Silly Stuff

I'm busy writing to a deadline, plus doing some research on breast implants for this blog. In the meantime, I'm going to offer you something that seems to sell well in the mainstream media:

1. Possibly some completely unfounded gossip on our current president. I can't guarantee that any of this is true, but if you like to worry or need another reason for it, this should keep you going for a few sleepless nights.

2. An IQ test. Guaranteed to make you feel bad, even if you score the maximum as internet tests are not real. Of course, IQ has very little to do with intelligence in the first place, but we all love tests that will tell us everything we never knew about ourselves through all these decades of inhabiting our bodies, yet all this can be told to us in one simple test by perfect strangers! Whom to marry! What color to wear! Whether we should have our penises or breasts artificially engorged! What fun!

The real reason I'm including this is of course that I got a good report. Sort of. Here it is:

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.

I do resent the comparison to Plato, though. But of course this writeup justifies my having a blog from which to preach to the world.
Am I getting too obnoxious? It's hard to know sometimes when one is a goddess.

On Ronald Reagan

I'll let the voices of those who mourn for him speak:

I love Ronald Reagan because I feel that he stands for good, period. I agree with everything he says and everything he does. I would never say the same thing about anyone else, other than the Pope and Michael Jackson."
Penned in behind a strip of yellow police tape outside number 668 St Cloud Road in the exclusive Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air, Paul Whitney was witnessing a small moment in American history and mourning the death of the country's 40th president.
"I'm overwhelmed," he said. "It's a big surprise. I thought he'd just go on and on, like Bob Hope. He lived to be 100."

...

As the news spread, people gathered to pay their respects and - occasionally - voice criticism of Reagan's policies. "I grew up in the 80s, I was a Reagan kid," said Jim Frye. "The thing that was different about Ronald Reagan was that he made you feel good about being an American. He had core principles and stuck to them."
"He was an idiot," countered LaShan Bramtam, who worked for the Reagan and Ford administrations. "I didn't agree with his politics. He was good in foreign policy but in domestic politics, the economy, we went into debt under him. Either you love him or you hate him. He wasn't one of those people you could stay in the middle."
Ms Bramtam, along with her friend Jacqueline Washington, were unlikely mourners for Reagan, both describing themselves as Democrats. "It's sad when someone dies," said Ms Washington. "We came here out of respect."

...

At 5.15pm the gates of the Reagan estate were opened and a hearse slowly made its way down the drive. Inside was a coffin draped with the American flag. Four assistants walked alongside the vehicle, each with one hand on its roof. The hearse negotiated the corner into the lane and Ronald Reagan left 668 St Cloud Road for the last time.
"I'll tell you something about this place," said Ms Hinton, who has lived in the area for 26 years. "It used to be number 666, but the Reagans petitioned to get the number changed."

Today's Philosophical Conundrum

If I accidentally swallow a fly in a glass of water, am I still a vegetarian?

Little Red Riding-Hood Retold

The Little Red Riot-Helmet

Once upon a time in a country far away lived a little boy called Georgie. He lived in a large, beautiful house with his mama and his papa, but the family was not happy with the house. They wanted an even larger and more beautiful house. That's why one spring morning when Georgie was outside playing riot police in his brand new red helmet, his mama called him in. "Georgie Porgie", she said, "Your papa and I have an important job for you. We want you to take a basket of Bible literature and food to your dear old granny Fundie. She's not feeling well, and we need her up by the elections." "Aawww, do I hafta?" moaned Georgie.

"Yes, you do. Elections will get us a bigger house," his mama said firmly. Then she packed a basket with some inspirational fundamentalist literature, a bottle of papa's Secret Health Elixir, and several hard-boiled unborn chickens. "Now, Georgie, remember to walk straight to granny Fundie's house. Don't stay gawking in the forest. There are dangerous Democrats there and even a terrorist who eats little boys!" And after having said this, Georgie's mama pushed Georgie out of the house.

Georgie was scared of the dark woods. He had heard about dreadful happenings there; stories about hordes of horrible feminazis attacking innocent wingnuts, stories about evil people who lived off the hard-earned savings of others and who were always on the lookout for more. Georgie feared that they might steal his basket of food or his brand-new riot helmet, but he didn't believe in any terrorists. Mama was just trying to scare him!

