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The degree to which Dreamwidth keeps getting more awesome is impressive. (And kind of makes me feel guilty for not keeping up with it very well lately.)
Quote of the day: In 1979, the United States federal government went after Sonny Barger and several members and associates of the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels using RICO. In United States v. Barger, the prosecution team attempted to demonstrate a pattern of behavior to convict Barger and other members of the club of RICO offenses related to guns and illegal drugs. The jury acquitted Barger on the RICO charges with a hung jury on the predicate acts: "There was no proof it was part of club policy, and as much as they tried, the government could not come up with any incriminating minutes from any of our meetings mentioning drugs and guns". (From Wikipedia on the RICO Act, emphasis mine.)
Why this quote gave me significant pause: Of the phrases I associate with the Hell's Angels, "adherence to formal committee procedure" isn't one. Seriously. I've been on a number of committees that kept minutes, I know that minutes are necessary, but somehow I just don't expect the Hell's fucking Angels to do it.
Meanwhile: Apparently I hold grudges against species better than I do against individuals. And in terms of animal subgroups, I am totally going to judge by colour, it turns out.
In Scotland, I walked around the loch at Fyvie Castle. I saw white swans floating on the loch, and I saw white swans coming in (very noisily) to land on the water. I thought: "Hey, white swans. Cool."
Yesterday, riding past the hospital on my way home from stopping by uni, I slowed down, with other traffic, because two black swans were crossing the road. I thought: "Go slower, maybe someone will run you over, [hatefully]."
The difference: I was never mugged by a white swan as a small child, whereas a black swan hit me with its wing, honked loudly in my face, and took the chicken drumstick I was eating on my family picnic from me as I was biting into it.
Ever since, I have pretty much hated black swans.
I have a vague theory that the degree to which I, and I hypothesise others, will indulge in categorical prejudice is in no small part dependent on the degree to which the members of that category are distinct. e.g. Swans, to me, all look pretty much alike. (Er, black swans. I can tell the difference between black and white swans. Just, "swan" defaults to "black" in my head, because I grew up in Western Australia.) So swans are easily dismissed.
Whereas I can't categorise, say, Canadians that way. I've known a few Canadians who really, really bugged me. I've known several Canadians who outright sucked. But because Canadians are people, each of them unique and easily distinguished from other Canadians, I don't have a default setting of "I hate Canadians".
Oddly, there's an accent which, when used by an older male, gets my hackles up instantly, but that's from working several years at Directory Assistance, and having a near 1:1 ratio of customers : GIANT JERKS with that accent. (They were famous for being total dicks to women on the phone, often demanding managers, and then being asses to female managers, but sweet as can be if they got a male manager.)
I don't actually know where that accent comes from, though, so I don't know who I'm prejudiced against, there. I just know that if I heard it on the phone, after a year or so, I would always become instantly wary, and found myself feeling genuinely astonished the one time I had a customer with that accent who was polite. (I told all my work-friends - they were shocked too. We all knew the Accent of Douche, spoken by the Douchebags from Doucheland.)
At some point: A reflective post on why UWA is peopled with ghosts, but not when I've had only five hours' sleep.
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