"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain

***

Jogjakarta trip
Day 4 - 1st May - Water Castle (Part 2)

We elected to skip the Sultan's carriage museum, not least since we had already seen pictures of his various drawn vehicles.

The next stop was the Water Castle (Tamansari), a reconstructed version (with UNESCO help) of what was "built in 1758 by Sultan Hamengkubuwono I as a rest house and pleasure park for the Royal family" and damaged in an 1867 earthquake. According to our guide, the area used to be a lake and they started working on it in 1750.

I had been earlier advised by a friendly local at Vredeburg not to visit as, in his words, it was "no Water, no Castle". I quoted this to our guide, who said that the place was not nice, but the story was. Our guide fee was fixed anyway, so we assented.


People camwhoring on the parapets


Obama as Jaws


Stairway and Entrance to the greater complex


Skyline from near where the people were camwhoring. The volcano in the distance is Mt Merapi.


Bombed out shell. Maybe UNESCO money ran out.


A moment's respite (from the heat, if not the humidity)


They also had some grafitti in death-defying positions. Why anyone would draw a Makcik (second picture) is beyond me.


Hiao Indonesian Girl


More skyline, from higher up


Amidst all the Indonesian kids' camwhoring, the best of all was this guy who took himself in weird emo poses


More desolation


Our guide told us they were still restoring the place, and these houses would be demolished and built over by 2010


Doorway with reliefs


Pregnant CWN


Underground tunnel: the area used to be underwater so the Sultan would travel by means of the tunnel


Ticketed entrance to Water Castle


Map of area



There're some very nice pictures of the Water Castle online:



Unfortunately, they bore little resemblance to what I saw:


Fetid water. The mask in the centre of the latter picture is a Buddhist symbol of protection.


Algae pond

There were 3 swimming pools: one for the women, one for the children and one private one for the Sultan (and his woman of the day).


Spout water came out from


Dried out pool


Honeymoon bed of Sultans 1-3. The holes you see underneath are for fires to warm the bed - in the times of Sultans 1-3 it was cold.

The interior had small doorways so you had to bend down, clasping your hands, to pass. This was to enforce politeness.


Changing room with mirror (fill the urn with water) and clothes shelves. 44 women used to swim naked in the pool.


Gate - main entrance for guards


Ayam long legs

We then went to the Sultan's Meditation Chamber. He would meditate inside for 40 days and 40 nights and get magical powers.


Planks would be placed on top of the partitions, and water underneath would keep the Sultan cool while he meditated


Looking out of the meditation chamber


Entering meditation chamber


Light seen through hole in meditation chamber


Road sign in Sanskrit


Bombed out neighborhood

Our guide had earlier brought us to his cousin's shop, where he made puppets. We declined to buy anything. He now brought us to his mother's house, where she made batik sarongs (and he made postcards - because he said working in the palace didn't pay well).

Before he brought us in he claimed we were under no obligation to buy anything ("I'm not trying to pressure you), but once we entered he used the hard sell on us (saying that we should help his mama and the family business so she would have money to eat, and that she didn't earn more than that) so CWN finally broke and bought something.

While we were in his mother's house I asked him if any of his family members sold Nasi Gudeg, but he either didn't hear me or pretended not to hear me. Maybe his sister was a prostitute, but because CWN was with me (and he helped us take pictures on the honeymoon bed) he didn't ask if I wanted to aid his family in that way.

He also tried to guilt us by claiming his mother's house collapsed during the 2006 earthquake, and they got a 50 million Rupiah grant from the government to rebuild it, but it was smaller than before. Please lah.


The bastard walking off. He didn't even walk us back to the main road.


Apparently there's a Becak association. Maybe they discuss strategies to prey on tourists: "Rely on the weather to wear them down and then prey on them". And fix tourist prices.


Bensin. There was something compelling about the Bensin signs. Given how common the stalls were, they must've used as fuel for their motorsikals.


Horse carriage. Incidentally, Bruges smelled worse, since it had more horses - even if it was not as hot there.

[Addendum: Many horses had flowers on them, presumably to give them a fresh appearance. Yet, half the time the flower looked sad or wilted, making the horse look even more pathetic.]


They were so proud of Indomie that they advertised that they used it


Cute puppy


Halal cosmetics

Since we were quite far from our hotel, we decided to take a becak back. Besides the distance, we hoped our distance from tourist traps would ensure rates were more reasonable.


