Archives for 2009

And unhealthy piles of cash. Attention, classic movie fans: items from Audrey Hepburn’s wardrobe will be for sale Dec. 8 in London. Doesn’t say anything about how mere mortals are supposed to manage to fit into those clothes…

Makes you think twice about pulling the plug too fast, doesn’t it:

A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.

Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them – but could make no sound.

‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state.

The Burka Barbie!

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Tanya does a double take: Oh! I get it. At first glance, I thought it was an ad for the Snuggie. (And is it just me, or does the burgundy Snuggie cause one to resemble a Gregorian Monk?)

I’m not exactly surprised or shocked by this story, for it is not new. Hard-core “environmentalists” have, for the longest time, been more partial to the earth than to humans. See this, for instance. Or this.

Of course it’s silly. And in some cases, more than a little creepy. But hey, I’m not particularly worried. Besides, if the most hard-core activists choose not to reproduce, it will mean that many fewer hard-core activists born and raised, so how can we lose?

I usually try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but these guys are making it difficult.

A Danish non-governmental organization has created a simple online video game — colourfully titled Hit the Bitch — that allows players to slap a woman in the face, causing her to become bloody as bruised, as part of an advertising campaign designed to draw attention to domestic violence issues.

WARNING, the depictions of violence in the game are quite graphic.

The game was created by The NGO for Children exposed to Violence at Home as part of an online advocacy and awareness campaign.

The game starts with a video of a young woman walking towards the screen greeting the player in Danish. At a certain point, the video is paused and the name of the game is superimposed on the screen. Users can then choose to either use their mouse or a Webcam to control a realistic male hand.

By moving the mouse back and forth across the screen, the player can slap the woman in the face using the hand on the screen. With each smack the woman’s face becomes increasingly bruised and her tone of voice grows increasingly angry.

After each slap, a power meter along the top of the screen grows from “pussy” to “gangsta.” Once the game’s power meter reaches the “100% Gangsta” side of the screen — after roughly 8 or 10 slaps — the game fades out and shows the player a “100% Idiot” screen.

The game then displays a video of the woman lying on the ground and crying, with what appear to be stats on domestic violence and ways to share the video via Facebook superimposed over her frame in Danish.

My goodness, how desperate are these young women?

Although Afghan women have attained greater freedoms since Western soldiers first arrived in their country in 2001, one imprint of the restrictions placed on women under Taliban rule remains: forced marriages. Now brides who find themselves in these hellish arrangements are resorting to a disturbing method of escape—they’re burning themselves to death. Earlier this month, it was reported that the Herat Regional Hospital burns unit in western Afghanistan had handled 51 cases of female self-immolation between January and July of this year. Of those cases, 38 patients succumbed to their wounds.

The doctor in charge of the burns unit, Mohamed Aref Jalali, said that the practice comes from Iran, which has one of the highest rates of self-immolation in the world, especially among Kurds living in rural areas along the border. Many Afghan refugees adopted the custom when they fled there during the decade-long war with the Soviet Union that ended in 1989, and continued it when they returned home in the 1990s. The popularity of burning oneself to death has since grown among poor, uneducated Afghan women who live in areas where young girls are traditionally forced into marriage.

Afghan laws stipulate that girls under the age of 16 should not be married, but an astonishing 60 per cent are forced into marriages when they are children anyway. Choosing death over marriage is a result of the stark daily routine of Afghan women: many are treated like slaves, kept inside and ordered to cook and clean, while others are repeatedly beaten or raped.

I have no idea what to do to help, but I’ll say this: As long as we continue to pretend that all cultures are equally valid, we will never get rid of that problem.

David Frum, about Sarah Palin:

This is a woman who has got into a position of leadership by sending very powerful sexual signals. And we see that in the way that men like her much more than women do.

I dunno, eh? I’m a woman and I like Sarah Palin. I know many other women who like her, too. Mark Steyn notes that “when I saw her campaign in N.H., I was surrounded by moms with strollers.” I’m not saying men who like Sarah Palin haven’t noticed that she is, not to put too fine a point on it, a woman who’s quite pleasant to look at. But come on. I’m willing to bet there are hundreds of thousands of women, if not millions of women, who think Barack Obama is attractive. Do analysts claim he got into a position of leadership by sending very powerful sexual signals?

