#if any group of people can be called heroes by virtue of their profession its those guys

[bookshelfdreams]

anyways stop making media that glorifies the police and start making media that glorifies firefighters

[fan-clan-fun]

I was wondering about making alternative naming systems for fanclans, not talking about anything that's in canon. Do you have any ideas that aren't strictly based on a prefix-suffix type system, or a tribe naming type system? I think you could use kittypet names or other names, but I feel like those don't really intertwine with a clan's culture, unless you make them.

This is a really interesting ask because it makes me really think deep about what naming is and why we have names. Cause, warriors names have (kind of) a logic to them, particularly if you follow the more traditional mindset of naming a kitten after something they can see that looks like them. If you want to go with something that is decidedly not like canon naming, I guess the first step is to think about what a name is and why we have them. Part of the issue we have these days is we have inherited a lot of the names in our culture, or absorbed them or borrowed them from other cultures. A decent chunk of them are religious, handed down through the generations. But names had to start somewhere right? As far as I can tell a lot of names originally came from a language and had specific meanings, just like these days some people might name their kid Mercy or Precious or whatever. Now when we use those names it might sound a bit weird to us at first in modern times, but it makes plenty of sense. Most surnames also came from literal meanings, lots of them refer to the profession of the individual, or the location they came from.

So let's move this to warriors or in this case a more warriors adjacent cat group. You could pull from real life, have their first name be something that is personal and theirs, and have a sort of surname be their rank/profession within the group so something like Ash Guardian. Or you could have those switched, have them called, like, Guardian Ash. Or they could only have the single name, or they could have a family name passed down. Maybe each cat in the direct lineage takes the name of the female who founded the line, so something like Ash of Ivy. Or maybe in smaller groups that arent as largescale as the canon clans (think like wolfpacks, smaller family units) they could be known for the group name either again the founder or the location, so Ash of clan Field, or Ash of clowder Field, or Ash of Clan Ivy. Or they could be known for a specific skill (though this is fairly close to some understandings of warrior names) so Ash the Runner, or Ash the Tunneler.

Of course those options still leave the first part up to interpretation, the personal name. You can have it so that instead of parents naming their kids, they choose their name upon adulthood, and they are called a nickname or a childhood name until they choose their adult name. But what could those names be? Well, you could come up with your own conlang ( a lot of work) or have cats build/create names out of sounds they can make and vocalize that might not have to have specific meanings. Or you could have them be named after the things they see around them in their world, like most warriors prefixes are. Or you could go with something wacky, like the pilgrims did. There is nothing more intimidating than having to face someone named Fear-not in battle. Im only somewhat joking, because you could heavily involve your naming system as religious or cultural, kit named after ancient heroes whose names have transformed over time, or deities or virtues or vices within their understanding. Now this is my personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe that going with "human" names is a bit lazy and also doesnt make sense. If you really want cats to have names given to them by humans, dont just write down what we as humans hear, change it up to what you think the cats might understand from it. So for example, one of my cats is named Artemis, no way they are going to understand the cultural significance of that, or how its spelled, BUT some of those sounds they can understand! So maybe she would call herself Arramiss, all sounds that I feel confident my cat can make. That could also be a fun way to come up with more unique sounding names!

Alright those are some of my suggestions, feel free to send any more questions if you have them! Hope this can help jog some ideas for you!

[fandom-rants]

Let’s Get Real For A Second

Fandom can often be seen as a reflection of society - usually, these days, its worst elements, since we have the safety of the anonymous Internet. And fandom has shown itself to fall into the same bullshit society has been susceptible to since the dawn of time - the either-or fallacy, the black and the white, the good and the evil - the right and the wrong. Coupled, as always, with the bandwagon fallacy and the mob mentality of ‘either you’re with us or you’re against us.’

Here’s a simple opinion for a well-known fandom: “MCU Steve Rogers is a hero.” Only, he’s not just a hero, he’s a paragon of virtue and morality; he can do no wrong. Why? Because if he did wrong, the he wouldn’t be a hero. Because heroes must be perfect. They must always be and do good. If they did a single thing bad, ever, they would be a villain. A single mistake, and poof! All your good work means nothing. And he is good, of course he is, because the majority of the fans say so. And if you don’t think so, if you think he’s made mistakes and needs to own up to them, or if you think he’s shown more villainous character traits than some MCU villains, then you’re the enemy, and we must all band together to take you down.

Fandom has become nearly militaristic in its style of thinking. ‘We, the central group of fans, are the Defenders of the True Path of Fandom, and everyone else is the enemy attacking our fortress. We must all fall in line with the status quo, or else we are the enemy -and the enemy must be culled. Extinguished. Silenced.’

Do you see characters as morally grey? Well, guess what, you’re wrong! Characters can only be good or bad, evil or pure. Just like real people. And if you think someone portrayed as evil or mistaken was good, then you’re [insert insane allegation of racism/sexism/whatever here]. You should be banned. Attacked. Harassed. Same, of course, goes for the opposite - if you see a character portrayed as heroic and don’t understand that the atrocities they’ve committed are just accidents (looking at you, Wanda), then you’re attacking an innocent person and are [insert insane allegation of racism/sexism/whatever here]. You should be banned. Attacked. Harassed.