'Nice brownies'


Broken horse shit collector. Kind of defeats the point. Incidentally I didn't see any broken ones in Bruges. Hurr hurr.


Don't jump!

York Hotel food photography FAIL:



(and this is ignoring the sidebar grammar)

"I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks." - Steve Martin

***

Apparently this has been going around for years:


Dear Prime Minister,
We citizens of Singapore urge you to PLEASE MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
We DO NOT NEED your help. Every time, you mention HELP, we have to run for cover!!!

Help the poor? Raise GST!

Help traffic flow? Up ERP!

Help passenger service? Up Bus fare/MRT fare!

Help us get taxi? Raise taxi fare!

Help us get good government? Raise Minister and Civil servant salary!

Everytime YOU WANT TO HELP, we all PAY FOR IT!!!

THANK YOU THANK YOU…TOLONG LAH, please, we will HELP OURSELVES, no need your help liao.
We DARE NOT ask for help any more!!!

Sir, most honoured sir, I urge you NOT TO HELP Singapore INVEST also!
Everytime your wife invest, we all lose money! Kao liao, kum siah!
Just let us have a dose of bad governance, like recently the Mat Selamat case, like dat….so far, it is ok, your incompetence, we ACCEPT!

PLEASE DO NOT help us have better security! Wait we all kena PAY FOR IT!!
I believe ALL SINGAPOREANS PREFER NOT TO HAVE CRUTCH MENTALITY!
I think it is ok lah, please just take your salary and enjoy life ok?

Thank you thank you,
I am very chin chai one, any how any how, no need to help oso can one.

"When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice." - Otto von Bismarck

***

Allow men to claim alimony, says ex-NMP - "Under the 48-year-old Women's Charter designed to protect women's rights, a woman can claim maintenance from her husband. Men do not have this right. Lawyers explain that a man cannot claim maintenance from his wife for his own benefit, but can do so if their children are living with him. Dr Soin said a man's obligation to support his wife arose because in the past, he took over her property upon marriage, so supporting her was compensation for her loss... Divorce lawyer Tan Siew Kim said only men who can show medical proof of being too ill to work should be maintained by their ex-wives. Like other lawyers interviewed, she said she has seen men quit working or feign joblessness to avoid paying their ex-wives maintenance. The idea may also not sit well with the men themselves. It is a matter of face, said lawyer Amolat Singh, since 'people see living off your wife as shameful'."
I doubt, even 48 years ago, that many women had dowries for men to take over; I wonder how many women who do not have medical proof of being too ill to work are maintained by their ex-husbands.

Lee Kuan Yew Watch - "State of the Lee
Last spotted: June 10, 2009 in Kuala Lumpur
Last analyzed: June 10, 2009 in Kuala Lumpur
Analysis
Mental acuity: No speech in video, but Lee seems upbeat and responds to stimuli.
Physical health: Lee walks unassisted, stands straight and gestures with both hands.
Next expected:
State visit to Malaysia, June 8-15"

Irony and weirdness: a Malaysian story - "These two supposed exorcists clothe their nastiness under a veneer of religion and call themselves "The Professional Islamic Support and Nurture Group" or P.I.S.A.N.G (allow me to roll around the floor laughing here - pisang means banana!! These two guys are laughing at you and your gullibility!!)"

From Russia Without Love: How thousands of lonely British men are being ruthlessly fleeced by a Russian 'email brides' racket - "It's hard to feel sorry for them or to distinguish who is really exploiting whom: the men who say they are looking for 'love' but, no doubt, expect sex as well, or the girls who shamelessly take them for every penny. They probably deserve each other... One agency boss we spoke to - a 50-year-old British ex-pat with greying hair and beer belly - admitted penning dozens of letters to male clients."
I sense an opportunity for arbitrage here, but ang mohs probably can't speak Mandarin.

