A couple of very hilarious woman-haters throw a tantrum.
A very short illustration of how people who are completely incapable of self-analysis project their issues on “the world.” The most hilarious thing is that the short post’s author is so oblivious that s/he calls the post “Internalization” without even beginning to notice that it is a perfect example of exteriorization.
“A list of some delicious things: . . . The high after a migraine attack.” I always knew that migraines are completely psychosomatic and bring huge benefits to people who auto-generate them. Here is proof!
A very good, insightful post on leaving an abusive relationship.
A person with an extensive weapons training explains why arming teachers is a horrible idea.
Several stories demonstrating that the immature gun-obsessed idiots are a danger to everybody.
“The stories teachers exchange these days reveal a whole new level of overprotectiveness: parents who raise their children in a state of helplessness and powerlessness, children destined to an anxious adulthood, lacking the emotional resources they will need to cope with inevitable setback and failure.” The article’s author is woefully ignorant about child development but at least she is trying to say something important.
Is Egypt on the verge of a civil war?
Another post on the subject of Egypt. I’m biting my tongue not to say, “I told you so.” OK, I said it.
A very insightful post on what makes people prize their own virginity. Short answer: immaturity and stupidity. I always wondered what makes people think that not knowing how to perform in a vital area of life is somehow a positive thing. Now I have the answer. I remember this guy who tried to make a “gift” of his virginity to me. Obviously, I ran away faster than I would have if he had an STD. [For the dense among us, it is the presentation of virginity as “gift” that chased me away.]
This is what happens when you worship and essentialize ethnicity: the case of Israel.
A person writes a rant on how tragic the lives of professors are and never stops to think that the problem why she is so miserable as a college prof is that she writes things like “I can’t in good conscious” and “Now, having said this, she (thankfully) also seems to be well-liked by her classmates. I say thankfully because I was (at worst) bullied and (at best) ostracized throughout elementary school.”
One man’s story of how he chose to be heterosexual.
And the post of the week: a beautiful collection of evo-psycho myths.
Clarissa's Blog 
Some people in Russian blogosphere react to rising anti-gay propaganda (link in Russian):
http://mahyak.livejournal.com/362666.html
// I always wondered what makes people think that not knowing how to perform in a vital area of life is somehow a positive thing.
There is a difference between sitting on a bicycle for the 1st time and having sex for the 1st time, no? Many people want their 1st sexual experience to be special and I doubt it’s 100% for patriarchial messages people get since birth. It’s different from knowing algebra or how to fix a leaking pipe since there are feelings and personal preferences involved. Unlike other skills, there is no “one true way” to have sex.
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“Many people want their 1st sexual experience to be special and I doubt it’s 100% for patriarchial messages people get since birth.”
– It is almost always especially bad, unless one finds a very experienced and patient partner. 🙂 This is a set of skills, just like any other, and there is no need to romanticize it. Practice, practice, practice. Of course, there are people who are so tone-deaf sexually that decades of intense practice do not teach them how to even minimally hear a partner and establish a non-verbal dialogue.
” It’s different from knowing algebra or how to fix a leaking pipe since there are feelings and personal preferences involved. ”
– Not really that different. The thing is, it is important to know what those preferences are and it isn’t something one can decide beforehand.
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I have to say, though, that my own husband disagrees with me completely on this. 🙂 He believes there is such thing as sexual compatibility, and if uou find a partner who is your perfect match, no training or practice are needed to make sex instantly perfect.
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Practice makes perfect, although I don’t think any amount of practice is going to overcome revulsion or a complete lack of chemistry. :
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The last thing I wanted to suggest is that people force themselves to have sex with partners they do not desire. That road leads straight to sexual dysfunction.
