Pontificatus Silverian!

[silveradept]

Or, we have a lot of links tonight.

Context on the Internet is important. Remembering that there is a lack of it on the Internet is also important. Someone forgot - and ended up killing a classmate because of it. That's not cool. I'm guessing, though, this will be billed as an "Oh, internet! You made my child kill someone else!" rather than "Um, child misunderstood and then acted very inappropriately."

In Republican news - Rush got caught with a bottle of blue pills and a prescription for it - the prescription's not in his name, though. Rush needs Viagra, huh? Can't get up enough natural steam that he needs help?

Close vote expected on flag-burning amendment. The Congresscritters are lobbying to make "desecration" of the flag illegal. Seems more like an election-year smokescreen stunt than anything of substance to me, but if it makes it past the Congress, there's a good chance it'll make it past the states. And this opens up an entirely new venue to cart people off with - not that any good government would, but I can just see plants who burn flags in a group just to get the group and their political ideologies off the field and in jail. Plus, this feels like a potential slippery slope about the "redress of grievances" as well as "freedom of speech" bits. Although, I joked when annaonthemoon asked, "Our freedom's already gone. Now they're just cleaning up." I wonder how close to the truth that phrase actually is.

Pro-lifers don't like Warren Buffet's gift, since the foundation he chose donates to (shock!) Planned Parenthood, and they think it will spread the "culture of death" further. That's silly. It's not about death, but about life - specifically, making sure that lives aren't destroyed because someone has a fetish for punishment and believes their ideology to be the only true one.

Which leads, somewhat obliquely, into the Male Privilege Checklist - all the benefits that I can enjoy as a man, without having to think about it, worry about it, and that women have to fight tooth and nail to obtain. I went through the list with annaonthemoon, and while I do agree (somewhat regretfully) with some of them, others I placed conditionals on or rejected entirely, and others she rejected entirely as well. We may not be normal people, of course. Anyway, what do you think? Are these on target, off-target, or off-kilter?

Men with older brothers appreantly are more likely to be homosexuals. Perhaps it's having a male figure in your life that loves, cares, collaborates, and is a positive role model for much of your life? Maybe now we'll find out that having an older sister makes a guy more effeminate. Or that girls who have older sisters turn out to be lesbians more often, and older brothers more tomboyish. But this apparently has nothing to do with societal or familial influences, but some prenatal factor that turns makes younger brothers more likely to be gay. I can hear religious conservatives squeeing and hoping this turns out to be valid in much larger study samples. Of course, this could be put to good effect to argue that since it is a biological thing, then gays deserve protection under law from the discrimination statutes. Could go either way, really. Although I wonder if there will be another rash of Henry VIII behavior, where the woman is blamed because she carries the "gay gene" in her.

Waterproof finger scanner.Getting closer every day to biotech being a requirement... and it's still not properly able to do all it should, securely. If it did, then I'd be lamenting that such things lead to ubiquitous data tracking and the fun that develops from that.

Not that the person's being a git about it, but apparently, the Red Cross would like people not to use their symbol willy-nilly. It being, however, a relatively simple image, this seems a little on the silly side. It seems a little tough that an object such as a red cross will be subject to permission-granting before it can be used anywhere. There's something that feels not-quite-right about this, like it's being overzealous or something. Can't quite put my finger on it. They do have a case, but it seems like the symbol has taken on additional meaning, and that to start restricting it back will be detrimental to the society as a whole. greyweirdo also gives a list of truly ridiculous stuff regarding patents.

An uncomfortable restroom decoration. Apparently, they don't want you to linger in this bathroom, so they've put up some observers to comment on the size of the people who use it. I suspect, unless it were, say, General Tom Thumb, that many men would be off-put by the looks on the faces of the urinal and toilet observers.

Anyway, after that scintillating set of strangeness, I'm being dragged away by two arms and goddess knows how many other appendages. (But I'm not about to be taking part in any sort of Call of C'thulhu game or Japanese tentacle porn, so I think I'm relatively safe.) G'night, and if I survive it, I'll see you tomorrow.

Comments

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Lucky you, you get a rant, because one of those is very true, and it drives me nuts!

"8. I am not taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces."

I HATE that people tell me I need to be afraid. I should be afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, afraid of meeting strangers, afraid of moving away from home, afraid, afraid, afraid, afraid, because I might get raped, I might get assaulted, I'm too weak to defend myself, and so I must be scared.

Screw it! I'll take my chances. I'm not stupid, I don't go out alone in a bad neighborhood or anything, but I'm not going to live in fear because something just might happen to me, and I'm really tired of people telling me that I should!

The others... *shrug* Some of 'em are true, some don't seem to be, and some of them I judge to be purely irrelevant. (Do I really care that I lack the "privilege" of having the default gender of my language be male? Not really.) And the others don't quite bother me the way that one does. I ignore a lot of what women "should" be like, and I'm in a field where females are both the majority, and have the psychological advantages. Male costumers are assumed to be either gay or less competent. But the expectation that I ought to be fearful just drives me up the wall. Grrr.

