[qm2] everything will be just fine

QE2 on the left, QM2 on the right

People, I don’t think I have the capacity to put a jinx on anything but the instant I saw the photo of the Queen Mary 2, it worried me. The boat is plain top-heavy.

As a sailor, even with stabilizers below, it worries me and the hype which is surrounding it reminds me a little of a particular 1912 boat beginning with the letter T and carrying Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet:

Wherever it goes, the ship is often greeted not just by crowds of onlookers, but sometimes even with parades and fireworks. ''When we go into Hamburg, 500,000 people line the shore to see the ship, and we've been there five or six times. I've never seen anything like it,'' said Ben Lyons, the QM2's first officer.

She’s been at it now for three years and the only glitch so far seems to have been the service on the maiden voyage. Fine, I’m absolutely certain nothing will go wrong. Truly. I’ve just been reading too much of this sort of thing.

Forget I mentioned it. QM2, every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you; that is how I know you’ll go on …

UPDATE: Now it's gone just a little too far. Wikipedia includes a side by side size comparison with, of all craft, the Titanic and the Airbus.

UPDATE UPDATE: Free thinker has some great shots of her coming into San Francisco Bay. He raced down and took them himself.

[be prepared] shakespearean taunt on stand-by

One should always have a fine insult at the ready for unleashing on your bewildered foe, e.g:

Thou bawdy unchin-snouted hugger-mugger!

The chap says that they are not genuine Shakespearean taunts but many of them are attributed and this Elizabethan Curse Generator seems better than most of the others on offer.

The aim of the series is so that you need never walk naked into the conference chamber – that you’ll always have a great historical insult at the ready to hurl.

Here are more.

[nudge nudge] on for young and old

Well, maybe we had to cover this topic. You saw the stats today – four in ten kids have accessed unsolicited porn, including pre-teens.

Now, what’s our reaction to be? I remember when I was in 2nd Form [Class 8], some kid brought some black and whites along and they did the rounds of the rest of us before the teachers stepped in and confiscated the lot.

I remember we all thought the staff were spoilsports and were only taking them to look at themselves. I actually asked one of the staff where the shots had got to and was told the Headmaster now had them. My goodness, I thought at the time – and he has a wife and family.

Was I traumatized? No. Was I turned into a raging sex maniac? I think I already was one. I had a girlfriend two years younger than I who was at the girls school across the way. Did I try out some new ideas on her? No – I was terrified enough holding her hand and asking her on a date.

So is it all right then for kids to see this stuff? In my humble opinion, I don’t think so. I really believe it has a cumulative effect over time and helps the already-existent poor attitude of boys towards girls. And if you know where to put it, you will. Just one opinion.

[nato] move over brits, here comes yankee know-how

Beautiful illustration of the essential differences between the British and US attitude to war.

The highest-ranking U.S. general to lead troops in Afghanistan took command of 35,500 NATO soldiers Sunday after nine months of British command. Gen. Dan K. McNeill replaced British Gen. David Richards to lead NATO's International Security Assistance Force after a year of sharply increased violence following the alliance's push into the Taliban's southern heartland.

The clearly pro-American article went on:

Military officials said they expect McNeill to take a harder line with insurgents than Richards. Richards backed a peace deal in the southern town of Musa Qala that crumbled in his last days in command when an estimated 200 Taliban fighters overran the town on Thursday. NATO said a targeted airstrike Sunday killed a key Taliban leader behind the upheaval.

I wonder if McNeill is aware of this and this about the Taliban and its plans for the spring offensive or does he think this is how they operate? If so, then we are headed for a conflagration of epic proportions. If not, then the new gung-ho NATO won’t know what hit them.

[japan] home of brave men and ‘birth machines’

Was there ever a better indication of the attitude of Eastern men to their women than the Japanese Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa’s reference to Japanese women as ‘birth machines’?

As the media said: The fuss over Yanagisawa's remark is the latest in a string of missteps to plague Abe, whose leadership has come in question ahead of the July election. A weekend opinion poll by Kyodo showed that public support for the 52-year-old leader had slid to about 40 percent, almost 25 points below the level when he took office in September.

This is the problem with most gung-ho politicians – all bravado and super-patriotic talk but not a lot else, certainly not a lot of common sense. Abe will go on from blunder to blunder.

I once posted a geisha girl's own story and that also says it all.

[alien attack] trying to identify a serial

Can anyone help me out here? I’m trying to identify a serial from the 50s, it would seem, made for television, possibly in six or so parts and in B&W. I was a child when I saw it years after it was made and was annoyed when my parents at first wouldn’t let me watch the exciting finale but then I prevailed on them to let me.