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Suppose famous writers wrote Java script? This post on a blog gives some really funny examples. You should have an appreciation of literature and computer programming to grasp all of the puns.
http://byfat.xxx/if-hemingway-wrote-javascript
“Recently I had a dream in which I asked Hemingway and four other literary luminaries to write some JavaScript for me; specifically a function that returned a fibonacci series of a given length. Interestingly each author chose to solve the problem in a different way. They did pretty well actually – as far as I can tell every solution works as advertised (yes, even Andre Breton’s). Here’s what I got:”
See if you can use some of your favourite authors in an example of this function.
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That’s quite the demonstration of an utter lack of empathy that you’re showing there.
Wow.
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What are you, two? You expect empathy for something like this?
Self-infantilization at its utmost.
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Actually, yes, I do think that empathy is useful when communicating with others. In all circumstances. If you’d read anything else of what I write you’d be aware that it’s quite important to me.
Also, I’m frankly baffled as to why you feel the need to, for no reason I can see, pick me out for what is quite the impressive barrage of unfounded insults to my character. You’ve decided within a paragraph or two that I’m incapable of self-analysis and prone to self-infantalisation. Quite the extraordinary claim. Then again, this is your blog so you’re free to make whatever baseless accusations against people on the internet that you like?
Also, being affected by things around you and the opinions of others is not something that only infants do. And the ability to consider the perspectives of others is generally considered mature.
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“Also, I’m frankly baffled as to why you feel the need to, for no reason I can see, pick me out for what is quite the impressive barrage of unfounded insults to my character. ”
– Not being patted on the head for every word you utter does not equal “a barrage of insults.”
“Then again, this is your blog so you’re free to make whatever baseless accusations against people on the internet that you like?”
– Now I am starting to feel empathy. Are you not feeling well? This is quite a fit you are throwing because somebody dared to disagree with your analysis of “the world.”
“Also, being affected by things around you and the opinions of others is not something that only infants do. ”
– Not even infants get so affected by the realization that other people might have opinions. At least, not healthy infants.
“And the ability to consider the perspectives of others is generally considered mature.”
– Yes, I can see how maturely you are considering my perspective.
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So, if someone said on a blog post, “Delicious….the high after a low sugar/low blood pressure attack” would you conclude that either of those are completely psychosomatic in all cases? Your confirmation bias is showing. :p
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It is completely psychosomatic in all cases anyways, so it isn’t that important what people say about it. It’s just curious that somebody finally is prepared to recognize that they foster and cherish their own migraines.
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Clarissa, you disappoint. An anecdote is not data. And it’s hilarious that you’ve just said what people say about it isn’t that important when you’ve just linked to a post in which someone says something about it as “proof” of your assertion that all migraines are psychosomatic.
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You misunderstand my post. I don’t need any proof as to the nature of migraines. I’m trying to attract people’s attention to somebody who is at least being honest about the pay-off she gets from her migraine.
This is really great news for all migraine sufferers who, as you probably know, cannot be helped by conventional medicine and often suffer for decades becoming virtually incapacitated by a monthly or even bi-weekly onset of a migraine. These people have a way out of their suffering if, as the author of the linked post does, the find the courage to ask themselves what the pay-off is and whether they are ready to relinquish it.
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Great collection of links! What do you think is behind this trend of professors and academics continually slamming the profession? This profession is wonderful and amazing and we are lucky to have it. But why do they stay in a career that makes them miserable?
Re: migraines. I would actually tend to agree that many cases of migraines are psychosomatic. But I don’t think all cases. My mother for a brief period suffered from severe migraines. She read up on it and found that sometimes migraines can be linked to a vitamin B deficiency. She upped her Vitamin B intake and her migraines dissipated and then disappeared. I really think hers were linked to health/physical body. Do you believe that all pains are psychosomatic?
On the subject of the “gun nut” link, have you seen this interview? Truly disturbing. I am not a fan of Piers Morgan but compared to the man he’s interviewing, Morgan is a paragon of intelligence and maturity. Shudder. These are the people with arsenals in their homes……http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XZvMwcluEg
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OK, the Piers video made me laugh a lot. I think this Jones guy wants a career in show business. He cannot believe that this will have a positive effect on his fight against gun control.
