Month: May 2001

I don’t think I could have written a more bizarre story than that written by Elliott Balch for the Harvard Crimson. The story outlined a plan by the Radcliff Union of Students to host a sex toy party for Harvard women, as Balch put it, “to emphasize women’s sexual independence.”

The kicker to the story is the role that one of the organizers apparently thought such an event would have in fighting “the patriarchy.” Balch reports that RUS president Elizabeth Vogt sent an e-mail to all RUS members saying that among other things, the sex toy part would give women a way to “challenge patriarchal society.”

“If you know that you can satisfy your own sexual desires without relying on someone else, you can gain a lot of power in romantic relationships,” Vogt wrote in her e-mail message.

Interesting how some feminists have no problem conflating sex with power — a view that traditionalists were long criticized by feminists for maintaining.

Source:

RUS Plans Women’s Sex Toy Event. Elliot W. Bach, The Harvard Crimson, April 20, 2001.

The World Bank just released its annual report, World Development Indicators, which focuses on the ongoing poverty that continues to afflict a substantial number of people in our world. But the best bet for alleviating poverty may be for developing nations to ignore the World Bank altogether.

First, the indicators. Summarized by the BBC, among other things revealed by the report:

• 1.2 billion people live on less than $1/day
• 10 million children under five die annually from preventable diseases
• More than 113 million children do not attend school
• 500,000 women die annually as a result of complications from pregnancy and childbirth

Of course the situation throughout the world — even in the worst areas of Africa and Asia — still represents a substantial improvement over the early part of the 20th century, but how should countries go forward to increase living standards?

The World Bank’s answer, not surprisingly, is that developing countries should more closely follow the World Bank’s advice. But so far the World Bank has yet to demonstrate that it understands what causes poverty in the developing world, much less the best solution to the problem.

After all some of the poorest areas of the world, say India for example, have been flooded with aid assistance attached to programs put together by World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other agencies, all pretty much for nought. Since 1951, for example, India has received about $55 billion dollars in foreign aid, and yet up to 40 percent of its population still suffers from abject poverty. Many countries in Africa who accepted aid from the World Bank or IMF actually saw their per capita incomes decline after going along with “structural adjustments” prescribed by donor agencies.

A lot of the recent anti-globalization rhetoric within the developed countries is way off base, but the notion that the World Bank and IMF do little in the long run to help alleviate global poverty is more than vindicated by the evidence. Developing countries should just say no to such “aid.”

Source:

World Bank’s plea for poorest. David Schepp and Kevin Anderson, The BBC, April 29, 2001.

DailyRadar, one of the slickest of a number of irreverent gaming sites, has put up a notice that it is “no longer publishing.”

Of course the editors couldn’t resist one final shot at game designer John Romero with whom they got involved in a back-and-forth over Romero’s last “game”, Daikatana.

With game sites going down all over the place, can we perhaps have a little hope that Jeff K. might move on to bigger and less bizarre things?