So off into the woods went Georgie, walking very rapidly, as rapidly as he could while carrying the heavy basket. He refused to look to the right or to the left, but went straight down the path. Evening was approaching and light was falling rapidly. Georgie could hear twigs snapping in the woods and he became very afraid. To keep his spirits up, he started singing a little ditty:

I'm Georgie, my helmet is red
I'm going to granny who is sick in bed
My basket will feed her and make her sing
And then mama and papa and I will win.

This was fortunate or unfortunate for Georgie, depending on your view. A very hungry and desperate terrorist was indeed roaming the woods, looking for something to devour. He saw little Georgie, all alone in his red helmet, and thought of making a quick snack out of him, but the ditty made him plan more carefully. Here was a way of getting a real meal: both the pudgy little boy and the granny. So the terrorist quickly ran along a sidepath to granny Fundie's house and knocked on the door.

"Who's there?" croaked old granny through the door. "It's me, little Georgie, granny. I've come to see you with a basket of goodies from mama" piped the terrorist in a convincing imitation of Georgie. "Come in boy, the door is unlocked" the granny answered. The terrorist obeyed. What happened next is too awful to describe. Let's just say that granny Fundie ended up in the terrorist's stomach. The terrorist then dressed in granny's large Christian nightgown and lay down in her bed to wait for Georgie.

Georgie was unaware of all this, of course. He had been walking fast and scared and singing his ditty until he was too tired to sing. He had scratches from tree branches, and his knee hurt from a tumble caused by a nasty tree root. After that one he had taken a break and eaten all the unborn chickens. He had washed them down with papa's Elixir. Thereafter, the path seemed much shorter though curvier than before, and Georgie arrived at granny's door quite happy, except for a small fear that she might not like the basket's contents without the food and the drink. Still, what's done is done, Georgie thought, and straightened his red helmet. He knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer. Granny Fundie's door was always unlocked for boys like him, he knew.

Inside the cottage it was quite dark, and Georgie could just distinguish the looming shape of granny in her bed. "Hi granny, how are you?" Georgie said and sat down by the bedside. "Would you like me to open the drapes more to let in some light?" It seemed to him that granny was really unwell. She looked so different. "No! No light, please, my eyes hurt" the terrorist squaked.

"What's the matter with them, granny Fundie?" Georgie asked. "They look sort of red and bloated."

'It's all that pornography that Hollywood keeps pouring out, my dear boy. It corrupts us, even the most innocent of us."

"Ok, granny. And that's why your nose is quivering, too, I guess."

"Yes, my child. I can smell the infidels at their evil plans."

"Infidels?" George said, a little confused. "Never mind, granny. But why is your mouth so open?"

"So that I can better GOBBLE YOU UP!" shouted the terrorist and quickly swallowed poor Georgie, red helmet and all. Poor, poor Georgie. He was all eaten up.

You might think that this is the end of the story, but you'd be wrong. What happened next was this: the terrorist fell asleep, having eaten enough for the day. But he had been so greedy that neither granny Fundie nor Georgie were properly digested. In fact, they were both alive in the terrorist's belly, kicking each other and arguing over whose fault the whole disaster might be. They even made a long list of possible culprits.

All this made a terrible racket, of course, though the terrorist didn't wake up. He might have turned over in his sleep, though. But a brave young carpenter, called Muricanpeeple did hear the racket as he was walking by on his way to fell some Democrats. He looked into the cottage through a window, saw the terrorist snoring away, and immediately knew that something was really wrong. He tiptoed to the front door of the cottage and peeked in. The terrorist was still very asleep and didn't notice a thing. The carpenter gathered his courage and took hold of his trusty axe. Then he took a deep breath, rushed into the room and smote the terrorist's stomach open with one blow of the axe.

Out popped granny Fundie and Georgie, only slightly digested. They were so happy that they kissed and hugged the carpenter and sang great psalms of joy. They promised the carpenter all sorts of good things, like lower taxes and eternal peace as a reward and Muricanpeeple was very pleased. In fact, he was so pleased and flattered that he offered to go out into the world to look for more terrorists. Which he did.

