March 31, 2005
I am plenty pissed off about this development. I hope the various legal challenges to the law work out. This being Minnesota, however, I'm not holding my breath. (Ha, ha! Get it?) But I'm not going to bother getting worked up. If bars and restaurants don't want my money, that's just fine with me. I have no problems with staying at home. It's better for my bank balance anyway.
But you should go read Dementee anyway. Because it's good fun, and it's similar to what I would write had I not just had a large lunch and felt a nap was called for.
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{...}The cause of Tibet is now at a critical juncture. After decades of diplomatic stalemate, talks began again in 2002 between Beijing and the Dalai Lama's envoy, Lodi Gyari. Mr. Gyari described the latest round of talks last year as the most serious exchange of views so far. As the Dalai Lama has repeatedly stated for decades now, the issue is not Tibetan independence from China but rather genuine Tibetan autonomy within the overall structure of a sovereign but benevolent China. This is not unreasonable or unobtainable. The model of Hong Kong certainly comes to mind.So now, more than ever, Beijing needs to feel outside pressure if we are to ensure that talks continue. Europe and Washington's most substantial means for pressure is certainly the weapons embargo, which they imposed on China after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. Yet the EU is now seriously considering lifting the embargo--it should not. Sixteen years later, China still has not substantively addressed the human rights abuses that led to the embargo, and, in fact, many of those involved in the 1989 demonstrations continue to linger in prison. In Tibet itself, severe restrictions on freedom of expression, association and religion remain in place. This record should not be rewarded with weapons exports.
All the more so since China enacted an anti-secession law providing it with the legal authority to attack Taiwan should it proceed further toward self-rule. The timing of this legislation contains a lesson for the EU. It was unthinkable until now because China lacked the capability to launch an invasion across the 100 miles of the Taiwan Strait. However, Beijing has invested billions of dollars in Russian-made submarines, destroyers and other weapons. Therefore, lifting the embargo could accelerate Beijing's buying spree and enable even greater Chinese aggression.{...}
While I believe it's a naive position to hope and negotiate for an autonomous, yet PRC occupied, Tibet, and it's doomed to failure, Gere makes some very good points about the message the EU would send to the PRC if it lifted its arms embargo.
Now this is one instance where I wouldn't mind him "speaking for the world."
UPDATE: Related like Peking Duck is related to Sweet and Sour Pork:Beautiful Atrocities
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Just a brief teaser to tempt you with:
{...}Not a single woman admitted that sex is a WEAPON that she uses to get her way. NOT ONE was honest enough to admit that simple fact.{...}
(I won't reprint any more of this stuff here, because, quite frankly, the language is beyond even my tolerance for such things. Which, as we all know, is pretty high.)
Go read, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, and be enlightened.
UPDATE: Phin tried to keep quiet, but couldn't.
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March 30, 2005
We actually had a thunderstorm this morning.
The grass outside has already started turning green and, as I can see my neighbors' garden from my window, since it started raining, their hostas have started springing up.
I love how quickly things can happen when you just add water.
Unfortunately for us, we're expecting rain and snow on Friday. Which is a comedown from yesterday, when it was 70 degrees, but we'll take it.
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This is courtesy of my very good friend M. in England. Bless you m'dear. I needed that laugh this morning.
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11:53 AM
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Pammy over at Lollygaggin', one of our much beloved Red Hat Divas, has written an excellent essay on the topic. Go read.
TeaFizz has their own take as well.
WitNit has a some very kind things to say about us. We thank thee.
Finally, Dax has given us our topic for next week, and we're all looking forward to tackling it.
I will end this post with a final plea for questions for DIVAS SEZ. Hit the Demystifying Divas button over on the right sidebar and it will magically take you to our mailbox, which I fully expect you to fill with questions for the brilliant Sadie to answer. Questions need to be in no later than Thursday evening so Sadie has some time to get the gray matter a workin'.
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March 29, 2005
In case you can't be bothered to scroll down because you have a lazy finger or something, know that Rich has answered my questions, quite marvelously, too.
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Why is blogging not cool anymore? you ask.
Well, I'll tell ya. David Duchovny has a freakin' blog.
Now, before you X-Files fans descend upon me like Well Manicured Man descends on Bond Street, realize that I like David just fine. I am actually, despite my general loathing of most things science fiction, a fan of the show. Can't wait for the next movie because I really want to know if Scully's baby was Mulder's (because I'm pretty damn sure that wasn't an immaculate conception.). I think he's actually quite underappreciated as an actor. I actually want to see this film he's directed.
