"If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city." - Charles Caleb Colton

***

"The American Composer Ned Rorum likes to classify music as either French or German.

By French, Rorum means music that is sensuous, economical and unabashed superficial.

By German, Rorum means art music that strives to be brainy, complex and impenetrably deep."

(Wednesday's Composer's Datebook)


Elsewhere, in his own words:

"I'm very French by nature and I lived in France for a long time and I am very sympathetic to French music as distinguished from German music. And I feel that all aesthetics in the universe are divided between French and German. Everything is either one or the other. If that's true, then I fall roundly into the French category. German means extravagance and beating your breast and repitition and thickness and heaviness. French means continuity and transparency and say what you have to say, then shut up, with a certain overlay of sexuality. As opposed to German which is sexuality with a lot of sweating. It is loud. Beethoven is pretty crude"

"The world is divided into two aesthetic styles: French and German. The color red is German. The color blue is French. Men are German, women are French. Japan is French, and China is German. German art is known for being profoundly superficial, and French art, for being superficially profound... I am French. If you disagree with my analysis, then you are German."

And:

"Unlike 30 or 50 years ago, there is no culture in Europe. There is nothing coming out of France that I know about—and I would know—in terms of serious theatre or music, or literature or painting, either good or bad; likewise Germany. England is fairly interesting but, strange as it may seem, America, with all its vulgarity, is the most interesting country culturally on earth today in music, in literature, in theatre, in painting."

"One thing I have noticed from a lot of reviews online and from this website, is that Singaporeans tend to be easily fooled by ambience. I've seen a lot of good reviews of restaurants based on Sentosa, and honestly, my reaction upon reading those reviews is often "you must be -expletive involving a mother and a verb-ing kidding me... do these idiots doing the reviews know how much money the restaurant spends on RENTAL vs. FOOD??" Especially since I have eaten at some restaurants at Sentosa, and think that (a) I'm glad I don't live on the ex-Pulau Blakang Mati, and (b) the food is really suitable for the dead.

Really, all it seems to create a "great" restaurant in Singapore with "great" reviews by food journalists with no tastebuds, is to have decent air conditioning, (b) hire a great interior design decorator. The food is often blah, tasteless, and cooked with as much fire and passion as a Toyota car factory robot."

(Source)

Rediscover Your Womanhood: A Health Seminar on Delicate Female Issues

My first question:

1) Are men welcome to rediscover their womanhood?
2) Why are all 4 of the speakers male?

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." - Voltaire

***

More great stories from the Malaysian press. WaiWai would be proud!

I wonder if these stories being run in the Malaysian press is a subtle attempt to discredit Singapore. Or at least make it sound as wacky as Malaysia.

Husband's organ donor is wife's lover

A BUSINESSMAN who was given a new lease of life after receiving a kidney transplant found out later that the donor was his wife's lover, China Press reported.

The daily quoted the businessman, in his 40s, who said that the man had saved his life but took away his wife.

Things got worse when he realised that the biological father of a child whom he had regarded as his own was actually that of his wife's lover.

The Singaporean, known as John, had been suffering from kidney problems for seven years and started undergoing dialysis in 2007.

"My wife told me one day that a friend of her buddy named Peter was willing to donate one of his kidneys and I was so touched," he said.

"Two months after undergoing surgery in August 2008, my wife of 12 years told me that she had been sleeping with Peter since 2006."

"I had wanted to reconcile with her for the sake of the child but a private investigator I hired found out that she was still on good terms with her lover and this disappointed me," he told the daily.

> Sin Chew Daily reported that a widow in Singapore has slept with at least 24 men in two years, including a married man resembling her late husband.

The daily said the businesswoman had to "pleasure herself" during the six months after her husband's death from a heart attack.

A few months later, she met a man, who looked like her late husband, and began pursuing him with expensive gifts.

He became her lover but they broke up six months later as he could not fulfil her desires.

She began picking up men in various night clubs and could not focus on her work even after consulting a psychologist.