Do you enjoy a ship? Any ship at all? Well, guess what, you’re wrong! That ship has A Problem with it, and anyone who likes that ship is [insert insane allegation of pedophilia/bestiality/abuse/whatever here]. You should be banned. Attacked. Harassed.

And on and on.

Fandom itself has become the worst parts of society, has become the groups of bullies and exclusionists and hypocrites and bigots (in the original meaning of the word as well as the prejudiced contexts) where you cannot have a differing opinion without being attacked. Even though it is so simple to block and avoid and ignore, or to hear a different opinion and just say “okay, but I don’t agree” or “I get where you’re coming from, but I can’t stand that” - even though it is even easier to do this on the Internet than in real life, fandom demands obeisance and agreement at every turn, or else you face ostracization, belittlement, and even deliberate verbal assault.

I see so many attacked every day for nothing more than their opinions on a show all profess to love. Never bother wondering why this blog is called fandom rants first and foremost. It’s because fandom has angered and upset me more than content or creators ever could.

[misscaller-blog]

THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE This is a questionnaire and personality test popularised by the writer Marcel Proust; this version in particular is Vanity Fair’s. It is answered in third person, in character.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Possibly, but not decisively, the solitude at the bottom of the ocean or a swimming pool. This is a difficult question to answer for someone who has never experienced perfect happiness, and is unlikely to ever experience it ever.

2. What is your greatest fear? (Trigger warning: alcohol.) Oblivion. In general, Chelsea fears oblivion far more than death. At the very least, death is some kind of ending. Oblivion leaves too many unanswered questions.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? She despises everything about herself, so it’s difficult to choose. Anything she inherited from her mother’s blood. 

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Possibly as a side effect of being Iona’s child, she deplores incivility. Despite her family name (including all its unfortunate allegiances and the unspeakable parts of its history) and the Wrath’s general politics, Iona believed that racism and sexism lay at the heart of all broken societies, and tended to use her cheque book in order to fund candidates that believed the same. 

5. Which living person do you most admire? She learned about ‘golden idols’ at an early age and accordingly tends to avoid admiring anyone. 

6. What is your greatest extravagance? Purchasing new plants for her conservatory at the thieves’ headquarters and Turkish coffee.

7. What is your current state of mind? Chels would call it ‘unclouded’, not a stray thought in her head. 

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Absolutely obedience. Following the commands of other people has made nothing but trouble for her despite her being promised otherwise.

9. On what occasion do you lie? It really depends on what you define as a ‘lie’. Chelsea was raised to believe that occasional white lies are not only allowable but necessary, and that is a mostly unshakeable habit. (She’s cultivated a reputation for always being the one to tell you your new haircut looks perfect when you’re in tears because it’s lopsided, a surprising but necessary softness.) Her profession is built on lies, she tells at least a few a day by way of omission. Lying doesn’t bother her in the way it did when she sat in the pews with Iona and Easton and wept at the trials of Job. No one’s struck her down for doing it yet, anyway.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance? She hates having an appearance at all. Her beauty, however immense and ephemeral, has done little for her except make her suffer, and she finds the way people look to be at the root of their suffering — an unwitting extension of her mother’s own beliefs on broken societies.

11. Which living person do you most despise? Chelsea would hate this question. She would want to say, with absolute certainty, Iona Whichillow, the originator of both ‘icy’ and ‘hot’, but in her heart, she knows that isn’t true. Someone made Iona like that, even if that someone was nature, or God. So who she most despises has to be that person. You don’t kill Hydra by chopping off only one of its heads.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man? She has maybe five points of reference for men in total: her biological father, Easton, the boys from the Wrath she tangled with, the Wrath’s men in general, and Roman [and whichever roles on the heist group are filled by characters that are male-identifying]. She likes Roman’s foolishness. She hasn’t found the right word for it. Wispiness, maybe. He feels rounded and complex. If she tends to strike him harder than she would anyone else, it’s because she knows he can take it, round things can stand to lose an edge or two, it only makes them rounder. 

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman? Unbridled rage. Full stop, unquestioningly. 

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Chelsea tends to say ‘as the Good Lord intended’ much more often than the average person, particularly in response to something gone sideways. And, of course, ‘bless your heart’, though she’s tried to cut it from her vocabulary entirely. In the beginning of her time with Roman’s crew, she used it enough to betray her origins, but now she’s stopped using it with such abandon.

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? Freedom. Which she would hate saying aloud, but it’s true.

16. When and where were you happiest? ‘Happiest’ is definitely easier to measure than ‘perfect happiness’, but the answer is not any easier. Objectively, she was happiest in the Wrath, six years old sat on Iona’s lap in the library, small palms on her mother’s cheeks so she wouldn’t cry; eight years old in the Garden in white, watching Easton promise to love and cherish Iona eternally; eleven and kissing Savoir-Faire’s soft, cold black ears; fourteen and helping Sutton walk across the conservatory so she could show her a ladybird on the window. It was easier before she knew she was raised to be her mother’s sacrifice. Her unending joy was what made her so beautiful then. 

17. Which talent would you most like to have? She would like to be very flexible and acrobatic, like Hazel. Her joints just don’t work that way, and her cartwheels are lacking in form. 

