North Korea is rattling the sabres

Here's the headline:

North Korea warns South of 'pre-emptive strike'

I'd just like to take a few seconds to respond to this...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
..
HAHA
..
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
..
sniffle...

Seriously.. North Korea.. like it has any change in hell of winning a war with South Korea. Always fun to hear kimmi squirm.

Democracy on the cheap

I'm always amazed when I hear people talking about voting. Nobody seems to care about it.

This might sound weird considering all the fuss over elections all the time. People do care about elections and politicians and the direction of their country. All that is clear, but as soon as it comes down to actually doing the voting nobody seems all that interested in the integrity of the process.

Crooks and liars has a post about Florida and Michigan democrats squabbling over what to do with their delegates, they both didn't have a proper election so the results they have are only partial. Now they are debating whether to count the delegates as is or to not count them or to do a new election.

Crooks and liars then says this: "Florida Dems could have another primary, but there are some major legal and financial restrictions."

Legal? So there is a law saying that people are not allowed to vote? I think I know the solution to this problem..

Financial? I'm surprised that this can even be said with a straight face. So the rule is "democracy is good as long as it doesn't cost anything"?

To be fair, Michigan is trying to set up a new election they just need the necessary funding ($10 million). Lets hope they can raise that.

Why I love Holland, part 2

I don't think I'll ever be able to comprehend the arrogance, immorality and maliciousness of those that oppose assisted suicide and euthanasia.



Chantal Sebire begs French president for the right to die
France rejects right-to-die plea

Joel speaks on web standards

There are only a few technology writers that can really explain stuff in non-technical terms, teach you something and be funny at the same time. Joel Spolsky is one of these people. He has written an article on web standards that is really worth the time if you care about the subject. I really like the quote at the end: "the idealists are 100% right in principle and, ..., the pragmatists are right in practice."

Amazon sucks

With the ongoing creditcrisis the dollar is seriously tanking. Great! that means that I can buy books for cheap on Amazon.. I like reading and I buy a lot of books but so far always from dutch sellers (bol.com and the local bookstore). So I thought I'd change this and save some money.

Here is the problem; Amazon only accepts credit cards as payment methods and I don't want a credit card. I do want to pay with iDEAL but Amazon doesn't want to support that system. I tried complaining to them but their online complaint system requires an order number for the complaint. Obviously I don't have one.

God I hate Amazon.

Why I love Holland, part 1

This will be a multipart series, although I don't know how often I'll post something.

In the news today is an article saying that the government is going to put more funding into combatting the dogshit at a public park in Amsterdam. This is in reponse to a survey which said that it was the number two annoyance there, the number one annoyance was stray garbage and number three was dogs running around not on a leesh. Other nuisances mentioned where people playing soccer, barbequing and public urination.

You might think, so why is this great? It seems like nothing more than standard governing. Well, its great because that same park is used at night by gay men having sex (obviously in public in full view). Nobody seemed to be upset about that. :)

I love Holland.

Blogosphere falls over itself to be politically correct

Yesterday I wrote about Charlotte Allen's post about women being stupid. I do not think that the premise of the piece is correct but it did raise an interesting point; that women and men are mentally different. Off course that part of the article was not addressed by the blogosphere:

Steve Benen in a post on Crooks and Liars:

Her foolish attack on women is easy to dismiss as petty nonsense, best suited for a He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club blog.

Ezra Klein on his blog says:

They should be ashamed of publishing an article of such poor quality.

Jessica at feministing had this to say:

she's just spouting misogyny for a patriarchal head-pat and a paycheck

But only hilzoy at Obsidian Wings had anything really useful to say:

A few more particular points. First, talking about what "we" women (or we liberals/conservatives, or whatever) is almost always just intellectual laziness. Unless the claim is obviously true (e.g., "we human beings are mammals"), the appropriate response is: what do you mean "we", white man?

Second, romance novels* (update below the fold) are not "books", as that word is normally used. They are either tools for relaxation or the female equivalent of porn. They should therefore be compared not to War and Peace, but to either Ultimate Sudoku or the Hustler centerfold. Personally, I think they come out fine in either comparison, but that's probably because I'm just a dumb woman.