She has since met a divorced man, in his 50s, who was able to satisfy her.

"Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most." - Joseph Wood Krutch

***

Christian teacher sacked for offering to pray for sick pupil

Shanghai Bridge Made of Rubbish Collapses - "After only a short period in operation the bridge began to collapse, with investigators finding such sturdy construction materials as bags of rubbish, Styrofoam, scrap wood and waste plastic used in the structure in place of reinforced concrete."
Looks like hairbands aren't the only things made of junk in CHina.

For Some of Japan’s Jobless, Homes Just 5 Feet Wide - "The rent is surprisingly high for such a small space: 59,000 yen a month, or about $640, for an upper bunk. But with no upfront deposit or extra utility charges, and basic amenities like fresh linens and free use of a communal bath and sauna, the cost is far less than renting an apartment in Tokyo... The government says about 15,800 people live on the streets in Japan, but aid groups put the figure much higher, with at least 10,000 in Tokyo alone. Those numbers do not count the city’s “hidden” homeless, like those who live in capsule hotels. There is also a floating population that sleeps overnight in the country’s many 24-hour Internet cafes and saunas"

Park ranger sacked over 'racist joke' wins £40k compensation after tribunal tells council 'skin colour is a fact of life' - "A park ranger sacked for asking a black colleague if he 'put polish' on his legs has won £40,000 compensation... employment judge Lindsay Hall-Smith has ruled that he was unfairly dismissed, saying: 'An individual's race or colour is a fact of life. It does not follow that alluding to such matters to or in the presence of the individual concerned necessarily involves racism or less favourable treatment of the individual.'... The judge said the switch to shorts 'usually provoked humorous comments', and one woman, Diane Nash, even wolf-whistled at Mr Parker when he arrived"

What Israel can teach us about security - ""When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for – not for hours – but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here"... Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, has not been breached since 2002... "They're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes. They're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.""
If North Americans adopted behavior-based screening, people would be screaming about racial profiling.

SSRN-How Movies Created the Financial Crisis by Larry Ribstein - "Narrative makes sense out of reality and can forcefully persuade listeners to a particular point of view. Artists in general have a narrative of business which springs from their belief that at least some aspects of business are antithetical to art. Filmmakers add to this a resentment of the constraints capital places on their art. Film is particularly persuasive because of its vivid images and because of the consistency of filmmakers’ anti-capitalist perspective on business. Filmmakers’ negative portrayal of capitalists has helped to prepare the public to believe that capitalists - and not government, economic cycles, greedy people or business generally - caused the financial crisis. This will help the public accept a regulatory agenda built on this premise, specifically including the regulation of hedge funds."

Smacked children more successful later in life, study finds - "Youngsters smacked up to the age of six did better at school and were more optimistic about their lives than those never hit by their parents. They were also more likely to undertake voluntary work and keener to attend university... "The idea that smacking and violence are on a continuum is a bizarre and fetishised view of what punishment or smacking is for most parents"... Previous studies have suggested that smacking children can lead them to develop behavioural problems such as being more aggressive"

iPhone users are delusional, consultants say - "Apple has launched a beautiful phone with a fantastic user interface that has had a number of technological shortcomings that many iPhone users have accepted and defended, despite those shortcomings resulting in limitations in iPhone users' daily lives... When we examine the iPhone users' arguments defending the iPhone, it reminds us of the famous Stockholm Syndrome... you will discover the 10 great myths about the iPhone. Here are just two: it doesn't attract new business for operators, and it is not a technologically advanced mobile phone"
From their How will psychologists describe the iPhone syndrome in the future?: Below is a selection of some of the arguments that various hard-core iPhone fanatics have been using since the iPhone initially launched:
3. You cannot forward a SMS: This is a function that hardly anybody uses and was therefore not included in the first iPhones.
8. Apple decides which applications you can install on the phone: This is good, because Apple thereby ensures that you do not get inferior programs on your phone.
9. The app store is a closed universe: Apple knows what is best for end users, which is good for the many iPhone users.
15. You can only purchase the iPhone from operators chosen by Apple: Apple has spent a great deal of time and energy selecting the best operators for customers.
17. The iPhone does not support memory cards: Iphones already offer the necessary memory people require and end users can choose between two models, one with a little memory and one with a great deal of memory.
18. You can not install your own browser: The browser Apple has designed is so superior that you do not need any other browser on your phone.

