Reflections, Reflections

dave bones (comment at RWS)

Thanks to a lousy Internet connection, I lost a post that focused on analyzing a thread on ACE regarding homosexuality, plus some recent posts by Clayton on the subject. Haven't had time to rewrite it.

In the meantime (been very busy), here's the only thing worthwhile that this rich guy ever said:


Thank you for reminding guys what they should really be born knowing ;-) We, anti-Paris-Hilton-types, deserve to be showered with lovely gifts and sweet souvenirs and everything else that our hearts desire.

And I found a great jazzy/swinging free online radio station, accuradio.

I have to say I like the word "doucement" for the special reason that it is just one word, but it is so perfect to adapt to different meanings depending on the context used. Fascinating thing about language. "Doucement" can mean: gently, slowly, smoothly, softly, lightly, quietly, mildly, with care, and more. But it has such a "gentleness" to it.

Maybe you all knew this about medieval pilgrimages designed to see and venerate a very specific part of Jesus' body, but I had never ever heard of it before! (further below in the text)

Pilgrims and relics: 7th - 14th century AD

Pilgrims are the tourists of the Christian Middle Ages. Like tourism in modern times, pilgrimage is an important strand in the medieval economy. It needs careful nurturing. Even Rome, the centre of western Christianity, benefits from special offers to attract the tourists - such as the plenary indulgences available, from 1300, to Roman pilgrims in a jubilee year.

Lesser cities and towns need a compelling attraction to bring the pilgrims, and no draw can compete with that of an exceptional relic. Long a feature of other religions, such as Buddhism, holy relics become an obsession in medieval Christianity.

The most desirable relics are those connected with Jesus himself. The True Cross is so valuable as to provoke warfare between the Byzantine empire and the Persians. The exquisite Sainte Chapelle is built in Paris specifically to house the Crown of Thorns.

Physical remains of Christ incarnate would be irresistible, but the doctrine of the Resurrection makes any such fragment a theological impossibility. There is only one exception - the relic of the Circumcision.

The foreskin of Jesus, cut from his body during his first days on earth, is so desirable that as many as fifteen versions of it are on show to pilgrims in different medieval churches. [15 versions!! too funny]

Another famous example of the Holy Foreskin can be seen by medieval pilgrims at one of the great French pilgrimage centres, Chartres - where the relics also include the Holy Tunic supposedly worn by the Virgin Mary when giving birth to Jesus.

Such relics of the Holy Family are of necessity rare. The objects more often on display are sometimes highly imaginative (pilgrims to Canterbury can see some of the clay left over after God fashioned Adam).

Other highly imaginative relics include:

- a vial of the Virgin's milk; [by that time 1500 years old, but just as if it were fresh - a miracle! ;-) ]
- Christ's portrait painted by no hand;
- St. Thomas' finger which touched Christ's wounds;
- St. Peter's chains;
- the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul; [What?? I wonder what in the world these relic heads would have looked like like...]
- the laws which God gave to Moses.

From which we conclude there was no end to the cleverness of some salespeople in the middle ages...

A manners manual for young noblemen, by Giovanni della Casa, early 16th century, includes these gems:

- The gentleman must not put his foot on the (meal) table or relieve himself in public.
- When speaking he must not wave his hands around as though swatting flies.
- He should not leave his study with his pen behind his ear.
- After blowing his nose he should not open his handkerchief and look in it, as though there were pearls and rubies there.
- He should not sniff the wine or food that others are about to consume or even sniff his own.
- He should not smack his lips when eating.

as though swatting flies... LOL
open his handkerchief and look in it, as though there were pearls and rubies there... too funny

At least they used handkerchiefs, as opposed to the disgraceful modern plebs that never carry a hanky around and spend hours making the most gross nasal noises in order to keep their nose water from spilling out.

(manual mentioned in the book: Pietro Bembo, Lover, Linguist, Cardinal.)

I don't know if where you are you get this, but everyday when I go out, I get to see a variety of mothers strolling along their babies on baby-carriages and strollers. And it's just lovely, it can be very hot or freezing cold, there they are, anywhere from leisurely promenading to lively cruising, just a lovely scene of moms and their babies.

In case you didn't know, the baby carriage was invented in 1733 by English architect William Kent for the 3rd Duke of Devonshire's children. The first baby carriages were designed to be pulled by dogs or Shetland ponies and were large and bulky!

Can you imagine:

"Honey, I'm going to take the baby out for a stroll."

"I'll have the pony ready in just a second."

As they developed through the years suspension was added, making the ride smoother for both the baby and the person pushing it.

Uh, no kidding, anyone who has been on a vehicle with little or no suspension knows the value of that!

A human-powered baby carriage was not developed in the United States until Charles Burton came up with the idea in 1848.

That's more than a century afterwards! Took humans long enough to have that idea!!!

Pedestrians, in America at least, did not take kindly to Burton's invention at first as inexperienced operators tended to run into them.

too funny! It reminds me of those subway scenes in certain countries where the doors open and instead of the people who are exiting taking one side and the ones entering, the other, they just moronically colide into one big mess! LOL

A discussion where I criticized all the ridicule and maliciousness that was dumped on the victims of the fake breast-examining doctor case. As if he presented himself as some pervert and the women simply did not suspect anything because they were "stupid."

My comments on someone's blog:

Obviously, that's not how he goes about it. It's not too hard to imagine how an old guy could come up with a whole act that he is part of the Department of Community Health, they are doing a cancer education program, says he is a doctor, and that he wants to talk to her about prevention, he blabbers, later, he offers to do a cancer screening exam, etc etc. I could see some women getting tricked by it.

Which were answered by:

Tricked? Nope. This falls clearly in the category of "stupid."

Alessandra wrote:

Totally disagree. No one ever deserves to get molested because they were naive. The assumption that these women wanted to be sexually assaulted is what is disgusting.

People lie all the time about very serious issues and others around them can are easily tricked.

There are people who are very good impersonators, and some are even involved in serious crimes.

People's ability to be suspicious also has to do past experience/knowledge and their educationa/cultural level.

This is another example where lack of knowledge in psychology makes people blame the victims, not to mention the nasty ridicule.

Answer:

Any twit with a half of brain would know that a physician will never do door-to-door breast exams. You aren't talking naivete here, these are women who are just plain stupid and they are so stupid it is insulting to the rest of us. They aren’t too young, they aren't feeble minded with age, and they should be more worldly at those ages; they have been to a physician before, I would think, and should understand the ropes. You can’t excuse their stupidity without recognizing that this is exactly what it is... stupidity.

Alessandra wrote:

The fact that they were naive does not take away their personal responsibility.

What is "stupid?" Are you suggesting they had mental retardation? Have you not heard of the tens of thousands different scams that humans have successfully invented as they pass off as someone or other ? Many work based on psychological manipulation.People's minds go far beyond their intellectual abilities and this is where psychology comes in, and quite often completely overrides rationality.

People aren't born with knowledge or the capacity to know everything and to suspect correctly everything, you must be completely snotty to think if someone somewhere hasn't acquired the same knowledge you have, it is because of a low IQ.

Answer:

Alessandra you just contradicted your point by saying: "The fact that they were naive does not take away their personal responsibility."

Alessandra wrote (after searching and finding more tidbits of information that show that my initial assumptions were right on target!):

Only if you mistake what I wrote for implying that no one should ever have any responsibility over anything - which is a big incorrect distortion. Or that naiveness equates to no one having to have personal responsibility. Another incorrect distortion. Or that only people who didn't fall for the scam have personal responsibility. Either you didn't understand what I wrote or you jumped to very mistaken conclusions about it.

Take the typical scams where someone pretends to be an agent that needs to process a certain fee and asks for the target's bank account information. Depending on how the scam person presents themselves, they can succeed in posing as some official agent and getting illegally the information they seek.

This does not mean any person who is contacted by such a scam artist has no responsibility over their financial information. Everyone has personal responsibility always. But if the way you decode the situation is not enough or is not appropriate for you to perceive the situation as a scam, you will be tricked. And factual information is only one component, other psychological dynamics can even completely override data, which is how we respond to people on a psychological level.

This means that you still are responsible for trying to advert any scam, but your ability to do so can be impaired based on lack of factual data and psychological dynamics. So, if a person didn't choose to be tricked, and was tricked, even though they still have personal responsibility over their lives, to blame them is to blame the victim.

re this case, I found this: "Authorities believe he targeted women who don't speak English well and women who don't have health insurance."

What does this tell you? He was going exactly for women who would have trouble figuring out it was a scam. Women who don't speak much English could certainly have a much lower awareness level compared to educated people about how doctors behave in the US, or compared to many Americans who are quite familiar with the behavior of the medical community; such women could be easily fooled, they might have not that much schooling, and this information that lots of bloggers believe every woman is born with was just not there for them.

