The right to free speech is not to be confused with the right to an audience.

Yes. To those of us that would cry that ANY attempt to tell someone that something is not fit for print is some kind of censorship, I say, you're watering down your argument by standing for crap and insult.

(From a comment about the whole "Fuck Bush" thing in Colorado, but not really related to that. My opinion on that is that I think it is, at best, a quaint, but misplaced sentiment. At worst, it is sensationalist journalism.)

The Power of Attraction

Recently, there was a study released that confirmed that men choose their mate based on looks, which, I can only assume, means that women choose their mate based on something more. I don't know, I wasn't interested in reading the story.

But lets go with that assumption and extrapolate. It is pretty obvious that our goal in life is to promote the continued existance of the species, in some way or another. The simplest way to do that is to make more people. The way to make more people is to have sex. But what reproduction means is different for men than it is for women. Men do not need to alter their lives for a few years (9 months + nursing, which was the only way to feed babies for most of the existance of our species, except, of course, for the very very rich who had nursemaids) in order to procreate, so their main goal is finding the best possible mate in terms of overall health (including looks). Women look for a guy that is not only healthy, but likely to help out so that she isn't left with the kid, all by herself. And what does a pregnant or nursing woman need? She needs what we all need, food, shelter, and clothing, but she also needs time and relaxation. A pregnant woman needs MORE nourishment but is LESS likely to be able to get it all by herself. Women need someone to meet their basic needs on a daily basis during this time. Men only need the woman to be pregnant, healthy, and alive.

Of course, men know that the best mate is more than *just* good looking, but in the end, women are more concerned with their looks than men are. And men, partially freed from worrying about how they look, partially to attract women, do other things - all kinds of other things. Everyone needs a mate to continue the species, but were not interested in just any mate. So we have competition for mates. Women strive to be the best looking, the healthiest. Whereas men strive to prove that they can provide.

So that is the mating dance of the homo sapiens sapien.

Long ago, long before written history, long before agriculture, every adult member of our species needed to devote the entire day to obtaining enough calories to stay alive. Lets not forget that men usally needed to provide for more than just themselves while the women were hampered from later stages of pregancy. Nobody had the time to develop fancy bowls, religions, or governments. Those that did starved to death. But along the way, there came agriculture, loosely defined as the cultivation or maintenance of a food resource leading to the eventual harvesting. Cultivation took a varied amount of work, from the domestication of animals to waiting around for the salmon spawn. But what this meant was that one person could suddenly feed two, three, ten, one hundred. The people that didn't have to spend their entire day looking for food also had nothing to do. The results are all around us.

I feel we are at a very important milestone in the history of our species, much like those living during the advent of agriculture. Remember how women devote years of their lives to the care of new generations? Until only recenly, only the very very rich woman could afford to both carry on her own genes AND not devote her life to pregancy. One baby might take two years, significantly more if babies died in infancy or early childhood. Women have devoted their entire lives to one thing - procreation. But after thousands of years, we've filled up the planet. Oh, technically, we could handle more growth. Technically, we could make the entire planet like California.

Technically, which really implies ignoring the unmeasurable. Simply put, there are too many people NOW. I've been caught in traffic on a SATURDAY around here more than I care to remember. So not everyone needs to have a kid to perpetuate the species. In fact, a lot of people can do a lot more good with other activites. We also have a system that allows women to just assume that any pregnancy will not only go to term, but the baby that results will live into adulthood and even old age. [Of course, this is not necessiarly the case in a large segment of the world]

The result? Women do not need to devote their lives to pregnancy. And because we're homo sapiens sapiens, we want to do other things now. Men used to spend their time looking for calories for themselves and the women. Agriculture solved this problem thousands of years ago. Women spent their time being pregnant or nursing until about a hundred years ago. The difference? Look around.

"Jumping 0.9%"

I am SO FUCKING SICK of all the play-by-play of the Dow Jones jumping up a hundred or down fifty points.

-Source

Does anyone understand statistics in this dumb country? No? I didn't think so. See that graph? You see it?

13,000

Does anyone get it?

Read the beginning of that Wikipedia article. We've got 100 years of source data about a stupid game of controling people's lives and we think we know it all. Take a look at that graph again.

There are two types of bull markets. A secular bull market is a period in which the stock market index is continually reaching all-time highs with only brief periods of correction, as during the 1990s, and can last upwards of 15 years. A cyclical bull market is a period in which the stock market index is reaching 52-week or multi-year highs and may briefly peak at all-time highs before a rapid decline, as in the early 1970s. It usually occurs within relatively longer bear markets and lasts about three years.

That little dip in the early 21st century was NOT a correction. And I cannot see these "corrections" from the 1970s. This is a bunch of made up bullshit.

This is the stupidest shit in the world. Business is the biggest bunch of bullshit. At least my history thesis was about something that actually fucking happened.

