UK production company Ballista Media has created a video introduction to the medieval instrument, the hurdy gurdy. The short explores the droning instrument’s complex history and offers a brief overview of how to play it.
“Gurdy” is a medieval word for your bottom, and “hurdy” means “turn,” so it’s “swing your bottom.” It’s a dance instrument. This is the instrument they would have used for medieval raves.
where can I uninstall my period
i think if you download pregnancy it blocks it for a few months but then you get a really annoying loud pop up that doesn’t go away for 18 years
omg
Four years ago, twenty-three economists (mostly conservative) signed a letter to Ben Bernanke warning that the Fed’s quantitative easing policy – adding billions of dollars to the economy – would be disastrous. It would “debase the currency,” create high inflation, distort financial markets, and do nothing to reduce unemployment.
Four years later, it’s clear that they were wrong (as Paul Krugman never tires of reminding us). Have they changed their beliefs?
Of course not.
Bloomberg asked the letter-signers what they now thought about their prophecy. Here’s the headline: “Fed Critics Say ’10 Letter Warning Inflation Still Right.”
This despite the actual low inflation:
I don’t know why I assume that high-level economists would be more likely than some ordinary people to change their ideas to adjust for new facts. Fifty years ago, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn showed that even in areas like chemistry and physics, scientists cling to their paradigms even in the face of accumulated anomalous facts. Why should big-shot economists be any different? It also occurs to me that it’s the most eminent in a profession who will be more resistant to change. After all, it’s the people at the top who have the greatest amount invested in their ideas – publications, reputations, consultantships, and of course ego. Economists call these “sunk costs.”
So how do they maintain their beliefs?
Most of the 23 declined to comment; a few could not be reached (including Ronald McKinnon, who died the previous day). Of those who responded, only one, Peter Wallison at the American Enterprise Institute, came close to saying, “My prediciton was wrong.”
“All of us, I think, who signed the letter have never seen anything like what’s happened here.”
Most of the others preferred denial:
“The letter was correct as stated.” (David Malpass. He worked in Treasury under Reagan and Bush I)
“The letter mentioned several things… and all have happened.” (John Taylor, Stanford)
“I think there’s plenty of inflation — not at the checkout counter, necessarily, but on Wall Street.” (Jim Grant of “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.” Kinda makes you wonder how closely he’s been observing interest rates.)
Then there was equivocation. After Thursday night’s debacle – Giants 8, Pirates 0, knocking Pittsburgh out of the playoffs– someone reminded me, “Hey, didn’t you tell me that the Pirates would win the World Series?”
“Yes, but I didn’t say when.”
Some of the letter-signers used this same tactic, and just about as convincingly.
“Note that word ‘risk.’ And note the absence of a date.” (Niall Ferguson, Harvard)
“Inflation could come…” (Amity Shlaes, Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation)
The 1954 sociology classic When Prophecy Fails describes group built around a prediction that the world would soon be destroyed and that they, the believers, would be saved by flying saucers from outer space. When it didn’t happen, they too faced the problem of cognitive dissonance – dissonance between belief and fact. But because they had been very specific about what would happen and when it would happen, they could not very well use the denial and equivocation favored by the economists. Instead, they first by claimed that what had averted the disaster was their own faith. By meeting and planning and believing so strongly in their extraterrestrial rescuers, they had literally saved the world. The economists, by contrast, could not claim that their warnings saved us from inflation, for their warning – their predictions and prescriptions – had been ignored by Fed. So instead they argue that there actually is, or will be, serious inflation.
The other tactic that the millenarian group seized on was to start proselytizing – trying to convert others and to bring new members into the fold. For the conservative economists, this tactic is practically a given, but it is not necessarily a change. They had already been spreading their faith, as professors and as advisors (to policy makers, political candidates, wealthy investors, et al.). They haven’t necessarily redoubled their efforts, but the evidence has not given them pause. They continue to publish their unreconstructed views to as wide an audience as possible.