Same for women with no health insurance, who could be poor, not that educated, and lack the necessary info to know that a hospital wouldn't send a doctor door-to-door like that - which is what I read his line was.

---

It's sad to see how the media (and the blogosphere specially) just made one big tawdry joke of the victims. And it's particularly cretinous the action of totally blaming the victims, as if doing this showed intelligence.

Below is a comment from ACE thread that actor Charlie Sheen has been caught by (ex?)wife viewing child porn (including homosexual child porn). It's not the particular person who made the comment who matters at all here, it's the contrary, it is a perfect example of a view that is found in millions of people (certainly including liberals and conservatives).

I couldn't care less if stupid Charlie Sheen is into gay porn or any of that. It's the CHILD porn that makes me wonder why that fucker isn't in jail.

And I'd be willing to bet there are at least a few here who think the "pigtails, braces, hairless" look is something they'd like as well. Probably not too many parents of young girls (or boys, if that's your bag), though.

There's something seriously fucking wrong with that shit. Even if the girls are 18+ and just dressing up, the attraction to "children" is just PLAIN WRONG. SICK.

Whence we conclude that one fundamental cornerstone of a certain ensemble of views that are simultaneously pro-adult-porn and anti-minor-porn is that it displays a concern only with violence against minors.

Which is a very stark contradiction in terms, since porn advocates an understanding of sex that normalizes huge components of sexual violence and degradation for adults (in a variety of explicit and less explicit ways).

My take on the underlying psychological dynamics is that there is no identification or thought of adults as potential victims of sexual violence, nor any empathy for the problem, specially by people who are privileged enough to have a sense of security (whether more real or illusory).

We see that in this pro-adult-porn and anti-minor-porn view, there is no thought that adults can be endangered and suffer sexual violence which is promoted by porn culture. Although any adult who is potentially at risk obviously needs protection, the only category that merits a feeling of protection are minors (since for obvious reasons children can be relatively more vulnerable, taking a broad generalization).

Also related to the above idea is the correlate that mass production of porn culture is not related to attitudes and behaviors that culminate in sexual harassment. Porn culture promotes a harmful degree of aggression, not simply an assertive one, but one which includes degrading and dehumanizing sexual attitudes and behaviors, a cornerstone of various psychological processes that will give an individual their internal green light to commit harassment or violence.


Posted by alessandra at April 22, 2006 11:20 AM

Interesting article on how television conditions harmful values/attitudes (and consequently behaviors) of teens and children (focus on Jamaica and music videos).

Aggressive promotion of an acquisitive, consumerist culture among television viewers, children in particular —‘Must have', ‘I want it now'—Mantras of instant gratification supported by merchandising without mercy. Someone describes what now obtains in America as “the corporate seduction of kids”. Take Pokemon for example. For the life of me I couldn't understand why these ugly little things were so popular among children. Then I studied the marketing strategy and the way everything was bundled and interrelated and I did get it. Television was one just one part of the overall mix. There were the trading cards, the branded clothes, the little ‘Pokemon people', websites, chat room, newsletters and the list goes on and on. Originating in Asia , this product took the children market by storm. But Pokemon on television in Sweden didn't end with the standard jingle and clever extortion to kids, “Gotta catch ‘em all.” That was deemed to be stealth advertising, being used to push the Pokemon playing cards and was therefore banned.



We've all seen the mayhem in toy stores and supermarkets when parents refuse to acquiesce to the pressures from their children to purchase products seen on TV. While the United States is big on child abuse and anti-corporal punishment, we in the Caribbean tend to be more lax. So we have children being bashed around and brutally beaten for wanting the very things which television tells them they ‘must have'.

[Is this horrendous or what?]

This double standard and mixed messages are confusing for children and harmful to their health. In the same way they told that they must have the toys, video games etc. being advertised, children are also told they must have the food and the caffeine laced sodas in order to be ‘cool'. The world is now faced with an epidemic of obesity and television advertising has come in for a fair share of the blame. For American children the obesity rate for 6 to 12 year olds has tripled over the past thirty years, moving from 5 to 16%. While unable to source the current figure, twenty years ago approximately 20% of girls in the 10 to 19 years age range in Barbados were already obese. Today the figure is likely to be higher although this island has pretty much managed to keep out American fast food chains. But for how long? Not long, if Barbados intends to remain in WTO where the fundamental philosophy is market liberalization.



• Sex sells, and underage sex sells even more.

In Jamaica we hear of school girls exchanging sexual favours for money so that they can buy the latest ‘bling' things that they see paraded by young girls like themselves in music videos and on TV in general. The clothes, the hairstyles, the jewellery all fall in the category of ‘must have' for many teenage boys and girls. The kinds of behaviours they see in television advertising and on music videos, which I argue have now become largely soft pornography programmes and virtual infomercials for fashion designers, are fast becoming ‘must do' behaviours. A supplier of Jamaican programmes to cable television in New York once told me that he didn't need to market pornography because he had the Jamaican dancehall music videos. Many music videos positively position sex alongside cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol. Research conducted in 1994 found that almost 26% of MTV videos contained smoking, while 20% of the 500 different music videos selected at random from four TV networks showed drinking. In one third (1/3) of the cases alcohol use occurred in conjunction with sexual behaviour.

Also:

[...]

What do these statements tell us? The adolescents believe that music videos give them the OK to have sex, after all everybody they see in these videos are ‘doing it', furthermore the videos encourage unprotected sex since as one girls pointed out, you hardly ever hear a video talking about use a condom. Interestingly, even the young ones in the 10 to 12 years age range mentioned the ways in which music videos are beginning to promote homosexuality.

Shoving homosexuality down's girls throats is more like it.

We hear girls blaming the way men behave on what they see and hear in the music videos. And we hear boys blaming the increased sexual activity among girls as a consequence of what these girls see portrayed in the videos. One really bright and eloquent older adolescent boy told me that in his attempts to court a girl he presented himself as someone very driven. Her response was that rather than a man who is ‘driven', she prefers a man who drives. So a hard working man is no longer an attractive option, rather it's men like those in the videos that girls aspire to catch; The ones with the fancy, fast cars, the bling and the ‘bitches'—that's how women are referred to in many of the rap/hip-hop songs.

The ugly minds of liberals/pro-homosexuality people.

I wrote this to a guy that thinks calling women sluts and being offensive to them is an example of being a Christian:

That's interesting because if you can't tell the difference between porn and the Bible, or the fact that Jesus didn't go around being obscene, vulgar, and putrid regarding women and sexuality means that what you think of "religiosity" isn't very Christian.

He then tried justifying mixing sexuality with degradation and offense by nothing less than the Bible!

Actually, the ancient Middle Eastern version of porn is in the Bible. You might be interested in a study of the Song of Solomon sometime, which is an example of the erotic literature of its time that extols the wonders of a concubine. It is, nevertheless, another divinely inspired message from God to us, and another revelation of His love for us. The cultural context changes; today we recoil in horror at the institution of concubinage, which is a polite way of referring to female sex slaves. But God's message to us never changes.

Here is a bit of the Song of Solomon (read it all)-

My beloved is all radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
beside springs of water,
bathed in milk,
fitly set.
His cheeks are like beds of spices
yielding fragrance.
His lips are lilies,
distilling liquid myrrh.
His arms are rounded gold,
set with jewels.
His body is ivory work,
encrusted with sapphires.
His legs are alabaster columns,
set upon bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as the cedars.
His speech is most sweet,
and he is altogether desirable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem. (Song 5:10-16 RSV)

Sordid, depraved, and sleazy, isn't it? Just like porn, isn't it?

And read this review in case you are not familiar with it:

The book of Proverbs is the expression of the will in man, summed up in the most quoted of the proverbs, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him [that is the choice of the will], and he will make straight your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6) The mind and the heart together must apply knowledge to the direction of the will to choose the right way. All through Proverbs you will find the emphasis is on the appeal to the will.

Now if the book of Job is the cry of the spirit, and Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes the cry of the soul, the Song of Solomon is preeminently the cry of the body in its essential yearning. And what is the essential yearning of the body? For love. Therefore, the theme of this book is love. It is an eastern love song, an oriental love poem, and there is no use denying that. It is frankly and fully that. It is a revelation of all that was intended in the divinely given function that we call sex. It is sex as God intended sex to be, involving not just a physical activity, but the whole nature of man.

For sex permeates our lives; Freud was right about that. But sexual response and impulse touches us more than physically. It also touches us emotionally, and even spiritually; God made us that way. There is nothing wrong with this. But this is where Victorianism went astray. It was pushed to extremism by the enemy. (This is always the devil's activity -- to push attitudes toward sex into extreme positions.) So sex went into prudishness, as though it were some unmentionable subject, as though it were something that should be kept locked up in drawers and hidden away behind curtains.

