New “toys” and accessories for toddlers: Nipple tassels and poll-dance dolls. That’s got to be a new record.

[h/t The Corner]

A columnist makes an interesting case:

At first blush there’s no difference between an honour killing and any other murder. If a woman is killed for insurance money or for honour, she’s still dead.

But on closer analysis there is a difference and an important one.

Killing a spouse for insurance is brutal and monstrous but it is an act only focused on the deceased.

But honour killing kills the deceased and threatens others. An honour killing uses violence as theatre to intimidate others. It stands to enforce a sexual code of conduct by violence and threats.

An honour killing is part of an organized effort to subjugate women to a specific and oppressive view of society. Although the total number of honour killings in Canada is still relatively small, probably less than 50 in total to date, the impact on the community as a whole is huge. When compared to a worldwide figure of perhaps 5,000 honour killing a year the implied threat is heightened.

I often wonder where feminists are on this topic, and they usually answer that if only I knew how to Google I’d know. Which is funny since intense Googling usually brings me to posts from feminists complaining about people like me Muslim-bashing, which, regardless of what you think of my motives, has little to do with the matter at hand – namely, what are we doing right here in Canada to make sure all women are protected from that kind of violence. So this morning I will refrain from asking about the whereabouts of feminists and just say that I’m glad the Sun published that column.

I know; it’s not exactly a new point. But it’s good to see more and more people making it, because it’s true.

Barbara Wilding, the longest serving female chief constable, said that a growing rift between young and old generations, combined with the pressures of an ageing population, is a significant challenge for police.

“Elderly abuse is something that we have yet to really grasp,” she said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. “It is one of the things that I think will be the next social explosion.”

She drew comparisons with the first discovery of widespread child abuse in Britain in the 1970s, and said that the abuse of the elderly was “the same sort of social issue – it can be covered up and the victims do not have a voice.”

Asked about the potential impact of changing the law of assisted suicide, which is currently illegal, Miss Wilding replied: “From a policing perspective we need to be very careful on this to make sure it does not become a way of getting rid of a burden. I will be watching any change in legislation very carefully”.

A fine column, if somewhat discouraging:

A few years ago, Kenneth Minogue of the London School of Economics wrote that ours is the age of “the new Epicureans” in which the “freedom to choose” trumps all. A childless couple can choose to conceive. A female couple can choose to conceive. A male couple—Barrie and Tony from Chelmsford, England—can choose to conceive and both be registered as the biological fathers of their children not so much on the technical grounds that they had “co-mingled” their sperm before shipping it out to their Fallopian time-share in California but out of a more basic sympathy that this is how Barrie and Tony “self-identify” and it would be cruel to deny them. A woman in Bend, Ore., can choose to become a man, and then a “pregnant man.” A man can choose to become a woman. A man can choose to get halfway to becoming a woman, and then decide it’s more fun to “live in the grey area.” Biologically, Barrie or Tony, but not both, is the sole father of their child; the “pregnant man” is pregnant but not a man; the he/she living in “the grey area” is in reality black or white—at least according to what we used to call “the facts of life.” But issuers of passports, drivers’ licences, even birth certificates and no doubt one day U.S. Department of Homeland Security visas now defer to the principle of “self-identification.”

In terms of sexual identity, we’re freer than almost any society in human history, at least in terms of official validation of our choice to “redefine” ourselves in defiance of biological and physiological reality. And yet, if you accept that infertile couples and gay couples should be free to “have” babies by means of technology, why should you not be free to sell them the semen that enables them to do it? If you suggest that, say, “partial-birth abortion” (which is actually partial-birth infanticide) ought to be illegal, feminists will be out in the street chanting, “Keep your laws off my body!” and “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!” But, when the government tells you you can’t sell your own bodily fluid, which is, after all, about as basic a personal property as anything, there are no outraged progressives to chant “Keep your legislation off my ejaculation!”

At some point we will come to see that the developed world’s massive expansion of personal sexual liberty has provided a useful cover for the shrivelling of almost every other kind. Free speech, property rights, economic liberty and the right to self-defence are under continuous assault by Big Government. But who cares when Big Government lets you shag anything that moves and every city in North America hosts a grand parade to celebrate your right to do so? It’s an oddly reductive notion of individual liberty. The noisier grow the novelties of our ever more banal individualism, the more the overall societal aesthetic seems drearily homogenized—like closing time in a karaoke bar with the last sad drunks bellowing off the prompter “I did it My Way!”

Or maybe it’s just me cackling. For I find these women funny. First they get all puffy about feminism, then they advise women on the proper care and feeding of husbands (if you’ll forgive the expression – thanks, Dr. Laura), which apparently includes picking up their socks and making them coffee. Which perhaps goes a touch far the other way. Still, this feminist has finally realized one thing worth realizing:

Asked if she thinks feminism has destroyed women, the author of The Lives and Loves of a She Devil and Puffball claimed that there are fundamental differences between the sexes.

She added that men should not be given such a hard time by career-minded women.