Georgie and granny Fundie didn't go with him. Instead, they skipped hand-in-hand through the dark forest back to Georgie's house where his mama and papa greeted them with great joy and celebration. The election victory was now certain.

The terrorist also got up, holding his stomach together with his hands. He wasn't dead, you know. Instead, he was now very very angry, and ready to find many more terrorists. They would start a big war against that stupid carpenter, Muricanpeeple.

Now, all's well that ends well, don't you think?

The Flanagan Circus and the New Yorker

Caitlin Flanagan is a new staff writer for the fabled New Yorker magazine. I have already written about her extensively, and those of you who have never heard of her, but are interested in knowing more should click here. The gist of that post is that Flanagan is the new darling of the East Coast literati, a writer who hates feminism and most women, who can't do proper research or make a logical argument, but who is very witty and if she's published in the Atlantic Monthly (her previous job) or the New Yorker, well, there must be something deeper in her message.

Christine Cupaiuolo in ms. musings tells us about the latest Flanagan-debate between Herself and several women who are still willing to call themselves feminists, despite Caitlin's pathbreaking work in trying to make feminism obsolete. Some Flanagan-quotes from this circus:

In her letter published in the May issue of The Atlantic, the writer and feminist Lynne Sharon Schwartz called Ms. Flanagan's essay "narrow-minded and self-serving." "Anyone who admits to never having changed a sheet should not presume to expound on those who have changed thousands," Ms. Schwartz wrote, suggesting that Ms. Flanagan's husband might pitch in with the linens as well. The debate turned even weirder when, in response, Ms. Flanagan wrote with a kind of wicked glee, "As for my husband's changing sheets—why in the world would I want him to do that? He is the head of the household, and I treat him as such. But I'm not a feminist, so there's no surprise there."

and

Consider that line about her husband being the "head of the household." What does she mean by that term, exactly?
"How old are you?" was Ms. Flanagan's response. "What do you think I mean?" To the suggestion that the term implies that the man of the house gets a free pass from doing domestic chores, she responds demurely, "I mean by it whatever anyone would think that I meant," adding, "if my husband pops a button, I sew it back on."
So she doesn't wash the sheets, but she does sew buttons. Does she like to sew buttons? "I do like to sew buttons. I think it's very rewarding that you can take a garment that's shabby and unwearable and in this quick way you can really transform it," she said. "It's an easy little gift for me to give him." Yet this is from the same woman who in her 2003 essay on Erma Bombeck wrote that "I have been married a total of fourteen years to a total of two men, and never once have I been asked to iron a single item of either man's clothing or to replace even one popped button, for which I suppose I have the women's movement to thank. But I realize now, late in the game, that we'd be much better off if I had a few of those skills."
But to accuse Ms. Flanagan of inconsistency misses the point entirely. Who cares that Ms. Flanagan apparently found the redemptive power of button-sewing some time between 2002 and 2004? Ms. Flanagan clearly relishes pushing buttons as much as she does sewing them.

and as a sort of concise summary of her odd logic:

"The two things I hate most are feminism and homophobia."

says she, or that hatred of others as a group is a bad thing in general, but a very good thing if it's about women. It's all very silly, of course. That's why Flanagan's presence in the New Yorker is such a conundrum.

There are, after all, many writers of her ilk, writers seeking fame and recognition by holding outrageous opinions and by changing the argument whenever they get caught for being wrong with the initial one. It isn't Flanagan's writing that causes the furor among women (and a few goddesses as well) who call themselves feminists. It is the behavior of the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker in choosing to portray someone like Flanagan as the Voice On Women's Matters. How utterly demeaning for women! And how utterly
callous and greedy! Just consider whether they'd employ a black member of the Ku Klux clan for similar purposes, and if they did, consider how the readers of the magazine would react to that.

But when the human rights that are debated belong to women it's perfectly acceptable to portray these rights as something ridiculous, nay, even harmful for the women themselves. It's perfectly acceptable to describe the prophet of such views as someone with "real wit" and to be "very excited to have her join in on the conversation" on family issues. Not to mention to have her single-handedly in charge of the said family issues.

