Blogaround

Baby goat. Image source.

1. Cold Reading, and the Christians Who Told Me All the Things I NEVER Did (posted November 13) "I had a strong reputation for spouting remarkably-accurate cold readings of people. None of us called it that, of course. We called it prophecy."

2. Why Most of America Is Terrible at Making Biscuits (posted November 22) "If you’re on the West Coast, forget it. Displaced southern bakers have been known to stuff a bag in their suitcases when visiting home. You can order the flour for delivery on Amazon, but it’ll cost you anywhere from $10 to $15 for a bag, many times the in-store retail price of around $2.50." Ha this reminds me of living in China and having SO MUCH TROUBLE finding "normal" things like vanilla extract or a meat thermometer.

3. The obsession with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s finances only amplifies her power (posted November 21) "After her win in November, Ocasio-Cortez said she couldn’t pay for a Washington, DC apartment until her congressional salary begins in January."

4. Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction, You Should Too (posted August 21) "In fact, they cite numerous studies showing that even feeling like you struggle to control your porn use doesn’t actually predict more porn use. What that means is that the people who report great anguish over controlling their porn use aren’t actually using more porn, they just feel worse about it."

5. 3 Children’s Books about Thanksgiving from Native Perspectives (posted 2017) Cool!

6. Why You Should NOT Choose Operation Christmas Child (posted November 26) Good post- and the point about kids in other cultures literally not knowing how to play with some of the toys blew my mind. I can't believe I never thought about that before. Simple little objects that are so familiar to us and immediately bring up feelings of childhood nostalgia may be completely unknown to people in other cultures.

I'm in China, and recently somebody from the US visited the company where I work and brought candy from the US for everyone. There was a big pile of mini Reese's cups. I wasn't even aware of the steps my mind went through to identify them as Reese's cups- little foil-wrapped things in that certain shape, obviously they are Reese's cups, I didn't even need to think. But then some of my Chinese colleagues came and were looking at them curiously, absolutely no idea what kind of candy they were. I said "it's chocolate and peanut butter" and they were like "ohhhhhhhhhhhh" like this is completely new information for them.

Same thing must happen when kids get their Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, with little toys we think are so normal that of course everyone understands how to play with them and no explanation is needed. I never realized that before. Back when I lived in the US, I couldn't *really* understand what cultural differences were.

And another thing: Chinese culture doesn't celebrate Christmas. The concept of a huge gift-giving holiday just completely DOES NOT EXIST in Chinese culture. So if Operation Christmas Child is running ads about "isn't it SAD how these kids are too poor to have Christmas gifts", well, no, maybe it's not sad. Maybe they don't feel bad about not having Christmas gifts because there was never any cultural expectation that such things should even exist.

7. Party Rock Anthem = Trading My Sorrows Wow what a fun video!



8. The kingdom of heaven is like: A Dutch church has been conducting religious services for 27 days to protect a refugee family (posted November 21)

9. Unheard, Unimportant, and Untreated: Why We Need to Talk About Vaginismus (posted November 22) "I went to several doctors for help with my problem, feeling stupid, and got palmed off with a number of excuses: that it was normal for first-time penetration to be painful for people with vaginas, that I was probably just inserting the tampon wrong. That the fact that it felt like someone was trying to prop me open with a brick was normal, somehow."

10. The COMPLETE Pixar Theory (posted October 30) Personally, I don't believe in the Pixar theory, but I LOVE it because this is EXACTLY how apologetics works. Take a bunch of different works, produced for different reasons over a long period of time, claim that all of them are happening in the same universe and telling one giant logically-consistent story, spend tons of time and energy making up convoluted explanations for the contradictions, absolutely refuse to abandon your theory no matter what new evidence comes out, and end up with a bizarre understanding of the material that the creators certainly never intended... all the while believing you understand it better than anyone else because you got there by treating every single tiny detail as irrefutable fact.

Blogaround

A goat. Image source.

1. Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis (posted April 11) [content note: racism, death of babies] 

2. Disabled People (Might) Finally Get Emojis That Represent Us (posted April 9) "Look at an emoji keyboard, however, and you’d never know [disabled people] exist at all. But if you’re a vampire or a merperson, you’re covered; there are currently seven emojis representing fantasy characters like fairies and elves."

3. The anti-abortion hypocrisy of proposed pro-Down syndrome legislation (posted April 10) "But Republican legislators, at every turn, have sought to dismantle the safety nets that would keep these families from tumbling into an abyss from which no one can return on their own."

4. A Thief in the Night: Traumatizing Children for Fun and Prophet (posted March 30) "Instead of protecting children and contextualizing their sometimes out-of-control fears, fundagelicals try their best to hijack those responses to brainwash their kids."

5. Andy Savage and the Problem of Evil (posted April 4) [content note: sexual assault and coverup] "Thousands of Christians located their car keys after praying for them and found divinely-ordained love." Yep, this is why I don't pray.

6. China's Weibo site backtracks on gay censorship after outcry (posted April 17) "'The response shows that we LGBT people in China are slowly realizing our rights,' Hua said. 'Gay people who would not have spoken out years ago are now letting their voices be heard.'"

Blogaround

Image source.

About the shooting in Charleston:

1. Why a Black Church? (posted June 19) "To this day, churches are the center of social and political life in the American black community—and they are clear symbols of black influence and power."

