Hymenoptera in the hat

[jere7my]

The problem is bees in the bonnet.

This applies equally well to liberals and conservatives, and explains why I feel like such a damn alien in my own country sometimes. Someone is bothered by something; they have a gut reaction, something strikes them as problematic, something in their brain lights up over this issue, and they decide to Make a Difference. Not to put too fine a point on it, they get a bee in their bonnet. And we end up with children unable to research AIDS because their library computers won't load pages with those words, and the FCC imposing ludicrous fines as a result of a semi-second of clothing malfunction, and beeping crosswalks that annoy the sighted and don't help the blind, and someone trying to change the colors of chess pieces because white going first is racist. It's the Mrs. Lovejoy syndrome, over and over, short-circuiting reason: "Won't somebody please think of the children!"

Bees are great. I love bees, don't get me wrong. They give us honey, fertilize flowers, and alert us to real problems. But bees aren't the final step; they're the first. If you have a bee in your bonnet, that means you need to learn what's happening, study the situation, see if there really is a problem, or if you're overreacting. Choose to make a difference after you know that it's the right difference to make. The bee will wait.

I guess that's pretty obvious, but it's the best I can do getting that off my chest at 5AM.

Comments

[irilyth]

The good news is that a lot of this sort of thing tends to pass before any damage is done. Remember all the hoopla about flag burning a while back, how we needed an amendment, etc etc? Lots of bees in lots of bonnets, but eventually they flew off.

Doesn't always work that way, of course; but the prospect that it might can give hope to beekepers (or whatever you want to call people who oppose this kind of knee-jerking).

Off-topic

[quixoticdancer.livejournal.com]

Remember when I asked if the turtle in your userpic was Vietnamese? Well, I uploaded a pic of a Vietnamese turtle statue. Here it is:



Hmmm...maybe they're only distant cousins...

Re: Off-topic

[irilyth]

Yeah; the lines carved into the head effect seems similar, but they don't look much alike to me otherwise.

Mine has sort of a Polynesian look to me, but what do I know.

Re: Off-topic

[quixoticdancer.livejournal.com]

Nah, they don't really look much alike. My memory was faulty. Oops.

Bee in the bonnet myself

[(Anonymous)]

The thing is, lots of good has been done by people with bees in their bonnets. In a society where apathy is king and craziness is queen, it's kind of sweet that somebody wants to use chess to teach students about algebra. The line about preferring to play with green or blue pieces because of racism didn't seem like he was on a crusade about that; the text of the article made it seem like the real bee in his bonnet was about algebra. I totally disagree about that, but that's a different issue.

Anyway, you are, of course, right that the bee will usually wait. And this guy appears to be crazy. But didn't Mayor Newsom get a bee in his bonnet about gay marriage?

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

Now I'm curious about when and where people use (or have used) red and black chess pieces (instead of black and white). Lewis Carroll did -- the Red Queen, etc -- and I think I saw red/black more commonly when I was a kid than I do now. Is it old-fashioned? Is it rare? Anyone know? TSOR didn't help, but I didn't look very hard.

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on this.