A Mystery Unsolved: The Black Dahlia

Elizabeth Short was was an aspiring actress born on July 29, 1924, ninety-five years ago today. Most don’t know her name, but have likely heard of The Black Dahlia. Short’s murder was one of most infamous and gruesome in Hollywood history. I’ll give no details of the crime because they can be easily found and are highly disturbing.

It’s possible that Short was Intersex. The coroner’s reported stated that she had Infantile Genitalia (possibly Turner syndrome or some other condition). They were the size of a child’s, so she was incapable of vaginal sex. The murderer may have committed the crime after finding this out. Violence has always been common against those who don’t conform to the cisgender hetero binary.

There’s an hollywood adage, “never get caught with a dead girl or a live boy.” Hollywood has a long history of covering up people’s crimes and personal indiscretions, especially in the 1940s when the murder occurred (1947). Short’s killer could have been anyone from the famous to the anonymous.

Let’s See Who Salutes: A proposal for an Intersectional flag

A few months ago while talking to people about Intersectionality, I noticed there was no flag.  Some people had logos, some better than others, but there was a variety of types.  What I liked least of all is that none were simple and easily recognizable.  Too many had fine detail that could never be recognized on a flagpole.

After much thought and several revisions, I came up with a simple flag that I think is inclusive and represents all people.  It follows the North American Vexillological Association’s principles for flag design except for the use of purple.

  1. Keep It Simple. The flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory.
  2. Use Meaningful Symbolism. The flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes.
  3. Use 2 or 3 Basic Colors. Limit the number of colors on the flag to three which contrast well and come from the standard color set.
  4. No Lettering or Seals. Never use writing of any kind or an organization’s seal.
  5. Be Distinctive or Be Related. Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections.

If you’ve never seen the Roman Mars TED talk on city flags, please do.  It’s fun and informative.

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Back Up: But will I be consistent this time?

I feel like a dog with my tail between my legs. And after nine months or so away (and my *second* months long disappearance), I’m again surprised to see my old stuff up there.

It’s a long story, either say fifty words or five thousand, and I’m too tired to type at the moment. Life has been a mishmash of personal issues, of ups and downs, of friends who were suicidal now happy and content, while other friendships ended (their mental health declined, others swallowing TERF fanaticism).

No, I was not and am not in any physical danger (re: last year’s criminal events in Taiwan).

Most of my writing this past year was on my facebook page. I feel ready to write other things if I’m welcome back.

Please Listen: Barriers should be torn down

With any new technology, it’s always the privileged who are accomodated first, and the rest left to fend for themselves, left to fight against being left behind.  The same goes for the deaf.

Alexander Graham Bell may have invented the telephone because his mother was deaf (he also advocated and practiced oralism), but his invention ended up being a sound based device that did nothing for the deaf.  Affordable telegraphs with flashing lights would have done more to help them.

But with the advent of cell phones came text messaging, which one would think would benefit the deaf.  Unfortunately, in the early days of cell phones, telephone companies weren’t very enlightened, courteous or forward thinking.  I can imagine this was a real conversation more than once:

Customer: “I need cell phone service with text only.”

Telecom: “Here’s out voice and text plan.”

Customer: “I’m deaf, I only want a text plan.”

Telecom: “If you can’t hear, why would you need a telephone?”

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Please Listen: Intolerance, impatience and ignorance hurt

The deaf and hearing impaired, for obvious reasons, are at a disadvantage when it comes to communicating in terms of speed, visibility, and technology.  But they also suffer the disadvantage of others’ intolerance, impatience, and ignorance.  Some discriminate simply because others are different, some because they can’t be bothered to try and communicate, some because they assume everyone can hear and that the deaf are “ignoring them, being disrespectful”.

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Trophy Case: Kavanagh’s high school yearbook is a collection of horrors

When Kavanagh’s alleged “65 women who support him” was claimed, I wasn’t surprised that few of the women responded, and that most wouldn’t comment or publicly refuted him. My snarky response at the time was that he handed his school yearbook to one of his stooges, and said, “Pick out only the names that I didn’t write comments on or beside their faces. They’re the ones I wasn’t interested in. The rest, don’t mention or call them.”

