cinnazimt

For the first time in my life, my transcript reads 4.0.

You Belong in San Francisco

You crave an eclectic, urban environment. You're half California, half NYC. You're open minded, tolerant, and secretly think you're the best. People may dismiss you as a hippie, but you're also progressive, interesting, and rich!

If you've been on antidepressants, read this.  If you know me then you know I'm generally anti-pills and that, despite this bias, I've taken anti-depressants off and on for years.  That said:

"in more than half of the 47 trials used by the Food and Drug Administration to approve the six leading antidepressants on the market, the drugs failed to outperform sugar pills, and in the trials that were successful, the advantage of drugs over placebo was slight." (albeit significant or it wouldn't have counted for the FDA)

This article also discusses the possibility that marketing drugs has increased their effectiveness.  Interesting twist.

The Vampire Novel Hmm, very interesting! You scored 136!

People are addicted to you, as you make such entertaining and sexy reading material. You get people’s imaginations flowing and make for the type of book people want to read more than once. Cults have been inspired by the likes of you.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 53% on bookpoints

Link: The What Kind Of Book Are You Test written by saucygirl on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Then he laughed a little.  He told me: "There is no difference between old and modern stories.  Stories are stories.  All stories are old.  All stories are new.  All stories belong to tomorrow."

Devil On a Cross, Ngugi wa Thiong'o,

At the end of February and beginning of March, I have a break in classes.  And, as you know, I'm in a very long distance relationship.  I would love to turn this break into a long awaited visit.  I'm hoping that, by reaching out to all of you charitable people, I might do it cheaply.  Do you have frequent flier miles you could donate to me?  Let me know!  Also, please feel free to forward this to anyone who might be able to help out!


Thank you!

Cinnazimt -- [noun]: A person of questionable sanity who starts their own cult 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Online forums I'm no longer addicted to: LJ.

Sorry everyone, I just forgot to read... I'll try to post...something...sometime...

No Free Love Available in Berkeley.
(According to craigslist,)

Ecstatic Births?

( Rules for answering the question.. )

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

4.      The most concerning side-effect of feminism has been...

a)      The belief that women are victims and powerless.

b)      The belief that women are superior to men.

c)      Animosity towards, from, or between feminists.

d)      The removal of all sex differences, including why women are/were special.

e)      Prevalence of abortion.

( Rules for answering the question.. )

Question 1
Question 2

3.      How are gender roles determined?

a)      Mostly or entirely by psycho-cultural processes.  Biological processes are trivial.

b)      Psycho-social processes fine tune biology.

c)      Mostly or entirely by biological processses.  Psycho-social processes are trivial.

d)      This is irrelevent or unknowable.

e)      These processes are dynamic and interrelated, constantly overwriting each other.

( Rules for answering the question.. )

Question 1


2.      Which do you favor?

a)      Enforced egalitarianism: Men and women should always be equally represented in public and private spaces.

b)      Egalitarianism in opportunity: Barriers to equality should be removed so everyone has a fair chance. 

c)      Protectionism: Women have special concerns and should be protected.

d)      Separatism: Women will never be free of the patriarchy until they are separate from men.

Emi asked me the other day if a certain book from the feminist canon was worth reading.  I suppose it depends on one's perspective...there are a billion different types of feminism, afterall.  So I have a group of questions I'm going to be asking, to get a feel for what kind of feminists we all are...and possibly narrow it down better for myself.

Rules for answering the question:

• If you're not a feminist but still care about gender issues, I don't mind you answering or critiquing it however you want.
• If you have a hard time answering, feel free to discuss why, being as specific as possible.
  
• I'm pretty curious about what people think, so feel free to write a billion page essay and post it here, email me, or call me.
  
• All of the answers represent some feminist point of view -- none of them are "unfeminist."
• In order to pick an answer, you can be for or against the items listed.  Picking an answer only says you think those issues are the debates you most care about.
• The issues listed for each goal are not exhaustive.  Try to pick the category most similar to your own point of view.

