TagSociety

“I really regret it. I really regret having children”

She regrets having children. And, more so, she has decided that other women ought not to have them, if they know what is good for themselves and for the world. After 13 years of maternal humiliations, she wrote a quick, funny, angry book.

Everywhere you look in France these days, you seem to see its cover: The words NO KID in English, followed by “40 Reasons for Not Having Children” in French. It is a huge bestseller. Her 40 reasons are often funny and personal (“Don’t become a travelling feeding bottle,” “don’t adopt the idiot-language of children”) sometimes bitter (“you will inevitably be disappointed with your child”) and often designed to puncture the idealized notion of motherhood that poisons Western societies.

It is a combination of tart sisterly advice (“What hope is there of having a fulfilling sex life when a woman is forced to turn into a fat, deformed animal decked out in sack-like dresses?”) with shock-tactic social analysis (“More murders and child abuse happen within families than outside them. Every family is a nest of vipers – all the reason not to add to your own”).

Such notions, in France today, are almost unthinkable. It is a country overtaken with what Ms. Maier calls “baby mania.”

Full Story: The Globe and Mail.

See also: Times Online.

(via American Samizdat).

The Cereal Box Conspiracy Against the Developing Mind

By Michelle Handelman and Monte Cazazza in Apocalypse Culture:

Breakfast with Barbie appeals to the precious libido of pree-teen girls and boys. The pink motif of the box is targeted for girls, and perhaps sissy boys rebelling from their puppy dog tail stereotype. But the image of scantily-clad Barbie showing lots of plastic flesh might be just the perfect breakfast companion for the developing heterosexual boy. The result of this may be to confuse a young boy’s sexual orientation. This may be welcomed by food manufacturers, for market surveys have found gay men to be more avid shoppers than their hetero counterparts. For the girls, the pink design of the Breakfast with Barbie box suggests nothing more than pre-pubescent female genitalia. To this end, an optical illusion that appears on the Breakfast with Barbie cereal box panders to the primal fears of a young girl’s sexual self-discovery. In between Barbie’s legs an undefinable form emerges very pink and very erect. Is it a giant clitoris? A tongue? Daddy’s penis? Further investigation reveals the form as Barbie’s pink sunglasses which rest upon her knee.

Full Story: deflection 7.

Portland Occulture participating in the Memory Walk for the Alzheimer’s Association

PDX Occulture is registered for the Memory Walk to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association.
Sunday, October 7th
9AM at Pioneer Courthouse Square

Help fund Alzheimer’s research by donating funds. Our team page is here and my fund raising page is here.

M.I.A: remixing the future

I have a piece up on Alterati today about M.I.A and her new album Kala:

M.I.A’s new album Kala whips listeners through the poorest corners of the world, moving too quickly to quite distinguish between the various locales. Is this Rio or Trinidad? Calcutta or London? Wait, the Australian outback? It’s all blurred, mashed-up.

M.I.A brings us straight to the bleeding edge of modern culture. While indie rock endlessly recycles the past, M.I.A is busy remixing the future. In his essay The Sudden Stardom of the Third-World City’ Rana Dasgupta wrote ‘Is it going too far to suggest that our sudden interest in books and films about the Third-World city stems from the sense that they may provide effective preparation for our future survival in London, New York or Paris? Our fast-moving media culture, groping always for any image of the ?new’ that can be used to produce more astonishment, operates in a zone slightly ahead of knowledge.’ In other words, westerners are increasingly looking to the Third-World to catch a glimpse of our own future.

Full Story: Alterati.

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Humans are naturally polygamous
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
Beautiful people have more daughters
What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
The midlife crisis is a myth-sort of
It’s natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they’re male)
Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

Full Story: Psychology Today.

Interview with the Institute for Applied Autonomy

You’re referring to our ‘Rogues Gallery’ project in which we took our GraffitiWriter robot to public spaces across the United States and Europe and offered it for use by the general public. One of the things that was so interesting about this project was that so many people were wiling to participate! We’d simply show up unannounced in a public park or city center, drive the robot around, and invite people to use the machine to spray paint messages on the ground. Virtually everyone we encountered was willing to give it a try, even though what we were doing was clearly illegal. To us, this seemed to be an interesting inversion of the usual narratives about technology extending human abilities. With Rogues Gallery, the robot overcame certain kinds of social conditioning not because of its mechanical capabilities but simply because it was seen as legitimate, based on the assumption that anyone possessing a robot represented some large research institution which probably had the ‘right’ to spray its messages on public space, rather than simply being a couple of crazy people who built a machine in their garage. Imagine if we had tried the same experiment without a robot, using only a few cans of spray paint – no one would have participated because the action would have been clearly understood as an illegal act of public defacement.

Full Story: WorldChanging.

Institute for Applied Autonomy web site.

Richard Dawkins on faith, at Pop!Tech 2006

Richard Dawkins believes science’s ability to admit ignorance is one of its greatest strengths. On the flip side, he proposes that faith all remains arrogant and all too certain of its validity without any rational set of proofs.

I’ve been watching all the speakers posted up on the Pop!Tech site and this was by far one of my favourites. Dawkins: 1. Faith: uhh, still millions, but whatever. Dawkins makes excellent points.

Now that’s some Wal-Mart effect!

Michael Barbaro breaks down the various advantages, issues, and resistances to the great Compact Fluorescent light bulb conversion, with attention to the might that Wal-Mart is bringing to the table.

Light-bulb manufacturers, who sell millions of incandescent lights at Wal-Mart, immediately expressed reservations. In a December 2005 meeting with executives from General Electric, Wal-Mart’s largest bulb supplier, ‘the message from G.E. was, ?Don’t go too fast. We have all these plants that produce traditional bulbs,’ ‘ said one person involved with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an agreement not to speak publicly about the negotiations.

The response from the Wal-Mart buyer was blunt, this person said. ‘We are going there,’ the buyer said. ‘You decide if you are coming with us.’

Now that’s some Wal-Mart Effect. [Link]

Just to follow up… If you read the Times’ piece last week and can’t get enough of this Compact Fluorescent chit-chat, prepare to return back down to earth with yesterday’s more sobering assessment from William Hamilton:

When I found out last week that Wal-Mart, America’s biggest company, was putting a push on compact fluorescent light bulbs, hoping to make them a new lighting standard at home because they use 75 percent less energy, last 10 times longer and would save me $30 over the life of each bulb, I thought to myself, what’s not to like?

Well, fluorescent light’s not to like, many people might say.

[Read more here.]

via the Core77 Monday Morning Must Read newsletter

New York Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.

Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.

continued via the New York Times

Just fyi, Canada Alberta is willing to trade Toronto for New York. In fact, we’ll give you most of Ontario in exchange…

Six technologies we need to fight to keep public dominion

I want to introduce friends and readers to Brainsturbation. I came across it via a comment made on my old blog, Occult Design.

Firstly, there are some good links to a very decent, select list of e-books to check out. There is also a mirror of a great Paul Laffoley gallery.

Second is the list of tech that we should be keeping our eyes open to watch for. I would somehow add legislation for artificial intelligence, as it develops, but that is a piece in itself.

We Need to Corner the Market on Future Tech Now – saving the planet pt. 2

  1. Universal Translation
  2. Encryption
  3. Teleportation
  4. ‘Acoustic Weapons’ is what happens when you classify Acoustic Healing
  5. Wireless Alternative Internets
  6. Fricking Invisibility Suits Yo

Follow the link to read more details about each subject. It’s a neato site, I dig.

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