What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth - "The scientists at King’s College London... claim there is no evidence for the existence of the G-spot... outside the imagination of women influenced by magazines and sex therapists. They reached their conclusions after a survey of more than 1,800 British women... If one identical twin reported having a G-spot, this would make it far more likely that her sister would give the same answer. But no such pattern emerged, suggesting the G-spot is a matter of the woman’s subjective opinion... Andrea Burri, who led the research, said she was anxious to remove feelings of “inadequacy or underachievement” that might affect women who feared they lacked a G-spot... The quest for the G-spot will not be abandoned. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, which is publishing Burri’s and Spector’s work this week, is planning a debate, with publication of research from the pro and anti G-spot camps. Meanwhile, David Matlock, a Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon, is credited with creating an artificial version of the G-spot. In some cases this has resulted in an over-sensitive zone which induces orgasms when, for example, women drive over bumps in the road."

WiFi for passive-aggressives - "Choose a wireless network: 'We can hear you having sex."

6 reasons why I’m dumping my iPhone for a Nokia N900 - "What does it take to ‘kill the iPhone’?
1. Web browser
2. Installing Apps
3. Contacts
4. Media
5. Messaging
6. Photos
Let’s face it. Apple needs to stop being stubborn and start looking at what we really want. They have, hands down, revolutionized the mobile industry. But they need to start evolving again. People need multitasking. Proper multitasking. Seamless integration of social networking is a must. And for god’s sake.. If we want to change the way our phone works.. even to the point of breaking it, can we not do that without playing a cat and mouse jail-breaking game?"

Meet the lipstick entrepreneurs - "Lots of people don’t like the term ‘lipstick entrepreneurs’. They think it’s sexist. But it reminds me of the women I’ve always admired most in business — the ones who look like they’re so in control, they still have time to dress well and do their hair. They make it look effortless.”"

"If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport." - George Winters

***

This is quite sad:



Voulez Vous Sortir Avec JOSHUA TAN

Who we are: We're two friends, Shannon and Matthew, and we're on a mission. We plan to set up a date for our third friend, Joshua Tan (He's semi-oblivious about the whole thing). Joshua's our dear friend and he just got out of a serious relationship awhile back, and kinda lost his bearings for abit. SO, we're hoping to get him back on his feet, and that's where YOU come in.

The plan: For one lucky girl out here in the world of Facebook (preferably in Singapore as well), to go on an all expense-paid night out/date with Joshua...

PROCEDURE: Okay, so here's how it's gonna go. The first female (sry, females only), to post on the wall consenting to the night out/ date with Joshua, will be the the lucky girl to win it. Just add a comment or post below, and we'll be in touch! cheers!

********************
BIO
********************

Height: 1.8m
Weight: 72kg
Ngee Ann Poly
Mass Communications

The day was November 9th 1990.

That was the day doctors first laid eyes on Joshua Tan and immediately knew the small but inquisitively engaging child laying in their hands was destined for greatness.

As doctors lightly tapped Joshua on his buttocks in a hot, sweat-stenched delivery room on a clear, crisp Wednesday morning, expecting him to cry like most other babies, but instead were greeted with his hazel-brown eyes staring longingly up at them, as a soft smile slowly etched itself upon his face, they knew they had met a child like no other.

Doctors would later swear to his mother they saw Joshua give a slight wink of his eye, as if to say “I’m good, I’m good.”

And for Joshua Tan, affectionately known as “JT” (read Justin Timberlake) or “J-Bird” to his peers, that has been the case for the most part of his 19 years in life.

