Personal is political
After
doing a few hours of moderately productive actual writing (after which
I noticed that my previous post that I wrote in the morning had been
eaten by Blogger with an error message "No such site found", but
fortunately I was lucky that I still had a copy of that post available
for repost) I went out to have a nice walk and then get some food.
Since I was in the mood for homemade samosas that the local Middle
Eastern grocery store serves (for four bucks a dozen they are quite a
deal), I eventually decided to head that way. Many other places also
serve samosas around here, but none of them are even nearly as good as
the ones made and sold in that particular store. If vegetarian food was
generally this good, I wouldn't find it at all difficult to become a
vegetarian.
When I stepped inside, I noticed that they had vastly expanded their store by purchasing the adjoining stores and breaking down the walls between them, rearranging pretty much everything. As I strolled around wondering the new and improved store, I came upon a really ugly middle-aged woman who reeked of the nasty and pungent stench of cigarettes. Yech. I'm talking about a stench that needs decades of chain smoking to build up. So I guess that the uplifting message of the new provincial anti-smoking campaign "Stupid" aimed for youth (all successful anti-smoking campaigns necessarily target the youth) won't be sharp enough to bore into her skull. It is too late to even try at this point, since she is already so totally addicted to ciggies that it has become a part of her nature, making it as impossible for her to quit as it would be to give up breathing. Smokers are jokers!
But no problemo, since it is just fine by me that smoking clearly becomes a loser activity that is widely associated to the dirty underclass and its wretched misery. The eugenic effects that this further social stratification will bring about will help make the human IQ distribution curve bimodal far more efficiently than anything else that I can think of, including the colleges and universities whose entrance depends on intelligence and merit and where the best and the brightest of each generation meet to pair up, and on the other hand the underclass slums, which are the dysgenic twin of universities on the opposite end of the Bell Curve. Whether this will eventually cause the human race to eventually split into separate Eloi and Morlock species is too early to guess. But certainly, as those edgy leftists so often quip, the gene pool desperately needs some chlorine!
Speaking of the gene pool, when I picked up the snail mail and came up in the elevator, there was a woman with a little baby sleeping in the stroller. The little tot looked kind of weird in a way that I couldn't first put my finger on, but then I realized that it had Down syndrome. This was the first Down syndrome baby that I have ever seen anywhere, so the whole sight was a little bit surreal and disconcerting. Oh, so that's what they are like. It is extremely rare for me to see any Down people around here these days, even though I tend to see quite a few people whenever I walk around the city, for example. I wonder why this is so. (Rhetorical.)
While L'il Mongo was sleeping peacefully in its stroller, I tried not to stare and avoided eye contact with the mom so that she wouldn't interpret my smile as malicious, so to pass this socially awkward time (perhaps Larry David could make an episode of Curb where he compliments the beautiful Down baby, gootchy gootchy goo) while the floors passed by, I mentally tallied how many Down syndrome people I remember having seen during the past five years that we have lived around here. My memory might be a bit spotty here, but I would say that back when I was a kid, I saw more Down syndrome people in each month than during the past five years added together. What this personal experience reveals us about anything, well, I guess that your guess is as good as mine.
Update: Ooh, ooh! I can't wait to see which group will blow up their gasket first because of the news article "Scientists playing God? We should rejoice", fundies or leftists, two traditionally opposite groups that are united hand in hand in their shared worship of defectives!
When I stepped inside, I noticed that they had vastly expanded their store by purchasing the adjoining stores and breaking down the walls between them, rearranging pretty much everything. As I strolled around wondering the new and improved store, I came upon a really ugly middle-aged woman who reeked of the nasty and pungent stench of cigarettes. Yech. I'm talking about a stench that needs decades of chain smoking to build up. So I guess that the uplifting message of the new provincial anti-smoking campaign "Stupid" aimed for youth (all successful anti-smoking campaigns necessarily target the youth) won't be sharp enough to bore into her skull. It is too late to even try at this point, since she is already so totally addicted to ciggies that it has become a part of her nature, making it as impossible for her to quit as it would be to give up breathing. Smokers are jokers!
But no problemo, since it is just fine by me that smoking clearly becomes a loser activity that is widely associated to the dirty underclass and its wretched misery. The eugenic effects that this further social stratification will bring about will help make the human IQ distribution curve bimodal far more efficiently than anything else that I can think of, including the colleges and universities whose entrance depends on intelligence and merit and where the best and the brightest of each generation meet to pair up, and on the other hand the underclass slums, which are the dysgenic twin of universities on the opposite end of the Bell Curve. Whether this will eventually cause the human race to eventually split into separate Eloi and Morlock species is too early to guess. But certainly, as those edgy leftists so often quip, the gene pool desperately needs some chlorine!
Speaking of the gene pool, when I picked up the snail mail and came up in the elevator, there was a woman with a little baby sleeping in the stroller. The little tot looked kind of weird in a way that I couldn't first put my finger on, but then I realized that it had Down syndrome. This was the first Down syndrome baby that I have ever seen anywhere, so the whole sight was a little bit surreal and disconcerting. Oh, so that's what they are like. It is extremely rare for me to see any Down people around here these days, even though I tend to see quite a few people whenever I walk around the city, for example. I wonder why this is so. (Rhetorical.)
While L'il Mongo was sleeping peacefully in its stroller, I tried not to stare and avoided eye contact with the mom so that she wouldn't interpret my smile as malicious, so to pass this socially awkward time (perhaps Larry David could make an episode of Curb where he compliments the beautiful Down baby, gootchy gootchy goo) while the floors passed by, I mentally tallied how many Down syndrome people I remember having seen during the past five years that we have lived around here. My memory might be a bit spotty here, but I would say that back when I was a kid, I saw more Down syndrome people in each month than during the past five years added together. What this personal experience reveals us about anything, well, I guess that your guess is as good as mine.
Update: Ooh, ooh! I can't wait to see which group will blow up their gasket first because of the news article "Scientists playing God? We should rejoice", fundies or leftists, two traditionally opposite groups that are united hand in hand in their shared worship of defectives!
In my old Finnish hometown there is a separate school for Down syndromed and other handicapped children in the downtown (Down-town!). Maybe you also lived ones in the downtown and saw them there almost in the neighbourhood?
Posted by Anonymous | 10:15 PM
Come to think of it, that might be one reason. There was one "special" school a few blocks away from ours, but I also doubt that they let the kids roam around that freely.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 11:49 AM
I see nowadays many Down syndromed often walk alone from their "special school" to their "home". Maybe some can do many things alone without a helping hand.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:42 PM
One special school in my home town: http://www.hameenlinna.fi/opetustoimi/index.php?id=1566
Posted by Anonymous | 9:46 PM