"Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done." - Fred Allen

***

Jogjakarta trip
Day 4 - 1st May - Jogjakarta (Part 3)

Disgusted by the human mosquitoes in Jogja who kept trying to suck our blood and felled too by the heat, we decided to skip the Imogiri Royal Cemetary and Kota Gede, an artists' village.

This was not an unwise decision, as a description of the latter warns that it is a tourist trap:

"Since entering Kotagede area, tourists begin to enjoy various kinds silver handicrafts at various prices sold at the front part of local people's house functioning as the gallery at the same time...

Please drop by at the gallery to see various kinds of handicraft, ranging from jewelry, silver ornament and utensils that are made with artistic touch of Kotagede silversmiths. Warm smile and greeting are pleasant reception to begin the exploration through Kotagede."

So we went back to our hotel and had lunch at a restaurant near there.


This was billed as Roti Paratha (and they told me it was Indian), so I was eager to see what the difference between this and Roti Prata was. However, I was disappointed to find out that it was frozen Prata (I wonder if Indians overseas who buy frozen Paratha made in Singapore get annoyed when they eat it).

Later research shows that while sources agree that the Indian Paratha is different from Singaporean Prata, all are silent on the difference.

A few sources also seem to have plagiarised each other, with the result that they claim that in Singapore and Malaysia, Prata is "drizzled with condensed milk and eaten as a warm snack"


Unfortunately they were out of avocado, so I got Es Jeruk. Which was actually Kordial. Since, unlike virtually everywhere else in Jogja, this was not watered down so much as to have no taste beyond the sweet, I finally figured out that Jeruk meant Orange.
Since there wasn't enough ice at first, I asked for more ice, and my cup was taken away and returned later suspiciously diluted - I suspect they poured out some of the drink and diluted it before adding the ice.


Nasi Goreng Istimewa. It wasn't very Istimewa.


Nasi Kembali (goreng with lamb). This was quite good.


"Creambath" is one thing, but this place as "Facial" also (IIRC CWN was the one who pointed it out, not me)


Tamarind juice - ugh

After lunch, we retired back to our rooms until the relative cool of the late afternoon.


Es Valentine at the back and Es Dangdut at the front. Dangdut is a haram form of music.
This was the worst shaved ice I'd ever had - it asn't shaved so much as chipped.


Sad Indon rock playing in the shop


"Menu Spesial: Babi Panggang
Chainese Food"
I was very happy to see this. This and the shop beside it were the only restaurants we saw with pork on the menu. However, it was too early so we decided to return later.


"Babi Panggang
Babi Kecap Inggris"


More Babi


A place that probably sold Babi


A place that might've had Babi


Mannikin with breast band. Incidentally, we saw no Malaysian Mannikins


Pieta gallery


Indon rockers talking to an Ang Moh


Grafiti I didn't grok


Various parfum parfum. Including Green Tea Perfume. Wth.


Wallets: "Osama Bin Laden. The HERO of Moslem" and "Guees"
I don't know which one I prefer.


A place which sold frogs. I don't know why they didn't go all the way and sell pork as well. Maybe some animals are more haram than others.


"Royal Garden Restaurant. the sensation of royal dining experiences....."
Restaurant owned by the Sultan's daughter.
Notice that "100% Halal" and "dining" are stuck on. Maybe they used to be 99% Halal and offer different sorts of experiences.


They really love Gudeg (Jackfruit). This is a whole row of shops selling it.


"Pusat
Asosiasi Peternak Jangkrik
Astrik Indonesia"
A business with a cockroach as its symbol


"10 Program Pokok PKK
2. Gotong Royong"


"Antique Japan Craft" sold in Jogja. Right.


A bilingual advertisement for airport jobs.

We then went to ViaVia cafe, a chain of travellers' cafes with branches in Mali, Senegal, Argentina, Nepal, Nicaragua, Honduras, Tanzania, Belgium (where it originated from) and Spain.

On our way there, one becak driver told us it was 2.5km away, and the lowest price he offered us was 10,000 Rupiah. We didn't believe him as we'd been conned by well nigh everyone else in Jogja, and because it looked quite near on the map (200m or so) but it turned out to be more than 2.5km.

When we rejected him, I commented that either the becak man was lying or the map was lousy (it didn't say it was not to scale, and was accurate for the centre of town). Either way, Jogja looked bad.

After walking for about 2.5km, we arrived at the start of the street ViaVia was on. By this time we were so tired and annoyed, so we unhesitatingly hopped on the becak of a man who came along and said it was 3km away since he quoted us only 5,000 Rupiah (naturally, it was only about 600m - BASTARD).

The street ViaVia was on (Prawirotaman) was a big Westerner hub - until the 2006 earthquake, when activity moved to Sosrowijayan (where our hotel was). There were still some shops catering to them, like a shop offering civet cat coffee for S$3 per 500g of beans, but it was otherwise quiet (except for ViaVia itself).
Frankly I found it puzzling as it was so far from the centre of town. But maybe the ang mohs could afford to becak their way everywhere.


Cafe interior


Belgian Chocolates - not something you expect to find in Indonesia.


"Beef sausage
Ham
Bacon"
I asked them if it was pork bacon and they said yes. Woo hoo!


Es Kopyar: "A delicious sweet drink with coconut jelly and [rose] syrup"


Frites with mayo!


Salad with bacon
We consumed more vegetables in this shared salad than in all other meals in Indonesia combined.


Typical over-selling: "Borobudur is one of the Seven Wonders of the World"
I also thought they misspelled "exotic" in calling Candi Sukuh and Candi Ceto "erotic", since no description of the eroticism followed. But here's Wikipedia:

"Candi Sukuh has a distinctive thematic reliefs from other candi where life before birth and sexual education are its main theme. Its main monument is a simple pyramid structure with reliefs and statues in front of it, including three tortoises with flattened shells and a male figure grasping his penis. A giant 1.82 m (6 ft) high of lingga (phallus) with four balls, representing penile incisions,[1] was one of the statues that has been relocated to the National Museum of Indonesia...

Candi Sukuh contains a pervasive theme of spiritual liberation symbolized by reliefs and statues. There is an obvious depiction of sexual intercourse in a relief on the floor at the entrance where it shows a paired lingga (phallus) and yoni (vagina)."


Their menu. I love the assurance at the top: ""All dishes are prepared without MSG. All vegies are washed in boiled water. All drinks and ice cubes are made with boiled water. We use organic rice"

When you use your credit card in Jogja there're 3 copies of the receipt - one for you, one for the bank and one for the shop. Hah.


Exterior of cafe

On the way out of ViaVia, we took a becak. The guy quoted us 30,000 Rp because it was uphill. He pedalled very slowly, and was visibly (and audibly) exerting himself to the limit, so at one point near our destination we hopped off when he couldn't pedal anymore and gave him 50,000. He was very happy.

I saw a shop advertising copying ('photocopy/lichtdruk'). The other services were in English, though.

I saw a place: 'Bumi putera art gallery'. Hah.

Since this was our last night, we dropped in at a big shop with signposted prices and airconditioning to do shopping.


Boxes of linga. They were too irregular to be pestles.


Pirated souvenirs. Now Indonesians can trick people into thinking they visited Australia, Egypt, a random European country and Atlantis (YOU tell me where that strange nude woman in the back is from).
I got a Horus, since he was cheap. His paint got slightly chipped and the base of his staff got dislodged during my return journey though.


Dutch cash register


Knight


"Do not squat"


Primitive lock


The first time I saw a streaked wig.


Haram!


There's something charming about Bensin signs.

For dinner, we made our way back to the area with Babi.


Super Babi: Babi Panggang Kombinasi. It was quite good, though the sauce was a bit strange. The sio bak was particularly good. The thing at the bottom is chicken.

When I had this, my Twitter read: "BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI! BABI!"

Unfortunately they were out of Sate Babi.


Menu. It was the most extensive of any place here.


Kiam Cai soup they gave us. With a bit of assam.

They had Es Jeruk Murni. Murni means pure, so this would not have been Kordial. For once.

After the Babi, I was still feeling peckish (CWN had some Nasi Putih, but I had wisely held back), so I ordered:


Nasi Goreng Ham B2. The Babi Panggang rocked my socks, but this sent me to new heights of ecstasy, so tasty was it.


"Sedap" brand Kecap Manis. How creative.


This Chinese lady seemed to be the owner. Notice what is on the table - "The Little Nonya 1 Movie Collection". GAH.


The stall


Quotes:

[Me: For the life of me, I don't know why people like travelling in Southeast Asia] This is the worst example of Southeast Asia I've seen.

[On the office] It's a distortion forcefield. [Me: I will pull you back into reality] I don't think I like Gabriel-brand reality

Basically for this trip we paid minuscule amounts of money to find out that Indonesians typically eat what we consider as rubbish. Frozen prata, mee from a packet.