I think the guy is a talented comedian. If he gets a show of his own, he will blow the tired old Limbaugh straight out of the ratings.
Jokes aside, note the fixation on size: how many times did he say that Piers has LITTLE factoids and LITTLE cue cards? He and people like him feel castrated by the figure of the Father and abandoned by the Mother (who chops up kids with a cleaver, as he said.) A classic Oedipal fixation.
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I think Piers realized the nature of the guy’s illness and managed to shut him up for 2 seconds with “You have a very BIG platform.” Smart! But ultimately useless.
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The video made me laugh too. I just don’t want that Jones guy to live anywhere near me. 😉 And I agree. The ONLY plausible interpretation after a while is that these people are suffering from castration anxiety. What else can it be??
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Jones is no comedian. To be a comedian, you have to create your own content. With Jones, the jokes write themselves.
And Jones already has his own radio show (according to WP). Apparently gives time to conspiracy theories and wingnut nonsense, which is shouldn’t be a surprise.
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“And Jones already has his own radio show (according to WP)”
– Hah! What did I say? The guy wants to be a media star. He might not even personally believe all this crap. Although there are too many freaks who do believe it, so that is a small comfort.
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“The guy wants to be a media star”
He is a media star with a popular and wildly entertaining radio show which you should check out (nb my recommendation is not related to issues of veracity or quality in any traditional sense).
I also notice that he’s gaining something like…. respectiability? Mentioning him (in certain circles) has changed from a declaration of tinhatdom and is now kind of neutral.
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“He is a media star with a popular and wildly entertaining radio show which you should check out (nb my recommendation is not related to issues of veracity or quality in any traditional sense).”
– I guessed that immediately. Am I good or what? 🙂
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Ooops. Mispelled my own name above. The above comment is from Evelina Anville!
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The person who claims she wants something better for her child than being a professor really writes in a horrible way. I believe that this fey and girly style of writing may be a way to try to convey homegrown sincerity. USA is strange.
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They keep publishing her pieces. I’m starting to believe that somebody needs to promote this vision of a female academic: girly, impotently chirping about Mommy issues, unhappy at work, incapable of producing an insight into anything, a poor writer, scatter-brained.
There are so many female academics who are powerful, strong, profound thinkers, beautiful writers, and who wouldn’t be capable of producing a piece this bad even after a bottle of Scotch. Yet do we see academic publications promote their writing? No, never.
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Maybe it goes against their conscious?
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“Maybe it goes against their conscious?”
🙂 Probably. 🙂 It must be a shared organ they all have.
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“I’m starting to believe that somebody needs to promote this vision of a female academic”
Or the “unhappy academic” in general. When is the last time that the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed published wrote a piece that suggested they were fulfilled by their career? Honestly Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle are becoming so viciously anti academic that I can hardly read them anymore.
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“When is the last time that the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed published wrote a piece that suggested they were fulfilled by their career? Honestly Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle are becoming so viciously anti academic that I can hardly read them anymore.”
– I know! This is very disturbing.
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From my own blog:
I hate employer-sponsored weight loss programs.
Off to read the rest of the links now!
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Re Egypt:
Those who believe in some version of the democratic threshold : 1
People who believe ‘democracy’ works divorced from social context : 0
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“People who believe ‘democracy’ works divorced from social context : 0”
– This is what I disliked in the analysis of what was happening in Egypt that I was seeing everywhere. People wanted to impose a Western narrative of “a struggle for democracy” onto a very different context. And that never works.
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Um, that first article complaining about the two misogynist guys… I was fine until the blogger started off on Sarah Palin using the same misogynist tactics and terms as the two males did for feminists. No, just no. You can be against Sarah Palin’s politics and question her motives and intelligence without using terms like “slut” and (as one commenter there did) “cunt.” Not impressed.
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This blogger is obsessed with Sarah Palin and has been for years. These folks get beyond weird in their obsession: https://clarissasblog.com/2010/07/06/sarah-palin-and-conspiracy-theorists/
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