When a driver maims or kills a pedestrian, nobody in this country will take the side of the pedestrian. This is why I took my first driving lesson yesterday and will take the second in an hour.
A notorious prude turns into a defender of pedophilia. Extreme prudishness does conceal serious sexual disorders, so I’m not surprised that the prudish freak who horrified me in the first months of my life in North America turned out to be a fan of pedophiles.
An interesting discussion of whether childhood reading shapes your opinion of what is good. The books I loved more than anything in childhood were saccharine stories about little Lenin who, according to these books, was the most judicious, virtuous and perfect child in the world. I can’t say that these books (which I loved so much that I even stole two of them from an exhibition) shaped my literary preferences all that much. We didn’t have access to a whole lot of good reading matter when I was growing up. Things were especially dire when I was a teenager for all we could find in terms of books were horribly written potboilers.
How many hours does it take to get a PhD?
“The Medieval Emperor Charlemagne famously said that “to have another language is to possess a second soul” but the idea that we express different personality traits when we speak another language has usually been left as anecdote.” By whom? Anybody who speaks more than one language knows that Charlemagne was right. It really bugs me when people waste time and resources on “studies” that prove something trivial and painfully obvious.
I have no idea what sense it makes to discuss the opinions of a Russian priest whose religion is practiced by exactly 2% of his country’s population and debate them through the use of a study of poverty in Britain. I really wish people realized that it is important to know something about a country before blabbing about it.
I’m really shocked by this post in defense of reproductive rights. I don’t know if the author was trying to be funny or is simply an idiot but the language of the post is extremely offensive. Here are some examples: “Everyday women close their eyes and let it happen”, “women sigh and spread their legs”, “women have accepted that too; accepted every last indignity, like an abused woman who thinks there is nothing she can do to end the beatings but try not to make her abuser angry”, “instead of objecting, women take time off work, find someone to watch their kids, and stay alone in cheap motels, or sleep in their cars.” The part about staying alone in motels is very mysterious. Do women need to be defended from assaults on their reproductive rights or from spending time without a chaperon?
The reason why fundamentalists condemn their children to this idiocy instead of a normal education is that they want the kids never to get educated, find good jobs and make good money. They want them perennially stupid and terrified.
I really dig this “sex educator” whose expertise on sex is limited to the obsessive insistence that women don’t need to have orgasms. Of course, as long as men climax, women should be happy to be used for that purpose and shut up about their own pleasure. This is the caliber of sex experts in this country.
Fundamentalist fanatics are all the same.
The top five mistakes women make in academic settings.
“A robot-friendly way of raising the minimum wage.”
I will never understand people who feel entitled to the property of a relative after his or her death. What is meaner and more pathetic than trying to subvert the last will of a person to feed your own greed?
Clarissa's Blog 
The line about staying alone in cheap motels makes perfect sense. If a woman has to travel hundreds of miles to another state to get an abortion, and that state requires multiple visits to the clinic, as many do, then she most likely will need to stay in the area for one or more nights to be able to go back to the clinic. It is an outrage, whether she has a friend with her or not.
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Without the word “alone”, I wouldn’t have a problem with this particular sentence. The author did put the word there for some reason.
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It just means she does not have anyone who can afford to take time off to go with her to the faraway clinic.
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That reproductive rights post is offensive because it conflates 1) Democrats and women, 2)implies that all an individual woman getting an abortion needs to do is overwhelm the clinic staff/hospital/etc with the sheer force of her personality to get out of the sonogram/waiting period/probe/unnecessary surgical procedure, and that a 3)woman who complies with those regulations in the moment to get the abortion wouldn’t protest it when she’s not pregnant or in need of an abortion.
Plus the language is very reminiscent of the same language people use when they say, “You let yourself be raped/abused.”
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“Plus the language is very reminiscent of the same language people use when they say, “You let yourself be raped/abused.””
– That’s what bothers me so much about it. One comes from the article with a feeling that these passive, pathetic, silent women just brought it all on themselves. Something is wrong with that picture.
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That “Top 5 List” of common mistakes for female academics was very helpful, since in retrospect, I think I made everyone of those mistakes during my Master’s Degree.
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Yes, I see women doing these things all the time!
