TheoCafe pulled up this gem from the news. In something straight out of a satire, a man is suing because his stripper ex-girlfriend "stole" his semen and used it to impregnate herself without his awareness, so that she would have kids and he would pay alimony.

General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Captain Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.

At the news sites, comment logs are full of the usual incendiary postings. Some feel sympathy for the man; some for the woman. I feel bad for the kids.

xfraulein:

 

”I think you could fall in love with anyone if you saw the parts of them that no one else gets to see. Like if you followed them around invisibly for a day and you saw them crying in their bed at night or singing to themselves as they make a sandwich or even just walking along the street and even if they were really weird and had no friends at school, I think after seeing them at their most vulnerable you wouldn’t be able to help falling in love with them. ”

Someone could.  I couldn't.  You couldn't.  Probably no one person could fall in love with anyone.

Hell, seeing someone at their most vulnerable also means seeing their secret addictions, their irrational hatreds, their petty (and not so petty) betrayals.  It means seeing their racism, their borderline date rape as they pick up a drunk at a party, their littering - all the things we know that statistically people must be doing but convince ourselves those we care for don't do.

Love is a grand thing.  But I don't think most of us love the truth. That's why things are so difficult.

Bob Ostertag's observations of recent UC Davis police brutality contain the following lines:

It is worth noting that in the Columbia photo, the one without helmets, guns, or chemical assault weapons, the student is being arrested for selling cocaine. In the Davis photo the students [who were just sitting around, and suddenly got pepper sprayed] were defending public education.

Apparently, in the state of California felons incarcerated for violent crimes have rights that students at public universities do not.

Amazingly, UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza attempted to justify this crime.

Many people no longer care to know the law in detail, which means that they no longer really care about rights until they personally are affected. Now, rights are not like rain or gravity, physical phenomena that happen independently of whether we believe in them or not. People in the system must believe you have rights in order for you to have rights. If they don't believe and act accordingly, then all the Constitutions and Bills of Rights in the world are simply dead pieces of paper.

If you view the entire thing from the perspective of officials looking for opportunities to expand the scope of their powers and do away with those pesky things called human rights, this response makes perfect sense. When pressed for answers, they use the opportunity for media exposure to try to drive home the idea that not only can they get away with this, they can get away with more. Whether or not it's grossly illegal is a secondary concern to whether they can get us (and their fellow officials) to believe they have the power to do it. For if we allow that they can do these things, they not only escape punishment for one instance of excessive use of force, they redefine what is considered excessive use of force, making it easier for them to do it in the future.

Obviously, such officials are not acting with the public interest at heart, but it remains to be seen whether we the public will recognize that and take action.

Do self-opening doors ruin our obsessive consideration of door-opening as a gender paradigm?

Sometimes 'why' is just what we ask ourselves when we don't have the power to act.

Son of a bitch, are we really this legally uninformed?

Yes. Apparently, yes we are.

Healthkicker asks why it's so hard to get sterilization, and suggests discrimination, lamenting that "it's almost impossible for a child-free woman to get sterilized. Once again, we see gender inequality here. "

Do these writers have any idea how insane some of the lawsuits that have gone through for voluntary medical procedures are? It's not discrimination on the part of the doctor if he's scared of being sued for it 10 years down the road: it's just plain fear. Justifiable fear. If people can sue for their dead relatives who repeatedly refused blood transfusions on religious terms, if people will sue because they chopped off their own hands and refused reattachment, then later had a change of mind, you bet your ass they will sue if they similarly get sterilized and then change their minds on the issue of sterilization.

Ask any number of doctors: what drives medical policy? Is it statistics? Is it the latest medical journals? If they are frank, they will tell you that lawyers determine medical policy. A good lawyer can drive a doctor to destitution and professional ruin and still have time to get lunch. A good doctor may be willing to risk a lawsuit to perform some vital, life-saving procedure, but only a stupid (or particularly impassioned) doctor will invite lawsuits over a non-vital, elective matter.

Look up the program that California ran to give free sterilization to crack whores. It was entirely voluntary, as the prostitutes did not want to get pregnant and the state did not want to have to deal with their kids. Lawyers descended on that like locusts, far-right groups were up in arms about the womens' "right to reproduce" (but note carefully, not their right to choose not to reproduce), and the whole thing wound up costing a lot of money in court battles and having to be shut down.