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? This, like any other ‘if’ question, is something Chelsea would loathe answering. ‘If’ is pointless. She doesn’t get to change what she would most like to change. And anyway, that thing is someone else, so the whole question is ridiculous and unnecessary. 

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement? She’ll throw Roman a bone: running her fingers along the edge of Shakespeare’s First Folio.

(Trigger warning: death.) 20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? A palm tree on some untouched desert island, alone with the waves until the sun blots out the sky and fire rains down and the world comes to an end. Something eternal until tragedy strikes, much like herself as a human. 

21. Where would you most like to live? On that untouched desert island with a palm tree. She’ll drink coconut water and learn to spear fish from shallow waters. It would be good for her. Alternatively, in a cave, high up in the mountains.

22. What is your most treasured possession? Her name. ‘Chelsea Caller’. It sounds so pretty, doesn’t it? It’s the most beautiful thing she lets touch her at the moment. (The Spy, her wardrobe, and stolen masterpieces excluded. So more accurately only the fourth most beautiful thing. She’ll bump it up a few spots.)

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Being chained to an unlucky and unloved, deeply haunted place. Kentucky. 

24. What is your favorite occupation? Her own, ‘thief’. Possibly, also, ‘getaway driver’. Chelsea watched that Ryan Gosling movie with hers. It was all so very exciting. 

25. What is your most marked characteristic? Her beauty, beyond any shadow of doubt, and also, her immense hatred of it. So: that she is all contradiction, ‘icyhot’. 

26. What do you most value in your friends? She prefers friends who don’t ask too many questions about and things of her. Loyalty is also appreciated, but betrayals of it, especially in the profession all her friends belong in, are understandable. 

27. Who are your favorite writers? Sappho, Anaïs Nin, Zadie Smith, Flannery O’Connor, Barbara Kruger, Pablo Neruda, Mahmoud Darwish, Ocean Vuong, Anne Carson. Chelsea’s authorial education is endless; she’s always discovering new writers she approaches with an insatiable hunger. Her subscriptions to the New Yorker and the Atlantic are indulgences she won’t ever give up. 

28. Who is your hero of fiction? Any lovers, in any work of fiction, in any time. Such a brave, stupid thing they’re doing. 

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Cleopatra VII Philopator. Helen of Troy. Juana Galán. Chelsea Caller. 

30. Who are your heroes in real life? She doesn’t have heroes in the same way she doesn’t have idols. They’re two sides of the same coin, really, both are unnecessary. 

31. What are your favorite names? She likes the name Chelsea. And slangy, well-thought out nicknames. She lived with a model from São Luís for a few months shortly after leaving the Wrath and moving to New York, and was given the Portuguese equivalent of ‘greyhound’ as her only-acknowledged name: Galgo. 

32. What is it that you most dislike? This would be a difficult question for Chelsea to answer. The most earnest approach would be for her to say ‘the phrase ‘the root of all evil’ and the concept of ‘evil’ and people who are evil.’ but accuracy might be lost. Perhaps just ‘ignorance and cruelty, especially when mixed together.’

33. What is your greatest regret? Her greatest ambition is to rid herself of guilt, and thus of regret.  That being said, her entire childhood is steeped in the stuff, she wishes she could go back and warn the sunny-eyed girl what was coming and tell her to avert her eyes and not to run.

(Trigger warning: death.) 34. How would you like to die? Gloriously and in as little pain as possible, though those things seem to be mutually exclusive.

35. What is your motto? ‘Absolute beauty is boring.’

[phroyd]

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center

Donald Trump tells lies.

Don’t take my word for it: The Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization PolitiFact rateshalf of Trump’s disputed public statements to be completely false, as of this writing, with most of the rest assessed as “mostly false” or “half true.” PolitiFact deems only four percent to be simply “true.” By contrast, they have rated as false a mere 14 percent of President Obama’s claims since 2007.

“Trump tells more untruths than any previous president,” says George Edwards, a Texas A&M political scientist who edits the Presidential Studies Quarterly. “There is no one that is a close second.”

But Trump’s political path presents a paradox. Far from slowing his momentum, his deceit seemed only to strengthen his support through the primary and national election. Now, every time a new lie is exposed, his approval rating doesn’t seem to waver very much. How does the former reality-TV star get away with it? How can he tell so many lies and still win support from millions of Americans?

Journalists and researchers have suggested many answers, from simple ignorance to anaging electorate addicted to fear-mongering cable news. But there is another explanation that no one seems to have entertained: It is that Trump is telling “blue” lies—a psychologist’s term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group.

As University of Toronto psychologist Kang Lee explains, blue lies fall in between generous “white” lies and selfish “black” ones. “You can tell a blue lie against another group,” he says, which makes it simultaneously selfless and self-serving. “For example, you can lie about your team’s cheating in a game, which is antisocial, but helps your team.”

From this perspective, lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump’s campaign and presidency. It serves to bind his supporters together and strengthen his political base—even as it infuriates and confuses most everyone else. In the process, he is revealing some complicated truths about the psychology of our very social species.

Turning lies into weapons

Children start to tell selfish lies at about age three, as they discover adults cannot read their minds. I didn’t steal that toy. Daddy said I could. He hit me first. At around age seven, they begin to tell white lies motivated by feelings of empathy and compassion. That’s a good drawing. I love socks for Christmas. You’re funny.