2. The Doors of the Church are Open (posted June 20)

3. Making Sense of the Charleston Shooting (posted June 19) "The most offensive word in expressions of sympathy for the Charleston shooting victims may be 'senseless.'"

4. Charleston shootings: Emanuel AME church to reopen (posted June 21) "It's a church of the Lord - you don't turn nobody down."

5. To donate to Emanuel AME church, go here: http://emanuelamechurch.org/ 

Other stuff:

1. The Execution of Michael Servetus & My Primary Deal-Breaker with Calvinism (posted June 15) "If Calvin didn’t understand something so basic as torturing and killing people is something a Jesus follower probably shouldn’t do, I have zero confidence that he ever understood the more complex theological issues."

2. Melchizedek: King, Priest, Time Lord (posted June 13) "It’s fascinating, really, to see what Jewish and Christian theology came up with based on an obscure episode in Genesis spanning just four verses."

3. Will your self-driving car be programmed to kill you if it means saving more strangers? (posted June 15)

4. How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope (posted 2014)

5. Let’s Talk about Rachel Dolezal’s Parents (posted June 17) "For those who are familiar with this subculture, you probably know where this is going. The CLASS curriculum is recommended by white supremacists, and as Kathryn Joyce has documented, black children adopted into evangelical families are often treated in a highly racialized way, punished more harshly than their white siblings and taught to denigrate their own culture."

6. Christian Complains That Neighbor’s Colorful Yard is Becoming “Relentlessly Gay” (posted June 17) "Yes... we must protect the children from the evil, wicked lamps!"

7. Ken Ham’s Reconstruction of Noah’s Ark Demonstrates Absurdity of Creationism (posted June 18) "Ken Ham needs more than $100 million, modern machinery, a huge team of labor, roads, lumber mills, AND tax breaks and never once thinks ‘You know... I don’t think a 500 year old man could pull this off with tools from the Bronze Age...'"

8. Why You Need To Know The Complicated History Of Pubic Hair Removal (posted June 22)

9. Let It Flow (posted June 22) Star Wars parody of "Let It Go." Yeah.

Happy Year of the Sheep/Goat!

Image souce.

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! It is now officially the year of the sheep. (Or goat. More on this later.) Last night (February 18) was the big night. China only has one timezone, even though it’s the size of like four timezones- so the whole country rang in the new year at the same moment.

This year, 2015, is the year of the 羊[yáng]. Now, what kind of animal is a 羊[yáng]? Sometimes you’ll see it translated as “year of the sheep”, sometimes it’s “year of the goat”, and sometimes, perhaps even less accurately, “year of the ram.”

Basically 羊[yáng] is a type of animal which includes sheep and goats. All of them are 羊[yáng]. 

See the little horns on top? Like a sheep or goat, right? (Though in this image, they're way curlier than the way we normally write it.) Image source.

Wait, so Chinese doesn’t have different words for “sheep” and “goat”?

No no no no, that’s not what I said. “Sheep” is 绵羊 [mián yáng], “goat” is 山羊 [shān yáng]. See, they are different types of 羊[yáng]. If you really want to specify if you’re talking about sheep or goats, you can use those words. But seriously, when you tell a story about something a sheep did, is it really that important that it was specifically a sheep, rather than a goat? Yeah, usually not very important. So just say 羊[yáng].

For more clarification on what a 羊[yáng] is, we can try an image search. Here are the results:

Baidu image search for 羊.

Yeah, some are sheep, some are goats.

However, in my opinion, most of the Chinese New Year decorations this year look more like goats than sheep. Like this stuffed animal hanging up in the mall:

(But I also saw some toy llamas in a display. Apparently they are also a kind of羊[yáng], or at least they have 羊[yáng] in their name. I don’t know what to tell you.)

Anyway, for more information about Chinese New Year, read my post from last year, the year of the horse. Right now, however, the most pressing question is: what kind of puns can we make about 羊[yáng]? Chinese culture loves puns.

This year the big pun is 三羊开泰 [sān yáng kāi tài]. It comes from an old saying 三阳开泰 [sān yáng kāi tài], whose pronunciation is the same, but look, we replaced the 阳[yáng] (sun) with 羊[yáng]. So clever. Seems that no one is able to give me a straight answer on what 三羊开泰 [sān yáng kāi tài] actually means, all we know is it’s about 羊[yáng] and it’s something about being prosperous. Think of it this way:

1. Get 3 sheep.

2. ????

3. Profit!

This painting helpfully illustrates the concept of 三羊开泰 [sān yáng kāi tài]. Image source.

And finally, I’ll leave you guys with some links to videos of the performances from last night’s 春晚[chūn wǎn] (the Chinese “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”). There were songs, dances, skits, lots of fun stuff. Here are a few that don’t require you to understand any Chinese. (I'm including links to both youtube and iqiyi, a Chinese site. The Chinese site has way better video quality, but I don't know how well it will load outside of China.)

Crazy-skilled acrobats. iqiyi link. Youtube link.

Belly dancing, Russian dancing, and other styles from around the world. iqiyi link. Youtube link.

Kung fu routine which involved a lot of dancing with chairs. iqiyi link. Youtube link.

Happy new year, everyone! 新年快乐 [xīn nián kuài lè]! Best wishes for success and health in the new year! Now go eat some dumplings.