What this demonstrates is how very far away we still are from a society that really believes in the equality of men and women. Women's issues are a sideshow in the big circus, and feminists are the new bearded women to be ogled at. As long as this draws enough paying customers or subscribers the Caitlin Flanagans of this world will wield the impresario's whip in the middle of this little circus ring.

Conspiracy Theories

They are a lot of fun and only get cumbersome when other people believe in them. This is a good time for some new, juicy conspiracy theories, though; not the silly old ones about the U.N. helicopters. I have made one myself! It is as follows:

There are five fat men in a secret cave
somewhere.
They are naked. They are bald. They live in a wave of
purified air.
They read the Playboy and the Joy of Cooking.
They have grown obese and sated from just looking.

They can feel us. They can see us.
They know our petty schemes.
They have planned us. They have manned us.
They made our secret dreams.
And they caused it to be thus:
Nothing that we do is quite as it seems.

If you don't like that one, or even it's wonderfully bad poetic form, you might be interested in something much more serious and worrisome:

A dentist who claims he met three of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Shreveport one year before the attacks has mysteriously fallen ill and is on life support.

Dr. David Graham was driving back to Shreveport from Houston on Saturday night when he became sick. A friend said Graham began suffering organ failure and medical tests show possible poisoning. He is hospitalized in Houston.

Graham is trying to publish a book that claims meetings with the hijackers and another Middle Eastern man who is a federal fugitive here.

In fact, the Bush administration gives a lot of material for conspiracy theorists. A large number of people who used to be in this administration have died in mysterious circumstances. Coincidence? Perhaps. It might be possible to clarify that by doing some statistical analyses of causes of death and any clustering of rare causes in this way. Or one could just speculate, of course.


Thanks to Atrios and kei&yuri for the links.

All These C-Words

This is a self-indulgent post that nobody else will find interesting. That's the nice thing about owning a blog, no editor can come in and force me to delete it because it doesn't sell. The bad thing about owning a blog is, of course, that I don't have an editor, unless you count the dogs.

The reason for this post is a simple one: I have totally fallen in love with these four things:
-cad
-curmudgeony
-clotted cream
-crunchy

Or at least the way the feel in my mouth. They are wonderfully edible words and phrases! Just try saying them: 'cad', like sighing out in exasperation, 'curmudgeony', like housing a small spiny creature in the mouth (a hedgehog?), 'clotted cream', just like the sound of a spoon digging up some of this substance and then spreading it on a piece of smooth toast, 'crunchy', so crunchy that I fear my teeth have crumbled when I say it. I adore them all.

Do these sorts of things ever happen to you? I used to have a bad crush on the word 'albatross' once, too.

Women in the News

Playing a pundit, again. This time I'm a caustic, male-bashing feminazi goddess. I always wanted to be caustic; I'm imagining walking by obnoxious people and causing all their clothing to melt.
General male-bashing comes harder, but it's doable if I pretend to be Rushette Limbaugh. Limbaugh and all his ilk bash females nonstop and that's called objectivity in some very loopy circles. Feminazi, well, I can goose-step with the best of them, but the rest of the nazi stuff makes me feel vomity.

So imagine me with safety-pins through my eyelids and with a horrible square stubby moustache. Ready? Ok, here it goes.

The first piece of news today is the miserable life of women in Congo, especially the life of young women who have been repeatedly raped by the militiamen in the recent disturbances. Now that they have been saved by the United Nations troops:

Young female refugees in the Congo who were raped by militiamen are now allegedly being sexually exploited by United Nations peace troops. According to the Independent, UN peacekeepers are giving girls as young as 13 food in exchange for sex.

Testimonies from both aid workers and teenage girls say that young girls in the Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp in northeastern Congo are climbing through a wire fence every night to sell their bodies for food to UN soldiers from Morocco and Uruguay, reports the Independent.

What else could they sell if they're hungry? Who would value the parts of these young women which are not related to sexual activities?
The stories they can tell, the songs and dances they may know, the ideas beginning to take shape in their heads. What will be saved for their futures? What sort of futures will they have?

And consider this, in many parts of the United States it's illegal to leave a child under twelve alone in a parked car. In Congo, thirteen year olds climb fences to have sex in order to eat. I eagerly await the rigorous examination of this problem the U.N. has promised.