Blue lies are a different category altogether, simultaneously selfish and beneficial to others—but only to those who belong to your group.

In a 2008 study of seven, nine, and 11-year-old children—the first of its kind—Kang Lee and colleagues found that children become more likely to endorse and tell blue lies as they grow older. For example, given an opportunity to lie to an interviewer about rule-breaking in the selection process of a school chess team, many were quite willing to do so, older kids more than younger ones. The children telling these lies didn’t stand to selfishly benefit; they were doing it on behalf of their school.

This line of research suggests that while black lies drive people apart and white lies draw them together, blue lies do both: They help bring some people together by deceiving those in another group. For instance, if a student lies to a teacher so her entire class can avoid punishment, her standing with classmates might actually increase.

And around the world, children grow up hearing stories of heroes who engage in deception and violence on behalf of their in-groups. In Star Wars, for example, Princess Leia lies about the location of the “secret rebel base.” In the Harry Potter novels (spoiler alert!), the entire life of double-agent Severus Snape is a lie, albeit a “blue” one, in the service of something bigger than himself.

That explains why most Americans seem to accept that our intelligence agencies lie in the interests of national security, and we laud our spies as heroes. From this perspective, blue lies are weapons in intergroup conflict. As Swedish philosopher Sissela Bok once wrote, “Deceit and violence—these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings.” Lying and bloodshed are often framed as crimes when committed inside a group—but as virtues in a state of war.

This research—and those stories—highlight a difficult truth about our species: We are intensely social creatures, but we’re prone to divide ourselves into competitive groups, largely for the purpose of allocating resources. People can be “prosocial”—compassionate, empathic, generous, honest—in their groups, and aggressively antisocial toward outside groups. When we divide people into groups, we open the door to competition, dehumanization, violence—and socially sanctioned deceit.

“People condone lying against enemy nations, and since many people now see those on the other side of American politics as enemies, they may feel that lies, when they recognize them, are appropriate means of warfare,” says George Edwards, one of the country’s leading scholars of the presidency.

If we see Trump’s lies not as failures of character but rather as weapons of war, then we can come to understand why his supporters might see him as an effective leader. To them, Trump isn’t Hitler (or Darth Vader, or Voldemort), as some liberals claim—he’s President Roosevelt, who repeatedly lied to the public and the world on the path to victory in World War II.

Why blue lies are proliferating now

Lies aren’t new on the American political scene.

Some politicians seemed to get away with antisocial lying, as with Bill Clinton’s deceit about his sexual infidelities; other careers were destroyed by deception, as happened with Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner, among others. But historians and political scientists like Edwards seem to agree: The scale, frequency, impact, and brazenness of Trump’s lies are unprecedented.

So what has changed?

Most scholars point to political and cultural polarization as the biggest cause. Research by Alexander George Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, shows that “partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group.” According to his studies, Democrats and Republicans have become not merely political parties but tribes, whose affiliations shape the language, dress, hairstyles, purchasing decisions, friendships, and even love lives of their members.

“Our party becomes a part of our self-concept in deep and meaningful ways,” hewrites. This self-concept includes racial identity. Several studies have shown that reminding white conservatives of President Obama’s race made them much more likely to believe that, for example, he is a Muslim born in Kenya. If they do not feel Obama is one of them, this work suggests, then they are more receptive to unfounded claims that dramatize their emotional truth.

Scientists call this kind of reasoning “directionally motivated,” meaning that conclusions are driven by feelings, not facts—and studies find that this is our default mode. As right-wing radio talk host Rush Limbaugh implied in the wake of a lie-riddled presidential press conference, facts don’t matter. What matters is what’s “in your heart.”

That’s why, when the truth threatens our identity, that truth gets dismissed. For millions and millions of Americans, climate change is a hoax, Hillary Clinton ran a sex ring out of a pizza parlor, and immigrants cause crime. Whether they truly believe those falsehoods or not is debatable—and possibly irrelevant. The research to date suggests that they see those lies as useful weapons in a tribal us-against-them competition that pits the “real America” against those who would destroy it.

Indeed, when I told the truth in the first sentence of this piece and said Donald Trump lies, I almost certainly inflamed readers who identify with the president and sees him as their champion. The truth may feel to readers like an attack on who they are, as human beings.

How anger fuels lying

Here we come to the role of anger.

Sociologists like Arlie Hochschild and Katherine J. Cramer have found widespread rage and resentment among GOP voters, specifically against educated, urban liberals. Other studies have found extreme hostility for constituencies that are perceived as Democratic, such as women, immigrants, and African-Americans.

This anger is the soil in which lies can grow.

In a series of four experiments described in a 2016 paper, Maurice Schweitzer and Jeremy Yip provoked participants to feel different emotions; they induced anger, for example, by giving insulting feedback on essays written in the lab (calling them “boring” or “stupid”). Then participants could play games for real money—and they were deliberately given opportunities to lie for their own gain.

The result isn’t too surprising: Participants angered by the feedback were much more likely to lie.

“Angry people focus on their self-interest,” says Schweitzer. “My research shows this.”

Thus he is not surprised by how Trump supporters have responded to the president’s lies. “Many people are angry about how they have been left behind in the current economic climate,” he says. “Trump has tapped into that anger, and he is trusted because he professes to feel angry about the same things.”