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The French have the best aventures érotiques, but even in that case, there’s something missing, for instance in terms of a really broad range of emotion that includes aggression. They’re just a little too detached, which in some ways is interesting, because they have sex like they were putting on a pot of coffee, but in other respects I don’t see any flickering micro-emotions, not really.
I refer to the movies I have been watching recently.
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I found the “sex educator” article really depressing. Can it possibly be true that only 10% of women orgasm during casual sex? I agree and understand that there is more to sex than orgasms but to think that SO many women are unable to orgasm during casual sex is very sad. To me, this seems to have more to do with guilt and shame than it does anything else.
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“To me, this seems to have more to do with guilt and shame than it does anything else.”
– Exactly. And this is what should be studied by sexologists.
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The whole POINT of casual sex is to get off.
This is why that whole stupid pizza analogy annoys me. If I have two slices and someone has four, and I say I’m satisfied and I mean it, it means I’m full and don’t want any more pizza. If I don’t have an orgasm, and my partner does, I’m not happy. I want an orgasm, not, “I just had some tingly genital feelings and I lubricated.” If I want that, I can just half-ass my shower, or tour the exciting world of bidets.
And shouldn’t a sex educator be telling women how to maneuver the situation so they can get what they want?
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“And shouldn’t a sex educator be telling women how to maneuver the situation so they can get what they want?”
– That’s exactly what I’m saying. A sexologist who tells people to accept lack of sexual fulfillment as normal is like a language teacher who says, “If you can’t learn to speak a language, well, maybe it’s just not meant to happen.”
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The whole POINT of casual sex is to get off.(Shakti)
Im not sure that is true. There are a whole lot of OTHER reasons why people have casual sex. Also, there may be evolutionary reasons why men orgasm easier(faster) than women do.
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“Also, there may be evolutionary reasons why men orgasm easier(faster) than women do.”
– Given that this is only the case for the Puritanical English-speaking societies since the XIXth century and has always been the other way round everywhere else, I seriously doubt this. Every ancient and medieval culture I’m aware of maintained that women needed sex more than men and enjoyed it a lot more.
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I never said they didn’t need it or enjoy it more. The fact that men typically orgasm quicker than women is not culturally based though.
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Yes, it actually is. Just turn to any ancient or medieval source and you will see. What you are discussing us a very recent and very local cultural invention.
In Latin America, Catholic schools prohibit girls from sitting cross-legged because they are aware that female orgasm is a lot easier to achieve covertly and without any need to undress or use one’s hands than male.
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Are we talking casual sex(as in intercourse)? Or are we talking about how to stimulate the clitoris?
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The two activities are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite, I’d say. 🙂
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The two activities are not mutually exclusive(Clarissa)
When it comes to casual sex I would bet you most women would disagree with you on that one. 😉
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“When it comes to casual sex I would bet you most women would disagree with you on that one.”
– I have no idea what you are trying to say. That there is some mysterious way of bypassing the clitoris that characterizes a casual sex act and distinguishes it from a non-casual sex act?
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“When it comes to casual sex I would bet you most women would disagree with you on that one. ”
Huh??? Why would clitoral stiumlation be absent in casual sex? This is totally bonkers to me. What women do you know? What women were interviewed in the article Clarissa originally linked to? I’m really feeling like I’m reading about some alien species–not about women who are from the 21st century, post sexual revolution, and under 60 years old. Who are these people????
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” I’m really feeling like I’m reading about some alien species–not about women who are from the 21st century, post sexual revolution, and under 60 years old. Who are these people????”
– Same here. I don’t really trust these “studies” because I have seen them manipulated so many times that I can’t take them seriously.
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What do I know, not much. So lets have someone else say something. I thinking 2/3 of men have no problem reaching orgasm through penetration alone.
http://sogc.org/publications/female-orgasms-myths-and-facts/
Myth:
“Normal” women reach orgasm through intercourse.
Fact:
Only about a third of women experience orgasm regularly during intercourse. A third can reach orgasm with intercourse but need extra stimulation. A third never achieve orgasm during intercourse but can by manual and oral stimulation. Having orgasms by means other than intercourse is a normal variation of female sexuality. In the past, people thought that “mature” women had their orgasms with intercourse; you will sometimes run across an older book that has this view. However, laboratory studies in the 1960’s showed that an orgasm is an orgasm no matter which way you obtain it. How a woman reaches an orgasm has nothing to do with her mental health or emotional maturity.