And here is where I complained about work, or my lack thereof. I've set my bar really high, but they've set my bar really really low. So they think I'm doing great, but I feel like nothing is happening.

The world is full of complete idiots. All you have to do to know that is to read the comments on anything that gets a lot of comments, especially Alternet. The glut of morons complaining about "why is this on here" is enough to make one homicidal. If you didn't like the article, STFU, who gives a shit? Feminist articles or even blog posts garner that kind of response more than any other post. The obviousness of men wanting women to stop talking at all is nauseating and pathetic. I can't even talk about it anymore, it is getting to be a cliche. Our society is going to hell, or is already there.

You know what I am sick of? All of the articles about Iraq and our failed policy. It is the same thing over and over, with extra details added. At least the feminist articles provide a perspective that we haven't heard before. Or that people besides me and other intelligent women haven't already thought of. You know the difference? I DON'T READ THOSE ARTICLES because I know that other people DO care. I DON'T think I'm the center of the world or that my opinion is shared by the entire population. I'm NOT an entitled asshole, but maybe I ought to be. Too bad I was raised to RESPECT others. Thats why I had a hard time getting into SomethingAwful. It was a big penis party full of jackasses that thought that since they went through some antimosity in high school and obsessed over computer crap that they were entitled treat anyone that veered outside their tightly and ambiguously drawn lines like shit. I'm too old for that. I was too old for that at 5.

When I was growing up, I always assumed that adults knew more than I did - those older than me knew more than I did, but now I'm peaking - I'm old enough to be really really smart, and not just for my age. And now I'm looking around with my paltry 147 IQ and realizing just how stupid the rest of the world really is. No wonder I'm depressed.

And it is so obvious that the American Empire is in decline. Any anthropologist or historian can tell you, but we're debating things like it the surge worked. IF the surge worked. IF it fucking worked???? The soldiers could have been flinging their own shit instead of bullets and it would have had the same effect.

It doesn't take a fucking weatherman to see the goddamn weather.

What were the goals for the stupid "surge" of 20% more troops? Secure Baghdad so the government can get things done. Baghdad is not secure and the government hasn't gotten anything done. Anbar is secure, wonderful, did you know that Anbar is mostly desert? 1+1 still equals 2, but we're fucking debating this. They're all just fucking morons.

Back to the Dow. I'm sure you've heard of all the fuss over the jumps, and drops of the Dow in the last month. Here is how the Dow has acted over the past year, in real terms.



I'm not going to give a shit until the Dow goes down several hundred points in a few days. Period, end of story, STFU already.

What I've been saying

We need more female writers in the media.

Science!

Human-animal embryo study wins approval

Possibilities

PRO	CON
Represents an advance in biology	Tampers in the domain of "God" or just too much power for humans to have in general
This is really awesome!	Viruses can have a greater chance to mutate in a crossover manner in cells like this, it's really dangerous. (Source)
Learn more about what gives us conciousness, thus memory, thus the ability to learn more with each generation.	Diseases wipe out the majority of the population. Which means our species will continue on, but we will lose a lot of people and productivity. Which, from a rational viewpoint, isn't so bad, just as long as we live through it.

But from my viewpoint, our species will not exist forever, and we seem to be on a fast track of energy depletion (though solar is seeming to gain ground). I don't know how I will die, nor do most people. We all hope to live a long time, partially because we want to live through generations, partially because the idea of not being alive is horrifying. But we are increasingly consuming energy and space on our planet, and becoming more segmented and panicked. We're attacking each other more vigorously all over the globe, and especially within America (though American attacking within is more verbal than violent). We seem to be on the fast track to destruction, but we're really far off from that (this is potentially within the century, but probably further away), so we have time to slow down and increase our time, if we work together. If we work together... all of us, as equals, none of this "othering" crap.

Miss Teen South Carolina

I heard about this at my networking "lunch", a little event related to the new employee network at my company. We get put into a group of 4 and then the 4 of us decide a day and time to meet and talk. Both times it was me and three guys, one of which was white and the other two asian, but the demographics are not really a factor. The people are all in IT jobs, more so than me, even though we are all in the IT part of the company.

Anyway, the other three people had heard of this, and I hadn't, so after the event, I went home and looked it up. They also mentioned that she appeared on the Today Show and explained the situation. My take is that sure, she might be ditzy, but she apparently didn't hear most of the question, and in that light, her bullshit answer, created on the spot and without flinching, is almost impressive. She is, after all, 18 and has probably been trained, in the sickening pagent world, to be like this.

Everyone loves a good rant

Mostly when one can agree with the subject, of course. My former employee (the one that turned out to be sexist) did do a very impressive rant once about his experience being a TA and the undergraduates that completely failed to retain any of the information about research he provided.