As it turns out, that horrible insinuation has turned out to be true. He and several other former male students wrote a sexual innuendo about a young woman from another school in the area. The ones who put “Renate Alumnus” beside their pictures may have inferred they “scored” with her.  From The Independent, UK:

Brett Kavanaugh: ‘Horrible, hurtful taunts’ towards schoolgirl in high school yearbook revealed

Brett Kavanaugh’s page in his high school yearbook offers a glimpse of the teenage years of the man who is now President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: lots of football, plenty of drinking, parties at the beach. Among the reminiscences about sports and booze is a mysterious entry: “Renate Alumnius.”

The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Kavanaugh, who were described as the “Renate Alumni.” It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school.

Two of Kavanaugh’s classmates say the mentions of Renate were part of the football players’ unsubstantiated boasting about their conquests.

One has to wonder if this is a stage of serial killers, like keeping trophies from murders they commit.

 

Weather Fronts: No doubt climate change deniers will latch onto this

In recent years, Taiwan’s normal August to November typhoon season has been anything but.  Some years, the typhoons were minor to non-existent (and causing droughts), other years typhoons occurred throughout the year, even in January to March.  For the first time since Taiwan’s centennial (2011), we’re facing a predictable typhoon season. It’s bad for mosquitos (and spreading Dengue fever) but good for farming and water collection.

After typhoon Mangkhut of last week, we’re already facing another, typhoon Trami which will make landfall by Thursday.  Mangkhut was powerful, but it was fast moving, and crossed Manila’s island of Luzon in about twelve hours; a slower typhoon might have caused a lot more death and devastation.  Trami is a different story, slow moving and heading directly for Taiwan.  At it’s current trajectory, it will take 24-36 hours to fully cross the middle of the island.  As if Hualien needs another landslide and building collapse.  Fortunately, building construction here is a lot more hardy.

It’s likely not a coincidence that 2018 also marks the first summer in a decade where Taiwan’s average summer temperatures have declined.  Not that you’d notice, it was still unbearably humid.  There’s talk about shutting down one of the nuclear reactors producing electricity, and yet no one wants to give up airconditioning and the business dress code, wearing lighter clothing or shorts in the workplace.  Nope, it’s gotta be suits and slacks, every day.

 

 

Challenge Accepted: I have a new responsibility

I intended to gradually talk about my involvement with a women’s support group over the past eight months.  The group is for women who have mental health issues, who have been raped and sexually assaulted, who have family or financial issues or other problems.  I initially joined to help support someone else, but I stayed both for my own benefit and because I’ve been able to help others.

Where I can’t help is one of the group leaders who is leaving.  I won’t list her traumas, but she has made multiple suicide attempts over several years and is submitting herself for long term psychiatric care.  It has fallen to me to lead weekly meetings of the support group because I’m the most regular attendee.

I worry about letting down people, about running the group well.  I hope I’m up to the task to continue what she started, because it was her baby, her initiative to help other women and men too.  Mental health is a taboo subject in Taiwan, and we’ve only just begun getting the public to talk about it.

I owe her greatly as a friend and what she did for me early this summer, which is a topic for another time….

Time To Shut Down: Fox Nuisance of the World

Fox Nuisance lives down to its name again, displaying their standard racist policy.  But this time they made have gone too far, even for their own fake news.

Fox 4 Dallas has decided the police obstruction, cover up, undercharging of Amber Guyger for the murder of Botham Jean isn’t relevant or newsworthy.  It has decided that evidence of the crime in Jean’s home isn’t important (e.g. blood, bullet casings).

Instead, Fox 4 Dallas has decided that marijuana found in Jean’s apartment should be the lead topic of its “news”, an intentional act designed to smear the victim aind infer that “he deserved to die”.

Needless to say, the backlash has been immediate and strong, and not just from those you expect.  Openly racist rightwingnuts from Fox Nuisance and the Nationalist Review have chastised it.  Even NRA mouthpiece Dana Loesch has spoken out.

This is as appalling as News Of The World’s phone tapping scandal, and deserves the same result: Fox 4 Dallas should be shut down immediately and taken off the air.

Small wonder both sources of trash are run by Rupert Muckraker.

Wind Storms: Another week, another typhoon. Ho-hum.

