Baltics - Day 14, Part 2

"No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating." - Harold Rosenberg

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Baltics trip
Day 14 - 29th May - Museum of Occupations of Estonia, Mikkel Museum, Tallinn; Estonia (Part 2)

Estonia must be the first place I've ever been to or heard of which has museums closed on a Thursday.



World Heritage plaque for the Historic Centre/Old Town of Tallinn. I was very surprised that there was no French here.


Hotel L'ermitage's very modern look


Information plaque for building built with 2 symmetrical apartments

Next was the Museum of Occupations of Estonia. We visited it in our quest to show that all 3 countries' Occupation museums were the same, but we were pleasantly surprised.

Estonia's was the smallest but it used the best technology (not surprising given that it's the most developed of the 3) and had the best layoput and narrative. There were a lot of videos which were good but time-intensive (there was 3.5 hours of video in total). The place was also less emo, focusing more on what occured (Lithuania takes the cake with the claim of "genocide"). The museum also focused more on daily life during the Occupations, so the items were quite boring.


Statues beside toilet: Viktor Kingissepp, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin

The museums in Latvia and Estonia said the German occupation was worse than the Soviet one; I got the impression from Lithuania's that the German was worse. nw.t thought Estonia's glossed over the German Occupation (interestingly there was no talk about Estonians' collaboration with the Germans and tellingly there were few mentions of Jews), as they gushed about the Germans rescuing them from the Red Army and how life was better under the Germans. In fact, the only bad thing they said about the Germans was that they didn't free them and used their resources for war.


Rowboat used to flee to Sweden during WWII


Weapons


"Instead of reversing the downturn in the economy, those in power generated propagandistic double-talk that offended the senses." - HMM, this sounds familiar


Communications devices


The only cars worse than Protons (the one on the right is especially hideous)


Doors


Communist flags


Museum


The interesting sliding door


Their shitty independence monument


Another fair maiden at town walls

We then went to St Nicholas' Church, which housed the Medieval Art collection of the Art Museum of Estonia. It didn't allow photography: many places in Estonia didn't - it seemd to be correlated with economic development (and thus, the potential for selling books and postcards). Yet, although the collection was decent - the best we'd seen in the Baltics - almost without exception (much of it viewable on Wikipedia, including an excellent Danse Macabre fragment by the Lübeck master, Bernt Notke) I didn't mind the no photo rule since the correction paled compared to less scummy places elsewhere in Europe.

There was evidence of medieval globalisation: there were Low Country altarpieces which'd ended up in Estonian churches.


St Nicholas' Church


Portals

After the museum we split up - I went to the Mikkel Museum, which "我们去吧！" claimed had the only Rembrandts in the Baltics.


Girls blowing bubbles, sitting on town wall


Consulat De Monaco and Monaco Restaurant


My lunch: Geisha chocolate (I bought some back and people asked me if it was from Japan; it's made in Finland). It was very good actually.

The Mikkel Museum had a special exhibition: "Restored Estonia: Restoring the Cultural Heritage of the Estonian Republic from the 1920s and the 1930s"


"A 'gentleman from the Republican era' or a 'lady from the Republican era' never became Soviet folk. It was there for everybody to see how World War II and the Soviet occupation ruined the everyday life of Estonia...
While the adoration of heritage from the 1920s-1930s might have been replaced with a more sober and critical attitude, this also forms a part of Estonia's free and natural development. Growing up shatters many illusions, both for the people and their country. At the same time, grown-ups have the ability to look to the past and the future simultaneously and to contemplate their role in shaping the two neighbours of the present."
Again, I found it admirable how they faced up to reality so readily.


Sketch for "Bearers of the Cross of Liberty" by Raudsepp


Little Alma, Ants Laikmaa
"When the seven-year-old Alma went to pose for her artist uncle, she had to utter the following code upon knocking at the door of Laikmaa's studio in the back of the house: 'This is the Estonian lass, uncle's dear friend"
This sounds very dodgy


Flower table with gypsy locks, made by a farmhand
Functionality evidently isn't a major consideration


Kristjan Raud, Kalevipoeg Returns Home

I then went upstairs to see their permanent collection.


Russian porcelain, 20th century


A Midnight Modern Conversation, Unknown German Follower of William Hogarth, on the ills of drinking


Berlin Porcelain, 18th c.


The Finding of Moses, Jean Francois de Troy, 1714-7


Bird Yard, 19th c, Unknown German artist


Meissen porcelain, 18th c.


Berlin Pottery, 19th c.