Yay. I shall walk around naked in my room with the fan on.

[On the lack of vegetables] Indon people don't shit is it... How come these people don't get colon cancer?

What shall I tell Puppy when she asks 'how was the trip with Gabriel?' 'It culminated in a search for sio bak'.

If you go to a Halal food court in Singapore everything is sweet and no wok hei.

"Berlin is usually represented as a twentieth-century defender of liberalism. This could easily lead to the impression that Berlin’s view of the self is individualistic. In this chapter, however, we will see that, for Berlin, an autonomous person is also always embedded in a community...

For Berlin, the relationship with others is “not merely a contingent fact about men” but part “of what we mean by men, a part of the definition of human beings as a species”...

It was Herder, the German philosopher of history, who first drew wide attention to the proposition that among elementaiy human needs—as basic as those for food, shelter, security, procreation, communication—is the need to belong to a particular group, united by some common links-especially language, collective memones, continuous life upon the same soil, to which some added characteristics of which we have heard much in our times—race, blood, religion, a sense of common mission, and the like.

... Individuals cannot define themselves apart from their relationship with others. In “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958) Berlin writes: “My individual self is not something which I can detach from my relationship with others or from those attributes of myself which consist in their attitude towards me” (FEL: 156; L: 202). One cannot define oneself without reference to the group to which the person belongs: “... I am a social being in a deeper sense than that of interaction with others. For am I not what I am to some degree, in virtue of what others think and feel me to be” (FEL: 155; L: 201). For Berlin, the ideas about oneself depend upon interaction with others. A person’s moral and social identity is intelligible only in terms of the social network...

The third reason for the need to belong is the psychological and social human need to have intimate communication and to be truly understood. This can achieved only when ways of life are shared:

When men complain of loneliness, what they mean is that nobody understands what they are saying. To be understood is to share a common past, common feelings and language, common assumptions, the possibility of intimate communication—in short, to share common forms of life. (P1: 258)

True understanding is possible only between people with a common language and background. For Berlin,

loneliness is not just the absence of others but far more a matter of living among people who do not understand what one is saying; they can truly understand only if they belong to a community where communication is effortless, almost instinctive. (Gardels 1991: 21)

... The fourth reason is the need to be recognised either by other groups within a society or by the international community. Recognition in this case means being regarded as full members of society without being ignored as a minority and the right to deviate culturally from the majority culture. For an individual, the recognition that one is a member of a particular group belongs to “some of my personal and permanent characteristics” (FEL: 155; L: 201). When this is denied, it often results in a hankering after status and recognition. This longing can be so intense that unrecognised people are prepared to fight collectively and die for that cause. The need to be recognised also explains why minorities are prepared to give up a considerable part of their negative liberty and to obey despotic leaders who are at least members of their own group or race and not some colonial oppressor (FEL: 155; L: 201). Berlin accuses contemporary liberals of often being blind to the need to belong and to be recognised (FEL: 162; L: 208).

In his view of human nature Berlin adopts the Herderian idea that individuals need to be embedded in a group for a proper formation of their identity. This is not just some accidental self-chosen group but a community with a collective identity that is based on a common history, language and traditions. This idea remained a vital part of this thought during his whole life and made him anti-cosmopolitan. In 1991 Berlin told his interviewer Nathan Gardels, "Like Herder, I regard cosmopolitanism as empty. People can’t develop unless they belong to a culture"...

Berlin recognises an important existential aspect in pathological nationalism, namely that people can find meaning and purpose in life through the identification of the individual self with thc collective self...

Berlin stressed that the tragic nature of this [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict and the equal claims the Arabs and the Jews have. It is a collision between two morally acceptable claims. “Hegel is right in saying that the essence of tragedy is the clash between right and right”"

--- Isaiah Berlin: a value pluralist and humanist view of human nature and the meaning of life; The Need to Belong and to be Recognised / Connie Aarsbergen-Ligtvoet

"I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it." - Lord Brabazon

***

How Do Male and Female Students Approach Learning at NUS?

"Motive refers to the reason why students approach learning tasks and their studies, while strategy refers to the methods and habits they engage in to accomplish the task. Surface motives include fear of failure, or wanting just to obtain a paper qualification, and may drive students to employ such surface strategies as memorising learning material without first comprehending it. Deep motives, on the other hand, entail an intrinsic interest in the subject and a desire for understanding per se, which usually drives students to deep strategies like taking the initiative to find out more about a topic and seeing interrelationships among different concepts.

In addition to deep and surface approaches, Biggs also defined a third: the achieving approach. The achievement-motivated student is driven by competition with peers for the highest marks. As such, achieving strategies are engaged, such as: choosing modules that the student feels confident in, and studying material deeply insofar as it is pertinent to the examination...

On average, males scored higher than females: 3.56 (S.D.=.74) vs. 3.34 (S.D.=.67) respectively. A stepwise regression confirmed that gender is a significant predictor of CAP (adjusted-R2=.021, F=23.261, p<.001) and that gender differences in CAP are not due to differences in age (R2-change=.003, F-change=3.206, n.s.). However, it should be noted that the size of this gender effect is rather small...

Across genders, one-way ANOVAs revealed that males scored slightly higher than females on achieving motives (F=7.033, p<.01), although this effect was small. Males also scored slightly higher than females on deep strategies (F=10.362, p<.001)...

Males scored higher on the Abstract Conceptualisation scale, indicating a preference for logical thinking and rational evaluation, which are deep strategies; they were also found to excel in impersonal learning situations emphasising theory and systematic analysis (Severiens & Ten Dam, 1994). In contrast, female students using a deep approach (identified as ‘comprehension approach’) tend to look for personal connections and relevance (identified as ‘elaborative processing’) with learning material (Meyer et al., 1994).

These two findings could explain why female NUS students score lower on deep strategies, since they may find it harder to relate some course material to their personal experiences...

Finally, it is surprising to note that those who scored the highest on just deep motives or strategies performed no better than those who scored the highest on just surface motives or strategies, since deep learning is supposed to be a fundamental goal of education...

Males were more likely than females to engage the following deep strategies: thinking of real-life applications of subject material, and drawing links between previous knowledge and new information...

It was suggested earlier that female students may encounter difficulties with subjects that are not perceived as being personally relevant to them. To address this need for personal connection with subject material, instruction can be designed to create engaging experiences with course content. Examples include talks or seminars by renowned females in respective fields; role-play exercises [an example is described in Sivan et al., (2000)]; or even spending some time to introduce course material as a personal story...

The findings reported here are based on first-year students at NUS. It has been observed elsewhere that students tend to move toward a more surface approach to learning as they continue in their studies, and that gender differences become more apparent over the years at University"


Good luck role-playing an engineering problem.

Also interesting:

Learning Goals and Styles by Gender—A Study of NUS Students

"Compared with male students, female students also scored higher on socially oriented goals. It is further noted that the individually and socially based performance goals are positively correlated thus, lending support to the notion that female students obtain grades for socially oriented purposes instead of seeing grades as an achievement or an end in itself."

Pink Gundam, wow! - "Wow, the Pink Gundam, Cool or stupid? For woman Gundam fans."

Chinese woman boiled man's head to cure daugther's psychiatric problems - "Lin Zongxiu, from the southwestern province of Sichuan, heard in 2008 that soup made with a man’s head could help cure her daughter who had suffered from psychiatric problems for years... Lin and her husband decided to enlist the help of a man in December who knocked unconscious a drunk 76-year-old passer-by before beheading him"
Joe Augustin: Sorry. WHO was nuts again?

What Did You Call It? - "There have been at least 1,200 terms for the vagina in the history of the English language, according to Steven Pinker... This is because sexual subjects are always “emotionally fraught,” he said, and each new euphemism eventually “gets contaminated” and prompts “the search for yet another euphemism.” HE calls it “the euphemism treadmill.” Such words arise, he said, “because people want to make it perfectly clear to their listeners that they are not bringing up the topic for prurient reasons.”... “Vajayjay,” he said, “is like your good buddy.” Ultimately, what makes any word catch fire is a mystery, linguists say. “Who could have predicted that the term for bulk e-mail would be spam, from a 1970s Monty Python sketch?” Dr. Pinker said... 'We’d once used the word penis 17 times in a single episode and no one blinked. But with vagina, the good folks at broadcast standards and practices blinked over and over and over'... [the term] doesn’t belong to me or anyone at the show. It belongs to all women.”"
Apparently the term 'vajajay' doesn't belong to men.