A second interesting piece of news is the rarity of female ministers in the governments of countries:

The Asia-Pacific region has the lowest ratio of women in legislative office, according to a report presented at the Global Summit of Women 2004 in Seoul.
According to the report released this week, Europe has the highest number of female cabinet members, comprising 18 percent of the legislative body. Compared with 14.7 percent in the United States and 10.8 percent in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region comes in at 6.9 percent.
Today, 12 countries have no female ministers of any rank in government, according to the report. Nine of those are from the Asia-Pacific region; they are Brunei, Lebanon, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu.
Won-Hong Kim, a researcher of the Korean Women's Development Institute, told the Seoul-based Korea Times that the low numbers are a result of patriarchy in Asian-Pacific society.
"Traditionally, Asian societies have been male-centered, denying access to women in many sectors, especially politics," Kim said. "In order to improve the status of women, policymakers are required to give special attention to the problems and offer administrative support."
Irene Natividad, president of the summit and a Women's eNews 21 Women for the 21st Century, released the report that included 195 countries in its analysis.
"One woman minister can affect thousands," Natividad told the Korea Times. "One woman minister can ensure women are open to all occupations. One woman makes a difference."

Asian societies have indeed been traditionally male-centered, and as far as I can tell, they are still very much so. Just consider the well-known preference for boys in most of Asian countries. But the problem isn't limited to Asia; even Europe with the highest percentage of female ministers is still a continent where eighty percent of ministers are male. Where are all the women, many male bloggers might ask here. Isn't it the case that women just aren't interested in politics? Just look at who reads political blogs in this country.

Well, as Rivka points out in her excellent post on this topic, women actually vote in larger relative numbers than men, and are more active as political volunteers. She also demonstrates that women's political involvement increases with time, especially when counted from the date when they won the right to vote. Given that women have had the vote for only somewhat less than a century in even the most advanced countries, it's a bit early to start making some sort of philosophical conclusions about women's reluctance to engage in politics. There are still real barriers in the way of politically active women in many countries, and in several of them women who venture out into the political arena face open discrimination. Even in the good old U.S. of A. women bear special burdens in political life: they are attacked by right-wingers if they have minor children, they are still often regarded as responsible for the home and the house as well as their political careers, they are suspected of being weak on defense, merely because they are women, and they are viewed as running as 'women' rather than as people. And most recently, women are found lacking in the required macho quotient... But yes, it would be good to have more female ministers and presidents and even a pope or two. In my opinion.

Finally, something cheerful and uplifting about women in the news:

--As she answers phones, scours wire service reports for breaking news and researches feature stories, Nazima Shafique looks like any one of the other two dozen journalists working in the Pakistan Television (PTV) newsroom.
And that is just the way the 28-year-old news anchor--who has battled two of the harshest forms of discrimination in Pakistani society to pursue her career--wants it to be.
"When people look at me, I want them to see a person who can work just as well as anyone else in this room, that there is nothing different or special about me," she says.
As gutsy as she is humble, the cherub-faced journalist, however, is anything but ordinary.
The PTV news anchor, disabled by a severe case of childhood polio, is one of only four women in Pakistan presenting the nightly news.
In a country where only 25 percent* of women work, Shafique challenges the male-dominated status quo of most newsrooms and the cultural tendency, in a country still struggling with polio, to expect little of the disabled.
Although Pakistan passed a 1981 law to reserve 2 percent of the workforce for disabled persons and a 2002 law to integrate disabled children into the education system, many social workers complain of lax enforcement and little change in social attitudes.
"It's an engrained belief that disabled people are a burden, that they will never contribute to a family's earnings other than perhaps as a beggar on the street," says Islamabad-based social worker Aisha Hamid. "Sadly, changing this perception has just not been a priority for successive governments, and many disabled persons and their families remain utterly ignorant about the possibilities to better their lives."
Over 80 percent of disabled persons in Pakistan remain unemployed.

Let's hope that this is the beginning of similar good developments all over the world.

Now, that wasn't too bad, was it? You've read through a whole feminazi post, and you're still as normal as you ever were. And I can rip off my moustache and go play with the snakes. Until next time.


----------
*As an aside, I doubt that only a quarter of Pakistani women work; rather, that only a quarter of them are directly paid for the work they do.