That’s the curious thing about cognitive dissonance. The goal is to reduce the dissonance, and it really doesn’t matter how. Of course, you could change your ideas, but letting go of long and deeply held ideas when the facts no longer co-operate is difficult. Apparently it’s easier to change the facts (by denial, equivocation, etc.). Or, equally effective in reducing the dissonance, you can convince others that you are right. That validation is just as effective as a friendly set of facts, especially if it comes from powerful and important people and comes with rewards both social and financial.
Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog or on Twitter.(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)
A trans lady friend of mine just said “back in the before time, when I had pockets” and I am just laughing forever, because her slow descent into rage vis a vis the uselessness of her new business wardrobe has been a schadenfreudetastic delight.
If anyone out there wants to design and make formal, or at least business, cargo pants, especially in lady cuts and colors, … Well you can put both of us down for 3 pairs.
After threats against her life, Anita Sarkeesian canceled an upcoming talk at Utah State University. Gamergate trolls are celebrating on Twitter while simultaneously dismissing the threats as nothing. Does this read like nothing to you?
“I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America.”The email’s author threatened to murder feminist women indiscriminately in a mass shooting. And because carrying guns on campus outweigh the right of students and guests to be safe, Anita Sarkeesian canceled her talk.
BUT WE SHOULDN’T FEEL THREATENED, RIGHT?
BECAUSE IT’S JUST THE INTERNET, RIGHT?
The bullies won this time. And if you think this shit isn’t dangerous, I’m fresh out of fucks to give and I’m not restocking any time soon. It’s goddamn wrong to to dismiss this by claiming the author isn’t serious. Elliot Rodger’s rantings were dismissed until it was too late.
This. Is. Not. OK.
guns… literally more important than the lives of women in the state of loveable mormons
"why did she win the nobel peace prize???"
"she didn’t do anything to deserve the nobel peace prize"
fuck anybody who wasn’t overjoyed when she won, this girl is providing a voice for uneducated and oppressed young people across the world whilst still advocating and campaigning for peace and anti-violence. after she was shot in the head.
THE TRUTH OF NATIVE AMERICANS BEFORE THE GENOCIDE
Gotta put this on blast.
We never needed a white savior.I hate this country.
What I learned from this video:
- 100 million Native Americans died at the hands of white colonists
- Instead of planting crops the colonists spent their days digging random holes in the ground looking for gold. They started starving and dug up Indian corpses to eat. They took Indian prisoners and forced them to teach the colonists how to farm
- Native Americans had massive cities with tens of thousands of well constructed houses, intricate water canals and large merchant areas.
- The Native Americans used soaps, deodorants and breath sweeteners while colonists never bathed or even took of their clothes
- There was a delousing policy with the mantra Nits create Lice; nits being Native American babies, so their goal was to kill every Indian, including babies
- In the 1700’s 80% of the Federal Budget went towards eradicating the Native American population so they could take their developed farmland
- Colonists leaders went town after town killing men women and children under the approval of George Washington
- "Pursue Indians to extermination" -Thomas Jefferson
- California governor (1849-1851): “extermination must continue to be waged until the Indian becomes extinct”
The main factor which prevented Native American extinction was the fact they were used for slave labor. The most prized Native Americans were young girls who were said to be valued for labor and lust (that one white dude in your ethnic studies class that says he’s 1/36th Cherokee?)
In modern times children were forced into Indian Boarding Schools whose goal was to “Kill the Indian in them”. It was federal policy. They were beaten if they used their native tongue, they were forced to dress and style their hair like whites
This country was literally built on terrorism and mass murder. White people are savage terrorists.
Until, this is taught in schools everywhere- “history class” is merely a racism propaganda course.
Things to marinate on this “holiday” weekend
Wow, okay buddy, you’re BEGGING for a takedown here.
First world problems? Not a thing. People who say shit like “first world problems” are massive racist, imperialist, dismissive assholes.
If you’re ever tempted to say “first world problems,” do me a favor, and pull down a map. Tell me EXACTLY where the “third world” is. Make sure you correctly identify Switzerland as part of the third world, and Turkey as part of the First World. Don’t forget that Djibouti is a part of the first world.
