The problem with discounting statistics, and then using statistics, should be obvious.
1. Memes are not the source of the contention. And not all the crime statistics from where you gathered them are in aggregate by year, as I pointed out in the post directly before you posted. Further, June of 2015(end of the second quarter) was when Trump began his rhetoric about the wall. He was not just a blip for 2015. Nor are most sources solely crediting him, but it is rather difficult to explain a 67% rise in hate crimes against muslims during that period without his campaign rhetoric playing a part.
2. YOU are playing a statistical game here as bad as the meme you are criticizing. You are working with overall totals, and ignoring details. Hate crimes DID go up for a number of specific groups by a significant margin, which I already summed up earlier. You will find no expert who is going to say a 67% increase is insignificant. Nor 12%, nor 8%. Further, the closest comparable political event to the election, Brexit, DID see an increase in hate crimes motivated by those events, so it is not unreasonable to predict similar results.
3. Your entire point three focuses on the increase in intimidation hate crimes(and summing them up as someone yelling something from a car, which is very unlikely to be reported to police) and totally ignores the marked increase in both simple assault and aggravated assault. In effect, you begin by criticizing hyperbole, and then your entire point is hyperbole.
4. We're talking about crime statistics, but if we want to talk about fake news and hyperbole, we should include stories discounting even the possibility of increased hate crimes on muslims, blacks, LGBT folks and hispanics IN THE FACE OF ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT SHOW ACTUAL AND SIGNIFICANT INCREASES IN HATE CRIMES AGAINST THOSE EXACT GROUPS as perfect examples.
5. Given that the article was talking foremost about hate crimes against specific groups, and the statistics back the assertions, saying, 'no, don't worry, the aggregate hasn't changed that much, [it's just your groups that are being targeted a non-insignificant percentage more all of a sudden]' is actually not addressing the article at all. Statistically speaking, a 67% increase in hate crimes against a group, in this case muslims, is so far from what they, or any other reasonable American, should take as being insignificant, that one wonders why you would think that the aggregate should be the only relevant statistic.
Seriously, did you just try to discount a 67% rise in hate crimes against a specific group by not actually ever acknowledging the stat, while using the very tables that stat came from, in a conversation about that exact stat?
For hate crimes against muslims, as the article stated and as the data shows, 2015 was a spike not seen since after 9/11. It was also high for most other groups by a significant percentage.
If reasonable I will agree with his policies. I will support his policies. I will fight for his policies. If successful I will praise his policies.
I will never agree with, support, praise, or fight for him as a human being. There aren't enough inner cities schools in the world he could build, or press conference apologies saying 'I was just kidding', to make me forget or forgive the things he's said.
A fun exchange from teh bunneh's Lucha Libra game over the weekend.
"Don't you find this a little suspicious?
"How so?"
"Every monster we've ever faced all showing up out of nowhere, and then vanishing all at once right when these aliens show up?"
"[scoff] That just means it's Tuesday."
"Yes, but today is Wednesday."
"...My god you're right! Something strange and suspicious is going on! We should investigate!"
Interesting. (And points for linking a fivethirtyeight article about something other than politics!) My first thought was to wonder is YA titles were disproportionately represented, but of course the statistics geeks at 538 would think of that and correct for it.
I found it interesting that books with Girl in the title were overwhelmingly written by women (79%-21%). But of course as the article also points out, most authors don't get final say on their titles, which could mean the G word is being inserted by male editors & publishers.
I still remember when Ms. Marvel joined the Avengers back in 1978(ish?) and the Wasp welcomed her with something like "Nice to have another girl on the team," and Carol replied with something like "I haven't been a girl in a long time, but I appreciate the sentiment." It wasn't portrayed as some big deal, just a recognition that some women see "girl" as acceptable and even empowering, while many others feel the opposite. Helped highlight the two characters' different personalities without making one of them "wrong." But it does sometimes seem odd that we're still having the same conversation today. See Supergirl's premiere episode, where Kara & Kat have a not-dissimilar exchange.
Forum ladies? I'm curious what your feelings are on the G word? Empowering, or belittling, or bit of both?
(Comment: this may be tl;dr, but it is relevant to the post above.)
I have never understood why Twitter ever became popular, except for infantile posturing and harassment. It's just electronic tagging for dicks.
Current Internet phenomena are wantonly ignorant of history (especially Internet history), but Twitter is very little more than the instant messaging capacity that the old BITNET had back in the 1980s. Limited to text posts with a limited character count (something like 60 IIRC), went out in real time. It was pretty intrusive (frequently just called "BITNET Bombs"), in that the message just blasted out onto your terminal when it arrived. It didn't change the state of what you were trying to do, but if you were, e.g., editing a file, your screen no longer showed you what your file/edits looked like. Some editors etc. had a "redraw" function that blanked and redrew the state of the work, but not all of them did; those you had to get out of insert mode, save, exit, clear the screen, reopen the file. Pretty disruptive. And it was, of course, on by default; turning it off for yourself required consultation of a manual, or use of VMS's execrable on-line documentation. Concerning the latter, as the latter-day expression goes, good luck with that.