Today, on Alternet, there was an article about Obama's stance on Cuba. I'm encouraged by the shifting tide right now, as represented by this piece. Suddenly, the rest of the country is realizing (or seems to be realizing, based on my vantage point) that those Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida are just disenfranchized slaveholders, waiting to go back and claim their unearned land and begin making money again. But that is beside my point here.

The last comment (well, when I read the post) included an interesting rant on the state of American "justice"

I'm all for patrotism, but why must I be a sheep. It seems we like to point the finger at Castro and Cuba for human rights violations that many states in this country abhere to themselves, but we call it justice because it was so-called decided by a 'jury of our peers' even as it was maniplilated by the politicians in our states that have such cruel laws on the books, and then we as citizens are told the laws were passed by the respresentatives we sent to to represent our interest and if we don't like the jobs our reps are doing we can vote them out of office at the next election but the laws that we passed will stay on the books even if they are cruel....and you know what, in the end nobody have to have responsibilty for anything.

-Source

Monkeys harassing women in Kenya

This is an interesting story. There is no mention of the sex of the monkeys involved. The fact that the monkeys are not afraid of women is probably good proof of the old hunter/gatherer theory that human males hunted other animals while human females tended camp and farmed. Such was the arrangement in many Native American cultures when they met Europeans.

Europeans actually thought that Native American men were "lazy" because in Europe, hunting was a leisure activity and not a means to provide meat protein. But New World cultures did not domesticate many animals, probably because there weren't many to domesticate. Dogs, of course - all cultures, actually, have domesticated dogs - and llamas in South America. The theory goes that humans inhabited the New World for only about 10,000 years, only 10% of the existence of our specific species. So Old World inhabitants had 90,000 extra years to domesticate cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and birds for their meat protein. And the majority of our culture was probably like that of our ancestors, so other animals have adapted. Human males are to be feared because they were the ones actively seeking animals to kill.

I don't think these monkeys are "sexually harassing" the women, but they're doing
something. They may just be communicating that they know it is a female human or something. It is amazing how intelligent the monkeys are. I wonder what would happen if a woman in this village/town/area just shot at a monkey. Maybe then the monkeys would know that the human females mean business too. I mean they're smart enough to communicate about poisoned food, and other things, so they seem to have
some kind of cognitive ability. Cognitive might be the wrong word. I hope there is more primate research going on. Maybe someday, we'll break the species barrier and manage to communicate with monkeys such as these. Lets teach the monkeys how to grow their own crops - or at least help out - so they won't be such a menace.

Feminist Politics, Digg

My colleague said his friend got to the first page of Digg with a brand new website. A website where a "woman moaned your IP address." I remember reading Digg at my ex's house and seeing an awful lot of articles on the latest gadget or internet method. Digg is apparently mostly male.

What re-awakened me to feminism back in March was the appropriating of Jill Filipovic's photos by people completely able to mask their identity on the web. I have other interests in life, so I don't have the patience to learn all I need to know to be completely anonymous. Not to mention that the marketing practices of GoDaddy.com offended me, so I switched at least one of my domains to a host that didn't conceal my identity. But really, I'd much rather reveal my information than pay any money to an organization that just ASSUMES I'll be enticed by a scantily clad woman touted as a "girl." I like to put my money where my mouth is.

It seems to me that men have been more likely to want to learn the ins and outs of the internet, whereas women want to network and share. It also seems that people that know the ins and outs of the internet and even just computers in general think that anyone that doesn't know what they have spent years studying must be a complete moron. Furthermore, they must want attention, any kind of attention. A couple of years ago, one of these men made the decision that since we were even the slightest bit identifiable in our Live Journals and personal blogs that we must want our school's website to link to them directly. When we objected, we were told, essentially, "too bad, I found you in this obscure directory, why didn't you mask it??" Well, in the end, when this person consulted with the advisor for this project, we got our way, because we were right. Not to mention that a friend of mine said that as an alumni, the issue was making him seriously reconsider making any future donations. And since Jill put her photos on a publicly accessable website, she MUST have wanted people to oggle her body and defame her character.

My ex reads Digg, I signed up, but remembered that it was a pretty biased community. Wisdom of the masses often isn't.

Here are some Alternet pieces I liked tonight

Dogs > Women
I responded to one anti-feminist as SalB.
Feminists got Barbie some jobs, maybe we can do the same for these girls?
What happened to make-believe toys? When I was 5, the thing was My Little Pony. I never wanted to be a horse. I doubt little boys want to be cars that turn into robots.

One Study on Modern people != Evolution

Leave it to ABC to assert that studying the reactions of some people equates to truth in evolution.

Though the HuffPost title is even more disgusting, at least it doesn't include some scantily clad model from the chest down

I wonder if these researchers have heard of HISTORY!