1.      If you were the leader of feminism, what goals would be most important?

a)      Labor and Economy-centered Goals: Wages, division of labor, affirmative action, economic independence, etc.

b)      Civil and Institution-centered Goals: Suffrage, sexual harassment, maternity leave, revising marriage/divorce/custody laws, single-sex education, etc.

c)      Sexual and Body-centered Goals: Genital mutilation, shaving, anorexia, BDSM, sex-workers/prostitution, pornography, masturbation, women's health, rape, etc.

d)      Psychological and Identity-centered goals: Stereotypes, liesure, pronouns and gendered language, clothing, sharing stories, understanding the intersection of gender with varied ethnicities/nations/classes/sexual orientations, etc.

e)      Spiritual and Value-centered goals: Gaia/the Moon, Biblical interpretation, re-valuing women's art/literature/history/sports, peace, nurturing, balance, cycles, etc.

( Read original post... )

EDIT: I got to thinking and the quota systems in place in many world goverments mean the numbers of my last post are simply incorrect.  That's what you get for using Wikipedia.  Maybe I should update it.

What you should know:
1. The first set of data I posted is wrong/misrepresented. 
2. The country with the highest percentage of female representation is still under 50% (Rwanda, 49% in their lower house and 30% upper house) and overall, women make up 16% of the world's parliaments.
3. Quotaproject.org has a lot more information, including how quota systems are used, different types of quota systems, and what the actual percentages are for countries who use some level of quota system.

Finished reading Woman on the Edge of Time just now.  
I have decided that the entire genres of dis/utopia stories, and psychological thrillers need to have a new way of ending books.  I may need to go back to reading the post-modernist, self-conscious, mod-podgy, pretentious story-telling books for a while to get my footing back.
Also, we need to hurry up on that whole non-gendered pronoun thing.  I haven't found one yet that works.

Reminds me of: The Giver, The Handmaid's Tale, The Left Hand of Darkness, I am the Cheese, Herland.  So if you liked any of those...
Generally I enjoyed and reccomend it.  Although (or perhaps because) I'm unsettled right now.

Today is Armenia's Genocide Remembrance Day.  Between 1915-1923, an estimated 1.2-1.5 million Armenians were were killed.  Most were "relocated" and died of harsh conditions (including starvation) or brought to one of the many concentration camps to be burned, drowned, poisoned, or otherwise tortured.  The genocide "officially" began on April 24 of 1915, when hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were arrested and (for the most part) executed.

Turkey does not remember this genocide today or on any other day.  Turkey has never admitted to a government-sponsored genocide or ethnic cleansing.

Remember genocide today:
Find out more about the Armenian genocide
See how the Armenian genocide relates to gender, at Gendercide Watch.
Listen to Democracy Now!'s segment: The Armenian Genocide: 90 Years Later Turkey Continues to Deny the Extermination of a People
Read a book by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist who refuses to deny the massacres (often compared to Calvino, Borge, Kafka, Márquez, and Rushdie)
Learn about genocide in general, and genocides happening today the Institute for the Study of Genocide
Join in the campaign to end genocide in Darfur
Form opinions on current issues in the same region, like the Republic of Nagorno-Karbagh, Turkish/Armenian borders, or Kurdistan (one of the most militarzied regions on earth)


Okay, okay.  I'm not generally interested in genocide.  Obviously I have some people to thank.  So...thanks to Q who's passion for such things kicks my ass and will change the world, Su, who thinks the Armenian genocide most be told, even as a bed-time story, and E who got the word out to Calvin about Darfur.

Sometimes I think "boy, those people upstairs are really loud. Don't they ever go to bed? It's like 2:30 and they're still moving around!" And then I remember I don't have neighbours or even housemates. I have a cat. And mice. I'm still not accustomed to this living situation.

My newest favourite thing is livejournal's "current location" field. They did an exceptionally lousy job of predicting what people would write. And before finding out, they went to all the trouble of integrating it with google maps.

So now you have this entertaining game of clicking on their location link and watching google struggle to find Jesse's house, a store selling The comfy blue chair or a business named the fucking internet cafe.

YAY!