I believe the most famous BITNET messaging ever came during the 1987 NCAA Men's Division I basketball championship game, ultimately won by Indiana over Syracuse. (I know this story because I was at Indiana, in my first postdoc, at the time.)
My memory is fuzzy, but either shortly before, during, or shortly after that game, some random idiot male student was on his machine at Syracuse. He was able to find some random person on a BITNET-enabled machine at Indiana U. And he proceeded to bombard that person with harassing BITNET Bombs. This went on for some time, IIRC something like 15 minutes or so; it wasn't a couple of messages.
Turns out the random person he was bombing was, quite by accident (there was no way to know this with the limited technology), a woman, AND, more deliciously, Indiana U's head of BACS ("Bloomington Academic Computer Services"), in effect, VP for IT.
This episode happened around game time, which was, of course, during prime time in the evening, so reckoning had to wait about 12 hours. But first thing in the morning, that VP for IT got hold of her opposite number at Syracuse. Must have been an interesting conversation. Idiot male student was expelled.
Anyway, by its nature, this kind of tech really isn't good for anything except posturing and harassment, and THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR DECADES. There is no good purpose to which this tech can be used that isn't done better, and less obtrusively, by other (less invasive!) means. I don't believe any thinking human being should touch it, ever.
Truths for heroes of all ages, by one of the best ever--
The Lone Ranger Creed
I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one.
That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.
In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.
That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
That “this government, of the people, by the people, and for the people,” shall live always.
That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
That sooner or later…somewhere…somehow…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
That all things change, but the truth, and the truth alone lives on forever.
I believe in my Creator, my country, my fellow man.
The "wuxia pian," or film of martial chivalry, is rooted in a mythical China, but it has always reinvented itself for each age. Like the American Western, the genre has been reworked to keep in touch with audiences' changing tastes and to take advantage of new filmmaking technology. Yet at the center it retains common themes and visceral appeals.
In Japan, only members of the samurai class could carry a sword, but in ancient China both aristocrats and commoners could become professional swordsmen. Since the land was ruled by rival warlords, an unattached fighter could become a killer for hire. This sordid reality became glamorized in the wuxia tales which became popular after the ninth century AD. Like the Arthurian legends of Europe, the wuxia promoted a conception of knightly virtue. The roaming hero was not only strong and skillful; he or she also had an obligation to right wrongs, especially when the situation seemed dire. The hero fought for yi, or righteousness - not for rights in the abstract, or for society as a whole, but for fairness in a particular situation - usually, seeking retribution for a past wrong. Here political history becomes crucial. China has had an unhappy history of corrupt and tyrannical regimes, dislodged only by court intrigue and assassination. Since civil society could not guarantee the rule of law, the wuxia knight-errant became the central hero of popular imagination. He or she was an outlaw who could deliver vengeance in a society where law held no sway. The revenge motive took on moral resonance through the Confucian scale of obligations: the child owes a duty to the father, the pupil to the teacher. The wuxia plot often presents a struggle between social loyalty and personal desires, as when in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" Li Mu-bai's final mission to avenge the death of his teacher prevents him from simply retiring from the Giang Hu world to live with Shu-lien.
Wuxia characters and plots entered Peking Opera in the nineteenth century, where dazzling acrobatics added to their impact. Wuxia novels, often serialized in newspapers and running to hundreds of pages, became mass literature in Shanghai shortly thereafter. As Chinese filmmaking emerged in the 1920s, screenwriters drew stories from martial arts plays and novels, building scripts around both male and female adventurers. (Most Westerners are surprised to find how central women warriors are the wuxia tradition.) The epic Shanghai film "Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery" (1928), released in eighteen parts, became a progenitor of the fantasy film. Using flying daggers and wirework, it employed over 300 martial artists. The genre grew during the interwar years, both on the mainland and among the emigré companies of Hong Kong. When Mao's 1949 revolution dictated new cinema policies, Hong Kong and Taiwan held a monopoly on wuxia filmmaking.