Literally sit down and learn what “third world” means and why people from nonwestern nations think it’s a total bullshit term.
Second: you think people in the so-called third world don’t care about shit like makeup, and love, and technology? You think they don’t care about internet harassment? You think women over there don’t care about street harassment? You think they don’t care about fashion and clothes? You think they don’t care about music and video games?
Because THEY DO.
Right now, there is a woman in burundi teaching herself how to do a cut-crease eyeshadow look. Guaranteed.
"Third world" nations have fashion shows and fashion magazines. They care about street harassment. They care about the internet. They play video games. They know more about anime than your sorry ass every will. And the idea of "first world problems," which makes it sound like all women in "third world" nations are dealing with starvation, rape, war, acid attacks etc.
Is bullshit.
Rank.
Bullshit.
Women in Iran spend shitloads of money on makeup. Women in the DRC don’t just care about rape. Rape - the ONE THING westerners can be expected to know about women in Congo-Kinshasa - ranks NUMBER FOUR on the list of issues women in Congo want addressed. Political participation is number 1. Economic empowerment is number 2. Women in India are passionate about information technology, and you know what they hate? Coming to the United States, where Indian women in STEM are suddenly considered LESS GOOD than their male colleagues. My friends in Senegal taught ME how to download movies off the internet. Zimbabwe has a fashion week.
As Teju Cole points out:
"I don’t like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.
One event that illustrated the gap between the Africa of conjecture and the real Africa was the BlackBerry outage of a few weeks ago. Who would have thought Research In Motion’s technical issues would cause so much annoyance and inconvenience in a place like Lagos? But of course it did, because people don’t wake up with “poor African” pasted on their foreheads. They live as citizens of the modern world. None of this is to deny the existence of social stratification and elite structures here. There are lifestyles of the rich and famous, sure. But the interesting thing about modern technology is how socially mobile it is—quite literally. Everyone in Lagos has a phone.”
95% of the people who use bullshit expressions like “First world problems” have NO IDEA what life is like for people in the so-called third world. You just like sitting there derailing.
And for the record? As a white, western feminist, DAMN RIGHT I concentrate on issues in the United States. Because when white western feminists try to “save” women outside the west? We do a SHIT job of it. We’re the ones who bowl over actual congolese women, and what THEY want, and say that the #1 issue affecting them is rape. We become arms of the imperialist patriarchal complex.
Classic example: the guy who was ruling Egypt for the British got british feminists to help him in his anti-headscarf campaign in Egypt. Why did he hate headscarves? Because he wanted to *break the spirit* of Egyptians. Not because he gave a shit about women’s rights.
How do I know that?
Because he was the head of the anti-women’s-suffrage group in England.
When women who live outside the west do awesome things, I will signal-boost them, and I will do whatever they think I can do to help. But I follow their lead. Because these are THEIR issues, and THEY know what matters to them. Not me.
FINALLY: My problems are not trivial. My problems are not bullshit. My problems are not to be dismissed with your racist, imperialist logic. Dress codes and makeup and music and books and video games MATTER. They matter to me. They matter to my life.
So fuck you.
And fuck your assumptions.
And maybe consider that YOUR first world problem?
Is that you can’t “see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”
On my tombstone, Stevie Wilson a vain neurotic artist. Be confident ladies, and be kind to each other
ThePrettiestOneI'ma just gonna leave this right here...
http://misandry-mermaid.tumblr.com/post/98200949498/pixiepienix-look-at-this-fragile-delicate
“Look at this fragile delicate flower of a man look at how precarious his value and identity is wonder at the marvel that is masculinity”
Yoga enthusiast Dan Abramson has created BrogMats, a line of yoga mats that are specifically made to accommodate the larger size of men’s bodies along with a line of whimsical bags in which to carry the oversized mats.
Brogamats was founded on the belief that yoga practitioners defy simple categorization, and include people of all walks of life, all genders, all Lululemon budgets, and all levels of earthy pretentiousness. We are avid yogaphiles who felt the range of yoga products currently available was frustratingly narrow, so we decided to start designing our own. First, we threw on some graphics that we thought would be fun to carry on our backs on the way to class or unfurl in front of envious classmates. Second, given that men are taller, heavier and sweat more than women, we decided to make a mat that was extra long, extra thick, and grippy as hell.