Not only has Trump tapped existing anger, but his rhetoric has fueled and amplified it. “Trump has created a siege-like mentality,” says Schweitzer. “Foreign countries are out to get us; the media is out to get him. This is a rallying cry that bonds people together.”

It’s important to note that Democrats have shown themselves to be susceptible to the effects of polarization and anger as well. During the antagonistic Democratic primary, lies proliferated within the party about Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and their supporters. Many Democrats fell for those lies for the same reason people fall for all blue lies: because they helped their cause, providing ammunition for their battle against the other side.

Where does that leave us? In a political landscape shaped by rage, deceit, and tribalism, how can we highlight facts and truth?

How to defy blue lies

It’s in blue lies that the best and worst in humanity can come together. They reveal our loyalty, our ability to cooperate, our capacity to care about the people around us and to trust them. At the same time, blue lies display our predisposition to hate and dehumanize outsiders, and our tendency to delude ourselves.

This hints at the solution, which starts with the idea that we must appeal to the best in each other. While that may sound awfully idealistic, the applications of that insight are very concrete.

In a new paper published by the journal Advances in Political Psychology, D.J. Flynn and Brendan Nyhan, both of Dartmouth College, along with Jason Reifler, summarize everything science knows about “false and unsupported beliefs about politics,” and what we can do to counter them.

They recommend several simple techniques, such as presenting information as imagery or graphics, instead of just text. The best combination appears to be graphics with stories. It’s not enough to negate a false story, as linguist George Lakoff has argued—you need to provide an alternative narrative to get people to pay attention. Simple fact-checking, of the kind that PolitiFact provides, is not effective with partisan audiences all by itself. The facts need to become part of a compelling story, too.

But this runs up against another scientific insight, one that will be frustrating to those who would oppose Trump’s lies: Who tells the story matters. Study after study suggests that people are much more likely to be convinced of a fact when it “originates from ideologically sympathetic sources,” as the paper says—and it helps a lot if those sources look and sound like them.

That suggests it is white conservatives who must call out Trump’s lies if they are to be stopped. But if you’re not part of that group, what can you do in the meantime?

We can start by verifying facts and refusing to promote ones that we can’t, seeking out different and competing news sources, cultivating a diverse social network, sharing information with integrity—and admitting when we fail. In their paper, Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler describe a series of research-validated steps we can take to encourage ourselves and the people around us to stick to reality:

Put some critical distance between you and your groups. We feel intense “social pressure to think and act in ways that are consistent with important group identities.” When you feel that compulsion to go along with the herd, remind yourself that you are not the group and the group is not you. We can also encourage others to do the same, honoring non-conformist positions and tendencies.

Set the intention to be accurate—and state your intention. Psychologist call this “accuracy motivation,” and lab experiments find that reminding people to make accuracy a goal influences their reasoning and behavior. This you can do in daily life by just talking about accuracy as a value, and trying to make the pursuit of truth transparent to the people around you.

Incentivize accuracy motivation. Part of the reason why so many journalists,scientists, teachers, and librarians have spoken out through their professional groups against the administration’s lies is almost certainly that accuracy is rewarded in their training and in their jobs. In a society where public lying is becoming more commonplace, we need to begin to think about more ways to reward accuracy and punish errors or outright fabrications.

In the end, it’s quite simply up to each one of us, Democrats and Republicans, to decide if we are going to live in truth or embrace lies. That doesn’t mean always getting it right; to err is human. But to apologize, forgive, empathize, acknowledge your own biases, and ask questions—that’s human, too.

Donald Trump lies, yes, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us, his supporters included, need to follow his example.

A much shorter version of this article was originally published in Scientific American. 

Phroyd

[11bestofnasir-blog]

Funny Stage Dramas

Think of stage shows and you immediately think of musicals and operas that have entailed theater and drama not just but over the past few centuries. Lots of the popular plays of Shakespeare have been written into musicals that have been popular and shows in addition to stage shows.

In October 2014, The Lion King celebrated 15 decades of stage presence at Lyceum Theatre in London, where it opened first in 1999, with audiences drawn into it. That is an outstanding achievement and it is proven by the facts - by then it had grossed over #4 billion internationally, beating Phantom of the Opera that was the previous record-holder. To understand it The Lion King earnings topped the combined revenues of their best six grossing Harry Potter movies!

Nevertheless, critics were skeptical else they are vestiges of tourist interest for foreigners visiting with a nearby city or nation or if point displays still hold sway within the general public in terms of visual majesty. The answer to their questions has been very much in favour of point shows, which goes to highlight the fact that the public enjoys a show with all of the elements of drama and theater.

What are the basic elements of a stage show? Unlike films and television, stage shows are live performances and living, breathing art types. The key elements are:

• Script or Text - a single that is the domain of this playwright and a theatrical performance's beginning point.

Scenario or Strategies - form the blueprint that a manager uses to build the production up

• Procedure - a co-ordination of the creative efforts put in by the director, actors, dancers, musicians, technicians etc..

• Product - the end result of the procedure 11 Best of Nasir Chinyoti which will be seen by the public

• Audience - each art; the existence of an audience's aspect transforms the functionality.