Taiwan president suggests using simplified Chinese characters - ""We hope the two sides can reach a consensus on (learning to) read standard characters while writing in the simplified ones," Ma told a visiting delegation of US-based Taiwanese community leaders. "It is also our hope that the standard characters can be listed as World Heritage by the United Nations one day," he said in a statement... Taiwan's government labelled its [traditional characters] system -- also used in Hong Kong and Macau -- as "standard" characters and banned books published in simplified Chinese until 2003."
We should recognise Egyptian Hieroglyphics as World heritage too

Gay Guise: When Straight Men Have Sex With Other Men - "A recent New York City survey that appeared in the September 19, 2006, issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine found that nearly 1 in 10 men say they're straight and have occasional sex with men... To best understand these men, therapists and clients need to be able to differentiate four terms that are often confused: sexual identity and orientation; sexual preferences; sexual fantasies; and sexual behavior. Contrary to common usage, they aren't always in alignment... These men typically want to bond with and get affection from other men. Their behavior may reflect a desire to experiment, to engage in something that's taboo, or to express inner psychological conflicts involving their sexual feelings and desires that have nothing to do with having a gay or bisexual identity."

Are downloads really killing the music industry? Or is it something else? - "Ben Goldacre took apart the rather dodgy calculations behind the claims [about lost sales] on Saturday... The reality is that nowadays, one can choose between a game costing £40 that will last weeks, or a £10 CD with two great tracks and eight dud ones. I think a lot of people are choosing the game - and downloading the two tracks."

Author Paulo Coelho's profitable Net obsession - "Forget Radiohead. Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has been an apostle of free Internet distribution for years. He figures they sell more books this way... Coelho explained why he thinks giving books away online leads to selling more copies in print: "It's very difficult to read a book on your computer. People start printing out their own copies. But if they like the book, after reading 30-40 pages they just go out and buy it.""

Viceland - ONE RAPE, PLEASE (to go) - I Paid a Male Whore to Rape Me Because I Wanted To - "I blame my recurring rape fantasy on the fact that I’m a feminist. I’ve never made any bones about getting boned in exactly the fashion that I want. But as a girl, my equipment can be trickier to manage, therefore I need to be a boss in the bedroom to ensure I get worked the right way... I find myself wishing that my typically sugary-sweet sexual encounters were sometimes peppered with assault. I decided that the best way to forfeit that control—while still holding on to a modicum of it for safekeeping—would be to hire someone for the job. Not to put too fine a point on it, I wanted a male whore to rape me... I didn’t want to get raped for free, because I felt that the exchange of money was the only way I’d be able to maintain the small amount of power I needed to feel comfortable. Besides, at this point, a large part of the allure of this whole thing was that I was actually going to fuck a hooker"

Classroom assistant at Muslim girls' school forced out of job by parents who believed she was a man - "Shifa Patel, a 28-year-old secretary, was accused of hiding her masculinity beneath a traditional headscarf and robes. The hate campaign started when photographs of a short-haired Miss Patel wearing a shirt and trousers were spotted on Facebook. They were copied and emailed to dozens of concerned parents as 'proof' that Miss Patel was a man. In a bid to defuse the rumours, she underwent a humiliating medical examination to prove that she was in fact a woman. But parents refused to believe the results and the headteacher resorted to writing to all parents assuring them the secretary wasn't a man. Miss Patel was finally forced to quit after a mob of parents gathered at the Al-Islah Muslim Girls School in Blackburn and demanded governors sack her immediately."

So do men REALLY prefer Miss Average? - "100 men taking part in an Australian study were asked to rate the attractiveness of 200 drawings of female torsos of different sizes... Every magazine cover and every movie sex scene might be bombarding his bemused male brain with images of the perfect Size Zero woman, complete with missile-silo breasts, but, given the choice, it seems a chap will still pick out bouncy Beth from next door... Are we women the victims of some sick conspiracy by Green activists working in conjunction with gay fashion designers to keep the population down? Why else would we be encouraged to aspire to the very body shape that is most likely to leave us childless?... Try typing Women Don't Like Their Bodies into Google and you come up with 14-and-a-half-million stories. Type in Women Like Their Bodies and what would you get - Victoria Beckham?... Men have only ever commented positively about my eyes, smile, skin and breasts... When I have ever lamented my rather generous proportions, they have only ever given my bottom a good squeeze and told me not to be ridiculous... The only people ever to have made unpleasant comments about my size are other women."
So much for socialisation. At least for men - women seem more affected by others' opinions. I've no idea what the guy at the bottom is on about, though; their other article on the same study is also good

Founder of anti-drug program is held in drug sting

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." - Friedrich Nietzsche

***

The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years: Mr. Luce's mag does satanism, porn, crack, Pokemon, and more! (from inimitable Reason Magazine)

"Since the British sociologist Stanley Cohen defined the moral panic phenomenon in the early 1970s as hysterical overreactions to imagined threats to social order, no publication has done a better (by which we mean worse) job of scaring the crap out of post-baby boomer America than Time...