We previously wrote about Yoga Joes, Dan’s latest yoga-themed project
The automatic criminalization of black and brown bodies
Now hold on a sec I do INDEED have a problem with one picture but not the other.
In the TOP picture you can clearly see two hunting rifles and a mid-sized handgun, which are perfectly reasonable guns for a family to have, and it appears that all three people in the picture are legally old enough to at least have gone to a hunters safety course, which legally justifies the weapons being in their hands for certain purposes - hunting. Hand guns are carried by hunters to defend against bear attacks, should they happen, and by fishermen when fishing in lakes containing sturgeon … because the only way you’re killing a goddamned prehistoric dinosaur fish from hell is by shooting it (no joke).
Now the BOTTOM picture clearly contains only ONE child old enough to have gone through a hunters safety course … and not a single gun that is used for anything other than killing other human beings, and this I have a serious problem with. Guns that are intended ONLY for killing humans (the AR and AK series rifles, which are shown) with CHILDREN is a fucking problem.
Now, if they were hunting rifles in the bottom picture - you know, guns that are meant solely for the procurement of food - then I wouldn’t have an issue outside of the questionable ages of the children shown.
Really huge red flag on the bottom pic is the fact two of the kids clearly have their fingers ON THE TRIGGERS.
Its called trigger discipline. I’ve never been to any gun safety classes and I know that much.
Supreme Court strikes down Wisconsin voter ID laws. #SCOTUS #voterID #Wisconsin
literally zero cases. LITERALLY.
Thus, the logic of the feminist argument to “Teach men not to rape” is revealed.
Yes because it’s such a radical notion to expect rapists to control themselves.
Uh, we do tell thieves not to rob, though. We actually spend a lot of energy teaching kids that stealing is wrong. We keep trying to teach them it’s wrong through their teens and adult years.
And when someone gets robbed? Cops don’t ask them if their front door was locked. They don’t ask them if they invited the thief into their house and maybe said the thief was free to take things before changing their mind the next day. And this is true even though sometimes people do get robbed by folks they invite in under false pretenses.
Cops and lawyers and judges don’t work together to make people who get robbed feel like shit for not installing extra security systems or putting bars on their windows. They don’t use people’s former history of inviting neighbors in and letting them borrow stuff to argue that they had no right to expect someone to respect their property. The media doesn’t talk about how the thief’s promising life was ruined by their victim’s decision to prosecute.
Your metaphor is bad and you should feel bad.
Viola Davis talks about the childhood hunger problem in the U.S. at Variety’s annual Power of Women luncheon. (x)
And it never goes away. It never, never goes away.
I grew up with immense food uncertainty. I did all these things, and I did most of them with two much smaller sisters. I resented them for getting to eat before I did when I was nine and they were two and three, because I was old enough to understand hunger, and they weren’t. I hated my mother for years because we never had anything to eat, and it took until well into my adulthood to realize that she had hated herself, too.
I start asking people what they want to do about dinner starting around nine in the morning when at a convention or other vacation spot. I need to know. Even if the plan is just “oh, food court” or “oh, we have those leftovers,” I need someone who is not me, someone who is less wrecked over their relationship with food, to promise me that I am still allowed to eat.
It never goes away.
Childhood hunger is never satiated.
I have never been in straits quite that dire, but…there was an odd stretch of my childhood when we had very limited food. My mother was very depressed and working unspeakably long hours. Sometimes when she came home, it was easier just to let her sleep than to nag her about food. When I had exhausted cooking everything I knew how to cook (it wasn’t much) I wouldn’t eat. (I imagine she didn’t either.) We had very little money for groceries anyway. There was food in the pantry, since it was my grandmother’s house, and she’d stocked it, but it was like twenty bottles of bulk bbq sauce and expired cans of crushed tomato and stuff. I didn’t know how to turn that into food. Possibly there was no way. Some nights—this was back when you could get tacos for 39 cents at Taco Bell—we would take a dollar and eat and then she would go back to sleep.