Copenhagen Pottery, 19th-20th c.


They had a nice China collection also, but even I was not hardcore enough to take the laminated information sheet and match everything.




Goddess with a lion; Guanyin, Goddess of mercy


Seated Lady, 19th c. Unkonwn artist


Christ at Emmaus, 2nd half of 17th c. Unknown artist
Notice the bad restoration


Susanna at her Bath, unknown after Rubens
Far inferior to Rubens's original "Susanna and the Elders"


Christ with the Samaritan Woman at the Well, 19th c. Unknown German artist.


Information on Meissen pottery from Germany


Angel. This was one of my favourite works.


Dancer with a wreath of flowers. 19th c. Unknown, copy after Antonio Canova

After seeing all the museum had to offer I still couldn't find any Rembrandts (I looked carefully). I asked the museum staff who said they never had any; further research reveals there were supposed to be etchings by him, but I don't know, so.

Be that as it may, "我们去吧！" (Let's Go!) was still more accurate than "孤独地球" ("Lonely Planet"), which had named as Author's Choice this restaurant in Juodkrante, in the Curonian Spit in Lithuania, which had never served the writer's highly recommended variety of potato pancakes and which had, over the years, many tourists coming in to ask for the dish in question.

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." - John F. Kennedy

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Spam HWMNBN got. It's getting more and more ridiculous:


Dear Sir,

I am Sonia Ehiosun from Port Norvo, Benin. My parents were assassinated by unknown masked men on July 13thth 2008. I ran away from my school where I am living in the hostel because of fear of being killed by the people that killed my parents.

As I am writing to you now, I am in tears and my life has not been the same since the assassination of my parents. I am presently hiding in a convent in Kalavi district. I wish to seek your assistance to help me get out of this place.

I am ready to share with you my inheritance and it is because of the material things that my father owned that made both my family members and other people plan against my family and killed my parents. Please help me. I need your assistance.

There are so many false people in the internet and please if you do not have a genuine intention to help me do not harm me or destroy me. God is watching us and whatever goodness you show to me, God will bless you for it.

I come in peace be my consoler. I am suffering for no just cause and no one is showing concern.

Sonia.

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to." - Granville Hicks

***

Date Rape's Other Victim

"If sexual assault was really so pervasive, it seemed strange that the intricate gossip networks hadn't picked up more than one or two shadowy instances of rape. If I was really standing in the middle of an "epidemic," a "crisis" -- if 25 percent of my women friends were really being raped -- wouldn't I know it?

These posters were not presenting facts. They were advertising a mood. Preoccupied with issues like date rape and sexual harassment, campus feminists produce endless images of women as victims -- women offended by a professor's dirty joke, women pressured into sex by peers, women trying to say no but not managing to get it across.

This portrait of the delicate female bears a striking resemblance to that 50's ideal my mother and other women of her generation fought so hard to leave behind... it is the feminists themselves who are breathing new life into her...

73 percent of the women categorized as rape victims did not initially define their experience as rape; it was Mary Koss, the psychologist conducting the study, who did.

One of the questions used to define rape was: "Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs." The phrasing raises the issue of agency. Why aren't college women responsible for their own intake of alcohol or drugs? A man may give her drugs, but she herself decides to take them. If we assume that women are not all helpless and naive, then they should be held responsible for their choice to drink or take drugs. If a woman's "judgment is impaired" and she has sex, it isn't necessarily always the man's fault; it isn't necessarily always rape...

Rape is a natural trump card for feminism. Arguments about rape can be used to sequester feminism in the teary province of trauma and crisis. By blocking analysis with its claims to unique pandemic suffering, the rape crisis becomes a powerful source of authority...

The movement against rape, then, not only dictates the way sex shouldn't be but also the way it should be. Sex should be gentle, it should not be aggressive; it should be absolutely equal, it should not involve domination and submission; it should be tender, not ambivalent; it should communicate respect, it shouldn't communicate consuming desire...

The idea of "consent" has been redefined beyond the simple assertion that "no means no." Politically correct sex involves a yes, and a specific yes at that. According to the premise of "active consent," we can no longer afford ambiguity... The idea that only an explicit yes means yes proposes that, like children, women have trouble communicating what they want. Beyond its dubious premise about the limits of female communication, the idea of active consent bolsters stereotypes of men just out to "get some" and women who don't really want any...