Coverage of the protests: Twitter 1, CNN 0 - "The much-ballyhooed Twitter swiftly degraded into pointlessness. By deluging threads like Iranelection with cries of support for the protesters, Americans and Britons rendered the site almost useless as a source of information—something that Iran’s government had tried and failed to do. Even at its best the site gave a partial, one-sided view of events. Both Twitter and YouTube are hobbled as sources of news by their clumsy search engines."

The Uneven Playing Field - Girls' Sports Injuries - "A national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever... “We need to do everything we can do to prevent injuries. But... it does seem that so little coverage focuses on women’s accomplishments, on their mental toughness and physical courage. There is a disproportionate emphasis on things that are problematic or that are presented as signs of women’s biological difference or inferiority.”... “If your job is to encourage inclusion of more women in sport, maybe you are not going to accentuate the negative. You don’t want to paint women in a negative light and tell a girl that if you play sports, your knees, by the time you are 30 or 35, may be in bad shape."
Another way feminists are hurting women.

Grinning Buddha with 'bulge' withdrawn from sale - "The Marimokkori character, which originated in northern Hokkaido island, is a word play on "marimo," a type of moss ball found in lakes, and "mokkori" which means bulge and is a slang term for an erection."

India plans hot chilli grenades - "Indian defence scientists are planning to put one of the world's hottest chilli powders into hand grenades."

EA's new motto: please pirate our games... er, storefronts - "EA doesn't mind piracy of Sims 3, as retail customers get the whole experience. In fact, please pirate the company's future games. Why? EA is selling a service, not a game. Consider everything that comes on the disc a demo; the real value is online."

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, IN HIS OWN WORDS - "The real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out... most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer... Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings... the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self"

Counselling Pioneer Known for Embracing Homosexuals as People - The headline is the best part of this article on Anthony Yeo.

Mating in a Material World - "Penguins are not the only creatures to exchange sex for a material benefit (aside, of course, from humans). A few other birds trade reproduction favors for food, and many insects have evolved elaborate quid pro quo sexual arrangements... Other animals also prostitute themselves for something valuable to them—usually food... But when it comes to turning tricks, insects have no equal. And their stock-in-trade is food—the deals so common they have a name: nuptial gifts. These range from dead prey—the insect equivalent of a box of chocolates—to food bags attached to females’ bodies during mating... The food seems to represent an early child-support payment for the inch-long hangingflies of North America"

"He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit." - Unknown

***

On fetish girls wheelchair stuck in mud:

Sexual Imagery of Physically Disabled Women: Erotic? Perverse? Sexist?
(Sexuality and Disability, 1999)

"Letty Cottin Pogrebin: "The concerns about sexual harassment affect all women."

Judy Heumann: "You know, I use a wheelchair, and when I go down the street I do not get sexually harassed. I hear non-disabled women complaining about it, but I don't ever get treated as a sexual object."

Letty Cottin Pogrebin: "You would hate it."

Fine and Asch summed up the responses of disabled women to the dialogue: "Try two weeks or thirty years without that sexual attention. Then tell us if you would hate getting some, even in the form of harassment." Fine and Asch correctly point out that "Denied the basic, if oppressive, gender-role prescriptions and offered nothing to replace them but often the worst of dead end jobs, disabled women have been without social role or gender-based value. Their anger at such deprivation uncomfortably reminds non-disabled women that sexual objectification is one vehicle by which at least heterosexual confirmation may be conveyed . . ."

... One underground community which has existed since the 1920s is comprised of mobility-impaired women and their devotees. A few magazines catering to devotees have been published. Now the Internet brings isolated individuals together into a community. A significant part of the commerce of devoteeism has been staked out by amputee women through the establishment of World Wide Web sites...

The second Web site, ASCOT WORLD is also kept by an amputee woman, and lists as many as thirty-six videos for sale. Many of these videos are of everyday life: weddings, volleyball, tennis, and shopping. Others move into the realm of erotica—women "stump rubbing" one another—a variation of a male fantasy of watching two women having sex? Here too, in this highly specialized supply and demand relationship, it appears that the disabled women are controlling the product."

The REACH forums are sometimes very amusing, and to their credit the administrators don't seem to censor the threads.


Singapore’s Population Trends

Scotland the Brave: Singapore passport and ID for sale !! Selling cheap 10 cents only !!!

I was born here in Singapore but will not die here ! Scotland my country !!

God save our gracious Queen
Long live the noble Queen
God save the Queen

Send her victorious
Happy and Glorious
God Save the Queen.

old man: you traitor

too expensive: I'd burn mine... but don't want to waste the fire.

[Addendum:

TMM: Singapore passport has a 0.50 chance of being a liability, not even woth 10 cents
:S

I would pay you to take mine away]

"Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad." - Diogenes the Cynic

***

Pay gap between men and women is not due to discrimination but to their lifestyle choice, says study

"The choice of millions of mothers to put children before careers was the chief reason given for the disparity between men and women that emerged after 30.

Before then, the difference in salary was generally just 1 per cent in men's favour...

The difference is usually measured by average hourly earnings, which show men are paid 17.2 per cent more than women...

Professor John Shackleton, of the University of East London, said that in reality the pay gap hardly existed for workers under 30.

He said men work longer hours in more dangerous jobs and face a greater risk of being sacked, while women who take career breaks outnumber their male equivalents by more than five to one.

In a paper for the Institute of Economic Affairs, he pointed out that single, widowed or divorced women earn more than their male counterparts, but the pay gap between men and women in families with three children was 19 per cent.

He also argued that female graduates tend to choose subjects such as psychology or education, which lead to lower-earning careers, while few opt for maths or engineering, which are more likely to result in lucrative jobs. 'The widespread belief that the gender pay gap is a reflection of deep-rooted discrimination by employers is ill-informed and an unhelpful contribution to the debate,' he said.

'The gap is falling but is also a reflection of individuals' lifestyle preferences. Government cannot regulate these away, and should not try to.'

Professor Shackleton also dismissed fears over low pay for part-time women workers.

Most were in low-paid jobs, he said, a factor which accounted for most of the gap."

The joys of ÜberTwitter:

Me: A statistical inequality that dwarfs all alleged gender inequalities:

In the US, in 2000 only 6% of the Prison Population was female. Does this mean men are shockingly discriminated against by the justice system?

No, it's mainly because they commit more crimes (though discrimination does play a part too).

Someone: There is no reason for us to believe that men commit more crime. Men are simply targetted as criminals by CJS [Ed: the Criminal Justice System]. With increased surveillance leads to increased labelled criminals which leads to a tendency to re-committing crimes. (Labelling theory). It does not point simply to men committing more crime.

Me: Okay, if you think men do not commit more crime than women, then I assume you believe that the stereotype that women are physically weaker than men is also pernicious, false and sexist.

I think I'll stop commenting here.

"I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking." - Katherine Cebrian

***

I came across a gem of a blog post, All monkey ladies are prostitutes who get paid in not-currency.

As you can tell, it was written by a feminist bashing the monkeys-paying-for-sex article ([Addendum: "Do Monkeys Pay for Sex?" in Time] primarily the one in the popular media, but also the one in the journal), and is a prime example of how many feminists 'debunk' ideas they do not like: by ranting emotionally, often along only marginally relevant tangents (and barely paying attention to the argument).

In the post, she makes one minor point and then launches a long tirade against "choadery disguised as science reporting in the mainstream press", and in the process completely misunderstands the original article she was trying to 'debunk'. To boot, the bulk of her time is spent railing against anti-feminism and the alleged implications of the finding (which she barely made an attempt to show is false), not dealing with the finding itself (which, incidentally, finds more support in the journal paper than is apparent from the Time article she is slamming).

Now, it might be unfair to chide the writer for only picking on one minor point when she didn't have access to the journal article, but then if you don't have full access to an article, while you can raise doubts or queries about it, condemning it wholesale is hardly justified. This is like Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie - without having read The Satanic Verses (and hints at parallels between much of feminism and religious fundamentalism).

Even better is how she condemns the Time article without even having fully read it. It is perfectly understandable if she is not aware of Penguin Prostitution and other cases of animal prostitution, but this what she is doing is like writing a scathing review of a play - despite having walked out halfway, and so getting your facts wrong.

To wit,

the mainstream press... uses just-so stories to explain how every vicious sexist stereotype you believe is not only not bullshit, but etched into our DNA... which is exactly what’s going on in this Time article

If Amanda Marcotte had only taken the trouble to read the rest of the Time article she was slamming so happily, she would have come across these lines:

We, more evolved primates, may be tempted to take a cynical view of these findings, but the study's author suggests a more favorable interpretation: The macaques' exchange of services simply illustrates a nifty system of cooperation that allows for successful mating...

It's easy to draw parallels between the monkeys' mating dance and our own, but Gumert warns against reading too much into primate studies like this one. The paper draws no conclusions about what these observations in monkeys mean for the human world. In fact, whether and how scientists should extrapolate from primate behavior is a fairly "big debate"

In other words, Krista Mahr (the Time writer) and Amanda Marcotte might agree about much.