[silveradept]

Yeah. Some are true, some are false, some are meaningless.

As for the fear bit, while it may be more true for females, I think there's a significant amount of the male population that is also taught to fear walking alone in public spaces. Children, especially, and people who fear that lower-class people are all just looking to rob them and hurt them are not going to be too comfortable in average public spaces, either. Or people who are taught that people of a different race are all thugs, rapists, and murderers. The smart thing is not to court or draw attention to yourself from the people who do want to hurt you, but just being outside alone in most places is not going to get you shot or assaulted.

The funny thing about rape and assault is that, or so I keep hearing, it's not random strangers most of the time who do rape, but people who you know and are at least acquainted with. It's the kind of people youwould go out with together so that you don't have to be alone. Kind of sucks that things tend to go that way.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

I hate to break it to them, but other groups have used a red cross as their symbol before them.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Ah, but did they trademark it? Who ever trademarked, or copyrighted it or whatever you do with a symbol, gets to have the say. Sadly, that really is the way it works now.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Not really - you can't trademark the letter "I" either.

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

The Red Cross symbol however is copyrighted.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Many things get copyrighted, and the copyrights don't hold up because, well, it was just mind-numbingly stupid that they got copyrighted to begin with. I can't see how something as simple as a red colored cross shape can be considered the sole property of one organization - especially when it has been used so widely throughout history.

Besides all that, why on earth are they wasting time and money worrying with this instead of helping people?

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

There are lots of copyrights that seem mind-numblingly stupid that do hold up though. All it really requires is a good legal team. Lots of things that have been used for centuries have been snatched up and copyrighted. Look into some of the copyright and trademark insantity that's run rampant sometime.

This also has other larger implications because of the protected status the Red Cross is supposed to enjoy under international law reguarding war zones and other trouble spots.

[silveradept]

True enough. That's about the only place I can see where cross confusion will be a problem, in someplace where the Red Cross really needs to be the Red Cross. In a place like that, though, will there be a lot of buildings and people still standing that have a red cross on them?

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Red Cross tents, vehicals and personal are not (under rules of war) supposed to be attacked. It happens, but the rules against it are fairly strict.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Ditto with the Swiss army.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

There are lots of copyrights that seem mind-numblingly stupid that do hold up though.

I can no longer find the link, but there was a webiste that claimed to have copyrighted the :-).

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Took me forever to find this article, turns out I was using the wrong keywords.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/exhibit/2006/03/intellectual_property.html

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Re: the correlation of male homosexuality with number of older siblings: it's a nice theory you have there, but the evidence really does mostly rule out social influences. (There is no correlation with "growing up with older males of roughly the same age", only with "being born to someone who has had lots of male children previously".)
Personally, I'm going with womb chemistry, since we already have other indicators that hormone levels in the womb are correlated with male sexual orientation...

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

The social numbers have never really added up.

Do they have similar indicators for females? I'm always hear about "What makes boyus gay" but I don't hear much about girls, which I personally find troubling.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Last time I actually looked into it, it seemed that the correlations for gay men were not correlations for gay women, and there was some discussion of whether this pointed to a different origin of sexual orientation between the sexes.
I don't know what's happened since then, though...

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

The current theory (and I've not really been following this, but just from reading the article) involves a much stronger immune response of the mother to a uniquely male hormone/something in the womb. Over multiple male pregnancies, this immune response gets stronger and hence those with multiple older male biological siblings are more likely to be homosexual.

[silveradept]

Yeah, I know - it feels like, though, if orientation is strictly womb chemistry, then there's going to be flak from many places about the need to "remove" the capability for people to be homosexual from the populace.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Why? If those people are predominantly religious, how dare they fuck with God's Divine Will?

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

I'm going to hold my tongue before I say something I really regret.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Against or pro my semi-sarcastic comment and assumption that anti-homosexuality tends to be a glossed with a religious standpoint in American politics?

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Pro your sentiment, certainly.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Question: isn't it supposed to be the homosexual males that are effeminate, and the homosexual females that are tomboyish?

M) ...

N) As a rule of thumb. (Please don't kill me.)

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

No.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Very interesting. *has whole section of internal model of world completely backwards*

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

For one thing, the stereotypical model of lesbian relationships (not that this is always the case, although I /do/ know people who fit into the stereotype as well) is one "femme" and one "butch" lesbian in each pair. Of course, this is a stereotype, and hence should not be regarded as an actual model for reality.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Very interesting. *mind begins making various connections between memories*

Stereotypes may not fit reality precisely, but they often have a root in truth (thus how they became stereotypes). *nods*

Thank you!

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I don't know if having siblings has anything to do with being gay or not. Mostly because several gay men I know don't have ANY siblings, so how would that theory tie those people in?

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

...because it's statistical?