Time was right about the increase in production and availability of pornography in the 1970s, it was just wrong about the effects. Two years after this cover appeared, the number of reported rapes in the U.S. began a 30-year free-fall, a period over which pornography became increasingly easier to obtain. Today, porn is more abundant and ubiquitous than ever, while incidence of rape in the U.S. is at its lowest rate since the government started keeping statistics...

A vanishingly small number of people actually die of cocaine overdoses (just 563 in 1983, out of tens of millions of users), yet still refers to the drug as a "taker of lives."...

As Reason's Jacob Sullum explains in his book Saying Yes, studies show that the vast majority of crack users never went on to become addicts. One 1994 survey, for example, showed that 93 percent of respondents who had admitted to trying crack weren't using the allegedly instantaneously addictive drug as much as once a month when the survey was taken. Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman even theorzied in the Wall Street Journal that it's actually the prohibition of cocaine that gave us drugs like crack, likening the intoxicant to the bathtub gin that soaked the black market during alcohol prohibition...

Citing gangsta rap and heavy metal lyrics, raunchy comedians, and radio shock jocks, Time worries that American pop culture has grown too vulgar... a woman who says that after sitting through a comedy routine by Andrew "Dice" Clay, "she felt like a Jew at the 1934 Nuremberg rally."...

Since the Time article ran in 1990, nearly every measurable social indicator has been moving in the right direction, from youth crime to sex crime to teen pregnancy. America has largely grown more tolerant, too, even as ethnic, sexist, and homophobic jokes are widely available on iTunes, the Internet, and basic cable...

"At any moment, the same kids listening to...'Baby One More Time' are just a few keystrokes away from Pandora's hard drive—from the appalling filth, unspeakable hatred and frightening prescriptions for homicidal mayhem" that plague the Internet...

The “principal researcher” for the study that inspired Time's cover was actually an undergraduate, and experts began picking the study apart the moment the issue hit newsstands...

The creepy-but-wired pedophile who substitutes Internet chat rooms for the van and a puppy is largely a myth. Moreover, most kids who download pornography online, the study notes, aren't innocently typing otherwise-innocuous phrases into search engines... Nor does giving out personal information online seem to make kids any more susceptible to predation...

Documenting the Pokemon “controversy,” or Pokemania, this Time cover story breathlessly warns that children are printing counterfeit cards, cheating friends and classmates, and even stabbing one another over Pokemon trading disputes. Time doesn’t dwell too long on any substantive data (there isn't any) that might show what sort of sustained violence and mayhem would make Pokemon an “addiction" (Time's word). Instead, it quickly cuts to what the authors see as the real dark heart of the Pokemon phenomenon: crass capitalism! Time works up a lather over the over-saturation of cuddly consumerism, calling Pokemon a “pestilential Ponzi scheme—complete with a fold-out graphic explaining why."...

Near the end of the U.S. craze—and at the beginning of the U.K.’s—the BBC ran a slightly tongue-in-cheek article about Pokemon that found the fad to be a good lesson in economics, teaching children the theories of speculation, supply and demand, exchange rates, and bubble bursting. But one man's good lesson in economics is apparently another's lesson in predatory cunning and capitalist thuggery...

Time's short, two-page story [on the "Columbine Effect"] is almost incoherent... “for students aged 12 to 18, overall school crime…decreased by nearly a third to 101 school-related crimes per 1,000 students in 1998, compared to 144 crimes per 1,000 in 1992... Thanks in part to scare stories like this one, dim-witted legislatures and school boards across the country enacted "zero tolerance" policies that led to kids getting arrested and suspended for drawing pictures, or for writing creative fiction about zombies...

While Americans have been getting fatter for 25 years, we still set new life expectancy records each year, and deaths from heart disease, cancer, and stroke have all fallen dramatically over that period. This is of course mostly due to advances in medical science. But obesity isn't exactly bringing on a public health calamity, either. As for medical costs, a 2008 Dutch study suggests what would seem to be intuitive: People who live longer tend to incur more lifetime medical expenses. Meaning that if obesity does modestly shorten lifespans, it does so at a savings to taxpayer-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid."