But then, the Time article also concludes that the study nonetheless *might* have implications for human social interaction. Perhaps anything less than total rejection of this study earns you vigorous condemnation from the writer and her ilk.

This is the peril of letting your emotions rule you. And the irony is that since she is a female, she is paradoxically reinforcing and reaffirming the traditional stereotypes she so despises.

The constitutive paradox of feminism is one thing, but here this feminist is actively shooting herself (and feminism) in the foot, with yet more proof that the bulk of those who self-identify as feminist are cuckoo. Though, happily, while the vast majority of commenters on feminists blogs I've seen are as equally shrill (or worse) than the writer, many of the ones here are mostly level-headed, even if most of them do miss the point (like her).

This is why many who hold beliefs legitimately described as feminist maintain that they are just working for equal rights, and that with "its reluctance to identify openly as feminist, at AWARE feminism is as feminism does".


A comment I particularly liked:

"

The actual evidence points more towards monkeys like foreplay, not monkeys as whores.

Grooming is not foreplay, catgirl. (Or else, foreplay actually is sexual currency. I think the argument could be made that, for practical purposes, it’s often treated that way.) Lovers groom lovers, sure; but parents groom children and children parents, siblings groom each other, and it’s often saved and bartered for other favors and for food.

Does that still sound like foreplay? Parents are having foreplay with their children? It’s hard to argue that’s the better way of looking at it.

Primate researchers have known for decades that grooming in monkeys is a social behavior, not an economic one.

Uh, no, the exact opposite is true. Grooming is primate currency. They trade it, they barter with it, they hoard it."

Blaring porn to chase off kids?

POLICE in suburban Philadelphia say a man fed up of children playing in his cul-de-sac blared a pornographic soundtrack to chase them off.

Irate neighbours told police they could hear the sexually explicit audio a block and a half away.

Police say Michael Buck faces a felony obscenity charge and two misdemeanours for the May 31 stunt at his upscale Phoenixville home.

The 27-year-old Buck has a preliminary hearing scheduled for next month. He doesn't have a listed telephone number, and his lawyer declined to comment Wednesday.

Detective Tom Goggin says Buck had filed one previous complaint about the neighbourhood children. He says the children clearly annoy Buck - but there's nothing criminal about playing outside.

"There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?" - Dustin Hoffman

***

The Straight Dope: How dangerous are Tasers? - "Medical journals speak of "sudden in-custody death syndrome," which is enough to spike anybody's BS meter... The risk of death due primarily to Taser was between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 100,000... Almost any sublethal method of persuasion carries risks. Pepper spray can cause potentially fatal reactions, police dogs can do serious damage, plastic and bean-bag bullets can kill. Nightsticks and choke holds I don't need to tell you about. Tasering the guy presents a non-negligible chance you could kill him. But what do you do instead?"

The Straight Dope: Why do men's suits have buttons on the sleeves? - "The soldiers made do as best they could with their coat sleeves... Frederick pondered long and hard on what to do. Finally, the solution... dawned: sew buttons on the top sides of the sleeves, and soldiers would scratch their faces open every time they tried to use their coats for a handkerchief... Now the buttons stay there for the same reason men still wear ties: it's always been done that way, they look vaguely natty, and most men are so baffled by matters sartorial that it never dawns on them to agitate for a change."

Russian man survives five storey fall - twice - "I have no idea why I jumped the first time but when I came back up and I heard my wife screaming angrily at me I thought it was best if I left the room again - out of the window"

Joseph Prince Resources Online Store - God's Protection Plan Against Deadly Viruses (CD Sermon) - Personally, I prefer handling poisonous snakes.

Age identification required to purchase spoons. - "A shopper was left baffled after she went to Asda to stock up on picnic equipment and was asked for proof of age to buy a set of teaspoons. The shop assistant reportedly informed the customer that someone had once been murdered with a teaspoon, and therefore age identification was now required... "It's most likely a mix-up with the bar codes.""

Man set house on fire while trying to kill a spider with a lighter

Pay Attention - Weird News Story Archive - "San Diego (Calif.) State University instructor Brian Cornforth got a tip that students in his class were cheating. Apparently, someone was providing students copies of a test from a previous class, so Cornforth mixed up the questions. He was “horrified” to find that 25 of 75 students marked their responses according to the order on the previous test, even though many of the resulting answers were “clearly nonsense.” All 25 have been flunked, but they’re not necessarily chagrined at being caught. “What about the teacher’s responsibility?” one complained, adding Cornforth was “negligent and stupid” to reuse tests. The course? Business ethics."

28 people overcome by fumes in San Jose, building evacuated - "28 AT&T employees in all reportd feeling ill, seven were taken to area hospitals including Kaiser in San Jose. And, it was all because a refrigerator in the office needed a good cleaning. When it got one, the combination of rotting food and cleaning supplies proved to be terribly wrong... The stench was so strong all 325 employees at the AT&T office in downtown San Jose were forced to evacuate... Amazingly enough, one person who did not get sick in all of this was the one woman who volunteered to clean out the refrigerator. Firefighters told ABC 7 that the woman suffers from serious allergies and has had nasal surgery so she did not smell a thing."

Anti-smoking activism: Puff by puff, inch by inch - "Campaigners shamelessly ramped up the evidence that the vice harmed others, and attacked anyone who said otherwise... “No one is seriously talking about a complete ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants,” said the director of ASH (UK) in 1998, adding that the suggestion was a “scaremongering story by a tobacco front group.” In June 2005 Britain’s public-health minister described talk of such a ban as “false speculation”. Parliament voted it into law just eight months later... “Today it’s smoking. Will high-fat foods be next?” asked a tobacco firm in an advertisement in the 1990s. No doubt the ad seemed ridiculously alarmist at the time."

Two ways Chinese Scrabble could work:
Chinese Squabble Home - Radicals
Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit go Chinese on the Mac - Pinyin

Raise Awareness of Raising Awareness of Raising Awareness! - "According to the Lancet, lack of awareness has contributed to 2.5 billion deaths. But the figure might actually BE HIGHER. "Because most people aren't aware of the link, they can't actually report it and then of course, they end up dead,"... The underlying philosophical thought behind raising awareness about raising awareness is that more people will be aware if you raise awareness about raising awareness. And that awareness, as any aware layman will agree, is key... If you make "raising awareness" sound cool, you'll probably gain impressionable fans among attractive slender teens! BONUS TIP: bring pot... I think it is incumbent on white children of privilege to go to neighborhoods of color to raise awareness about raising awareness. It may not actually help, but raising awareness about raising awareness looks damn good on the Dartmouth application... Note: Based upon cultural prejudices and a need to dispel institutional biases, the ideal RARA instructor is black, tightly built, gay and willing to give it all he's got."

Marriages between Singapore Citizens and Non-Singapore Citizens, 1998-2008 - "More than three quarters (76%) of the SC/non-SC marriages over the past decade were between SC grooms and non-SC brides... Compared to SC grooms marrying non-SC brides, SC brides who married non-SC grooms tend to be younger... This group of SC brides tends to be highly educated (para 3.8) and could have spent more time pursuing higher qualifications and building careers, including venturing overseas... Among SC/SC marriages, the majority tends to marry within the same age group... a higher proportion of older SCs grooms married younger non-SC brides compared to SC/SC marriages... while most non-SC brides had secondary education, most non-SC grooms had university education... In 2008, non-SC grooms who married SC brides came predominantly from Asia (69%)... On the other hand, most non-SC brides of SC grooms came from Asia (97%)"
No surprise: women marry up, men marry down. Too bad we don't have data on marriages of Singapore Citizens overseas - it'd reveal where many (perhaps even most) of the girls who marry non-Singaporeans are going.

Confessions of a Bailout CEO Wife - "I know people are angry—angry at those they view as responsible for the subprime crisis and the subsequent economic meltdown. I don’t blame them. I’m angry too. But my fury extends to any number of culprits: to Alan Greenspan, who encouraged the loose-money policies that undermined the pricing of risk; to Barney Frank, who cudgeled Fannie Mae into supporting loans to unfit homebuyers; to the rating agencies that were ethically compromised; to the subprime-mortgage brokers who chased fees and ignored any accountability; to the investors who didn’t do their homework and absurdly leveraged up their balance sheets. I’m an equal-opportunity blamer. And yes, I blame those who were in charge of the big banks—including my husband—for not seeing the default tsunami coming. But almost no one did. Everyone knows this, yet financial CEOs have replaced the Mob as the most despised group in the country. The good news is that Americans have short attention spans. Before long, some other group will come along to absorb all the frustration and anger."
One comment: "The sad part is that we need the 'rich' to spend to keep everyone (or some of us) employed."

