The Weird Wide Web 26 Oct 2007 05:49 pm
My del.icio.us bookmarks for October 11th through October 26th
These are my links for October 11th through October 26th:
- Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – Make a Robotic Snap-O-Lantern! – It’s a jack-o-lantern with a toothy hinged jaw that slowly opens and then snaps shut menacingly. SNAP!
- SD10 – About Paper Grain – Finally I begin to get it.
- Gore Derangement Syndrome – New York Times – “What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?”
- blog.talkingphilosophy.com — The Little Red Hen – Putting the Little Red Hen into one context or another.
- Bennett Robot Works: Robot Index 1 – So neat! (Adrian, these made me think of you.)
on 27 Oct 2007 at 11:58 am 1.Rechercher said …
Am I missing something? The little red hen and the German version just sound like two completely different stories. They both involve animals and food but I can’t connect them.
I mean one involves making food that everyone wants, and one involves *being* food that everyone else wants. Is that the connection? The stories seem to be trying to tell different stories and morals.
How exactly are they similar?
Help me out?
Thanks
on 27 Oct 2007 at 1:34 pm 2.Cam Sculpin said …
I probably didn’t write the “German” version very well at all. But they’re all stories about reciprocity and friendship.
In the original version, the red hen makes food that everybody wants, and nobody else helps. So, that’s a story about immediate reciprocity (or lack thereof).
Ophelia argues with that by writing a “French” version: the red hen makes food that everybody wants, and everybody else has helped in different ways. So, that’s a story about a more general reciprocity.
I took it another direction, however muddledly. In my version, the white rabbit (an obligate vegetarian, unlike a hen) makes food that everybody wants (something I didn’t really make clear!) and everybody else has pretended to help him. They’ve extended an invitation that they know he will not and cannot take up, in order to use the principle of reciprocity on him. When he doesn’t fall for it, he can suffer the consequences. He’s been manipulated into a situation in which either he gives away much of his meal or he looks like a bad guy — and it’s okay to eat bad guys. And all this at no cost to the manipulators. So that’s a story about manipulative false reciprocity.