Day: October 28, 2003

A Very Scary Solstice

Okay, everybody loves Christmas, and what goes better with Christmas than H.P. Lovecraft? Nothing, of course, which is why the A Very Scary Solstice is a must have for the coming holiday season.

This contains classics like “I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog-Shothoth” and Awake Ye Scary Great Old Ones (MP3).

Yeah, it’s $20 but they throw in a Singalong Songbook that includes tidbits on the stories behind these classic Holiday hits.

I think I’m going to buy this to play at my office to see if anyone notices.

The State of Laptop Alternatives

Over the past couple years I’ve written several pieces and a few reviews of laptop alternatives — essentially portable keyboards with small LCD displays, memory and USB/serial ports such as the AlphaSmart 3000. I haven’t written anything in awhile about such devices, however, and I get a surprising amount of e-mail asking for information/opinions about the current set of laptop alternatives.

First, I should make it clear that I no longer use any of the laptop alternatives I’ve used in the past — I’ve got my Alphasmart and Quickpad boxed up somewhere in the basement. They both certainly did what their respective manufacturers advertised, but at some point what was lost in not having a laptop was just not worth it for me anymore. Part of the problem is the form factor — you still need a keyboard-sized bag or backpack to carry these things around in. So if I’m going to be carrying around a bag that size, why not throw a laptop in it anyway?

I would have used these more if I had an application where a) weight and b) battery life were serious issues. If I were a student spending 6 hours on campus, for example, I would have found the laptop alternatives much more useful.

As for products out there today, I know a number of people who swear by their Alphasmart Dana which uses the Palm OS (and there’s even an 802.11b version at a slight premium). It certainly is a creative solution to some of the limitations of the Alphasmart 3000.

To be honest, though, I’d just go with a PDA-oriented solution. The Dana Wireless is $429. You can buy a very nice PDA for that price and add a portable keyboard. Yes the screen size is smaller, but for my money that is more than offset by the bright color LCDs of today’s PDAs as opposed to the monochrome screen you’re stuck with on something like the Dana.

Debate Over “Female Born” Lesbians in Australia

You just can’t make this stuff up. A controversy broke out in Australia earlier this month over the desire by organizers of the upcoming LesFest 2004 to exclude transsexuals from attending or working at the national lesbian festival.

LesFest 2004 organizers had applied for and received an exemption from sex discrimination laws from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

But the exemption was challenged by the transsexual lobby group the Australian WOMAN Network. The transsexual group argued that the LesFest’s advertisement for “female-born” lesbians was offensive and urged the exemption revoked. The tribunal agreed and overturned the exemption on the grounds that LesFest organizers failed to inform the tribunal about a complaint filed against them.

In a press release WOMAN noted that under Australian common law,

  • sex is not immutable;
  • a transsexual person?s sex, following hormones and surgery, is their affirmed sex;
  • the law should be consistent in this regard; and
  • the meaning of ?woman? is its ordinary, contemporary meaning

According to WOMAN,

Such a term [female born] is offensive to the law that protects us all from discrimination on the basis of ?sex?. Inclusion of ?female born? in the text of a legal decision purports to create a legal distinction between people who are all legally women; those who were born women and those who were not. Such a distinction is not countenanced under either the common law or the Equal Opportunity Act 1995.

?Female born?, and its more common presentation, ?born womyn? are remnants of a gender political culture spawned more than three decades ago by radical separatist feminists like Germaine Greer and Janice Raymond. They did much that was good for the advancement of women, but their vitriolic pronouncements on people born with a variation in their sexual formation are abhorrent to anyone who support the rights of all individuals to dignity, privacy and self-expression.

I.e., people even nuttier than the radical feminists.

Sources:

Claws out over lesbian festival. Australian Age, October 1, 2003.

LesFest – On Again, Off Again. October 28, 2003.

VCAT joins attack on LesFest’s ‘Lesbians Born Female’ Policy. September 30, 2003.

Anna Diamantopoulou: Sex Shouldn’t BeTaken Into Account in Insurance

In August controversial European social affairs commissioner managed to raise one of her patented controversies by telling the BBC that insurance companies should be barred from using sex as a factor in setting insurance premiums and benefits.

Women tend to pay more for insurance when they are young, for example, because of higher costs associated with pregnancy, but is cheaper than men’s later in life. Annuities paid to women are lower than men’s because women tend to live significantly longer than men. And women tend to pay lower insurance premiums than men because they tend to drive fewer miles.

Diamantopoulou would apparently change all that and simply ban insurance companies from taking sex into account. Of course all this would do would lead insurance companies to charge higher rates to everyone, but that prospect doesn’t seem to bother Diamantopoulou.

Sources:

Ban urged on ‘sexist’ insurance. The BBC, August 7, 203.

Equal Time. Amanda Ripley, The BBC, September 22, 2003.

British Court Rejects Women’s Appeal to Use Frozen Embryos

A judge in Great Britain ruled earlier this month that two women who wanted to use frozen embryos created with their former partners did not have a right to use the embryos.

Natalie Evans, 31, and Lorraine Hadley, 38, had created the frozen embryos for later use in in vitro fertilization. Before that happened, though, their relationship with their respective partners ended. The men wanted the embryos destroyed, whereas the women wanted to be implanted with the embryos.

Great Britain’s 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act says that frozen embryos can only be used if both parties agree to said use.

A High Court Justice upheld that law saying that the Fertilization and Embryology Act “must be respected.”

In criticizing the ruling, some commentators couldn’t resist good old fashioned sexism. Writing in the London Evening Standard, for example, AC Grayling maintained that the rights of the potential father under the act should be shoved aside because “the clincher is the fact that parenthood is a more crucial matter to women” and decried the fact that requiring consent from both potential parents “places control of their [the women] prospects of motherhood into the least sympathetic hands: those of their ex-partners.”

Sources:

What they said about . . . the embryo ruling. William Cederwell, The Guardian, October 3, 2003.

IVF women lose their chance to have babies. Sarah Womack, Daily Telegraph, October 2, 2003.

Researchers Develop Effective Male Contraceptive

Researchers at the Anzac Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, announced in October that a small clinical trial of a male contraceptive found the drug 100 percent effective and side-effect free.

The trial involved 55 men who received a combination of implants and injections designed to stop production of sperm.

The men were given injections of progestin every three months. The progestin signals the body to stop producing sperm. It also shuts down all testosterone production, so the men were also given a testosterone implant that has to be replaced every four months.

When injections and implant treatment were stopped, the men’s sperm production went back to normal levels indicating the contraceptive effect is completely reversible.

Leader researcher David Handelsman noted the significance of the trial saying that,

This is the first time a reversible male contraceptive that will suppress sperm production reliably and reversibly has been fully tested by couples. This shows the way for a final product to be a single injection containing testosterone and a progestin which will easily be given by local doctors on a three-four monthly basis and still maintain male sexual health.

Larger clinical trials of the male contraceptive will have to take place before it reaches market, but this is likely to be fast tracked if these sort of results continue to hold up.

Sources:

Male contraceptive proves 100% effective. BetterHumans.Com, October 6, 2003.

Male contraceptive ‘100% effective’. The BBC, October 6, 2003.