However, the single most important element for the success of a stage show or a theatre play is the script, the story or the text. This is where the playwright's significance dominates all elements. Aristotle, the established over 2000 years ago the 'theories of playwriting' or Drama's Elements that have since been adopted by many successful playwrights over time. In Aristotle's critical analysis of dramas and several Greek plays, the six components that summarize a script or a story involve:

• Ideas / Theme / Thought

• Action / Plot

• Characters / gamers at the script -

• Language

• Music

• Spectacle

Besides the above, the other elements of play include the sub groups of tragicomedy, melodrama, tragedy and comedy. The achievement of Shakespeare's writing is credited to the single aspect - i.e. all his plays can be slotted into a class of drama.

Drama in this current day is as confusing to folks as every thing for of entertainment. Though as outdated as the scripture drama is referred to as the End Time ministry. It's so-called because it is being used more to edify the kingdom of God in these latter times than in the earliest days.

Drama ministry might be called the ministry where the term is becoming flesh again in our time or put the ministry. This ministry is simpler in reaching out to people.

This ministry isn't a new ministry per-se, as said earlier. Hosea, Ezekiel and Jeremiah are a number of the Old Testament ministers within this ministry. For instance God directed Jeremiah to preach repentance through the marred girdle (Jeremiah 13:1-13) and obedience through the Recabites (Jeremiah 35). The book of Ezekiel is replete with symbolism and visions whereby the prophet preached Holiness unto God. God directed Hosea to preach covenant by his experience of a marriage.

Through His parables, Jesus ministered greatly in drama from the New Testament. Although the parables were not Put into action, using characters and symbolism gives you the chance of visualizing the several messages.

Much like in music, there are various types of drama; royal and sacred, but in this context we are concerned with tradition in play. Similarly as in music, God's kingdom is being edified by not the Gospel play because some of them are acted for not ministry and secular benefits.

Anyone within this ministry must along with the ministerial requirements be a person of vision and understanding. He must be one that can comprehend and visualize any message which he is being given by God. He must have a high amount of boldness and self-control on stage both over the flesh and after the stage. He should be a person of prayer and fasting. This is as laid down by Jesus confrontation could be done effectively through and prayer and because drama ministration is an open confrontation with Satan.

Play helps us picturize the causes and effect of a lousy attitude since there is a dark picture of the nation of human culture and nature. Therefore, that we might not create the Word of God of none effect through our 33, every Christian is called on to practicalize God's love through dramatical and pictorial ways. Dramatizing what we see in everyday life in comparison can help bring the people the Word of God.

Nonetheless, in order to make sure our voices are heard and much more influences made towards making the world a better place for God to function in people's lives, I'd strongly advise that all play ministers should contribute themselves to acute praying to allow their play ministration have upper hand in breaking the hold of darkness in people's lives. Prayer will always empower each ministration's message in addition to the ministers from the arrows of the enemy both and following stage.

Drama is a term derived from Greek language means actions. It could be defined, "play is an action That's performed on the stage Together with characters before the audience. " For making him agreeable as behaving before god its beginning is adhered to religion. They largely wrote comedies and tragedies. Its beginning is, too, connected to morality plays, mystery plays, magic plays, drama ____ liturgy plays, tragedies, comedies and the modern plays. The modern era divides it into total length plays and plays.

The following are the elements of play:

01. Stage

It's the element that is most important and without it the drama is not done. It is the name of place. It is shaped with various doors for exit and entry. The figures perform their functions, come from 1 doorway and exit from doors. If we believe it broadly we locate two stages, one is for personalities and alternative is for audience but the crowd point differs. The audience extols the celebrities and watches drama. The acting is viewed from both sides. One has full actions;where as the other has complete response expressed in gestures, words and feelings rolling the notions that are various in audience heads.

02. Plot

It is the pact of occasions. The author makes notion from whom he gets the story out lines with into his head. So storyline is the collection of events or actions that are gathered along with the story is made. The dramatist divides events or plot into three parts____ denouement and exposition, middle or body.

I. Introduction or Introduction: It is found or put in the very first act or beginning of the drama. There in all the figures and the chief problem on that the play is written are introduced to the audience. The audience easily understands the movement of drama and the connections. It is a terrific assistance for him to leave the celebrities feelings based on classes. The problem is acquainted and developed entering to the drama's body.

ii. Mid or Body: In this realm conflicts, rising action and activities take place. It is the body of the play And celebrity come face to face and speed tricks or their ideas whether they're positive or not. The audience gets familiarity to external and internal battle of primary characters. At which the external conflict is between the hero and the villain the internal conflict is between the hero and his conscience. Both try to knock every other down or fight. Their tussle reaches the peak and now it has to fall down to the end. They are not solved, although it means problems and all struggles come on the stage for alternative.

iii. Denouement: it's the stage of issues of catharsis or solution. As the announcement is supported by Shakespeare that virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. On this stage is the down of all activities. Here conflicts are resolved and that the audience pressure as well as the characters is published. They all go to the prior degree.

03. Character

Story is carried on by personalities. The dramatist takes characters of all course-- hero, heroin, villain attendants etc.. Nevertheless, the major focus remains on the main personalities like protagonist, heroin, villain etc.. A fantastic chain of characters is found, earning feelings from the audience by behaving. The struggle of celebrities or all characters add work or help to the hero. The hero has to perform actions that are hazardous or adventurous and because of him the other minor or major characters make his aim achievable. By this means, the protagonist succeeds to eradicate evils.