To serve Hong Kong's large Asian market, films were made in both Cantonese (the local Chinese dialect) and Mandarin (the more widely spoken dialect). Cantonese wuxia pian of the 1950s and early 1960s emphasized magic and fantasy. Warriors soared endlessly, swords and daggers turned to fire, and fighters' hands could emit jagged bolts of lightning to stun their opponents ("palm power"). The plots were sketchy and the special effects were crude (sometimes scratched directly on the film negative), but the supernatural films established some permanent techniques of the genre. Reverse-motion shooting created impossible stunts, like leaping onto a roof. Hidden trampolines launched fighters into the air, and strong wires kept them aloft. On the soundtrack, thunderous whooshes underscored leaps and blows.
In reaction to the Cantonese fantasy films there emerged the "new wuxia pian," a school of more realistic swordplay films influenced by Japanese movies and a younger generation of martial arts novelists. Filmed in Mandarin and produced by big studios like Shaw Brothers, these tales didn't shy away from giving their warriors astonishing abilities, but the supernatural aura vanished. Now feats were presented as things which could be executed by a very disciplined fighter. In "The Jade Bow" (1966), the hero and heroine pursue ninja-like assassins over rooftops with a fluidity that seems only a slight exaggeration of natural human grace. Women warriors remained central to the tradition, but now they were given opportunities to contrast their styles with men's. Cheng Pei-pei became famous and known as the "Queen of wuxia pian" for her roles in "Come Drink with Me" (1966) and "Golden Swallow" (1968). In "Fourteen Amazons "(1972), when an army's generals are massacred, their widows take up arms to avenge them in spectacular combat sequences.
The Mandarin wuxia pian also intensified realism by focusing not on aristocrats but on commoners, tormented heroes and heroines driven by ambition or revenge or devotion to justice and undergoing extreme physical suffering. Zhang Che quickly built a reputation for his sadomasochistic swordplay dramas, emblematized in his "One-Armed Swordsman" (1967) and "New One-Armed Swordsman" (1971). In contrast were the delicate, lyrical masterworks of King Hu. Hu brought the energy and finesse of classical Chinese theater and painting to the new swordplay movie. His films lingered on breathtaking landscapes, treated swordfights as airborne ballets, and created a gallery of reserved, preternaturally calm warriors who fought not for prestige or vengeance but to preserve humane values. Perhaps the most famous scene in all the new wuxia pian comes midway through Hu's "A Touch of Zen" (1971), where a combat unfolds in a quiet bamboo grove. Although fighters clash in midair, hurling themselves from spindly branches high above the ground or dive-bombing one another in a flurry of fast cuts, the overall impression is of poise - the sheer serenity of perfectly judged physical movement.
Swordplay films fell out of favor in the mid-1970s as kung-fu swept the world and gave the Hong Kong film industry a cheaper genre to exploit. Still, there were efforts to revive the wuxia pian. Patrick Tam's brooding "The Sword" (1980) reflected Japanese influence. Action choreographer Ching Siu-tung turned to directing, and created a supple, modern flying swordplay style in "Duel to the Death" (1982). At a less spectacular level, the great Shaws kung-fu director Lau Kar-leung turned to wuxia swordplay in his comedy "Shaolin vs. Ninja" (1978) and especially in "Legendary Weapons of China" (1982), a virtual anthology of wuxia devices, both magical (a magician controls a fighter from a distance by manipulating a doll) and historical (the final fight scene displays over a dozen weapons and fighting techniques).
Above all, it was producer-director Tsui Hark who spearheaded the revival of all manner of wuxia. Tsui's first film, "The Butterfly Murders" (1979), enhanced swordplay with futuristic weaponry, and he went on to revive fantasy swordplay in his dazzling, flamboyant "Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain" (1983), for which he imported Hollywood special-effects experts. He went on to team with Ching siu-tung for the trailblazing "Chinese Ghost Story" (1987), which melded supernatural swordplay, horror, comedy, and romance. With its bisexual ghost and animated skeletons, "A Chinese Ghost Story" triggered a fashion for flamboyant, almost campy swordplay fantasies. Tsui knew a good thing when he saw it. His productions "The Swordsman I" (1990) and "Swordsman II: The East Is Red" (1992), "Green Snake" (1993), and other hits relied on gender-bending transformations, outrageous aerobatics, thundering music, and stunning set designs. They also showcased Brigitte Lin, Jet Li, Joey Wang, Maggie Cheung, and other popular stars of the period.
Like all Hong Kong cycles, the updated fantasy wuxia wound down, and a new trend surfaced. Under Tsui's auspices Yuen Wo-ping, one of the great kung-fu choreographers and directors, made "Iron Monkey" (1993), a mixture of kung-fu and swordplay that was also grounded in the reality of traditional techniques. Daniel Lee's fascinating "What Price Survival?" (1994) featured classic wuxia performers in an enigmatic tale pitting Japanese and Chinese swordsmen against one another. Tsui himself revisited the 1960s grittier wuxia pian tradition in "The Blade" (1995), a savage and tumultuous tale in which a one-armed swordsman avenges his wounding and his father's death. Most important was Wong Kar-wai's "Ashes of Time" (1994), told in laconic dialogues over wine, splintered flashbacks, and strobe-pulsed fight scenes, all awash in a melancholic score. Ashes offers a poetic meditation on the wuxia tradition itself, as old fighters brood over their wasted lives, mourning the youth and loves they have lost.