Counting the books A Walk To Remember and The Notebook as a couple of his personal favourites, Joshua isn’t afraid to embrace his sensitive side, admitting to only his closest friends (and the rest of Holland Village) in a drunken spur that he once shed a couple of tears as he watched the first Pokemon movie where Ash was turned to stone but was miraculously brought back to life by the tears of the heartbroken Pokemon.

But we digress.

In all seriousness, Joshua Tan is your boy-next-door meets Johnny Depp cum Ewan Mcgregor in Moulin Rouge, who strongly believes in the beauty of love and what it stands for, is steadfast and loyal, yet firm and assertive at all the right times. He would gladly walk the ends of the earth for the right girl, but remains his own man.

In conclusion, Joshua Tan is the clean-cut, well-spoken boy that both girls and their parents would love to have over for dinner, and maybe even stay for supper. So why not give him a try this New Year, after all everyone's entitled to a new start right? =)

Go with Love. Do the right thing."

My comment on the wall: The first? Isn't there any quality control?

Bunny Girl: after reading the entertaining copy, i'm more intrigued by Shannon/Matthew! sorry :x

"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll

***

Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department | The Onion

CHEYENNE, WY—After attempting to contain a living-room blaze started by a cigarette, card-carrying Libertarian Trent Jacobs reluctantly called the Cheyenne Fire Department Monday. "Although the community would do better to rely on an efficient, free-market fire-fighting service, the fact is that expensive, unnecessary public fire departments do exist," Jacobs said. "Also, my house was burning down." Jacobs did not offer to pay firefighters for their service.

I got spam in Mandarin from "Vanessa Crenn" and "Grégory SCHMITT" (and with final-line-advertisements in French).

I can't imagine why they'd think this would make their messages more likely to be acted upon.

Random tidbit:

In Imperial China the minimum age for marriage was 16 for men and 14 for women.

This was set during the Song and the Ming and Qing continued it.

The ROC bumped the age limits up by 2 years in 1931.

Source: Grandpa's Letters by Wang Jingshan


An amusing passage from the same:

"In the South people have a habit of getting married early - eighteen for a man and seventeen for a woman - mainly out of regard for the fact that it is difficult for the young couple to maintain their virginity if they marry much later...

Based on human physiology, no matter whether in a nation or a society, men are always the principal players whereas women are subordinate. This is the way it is; no one can do anything about it... As far as a woman's responsibilities at home are concerned, a high school education is enough, why college?"


Addendum: @reivad:

"I feel its hypocritical of the older generation to expect young ppl to remain virgins b4 marriage when they married so young."

"Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege." - Unknown

***

Tan Ern Ser on racial classification in Singapore:

"Doing away with race may be politically correct, but it does not necessarily eradicate race-related problems... I am not suggesting that we emphasise race, but we must recognise its existence and work towards integration and strengthening national identity"

The prime example of a country which does not track racial demographics is France, and we can see how that doesn't work with the recurrent trouble in the banlieues.

Apparently India doesn't either - but they track you mother tongue and/or scheduled tribe, which is a good proxy for race, so.

The Daily Kos's comment:

"if one does not collect data including a race category, then one does not even notice that the problem exists, one cannot attack the problem, one cannot track the problem to see if what one is doing is have an effect, etc."

Of course, active racial management and manipulation is a different story.

MMPR Remastered is weird :/

"Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone." - Hodding Carter

***

How women love their mobile phones... more than their boyfriends

Passions over 'prosperity gospel': Was Jesus wealthy? - "Jesus' wealth is evident even in the Gospel accounts of his execution, some pastors say. The New Testament reports that Roman soldiers gambled for Jesus' clothing while he hung on the cross. They wouldn't gamble for Jesus' clothing unless it was expensive, Anderson says.... "The only way you can make Jesus into a rich man is by advocating torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically""
"torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically" describes apologetics perfectly

Bingo caller told to cut 'fat ladies' patter by council - "John Sayers, who runs charity games in Sudbury, Suffolk, says he was told by a council clerk the traditional bingo call could upset some players. Mr Sayers said no-one had complained before, but now players moaned his new numbers-only style was boring. A town council spokeswoman said it was "sad" they had to give the advice but they had to be "politically correct"... A council spokeswoman... added: "It is very sad because it is part of the fun of bingo but unfortunately in today's society people take it literally""

A new study shows that singletons might be just as psychologically well-off as married people.