I just don't want to read yet another blog set up by someone to sell something. And that's the only purpose of this blog. If he wanted to get into some existential discussion about the price of rice, no hassles. This is a blog that is set up to SELL SOMETHING! Which, to my mind, is annoying and means blogging has jumped the shark.
{Hat tip: Sadie}
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SF Geekette The money quotes:
{...} "This is a very big issue that's just beginning to surface," said Steven Aden of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, Va., which defends pharmacists."More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable medications across the counter. We are on the very front edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the line."
An increasing number of clashes are occurring. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.
"There are pharmacists who will only give birth-control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to [dispense] it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."
{...}"Our group was founded with the idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's been going on is the use of medication to stop human life. That violates the ideal of the Hippocratic Oath that medical practitioners should do no harm," said Karen Brauer, the Pharmacists for Life president, who was fired from a Kmart pharmacy in Delhi, Ohio, for refusing to fill birth-control prescriptions.{...}
I have a few problems with this, the very least of which is that someone in a position of power is trying to push their morals on people who aren't paying to hear them. I mean, honestly. You want a "moral" pharmacist in that you can be reasonably sure they're not part of a meth pipeline, but to deny a woman birth control pills because it goes against your relgious beliefs? Particularly when there are other uses for birth control pills other than contraception? Where the fuck do you get off?
Erm. Let me rephrase that.
To put it mildly, I find this disturbing.
About a year ago, there was much rumbling from the gay community about a bill that was going through the Michigan Legislature. While I have no Lexis/Nexis to go a researching on this particular bill and Google has proved inadequate to the task, the controversy revolved around allowing medical providers to refuse treatment on moral grounds. The gay community was, understandably, upset because if this bill had become law (which I don't believe it did), it would have meant that a doctor who had issues with gay men could, conceivably, throw over their Hippocratic oath and refuse them treatment for HIV/AIDS without facing any legal ramifications. Furthermore, if I'm remembering correctly, this bill would have shielded insurance providers and hospitals as well.
What I found interesting about this whole brouhaha, was the fact that while the gay community was upset about it, everyone seemed to skip right past the somewhat larger issue---strictly in terms of population---of how this would affect women's health. As in birth control, access to abortions, sterilization, hysterectomies, etc. Because, let's face it, while a lot of people have problems with homosexuals, an equal number of people have issues with women having control over their reproductive systems.
This, like I said above, is disturbing. There are two separate issues at play here: one is birth control, the prevention of conception, which some people believe is just as bad as abortion, and there is abortion in itself. The evils associated with the latter, I believe, are what is driving some people to take a hard line stance against all contraception. Which is not very nuanced, if you ask me, and could even be dangerous and deleterious to a woman's health if a prescription for birth control were denied someone who had, say, ovarian cancer, for which birth control pills are prescribed as a part of the treatment. I've read many o' a history of what life used to be like for women before birth control became widely available, and let me tell you, no matter how much I loathe abortion and the culture it has wrought, I just don't want to go back to a time when birth control was not available because someone refuses to distinguish between contraception and abortion.
In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, let me refresh your memory: multiple pregnancies that resulted in more children than a family could feed; women whose life spans were half of what they are now because pregnancy is not kind to a woman's body; high infant mortality rates; high rates of women dying in labor due to complications; unmarried women, panicked at the thought of being pregnant, making an unholy covenant with a back-alley abortion provider and perhaps bleeding to death as a result---ya think there's a counselor available then; women relying upon a set of knitting needles to do the job, etc. This was less than a hundred years ago, yet some portions of our society believe we're past all of this, and that they have a right to deny birth control because they believe contraception is wrong. Furthermore, this notion of "holding a prescription hostage' is even worse. It's telling someone that well, I'm not going to do it for you, and I'm going to prevent anyone else from helping you, too. Because I know what's best for you.
Hmmmmm.
This affects all women. I am not a big fan of NOW and similar organizations, so it bothers me greatly that I'm parroting their line here. That said, they've got a point when it comes to protecting women's reproductive rights. If this becomes a widepread practice, what happens when it transfers to the practice of medicine itself? What happens when, for instance, a Catholic doctor refuses to perform a sterilization on a woman who's had her kids because they claim it's against their beliefs? Or if a woman has a prolapse and would like a hysterectomy because she's in pain? I could go on, but I'm sure you get what I'm driving at. Who has the choice then? You can always find another doctor here in the big city, but what happens if you live in a small town and there's only one doctor available? Or one pharmacist available, for that matter?