But that is not the way you find it in the Bible. In the Bible, sex, like every other subject, is handled frankly and dealt with forthrightly. It is set forth as God intended it to be. So first and foremost, the Song of Solomon is a love song describing with frankness and yet with purity the delight of a man and his wife in one another's bodies. There is nothing pornographic or obscene about it, nothing licentious. As you read though it, you can see how beautifully and chastely it approaches this subject.

The book comes to us in what we would call musical play form. The characters in this play are Solomon, the young king of Israel -- this was written in the beginning of his reign, in all the beauty and manliness of his youth -- and the Shulammite. She was a simple country lass of unusual loveliness who fell in love with the king when he was disguised as a shepherd lad working in one of his own vineyards in the north of Israel.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us that he undertook expeditions to discover what life was like on various levels. Once he disguised himself as a simple country shepherd lad, and in that state he had met this young lady. They fell in love, and after they had promised themselves to each other, he went away and was gone for some time. The Shulammite girl cries out for him in her loneliness.

Then comes the announcement that the king in all his glory is coming to visit the valley. While the girl is interested in this, she is not really concerned because her heart longs for her lover. But suddenly she receives word that the king wants to see her. She doesn't know why until she goes to see him, and discovers that he is her shepherd lad. He takes her away and they are married in the palace.

The play is set in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, and a chorus of singers, referred to as the daughters of Jerusalem, asks certain leading questions from time to time during the account of the events leading up to the courtship, betrothal and marriage. The Shulammite girl addresses them on three occasions. It is interesting to note that the word "Shulammite" is the feminine form of Solomon. Therefore we would call this lady Mrs. Solomon. She is the bride, and we read of her encounter with this young man their courtship and the strength and the methods and the delights of love.

My reply to his snide justification:

Given that there was a lot of sexual violence and degradation in ancient times as there is now, and I would imagine coupled by even more serious cultural denial than at the current moment, I find it puzzling that you equate what is mostly a love poem between a bridegroom and a bride to "ancient porn," either by modern or ancient standards. However, even if this is the most erotic/explicit material ever produced in ancient times, it only means that ancient society curtailed the mass production of the equivalent diseased, destructive sexuality materials that today's pigsty is obsessed with.

It is intriguing that you are completely unaware of the differences that exist between Hustler magazine, between sexually torturing people for a diseased pleasure, between sexual degradation of all kinds that are bandied about as "entertainment" and what the Song of Solomon talks about. It is also quite sad that you choose the Song of Solomon to justify being vulgar and demeaning with women.

But perhaps that is because we go to different churches. For example, if your pastor's sermons center on how to excrement on people, how to commit adultery with interns, how to rape women "because they like it," how to degrade women with all kinds of animals, how to be a pimp and a 'ho, and the benefits of a homo sauna - how could it ever dawn on you that those are not exactly God's messages?

If the pastors of your Church preach that a healthy and respectful relationship is one between a man and a woman, donkeys, homo saunas, prostitutes, and kids, how could you know that there is a bit of a difference between porn and the Bible ? Yes, it must all be very obscure for you, because you are simply naive, and not something else.

"which is a polite way of referring to female sex slaves. But God's message to us never changes."

On the other hand, if the Inquisition used the Bible to justify murdering and torturing people, including small children, I guess there is no end to what the Bible ends up being used to justify, even when it couldn't be farther away from Jesus' teachings.

From Kell, at Mr. T's:

While this is a topic not many people want to talk about, there are a few out there that truly can not understand how difficult weight issues are. Mr. Twisted, while I adore him, is one of them. He and I have had a conversation about this very subject. My first point being, that if you have never walked in a fat person’s shoes, you will never understand. This commentary will most likely include a number of TMI topics, so be warned! I have several sisters who are very heavy. My parents are overweight. My twin sister was the only one that escaped the wide-ass curse. But… she worked out an insane amount, rarely remembered to eat and was constantly moving. When she ate, she could really EAT! And it didn’t bother her, a la Mr. Twisted. I think she would have been actually happy if she had been able to hold on to some weight. Me? I have had five children in the last 16 years. Each pregnancy left me heavier than the last. Two years ago, after the final one, I was tired of it. I have lost 53 pounds since then. I am still not happy with the way I look, but that is my issue to deal with. But with this family history and a personal journey, I feel like I can put in a few thoughts on whose fault this is…. It is mine. It is yours. It is theirs.

It is not the fault of Big Food America. While they have helped us along, they didn’t threaten to pull the trigger. They HAVE made “Flavorists” a 1.4 billion dollar industry. 10,000 new processed foods are released every year. But diet food is artificial and not nutritional. It is empty food. Non fat food has as many calories as most regular fat foods. Low Fat and Non Fat labels does not mean healthy. But there is a freedom to being a consumer. I don’t have to buy them. I can read the labels and find this out myself. I can shop the ring of the store and avoid the crap… (Fresh produce, dairy, and leans meats are stocked around the outside of every store. The center is the danger zone!) It isn't just a fast food nation that is to blame. 85% of the food we consume is purchased at a store.

People who blame the media? Yes, they portray unrealistic expectations of what beautiful is. But I have to decide if that is beautiful, now don’t I? I can disagree... I can say that I don’t find slim and nearly emaciated women beautiful. Interesting tidbit… The island of Fiji idolized women who were round, soft and curvy as being beautiful. Western television was introduced and within 2 1/2 years they were dealing with eating disorders. Unheard of prior to TV exposure. An average model is 5’11 and weighs 117 pounds. An average woman in the US is 5’4 and weighs 140 pounds. (Woo Hoo I am tall!) By 4th grade, 80% of girls have tried a diet. But it is still a personal choice and a parent’s responsibility.

There is a reason that the Diet Industry is worth billions. Americans spend as much on diet products as the Federal Government spends on education, every year. And that does not include athletic items, gym memberships, or fitness products. The industry preys on the vulnerability of people who don’t feel that they are good enough. Weight is an issue not just with food or lack of exercise. It has a lot to do with self esteem, feelings, depression, and is completely emotional. Not unlike drinking and drug use. It is estimated that 5-10 million women and over a million men have some sort of eating disorder. Food is a form of self torture for these people. Yet Americans are getting fatter by the day. They are sedentary and in 2005 spent 4 billion dollars on french fries and another 3 billion on potato chips. So where does that leave us?

Weight is a personal problem, not a national one. Yes, there are dealers out there (Lay’s, Ben and Jerry’s, Coca Cola, Hostess) with products that are hazardous to your health. But just like you can walk around the crack house, you can walk away from the crap. I had to be fat AND miserable enough to fix the problem. My problem. I realized that I was chaining myself to the house each time I had a child in order to breast feed them for months and months because I had read that they would be 22% less likely to have weight problems if I did. That was the revelation. I was willing to be chained to the house for them, but not to help myself. So I changed the way I eat. (Which is still not healthy enough, but I am working on it.)

Then there is exercise. Yes, it is very hard to make time. Not many people have the inclination or time to do what they “should.” But…. I have five children, eight if you add in the three adults who can’t seem to care for themselves. I take care of them all 100%- cooking, cleaning, laundry, helping with homework, etc. I am working on my Bachelor’s Degree taking one accelerated class every 5 weeks. I work 25-35 hours a week at my job. I volunteer about 10-12 hours a week between the three schools. I drive carpool and take everyone to their music practices and athletic practices and the resulting games and recitals. Plus, I am the scorekeeper for two teams and yet I find a way to do something at least every other day on average. So to those that have the ability just not the inclination yet…. Get off your ass

By Kell (aka "the one who keeps me sane").

---

Jonathan Scott commented:

It is so easy to blame your problems on an external condition (physical or environmental).

I think with the question of weight, it can go from a reasonably small problem to a very complex one for each different person, so the minute we paint everyone with the same brush, we lose most of our ability to understand the cases where it is complex.

For people with deep psychological problems that are related to under or over-eating, unless they get serious help with the psycho-emotional stuff, the advice on nutrition and dieting can be quite useless, and can actually be harmful, if it robs people of the capacity to address the real root of the problem or get help.

For people with lifestyle difficulties (sedentary, preference for junk food, etc), but not profound emotional problems, it's much more possible to change habits. But it doesn't mean it's easy. At. All.

I recently met a guy (probably around his mid-50s) who lost around 50 lbs as well JUST by changing what he eats. I think that gets more results for men, because they can eat more calories per day.

You know something that has helped me? I began to be very curious about the phenomenon of craving for a particular food. Why do we crave for one specific food at a particular moment? It's a really interesting question. I don't mean being hungry for a particular type of food, I mean that craving, dreaming, yearning, gnawing feeling. And if you are on a diet, usually the craving is more intense. Why?

