I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
.
That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
Kiss kiss!
April 30, 2007
I love it when an article is not entirely internally consistent.
Point 1:
….human kissing can be a relationship barometer. The British Marriage Guidance Bureau found that married couples on the verge of a split kissed less often. They were also more likely to have intercourse than to kiss - an indication the venerable lip-lock might be the most intimate of relationship acts.
Which is an interesting statistic, to be sure.
However, point 2:
Kissing close to 130 women, McCready found most women were quite willing to participate, especially once they found out it was for art. The idea was controversial to some, he says, while others found it to be funny and smart.
And what did he learn most about human nature through this experiment? Well, he says, “Kissing is more social than sexual, and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
So which is it, one wonders…the most intimate human activity, or a reasonably meaning-neutral social expression? I find it amusing that a similar ambiguity seems to apply to our postmodern society’s understanding of sex as well; it’s either a special union between two persons, or a casual social activity that is perhaps only a step or two above dancing in a club.
In fact, it’s kind of a shame that the article is framed by a muddled internal inconsistency — much of it makes for an interesting read indeed, especially where it concerns societal customs about kissing and how such things vary from nation to nation (for example: in most of Europe, it’s a social custom for the man to kiss the woman’s hand; in Romania, the opposite is evidently the case).
Personally, I find kissing to be quite an enjoyable activity, and certainly I would suggest that it’s a unitive thing. Expressed as a gesture between lovers, I trust this would be obvious, but even between friends it has significant meaning. I suppose one could train one’s self to regard it as just a “no, never mind” sort of thing, no different than shaking hands. But that would be a shame, I submit; kissing is far too enjoyable an activity, especially when one is in love, and it really would be a loss to diminish it in that fashion.