I thinking 2/3 of men have no problem reaching orgasm through penetration alone. Im thinking most casual sex(one nighters or some variant) leaves one of the two orgasm free. I thinking could you please explain the reasons why that may be?
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Yes, I’m hearing that Viagra and Cialis don’t manage to sell at all. There is absolutely no demand for these products. 🙂
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Cialis and Viagra are for blood flow, not arousal.
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“Cialis and Viagra are for blood flow, not arousal.”
– One can’t have an orgasm if there isn’t even an erection, so the huge demand for these drugs definitely signals a huge problem with achieving an orgasm.
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One can’t have an orgasm if there isn’t even an erection(Clarissa)
Not true. I have.
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So you are maintaining that people buy Viagra because they don’t want orgasms? 🙂 🙂 That’s an interesting way to avoid them. 🙂
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Nope, they just want to be able to penetrate something. 😉
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HERE IS HOW A STUDENT OBTAINED 0%
IN AN EXAM –
Personally, I would have given him 100%
Q1. In which battle did Napoleon die?
* his last battle
Q2. Where was the Declaration of
Independence signed?
* at the bottom of the page
Q3. River Ravi flows in which state?
* liquid
Q4. What is the main reason for divorce?
* marriage
Q5. What is the main reason for failure?
* exams
Q6. What can you never eat for
breakfast?
* Lunch & dinner
Q7. What looks like half an apple?
* The other half
Q8. If you throw a red stone into the
blue sea what will it become?
* It will simply become wet
Q9. How can a man go eight days
without sleeping ?
* No problem, he sleeps at night.
Q10. How can you lift an elephant with
one hand?
* You will never find an elephant that has
only one hand..
Q11. If you had three apples and four
oranges in one hand and four
apples and three oranges in other hand,
what would you have ?
* Very large hands
Q12. If it took eight men ten hours to
build a wall, how long would
it take four men to build it?
* No time at all, the wall is already built.
Q13. How can u drop a raw egg onto a
concrete floor without cracking it?
*Any way you want, concrete floors are
very hard to crack.
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I have a professional deformation that makes me dislike smart-asses. Even though I am one. 🙂
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http://libertycrier.com/americans-killed-cops-now-outnumber-americans-killed-iraq-war/
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Why does casual sex mean “penetration only sex?” I’m still confused.
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@Evelina
It doesn’t mean only. But you can bet your house most casual sex is penetration only. The majority of people I know require more of an intimacy to include such techniques as lets say, fellatio or cunnilingus.
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“But you can bet your house most casual sex is penetration only. The majority of people I know require more of an intimacy to include such techniques as lets say, fellatio or cunnilingus.”
– I have to confess that this is the first time I hear this definition of intimacy. I believe that most Americans – who don’t even see oral sex as sex – don’t have the same vision of oral sex as requiring more intimacy than PIV.
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Clarissa. I would imagine that would greatly depend on age demographic. As a male in his 40’s I can say with some certainty that in my age group it is the other way around. Mind you, Im Canadian. 😉
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This is absolutely brilliant: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/11/28/the-story-of-thanksgiving-is-a-science-fiction-story/
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In one of your former posts you wrote:
“As an educator, I can tell you that there is a lot of truth in this statement. The Department of Education is usually somewhat of a joke on every campus. ”
But in another post you mentioned being educated in pedagogy and how adults, in general, must know how to talk with teens or not to try.
Where are teachers supposed to be educated, if not in the department? Could you write about teaching teens? Btw, had you ever been a school teacher?
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A few courses in pedagogy are a good idea but there simply isn’t enough substance for an entire degree. This is why Education profs invent weird things to pretend like they have enough to teach.
I only work at a school for a few months but I taught school-age children outside of school. For instance, there was a course in Spanish literature for problematic teens in New Haven. Those kids really loved me. 🙂
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I liked the photos of “The most spectacular libraries in the world”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10382588/The-most-spectacular-libraries-in-the-world.html?frame=2705752
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