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing - "Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do. Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them... Many teachers say they are being punished because they ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores... Some sell real estate, earn graduate degrees or teach each other yoga and tai chi."

Singaporean men are fussy, Singaporean women are even more fussy

"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated." - Poul Anderson

***

Singaporean men are fussy, Singaporean women are even more fussy

I was amused and slightly surprised that a survey has showed that Singaporean men are more open-minded in dating than Singaporean women.

The survey in question, commissioned by Lunch Actually, was done in May and involved 200 singles.



It revealed (presumably among other things, but as of the writing of this post Lunch Actually has not released any information on its website) that of the men:

- 51% would date an older woman
- 67% a woman who earns more
- 71% a more-educated woman and
- 47% a taller woman

Among the women,

- 59% would date a younger man
- 28% a man who earns less
- 25% a less-educated man and
- only 11% a shorter man

To put it another way, compared to men doing the reverse, Singaporean women are slightly more willing to date a younger man, much less willing to hook up with a poorer man, way less willing to snog a less-learned man and whoppingly more reluctant to snag a shorter man; Singaporean women are extremely fussy, and the refusal to date shorter men is the most ridiculous (and strongly-expressed) of their preferences (the excuses I can think of for this are the weakest).

All this coheres with other information we know. For example, that SDU women are looking for rich men ("You might as well show up with your salary printed boldly on your T-shirt. Save the women at SDU the trouble of asking"). And with revealed preferences, like marriage statistics released by the National Population Secretariat.

Of course, the survey results should be interpreted keeping in mind its methodology. I considered the possibility that they surveyed their own customer base, but since the survey was "commissioned", this is very unlikely to be the case. Not having access to more information, I made some assumptions about the survey which I deemed reasonable.

This being an online survey, the sample probably differed from Singaporeans at large in:

i) Age

Those surveyed would likely be disproportionately from the late teens to mid 40s. Given that the average age of marriage is 29.7 for men and 27.1 for women, this is likely not a problem as the older a single is, the less likely that he will eventually get married. Also, the number of singles in a given cohort decreases as it becomes older.

On the other hand, people become more desperate with increasing age (see also: the closing time effect in bars; "All the girls all get prettier at closing time / Oh, they all begin to look like movie stars... I'm looking for a nine but eight could work right in / Few more drinks and I might slip to five or even four"). As someone from another dating agency commented, "It's always the older ladies who don't mind dating younger men or those with lower education levels". As such, the survey will overestimate how fussy Singaporeans are since it leaves out the older crowd.

Yet, given the countervailing effects, as well as how common discourse does not have singles past their mid 40s in mind, this is not a problem.

Also, with regard to age, given that on average grooms are aged only two years older than brides, in the absence of large skewing factors like a hideous disease that strikes down 99% of all single men above the age of 40 (at least not that I know of), the age of both single cohorts is unlikely to differ much.

ii) Social Class (or, if you like, SES - Socio-Economic Status)

This is less of a factor now than in the past, but those who use the Internet - and more so, those who actively use it (since casual users are less likely to be captured by Internet research studies) - are slightly better off than those who don't.

SES is broken down into income, education and occupation. I'm not sure what effects occupation would have on attitudes to singlehood, but am on more solid ground about the other 2.

Generally, we can see that, despite (or perhaps even because of?) their higher SES, the surveyed women are very fussy. Education does not seem to have done much to make them more open-minded (perhaps this is why traditionally societies have been leery about educating their women).

Two of the four findings are especially interesting, given their correlation with SES.

If we assume that the survey respondents are slightly richer than the population at large, women's fussiness when it comes to income is even more galling.

Let me illustrate.

If I am a woman who earns $1,500 a month, and am unwilling to date a man who earns $750 a month, this is somewhat defensible as I can say we will end up a poor family. However, if I earn $8,000 a month and refuse to consider a man who earns $4,000, I have much less to say in my defence about why I am so demanding - there is diminishing marginal utility of income. Given that the median monthly income in 2008 was $2,590, a goodly proportion of the 72% of women who would not date a poorer man likely fit the latter example better than the former.

With regard to education, the respondents' fussiness is more excusable.

If I have an O level certificate and refuse to consider someone with only a PSLE certificate, it is apparent that there is a sizeable gap in our educational levels. On the other hand, if I have a Bachelor's Degree, it is not much of a leap for me to consider someone with a Master's Degree (or even a Ph.D).

iii) Marital Status

Although the survey drew conclusions about "the Singaporean's search for love", it only looked at those who are currently single.

This may seem like an empty point, but it is important to look not just at the people who are currently single but all who were searching for love at one point or other, in order to get a good grip on the way Singaporeans as a whole think.

For example, assume that there are 5 men and 5 women in the total population. All of the women are fussy, while 2 of the men are fussy while 3 of them are open-minded. If the 3 open-minded men hookup with 3 of the women (it is easier to match a fussy person and an open-minded one than two fussy ones) and the singles in the population are then surveyed, the erroneous conclusion that all the singles are fussy will be drawn.

Given that women are in general more discriminating about who they pair up with than men, for the population as a whole, women in general might be even fussier (relative to men) than they seem to be (according to the survey).


Of course, market research companies do have techniques of guarding against over- or under-representation, but those notwithstanding I still believe there is some degree of skewness in the data.

Someone raised the problem of respondents lying, but even if people from both genders lied, the general trend of female fussiness would be the same - unless for some reason you thought guys lied more. Indeed, if women lied more than men, they would in reality be even more fussy than they currently appear to be.

Someone also explained that women are justified in not wanting to marry poorer men by saying that they need someone to provide for the family if they give birth. I agreed that this was true, but replied that I was just showing that Singaporean women are less open-minded than Singaporean men. After all, one can similarly construct an argument that men are justified in looking for pretty wives since aesthetic appeal is correlated with fertility. Or that they should look for submissive women to avoid minimise nagging for the rest of their lives.

All in all, this survey helps to put paid to the long-running myth that "Singaporean men marry foreign women because they are losers. Singaporean women marry foreign men because Singaporean men are losers", although doubtless people will go on believing in it.

But then, due to Female Mate Choice, it doesn't help the former much anyway. At least if you restrict the pool to locals - which is why more and more Singaporean men are marrying foreign brides. Meanwhile, Singaporean women are also benefiting from the increased market size as they are better able to satisfy their desires.

(Incidentally, the survey didn't cover LGTQs, but it'd be much harder to survey them)

"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible." - P. J. O'Rourke

***

George Ayittey on Cheetahs vs. Hippos | TED

"The Cheetah generation is a new breed of Africans who brook no nonsense about corruption... And Africa's salvation rests on the backs of these Cheetahs.

In contrast, of course, we have the Hippo Generation. The Hippo Generation are the ruling elites. They are stuck in their intellectual patch. Complaining about colonialism and imperialism -- they wouldn't move one foot. If you ask them to reform the economies, they're not going to reform it because they benefit from the rotten status quo...

Africa is more than a tragedy, in more ways than one... so many people, so many governments, so many organizations, who want to help the people in Africa -- they don't understand... Helping Africa has been turned into a theater of the absurd. It's like the blind leading the clueless. There are certain things that we need to recognize.

Africa's begging-bowl leaks. Did you know, that 40 percent of the wealth created in Africa, is not invested here in Africa? It's taken out of Africa. That's what the World Bank says... There are people who think that we should pour more money, more aid into this bowl, which leaks. What are the leakages?

Corruption alone costs Africa 148 billion dollars a year... Capital flight out of Africa, 80 billion a year... That's far more than the 50 billion Tony Blair wants to raise for Africa.

Now, back in the 1960s, Africa not only fed itself, it also exported food. Not anymore...

"Whom do we want to help in Africa?" There is the people, and then there is the government or leaders.

I said, "Since 1960, we've had exactly 204 African heads of state, since 1960." And I asked them to name me just 20 good leaders... Even if they had been able to name me 20, what does that tell you? 20 out of 204 means that the majority, the vast majority of the African leaders, failed their people. And if you look at them, the slate of the post-colonial leaders -- an assortment of military fufu heads. Swiss-bank socialists, crocodile liberators, vampire elites, quack revolutionaries...

If we want to help the African people, we must know where the African people are.

Take any African economy. An African economy can be broken up into three sectors. There is the modern sector, there is the informal sector and the traditional sector. The modern sector is the abode of the elites. It's the seat of government. In many African countries, the modern sector is lost... the modern sector, of course, is where a lot of the development aid and resources went into. More than 80 percent of Ivory Coast's development went into the modern sector. The other sectors, the informal and the traditional sectors, are where you find the majority of the African people. The real people in Africa -- that's where you find them. Now, obviously it makes common sense, that if you want to help the people, you go where the people are...