So I started to ask myself, if I listed all the foods I ate on a certain day, which were the most gratifying? And often I would find that I enjoyed mostly the taste of some very healthy, lightweight stuff, along with the experience of eating it, lots of things you usually don't crave for because they are never "prohibited." That was interesting, because gratification also has to do with what you think will gratify you. And this sometimes is nothing but an illusion or cultural conditioning.

Weight is a personal problem, not a national one.

I think it's both, because problems with weight are so tied to cultural dynamics, and these dynamics seem to be getting more neurotic and destructive with each passing day. There's the couch potato aspect, there's the junk/fast food dynamics, the fashion and media industry, the dehumanized artificial beauty/sexy standards, etc. Not to mention the huge growth of the cosmetic surgery industry, which is also related to all of this.

I was thinking the other day that all of this stifling and binding cultural problems can be just as intense (for women) as the custom of foot binding in China. We've changed the binding, but the intensity with which we are stunted by a lot of nonsense remains the same.

Veering off into a related but different subject, not too long ago I read an article about ten year old girls hating their bodies. Ten year olds, for Christ's sake. Not that it makes it any less harmful or sad for a teenager or adult woman to hate their body. And I also think of how much time women spend fretting over all of this, and this is really mental time robbed from you and much more important thoughts. Life is, after all, very short, and should be experienced as more than a waste of years of neurotic obsession about oppressive beauty/appearance standards and lifestyles/comsumption patterns.

I don't like the sound of Arabic, I find it very annoying, which is just as true, but slightly less, for German. Since I do have to hear people speaking in Arabic with a certain frequency, I just feel like telling them to be quiet or change the language :-) And I can't stand the sound of Chinese (or any other from this Asian family of idioms, including neighboring ones). But I love all the South African clicking sound languages. Too cool.

Languages to me are like songs, the sound quality jumps out at me and I can feel anywhere from love to utter and the most profound annoyance at the ensemble of sounds. It has nothing to do with the language itself and what it may express or how, just how it sounds.

Violent day started with slaying of two perverts
By Kevin Rothstein and Jessica Fargen

Joseph L. Gray’s violent death at 3:15 a.m. ended a life he had restarted in Milo, Maine, after leaving a troubled past in Massachusetts.

The family associate, who did not want to be named, said Gray had served time in the mid-1990s for sex crimes involving youths in Bristol County.

Police told Gray’s relatives the 57-year-old was targeted because of his status as a sex offender. But the source said there didn’t appear to be a personal connection between Gray and the alleged shooter, 19-year-old Stephen A. Marshall.

Maine State Police suspect Gray and another registered sex offender, 24-year-old William Elliott, were killed by Marshall, who shot himself last night on a bus headed into South Station.

Gray lived in Mansfield in the early 1990s, records show, and he has family that still lives in the area. Gray was also charged in Maine in 2002 with operating under the influence, a probation violation. He served three days in jail.

Elliott was arrested in 1999 on two counts of the misdemeanor charge of terrorizing and given a suspended sentence of 120 days in jail. He violated his probation 75 days later and his probation was revoked, according to Maine criminal records.

He was arrested in April 2002 and charged with sexual abuse of a minor, assault and obstructing the report of a crime. In June 2002, he was sentenced to four months in county jail. Elliott’s crimes were committed in Maine.

---

I'm not going to spend time prefacing this news report with a speech about the problems of people taking justice in their own hands, arguments that often drip with the hypocrisy of the privileged. Without knowing more about what Gray or Elliott did, if their deaths were crimes for justice, I'm just sorry Marshall killed himself. And if the day started with killing two perverts, not such a bad start after all. (And I won't bother posting all the recent gruesome sexual torture and murder crimes against children that have been making headlines - an infimal percentage of the sexual violence iceberg that nobody pays attention to normally. I will link to what many of you already know, most child abusers, sexual harassers, adult sexual criminals are NEVER even taken to court, in other words, the victims are completely robbed of any justice whatsoever).

What I want to focus on is what the above event is symbolic of and that we can glimpse through these stats:

More than 1/2 of all convicted sex offenders are sent back to prison within a year. Within 2 years, 77.9% are back.
-California Department of Corrections.

• Recidivism rates range from 18-45%. The more violent the crime the more likelihood of repeating.
-Studies by the state of Washington.

• 3 in 10 child victimizers reported that they had committed their crimes against multiple victims: they were more likely than those who victimized adults to have had multiple victims.
-BJS Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991.

• Like rape, child molestation is one of the most underreported crimes: only 1-10% are ever disclosed.-FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.

• The behavior is highly repetitive, to the point of compulsion, rather than resulting from a lack of judgment.
-Dr. Ann Burges, Dr. Nicholas Groth, et al. in a study of imprisoned offenders.

So, to discuss the matter, I will assume certain things about the people reported. If they turn out to be different when more information is supplied, my views are about all the other cases where these assumptions hold.

Take Elliot, who sexually abused a minor, plus he committed assault and obstructed the report of a crime - and for all of that he gets four months in a county jail? Four months? Assuming this was like many abuse cases, not some mild negligible action, but a griveous assault (or a prolonged period of them), we see that the lives of children and minors are cheap in this society.

We live in a society that is full of people who commit sexual aggression of various forms and of insensitive sexual nazis (people who endorse or promote various forms of sexual violence and degradation or who simply don't care about any of these problems, and consequently are an obstacle to changing the larger picture). This is a society where the justice system regarding sexual aggression and abuse often mirrors a Barnum & Bailey spectacle, the only justice some people are ever remotely close to having is if they take matters into their own hands. So, even though we may understand the problems with that, we can also understand the horrible circumstances that drive them to it.

The majority of victims are bludgeoned with a barbaric lack of possibility for justice and, not that infrequently, the profound destruction of very crucial parts of their lives or mental health. And, if some self-justice execution is carried out, then that crowd of insensitive sexual nazis sometimes comes out with the "shocked, SHOCKED! horrified, HORRIFIED!" cries since a victim of a vicious and profoundly destructive crime(s), entitled themselves, albeit in a problematic form, to their most minimal fundamental right, which is the right to justice, a right that they were previously completely denied.

Because what really irks the insensitive sexual nazis is not the abuse of adults and children, nor the preceding failure of society to prevent the crimes and to protect the victims, nor the failure of the Justice system to address the crimes they suffered after they have been tortured, nor the damages and losses the victims have to be ground to dirt with. No, what irks the sexual insensitive crowd is that a victim for once decides not to rest totally passive with the barbaric destruction of their lives and doesn't go along with the circus. Not only that, but a very salient aspect of the psychology of sexual insensitive nazis is that, more often than not, they identify with other abusers and not with victims. And they hate accountability for many or all types of sexual violence and degradation. And that is why often enough the moralist speeches about how awful it is for people to take justice into their own hands in these circumstances drips with a foul hypocrisy secretion.

See also this.

Author is Wonked - who can be very funny. I won't go commenting on lots of issues that relate to the man and preocupation with hair color, don't think it was Wonked's intention, at least I read the photo as the failure of technology to bring us miracles of improvement in human beings, specially concerning the futile and selfish affluent classes.

I found this on his blog:

I Am Going to Give You a Gun With Two Bullets

And put you in a room with Pat Robertson, Hillary Clinton and G-Dub. Remember, you only have two bullets.

WHO WOULD YOU SHOOT?

The answer, of course, is Pat Robertson. Twice.

---

LOL

Pope Shocks Easter Crowd, Doffs Cap and Gown
by Scott Ott

(2006-04-16) — Pope Benedict XVI shocked the faithful gathered at the Vatican Sunday morning when he removed his golden headdress, shed his glamorous robe and pulled up a chair for an “informal talk” with those who had gathered for Easter Mass.

Dress in casual khaki pants and an open-collared long-sleeved denim shirt,

LOLOL

his hair mussed with a self-confessed “bad case of miter head,” the pontiff formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger (TPFKAJR),

LOLOL

said that “during a long sleepless night of prayer” he had begun to wonder “whether all the pomp and circumstance sends the wrong message, and directs people’s gaze on me rather than on the one who deserves our worship.”

“It makes good television — you know, all the candles and gold and costumes — but we have gathered to celebrate the resurrection of the only sinless man who ever lived, the one we believe is Lord of the Universe,” the Pope said, “and that ain’t me.”

The Pope told a rapidly-dwindling crowd that the “true message of the Gospel was that God sent his one and only son to fulfill the righteous requirements of God’s law and to give his life as a ransom for many, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

[rapidly-dwindling - sweet! ]

By the time he finished, inviting those who realized they were sinners to “repent and believe in Jesus Christ alone for forgiveness of sins, and eternal life” a relative handful of Vatican tourists remained in the cathedral.

