Better Not to Know

Among other decluttering, I've decided to find out what is on a bunch of floppy disks I have lying around and copy anything worth saving to modern media. A lot of what was there is old email - in the range of 20 or so years old.

Some of that was from a particular private mailing list and I was curious as to what had become of other people who were active on that list. A bit of googling revealed that one woman was murdered by her husband (who then committed suicide), another is making jewelry out of human bone, and a third (oh, the horror) has become a lawyer.

It may be better not to know.

Cannibalism and Necropihilia - a quote

This is from Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating by Peter Farb and George Armelagos. The incident described took place in New Guinea, though the book is not more precise about where and when, and is discussed in the context of cannibalism as a means to vent anger and hostility against enemies. Apparently, sexual abuse of corpses was also common.

"One man was seen to copulate with a young woman who had just been killed. His kinswoman impatiently began cutting out the corpse's belly while he was so intent on copulaton that he did not notice how close the knife had come. Slicing into the belly and then hacking downward towards the vagina, she cut off the tip of the man's penis, removed it, nonchalantly popped it into her mouth and ate it, with scarcely a pause in the process of butchering."

There just isn't anything to say to a description like that. (Most of the book is far tamer, though often equally interesting.)

Dreama's Meme

Over on her blog, Dreama is asking "getting to know you type questions. I figured I'd fill out her survey because, well, why not?

1. First name Miriam
   
   
2. Are you married or have a significant other of some sort? (Names appreciated, not required.) Robert and I are conducting the world's longest running brief meaningless fling. It's complicated. Mostly, I wish I saw him more but with not being on the same continent and all, it's not easy.
   
   
3. Do you have kids? If so, how many and how old? (Names appreciated, not required. Furry, finny and feathery kids included!) No. I have vague intentions to get a cat, but I need my life to be more organized in multiple ways before that is really feasible.
   
   
4. What do you do for a living? (and yes, “parenting” is a perfectly lovely career choice!) I'm an aerospace engineer. Mostly I go to meetings and write emails, functioning as something of a geek to English translator to answer technical questions about military satellite systems for senior government leaders. I like not doing the same thing all the time, so this suits me well.
   
   
5. Where in the world do you live (if you aren’t comfortable with a specific city, what region)? Northern Virginia (i.e. the D.C. suburbs).
   
   
6. What do you like to eat? What do you absolutely hate? I eat a pretty wide variety of things. If I cook, it's mostly stir fried vegetables with maybe some tofu or surimi (fake shellfish) thrown in. Or pasta. If I eat out, it's likely to be fish. A perfect meal would be a salad with a sesame dressing, a main course of lightly seared ahi with a side dish of stir fried carrots, mushrooms and bok choy, and ginger ice cream for dessert. As for things I dislike, I'm not really crazy about Greek food for the most part (though there are exceptions, I often find it too oily). And I'm not really big on red meat, though I get cravings for it once in a while.
   
   
7. What do you like to listen to? What music is like nails on a chalkboard to you? My CD collection is about 1/3 Broadway cast recordings, 1/3 world beat, fusiony stuff, and 1/3 everything else with a lot of that folk/acoustic, 70's British rock, and classical. I pretty much listen to everything except country and rap (and, even then, there are exceptions). My single favorite musician on the planet is Pierre Bensusan, a French guitarist who falls into that world fusion jazz category.
   
   
8. What do you like to watch? What would you rather stab yourself in the eyes with a knitting needle than waste a half-hour or more watching? I really don't watch much of anything. I turn on the TV for baseball games in season and have been known to watch movies. The last show I've watched with any regularity is The Amazing Race. I cannot understand why anybody ever watches Home Shopping Network or things of that ilk.
   
   
9. What kinds of things do you like to get as presents? What kinds of things make you go, “Huh? Why’d s/he send me that?!?!” The best gifts are tickets to a show or a baseball game, since I'm more into experiences than into things. Books should be a good gift but are tricky because I already own so many. That's also the case with CDs, but I've really enjoyed getting mix CDs from friends, especially if they find some music I didn't know about but fall in love with on first listen. I'd prefer not to get fragrances (since most just trigger my allergies) or most jewelry (because I have really distinctive tastes and am fussy about what I'll wear).
   
   
10. Liberal/conservative/somewhere in the middle? What are your “hot button” issues? I consider myself a social liberal and an economic conservative. My hot button issues are largely local ones, e.g. transportation policy. (We need metro to Dulles and the Tyson's tunnel approach is the right one.) I also care a lot about civil rights, particularly freedom of religion. I'm interested in foreign policy and think we mostly have good intentions gone bad.
    
    
11. How do you self-identify, in as many words as necessary? (for example, I self-identify as “Multiethnic woman/wife/mother of color, activist and agitator, opinionated loudmouth”)
    Space geek, storyteller, world traveler, biblioholic, displaced New York Jewish intellectual
    
    
12. Why do you read my blog? You have strong opinions and write well about them.