Traditionally, Africans hate governments -- they hate tyranny. If you look into their traditional systems, Africans organize their states in two types. The first one belongs to those ethnic societies who believe that the state was necessarily tyrannous... they have no chiefs. The other ethnic groups, which did have chiefs, made sure that they surrounded the chiefs with councils upon councils upon councils, to prevent them from abusing their power."


I guess African Values don't exist, then.

Positive thinking's negative results: Words of wisdom | The Economist

"Self-help books through the ages, including Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, have encouraged people with low self-esteem to make positive self-statements. New research, however, suggests it may do more harm than good...

Those with high self-esteem who repeated “I’m a lovable person” scored an average of 31 on their mood assessment compared with an average of 25 by those who did not repeat the phrase. Among participants with low self-esteem, those making the statement scored a dismal average of 10 while those that did not managed a brighter average of 17.

Dr Wood suggests that positive self-statements cause negative moods in people with low self-esteem because they conflict with those people’s views of themselves. When positive self-statements strongly conflict with self-perception, she argues, there is not mere resistance but a reinforcing of self-perception. People who view themselves as unlovable find saying that they are so unbelievable that it strengthens their own negative view rather than reversing it. Given that many readers of self-help books that encourage positive self-statements are likely to suffer from low self-esteem, they may be worse than useless. "

"Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist." - Camille Paglia

***

Someone: oh
*** asked me to [drink alcohol] at his place
i'm going to decline, politely but firmly
i think it's inappropriate, whatever anyone says

Me: hurr hurr. what if *** tries to bone you at his place (:

Someone: yeah, precisely...
he's the sort of guy who "can't help himself"

Me: hahaha has he used that line before

Someone: no
but i can most definitely see him say it the morning after :P

me: I trust him with women as far as I trust my skill with women

Someone: hahahahahaha
same here
i trust him with women as much as i trust your skill with women :)
in fact, i think i trust him even less!!
:P
hahahaha


Someone else on someone else who gets his education from Wikipedia and throws terms around haughtily: hes got weight in his arguments, as any textbook would. UGH. you fucking arts/neuroscience students. Even the highest level academics in systematics dont dare talk like this - theres a real risk of looking stupid in front of the other people. Hes thowing out so many complicated terms i get blurred eyes after a while.

got to be real careful
or youll be torn to pieces
which is why i am so horrified whenever i see such

pardon me
for saying this
ARTS FAC talk

Me: that's why academics are so cautious and tentative

Someone else: yes!

Me: people like to slam scientists for their certainty and thinking that they have Truth. but real scientists are very cautious
the conclusions of most papers are "more research is needed"

Someone else: yah
i really blame pop science

Me: just blame the media
HAHA

even in so-called science studies they have silly ideas

Someone else: yes


Someone: i stay out late a lot these days
food is optional
drinks are more of what's on the menu

i think my diet has turned partially liquid

Me: ah, you're such an alcoholic
are your poor mere and pere straining to support you now

Someone: hahas
i'm not an alcoholic

and i dont pay for the drinks
it's just...paid for by others
girls have it easier

Me: WELL DONE


Someone else: ang moh women like chinese guys who can hold their own, generally

and whom they can boss around...

get on top of :p
literally too

they have to hold their own with ang mohs in general (not many sporeans are good at that)
and yet allow themselves to be bossed around by their wives/ gfs

i guess the kinda ang moh women that go for chinese guys wanna be different

it's a complicated coupling and hence was at its peak during the hippie era
has died down of late

Me: yes
which explains why our parents' generation has quite a few ang moh women with asian men

Someone else: the guys are all the same sort too
from a family with a certain amt of wealth
to be able to send their sons to england to study

Me: so the general theory still holds

Someone else: note: not many daughters were similarly sent there
and those who were, are no longer in spore
as they got married to foreigners and moved

like ***

nowadays, it's the ang moh men that are moving to asian places to work
and hooking up with the asian girls
from what i hear


MFTTW: die lah you
you want to take ont he breastfeeding nazis

dont forget these are nonworking mothers
they have ALL DAY to respond to you

Me: later they come and squirt me with their breastmilk how

MFTTW: wtf you cant squirt breastmilk

Me: I saw video before
HAHA

MFTTW: bloody hell
i'm not even going to google that

Me: you dont know what you're missing

MFTTW: i'll take your word for it

"'Who are you and how did you get in here?' 'I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.'" - Leslie Nielsen

***

u r wt u wr:

- 'Hot tamale'
- 'Boudoir babe' (Back, I didn't see the front)
- 'I'm sexy by nature, naughty by choice'
- 'Ravishing. Ravishing. Ravishing. Ravishing. Ravishing. Ravishing.'
- 'Innocent' (Maid)
- 'Are you ready to scream?'
- 'Cheer you up *picture of 2 cherries*'
- 'Feeling single again'
- 'I'm sorry to make you falling in love'
- 'Pure milk'
- 'Property of Alcatraz. Rejected. Too cute'
- '... is like nose digging. The nose always enjoys it better!'
- '*something*friendly 6739'
- 'Whatever, whenever, whoever, however'
- 'Touch me. *picture of sunglasses* I'm famous'
- 'Everybody needs somebody'
- 'H*something* all the time' (the plunging neckline cut out the first line, which kinda defeats the point. It looked like a modified round neck tee)
- 'YES! But not with you'
- 'I'm not a woman [Back: I'm an angel]'
- 'Foxy babes scout team'
- 'If you don't swing don't try'
- 'Animal *some small words*'
- 'Treat me like prince' (maybe she had transsexual tendencies)
- 'Sugar'
- 'You choose me'
- ':) be juicy'
- 'Time to be bad'

Contributed:
- 'I dig good boy'
- [8-9 year old] [Back of knee length denim miniskirt] 'Do you like beer?'

Guys:
- 'TITS! *picture of 2 birds*' (I told him I liked his shirt. He looked stunned and his girlfriend laughed)
- 'The more I drink the better you look'
- 'I only have eyes for you. And you. And you'
- 'for my next trick, i'll need a condom and a volunteer'
- 'Super Grover is my wingman' (he probably doesn't have much luck)
- 'I -heart- E37M' (???)

There's something very phallic about pointy shoes. Maybe Freud was right for once. I need to look at gays and lesbians' footwear more!

I saw "Little Miss Happy Family". That's worse than Hard Rock Cafe Crete.

I feel like strangling with their scarves those who use them.

I want to use a sword to slice off baseball caps that are not fully on guys' heads.

Man jailed for insulting SMS

"AN UNEMPLOYED man texted an SMS message, saying: 'Can I make love with u. I give u 200. Service very good not to worry u will be very SHIOK.'

The 29-year-old accounts executive who received it last October, did not know who sent it and replied: 'U r messing with d wrong person. U'll regret tis.'

Rather than heed her warning, Lee Wei Loon, 26, sent another insulting SMS, asking her: 'How big is ur cup?'

Lee was jailed two weeks on Monday after he admitted to insulting the modesty of the 29-year-old victim, whom he did not know.

His first SMS to her was 'Hi how r u', to which she replied 'Who is tat.' He then texted: 'Got any job,' followed by 'Jus want to know u.'

She told him off: 'No time n not interested in coward like u who dun even dare 2 tell who d hell u r.' The insulting SMS messages then followed."


If sending an obscene SMS to a woman gets you two weeks in jail, will staring lewdly at her get you a day?

"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson

***

My Case against Public Breastfeeding

Some people think that women should be allowed to breastfeed in public and some even call public breastfeeding a "civil right". They call themselves 'lactivists' and while the silly name is a good tip-off, but it is still profitable to examine their claims.

They put down opposition to public breastfeeding to a view of the breast only as a sexual object, or one of bodily shame.

Yet, it is doubtful if these same activists would support people peeing in public. Assuming you are directing your flow into a proper receptacle and are thus not soiling public or private property, there really isn't any reason to oppose public urination - unless you view the genitals as being exclusively sexual (I am alright with pissoirs since they cover the genitals). Or is there? If people who really need to go can hold their pee and find a bathroom, is it unreasonable for mothers who want to breastfeed to find a similarly private location (indeed, one can breastfeed in any empty room, but it takes plumbing to make a Little Boys or Little Girls Room)?

A similar argument can be made for digging noses in public. In fact, here the issue of sexualisation is moot (talk of the nose having more fun than the finger when you dig it notwithstanding). Simply, where bodily fluids are involved, it is best to keep everything private.

Indeed, if you say that breasts are not sexual, you return to a problem I mentioned before: if breasts are not sexual, then there is no problem with pictures of topless women (any more than there are problems with pictures of topless men), or touching a breast (any more than there are problems with touching a man's chest). After all, there is nothing wrong with touching someone's hand or tapping someone's shoulder. If you are normal, this is not a problem (actually, if you are normal, you acknowledge that women's breasts are not like men's chests, but nevermind).