Iceland has a law for that? That's great. Iceland is really not America in a number of ways; it has a lesbian prime minister, and more to the point, it does not have the legal atmosphere concerning medicine that America does. Raging about why the US does not have an Icelandic law without examining any of the legal and cultural differences is at best uninformed and naive.

“It’s not too much to ask men and boys to “look, but don’t touch.” A young woman who wants to be noticed, even desired, without being assaulted isn’t making an unreasonable request. She’s not defying the facts of biology. She’s asking to be watched, appreciated, and left unharmed. Saying that she’s asking to be raped is like saying that a talented actor who portrays an unsympathetic villain particularly well on screen is asking to be attacked by an outraged member of the movie-going public. There’s a difference between a performance and an invitation, and it’s not that hard—really, it’s not—to distinguish the two.”

Sexy Halloween Costumes for Girls Don’t Cause Rape — The Good Men Project

I have to object to the wording, not because I want to, but because it just isn't true. It shouldn't be too much to ask. But in reality it actually is too much to ask of everyone. We know this because of the fact that rapes happen.

I think this is the key to understanding the problem: that which is simple and intuitive for many people is not necessarily simple and intuitive for all. In this case, the matter involves treating other people like actual human beings with rights. It is simple for most of us, but we have to accept that some people must struggle very hard to internalize this concept in order to understand the problem. Once we accept that fact, however improbable it feels, we can start to think of ways to deal with the problem. If we can't accept it, if we reject the absurdity, we get stuck at the stage where we rant about how this is just a simple thing, and we can't believe how people don't get it, etc. etc. That may feel nice and standard-affirming, but I don't believe it solves this problem.

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I have mixed feelings about translations. It irritates me how some translators can be so precise in rendering the literal English meaning of something like a fiction passage, a bit of poetry, or song lyrics, and miss the point in the process. Of course, you cannot ever preserve 100% of the meaning and implications both in a translation, but if you translate without preserving any implications, you no longer have a poem.

This is a translation of Younha's Houki Boshi. Relative to other translations, it is quite excellent.

Looking up to the night sky alone, I saw a comet
In an instant it burst open, and disappeared
When I think of you, my heart aches
I want to see you right now
But I can't fly

If I could turn into a comet
I would run through the sky and fly
No matter what tomorrow is like, these feelings are strong
So this comet will never break open

When I grumble about hating it when it rains
I even now remember what you would say
Stars will come out beautifully in the night sky, after the rain
When I think about that
I think that I can grow to love the rain too

If I could turn into a comet
I would she'd my overflowing light
Whenever I was sad, you would always look up to the night sky
And make it shine even more, so that I would smile

You're always alone, and fighting with something
But I can't be
At your side

If I could turn into a comet
I would run through the sky and fly
It will definitely reach you, in the light of this moment
Your moment shines, bringing the sky around
If I could turn into a comet
I would certainly be by your side, at any time

[ Lyrics from: LyricsMode, submitted by minor]

It's really awkward in certain places where Japanese does not match English well, but the individual concepts all seem to be appropriately translated. Most notably, there are parts where certain information would simply not be conveyed in English. The first line is yozore wo miage hitori ho mita: I was alone; I looked up into the night sky; I saw a comet. Or if you like: In the night sky, I saw a comet (and I did this thing by myself.)

What part of that do we keep? "In the night sky, I saw a comet"? For that part, should we make it match the original Japanese meter, so that it can be sung with the song?

A comet flashed in the dark and empty night
Turned into a fleeting show of light
I wanted to spend my time with you
But I can't fly like a comet

I just thought if I was that kind of star
I'd be with you no matter how far
My heart doesn't want it to matter
This comet won't shatter

---- work in progress

[Refrain:]
If I could turn into a comet
I would run through the sky and fly
No matter what tomorrow is like, these feelings are strong
So this comet will never break open

When I grumble about hating it when it rains
I still remember what you would say:
Stars will come out beautifully in the night sky, after the rain
When I think about that
I think that I can grow to love the rain too

If I could turn into a comet
I would shed my overflowing light
Whenever I was sad, you would always look up to the night sky
And make it shine even more, so that I would smile

You're always alone, and fighting with something
But I can't be
At your side

If I could turn into a comet
I would run through the sky and fly
It will definitely reach you, in the light of this moment
Your momentary brilliance, bringing the sky around
If I could turn into a comet
I would certainly be by your side, at any time

On the worship of rationalism:

Any emotion must be immediately justified away as rational, which leads to a life filled with self-denial and incomprehensible pretzels of logic. They convince themselves that what is missing from their life is sex, because to admit they are lonely would be to admit emotion, which they don’t have because they are rational. The convince themselves that women are inhuman and have nothing in common with them, because otherwise their desire to use them for sex the way they use a computer for email would be too horrendous to contemplate.