Probably Bad News: News fails, because journalism isn't dying fast enough. - One example: "A TEENAGER who tried to copy a scene from the hit film American Pie by shagging an apple pie was rushed to the hospital with serious burns to his penis"

The longest literary sentence - "Move over, James Joyce and all the other pretenders. The new owner of the record for the longest sentence in published literature is Mathias Enard for his 517-page French novel “Zone.” In fact, the entire novel, except for a few pages of flashbacks, is made up of a single 150,000-word sentence."

Physics Buzz: For a Quick Exit, Just Block the Fire Door

Pictures of 56 Chinese Ethnic Groups
A lot of them carry rifles. Too bad that won't save them from the CCP.

ExitAhead! Last.fm to eBay Search - "1. You tell us the username of your last.fm account.
2. We check last.fm for the artists you have recently scrobbled, and the artists recommended by last.fm.
3. We search eBay for music by those artists."

Men Stare at Opposite Sex 43 Minutes a Day - "According to a new study, men stare at up to 10 women a day, which equals about 43 minutes spent every day ogling... women gawk at men about half as much"
The more interesting question: how much do women look at other women?

Men Who Help Clean Get More Sex?

Atheist Ireland Publishes 25 Blasphemous Quotes - "From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational... Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine... In this context we now publish a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern."
I'm surprised the Hitchens quote (in God is not Great) made it to Singapore - it's very seditious, calling Islam "not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms"!

Security charade: how I made a bomb and blew up a plane - "Unless we are all actually forced to strip naked at the airport - and probably not even then - the fact is that we can never erect a Berlin wall to physically stop everyone taking bad things on planes. All our efforts to do so, all the silly routines to which we dutifully submit, are at best a minor hindrance, a deterrent to nutters; at worst a charade and a distraction from the real target... the editor of the magazine Aviation Security International, said he could not recall a single time when a bomb had been found using an airport X-ray machine alone. Airport security, he said, was "theatre", designed to reassure the public rather than to stop bombers... Airport security means, above all, starting long before the airport, with intelligence... the guilty get missed because the authorities are spending too much time hassling the innocent"

Singapore workers work longest hours: ILO report - "Only workers in Iceland put in almost as many hours in 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Real wages also fell at the same time. Though nominal wages rose 4.2 per cent in 2008 according to the Ministry of Manpower, real wages dropped 1 per cent, according to the ILO report"

Sure, God has a sense of humour. Shame about some of his followers - "I was accused of knowing too many words and too few facts; of being stupid and anti-Christian - many assumed these were identical; of being overly subtle and of laying about me with a blunt instrument. Of not having read the Bible, of having read but not understood it, of having got the wrong Jesus (easy to do), of being one of the chosen (are they serious?), of misunderstanding history (no doubt), of misquoting Brian Houston (no way), of being insulting (I do try) and of showing off (well, natch)... Taking up religion seems to involve having your humour gland surgically excised. There's no obvious explanation for this. Comedic failure is generally a sign of class insecurity. Feminists, for example. Cyclists."

Sex differences in driving and insurance risk - "Men are more likely than women to be involved in crashes that occur on bends, in the dark or those that involve overtaking. Women, on the other hand, have a greater frequency of crashes occurring at junctions than men. This supports the suggestion by Storie (1977) that men are more at risk from accidents involving high speed while women are at more likely to be involved in accidents resulting from perceptual judgement errors... [The WHO] concludes: "Research is needed to examine the potential benefits of gender and age-differentiated policies for issuance of driving licences and related issues". The fact that this WHO report was prepared by the Department for Gender and Women’s Health suggests that driving-related policies that differentiate between genders are not seen as cutting across broad notions of equality in this context.
When you discriminate against men, it doesn't cut across broad notions of equality.