The nadir of this came during one summer, when I didn’t have school lunches to fall back on, and so I would frequently go a day or two without eating. I didn’t really feel like I was being starved, because it was a thing I was choosing to do, to help out. I think I believed on some level that if I bothered my mother, she would find a way to fix it, I just didn’t want to bother her because she was so tired.
We got food stamps a little while after that, and it was…I can’t really explain what that was like. We couldn’t believe we were being allowed to have this much food and that it was okay. Mom cried a bit, I think. That whole summer was like we were in this weird little bubble and it wasn’t as good as other people’s bubbles, but it was suddenly so much better in there.
Anyway, TL;DR, anybody who says food stamps are for lazy people, you can unfollow me now and kindly fuck yourself on the way out.
+1
I went on a bit of a twitter rant yesterday after reading one too many trade reviews in which a book’s diverse cast was dismissed as implausible. Charles Tan was kind enough to storify the whole thing here.
Viola Davis talks about the childhood hunger problem in the U.S. at Variety’s annual Power of Women luncheon. (x)
And it never goes away. It never, never goes away.
I grew up with immense food uncertainty. I did all these things, and I did most of them with two much smaller sisters. I resented them for getting to eat before I did when I was nine and they were two and three, because I was old enough to understand hunger, and they weren’t. I hated my mother for years because we never had anything to eat, and it took until well into my adulthood to realize that she had hated herself, too.
I start asking people what they want to do about dinner starting around nine in the morning when at a convention or other vacation spot. I need to know. Even if the plan is just “oh, food court” or “oh, we have those leftovers,” I need someone who is not me, someone who is less wrecked over their relationship with food, to promise me that I am still allowed to eat.
It never goes away.
Childhood hunger is never satiated.
Rape is the only crime on the books for which arguing that the temptation to commit it was too clear and obvious to resist is treated as a defence. For every other crime, we call that a confession.
I’ve gotten more angry asks about this post than I have actual reblogs.
I literally put my coffee down, stared at the screen and said “Holy shit…”
Fuck.
this is still my favorite post ever
Have you visited Pleated Jeans today?
I left Doctor Who because I could not get along with the senior people. I left because of politics. I did not see eye-to-eye with them. I didn’t agree with the way things were being run. I didn’t like the culture that had grown up, around the series. So I left, I felt, over a principle.
I thought to remain, which would have made me a lot of money and given me huge visibility, the price I would have had to pay was to eat a lot of shit. I’m not being funny about that. I didn’t want to do that and it comes to the art of it, in a way. I feel that if you run your career and– we are vulnerable as actors and we are constantly humiliating ourselves auditioning. But if you allow that to go on, on a grand scale you will lose whatever it is about you and it will be present in your work.
If you allow your desire to be successful and visible and financially secure – if you allow that to make you throw shades on your parents, on your upbringing, then you’re knackered. You’ve got to keep something back, for yourself, because it’ll be present in your work. A purity or an idealism is essential or you’ll become– you’ve got to have standards, no matter how hard work that is. So it makes it a hard road, really.
You know, it’s easy to find a job when you’ve got no morals, you’ve got nothing to be compromised, you can go, ‘Yeah, yeah. That doesn’t matter. That director can bully that prop man and I won’t say anything about it’. But then when that director comes to you and says ‘I think you should play it like this’ you’ve surely got to go ‘How can I respect you, when you behave like that?’
So, that’s why I left. My face didn’t fit and I’m sure they were glad to see the back of me. The important thing is that I succeeded. It was a great part. I loved playing him. I loved connecting with that audience. Because I’ve always acted for adults and then suddenly you’re acting for children, who are far more tasteful; they will not be bullshitted. It’s either good, or it’s bad. They don’t schmooze at after-show parties, with cocktails.
”Christopher Eccleston (via thehellofitall)
FOREVER REBLOG THIS CLASSY ASSHOLE
(via k3llyb3an)