"He who praises everybody, praises nobody" - Samuel Johnson

***

The DM of the Rings

"Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign."

Some of the best parts so far (it's very long, so I'm only halfway through):


(In Bree)

Aragorn: Wait, I want to visit the Blacksmith. See if he has like, weapons or stuff for sale.

DM: You want to go shopping? But your quest has only just begun!

Aragorn: Have you seen my starting equipment? All I have is a broken sword!

DM: None of these humble blacksmiths are capable of re-forging NARSIL, the mighty blade of old...

Aragorn: Fine. What about a brothel? Does this town have a whorehouse or anything?

DM: Certainly not!

Aragorn: This town sucks!

Sam: Let's just leave.

DM: You have only just arrived in Bree, after several long days of travel!



Legolas: Pry it open?

DM: No gaps.

Legolas: Pour water around the door, let it seep into the cracks and freeze, thus cracking the door?

DM: It is well above freezing here.

...

Someone: "So we're agreed... You guys go find a big tree, cut it down, and haul the trunk back here. Dave and I will assemble the scaffolding, and Frank will tie all the ropes together. Now all we need is a pulley."

Gandalf (NPC): Oh for crying out loud! The password is Mellon, you lunatics!



DM: From deep within the tangled heart of Fangorn Forest, the White Wizard approaches!

Aragorn: This makes no sense. What would Saurman (sic) be doing here in the middle of the woods?

DM: As he appears, you are surrounded by a brilliant white light!

Legolas: Ahhh! JERK!

Aragorn: So he hiked all this way so he could cast "Flare" at us? Isn't that a Level 1 Spell?

Gimli: It's a cantrip actually. Level Zero.

Now let me see if I understand this:

The guy who is leading the invasion of these lands - the guy with the huge Orc army and the indestructivle Tower of Black Stone - this guy spends his time wandering around in the woods all by himself, pranking random travelers with low-level spells?

Does that seem right to you?


Also great: the extended hit-on sequence in Part LXIII:Overly Requited Love

"How my achievements mock me!" - William Shakespeare

***

On the co-existence of High and Pop culture:

"The new theaters did not prosper equally. Within three years of its opening, the Curtain was being used for fencing bouts, and all other London playhouses, with the single eventual exception of the Globe, relied on other entertainments, particularly animal baiting, to fortify their earnings. The pastime was not unique to England, but it was regarded as an English specialty. Queen Elizabeth often had visitors from abroad entertained with bearbaiting at Whitehall. In its classic form, a bear was put in a ring, sometimes tethered to a stake, and set upon by mastiffs, but bears were expensive investments, so other animals (such as bulls and horses) were commonly substituted. One variation was to put a chimpanzee on the back of a horse and let the dogs go for both together. The sight of a screeching ape clinging for dear life to a bucking horse while dogs leaped at it from below was considered about as rich an amusement as public life could offer. That an audience that could be moved to tears one day by a performance of Doctor Faustus could return the next day to the same space and be just as entertained by the frantic deaths of helpless animals may say as much about the age as any single statement could.

It was also an age that gave rise to the Puritans, a people so averse to sensual pleasure that they would rather live in a distant wilderness in the New World than embrace tolerance. Puritans detested the theatre and tended to blame every natural calamity, including a rare and startling earthquake in 1580, on the playhouses."

--- Shakespeare, The World as Stage / Bill Bryson

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." - Lily Tomlin

***

S'pore needs to build up long-term care sector - "Singaporeans often come across the three Ms in healthcare - Medisave, Medishield and Medifund. But Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said now it is time to focus on the three Es - Eldersave, Elderfund and Eldershield - so that Singaporeans can finance their long-term healthcare expenses as the population ages."
Maybe people can look at the Fourth E - Emigration.

Wiccan Accidentally Stabs Herself in Foot With Sword During Good Luck Ritual - "Gunther said she was performing the ceremony to give thanks for a recent run of good luck. The ceremony involves the use of candles, incense and driving swords into the ground during the full moon. Gunther said was aiming to put the sword in the ground, but hit her foot instead. "It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said."