Men's and Women's Irritating Driving Habits - "Women were certainly harsher about men than the other way around... "The old stereotype that men are always criticising women's driving has been turned on its head by these results, as it's definitely women who get the most irritated""

Sex Drive: How Do Men and Women Compare? - "Nuns do a better job of fulfilling their vows of chastity than priests... 62% of priests admitted to sexual activity, compared to 49% of nuns. The men reported more partners on average than the women... Homosexuality is a more fluid state among women than men. In another broad review of studies, Baumeister found many more lesbians reported recent sex with men, when compared to gay men's reports of sex with women. Women were also more likely than men to call themselves bisexual, and to report their sexual orientation as a matter of choice... Women's attitudes towards (and willingness to perform) various sexual practices are more likely than men's to change over time. Women who regularly attend church are less likely to have permissive attitudes about sex. Men do not show this connection between church attendance and sex attitudes... Women with higher education levels were more likely to have performed a wider variety of sexual practices (such as oral sex); education made less of a difference with men. Women were more likely than men to show inconsistency between their expressed values about sexual activities such as premarital sex and their actual behavior"
I found this by looking for gender differences in driving. Grr.

Sex and the SUV: Men, Women, and Travel Behavior - "University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz reports that in 9 of 10 households that identify themselves as “feminist,” the man does most of the driving when both partners are in the car."

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams

***

Another reason not to trust Singapore media

One of the reasons why the media in Singapore is not world-class is that they play games with their content.

Take, for example, this ChannelNewsAsia article, Suspected pirates board Singapore-registered vessel.



You wouldn't normally suspect anything, but if you had viewed the article when it was first posted, you would've noticed that the ship's managing company, "GBLT Shipmanagement Pte Ltd", was mentioned (on a side note: who chuckles when they hear the name of this company?)

In Google's cache you can see that the company's name was mentioned in an older version of the article:



The original article (as far as I can tell) is available on Xinhua (how ironic).

While respectable news agencies do correct or otherwise amend their articles, they ALWAYS have a note at the top or the bottom detailing what has been changed (and why).

(I seem to recall that CNA has done this sort of shit before, but this can be yet another item in their Hall of Shame)

"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment." - R. Buckminster Fuller

***


Le prince asiatique

(via McDonald's France)

Instructions:

1) Cliquez ici
2) Cliquez sur "accéder aux contenus exclusifs"
3) Cliquez sur "créez votre avatar"
4) Vous verrez "avatarise toi". Cliquez sur "créer mon avatar"
5) Cliquez sur "passez"
6) Cliquez sur "téléchargez"
7) Cliquez sur "téléchargez votre photo"
8) Marquez la boîte à côté de "J'accepte les conditions d'utilisation"
9) Cliquez sur "Parcourez les photos"
10) Choisissez la photo que vous désirez métamorphoser
11) Ajustez votre photo jusqu'à la croix blanche est sur votre visage, comme le modèle (utilisez les boutons comme vous voulez)
12) Sélectionnez votre sexe ("Homme" ou "Femme")
13) Cliquez sur "soumettre"
14) Placez les points d'ancrage: "Outer Cheekbone Left", "Outer Cheekbone Right", "Left Eye", "Right Eye", "Nose Tip", "Mouth Right Corner", "Mouth Left Corner" et "Chin"
15) Cliquez sur "soumettre"
16) Vous verrez ton avatar
17) Cliquez sur "partagez"
18) Cliquez sur le bouton "téléchargez" à côté de "téléchargez en tant qu'image"
19) Enfin, cliquez sur "OK"

J'espère que mes instructions ont aidé les hôtes qui ne parlent pas français.

Enfin, je suis très amusé que les info-ballons pour les points d'ancrage sont en anglais.