However, the contradictions in lactivism become apparent here. Lactivists want to say that breastfeeding is alright and non-sexual. Yet, if this is so, why are they treated differently from men's chests? Although they are committed to public breastfeeding, lactivists still want to say that a woman's body is sacred and should not be violated. So the only way out is to declare the whole body sacrosanct, at which point we know we have hit upon an argumentum ad absurdum - since only the battiest lactivists would say that one's hands and shoulders should be sacred as well.

One of the only ways to rescue lactivism is if you create several categories: Can see, can expose, can touch (hands, shoulders); Can't see, can't expost, can't touch (genitals) and Can't see, can expose, can't touch (torso). If these categories sound tortured it's because they are gotten by working backwards from a conclusion: women can do anything they want, but if men act upon these implications they are evil.

Another way to rescue lactivism is to claim that breasts are sexual *except* when they are being used to breastfeed. This is a little peculiar, since a gun, for example, does not cease to become a martial symbol when used in hunting, parades or mounted above the fireplace. Perhaps this claim is inspired by the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, but goes one up on it, for unlike the Body and Blood of Christ, Breasts can endlessly move between the Sexual and Non-Sexual states.

In fact, if you support public breastfeeding, I don't think there's very far to go to support public nudity (or at least public toplessness by women), unless you impute quasi-mystical significance to the act of breastfeeding your child (which probably explains why we have the Gabriel Break-Away Feeding Pad (a feeding harness - I saw one which actually replicates breasts and looks like a bra, but can't find where it is online right now).

But then, even if I impute quasi-mystical significance to the act of sex, it doesn't mean that I should be allowed to have sex in public (assume for the sake of argument that I am impoverished and cannot afford a hotel room, or that since Hotel 81 has been forbidden from offering hourly rates, I have nowhere to go). Ditto for any religious significance I might attach to an act of, say, public defecation (even if I clean up after myself).

An alternative argument could be made about breastfeeding being temporary, whereas public nudity is an extended performantive act, but it seems weak to me and in any case sounds like it is making excuses for breastfeeding (like how those sanitary pads which don't rustle are supposed to make menstruation even more shameful than it is), so the activists are not going to use that line of argument.

Perhaps the best solution is something I saw one mother doing - covering your breastfeeding baby under a shawl or something similar.


Naturally, after I posted a short thought on Twitter (unfortunately, micro-blogging lacks context) I got engaged by some lactivists.

Besides repeated ad hominem insults ("Grow up and get a clue!"; "Growup & educate urself"; "you're DENSE and creepy"; "I don't know what strange planet you came from, but go back there."; "idiot")*, their objections were that:

* - Significantly, the only civil Lactivist was a guy. Make of that what you will.

1) Breastfeeding is okay because it benefits other people
2) Breastfeeding is just feeding a baby. Other people can eat in public, so why can't babies?
3) "it's only a recent anthropologic phenom for women to be ashamed of exposing breasts in public - not a problem for men - why differ?"
4) Babies are not meant to feed from bottles. Breasts are for feeding babies.
5) Grow up.
6) Hands have a sexual function also but we don't wear gloves to sign our name in public.

My responses were that:

1) If benefiting someone else makes an act okay, what if I bed someone really well? Even if you exclude sexual acts, it wouldn't be very nice for me to dress my friend's festering boil in public.

2) Babies can be fed from bottles. If I chose to eat from a trough in public (au porc), people would be disgusted, but if I did it in private it would be alright.

3) Actually in almost all non-tribal societies,the female breast is covered in polite company. This is not a recent phenomenon at all. The only exception I can think of: [Pre-Meiji] Japan (but even then it was the peasants who did this).

4) People are not meant to wear clothes or take antibiotics either.

If you take the naturalistic argument, human breasts are far larger than needed for milk production. They have an evolved sexual function.

5) *Silent amusement*

6) Do you support public nudity? (the response to this was a dodge and a change of subject)

At this point, I sensed close to zero marginal utility, so I decided to stop.

Well, actually a "RadicaLactivist" then came and engaged me, but I will reproduce only a short part of that exchange here:

"women CAN and should be able to go topless if they choose. Men do. And there is NO reason for a man to bare his breasts IN PUBLIC.

One should never touch/photograph another person without permission. One's dress or activities are irrelevant to basic Human Rights"

I guess the word "Radical" tells you all you need to know and explains the sexism and the disconnect from reality (she claimed those who photograph other people without permission are creeps with cameras)

Later she backpedalled somewhat and claimed she was neutral and going topless was a personal choice but, well.

Suffice it to say that, as usual, when you see the word "Radical" it's a sign to run far, far away; I'll never understand why some groups adopt 'radical' as a badge of pride. I've not encountered a case where it doesn't cover nuttiness.

"There are more fools in the world than there are people." - Heinrich Heine

***

"Since all argument must proceed from assumptions, it is plainly impossible to demand that all assumptions should be based on argument. The demand raised by many philosophers that we should start with no assumption whatever and never assume anything about 'sufficient reason', and even the weaker demand that we should start with a very small set of assumptions ('categories'), are both in this form inconsistent. For they themselves rest upon the truly colossal assumption that it is possible to start without, or with only a few assumptions, and still to obtain results that are worth while...

The irrationalist insists that emotions and passions rather than reason are the mainsprings of human action. To the rationalist's reply that, though this may be so, we should do what we can to remedy it, and should try to make reason play as large a part as it possibly can, the irrationalist would rejoin (if he condescends to a discussion) that this attitude is hopelessly unrealistic. For it does not consider the weakness of 'human nature', the feeble intellectual endowment of most most (sic) and their obvious dependence upon emotions and passions...

He who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens the way for those who rule by hate... Love as such certainly does not promote impartiality. And it cannot do away with conflict either... The greater the love, the stronger will be the conflict. There are only two solutions: one is the use of emotion, and ultimately of violence, and the other is the use of reason, of impartiality, of reasonable compromise... No emotion, not even love, can replace the rule of institutions controlled by reason...

Loving a person means wishing to make him happy... but of all political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of 'higher' values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams. And no doubt, there would be heaven on earth if we could all love one another. But, as I have said before... the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties. It is our duty to help those who need our help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy... Thus we might say: help your enemies; assist those in distress, even if they hate you; but love only your friends...

The adoption of rationalism implies, moreover, that there is a common medium of communication, a common language of reason; it establishes something like a moral obligation towards that language, the obligation to keep up its standards of clarity and to use it in such a way that it can retain its function as the vehicle of argument. That is to say, to use it plainly; to use it as an instrument of rational communication, of significant information, rather than as a means of 'self-expression', as the vicious romantic jargon of most of our educationists has it... Mankind is united by the fact that our different mother tongues, in so far as they are rational, can be translated into one another. It recognizes the unity of human reason...

Rationalism is critical, whilst irrationalism must tend towards dogmatism (where there is no argument, nothing is left but full acceptance or flat denial)... Criticism always demands a certain degree of imagination, whilst dogmatism suppresses it... It is humanly impossible for us to love, or to suffer with, a great number of people; nor does it appear to me very desirable that we should, since it would ultimately destroy either our ability to help or the intensity of these very emotions... We can love mankind only in certain concrete individuals. But by the use of thought and imagination, we may become ready to help all who need our help...

A rationalist attitude seems to be usually combined with a basically equalitarian and humanitarian outlook; irrationalism, on the other hand, exhibits in most cases at least some of the anti-equalitarian tendencies described."

--- The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 2 / Karl Popper:

A gem in otherwise dull (so far) War and Peace:

"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing--or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!...

Tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality--these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from...

That stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything--that's what women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!"

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter." - Aleister Crowley

***

Is the countryside racist? - "Nearly 8 per cent of the population is from an ethnic minority, and yet they make up only 1 per cent of the visitors to National Parks. Is the countryside a no-go zone for non-white Britain?... It’s a proposition that was put forward in 2007 by Liverpool University’s Professor Ann Jacoby, whose research condemned village communities for “harbouring discrimination and hostility”... there’s a difference between ignorance and “racism”, and one needs to remember that people in the country aren’t just hostile to ethnic minorities – they’re hostile to all outsiders. As Richard Younger-Ross, the Lib Dem MP for Teignbridge, has put it: “One lady in Widecombe said she was fed up with all the foreigners moving in... But she didn’t mean people from different ethnic backgrounds, she meant people from Newton Abbot.”... writer Hanif Kureishi has made the important argument that traditional English country pursuits simply do not appeal to certain ethnic groups, pointing out that his family would never have gone trekking in the countryside because it was considered demeaning for middle-class Indians “to traipse about like peasants”."