Call the Condom Car! Quick!

Believe it or not, this is possible in Sweden:

From Friday, June 4, amorous couples can call the telephone number 696969 and a white van featuring a large red condom with wings as a logo will deliver them a packet of 10 prophylactics.
"We need to increase the usage of condoms," said Carl Osvald, marketing manager for the Swedish Organization for Sex Education, the non-governmental organization behind the initiative. "It is 50 percent about pregnancy and 50 percent about sexually transmitted diseases."

That is, of course, in a parallel universe, not the one where I'm sitting and typing away. There are yet other universes, all coexistent on this same earth. Which would be quite funny, if we weren't part of the mess that results from that; you know, the greatest minds of the fourteenth century telling me what my morals should be and so on. I always want to make ugly faces to those minds, but they'd interpret that as me being possessed by Satan. Which is always possible, I guess.

Still, I can't imagine calling for the condom ambulance. Imagine the whole neighborhood standing in their windows staring at a van with a flying condom painted on its side! They'd all KNOW! I have to work more on my Viking courage.


Thanks to Mrs. Jones for the link

Some Cunning Campaigns

The New York Times has been duped by one, according to Daniel Okrent, the Times ombudsman (a Swedish word?). The campaigners were the Pentagon, CIA and "cloaked government sources...[who] insinuated themselves and their agendas into prewar coverage". Okrent waxes very poetical on this: Some stories "pushed Pentagon assertions so aggressively you could almost sense epaulets on the shoulders of editors", and other stories that challenged the assertions "were played as quietly as a lullaby".

Ok. What he's saying is that the Times admits to doing a crappy journalistic job on this issue. I think admitting it is great, it's the first step to getting more objective coverage. What's so sad is that most of the mainstream media did at least as poorly as the Times, and others are not apologizing.

But was this a very cunning campaign from the Pentagon, CIA and various mysterious cloaked agents? Or were the journalists who fell for it unusually naive/greedy/biased? I'd go for the latter, given that the press is supposed to stand in an adversial position to the government, and that every adequately cynical adult expects propaganda from the administration. So maybe the Times and especially the other culprits who haven't even started on their self-recriminations should also think about getting rid of those who appear unable to hold up the expected journalistic standards. Just saying.

Another cunning campaign may have been carried out on the unsuspecting American medical establishment. In 2001, The Journal of Reproductive Medicine published a study which seemed to prove, quite decisively, that long-distance prayer works to improve medical outcomes. The authors, Daniel Wirth, Kwang Cha and Rogerio Lobo reported on an experiment where prayer groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia were given photographs of some women who were trying to conceive through IVF in Seoul, Korea, and asked to pray for their successful pregnancies. Other women at the same IVF clinics served as a control group as nobody was presumably praying for them. The experiment was a double-blind one, so that neither the research staff nor the women themselves knew who was being prayed for. The results were shocking: the women in the prayed-for group doubled their chances of conceiving. According to one expert in the area of fertility research, this sort of an increase would be a revolutionary one.

As the Guardian points out, many Americans took this study as a sign from God: prayer works, and even quite scientific organizations and groups were impressed. Questions were asked about how to incorporate this into general medical practise and so on. I must admit I was very sceptical of the whole study from the very beginning, not because I wouldn't believe in the power of prayer (just ask me something!), but because I very much doubt that any divine being would let humans play with prayer this way: some women were arbitarily excluded while others were allowed to benefit. This makes the experimenters the gods.

Anyway, now it turns out that one of the three authors, Daniel Wirth, is a well-known conman with special interests in parapsychological research. He is currently under house arrest in California awaiting sentencing for multi-million dollar fraud charges against Adelphia Communications. It's not clear what his role in the research was, but his prominent position among the authors of the study is at least a minor embarrassment for the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, and in the worst case the whole study may be a gigantic fraud. I vote for the latter alternative.

I also think that the same requirements apply to the medical establishment as to journalists, i.e., they can't now blame someone else for the mess. Medical research is frequently financed from public funds, and researchers have the responsibility to be good guardians of this money. If my fraud prediction turns out to be correct, heads should roll here, too. Wow, I seem to be a vengeful goddess today.