"My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they're in August." - Ronnie Shakes

***

Female Body Image Projection



I've noticed that girls like to post (or, in a previous age, cut out for their notebooks) pictures of stylised women (often with quotes).



Guys don't do this.

It must be projection (as with sketching themselves in the form of pre-teen stick figures).

"My one regret in life is that I am not someone else." - Woody Allen

***

In the wake of a Straits Times article ostensibly about teens having consensual sex (the subtext - whether by commission or omission - is obvious):

yax-1087 Stone-age sex law hidden in plain sight

"A boy, then aged 15, had sex with two girls aged 15. The sexual encounters are described as consensual -- one girl even skipping school to make the tryst. The boy is charged and faces up to 10 years in jail. There is no mention of the girls being charged...

Would AWARE, the feminist group so keen on gender equality, be taking this up as an issue, I wonder?

It so happens that a similar case is taking place in Ireland, with the difference that there, at least some people see the injustice of it. Defence lawyers don't just roll over, advise their clients to plead guilty and merely make an appearance for mitigation. The Irish lawyers are mounting a challenge against the State on the ground of discrimination, with the possibility of the case going all the way to the European Court of Human Rights."


If you think the law treats males fairly when a sex crimes case pitting a man vs a woman comes up, you must be a feminist.

raist previously drew my attention to the Evidence Act, which reads:

"Section 148. When a witness may be cross-examined, he may, in addition to the questions hereinbefore referred to, be asked any questions which tend — (c) to shake his credit by injuring his character [...]

157. The credit of a witness may be impeached in the following ways by the adverse party or, with the consent of the court, by the party who calls him:

(d) when a man is prosecuted for rape or an attempt to ravish, it may be shown that the prosecutrix was of generally immoral character."

Yet, this fits in perfectly with the conception of women in Singapore law as Inviolable Sacred Beings.

Since anything you can do to a woman can be an offence, if the woman has already "soiled" herself, then it doesn't matter what other people do to her.

Indeed, revealing "immoral character" would be relevant in some cases. For example, a Charles Steadman of Wisconsin was accused of rape in 1993, but "was prohibited from revealing that his accuser was currently facing criminal charges of having sex with minors, and thus had an excellent reason to claim that the sex with Steadman was not consensual. Such evidence was deemed related to his accuser's sexual history and thus inadmissible".

In any case, the letter and the practise of the Law are very different (which is why underaged boys can be charged for having sex with underaged girls), so women can get the benefits of "protection" without suffering the costs.

In fact, I'll buy a drink for the first person who can dig up a case of a prosecutrix being of generally immoral character (and thus, having her testimony invalidated) in the last 5 years, failing which, takoyaki for the first one who can dig up one in the last 10.

"I've known what it is to be hungry, but I always went right to a restaurant." - Ring Lardner

***

"[Erich Maria Remarque] had just married an old friend of mine, Paulette Goddard, all woman, magnificently distributed, as feminine as she is female.

One night when we were having dinner, I said to Erich (not seriously): 'How do you get along with this wild woman?'

He replied: 'Beautifully. There is never an argument.'

'Never an argument?' I asked incredulously.

'Never,' he replied. 'We will have an appointment one evening, and she charges into the room crying, 'Why aren't you ready? You always keep me waiting. Why do you ...?!'

I look at her with astonishment and say, 'Paulette! Who did your hair? It's absolutely ravishing.'

She says, 'Really? Do you really like it?' 'Like it?'

I reply. 'You're a vision. Let me see the back.'

By the time she has made a pirouette her fury is forgotten. Another time she turns on me in rage about something, and before a sentence is out of her mouth I stare at her and say breathlessly, 'My God! You're incredible. You get younger every day.'

She says, 'Really, darling?' 'Tonight,' I say, 'you look eighteen years old.'

And that is the end of her rage.'

