On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Tom Morris <tom(a)tommorris.org> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:04, Scott MacDonald
<doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Unfortunately, I think this is what happens when
kewl teenagers who like
memes started (apparently) by star-trek, meet adults who value actual
communication in the language of Shakespeare.
Oh, please. I'd call you a flap-mouthed miscreant, but instead I shall
risk accusations of incivility and just facepalm quietly to myself.
This whole conversation is starting to get a bit WP:DICK-ish... :-)
Seriously, have a look at the article on facepalm. It is terrible and
might be causing a fair bit of misunderstanding here. For starters,
"lowering one's face into one's hand" is wrong. You raise your palm to
your face (as clearly shown in the pictures). The act of lowering your
face into *both* hands is known a variant of "holding your head in
your hands" (sometimes shaking the head in despair as well). The Star
Trek image in question isn't even a classic facepalm:
http://knowyourmeme.com/system/icons/554/original/facepalm.jpg?1248715065
That is just holding your forehead with one hand supporting the head
from the side. A completely different gesture. There is also a similar
gesture where you avoid looking at something because it is
embarrassing, that involves turning the head away slightly and
cringing mentally and covering the eyes. Not to mention slapping your
forehead in mock disgust/frustration. Really, we need a better article
on body language, with scholarly sources, rather than stubs with urban
dictionary references or worse.
I suspect looking at the page history will throw up a better version
than the current one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facepalm&oldid=332507973
That version dates from 18 December 2009. The redirect discussion is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2009_De…
But the article whichever version is used still needs a massive
citation needed tag added, and better sources. The monkey stuff seesm
to come from the experiment described here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/02/02/monkey-see-mo…
Trouble is, most easily findable sources are blogs like this:
http://www.healthkicker.com/754153008/the-science-of-facepalm/
Which shows that the definition is not exactly stable.
Carcharoth