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Andrea adds: I plan on doing a Palin post soon since I’m in the US of A and seeing quite a lot of book tour coverage. For now I’ll just add that I’m not as convinced as I once was that she is President material. But neither do I feel it necessary to incessantly malign her, as apparently some others do. On a related note, and speaking of American coverage, Frum was on CNN last night, attacked from all sides (something about Fort Hood). He held up well; was certainly the most rational one on an annoying, loudmouth panel.

OK, this crusty old goat here would hate to be mistaken for someone who’s in touch with modern teen culture. I don’t have time to watch television or keep up with what’s popular, so forgive me if I’m, like, a week and a half behind the times. For instance, I did not realize the new movie in the Twilight saga was coming out this week, even though I’ve been hearing about it from the various teen girls who train at my dojo – Edward is an awfully popular name these days, I gather.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUjiOHA7GAo]

If you’d watched only the trailer you’d have missed this interesting plot element:

In the series, vampire Edward Cullen doesn’t want to harm or bite his teen love interest Bella Swan, which means they can’t have sex.

“With teens, we actually found that they appreciated the messages of abstinence,” said Melissa Click of the University of Missouri, who surveyed 4,000 Twilight fans.

Click and her co-authors’ research primarily addresses the reasons behind the teenage-madness for Twilight, a four-book series with two films so far. The newest movie, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, opens Friday, and has already broken Cineplex Theatres’ records by selling $1.5 million in advance tickets across Canada. The first film, Twilight, grossed more than $190 million in North America.

The research found that many teen girls — who make up the core of Twilight’s audience — are drawn to the story about love beyond the physical. “The media environment is saturated with teens in sexual relationships,” said Click. “(Twilight) does provide something different for girls. I’ve had girls say to me, ‘I’m going to wait for my Edward.’ And they think that’s really cool.”

Indeed it is, and I’m delighted to hear that many girls and young women are getting the very important message that true love is a heck of a lot more than just casual sex, and that it is worth waiting for that special someone. I’ll make a point of reading the books… as soon as I’m done with the last Harry Potter tome (told you I wasn’t up to date).

Please forgive my obsessive compulsive habit of finding fault with public “education” systems. I have a big grudge against them that goes a looooong way back, and this poor old soul here doesn’t really let go of grudges easily. (I know; I’m a bad person. But that doesn’t mean I’m not right.)

Thing is, just about everything reminds me of exactly how wretched public “education” systems have become. And when I see articles like this one, I get very excited.

A few facts about schools and education:

• A review of British pre-school programs which included “free nursery education for all three-year-olds” found that the £3-billion spent on the programs since 2001 resulted in no discernible benefits. One study found that the children of teen mothers actually did worse in the new program.
• Peer-reviewed studies consistently show that home-based learners out-score their schooled counterparts, with the relative gains being greatest for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
• The Conference Board of Canada’s 2007 Report Card on Canada found that “[o]ver 7.5 million adult Canadians have low basic skills and low levels of literacy,” even though many of them had graduated from high school.
• There is compelling evidence that before the implementation of compulsory schooling in New England, the literacy rate far surpassed that of today, even when controlling for the greater numbers of non-English speakers present in the region now.
• Research two years ago at the University of Connecticut discovered that many graduating students at four-year American colleges knew less about civic issues, including history, government and economics, than those students entering the institutions.

Why is it that more schooling can actually hinder learning? Perhaps it’s time to start pointing the finger at moral hazard, the blanket scholastic insurance policy that induces those insured — students and their parents — to become less inclined to take an active role in securing their own education.

Makes sense, which is exactly why governments everywhere are insisting that, No, no! We should NOT point fingers at anything and we should ABSOLUTELY frog-march toddlers to all-day “early education centres”, no matter what it costs and how much it doesn’t do! (Here in Ontario we have a big old expensive all-day school-based daycare system coming, and nothing anyone says will stop politicians from implementing it.)

In other (completely unrelated, I’m sure) news, children in Britain will get a legal right to a good education:

An education Bill to be unveiled in the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday will create a set of pupil and parent “guarantees” for the first time – outlining what families can expect from the state school system in England.

This includes one-to-one tuition for pupils struggling in the basics, five hours of PE every week, the right to “high quality” cultural activities and a promise that all schools will promote healthy eating, active lifestyles and mental wellbeing.

Let me get this straight: First we institute new and modern “education” systems that consistently teach less and cost more. And then we tell parents their children are guaranteed a “good education” [sic], opening the door to endless and no doubt extremely costly litigation. Which will result in better outcomes for the kids in what way, exactly?