A CNN reporter shouted to the pontiff, “Would you mind putting the hat back on so I can get some video? Our viewers didn’t tune in to see an ordinary Joe.”

---

One of his best.

From Mr. T.

From the Volokh thread - comment now referring to the larger problem with the modern academic system:

Ben Bateman:

On the long term, the only way to maintain the system is the honesty and intellectual integrity of the professors themselves. The core problem with modern academia is not such much that it's liberal, but that it's completely out of touch with---and ignorant of---what most of the country is thinking. Mr. Savage tried to point that out to his fellow committee members by referring to the Amazon rankings of the books he suggested, but the response was typical of modern academia: proud ignorance. They don't know what the rest of the country is thinking, and they don't care, because anyone who doesn't think like them is evil, evil, evil.

If you closely read the email from Mr. Savage that we have, I think you'll conclude that he is not particularly conservative. The fault for which he will be lynched is that he is intellectually honest. He simply couldn't stomach playing along with the idea that reading Jimmy Carter and Maria Shriver is some sort of bold and intellectually stimulating experience.

He refers specifically to the sixties, and I know exactly the point that he was trying to make: In their youth, the sixties kids who now have tenure saw themselves as boldly overcoming the cloistered and unchallenged orthodoxies of their elders. But today they simply cannot imagine that they have created a new orthodoxy, and their orthodoxy is every bit as sclerotic and flabby as the orthodoxy that they conquered in their youth. They're like communists: They honestly believe that their revolution will last forever, and can never be legitimately challenged. They know that they are right, right, right, and everyone who disagrees is wrong, wrong, wrong. They are the antithesis of what academicians should be.

I don't know how we clean the stables of these intellectual cowards and midgets. But it's going to be ugly, because the current situation cannot stand. Taxpayers and donors will not fund these people indefinitely.

---

I have seen and gotten to know a whole range of academics (including grad students). I include grad students with academics because often already at this early stage you can tell if they will invest most of their academic and intellectual energy into thinking they are right about everything or if they are interested in intellectual honesty and a true quest for knowledge. But from my experiences, it is exactly as Ben very realistically describes above: "They're like communists," in other words, in the last 40 years liberal academia has been like "Animal Farm in the Ivory Tower" down to the very last detail.

He mentions financial strategies to put pressure on the low ethics/low quality problem, but I also favor the legal battles for freedom of speech/thought regarding many issues.

From ACE on the Scurrilous Sexual Harassment Suit - comment thread:

"One of the big lies told today is that the stereotype of gays (limp wristed, wears lace, lisps, walks like a girl, etc) is fake and gays are just like everyone else.
I'm sorry but there really are gay people out there who are like that, and they really aren't all that damned hard to find."

Posted by Canelone at April 14, 2006 04:31 PM

---

"Sorry, Gabriel. [...]And your flat wrong. There are homosexuals and there are raging queens. Take a stroll through the South End in Boston (ironic, that) or Provincetown or South Beach. Spend a weekend in SF. Hell they don't deny it, why are you trying to?"

Posted by JackStraw

---

Because normalizing and legitimizing « homosexuality » requires that every single attitude, mental dysfunction, and behavior from homosexuals be legitimized. Otherwise people don’t follow Gabriel’s obsessive denial about how many problems there are in homosexuality (and human sexuality).

If people are not in obsessive denial, they start to think and don’t fall for the pro-homo propaganda line. If people start to connect the dots that a whole ensemble of mental problems can engender a homosexual state of mind, then homosexuality can’t be shoved down everyone’s throat as normal and perfectly healthy (and biologically determined).

That’s why most pro-homosexuals go for the « any time anyone says anything that relates to any problem regarding homosexuals they are lying (or saying some false stereotype) » line.

Posted by alessandra at April 15, 2006 02:37 PM

---

5Cats :

"I draw a distinct line between them:
Faggots: Like to diddle little boys, shriek when offended and wear far too much pink
Gays: Like to have sex with same-gender adults, are often difficult to tell apart from straights."

I didn’t know heterosexuals who abused children wore far too much pink. Just about every heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual who abuses children or adolescents doesn’t have an extreme dysfunctional effeminate behavior like fags do.

When NAMBLA holds their meetings by the way, the homos who go there cannot be detected by police as raging garbage queens, they look and behave (outwardly) like you and other ACE commenters.

5Cats :

"Gays: Like to have sex with same-gender adults, are often difficult to tell apart from straights."

Yep, you can’t tell them apart from straights who engage in prostitution, or adultery, or destroy a respectful culture towards sexuality by producing and consuming porn, or who batter their spouses, or who abuse children. Or who do nothing about any and all these problems and make big moralist speeches about how purgrassive and tolerant they are.

Posted by alessandra at April 15, 2006 02:57 PM

Comment at Volokh:

Tony :

As a gay man, it is plain as day that there is really no debate as to whether homosexuality is "acceptable" or not. It's not even the right question. I'm born with it, I'm stuck with it. It is, in itself, neither good nor bad... it simply is. And no, Clayton, I was not molested - I was gay before I knew what sex was, before I even knew the basics of the birds and the bees. One can legitimately discuss the implications of fact for American culture, discuss the ways both good and bad that people of similar bent form communities, ande even the (very real) pathologies of those communities, if one starts from the position of recognizing the basic humanity of the people involved.

This is total pro-homosexual propaganda. First, not the most important, but something which has become more and more salient to me, since I am always fascinated about the politics of language is the use of the word « gay » instead of « homosexual .» (Thinking about Language Again - "Gay" Instead of "Homosexual" )

The second observation, which is the most important, is the insistence that everything that is manifested in homosexuality is biologically determined and has no relation nor is caused by any personal past experience, nor any personality component, nor any cultural/social conditioning nor as a reaction to one’s environment ever, simply nothing :

« And no, Clayton, I was not molested - I was gay before I knew what sex was, before I even knew the basics of the birds and the bees. »

Pro-homosexuals posit themselves on the same levels as amoebas, whose entire range of sexual behavior is totally innate and driven by some instinctual pre-programming.

« I was gay before I knew what sex was «

How does he know that he was a homosexual then ?

Clayton responds to our homo-amoeba commenter:

The belief that "I've always been gay" is widespread among homosexuals, but that you believe it doesn't make it true. A serious debate about the subject would be very worthwhile, especially because there seems to be a lot of different forms of homosexuality. For example, this incident is an extreme example of the S&M gay subculture--but even in the less extreme forms, it is pretty clear that someone has a serious confusion about pain, pleasure, sex, and domination. (Gee, rather like you might expect if someone's first sexual experiences involved pain, pleasure, sex, and domination.)

Unfortunately, there will be no serious debate about this subject, because homosexuals will not allow it at a place like Ohio State, or just about any other university.

Exactly.

Comment at Volokh:

Public_Defender:

The difficulty with gay rights issues is that your perspective on the merits determines your perspective on the rules of discussion.

All conversations have rules. All decent people would agree that it's OK to criticize pedophiles. All sane people would also agree that we have the right to punish* others (at least socially) for racist or anti-Semitic comments

If being gay is morally the equivalent of being Jewish, then it's OK to punish anti-gay comments. Wouldn’t everyone agree that a librarian should at least be criticized for trying include a book that treated Judaism as an evil on the Freshman reading list? But if you take the perspective that being gay is itself immoral, then a whole different set of rules apply.

Can anyone come up with a system of rules of discussion that does not depend on the speaker's view of the underlying merits?

---

regarding:

"Can anyone come up with a system of rules of discussion that does not depend on the speaker's view of the underlying merits?"

Off the bat, I would say no, because neither education, nor religion, nor a body of laws and rules can exist without morality, without determining what is right or wrong.

Theoretically in a democracy, this moral determination should be achieved by a fair debate. But more often than not, this is not what happens.

In practice, morality is determined by the rule of the jungle in a democracy, that is, the most powerful groups determine what is right or wrong, usually by the ability to stifle debate or opponents, or to misguide and misinform the masses about perspectives on issues. Long-lasting prevailing incorrect and harmful ideas are a result of a vicious circle of lack of information or criticism or selfishness or insensitivity from the masses who then give support to the immoral discourse powerbrokers (in law, education, or the media, for example).

At OSU, there cannot be any debate on the issue of homosexuality (and consequently of sexuality), and views on the subject must by shaped by totalitarian control of speech, which amounts to passing down ignorance as education. This entails a totalitarian destruction of not only speech, but the criminilization of knowledge and debate itself.

---

The fact above is perfectly emphasized by another comment:

OutofHigherEd wrote:

I'm surprised so many are surprised at the professors' actions; I'm sure they would be surprised too.

