one letter after another would pop onto the screen from some distant person. Heh, and watch those letters disappear as the person hit backspace to correct a typo.

But it wasn't until I was nearly done with my seven year stint at university before I discovered MUDdog and email and just how fascinating this online Waffle House could be. That was somewhere around 1992-4.

I've been hooked ever since.

This morning, once again, I've turned off all of the lights. I have the band Sick Puppies blaring on the stereo, though not as loudly as I'd like - my neighbors are still sleeping. The glow of my keyboard and laptop screen - and the blue glow of the stereo are all I want. I'm writing against the deadline of sunrise, remembering how easy it was for me to get lost in my introspection as a teenager and 20something in the dark. How much easier it was and is to reflect honestly on myself and my actions as well as the biomass I observe around me.

I recognize that I'm damaged
I sympathize that you are too
But I wanna breathe without feelin' so self-conscious
But it's hard when the world's starin' at you

To me, this is the most interesting thing about the internet. You have all of these people with their foibles and faults and strengths ... you have these intercies, these nodes, of common interest where this diverse mass of individuals pour their thoughts into shared pixel representations.

Why do we do this? Why do we strive to share our experiences and thoughts with everyone else? Why do we strive to get people to understand what we're thinking, feeling, wanting?

It seems to me that no matter how introverted or extroverted an individual is, we all are reaching for some connection beyond just our self - to know that we are not totally alone in our thought or experience or feeling. That someone groks at least a fraction of who and what we are.

What I constantly strive to understand, and I'm not sure I'm capable of really understanding it, is why some people are literally so lost in their own individuality that they cannot hear the experiences and feelings of others.

I can't even begin to recall how many times I have read the pixels of people who define their world by "I'm right" and you're either 100% with me or 100% against me. So when I see one of these people laying their pixels down in a frantic dance of light and dark dots, I'm sucked in by my own curiosity and confused fascination. When I watch as they blithely ignore the community around them and choose to take disagreement as attack; when they insist on reading a helping hand as condemnation.

And, then, of course, all of our shared human foibles come to the fore. The helping hand and the civil disagreement becomes frustration and anger - which does become attack and condemnation. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that leaves the outer edges of the community in confusion and often shock. It's like seeing the "perfect couple" have a real fight finally. You see sides of these people that you never suspected lurked beneath all the letters they've strung together on the internet.

And when the smoke clears and all the participants who are able to do so actually sit back and take a look at what happened and how they contributed to the explosion, they are left with this conundrum:
How do I both "protect" my self, ideas and beliefs ... and balance my emotional reaction ... and walk away from the trolls who only want a fight and to get everyone riled up?

How do we differentiate motive on the net without body language and tone of voice to help us decipher our pixelated world?

In my experience, it becomes about building a context. If one person's response to disagreement is to always either ignore or attack, with no middle ground attempting to bridge differences and create understanding, then that person is probably simply trolling for trouble. It's a subjective thing. And, in online communities, it's a dangerous field to walk across. Newer folk are going to tend to side with the troll when the old hands attempt to slap down the troll out of frustration. The old hands know the history and have often decided to take a stand to defend their community and hunt the troll until they've left the community. New people, not knowing that the troll may be currently presenting the mask of the maligned victim in order to garner support and thus keep the battle going on longer, may openly side with the troll in an effort to defend their new community from bullies.

The term troll is highly subjective. Some readers may characterize a post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate contribution to the discussion, even if controversial. The term is often erroneously used to discredit an opposing position, or its proponent, by argument fallacy ad hominem.

Often, calling someone a troll makes assumptions about a writer's motives. Regardless of the circumstances, controversial posts may attract a particularly strong response from those unfamiliar with the robust dialogue found in some online, rather than physical, communities.

Experienced participants in online forums know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore him or her, because responding encourages a true troll to continue disruptive posts — hence the often-seen warning "Please do not feed the troll".

Frequently, someone who has been labelled a troll by a group may seek to redeem their reputation by discrediting their opponents, for example by claiming that other members of the group are closed-minded, conspirators, or trolls themselves.

No matter how even-handed ... how just ... we try to be, the fact of the matter is, we are not perfect. We snap. We jump to conclusions. We get tired and cranky. And what separates us from the trolls? We are able to step back and re-evaluate our behaviour, to try to learn from our mistakes, to learn when to stop reacting next time and walk away from what we feel is trollish behaviour.

To creatures who seem to intrinsically need to be understood, it's a hard thing to walk away from that chance at communication. But some battles are won only when they aren't fought at all ...

The light is beginning to make the curtains glow ... so now I leave you with this ...

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:26 AM | Comments (7) | Blog | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Sketches | Stumble

February 17, 2008

Welcome, Nephew!

After a long wait ... it appears that the Red Monkey has a li'l nephew-monkey. My sister called about 11:15 p.m. eastern time on the 16th to say the li'l guy had finally made his full monty appearance. She sounded exhausted but content ... of course, that could have been the morphine. Hopefully I'll have more details tomorrow. Or later today, I mean.

WOOHOO!!!!

UPDATE 9:30 a.m.
Just got off the phone with baby-sis and here are some details:
He is 8 pounds, 8 ounces, which was smaller than they'd originally thought he'd be.
Don't have a length on him, but baby-sis says he's got the LONGEST arms and legs of any newborn she's ever seen. I'm assuming he's gonna be a futbol player considering how much he kicked her during the pregnancy. Dunno how she feels about putting his name publicly, so I'm not posting that, but I will say I love his name.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:00 AM | Comments (8) | Blog | Stumble