The Serious Need for Play - "A lack of opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play can keep children from growing into happy, well-adjusted adults. “Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving. Research into animal behavior confirms play’s benefits and establishes its evolutionary importance: ultimately, play may provide animals (including humans) with skills that will help them survive and reproduce... “games have a priori rules—set up in advance and followed. Play, on the other hand, does not have a priori rules, so it affords more creative responses.”"
This seems to contradict the evidence for parenting and environment doing nothing to affect how children turn out

Black widow woman who drugged, raped ten men - "A YOUNG Russian woman, a devoted collector of horror films and spiders, is on trial for sedating and raping 10 men... she undressed her victims and raped them, tightening a rope on their male organs to keep them erect... one of them refused to file a complaint against her. “It was great,” the unnamed man said. “I like hot women. I only wish she hadn't use the clonidine on me.”"

Playboy bunny reveals how to spot fake boobs - "The world's largest fake breasts are 36 MMM and weigh in at 20 pounds each"

Men become impotent because of women's low-cut dresses and bare legs - "Russian physiologist Leonid Kitaev-Smyk has stated that most male diseases are caused by women who adhere to provocative clothes and behaviour. As a result, the Western civilization gradually turns into the society of sexually unsatisfied men and eventually unsuccessful and physically unhealthy men, the scientist considers."
Uhh...

Delanceyplace.com 6/16/09 - Founding Fathers - "The success of the American Revolution generated much after-the-fact finger-pointing and criticism among its leaders as they vied for power in the new government and for their place in posterity... 'Washington quickly became the avatar of revolutionary achievement because the nation could hardly do without a conquering hero. But privately - and sometimes very publicly - many of his closest associates thought differently... Tom Paine, even after Washington had virtually been sanctified, told the public that had honored him for the crucial essay Common Sense that Washington was 'treacherous in private friendship . . . and a hypocrite in public life.'"

Study can't verify one 'drink-spiking' - "Of 100 suspected drink-spiking cases reviewed in a West Australian study, none were found to involve being slipped a sedative or illicit drug. What emerged instead was a concerning picture of excess alcohol and illegal drug use by people - usually young women - at the centre of these drink-spiking claims... When confronted with their test results, Dr Little said 35 per cent of the study participants continued to believe they had been spiked. He concludes real cases of drink spiking involving sedating or illicit drugs are "rare'', and "if drink spiking is going to occur, it will probably involve alcohol''."
It's okay, the patriarchy's glamourising of alcohol and drugs (its need to control women notwithstanding) is a form of spiking anyway

The Project: Fallen Princesses - "These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues."
I especially like Rapunzel II; bald women are hot.

The Internet Is Terrible » Blog Archive » Something about this video is off - This is a new spin on an old classic. If you don't get it (I didn't), read Comment #2.

I have received a US$30 (A$38; S$45) coupon code for the website Whooga Australia, which sells Ugg Boots (aka Uggs).


Uggs, for those who haven't heard, are the sheepskin-lined boots which are perfect for winter wear and have been popular with women for years. I am also informed that they have since become acceptable worn by the other half of the human population, with "Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake, Harvey Keitel and Ronnie Wood, plus a selection of Chelsea footballers" wearing them.

Their cheapest model, the Mini Ugg Boots, costs A$145.20 (including shipping; S$172), so after the discount they're only A$107.20 (including shipping; S$127). Models with more material naturally cost more. Incidentally their non-Ugg Tan Weave Boots cost the same as the Mini Uggs.

I couldn't find a price comparison online, probably because no retailers are insane enough to sell them in Singapore, but Whooga Ugg Boots (UK) is selling them for £65.00 (plus £9 for shipping, which adds up to £74.00; S$178.30).

So.

The coupon code is:

4GSSQX30

Since Uggs create a "bed of warm air [which] will keep your feet comfortable in temperatures as low as -30 degrees", readers located in temperate climes might wish to avail themselves of this coupon code (good for about 4 months).

Then again I've seen Singaporean women wearing Uggs in Singapore as well, so they can go ahead and use this coupon code too. After all, the "Merino sheepskin promotes circulation in your feet" and each pair "Aborbs moisture and odors".

Alternatively, you could be like Eleh, who wears them to sleep and on rainy days (the UK Whoooga folks got to her and sent her a free pair, but that's alright, since I wouldn't wear them anyway!)

"I am no more humble than my talents require." - Oscar Levant

***

Those who are ignorant of history (e.g. feminists) carp that lines such as:

"It's every man for himself"
"The fabric is man-made"
"What time does the postman come?" and
"Ask the average man in the street"

are sexist. Incidentally, these are actual example sentences from a book on "Sex Education" (whatever that has to do with Sex Education - this section, "Blue for boys and pink for girls", is bizarrely and abruptly jammed in between two agreeably relevant ones).

Yet, not only does this ignore the fact that centuries of use have effectively neutered the male pronoun, it leads one to question why they still use the terms "woman" and "women" to refer to their gender, since these terms build upon the hated root word of "man" in the first place.

Yet, they know that to use terms like "womyn", "womon" or "womin" will mark them out as positively batty and lose them what popular support they have, and so refrain from doing so.

As Hugh Rawson wrote on this topic,

"Woman" itself has a curious history, which may be of some consolation to female readers, since it shows that they are not, linguistically at least, derivatives of the other sex. "Woman," superficial appearance to the contrary, does not come from "man," but from the Old English "wif-mann," where "wif" meant "female" and "mann" meant a human being of either sex. As late as 1752, the philosopher David Hume could use "man" in the original sense, when contending that "...there is in all men, both male and female, a desire and power of generation more active than is ever universally exerted."

Carping about this "problem" is what is creating the problem in the first place.

Or more simply, they are taking a crap in public and then complaining that there's shit in the open.

As the page linked to earlier concluded,

[W]hat can you do with a philosophy which believes changing the spelling of a word (womyn/womin/wimmin, they can't even agree on that) is a significant act? Or that Ms should be pronounced Mz (as in miserable) and not be an abbreviation for anything at all? (Why not just eliminate the use of Mrs and use Ms, pronounced Miss, as the logical counterpart to Mr?)

Anyway, all the capable, independent, intelligent, competent women I know (and that's almost all of them) have far better things to do with their lives than indulge in these inane academic parlour games.

Great Wo-hen Nankan photoshops done by South Koreans from Know Your Meme: Asian Prince:

If IKEA bought GM:

"Needless to say, not all neologisms were semantic or loan translations. In fact, one of the most fascinating neologisms invented in this period was the gendering of the third-person pronoun in written Chinese, which occurred directly between European languages and Chinese. The original form of the Chinese character for the pronoun ta (他) contains an ungendered ren radical （人） (denoting the human species), and the gendering of this pronoun arose from circumstances of translation. For thousands of years, the Chinese had lived comfortably with the ungendered form of ta and other ungendered deictic forms. Suddenly they discovered that Chinese had no equivalent for the third-person feminine pronoun in English, French, and other European languages. Some Chinese perceived the absence of an equivalent as an essential lack in the Chinese language itself, and efforts were made to design neologisms to fill this lack. (It seems to me that this anxiety reflects a historical situation of perceived inequality between languages rather than a failing in the language itself. For instance, one does not experience much inconvenience when translating the French feminine plural elles into the ungendered English “they.”) After a few years of experiments with regional forms, such as yi from the Wu dialect, writers and linguists finally settled on writing the feminine ta （她） with a nü (woman) radical （女）. For instance, Lu Xun’s use of the third-person pronoun in his fiction reflects this interesting period of experimentation. As one study has pointed out, he started out by using ta written with its usual ungendered radical ren interchangeably with the Wu dialect word yi when he referred to his female characters in some of the early stories, such as “Tomorrow” (1920). The feminine pronoun written with a nü radicaldid not appear in his works until “New Year’s Sacrifice,” which was written in 1924. A year later, Lu Xun began to adopt another neologism, ta with a niu (cattle) radical （它）, to refer to animals, as in “Regret for the Past” (1925)."

--- Translingual practice / Lydia He Liu

(Hat tip to PPBI)

One of the reasons most religions have dietary restrictions is that they keep the religious group apart from its neighbors. Thus, it can be argued that integrative eating (i.e. accommodating people of various religions with different dietary requirements) is actually irreligious.

I didn't fully appreciate the role that imbibing sustenance comunally plays in bonding groups together until I encountered a secular instance of a peculiar dietary habit, and an unusual form of it at that.

Since this particular dietary habit was not sanctified by religion, tradition (e.g. Older Chinese not eating Beef) or pervasiveness (e.g. vegetarianism), others reacted as they are wont to do - with disgust, apprehension and ultimately, ostracism.