Category: Uncategorized

Kuwaiti Politician, Feminist Agree — Women’s Bodies Should Be Hidden

When Islamic extremists and feminists agree on a principle, run for cover. In this case, both feminists and a Kuwaiti politician both decried the provocative display of the female body in regards to the same event: the Olympics.

In Kuwait, the conservative member of parliament Waleed al-Tabtabai complained about the obscene display of women’s bodies during televised coverage of women’s beach volleyball, diving and synchronized swimming at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. “A number of competitions, especially those for women,” al-Tabtabai complained, “include indecent displays which require that television should stop showing them to viewers. … Showing such competitions cannot be accepted as sports because they only reflect Western standards which do not provide a woman’s body with the sanctity, honor and protection that Islam does.”

This is one of only several causes al-Tabtabai has taken up — in 1997 at his initiative Kuwait banned music concerts where both men and women were allowed to attend.

Al-Tabtabai was joined in his criticism of the sexualization of women in sports by feminists angry over photographs of some female athletes. An especially sore spot was hit with the publication of a picture of U.S. Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson. Thompson posed on a beach for the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing a swimsuit bottom, but nothing on top — covering her breasts with her fists.

Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation of Long Island, New York, told Newhouse News Service that “any exposure in a sports magazine that minimizes athletic achievement and skill and emphasizes the female athlete as a sex object is insulting and degrading.”

Olympic swimmer Ashley Tappin, who appeared in a provocative pose for the September issue of Maxim magazine said such criticism was “a bunch of bull. We’re healthy. We’re fit. And we’re not just cute; we do good things with our bodies. They are functional. Why not show them off?”

Some of the feminist critics don’t get out much since they seem to think semi-nude athlete photos is an exclusively female phenomenon. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, told Newhouse, “All I am asking for is equal treatment. When Tiger Woods is on the cover of Sports Illustrated naked, holding a golf ball with the Nike swoosh in front of his genitals, I’ll be quiet.”

To my knowledge no serious male or female golf professional has been photographed semi-nude with or without golf balls — that sport takes itself a bit too seriously for such a photo. On the other hand, plenty of men from bicyclists to swimmers to (remember the poster of Mark Spitz clad only in a barely there Speedo and his gold medals?) to track and field athletes have been featured in semi-nude photos. In fact as a recent Sports Illustrated story noted, so many athletes have done the nude photo shoot that the whole genre is quickly becoming a dull cliche, since it’s no longer shocking.

In fact, despite the feminists attempt to ghettoize women, the bottom line is that sports coverage has always tended to sexualize athletes of all sexes. If Tappin and Thompson want to show off their bodies as Spitz and other males athletes have done, more power to them. The Kuwaiti politicians and radical feminists should mind their own business.

Source:

‘Olympics are too sexy’. The BBC, September 21, 2000.

Sex and the Olympics. Mark O’Keefe, Newhouse News Service, September 16, 2000.

HIV Heightens Malaria Risk

As if African nations didn’t have enough problems to worry about, a recent study published in the British medical magazine The Lancet confirms that HIV positive individuals are much more likely to contract Malaria than those not infected with the virus. After monitoring both HIV positive and non-HIV positive people in Uganda, researchers found the HIV-positive patients were almost twice as likely to be infected with malaria. This make sense since the diminished immune system of HIV patients makes them more susceptible to other diseases such as tuberculosis.

Given the continuing high rates of HIV infection Africa, which shows no hint of slowing down, this could be a huge public health disaster. Already about 2 million people worldwide die from malaria, and if HIV makes it easier for the malaria parasite to infect a person, those numbers could increase dramatically even with HIV treatment, further straining limited health care resources in African nations.

Source:

AIDS compound malaria problem. The BBC, September 22, 2000.

Alf Activist Justin Samuel Pleads Guilty

Last September, Justin Samuel was arrested by Belgium authorities and extradited to the United States where he faced charges of releasing mink and other animals from fur farms (see ALF Updates). At the end of August Samuel plead guilty to two misdemeanor offense related to releasing animals from four Wisconsin farms in 1997. He faces a maximum of two years in jail as well as restitution to the mink farmers who claimed losses of around $200,000. Samuel’s sentencing hearing is November 3.