‘Life is much better, because you are not dependent on the goodwill of men,’ she continued, referring to the growth of women in the workplace.

But the trouble is, the battle became too fierce, and the whole culture encouraged women to believe that men are stupid, useless creatures who are the enemy.

‘But men nowadays aren’t s***. They’re actually much nicer.

‘They just don’t want to commit to you, and why would they when you are a busy working woman who can look after yourself and probably goes to bed easily with them?’

[h/t Kathy Shaidle]

You know what we need? We need a group dedicated to reminding people that access to maternity services are incomplete and threatened. Hey, if it works for abortion…

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets – even a caravan – went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

There will always be “born-in-the-taxi-on-the-way-over” cases, because I’m told that sometimes babies make their appearance quite suddenly. But golly, 4,000 a year in Britain is A LOT.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply – up 20 per cent in some areas.

Mr Lansley said: ‘New mothers should not be being put through the trauma of having to give birth in such inappropriate places.

Indeed.

I’m jealous…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UMWhJsd0JE&feature=player_embedded]

[h/t]

I’m sorry. I don’t want to sound cruel (well, more than usual, I mean), or to diminish the suffering of those who have great difficulty conceiving children. But golly, articles like this one bug me big time. Children are persons, not things we choose to have rights over.

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Tanya’s got nothing but questions here: How can a government decide to cover abortions but not cover IVF? It’s contradictory in the most obvious sense of the word.  Is there reproductive choice, or isn’t there?

If a woman is infertile sometime between puberty and menopause, for whatever reason, she is suffering from an actual physical ailment. If a woman becomes pregnant through natural means, it’s an indication of her reproductive health. So, here in Canada, our health care system might treat the healthy one, but leave the unhealthy one to fend for herself? Really? Genius.

One of my pleasures in life is going to Starbucks with Andrea. One secret I think I can share is that Andrea likes her Starbucks coffee super-duper hot. Like burning hot. So when I saw this story, I immediately thought of her. That’s how considerate and selfless I am.

The always informative Spiegelonline has a fascinating article about a pair of German scientists who have developed a coffee cup that keeps coffee at a temperature of 58 degrees Celsius (136.4 degrees Fahrenheit), which is apparently the ideal temperature for drinking hot beverages.

The two men, Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler, got upset because their mulled wine was always either too hot or too cold. They figured there must be a way to retain the heat long enough to drain the mug, and found the solution in something called phase change material (PCM), “a wax-like substance” that absorbs warmth and is used in construction to retain daytime heat and reduce energy use.

Sedlbauer and Sinnesbichler constructed a coffee cup containing little pockets they could fill with a type of PCM that melts at exactly 58 degrees. Once liquidized, it absorbs the heat from the coffee, allowing it to cool to the perfect temperature, and then holds it there by slowly returning the stored heat to the coffee. Once the coffee is gone the material cools and returns to a solid state. (See a photo here).

Oh sure, it’s ugly as all get out. But who cares? If it really does keep the coffee warm…

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Andrea is laughing: Super-duper, extra, extra hot… I like to take the time to stress that with the barista. I like to give them ample opportunity to have me not return my coffee, which I had to do just yesterday. (Wish I could say I was joking…)

I have no idea who Kourtney Kardashian is – I gather she’s famous, but since I don’t watch television I can’t tell you if that’s true or not (I know; I’m hopelessly out of touch, especially when Rebecca fails to keep me updated about this stuff). But that’s not the point. I just wanted to say: Kudos for doing the right thing.

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Rebecca adds: The Kardashians are a bizarre clan. Their stepdad is former Olympian Bruce Jenner, who has had so much plastic surgery as to look unrecognizable (is this Michael Phelps in 30 years’ time?) and their only other claim to fame, however tenuous, seems to be steatopygianism. I am happy that she is speaking publicly about choosing not to abort. Does it make me a curmudgeon, though, that she needed her hand held to tell her family she was expecting?

It kan’t be easy koping with parenthood if a frank discussion with your siblings is so daunting.

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Andrea adds: Rebecca, you do know that “can’t”  and “coping” start with “c”? Anyhoo, I heard about this star’s decision to keep her baby and a whole flurry of thoughts went through my head. Why was this agonizing for her? (She’s 30 and must be aware that sex can sometimes lead to pregnancy–even if you are on The Pill.) But then I realized, no, we can’t take this for granted. Our culture is very abortion-friendly. So yes, kudos (with a “k”) to Kourtney for keeping the baby, also for going public with the process.

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Rebecca can’t resist adding to this thread: KK (I really hope her middle name starts with a different letter) on eating while pregnant:

“You know what’s weird? Like, I always thought, like, if I was pregnant I would eat like, McDonald’s or like, Taco Bell all day long or something,” she says. “I’m not craving those things. Like, I’ve been craving, like, cold stuff like frozen yogurt and smoothies and like, I’ve been eating way more fruit then I used to eat before.”

When editors like you, they edit your quotes to make you sound less like a 12 year old.