Typhoon Mangkhut will make landfall around noon on Friday, September 14. It will most likely cross the northern half of Luzon Island and go straight to Hainan Island.  But it’s large enough that the southern half of Taiwan will get hit too, even if it doesn’t change direction. Speeds up to 60m/second (216km/h) are expected and its diametre approximately 600km.

I’m at the north end of Taiwan, almost 1000km away from the storm’s centre. It’s unlikely it will affect me, but that could change. Last weekend, the north end and the entire east side were battered by a rainstorm that caused flooding on streets in Taipei.

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Hang Up: Dumb phones are the smart phones

Apple are releasing a new phone guaranteed to always be in people’s hands: the iphone SX Max.

Why will they always look at it?  Because it won’t fit in anyone’s purse, never mind a pocket. “XS” usually means “extra small”, but apple decided that the name of a seven inch long phone should be “XS”. And the cult members will buy it, because they’re told to.  The piece of crap will cost up to US$1500.  I’ll bet when 5G networks are the standard, the 5G iphone will cost 5G, i.e. US$5000.

In January 2019, Taiwan is switching off all 2G, 3G and 3.5G phone service except for emergency numbers. People will have no choice but to buy new 4G phones to have any functionality.  The only 4G phones on the market here are overpriced smart phones, the cheapest of which is a three year old phone for NT$7500 (US$244), many newer ones running NT$12000-15000 for Taiwanese brands (Acer, ASUS) and more for others. Good luck to the poor affording that when minimum wage is NT$22000/month.

This isn’t “planned obsolescence”, it’s enforced obsequiousness.  People are being forced to buy new phones for the benefit and profit of corporations.  Unlike landlines and grandfathering, service will be denied to those who can’t afford to pay.  And that’s before we address the environmental waste of enforced consumption, millions of still functioning phones being thrown away.

 

 

There are several 4G feature phones (aka dumb phones) and a smartphone on the market in other countries, but none are for sale here. I’m sick of smart phones, I want something small that makes and takes both calls and messages, even if it means living with a two inch screen. My current “smart phone” is dying after less than two years’ use, and I don’t abuse my phones.

Personalities Stereotyped: The origin of MBTI codswallop

Merve Erme of Oxford University has written a book on the origin of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tests, astrology for the 20th century.  Most know that it’s pseudo science, but how did it gain such popularity when it lacks credibility and scientific testing? (See also: Dvorak keyboards.)

My first exposure to MBTI was in college as part of a business management course.  But it was not the first time I had seen such limiting tests that claimed to know people’s “true selfes”.  Magazines containing “personality tests” were in the house when I grew up, and even with limited knowledge and education as a pre-teen, it was easy to see these were bunk, that not everyone fits into pigeonholes so easily.

I would rather hear someone talk about their MTBI than their MBTI.

The Bizarre Untold Origin Story of the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator

How a mother-daughter team created the pseudoscientific quiz that conquered the world

If you’ve ever been on a dating app, you know what the Myers-Briggs personality type is—those four letters that are supposed to unlock the secrets of your inner personality and guide you through everything from your career to your interpersonal relationships. There’s (E) and (I) for extraversion or introversion, (N) and (S) for intuition or sensing, (T) and (F) for thinking or feeling, and (J) and (P) for judging or perceiving. This four-letter classification is hard to avoid. Some companies use it as a management tool, individuals use it to judge their Tinder dates, Redditors even obsess over it in subreddits dedicated to each type.

Merve Emre, an associate professor of English at Oxford, addresses this tension in her forthcoming book The Personality Brokers, which traces the lives of the two women who created the test—the mother-daughter pair of Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. In recounting their lives, she examines how a methodology created from studying their husbands and children blossomed into one of the largest pseudoscientific personality testing models in history.

The Big Bang: Ten years of the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider went online at CERN on September 10, 2008.

Happy tenth anniversary, ten years of proving that the fear mongering Chicken Littles should have kept quiet.  (“The black hole is falling!  The black hole is falling!”)

‘Big Bang’ Large Hadron Collider is switched on

The £5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will smash protons – one of the building blocks of matter – into each other at energies up to seven times greater than any achieved before.

The LHC, a colossal machine housed in a 27 kilometre (17 mile) tunnel buried under 100 metres of rock, straddles the borders of Switzerland and France between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains.