Nope, Still Gross. Or, what happened when I went for Korean food at lunch today.

I was adventurous today. We went for Korean food.

It turns out that my abhorrence for Korean food was somewhat due to the odors in the previous instances. Like when we went in to this restaurant it didn't smell like rotting meat and fish with an overtone of burned broccoli and gag.

However, despite getting something today that I normally really like from the food court place that's completely inauthentic, I was grossed out. I got the glass noodles with beef and vegetables. First they don't tell you that the vegetables are overcooked mushrooms and that nasty bitter green stuff that looks like a cross between poor people greens and broccoli (it's got a split in the leaves and in the crotch of that there are sprinklings of wartlike broccoli buds---- it looks like an alien STD). It took forever to fish all the crud off the heap on my plate. Then my noodles were in a congealed glob even though they were too hot to touch.

Speaking of touching hot food.... yeah, they had metal chopsticks. WTF? Why bother? If I'm going to burn my hands anyway, I would rather just use my fingers directly. I wanted a fork but the server was Speedy Gonzales *zip-zip-zip Arrriba!* and we were clearly not ordering as much as the family-sized groups at other tables.

Once I got some beef that wasn't touching mushrooms or bitter green Shthuph, I discovered that it was rimmed with that jiggly fat. I ate about a third of my food and gave up.

I'm not entirely sure what the little dishes of things in the middle were. Auditions for Fear Factor? Julienned strips of milky white gelatinous ooze? rehydrated cinnamon jelly beans? leftover tempura from other restaurants owned by the same family? shredded Easter grass in 3 colors? and something that looked like griddled old people skin but tasted like eggplant?

So. overall. I still hate Korean food. But I feel reassured that my dislike of Korean food is because the food is yucky and not because I'm somehow unworthy of being a human.

Heroes and Culture

Another thing I was thinking about is how we view heroism.
From comicbookmovies there was this link from the actor who plays Loki, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/apr/19/avengers-assemble-tom-hiddleston-superhero

It somewhat says that superheroes are a non-faith mythological context for our common culture.

Then I was reading "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (fanfic by LessWrong)
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/85/
The latest (linked) chapter of which talks about how superheroes are often monstrous because outside of the sterile bubble of civilization, when they use non-death methods to subdue villains, those villains escape and kill other people. It gives an example that the Joker kills lots of "little people" every time he escapes. But since none of those people are named people, we don't care and we like to think of Batman as having control over himself and his vengeance. It's actually not very heroic to let thousands of people die because killing the villain makes you squeamish.

What really interested me was the dichotomy between these viewpoints and how I agree with both of them. Firstly I love superhero movies. I wish I could stand being in theaters because I'd love to see Avengers on the big screen right away before all the complainers jump all over it. But I also think most of them are wrong when they let the police arrest the villain instead of killing him.

That's going to sound insane out of context. But I don't see how it helps society to imprison people for their entire lives. What are we saving them for? It's expensive and undermines any attempts we make toward rehabilitating people with shorter sentences. And we know that the majority of criminals who escape go on to commit more crimes of a violent nature. So in superhero stories, I actually agree that the person who doesn't "accidentally" squeeze too hard in the headlock is as much to blame as the villain when they escape police custody and slaughter innocents.

Then I started asking myself why it scares the police that Batman goes around at night fighting crime but people love Superman and would trust him with extraordinary powers. I think some of it is that Batman wants to kill and we never get the impression that Superman does. So Superman doesn't do his heroing out of a need for vengeance so it's okay that he acts on his heroism. Batman, not so much.

And Spiderman? yeah, we don't trust him either.

I realized that the major difference is in the masks... Superman is the regular identity, but his alter ego is the one who wears the disguise. Not that it would hold up with all the facial recognition nowadays.

But I keep wondering why we associate wimping out with heroism. But we totally do. If you're a real hero, you never have to make a choice where you sacrifice 100 people to save 1000. If you have to sacrifice anyone, then maybe we shouldn't consider you a hero. Only that's completely unfair since being arrested for violent crimes is a really good indicator of likelihood of further violent crimes.

So when Batman ties up criminals for the cops to take in, the criminals get out on bail or a technicality or for social reasons--- then they go on a murder spree.... we're all angry with Batman for not fixing the problem. Except if he did, we'd think he was a vigilante that needed to be stopped.

It's all well and good to claim heroes don't need violence to succeed, but reality is messier than that.