Many, if not most, academics are in the job NOT to deal with anything they don't like. They teach the classes, write the exams, and grade students so they don't have to encounter any ideas that they don't already approve.

Any deviation from this is simply unthinkable and, in their opinion, unconsciousable, so of course they took action.

There is a ideological requirement in most departments, unspoken, but there and if you don't like it, please seek employment elsewhere. I did!

There is a ideological requirement in most departments, unspoken,

ahem, or shriekingly yelled out ;-) Which brings us to another question:

Duncan Frissell (mail):

Savage was put under “investigation” by OSU’s Office of Human Resources after three professors filed a complaint of discrimination and harassment against him, saying that the book suggestions made them feel “unsafe.”

Perhaps the complainants could be punished under a "group libel" theory for implying that homosexuals are a weak and pathetic victim class that can't take any criticism or political opposition.

Joe7:

Let's not overlook one thing; the complaining professor's claims are likely complete lies. I find it highly unlikely they actually feel "unsafe". Ticked off maybe, but "unsafe"; nonsense.

---

However, these 3 homo professors have endangered the jobs for anyone who exercises freedom of thought and speech on campus, and they have effectively created a hostile working environment for such people.

And this is what is so disgusting about pro-homosexuality and homo activits. They often are bigots, intolerant, destructive in a variety of ways, they have no respect for a thousand important things, BUT they are always twisting reality and putting on the most hypocritical self-victimizing circus.

As "hey" articulated more formally:

I seriously hope that Mr. Savage sues the University and the accusers for their scurrilous charges and attempts to damage his career and reputation. Unless they can produce other emails that give substance to their "fears" they deserve to lose and be hit with a very large judgement on the order of several million dollars (given their attempts to make Mr. Savage unemployable and remove his current high salary and benefits).

From ACE (where people argue a lot of the same that appears on Volokh, but with a sense of humour):

Hey, if this thing actually goes through, why not sue the publisher for publishing such a book? Or the writer for that matter? Why not people in the bookstore who are caught reading the excerpt and therefore might actually think that way.

Thank God we gays don't have a profit that we find sacred (with the exception of Madonna and Cher). We're always actively looking for things to be offended about and God help the hetero world if it were to ever defile a bust of Babs.

"Apeshit" wouldn't begin to describe our wrath....

Posted by Chad at April 14, 2006 01:52 PM

I thought only mo-hammed cartoons could bring a wrath like this. How many were killed by these savage queers? How big was the riot? Billions in property damage huh. Say what? Oh, they filed a complaint. Might sue. The brutes. Sissy shit will get them nothing, you gotta lop of heads these days to get good headlines. Come on pole smokers, burn some Peugeots at least.

Posted by hutch1200 at April 14, 2006 02:50 PM

BERLIN (Reuters) - A cat saved the life of a newborn baby abandoned on the doorstep of a Cologne house in the middle of the night by meowing loudly until someone woke up, a police spokesman said on Saturday.

"The cat is a hero," Cologne police spokesman Uwe Beier said. "Its loud meowing got the attention of the homeowner and saved the baby from suffering life-threatening hypothermia. The homeowner opened door to see why the cat was making so much noise and discovered the newborn."

Beier said the boy was taken to hospital at 5 a.m. on Thursday, when overnight temperatures fell toward zero, and had suffered only mild hypothermia. He said there was no indication of what happened to the boy's mother.

---

From Drudge. And then they say that humans are the superior species...

Comment at Volokh:

Public_Defender:

The difficulty with gay rights issues is that your perspective on the merits determines your perspective on the rules of discussion.

All conversations have rules. All decent people would agree that it's OK to criticize pedophiles. All sane people would also agree that we have the right to punish* others (at least socially) for racist or anti-Semitic comments

If being gay is morally the equivalent of being Jewish, then it's OK to punish anti-gay comments. Wouldn’t everyone agree that a librarian should at least be criticized for trying include a book that treated Judaism as an evil on the Freshman reading list? But if you take the perspective that being gay is itself immoral, then a whole different set of rules apply.

Can anyone come up with a system of rules of discussion that does not depend on the speaker's view of the underlying merits?

---

Regarding:
All decent people would agree that it's OK to criticize pedophiles.

Whence we conclude the American Psychological Association has been recently ruled by people who lack the most basic decency.

The APA took pedophilia out of the DSM, relatively at the same time they took out homosexuality. (And after the scandal that ensued, they flip-flopped on the issue).

Which follows that their categorization of mental disorder or lack of character is neither very sane, nor decent.

As I mentioned, "I am reading a book on Pietro Bembo, and since I'm still at the beginning, I spent a good part of today reading many of his letters to one of his two most well known lovers (Maria Savorgnan)."

Bembo:

The amazement that I feel at the infinite sweetness ... born of your most sweet conversation of yesterday ... I really do not know if felicity may exist down here, if it dwells along us. But if it is here, certainly it was with me yesterday and has stayed. What are kingdoms, or what are treasures, or what are lordships? I do not believe ... that I would have enjoyed so much the acquisition of one thousand cities, or all the wealth of the peoples of the orient or the broad dominion of the king of France; as the dear and sweet revelation, that you made me yesterday, of your thoughts, of your joys, of your desires, and I to you of mine; the equality of our passions, the contest as to who feels them greater and more vividely, as to who loves with truer faith and with purer; the sweet proposals, the sweet sighs, the sweet flashing of the eyes, which I love so much; the sweet smiles, the sweet blushes, the sweet paling, the sweet hopes, the sweet fears. Oh, how I would like to say many things, and the tongue does not find words with which it can express them, and love with no customary term allows me to be content.

Other snippets-

Bembo begins with: "Beautiful and dear and sweet object of my thoughts..."

Maria finishes of her reply with: "O, o, o, and a kiss"

Bembo finishes with: "Love me, and a thousand times love me."

Or: "Expect me by the end of half an hour and love me."

(And she alse finishes letters by saying simply, "Love me.")

Maria ending: "I am yours, yours and yours and most yours and always will be."

I love the repetitions! They are so effusive!

But perhaps the detail that I was most delighted and enthralled with is this ending that I never see in modern correspondence, where people always say the almost bland and reverse ("I love you").

Above is what is so great, to ask the one you are so passionately in love with to love you, always. And to beseech that a thousand times, that he will simply love you.

Sweeeeeeet.

From Clayton:

You Call It Harrassment; I Call It Free Speech

This article from the Los Angeles Times points to a serious problem: when does my free speech become your hostile environment?

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."

In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms — backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ — already take on such cases for free.

The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they're labeled intolerant.

A recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 64% of American adults — including 80% of evangelical Christians — agreed with the statement "Religion is under attack in this country."

I've blogged a lot about this, glad to see people are taking it more and more to court. Where it needs to be taken and won.

It's wrong, at fault, foul, and totally unacceptable.

Related: The Worst Instrument of Crime ; Criminalizing Thought - Hate Speech/Crime Legislation

I wanted to walk to work tomorrow, but just knowing how I can barely open my eyes in the morning when I am trying to get up is already causing me not to know it's not going to happen. And I need to rush out the door at the end of the day, so there will go another day without exercise...

And in another interesting recent development, I bought this really cheap but fantastic dark chocolate last week (8 tablets for the price of one!). It's just dark enough not to be sweet milk chocolate, but it's also not that really strong sugar-lacking taste. So I've been having dark chocolate for breakfast, and it's great.

And as if I hadn't 3 or 4 major projects that I never have time or mental space to get going on, on Monday I just couldn't stop thinking about doing a documentary. It's because of someone I interact with who would be the center of my documentary, he is just so great, and he and his work would make such a great documentary. Maybe if I stay here, which is all up in the air right now, I can even toy more with the idea, but I was already sad thinking it would just be another one of my dream projects. Argh!

Since women made up half the population of Renaissance Italy, their stories surely need to be told; but, like women in ancient Athens, Italian women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were hemmed in by increasingly restricted social roles and limited education. Their lives, at any point on the economic scale, were usually hard, monotonous, and depressing. (And not only to a modern reader: a Sienese chronicle that coincides almost exactly with Lucrezia Borgia's lifetime shows how frequently girls and women killed themselves in that central Italian city.)

I am reading a book on Pietro Bembo, and since I'm still at the beginning, I spent a good part of today reading many of his letters to one of his two most well known lovers (Maria). Some of the letters are so beautiful, but then the relationship starts to get so embroiled and neurotic that it takes the beauty away, even if the literary style remains the same. If I want to watch crappy relationships, I have modern TV to look at. Tried to find examples of the letters online, so I could include bits here, but I only found one tiny (and not very good) letter to Lucrezia, his second big famous love. I will include at least one letter to Maria later, because I found a detail I really liked.