- different woman engineer

This probably applies to Ayn Rand, too.

With apologies to Axis of Doom:

1. You will be several steps behind your time.

Latin-speakers (people officially from Latin-speaking countries) are the SMALLEST minority in the world, making up a whopping 0.0000000001% of the total world population. And this group does not grow! Latin speakers are also the slowest-growing minority group, and are projected to comprise even less of the world population by 2050. Granted, Latin is still taught in Universities, Churches, etc., but there's ALWAYS a chance that you will fail to use it in any of those settings. Furthermore, Latin's cultural and political influence continues to ebb.

2. Due to their lack of growth, knowing Latin-speakers in your neighborhood is becoming less likely.

This means that it's less likely that you will marry one, know some in your neighborhood, work with them, or do business with them. In other words, they are rapidly becoming a forgotten part of our daily lives, and knowing Latin will have almost no impact on communicating with others.

3. Learning another language is good for your brain.

The brain is actually a muscle. The more you exercise it, the better it gets. Learning other languages increases grey matter in your brain. This stuff affects the way you process information, so learning *any* foreign language almost literally builds brain muscle. Thus, why not learn the least useful one? Furthermore, bilingual people can better combat dementia once it starts better than monolinguals. It also delays dementia! Sadly, muttering in Latin makes it likely that you will be *mistaken* for one with dementia.

4. People who know Latin are not necessarily good for business.

It wouldn't help to have "I fucking know Latin" on your resume. Why, you may ask? Well, it's the least spoken business language in the fucking world, and one of the least spoken in the world, period. Oh, and profanity is always great on your resume. If coming across as a pompous ass isn't enough of a reason for you, again, having "I know Latin" on your resume is silly, because it ensures you will be able to communicate far better with the Pope (and thus have basically no increase in opportunities to sell your product), and you will be less likely to be hired than other bilinguals. Of course, Latin speaking clergy are in very high demand. You will also have more university opportunities. That's just about the extent of it.

5. It's good for travel to one destination.

This is pretty obvious, but it's damn good to know if you plan on traveling to a Latin-speaking country. Are you going to Rome? (Y/N) Just imagine learning a language that has no bearing on finding places to eat, getting back to your hotel if you're lost, or having more chances to speak with the locals to authenticate your travel experience. Also, you're no less likely to get scammed. You can confuse others like a motherfucker. Book a hotel. Buy dinner. Et cetera. (That's Latin, bitch!)

6. There are intrinsic benefits.

This might sound backwards at first, but you'll actually get a better understanding of English if you know Latin. Why? Because both are confusing as hell and often disregard their own rules. You'll also notice how different Latin and English are, and how similar they are. Next, you'll be more aware of English grammar. Furthermore, learning Italian and/or French will be easier, since they have roots in Latin, and are thus very similar.

7. You'll be more equipped to understand and respect Catholic cultures.

Basically, you'll be able to read magazines, articles, newspapers, and even internet sites in Latin. Reading about how these were 500 years ago will help you understand these cultures far better than simply experiencing them in the present.

8. Learning Latin is relatively easier.

Don't get me wrong. Learning any foreign language takes at least a few years of persistent work, rote memorization, and a good amount of blood and sweat. But, as said before, Latin is similar to English in a few ways, and it's also almost completely dependent on a declension system that has no direct analogue in modern English. In other words, you'll almost never know how to use the grammatically correct form of a word just by reading it. English, obviously, is not always baffling in this respect, but Latin almost always is. Furthermore, it has a very similar alphabet and even very similar vocabulary (sometimes, anyway). For instance, "to breathe" in Latin is "spiro." That doesn't put me in mind of anything but Spiro Agnew, the embezzler. Pizza is "pinsa." So it's far easier for an English speaker than, say, Quenya.

9. You'll have more opportunities to have fun.

Basically, you can watch Tridentine Church rites, watch Tridentine Church rites, watch Tridentine Church rites, et cetera.

It's high time America started to become more and more bilingual. As a Western country that is largely monolingual, we embarrass ourselves to other Western countries who regularly have citizens who are bilingual. Furthermore, we isolate ourselves and create fewer opportunities for ourselves, as a nation and as a population.