The characters work with wonderful sincerity. They are to great extent faithful for their own professions. For example:. Hero is faithful to alcoholism deeds, villain is true to villainous deeds servants to their professions. It's sincerity, devotion, or faithfulness that pushes their job as a work that is actual. This manner, reality by personalities is prevailed from the drama. Play is called society's reflection

04. Dialogue

The story is written in dialogue form, which are uttered by the characters. The dramatist makes dialogues brief and easythat the figures utter them easily but in one breath. The dramatist sets attraction's spirit. These dialogues have feelings that are sensed by the audience that's why characters' happiness is supposed sorrows as well as the happiness of viewers. Sometimes the audience laughs by bringing out the tears and a few instances weeps.

05. Soliloquy

It is an unconscious and impulsive force of talking to oneself. When a person is beneath the dreadful dominance of dejection, it occurs or is seen in issue, or his mind is unbalanced searching catharsis. In conflict, different ideas come out spontaneously and uncontrollably. Talking makes him unaware of the environment, he believes that he is speaking to himself and everything is key to him, however, it isn't like that. For it is being disclosed by him to all he believes inverse of the fact. Soliloquy is a psychological analysis of man and it is helpful to get familiarity with the working of a single. The dramatists use it with the design of future in advance or a purpose of character thoughts to the audience. It is to expose tendency of judgment's boundary that makes curiosity among the readers or audience or this character.

06. Audience:

It's written for viewers or performed before the audience, although for decorating the shelf drama isn't written. The viewer is inseparable from drama. Indeed it's the audience which makes fans and watches and extols personalities. It's the audience that gets similarity to feelings and feelings. It is the audience that gets consciousness about struggles and bad deeds for making the society free.

Drama offers education and amusement, the both are for audience. The dramatist represents it and selects theme and actors from that culture. The dramatist awares them's crowd by representing if the society is moving towards the deeds. So play is a means of uplifting beings and ways of the audience, since the crowd must make war against them and conquer them for ever. That is why the audience is as important as the characters.

[lostpensioner]

Great Expectations.

Now that I have reached the age of pensionerhood I find myself getting more and more indignant about people treating me with no respect.  Call me touchy, but I feel that throughout the last decade I have slowly but surely come to be regarded as something of a laughing stock.  Let me just think of an example now.  Let me see, let me see, let me see.  O.K.  Here goes. I recently found myself in a situation where my wife and I spent a whole week on holiday with a group of other couples. Our kids were there too.  I noticed that whenever the other wives spoke about possible future achievements of their husbands, their tone of voice, facial expressions and body language suggested that they genuinely believed that the future held the possibility of some success in their better halves’ lives. They might lose weight, get a better job or take up a new hobby.  They might get around to making that tree house they’d always promised the kids. They might organise a surprise dream holiday.  All these things, and more, were real, living possibilities in the eyes of these other women and their children.

 But then I would finally, and reluctantly, risk a glance in the direction of the six eyes of my nearests and dearests.  And what I saw there was disturbing to me in the extreme.  Hanging from all of their eyebrows there seemed to be little signs which said:  “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”.  They seemed to be looking at me in a way which expressed any combination of the following thoughts:

Ÿ  You will never lose so much as a gram of weight.  You will forever be thought of as the guy who could have looked pretty fancyable if he could have exerted a bit of control over his appetite. (That would have been my wife thinking that.  There’s no way my kids could ever believe I’d once come damn near to being fancyable.)

Ÿ  He’ll never leave that job.  He’ll never be capable of striking out for pastures new, armed with just his native wit and a heart full of optimism and self-confidence.

Ÿ  The last new hobby he took up was reading the death notices in the paper.  And that was when he was six.

Ÿ  Tree house me arse!  The only way we’ll ever get a tree house is if we plant an acorn under the garden shed and wait for it to lift the shed off the ground as it grows.  That should only take about a hundred years.

Ÿ  The only holiday he’ll ever surprise us with will almost certainly involve Ryanair, Supervalue vouchers and a lot of people with tattoos.

 And the more I look into their despairing little eyes the more indignant I get.  I get positively incandescent.  No, that’s not right.  I get apoplectic. No, that’s wrong too.  I get extremely whatever it is you get with indignation.  

 But this should not be so, I find myself thinking.  Although I’m not really a glass-half-full man, it seems pretty obvious to me that I’ve been looking at this all wrong.  The truly amazing thing about my life is not how I have managed to disappoint so many people.  We need to ask, instead, how did I ever manage to appoint so many people in the first place.  How, in the name of the seven snotty orphans, did anyone ever get it into their heads that I could have been a contender?

And, I would have to say, there was a time when people regarded me as one would regard an acorn; that is, in terms of my boundless potential rather than for what I was at the moment.  As a child, as a teenager, as a young man, even up until the onset of middle age, people waited patiently for me to amaze them. The fact that I never even tried to impress them actually impressed them.  They took this as evidence of humility, of patience, of subtlety.  They were inclined to doubt themselves sooner than doubt me.  At dinner parties, if I failed to say anything extraordinary people thought that maybe they were missing something, that the fault was in them.  Maybe I was so wise, so far beyond them in my insight into the nature of being, that their ordinary little mortal minds couldn’t grasp the complexity that was hidden in my simplicity.