According to common definitions of date rape, even "verbal coercion" or "manipulation" constitute rape. Verbal coercion is defined as "a woman's consenting to unwanted sexual activity because of a man's verbal arguments not including verbal threats of force." The belief that "verbal coercion" is rape pervades workshops, counseling sessions and student opinion pieces. The suggestion lurking beneath this definition of rape is that men are not just physically but also intellectually and emotionally more powerful than women.

Imagine men sitting around in a circle talking about how she called him impotent and how she manipulated him into sex, how violated and dirty he felt afterward, how coercive she was, how she got him drunk first, how he hated his body and he couldn't eat for three weeks afterward. Imagine him calling this rape. Everyone feels the weight of emotional pressure at one time or another. The question is not whether people pressure each other but how our minds and our culture transform that pressure into full-blown assault...

"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated," writes Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor and feminist legal scholar best known for her crusade against pornography. The language of virtue and violation reinforces retrograde stereotypes. It backs women into old corners. Younger feminists share MacKinnon's vocabulary and the accompanying assumptions about women's bodies... Of course, sophisticated modern-day feminists don't use words like honor or virtue anymore. They know better than to say date-rape victims have been "defiled." Instead, they call it "post-traumatic stress syndrome." They tell the victim she should not feel "shame," she should feel "traumatized." Within their overtly political psychology, forced penetration takes on a level of metaphysical significance: date rape resonates through a woman's entire life.

Combating myths about rape is one of the central missions of the rape-crisis movement. They spend money and energy trying to break down myths like "She asked for it." But with all their noise about rape myths, rape-crisis feminists are generating their own. The plays, the poems, the pamphlets, the Take Back the Night speakouts, are propelled by the myth of innocence lost...

People pressure and manipulate and cajole each other into all sorts of things all of the time. As Susan Sontag wrote, "Since Christianity upped the ante and concentrated on sexual behavior as the root of virtue, everything pertaining to sex has been a 'special case' in our culture, evoking peculiarly inconsistent attitudes." No human interactions are free from pressure, and the idea that sex is, or can be, makes it what Sontag calls a "special case," vulnerable to the inconsistent expectations of double standard.

With their expansive version of rape, rape-crisis feminists are inventing a kinder, gentler sexuality. Beneath the broad definition of rape, these feminists are endorsing their own utopian vision of sexual relations: sex without struggle, sex without power, sex without persuasion, sex without pursuit. If verbal coercion constitutes rape, then the word rape itself expands to include any kind of sex a woman experiences as negative...

Rape has become a catchall expression, a word used to define everything that is unpleasant and disturbing about relations between the sexes. Students say things like "I realize that sexual harassment is a kind of rape." If we refer to a whole range of behavior from emotional pressure to sexual harassment as "rape," then the idea itself gets diluted. It ceases to be powerful as either description or accusation.

Some feminists actually collapse the distinction between rape and sex [like] Catharine MacKinnon... Gillian Greensite, founder of the rape prevention education program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, writes that the seriousness of the crime "is being undermined by the growing tendency of some feminists to label all heterosexual miscommunication and insensitivity as acquaintance rape.""

"The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change." - Seth MacFarlane

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Democracy in Singapore: How Is One-Party Rule Possible? - "After extensive reflection, though, it hit me: Instead of comparing Singapore to other democratic countries, I should compare it to other democratic cities.  There are many major cities in the United States where one party wins supermajorities year after year. Democratic mayors have continuously ruled in San Francisco longer than Singapore has been an independent country!... Why is it easier to have a one-party city than a one-party country? There are probably a lot of reasons, but the most obvious is that smaller polities (measured in terms of both population and land area) are less diverse"
One comment: "With cities, people have already have voted with their feet. The Republicans who used to live in SF or NYC moved out."
Another on the PRI: "If a political party absorbs into its ranks with *paying* jobs _every_ young adult with _any_ interest in politics, it will be effectively unchallenged. At that age, they can be bought off very cheaply, and kept comfortable and turned compliant."

Singapore's future as a financial centre - "In 2006, now bankrupt Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reported that the number of "super-rich" Indonesians living in Singapore is a staggering 18,000 whose wealth amounts to approximately US$87 billion. Much of this wealth, complains the Indonesian Government, came from illegal activities in Indonesia. Xie added that in order to sustain its economy, Singapore was resorting to "building casinos to attract corruption money from China." Corrupt ruling generals in Burma are also suspected to be stashing their assets in Singapore... In a report in 2000, the United States State Department pointed out that the system in Singapore "provided opportunities for money launderers to conduct a wide range of illicit transactions."... It is such unwillingness to cooperate with foreign governments and the lack of transparency that has solidified Singapore's reputation as a tax haven... Building our nation up as a secretive tax haven is neither good politics nor good economics. The strategy is, at best, risky and, at worst, downright dangerous for Singaporeans both on the domestic and international fronts."