Sara Ziff talks to Louise France about the world of teen modelling - "The famous photographer demands to be touched sexually. "Sena - can you grab his cock and twist it real hard," his assistant tells her. "He likes it when you squeeze it real hard and twist it."... This is the ugly, sleazy side of the modelling industry, the side few insiders like to talk about. It's one of the most secretive businesses in the world, which is ironic when you consider that it is also one of the most pervasive... they end up with one of the best films about the world of modelling and an honest portrayal of an industry built on artifice... an industry where women, she believes, are betrayed all the time"... It's an industry that is as much about undressing as dressing up, as much about what's underneath as what's on top. The model's job is to look into the camera lens and make a woolly, oversize cardigan look sexy. It was ever thus... There's a suggestion that some models lose weight because it's the only aspect of their lives that they have any control over."

To thine own self be untrue: Self-awareness in authoritarians - "Described authoritarians, defined as those who score relatively highly on the Right Wing Authoritarianism scale, and presented data in support of the argument that authoritarians are less likely than most people to exhibit self-awareness. Possible explanations for the phenomenon are noted, with discussion focusing on fear as an underlying cause."

Unusual Canned Foods From Around The World (45 Pics) - I like the Reindeer Pate: "Arctic delicacy. Farm raised relative of Rudolph. An
indulgent Christmas treat!" Also nice, Pork Brains in Milk Gravy (156g gives you 1170% of your Cholesterol needs). And the canned cheeseburger (which seems to include the bun).

Male brain vs. female brain II: What is an “extreme male brain”? What is an “extreme female brain”? - "Even after Baron-Cohen figured out the essence of autism as an extreme male brain, the nature of the other extreme, an extreme female brain, remained a puzzle... The female brain tends toward empathizing and mentalizing thinking, treating machines and objects as if they were other people. They attribute minds, thoughts, and feelings to inanimate objects. That, according to Crespi and Badcock, is the essence of paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenics hear voices where there are no people, and they attribute minds and thinking where none exist, such as when they believe other people are talking about or conspiring against them when they aren’t. Paranoid schizophrenics are hypermentalistic, and overinfer minds and emotions in other people, just as autistics are hypomentalistic, and underinfer minds and emotions in other people."
It all makes sense now. And explains why girls (and gay guys) are into literature.

Typhoons trigger slow earthquakes - "This gentle release causes an earthquake that dissipates its energy over several hours rather than few potentially devastating seconds."
In a few years they'll discover that the answer I gave in Geography class about detonating bombs to prevent earthquakes is actually right.

Dog Playing Fetch in Germany Delivers Live Grenade to Owner

Fla. fisherman hooks test missile in Gulf waters - "Fisherman Rodney Salomon hooked the missile about 50 miles off the Panhandle town of Panama City and then kept it on his boat, the Broad Venture, for ten days. Salomon hoped to keep it as a souvenir, but took precautions because he didn't know if it was live."
It'd have been funnier if his name had been "Rodney Salmon"

David Carradine, Bruce Lee 'killed by assassins' - " KUNG-FU cult hero David Carradine may have been killed by a secret society of martial arts assassins, his family's lawyer claims. The New York Post reports Mark Geragos suggested Carradine may have been attempting to uncover groups working in the martial-arts underworld at the time of his death... The conspiracy theories surrounding Carradine’s death echo those around the death of Bruce Lee, who died in 1973 of brain swelling linked to medication, reportedly an aspirin. Lee’s death is often linked by conspiracy theorists to the Triads, a Chinese secret society."

Leading historians on whether fascism is on the march again - "We should be wary about the rise of the far right but not panicky... I don't like all these stupid historical analogies - this is not a re-run of the 1930s. In some ways, history can box you in and limit your options. We live in a very different world, and these parties organise themselves in a very different way. Hitler didn't Twitter. Conditions in Europe are very different now from those that prevailed in the 1930s. We haven't had a catastrophic European war, with resentments about how that ended. We should also be cautious about saying that an economic recession inevitably leads to the rise of the far right. The fascists came to power in Italy long before the Depression. There is no automatic link. In Germany, most of the unemployed voted for the communists... You just have to look at the BNP to see how it is trying to adapt its approach to changed circumstances, ramping up its hostility to the EU while playing down other aspects of its policy. The left has a vested interest in playing up the threat of fascism. It uses it to reoxygenate itself... In Italy, the fascists, faced by an oppressive state, were seen as martyrs, and that won them popular support... Don't censor or oppress the BNP. Marginalise and ridicule them. Ridicule is an underestimated weapon."