I was as amused as I was admiring and I said to him: 'Erich, one day I will have to write a song about that.' The song was 'How to Handle a Woman' which ends:

The way to handle a woman is to love her,
Simply love her; merely love her,
Love her, love her."

--- The Street Where I Live / Alan Jay Lerner


Somehow, the moral I took away from these anecdotes was something else...

"Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution." - Edward Teller

***

This doesn't touch on the speciesism and the myth of the noble savage of Avatar (as well as the only folly of man being women: does anybody think Jake would have switched sides if not for his affair?), but it's still good stuff:


Avatar Stereotypes? Jarheads, Rebel Women & Cross-Species Love

"The culture often plays with important character archetypes — “typical characters” that audiences know and recognize. And such cultural markers are a way that both the audience and the artists find a common frame, within which the drama and examinations can take place. I have seen such archetypes denounces as “stereotypes” all my life — as if we can’t recognize (and even enjoy) cultural encounters through familiar types.  As if that is inherently sexist and racist. And as if there isn’t an important role with offering audiences the familiar in order to take things someplace strange and shocking...

I find it strange to say:

“[The film] Aliens ends up as a compare/contrast between Ripley and motherly instinct as an adoptive parent vs. the Queen Alien and its endless laying of eggs.”

That film ends up in THAT contrast? On what planet?...

Is a film tame, compromised, unacceptable if it doesn’t load its female characters with a queerness that puts it out of access to mass audiences? Why would THAT be our key standard for what is acceptable or positive?...

Take Heg’s discussion of Chacon death (warning: spoiler):

“In the instance of Aliens’s Vasquez and Avatar’s Chacon, they’re introduced, then meet their end when their presence threatens to develop into a more fleshed out character…. So what we have here are a sort of constellation of femininity: butches die before combat really begins, but feminine characters prosper so long as a mother or girlfriend character arc can be tacked on. This isn’t really all that much far removed from the action and horror movie convention of killing the black sidekick first, so that they don’t outshine the more Aryan protagonist.”

Is that true? Chacon rebels, openly breaks rank in battle, goes over to the other side, and then dies in combat in an act of mutiny. And this is a negative thing? Because she isn’t the lead character?

It’s not true that Chacon is removed “before combat really begins.” But really, it is very odd to claim that she is  gotten out of the way so that more traditional (read: non queer) relations can flourish. The cross species love of two warriors growing in the course of an insurrection, Jake Sully and Neytiri? Is their love some reactionary and traditional thing simply because it is not queer? Doesn’t miscegenation count as nontraditional to communists anymore?!...

What kind of a film would Hegemonik NOT find unacceptable? Once we exclude all the means and memes that Hegemonik finds unacceptable — what is left for radical artists to build with?

What would that film show, what would its characters be like, and what kind of an audience would it help reach and transform? What does a movie look like that is scrupulously free of “stereotypes” — and how would such a film play against the questions and contradictions of an audience? (And which audiences?)...

Doesn’t this whole method end up saying that only experimental sub-cultural work is worthy of praise? And that anything that seems “mainstream” (i.e. eagerly seen in real theaters across the country seen by millions of real people) must be inherently compromised beyond acceptance?...

Does anyone really think the impact is that these girls are trained to believe that “feminine characters prosper so long as a mother or girlfriend arc can be tacked on”?

Were we watching the same movie?...

I spent time in a radical sub-movement (the RCP) that tried, in many ways, to screen sexuality out of human encounters — including its youth movement, party’s discussions and even the love relations of party members. At major summer projects it was sometimes announced that sexual contacts or flirting among participants was not acceptable. Is that how we want reality portrayed…. or lived?

Isn’t the issue really HOW sexuality and attraction are portrayed?...

I have long seen a method of left cultural critique that assumes (a priori) that it all sux, that it is all bourgeois and reactionary in intent and impact (otherwise why would Hollywood make it? Why would zillionaires fund it? Why would a ruling class allow it? etc.).

And starting from that assumption, the real question becomes merely the details: How (in particular) is this or that new piece a pile of shit."