How to Marry the Man of Your Choice: Margaret Kent - "A practising lawyer in Miami, Kent also conducts a course that, she claims, has helped over 400 women to become wives since its origination in 1969. The author's detailed tips on male manipulation comprise a howling, humorous success, if not a sure guide to tying the triumphant knot. The chapters deal with each phase of the husband hunt from dressing attractively and looking one's best (including "dentures if you need them; missing teeth are a turnoff,") through the happy ending. According to game plan, a woman meeting future in-laws should "keep your shoes on unless they remove theirs." Premarital sex is encouraged, and ways to enhance bedtime are covered extensively: "Don't expect him to sleep on wet sheets!"; "Don't store trinkets or money in your underwear!" Kent's numerous one-liners beg for quotation, but the finale caps them all: a woman must ignore "dastardly acts" that her intended may commit as weak attempts to escape matrimony, she says, citing examples of a prospective benedict who slashed his fiancee's car tires, another who moved to Europe and one who brought a date to his weddingall three wound up married anyway."
I had this hilarious book until my mother threw it away, thinking it was one of my sister's "yellow books". Luckily there's a precis available online, where one can laugh at what would be considered misogynist if applies to the opposite sex.

Fantasy Island - "America has its run-of-the-mill massage parlors and topless bars, but only in Tokyo can you find entire clubs populated by faux-nurses, teachers, stewardesses, and secretaries—not to mention naked karaoke, mirrored floors, life-size latex dolls, and bathtubs filled with green gel and faux-mermaids."

Amahs On Wheels - The Story of 'Amahs' - ""Amah." An affectionate term used during the British Colonial era for a live-in housekeeper who is often treated as part of the family. Often associated with values such as reliability, trust and professionalism in work. Decades old professionalism with today's cleaning know-how now taking on a new definition in our modern lifestyle, Amahs On Wheels... The pioneering spirit at Amahs On Wheels led to the foundation of the AOW Academy of Domestic Services"
Do they take a vow of celibacy?

Meeting the cannibals of Papua New Guinea: "Japanese people taste the best - whites are too salty!"

The virtual battle of the sexes - "The study looked at gender differences in more than 2,400 gamers playing EverQuest II... although more of the players were male, it was the female players who were the most dedicated players, spending more time each day playing the game than their male counterparts... The pressure to conform to traditional gender roles might mean that some women are put off activities seen as "masculine", whereas women who reject traditional gender roles might be more likely to play MMOs such as EverQuest II. Perhaps in support of this the survey revealed an unusually high level of bisexuality among the women who took part in the study - over five times higher than the general population."

'Viagra lure' for Afghan warlords - "In one case, a 60-year-old warlord with four wives was given four pills and four days later detailed Taleban movements in return for more... The paper said the CIA had a long line of inducements for the notoriously fickle warlords, including dental work, visas, toys and medicine. It quoted one private security official as saying that simply handing over large sums of money would raise suspicions about newfound wealth."

15 Unfortunately Placed Ads - And more

No breakfast, earlier sex: Japan study - "In a study of 3,000 people, those who did not regularly eat breakfast when in their early teens said they lost their virginity at an average age of 17.5, versus an overall average of age 19 for all Japanese."

Young Nursing Student uses her bra in a pinch! - "Using her bra to stop the bleeding, a Calgary woman is being credited with helping save the life of a man beaten unconscious outside a southwest nightclub."

Satish Narayan dies after his wife Rajini allegedly set his genitals alight

Beardos - "A beard is a bullshit filter. It keeps me from working at lame places and 
interacting with lame people... “A beard is a scarf that works great while bike riding in this climate—it’s better than wool!... A beard is a friend who is always there to give you a hug."
Hair has much utility.

World of Warcraft Players Need Not Apply - "A member on F13, a forum for game-related news, recounted a recent conversation with an Australian online media recruiter about his hobby of playing online games like World of Warcraft: “I happened to mention I’d spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online game… He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100 percent because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc.”"

Beijing restaurant captures online game trend - "The restaurant's entrance is a real-life re-creation of the opening animation from the game, The World of Warcraft. The dining area is called the Hall of Snow Storms." Here, an immense plasma screen displays action from the game. There's a towering tree at the centre of the dining "portal," creating a pleasing ambience for leisurely diners. Most patrons are fans of the multi-player game."

0.

TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG!!!