Samuel admitted to authorities that he and Peter D. Young, who remains a fugitive, were responsible for the mink releases in Wisconsin. The two were implicated when police stopped their car in October 1997 after a mink release and found ski masks, a bolt cutter and a list of mink ranches in the area. FBI tests demonstrated that the bolt cutter from the car was the same one used to break into several of the mink farms.

Samuel reached a plea agreement whereby authorities dropped the felony charges against him and instead charged him with conspiracy to disrupt an animal enterprise and traveling in interstate commerce to disrupt an animal enterprise. In exchange, Samuel is to provide testimony to a grand jury about his activities.

Typically animal rights activists have responded very negatively toward ALF members who turn state’s evidence, and it will be interesting to see how they react to Samuel’s cooperation with authorities.

Source:

Washington state man admits releasing hundreds of mink by cutting fences. Kevin Murphy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 30, 2000.

Good and Bad Software Programs

Since I was expounding on what I thought made good and bad software, I got to thinking about the best and worst software I’ve ever used.

On the best side, the best computer game I ever played was Pinball Construction Set. To my mind that game is still as close to perfection as I’ve seen. The beauty was that pinball is a pretty limited game but within that basic board and balls domain you could do anything. I remember creating a game once where the gravity was set to zero, there was one hole in the middle of the board for the ball to go into, and then bumpers, flippers and other stuff on the outside — called the game The Black Hole. You could do that sort of thing very easily and it was fun to play around with.

The worst software is a shoe-in — pretty much any Windows word processor. WordPerfect stinks, and MS Word somehow manages to be even worse. I spend much of my time at work editing documents in those two programs and they drive me bonkers. Most of my co-workers like WordPerfect because of the “Reveal Codes” feature, but I routinely run into documents where what I see on screen has nothing to do with the codes. Word is pretty much unuseable; I really have no idea how people get work done with it.

Dying Without A Cemetery Plot Is Illegal in Le Lavandou, France

An example of just how crazy state regulation can be, the town of Le Lavandou recently proclaimed that “it is forbidden without a cemetery plot to die on the territory of the commune.” Don’t blame the town’s politicians for the bizarre law, however, — the blame lies squarely with environmentalists.

The small town of only 80 people knew it was running out of cemetery space, but because it is near the sea shore environmentalists successfully sued to block a new grave yard the town had planned. Instead the environmentalists want Le Lavandou to use an abandoned rock quarry as a graveyard, which the mayor, Gil Bernardi, denounced as nothing more than a “dump” which doesn’t give proper respect to the dead.

The town hopes to have the ruling overturned on appeal, but in the mean time officials were forced to enact the “no dying” law in order to minimize their own liability for those who die. The law may remain in effect for awhile as the appeals procedure could take upwards of three years to wind its way through the courts.

Source:

Dying prohibited in Riviera town. The Associated Press, September 21, 2000.

This Is How Every Game Should Be Made

When it comes to software, hardware, toys, or whatever, my mantra is simple — I want options, options, and more options. I think the day software designers can write a program and expect people to conform their behavior to the needs of the program are long gone. Instead consumers want software that they can customize to the way they work rather than vice versa.

An example of a computer game that does this well is Space Empires IV by Malfador Machinations. Space Empires is legendary among fanatics of the so-called 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) strategy games. It takes the space gameplay from the excellent Masters of Orion and then throws in so much customizability that at times it comes close to having too many options, if that is possible (on the other hand, if you just want to play the game as is you can ignore all of those options, which is also important).

Just about everything can be changed in the game. Want to set a Babylon-5 vs. Star Trek game? Definitely doable (and believe me, the game’s fanbase will take only a few weeks after the game is released to post complete ships, technology trees, etc. for scifi properties like Babylon-5 and Star Trek on the Internet).

I got very burned out on strategy games after too many 4 a.m. sessions of Civilization II, but I bought Space Empires III based solely on the customizability, and eagerly await version IV. To my mind this is the way to sell a toy, electronic or not. Don’t sell me a gadget that just does one or two things, sell me that box of Legos where I can build the toy depicted on the front cover of the box if I want or if I feel more energetic create something completely different. I hate software that boxes the user in to only a few, often relatively meaningless, choices.