It's a extremely slippery slope and one I don't want to find myself sliding down.
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Last summer, Rich embarked on a cross-country move. He decided that instead of having to find a motel room every night, he would instead plan his trip around the invites of hospitable bloggers. He called this project Blogs Across America and Glenn wouldn't give him one bloody insty-link to promote it. But he's not bitter about it. Anyhoo, he stayed here at the Cake Eater Pad on a rainy summer evening, and despite my promises of going and stalking Lileks, we wound up staying in and drinking lots of gin. A good time was had by all, but I had one mother of a hangover the next day.
So, to complete the game, Rich will answer my questions, I will linkie back to them when he's got them done AND he will need to include the rules in his post, so he can grill five of his own commenters, hence continuing the meme.
Here we go.
1. You are a poet, which is a rare thing in this day and age. What does poetry provide you with? Who are your poetry idols? And why haven't you coughed up my "albatrossy" poem?
2. During your BAA trip, you had the opportunity to meet up with Jeff Goldstein and Martini Boy---and even stayed at Martini Boy's house. Are there any stories you neglected to mention then that you'd like to relieve your soul of now? Confession being good for the soul and all.
3. In haiku format please define the differences between your old neighbors on the west coast and your new neighbors on the east coast.
4. You have received a classical education. What do you think this has given you and how has it prepared you for the future?
5. Explain where the title of your blog comes from. Do you have a favorite type of booze, or will any old swill do?
I'll update when Rich posts his answers.
UPDATE: Rich has answered all. And quite marvelously, too.
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Go and read my children, and get to know my kid better.
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10:21 AM
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And they're very well done and completely worth the wait. Go and read.
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At a guess, I would have to say, no, they don't.
I have a lot of reasons for holding this view. First, I've seen how men treat women the morning after. They slink out in the morning, uttering promises of "I'll call you," and then they disappear, sliding off the end of the earth, never to be heard from again. Ironically enough, however, these men never have an issue with turning away what's offered them. This goes back, of course, to the whole "madonna/whore" complex that men are soooo enraptured of, in essence saying to the world, we like women who go to bed with us and who make it easy for us by going quickly, but we'll never have anything to do with them because what they just did disqualified them for wifedom and motherhood.. Of course, none of this mattters if you're Samantha Jones: she doesn't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of her, let alone the men she partners with. But most of us aren't Samantha Jones. We women are, perhaps, sometimes too eager to please, hence we make mistakes in the meantime, not fully understanding the nature of the male beast.
Which brings me to my second point about men not respecting women who jump into the sack too quickly: men are all about the chase. Hence the label "easy" is attached to a woman who gives it up too quickly. "Easy," in this situation is a loaded connotation, but at it's base level, it means, well, easy. It wasn't a hard thing to achieve, hence they don't have respect for a person who made it easy for them. No matter how much men whine about some woman leading them around by the nose and "playing hard to get," it's been my experience that they really do love it. They enjoy it because they're all about the chase.
Of course, the chase does, at times, gets boring. They want to settle down. They want to raise a family. Yet, when they do get around to this, the most likely candidate for the job will be someone who has led them on that merry chase. They will have earned her. They will have fought the battle and, after much blood has been spilled and many entrails have been gutted, they will declare victory---and the victory wouldn't be nearly as sweet if it was easy.
In conclusion, respect, as it is so often said, must be earned. If a woman wants to be respected by men, she will earn said respect by keeping her knees locked and scooting into her house after the good-night kiss. "Earning" whatever you want to earn is not something that one generally achieved overnight. It takes time to earn a paycheck. Why should earning respect be any different? It's all about what you value, and if you value respect, you will earn it, because at the same time you're learning if you can respect the object of your affection.
Because, after all, you wouldn't want him to be too easy, would you?
Now, go and read what the other Delightful Demystifying Divas have written on the same topic.
For the male perspective, you will want to go and read what Athos and Aramis have to say. Porthos and D'Artangan were out drinking and wenching last night, so when they've cleared themselves of their hangovers, I'll update.
There was something else...what was it? Oh, that's right! WE NEED QUESTIONS! Our beloved Sadie will be answering questions for Divassez on Friday. Fill up the inbox---you can clickie on the Demystifying Divas button on the right to get the address. (And don't look at me---the husband is responsible for that one! Must become more technologically adept. Must become more technologically adept.)