Third, the idea that brain size has anything to do with intelligence was disproven ages ago (at least, if we're talking about the normal variation in human brain size, as opposed to the difference between human and planarian brains.)

Fourth: doesn't the Post have editors whose job is to prevent this sort of trainwreck? If so, the editor responsible for allowing this column to waste perfectly good space in the Washington Post should be fired.

The first is nothing but semantic nitpicking. The question is if there are differences in intelligence between the genders. What the word 'we' means in the phrase 'we women' is rather pointless.

The second doesn't make much sence either. Comparing men and women by the kind of entertainment they enjoy isn't going to teach us much about their intelligence. And of course the research is very hard to control. I.e. when is something entertainment? how do you control for spare time? how do you rate the 'intelligence' of different forms of entertainment? etc.

The third point is fair, but false. A simple google search shows that there definately is a correlation between brain size and intelligence. [1], [2], [3]

And the fourth, well, I guess you can disagree on whether to print this article.

America bombs a village, doesn't provide health care and some reflections on misogyny

Some news of the day..

America decided to bomb a somali village using a Hercules AC-130. Those planes are generally not used for precision bombing. Score: 2 women and 2 children dead, 20 people wounded.

Americans are now getting health care provided for them by charity.

A war is erupting between Equador and Venezuela on one side and Colombia on the other. My first reaction was; wow a war in the world that America is not part of.. But the conspiracy nut in me couldn't completely rule it out.

Finally, Charlotte Allen in the Washington Post wrote an article asking why women are so stupid:

I can't help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women -- I should say, "we women," of course -- aren't the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial.

As you can understand this struck a nerve in our friendly feminists. Jessica at Fiministing had this to say:

Charlotte Allen - a professional woman-hating hack from the Independent Women's Forum who has also oh-so-bravely attacked transgender rights, said that the answer to women's potential financial woes is marriage, and suggested that Hurricane Katrina might have been "the best thing" to happen to New Orleans which is full of "whiners...chisel[ing] us taxpayers" out of money - has outdone herself in an article that is all about what dumb fucks women are.

You can see where this is going:

I could go on and on, because Allen certainly does provide ample fodder for fisking, but there's no real point. Professional anti-feminists make too much bank to ever stop writing sexist drivel.

I made that part bold because I think that part is the most important, Allen doesn't just mention anecdotes and vague beliefs, she mentions scientific studies. And thats what this question ultimately is: a scientific question. Everybody I know would readily accept that women and men are physically different, why is it so hard to entertain the notion that women and men are also mentally different? Maybe its just me but I've always found feminists to be a strange type of woman; trying very hard to be like men. I've never heard of men voluntarily trying to get in touch with their feminin side. We are all different in a lot of ways, please stop confusing equality with similarity. We are equal and different.

So what were those studies that Charlotte refered to? These are the quotes:
- "A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women." article

- "a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness" article

- "Men's and women's brains not only look different, but men's brains are bigger than women's (even adjusting for men's generally bigger body size)." website website

- "While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid." article

Its not very conclusive in my mind but it does clearly show difference. I especially like the last one where men stick to the extremes and women are more in the middle. So Jessica, do you have any criticisms of these papers? In the interest of furthering the debate this seems like a good place to start.

A new promotional video for clinton.. Blowjob fiasco

I just ran into this from the Huffington post:

The Hillary Clinton Campaign released a video starring Jack Nicholson today. The spot consists of a statement from Nicholson along with him in character as The Joker, Col. Jessup (A Few Good Men), and Jake Gittes (Chinatown).

Here is the video:

I think its a great promotional video, but what I find really amusing is that last part of the video. It doesn't include everything that Jack Nickolson says in "A few good men". Good thing I remembered and Google is so good at finding a transcript:

JN: There is nothing sexier then a woman you have to salute in the morning.

JN: Promote 'em all, I say!

JN: If you've never had a blowjob from a superior officer, -
JN: you've missed the best in life.

TC: Code Reds are still condoned here?

JN: But I'll just take cold showers till they elect some gal president.