 I remember once, for instance, stopping a dinner party in its tracks by asking: “Any chance one of yiz could pass the auld salt there?”  I swear that there was a good ten minutes silence while nineteen people quietly meditated on this great Zen puzzle I had posed.  Occasionally somebody would raise a finger, as if to speak.  But just as their mouth was ready to release an utterance they would suddenly lose confidence, spot a fatal error in the logic they had been silently pursuing, and return to their unspoken musings. There was total silence except for the sound of me bemoaning soto voce the fact that “I hate eatin’ spuds with no salt on them.”

 Why did such misunderstandings surround me?  Why did so many people give me credit for having some vague aura of maybe-someday-he-might-do-something about me?  The following are some suggestions I have come up with, which might bring us slightly closer to an understanding of how a complete mediocrity can come to be regarded as maybe having something going for him:

 Ÿ  I think I must have looked like somebody who could one day be great.  I truly believe that, due to some freak arrangement of my features, over which I had no control whatsoever, I naturally leaned towards looking like an exceptionally intelligent person.  This trait fooled, first of all, my parents.  As a baby, I was singular in that the facial expression I used to express an attack of wind was almost identical to the expression great philosophers favoured when formulating epoch-making theories.  “Jesus, will you look at the little genius face on him!!!” they would say, with three exclamation marks in their proud voices, while I strained with all my might to belch.  Later on, teachers were so taken by my genius-like body language that they would award me huge grades in tests even though they couldn’t read my handwriting. “Jesus, will you look at the little genius face on him,”  they would say, eschewing exclamation marks in favour of the vocal equivalent of italics.

Ÿ  I’ve never been much of a talker.  This definitely helps if you want to acquire a reputation for being a deep thinker.  The assumption seems to be that I am some sort of verbal minimalist whose brief utterances are both pithy and cryptic while still managing to be coated in a veneer of deceptive simplicity.  I’ve never understood why talkative people are so willing to credit non-talkers with a wisdom they themselves can only dream of.  But the fact is that people who talk a lot need a lot of material, to borrow the comedians’ term.  This material can only come as a result of thought, creative thought.  Yet people who manage to generate huge amounts of conversational material insist on regarding themselves as empty vessels. People like me, then, tend to be treated as some sort of Delphic oracles.  Maybe it’s because I don’t tend to say much that you can disagree with, that people credit me with some sort of wisdom.  But the fact is, most of the time I just can’t think of anything to say.

Ÿ  Throughout my life I’ve been inclined to shy away from the world of action.  I’ve managed to get to where I am today by doing very little.  This has not been a deliberate policy; it is not meant as some sort of nihilistic protest against the futility of effort.  Neither is it a carefully thought out tactic, designed to create an impression of inscrutable patience and Zen non-attachment.  No, the truth is that sixty odd years of inaction have pretty much crept up on me while I’ve been genuinely intending to get around to doing something any day now.  There are those who would dismiss me as simply lazy.  But I think that is actually quite lazy thinking on their part. I haven’t, strictly speaking, been sitting around for all these years doing nothing; I’ve been as busy as the next man.  But a large part of that busyness has been channeled into activities which don’t lend themselves to being recognised by posterity.  I’ve been so caught up with the chores of this life that I haven’t been quick to notice the gap between my imagined achievements and my actual, real-world deeds.  I’ve been so busy washing the dishes and putting the bins out that I haven’t gotten around to writing that three volume novel that I’ve always assumed was in me. Now, the upside of all this inaction is that I haven’t done much in life that you could criticise.  An old teacher of mine used to say: “The man who never made a mistake never made anything.”  And this saying has always struck me as being particularly relevant to me.  I’ve made very few mistakes.  And I have to say that one thing I’ve always looked down my nose at doers for is the amount of stuff they get wrong.  Most great lives seem to end in failure.  I seem to have sidestepped the old failure trap by non-doing.

Ÿ  I am a genuinely patient sort of person.  My ability to defer gratification is second to none. And, for some reason which I find difficult to grasp, patience is regarded as a virtue.  Deferred gratification, likewise, is deemed to be good for us; psychologists use it as an indicator of likely success in life. But these traits are not good. Although there is something in us that looks with distaste on a child who constantly demands to have its every whim satisfied right now, the truth is that his more patient siblings will fall behind in life, despite all our professed approval of their ability to wait their turn.  Let’s face it, when there are more piglets than teats, there is absolutely no merit in always being the one to say; “Oh, do go ahead, old boy.  I can wait”.  That’s how you end up as a dead pig.  And we don’t, generally speaking, hero worship dead pigs, do we?  Yet I’ve always felt that people have admired my ability to bide my time, with stoic forbearance, until the time was right for me to strike.  And, for a long time, nobody seemed to notice that I was doing a lot of biding and damn all striking.

 So then, for a long time people granted me a lot of time to do something.  I looked like I might do something, I said very little you could disagree with, I did very little you could find fault with, and I had the sort of patience which many people believe is a sign of greatness.  And then, almost imperceptibly, there was a change in people’s attitude to me.

“We’ve waited long enough, Des. Round about now would be a good time to amaze us.”

And so began my indignant years.