Back in the 19th century, pink was considered a masculine color, as a watered down version of red - the color of passion, war, etc, whereas blue was "dainty."

Evolution MY ASS. [note that you need to "log in" to see the pictures, but they're not important, feel free to help me find better sources of this information].

YesYesYesYes!!!

Holy shit, no way!

Back when I learned about how life may have formed on earth - probably from Bill Nye, that wonderful and funny science guy - I wondered when we'd be able to prove it. It was something about a sea right in amino acids and lightning strikes causing eletrification. One of these days, we'd be able to prove this theory to be true by doing it ourselves. Now, I wasn't going to do it myself - I hated labs. I mean, I love science, but I can't stand lab work. It is too damn specific for me. The microscopes never worked and my results were always just slightly off from what they should have been.

But here you have it. Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years. Kiss my ass, creationists. Kiss my entire ass, then stfu.

Losers

There is a woman at my job that never got married or had kids. She is in her 50's and has a condition that requires her to walk with a cane. It seems she might live out the rest of her days alone, though I don't know anything about her social life. But she has a job, a house, and is involved in her field.

My ex had an uncle that lived with his mother and died in his 40's. Until I began dating him, my ex assumed that was his fate too. Now that I've dumped him, I wouldn't be surprised if that was his fate. For a while in there, though, he had a future. I mean, he still does, depending on the attitude he decides to have. But, the reason I dumped him was because he didn't seem to want to have that attitude.

To me, marriage is important, for both men and women. It is a partnership, a relationship, someone to be there for you. But anyone could tell you that my co-worker's life is infinitely better than my ex's uncle's life. Well, he is dead now, so he really doesn't have a life.

It seems that the basement dwelling, living at home loser is more likely to be a man than not. Sure, women do marry men that provide for them, and can be as lazy as any loser, maybe that explains the difference. But what about all the women that never marry? Like three of my aunts and my co-worker. They're all home-owning career women. One owns a lot of houses - 3 or 4. They're not losers.

Maybe it has to do with that whole chest-beating, shoulder-hunching mentality we all learn. Chest Beaters don't face animosity, or people telling them they're not good enough because of something they can't change. Shoulder Hunchers do, and for a lot of us, it gives us a desire to prove them wrong. But it also gives us a critical eye. Maybe "they" are right, we think. Maybe I am not good enough for an A. Maybe I should study harder. Maybe I should prove this jackass wrong and force him to give me an A even though I'm an unattractive girl and not one of his precious football players or wrestlers. That was my decision in the 9th grade with my joke of an Earth Sciences teacher. He was a creationist and a sexist. If I had it to do all over again, I would have gone right to the school board. I don't care if he was up for retirement. In my world, people don't get away with being an asshole when I walk in the room.

Does anyone know if there are statistics that compare the age and gender of people living with their parents? I have a feeling that more old unmarried men still live at home than old unmarried women. In other words, there are more male losers than female losers.

Women TWICE as likely to regret their choice of mate

TWICE - well, almost - 22% of women vs 12% of men regret their choice of spouse. My knee-jerk reaction is to say that these women (who do not get divorced - or at least haven't yet) are unhappy because men are assholes more often than not - sexists. For some reason, I can't seem to type what I mean.....

They came to find that the guy who "swept them off their feet" for their beauty or something trivial turns out to be a jerk once the woman gains some weight or ages naturally. Women seem to be more forgiving of aging and weight gain in men.

Anyway, let me know what your ideas are. There were also some other survey results, like how a third of people wished they'd saved more money or taken a different career path. HALF of all people wished they had traveled more before settling down [and having kids, may I add - the main thing that hampers travel]. Then, the article posted the most rediculous, arrogant quote I've seen in a while (btw, I tend not to read things from conservatives, even when quoted in liberal blogs)

Paul Whitlock, head of savings at Bradford & Bingley bank, which commissioned the survey of 1,250 men and women, said: "There's no reason why people can't set up their own business, travel more or be prepared for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that may arise."
-Source

Right, anyone can set up their own business. There is NO REASON we can't. NO REASONS, there is NO COMPETITION for these people, NONE, no GIANT CORPORATIONS that have already cornered the market. No, and having your own business is the EASIEST JOB IN THE WORLD. This idiot needs a reality check, big time. What a fucking retard. Ugh.

Ugh, Fuck you too

So I was reading some HuffPost Feed articles and saw the disgusting practice even otherwise progressive men [people, since gender is not always apparent from the posts] seem to still think is a-ok. That is giving men they don't like female names. I saw "Rude E Julie Annie" and "Karla Rove."

Would it be appropriate for me to respond to that comment asking why the person did that? What else could I say that would bet my point across without it sounding like whining but also not start a fight. I want it to be short and sweet. "Thanks for letting me know that you think being a woman is an insult"?

I'm sick of this shit.