UPDATE: Porthos and D'Artangnan, saucy little French souls that they are, have recovered from their hangovers and have chimed in.
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I can testify that this is true.
One just doesn't expect the door to shut because of a wind tunnel created by the window that had suddenly opened.
My devoted Cake Eater readers will know that the Great White Hunter landlord put the Cake Eater pad up on the market in early January. The house sold at the end of last month and we were given thirty-days notice to pack it up and move it out. The husband and I, after a weekend of denial, started looking for a new place to live within our neighborhood. I started mentally plotting our move: what would need to be packed and in what order, etc. As of last Friday we hadn't found a place to move to. We weren't too concerned. After all, we found this place three days before we had to move last time. What can I say? We're picky.
But we've moved a lot in our ten-year marriage, so we know not to get too freaked out and not to give in too early. Something always turns up. If a door has closed, a window opens. If you would have asked me last Friday, I would have told you that a house up the street was the abruptly opened window mentioned above. Today, it's a different window entirely.
It's my own window.
Where I could reach out and touch the three pine trees that reside outside if there wasn't a screen in the way. It's the one that I'm currently seeing my own reflection in because it's dark outside. It's the one that's currently letting in a stream of fresh, early-spring air. And it's the one I'll be looking at and out of for another year.
Yep. That's right kids. We're staying put!
If you want the entire story, read on after the jump. more...
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March 28, 2005
Of course, I'll have to see it. Because I'm a Bond nut that way. But Orlando Bloom? I repeat: bleh.
I still do not get what it is people think is so attractive about him. He's a pup, for chrissakes. And a skinny, weak-mustachioed one, to boot!
Get some facial hair that doesn't look so freakin' scabby, young man, and then perhaps we can talk.
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11:05 PM
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For the love of God.
If you're such an evironmentalist, Cameron, one would suppose a check to the Nature Conservancy or Greenpeace even would do more good than you traveling around with a camera crew, littering up the "evironmentally sensitive spots" of the world while creating "awareness."
Gag.
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Yep. You read that right. Phoenix is my blog child. Late last summer, after lurking for months on end, she finally fessed up to her love of the Cake Eater Chronicles and told me something that still shocks and amazes me even today: she read my blog before she read Drudge. Woooooh. Thus began an email correspondence, which, after a while became quite screedy. This resulted in me telling her to start a blog.
Which she did. She also volunteered to be interviewed. Hence, I am now going to ask her five questions. She can find all of the stuff she needs to post with her answers right here.
And away we go.
1. You, Phoenix, are a midwestern girl. Born and bred in the heartland. Explain for the folks on the coasts (and around the world) what it's like to live here. Detail the pros and cons for them.
2. Your work has something to do with Agribusiness, which some people consider to be a dirty word. Give me an example of one common misconception you run up against in regard to the field you work in. Lavish us with the details of what you would say to these people if you didn't have to worry about being rude.
3. You enjoy baking. What has been your most spectacular success in this field, and conversely, what didn't work out so well?
4. You're an anonymous blogger. Why did you choose to blog anonymously? Do you feel it gives you more leeway to write certain things than if you attached your name to your work? Do you ever feel the compulsion to fib to your readers, knowing full well that they'd have no idea if you were telling the truth or not?
5. How did Prince Charming propose?
I will update when Phoenix answers.
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If you have BBC America on your cable/satellite system (DirecTV Channel 264!) and are a fan of crime drama, I would highly recommend watching this series. Robson Green plays Dr. Tony Hill, who according to the website is:
{...} a clinical psychologist who works with convicted killers in secure units. Intelligent and endearing, he is driven by a tangible sense of right and wrong, working to glean information from his patients about their crimes to help them and the victims' relatives. Tony's understanding of human behavior enables him to empathize with both victim and killer - even to the point of almost sensing the killings themselves. His expertise could be valuable to the police, but some consider him too eccentric.
By eccentric they mean a. he's not overly postmodern and b. he talks to himself. A lot. Robson Green's performance is, quite honestly, one of the best and most interesting performances on I've seen on tee vee in recent years. This character is someone who if you ran into them in real life, you'd think was a complete nutjob. But Green makes him extraordinarily fascinating and lets you into Tony's head, and not in a hokey, Tom Cruise-ish sort of way.
BBCAmerica is running older episodes starting this evening, with the new series starting on the 11th. Check it out if you get the chance and have two hours at a shot to blow. It's well worth your time.
I suppose I should also note that the Brits have different broadcast standards than we do. These, on occasion, can be fairly gory. Beware.
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