Pregnant man Ruben Noe Coronado miscarries twins - "But 25-year-old Ruben Noe Coronado, who was born a woman named Estefania and still has female sex organs, said he plans to try again"
Makes you wonder why he wants a sex change. Maybe I should try to get pregnant also.

This is why having video evidence is useful.

And why reflexive "the Powers That Be are evil" (i.e. always supporting individual citizens against the political system/big companies) attitudes are unjustified.

Everyone is capable of iniquity - not just the "privileged", or the dominant class in "power relations":

Great-grandma dared cop to Tase her, so he did

"Kathryn Winkfein was stopped for doing 60 mph in a 45 zone in her pickup truck on a highway near Austin, Texas. After Deputy Chris Bieze finished writing the ticket, he gave it to her and asked her to sign it.

Winkfein refused. Bieze insisted, saying he would have to arrest her if she didn't sign the ticket. When she wouldn't sign, he opened the door to the truck and told her to get out...

The Travis County Constable's Office alleged that she had been argumentative and profane. She denied the charge, telling a local Fox News reporter, "I was not argumentative. I was not combative. Every bit of this is a lie."

In response, the constable's office released the dashboard video of the arrest, which shows Winkfein using vulgar language and daring Bieze to use his Taser. According to the time stamp on the dashboard video, it was at least seven minutes from when Bieze told the elderly woman to get out of her truck until he finally hit her with 50,000 volts of low-amperage electricity and she fell screaming to the ground.

Winkfein has not commented since the video was released. According to the local Fox station, she has hired an attorney.

When Bieze tells her to get out of her truck, Winkfein says, "Take me to jail. Go on and take me to jail."...

"If you don't step back, you're gonna be Tased," Bieze says.

That's when Winkfein said, "Go ahead. Tase me."

Even then, Bieze did not use the Taser he had out and ready. He attempted to grab her, but Winkfein twisted away.

"Step back or you're gonna be Tased, ma'am," Bieze says again.

"I dare you," she said.

Winkfein then decided she was leaving and tried to walk back to her truck.

"I'm getting back in my car," she said.

"You're gonna be Tased," Bieze said, blocking her path.

"I'm getting back in my car," she insists.

"No, ma'am," he says.

That's when he finally fired the Taser and Winkfein went down screaming."


(This TODAYShow.com - which is mostly a description of the video - is a lot more accurate than the other articles I read describing this incident, where just how belligerent the grandma is is not made clear)

On Truth vs Ideology in History

From the History According to Bob Questions and Answers 77 episode,

A letter that Professor Bob, an Adjunct Professor of History at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City, Missouri, received from a High School history teacher in Queensland, Australia:

"'A problem which I found plagues everything I do as a history teacher.

One of the reasons I love your podcast so much is because you focus on investigating historical truth and analysing the causes and consequences of events in history.

I find, however, that in my classes and in my dealings with other teachers, this approach has been lost.

Everywhere I look, so-called 'history teachers' are instead teaching cultural or social justice studies. All content and context has been stripped out of the curriculum and replaced with simplistic dogmas and injustice-obsessed theories'...

When I first came into the district... there was no required Western Civ. And, they only required half of American History...

At college, I much prefer a social issue American History/World History text, because I can talk about these topics. I can assign the students to read the social issues. They'll then raise the social question, and I can put it into context."

[Addendum: Interesting comment on the Singapore Humanism Meetup list:

"I'm from Belgium... When I was a history teacher connecting moral issues in history lessons were even forbidden and could get you expelled as a teacher (which is a good thing of course) For example, when you talked about pharaos in ancient Egypt and you asked the pupils "Do you think that's ok that the pharoah had more than 1 wife?" , you could be expelled for that."]


Also:

"'What happened after the [American Civil] War? Why were the African-Americans so badly treated?'...

The mistake in American History is to believe that the North and the Abolitionists were in favour of Equal Rights for the former slaves.

They saw Slavery as a bad issue; they didn't want them to be citizens, any more than the States wanted the Indians to be citizens of their states. So you have to separate that - there's a difference between Freedom and Equality. And that's part of that.


[Addendum: This post has been updated to include information on Professor Bob. Previously it might've given the impression that he was a teacher in Queensland, Australia]