[NON BLOG] CFTAG Report

[rfmcdonald]

• Requisite good wishes were extended to attendees not present. So, happy birthday wishes go out to amcrabtree, it was a pity that James couldn't have made it, and best wishes to robertprior in China.


• schizmatic recommends Claude Lecouteux's 1999 Chasses fantastiques et Cohortes de la nuit au Moyen Age for a take on the supernatural in medieval Europe. I recommend Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory for a comparable take on the interaction between geography and culture.
  
• It's never fun when dictionaries cleanse a word of its full meaning. For instance, Merriam-Webster's French-English Dictionary defines the word "pimpant" as "spruce, dapper." The etymology isn't listed, but one would guess that it derives from the English "pimp" and isn't something at the country club when you meet the boss: "Vous êtes pimpant, m'sieur, et ta putain aussi!" You're not told, though, and this is annoying.


• The decline of populations in rural areas around the world is inevitable, between the marginalization of non-corporate farming and the cultural unattractiveness of these areas. How can you reverse this trend? Likely, you can't.


• Cognitive psychology reveals that humans are willing to make bad decisions based on false assumptions and superficial impressions. Humans become addicted to VLT lotteries so long as they can win, at least once. People became agriculturalists even though hunter-gatherers had a higher standard of living, perhaps (as pauldrye once suggested) because farming looked like a secure bet. Rates of HIV transmission among MSM remain high despite the introduction of medicines which sharply reduce viral loads, since people feel more comfortable with the idea of barebacking now that there are these new medicines. People eat fast food even though it's harmful, since it tastes so good.


• It's always annoying when libertarians single out Dresden as an Allied atrocity in Europe, and progressives emphasize Hiroshima as an Allied atrocity in Asia, and never look at what actually happened, seeking to use the facts in isolation from broader reality for their own parochial political goals. This tendency is product of a culture excessively addicted to sampling, to history as a menu.


• People moan and complain about how space travel in the 21st century has proved to be less advanced than we hoped, but by the same measure the extent and sophistication of modern computing technology came as a complete surprise. Lost futures are interesting.


• It's difficult to imagine how the survival of Greenlandic Norse society past the 15th century, at least long enough to be brought under the control of imperial Denmark in the 16th century and guaranteed some sort of survival, would change things. Put baldly, Greenland was a marginal society in a marginal environment, and Denmark's overseas colonial holdings were also more about exploiting trade points than extensive settlement.


• We discussed an old soc.history.what-if posting of james_nicoll's, wherein he wondered what would have happened if Galactic civilization came by and gave us vast amounts of wealth (by our standards) in exchange for wormhole rights. We decided that Earth would either become like Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates, or it would be a dead world.


• "No one ever wanted to play submissive to a commissar." This, the unlimited and unrestrained power popularly associated with the Nazis, may be why gearheads and sexual fetishists alike can be so disturbingly Naziphile.


• Umji Bunsik Thumbs-Up Korean Food (southwest corner of Bloor Street West and Palmerston) is an excellent place to go for Korean fast food. I particularly enjoyed my pork bone soup with potato. schizmatic liked his food, but I think also the chance to impress the waitress by speaking Korean.