ABOUT WUXIA PIAN A "xia" is a knight-errant, who might come from any class, and wuxia involves knightly chivalry. The Chinese concept of the knight-errant originates the fourth century BC, but chivalric stories as we know them today go back to the T'ang dynasty, around the ninth century AD. Some were literary efforts composed by men of learning, others were oral tales and ballads in colloquial prose or simple verse. By the seventeenth century, these forms had become a flourishing fictional genre concentrating on vagabond warriors who display outstanding courage, honor, and fighting skills. Magical elements had also entered the mix, so knights were often given superhuman powers - flying, hurling balls of fire, becoming invisible. Many stories played on the boundary between pure fantasy and what might be barely possible for a supremely trained and gifted warrior - not really flying but the "weightless leap"; not being invulnerable but being able, through control of breathing, to make one's body as hard as iron. To enjoy the wuxia tale we must grant that supreme skill in martial arts could give a fighter extraordinary powers.
ABOUT THE WEAPONRY The Chinese martial tradition, a bit like Chinese cuisine, presents astonishing variety. The country is so vast, and its local fighting traditions so diverse, that a well-stocked armory indicates a frightening range of ways to inflict damage on other humans.
Central to the wuxia mythology is the sword. Chinese distinguish between double-bladed ones, calling them swords proper, and single-bladed ones, which regardless of size and design are usually called knives. There are broadswords like the Green Destiny Sword in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and lighter sabre-like swords, as well as heavy cutlass-like blades (often pierced with rings to snag the opponent's weapon and to distract the opponent with their clanging). Shorter swords are often used in pairs, such as the so-called "butterfly swords," and the emei, or blades with arrow-like points at each end.
Western fans often assume that the exotic weaponry on display in wuxia films is an invention of moviemakers, but very often it comes from tradition. The simple staff, which may be as long as seven feet, can also have one or two joints (making it useful for delivering a hard, swinging blow or for enclosing an opponent's arm). Bruce Lee popularized the short jointed staff, best known by its Japanese name, nunchaku. Whips may be sectional as well. Spears come in a dazzling variety of shapes, including the jagged-edged "snakehead" spear and the hook-spear. Spears often have colorful tassels or feathers which distract the opponent from the blade's maneuvers. There are hand axes, hammers with heavy spherical heads, and heavy cudgels with bulbous, gourd-shaped heads. For throwing there are darts and arrows, razor-edged stars and boomerang-style blades, and the infamous "flying guillotine," a rattan basket with an opening lined with knives. During the 1960s and 1970s, many wuxia pian built their plots around the sheer variety of Chinese arms. Zhang Che's "New One-Armed Swordsman," for instance, gave the villain a two-jointed staff, the secondary protagonist a pair of heavy butterfly swords, and the main protagonist a single light broadsword, so the combat was not only among fighters but among weapons and techniques.
DAVID BORDWELL is a Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and his many books include On the History of Film Style and the recently published, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment.
Ang Lee: The Wuxia is a particularly Chinese type of hero (or heroine). Wu means martial, and a rough equivalent for xia in Western culture would be knight-errant. Unlike the knight-errant, however, the Wuxia is a free spirit, not belonging to any class. In the world of the Wuxia, the most important values are honor, loyalty and individual justice.
These qualities became ideals, and the Wuxia became a mythical, larger than life hero in the Chinese imagination. By the Ching Dynasty, in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Wuxia fiction was very popular. The story of the Wuxia became a fantasy of power, romance and moral duty embodied by Li Mu Bai and Shu Lien in "Crouching Tiger."
As the genre developed, the Wuxia character became a more independent figure, often serving the basic principles of honor and justice themselves, rather than a particular master. In this respect, the Wuxia is not unlike the familiar Western hero the lone cowboy riding into town to exact justice and right wrongs. The world of the Wuxia is different from that of society. The Wuxia operates in a realm under the surface of society and the rule of law, called Giang Hu. A world made up of individuals and their relationships, rather than the collective and the government. These relationships can exist entirely outside of the law. For example, the Wuxia can be a member of an underground, Mafia-type organization, but loyalty and honor are still the main values. In serving a master, the Wuxia keeps his or her word, even to the point of death. (Today, the term Giang Hu has a broader meaning, referring to the entanglements of life and relationships in a society).
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