While I was searching, I came upon the page linked above, which mentions something I think so often, how horrible it must have been for so many women to have lived in the past, and how so much of it just becomes completely invisible since history is usually about the famous, the very wealthy, and the people who were very active somehow, even the ones who had miserable or violent lives. Not that life is not horrible for many women around the world today (and needless to say, for many men as well), but with all the means of registering what goes on in the lives of so many people who also suffer today, I think when generations way in the future look back at our times, they will have a volume of historical information as never before. For the first time in history, a huge volume about lives is being produced. And yet, given that each day can contain such a wealth of human individual experience, what a human being is actually able to write or record is so mininal compared to all that we live, all the profound intensity and the enourmous range of our experiences and emotions.

As I posted recently, I got into a fight with a disgusting guy at RWS, and I decided I would answer his slurs and ad hominen attacks (which he continued on his blog). He is one of these sexual parasites who puts himself up on a pedestal.

Here is the rest so far:

---

JD wrote:

alessandra : You are perhaps one of the most vile, insulting, sanctimounious asses that we have seen around here.

Andy, sorry for your loss.
JD

=================

Don't tell me I was describing you in my criticisms above? My opinion of you mirrors yours of mine.

Another violent cheap ignorant liberal calling other people vile for breaking up their self-denial party?
alessandra | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 12:34 pm | #

---

andy wrote to me:

you worthless sack of shit disguised as a human being.

you are an examplar of what is wrong with humanity, a walking genetic defect whose dad should have kept his dick in his pants and spare the world such a stinking twat of a woman.

a complete dipshit

racist asshole,

the fucktard , you damnable idiot?

RWS, my profuse apologies for my language.

RWS - I rescind my question on the sexual abuse. To bring up the subject is unfair to others who might not be comfortable with the topic for whatever reason.

=======================
Oh cmon Andy. Who are you fooling? The more sexual torture you hear about, the more you salivate, the more that sick mind of yours just gets going.

Your dying to hear about ANY sexual abuse aren't you? Sexual abuse really makes you comfortable, doesn't it? Just like your verbal abuse here. it's not others "comfort level" you're worried about. You took back the question because it showed to this little crowd just how sick your mind is. But you came to my blog to post it. Too much of a tripe to show who you really are here? Keeping up the façade to fool RWS?

That's why you can't say two words of any argument without profanity and some sort of verbal aggression. That's what your little homo-obsessive sanctimony amounts to.

As I answered you on my blog, calling on people like you about their violent and irresponsible minds does not require having been abused. It requires knowledge and character. Both of which you are missing.

==================
RWS: But there is a way to make a point without insulting everyone around you.
==================

Apparently that illudes liberals who can't say two words without vommiting the excrement they have between their ears.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 1:14 pm | #

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You also endorse sexual promiscuity, don't you, andy? And prostitution?
=================

So Andy, aside from spitting out swearwords in every post, and endorsing varied forms of physical and sexual torture, you haven't yet confirmed how much your mind stinks regarding other sexuality problems such as promiscuity and prostitution.

Cute sanctimonious position you "stand on." Or sink completely through.

This is why pro-homosexuals are obsessive. They have the most stinking minds that denigrate sexuality in every possible way and get on the highest hypocritical high horse.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 1:37 pm | #

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andy wrote:

alessandra -

No, I rescined the question because, at the time, I felt it was not appropriate. Now that you've continued your irrational blathering, I have little problem asking it, because I think it would help others to know just what made your mind go so wonky somewhere along the way.

As for your other questions:

a) I'm not promiscuous; I'm not going to stop others from being so.

b) I don't frequent prostitutes; I'm not going to stop others from doing so. It's a violent and dangerous profession because of people like you that force it into the dark corners of society. Legalize it, regulate it, and you'd have nothing to rant about.

You're quite possibly the most amusing idiot I've met on the internet.

This will pain you to hear, but you're no different from a far lefty liberal - you both want to control the lives and livelihoods of others, just by different means. You're both the worst kind of moral offender, thinking you have the right to dictate to others how they should live; to tell them that what they own, from their money (the lefty liberal) to their body (the crazy conservative), is not theirs and that you know better how it should be used. You're a little dictator-wanna-be spouting off on the net.

(P.S. I voted for Dubya - go figure that one out. I suspect you can't, given your us vs them, black/white, simpleminded mentality that makes my 3 yr old look like a genius).

andy | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 2:06 pm | #

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Sparkly, you wonder why I don't comment here much anymore? Take a look at the above.

Wonderduck | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 6:47 pm | #

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Sorry, Wonderduck, but when someone wants to use my dead friend, not even in the ground yet, as some kind of justification for their bigotry, I'm not going to be nice about it.

andy | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 7:29 pm | #

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Andy, it isn't you I'm talking about. Your comments are completely understandable under the circumstances.

Wonderduck | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 10:07 pm | #

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Oh, nevermind then.

andy | Homepage | 04.09.06 - 11:24 pm | #

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andy with the ugly mind wrote--

That you even think such a question is remotely funny, let alone appropriate, is an indicator that you are an examplar of what is wrong with humanity, a walking genetic defect whose dad should have kept his dick in his pants and spare the world such a stinking twat of a woman.

+++++++++++++++++
alessandra:
oh look! a liberal vomitting excrement! how cute that you think you call people all kinds of vulgarity every time they ask something you don't like.

And, in case, other people aren't completely ignorant as you are, the question is totally pertinent, given the much higher incident of rectal cancer in male homosexuals. Now what could cause that, I wonder??? Hard to figure out...

That's just how natural homosexuality is.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.07.06 - 6:13 pm | #
================


Anal Cancer: Homosexuals are at increased risk for this rare type of cancer, which is potentially fatal if the anal-rectal tumors metastasize to other bodily organs.

· Dr. Joel Palefsky, a leading expert in the field of anal cancer, reports that while the incidence of anal cancer in the United States is only 0.9/100,000, that number soars to 35/100,000 for homosexuals. That rate doubles again for those who are HIV positive, which, according to Dr. Palefsky, is "roughly ten times higher than the current rate of cervical cancer."[49]

· At the Fourth International AIDS Malignancy Conference at the National Institutes of Health in May, 2000, Dr. Andrew Grulich announced that the incidence of anal cancer among homosexuals with HIV "was raised 37-fold compared with the general population."[50]

50. "Studies Point to Increased Risks of Anal Cancer."

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andy the slur-thrower wrote:

You're quite possibly the most amusing idiot I've met on the internet.

=================

speak for yourself, you're ignorant, fanatic, and have a putrid little mind.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 7:35 am | #

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andy wrote:

It's not just the question being asked, it's the fucktard doing the asking. Christ, if he was gay you'd probably be tap dancing on his grave, huh, you damnable idiot?

===============
Please save your ad hominen attacks.

PRO-homosexuality, PRO-pornography, PRO-prostitution is the problem. Whoever endorses sexual violence, sexual exploitation, sexual dysfunction as healthy is a monster, andy. They can be heterosexual or non-heterosexual, white or black, men or women, young or old, the harm is the same.

I have to say, though, that the day you and all those PRO-sexual-violence people like you are off the surface of the Earth, not only will it smell better, but the world will be less violent.

That's what you amount to.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 7:54 am | #

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andy wrote:

Yes, colorectal cancers are higher among homosexual men. However, the most recent documents at pubmed indicate that insufficient work has been done to determine the role of STDs and HIV in this fact.

==================
It doesn't change the fact that the numbers are tremendously higher for homosexuals and specially those with certain STDs.

It is a FACT.

It is not irrelevant. It shows the extent to which a society that is obsessive with pro-homosexuality will do to lie and deceive people about the problems with homosexuality and its biggest sexual practice.

That's why you have an ugly mind. It's your bigotry that I'm referring to.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 8:15 am | #

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RWS wrote:

I think I can say without a doubt that andy does not approve of homosexuals or bi sexuals abusing young boys.

================

That's right. andy here just thinks that rape, and prostitution, and promiscuity, and the desecration and destruction of everything that is beautiful and sacred and healthy in personal relationships, (which are all a part of SM), like taking a cord and asphixiating people, or burning them with cigarettes, or battering and breaking their bones, or inflicting humiliation and verbal abuse and psychological abuse and terror and enemas and mutilation and renactment of every form of child abuse dynamics in adults is just fine.

He's such a good person! After all the above, he adds that doesn't think child abuse is right. What a lofty mind he has.

An example: there is a boy being raped to death by some homo monster is andy here is like "Oh yeah, that may not be right, because they are under 18." But it just goes on, because little pro-homo shits NEVER take action or speak out against it. Have you ever heard andy here speak out on how homos abuse adolescent boys? He's too much of piece of garbage to do that (and so is every other pro-homo that thinks like him).

Continuing the story, so the boy is being abused, for years on end, and he gets so destroyed inside that he doesn't know anymore what it is to have mental health. And andy here is just salivating until this boy turns 18, because then he is not a "child" anymore and andy can say in his most vile and devious mind, 'oh look, SM time, I'm going to rape you till you die and burn you with cigarettes and that's because you like it! And yeah, it's a free country! God bless American and freedom fighters like me. Oh, and Alessandra, you are a pile of shit because you don't clap at all of this.'

You pro-homosexuals have such ugly minds.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 8:17 am | #

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andy wrote:

b) I don't frequent prostitutes; I'm not going to stop others from doing so. It's a violent and dangerous profession because of people like you that force it into the dark corners of society. Legalize it, regulate it, and you'd have nothing to rant about.

==================
that's because you don't stop anyone from perpetrating any kind of sexual violence, exploitation, or harassment.

"people like you that force it into the dark corners of society. "

Another one of your strawmen distortions. I haven't written that, so try arguing something I wrote.

And try reading up on how destroyed the emotional lives prostitutes are before you post here again. Not to mention the history of substance and alcohol abuse. The same with a lot of porn people.

Oh I forget, I'm talking to someone who favors sexual torture of people, you wouldn't be able to grasp what I am talking about here, like having a human heart.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 8:27 am | #

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JD wrote:

alessandra : You are perhaps one of the most vile, insulting, sanctimounious asses that we have seen around here.

Andy, sorry for your loss.

JD | 04.08.06 - 9:26 am | #

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Maybe you oughta take that bloated head of yours out of the sand and hear what child abusers say when they are abusing children.

You've never heard of that before have, you? Oh I forget, that's not vile for people like you.

Or when pimps are battering and raping prostitutes. You don't think that's very vile.

Or when there is one more incident of domestic violence that ends up in spouse murder. Not very vile, is it?

Or when another teenager is raped on a date. Or when some sadistic garbage decides to sexually torture another human being for fun; or when every form of deviant behavior is touted as fun on video games or the largest and most profuse database of every type of vile and violent sexual attitudes, values, and behaviors, which is pornography.

Well, for a deaf and dumb and alienated piece of garbage like you, I'm sure the most "vile" thing your sick mind has ever managed to take notice of is a question if a rectal colon cancer guy is a homosexual. And given that homosexuals do have higher rates of colon cancer, just like miners have higher rates of lung disease, your characterisation of the question as vile is nothing but a hate post, an ad hominen attack.

You pro-homosexuals have such ugly minds.
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 8:30 am | #

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andy wrote:

JD - thanks for your support.

andy
================

Any sick and violent minded person who is looking for support has found the right blog! hahahahh

all you child rapists, molesters, the adult sickos, pimps, spouse batterers, pornographers, come one and all to RWS's!

As long as you don't ask about ugly FACTS regarding homosexuals and disease, they will give you all their support and more, there may be money to be made. Right here.

If you are selling your stuff, lots of opportunity, given that here is the blog of the free, the liberated, the pergrassives!

(and they call other people extremists!! ooh boogie man!!)
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 8:39 am | #

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andy wrote:

This will pain you to hear, but you're no different from a far lefty liberal - you both want to control the lives and livelihoods of others, just by different means.

===================
Speaking of yourself?

What are you trying to achieve here but control? You want no accountability for destructive, violent behavior (physical, psychological and sexual). You are a total parasite.

"You're both the worst kind of moral offender, thinking you have the right to dictate to others how they should live; "

I do have the right to tell child abusers, rapists, torturers, and all others who perpetrate violence that not only they aren't healthy, they don't belong in society.

It is my right not to live in a violent pigsty.

It is my right to protect other people from your monstrous attitudes which then engender and ensure a very violent society.

It is my right to care and not to be a sexual insensitive nazi like you.

"You're a little dictator-wanna-be spouting off on the net."

It is also my right to expose how ugly your mind is even though you try to camouflage it behind a discourse of freedom and rights.

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Sexuality is an ugly affair in the world right now. So many putrid people with such harmful views, so active in destroying everything that is precious.

---

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In his blog, he just continued to write a bunch of slander and distorted crap about what I had written. Total hate post. So I left some comments. He's too dishonest to argue any topic without shoving a whole load of ad hominen attacks.

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andy wrote:

No, you worthless sack of shit disguised as a human being. He was a happily married newlywed to a beautiful bride. He was generous and compassionate and accepted everyone regardless of who they were. He was the kind of person you could hold up as an example for us all, on how we should live and treat one another and embrace life to the fullest.

========================
Embrace like this?

rape, and prostitution, and promiscuity, and the desecration and destruction of everything that is beautiful and sacred and healthy in personal relationships, (which are all a part of SM) like taking a cord and asphixiating people, or burning them with cigarettes, or battering and breaking their bones, or inflicting humiliation and verbal abuse and psychological abuse and terror and enemas and mutilation and renactment of every form of child abuse dynamics in adults and thinking it is just fine?

That's how he embraced people?
alessandra | Homepage | 04.11.06 - 7:33 am | #

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andy wrote:

I'm still not a sex abuser, despite alessandra's bizarre thoughts on the matter).

============================
You really can't argue anything I write without lying about it, I suppose.

Go back and read your statements at RWS regarding how you totally endorse the sexual torture of people in SM. It's what you told us: you endorse (and therefore promote) sexual torture, and you endorse sexual exploitation through prostitution and pornography. (this is what I wrote)

What you do in that little life of yours, with the views you have above, who knows. Whether you do it yourself, or whether you just endorse every other person who is doing some form of exploitation or violence, we don't know. That's because you don't have a "narrow" sexuality. And other people who don't endorse sexual violence are the twats. That's your mental health.

---

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And then he adds this:

Update 2: The prosecution presents into evidence this post in support of the accusation that alessandra is a whackjob:

If [Hitler] were alive today, and if he couldn´t find his way in some military, secret police system, I have no doubt he could become a substantial millionaire, building an empire of violent pornography, using people of all ages, including children.

Yup, that just reeks of sanity, doesn't it?

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That's a reference to the SM discussion and how normalized sexual violence is in the world today, which he completely quoted out of context.

For andy, not having a mind that totally normalizes and legitimizes sexual violence and denigration in porn is being crazy.

His main ad hominen attacks focus on trying to slander me as "crazy," "narrow/prude" (on sexuality), against "sexual freedom," and "homophobe."

It's totally related to what I commented in the beginning of another comment thread below (with Dave's comments). Michael posted about multi-player porn gaming and he commented:

This is not just porn - we’re talking about interactive multi-player gaming.

Call me a prude, but this really strikes me as unhealthy. I mean, it’s one thing to flirt with Lipstick in a comment thread. Quite another to engage in simulated sex with an on-screen caricature of someone who you know absolutely nothing about. Creeps will be coming out of the woodwork in droves to sign up for this.

oh, and what you just said here “Call me a prude, but this really strikes me as unhealthy” is really at the heart of how a really shoddy (and vicious) liberal culture manipulates men (and more and more women) into endorsing a lot of sexual deviance and violence. All of this in order to fool themselves as being (falsely) sexually hip or, in the case of men, as macho/masculine. Otherwise they get tarred and feathered as “prudes,” “afraid of sex,” “wimpy,” “not masculine enough,” etc etc. At the same time, the liberal crap all clothe themselves as “liberated,” “full of ‘masculine’ status playboys (and pimps),” and “sexually avant-garde.”

The result is that at the core of this culture, decency, trust, intimacy, and responsibility are getting more and more distant from sexuality (and, consequently, from the fundamental basis for a personal relationship).

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15. Dave in Texas wrote to alessandra - April 9, 2006

Where we clash is if you are a Christian, your behavior and comments are judgemental. So you and me are fightin over the Word. Cause that’s not our prerogative, even if they’re heavily financed.

If you’re not, then distance yourself from us. Because you’re kind of hate is harmful to the Kingdom.

Dave, I find your characterisation of what I say as “hate” just vile, it’s an ad hominen attack.

I’m not interested in getting into a fight with you, for all your rants and attacks on what I am expressing. Your rants are cowardly and misguided, and not at all Christian. People who shove their heads in the sand and do nothing about evil desecrate God’s creation in every way. That’s not what Christiniaty is about.

I also really despise people who use Christianity (or any religion) to make excuses for themselves. It is a total desecration of the fundamental goodness of any religion. Lots of “religious” people love to use their religion to make excuses for being irresponsible, not caring, for going along with and consequently promoting evil, for not holding accountable people who practice violence and destruction in the world, not to mention when they are not the perpetrators themselves.

The only thing that is needed for evil to flourish in the world is for good people to do nothing. At the end of the day, this is what you will have to show for yourself.