I’m very, very hazy about it. The hero was, I think, like all the short-haired heroes of the time, in a suit, an ordinary man who’d ‘discovered the truth’. The tone was dark and menacing and it was unlike any other I’d seen, with the exception of the classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. There wasn’t the least amount of corniness about it.

It turned on the fact that if something hadn’t been agreed to by a certain time, the flying saucers would obliterate the earth. Somehow it came down to one particular saucer planning to hover over maybe the Empire State building at maybe 12 noon and if that couldn’t be prevented, then zap!

Once the final pieces fell into place and the hero realized what was really going down, he had to somehow race to the city to warn someone. Like all of those more innocent days, I naturally assumed he’d clinch victory at the last second. He didn’t. He never made it on time and the saucer came to the building, hovered and zap! The screen went blank. I can remember being shocked to the core because in every other film and TV show I’d ever seen, good had always triumphed.

Any thoughts?

[rape] seven short posts on the matter [7]

The way it should be

When I was in my early twenties, I loved rambling and there was a sober-minded, intellectual girl I hiked with and that was all. We were friends.

One Saturday morning I collected her from her home [where she lived with her mother] and we went into the forest, left the car and climbed a tor, as we’d planned. Once there, we got out the makings of lunch and casually, between mouthfuls, she told me she’d been raped at 2 o’clock that morning.

You can imagine the swirl of emotions running through the mind. But why was she here hiking now? Answer - rape doesn’t stop the body working. But aren’t you … er … in shock? Not really. You want to tell me? She told me. It had been on the way home from her evening class, he’d followed her and well …

But shouldn’t you be with the police, you know, giving statements and so on? How do you feel [stupid question]? Not good. As we fell silent, all sorts of questions suggested themselves but I didn’t ask them: how had her mother let her come with me today, how could she stand to be with me, how could she have finished with the police at 4 a.m. and then come with me at 9a.m.?

I did ask her if she’d have to go to court. No. But whyever not? The animal! She didn’t want to go through any of that. She just wanted to forget it. She’d been lucky physically. She told me about her rule that you never fight them. I got on to other topics. I somehow felt guilty to be part of the gender which had done this thing.

Actually, I didn’t have a clue how to deal with it or what to say. So I didn’t. I still don’t.

[rape] seven short posts on the matter [6]

The way it should be

Seems to me the answer is to immediately differentiate, as Germaine Greer indicated, between types of rape:

1] the unprovoked attack on a modestly clad female in a place which in no way could be construed as conducive to this crime;
2] underage statutory rape;
3] incest where, though she might be of age, she’s still in a subordinate position;
4] where the wife or consensual partner, of age, brings the charge, with a history of conjugal relations and alcohol and/or a prior history of violence is involved;
5] the unprovoked attack on a female in a place which could be construed as conducive to the crime, where she demonstrably was dressed enticingly or can be shown to have repetitively placed herself in a position which could well bring her into contact with such types;
6] attacks, particularly group, where the female was for some time in their company, where she left the point of meeting with them and where her attire and overheard conversation was of a sexual nature;
7] where the wife or consensual partner, of age, brings the charge, despite a history of conjugal relations and no alcohol or prior history of violence is involved;
8] where her trade is sex.

The criterion is still that she claims she said “no” but it’s filtered through the above hierarchy of situations. This would take care of the professional rape-caller who’s out to make a dollar.

Which leaves the girl who’s really been raped but is too traumatized to press charges. This, it seems to me, is the situation we should be directing our energies towards. I knew such a girl once.

[rape] seven short posts on the matter [5]

The way it should be

Doesn’t the definition of rape come down, in the end, to not wanting him [and it is always him] to do it?

Do what? Where’s the line? Is the line the first touch? Is it the kiss? Is it the first time the hand touches a sensitive part? The woman wants the right to say “no” at any moment in the process and wants the weight of the law available to bring down on any transgressor.

Women rely on legislation but no amount of legislation alters the fact that man’s physiognomy is such that once he’s aroused, it needs release. She may not like that but it’s how men are biologically structured. What she has no clue about is how strong that desire is, even in reasonable, quiet men. And they’re not the ones she’s dirty-talking with in a bar or club. That desire is overpowering and a man need never apologize for that.

Alison says: "Yes women need to take care of themselves, of each other when they are drinking, [or not], only a fool would think differently. But a change in attitude needs to take place on both sides ..."

I agree with the point but add that they should never have been in that position in the first place. This smacks too much of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

There was a time where a thing called “chaperoning” went on and there was a lot of sense in it. The girl always had protection because she is naïve and doesn’t understand the male dynamic, no matter how worldly she might think she is.

But we threw all that out, didn’t we? Along with the Christian moral code which really did rein in man’s excesses in most cases and treated women as ladies. Anyone over a certain age knows that to be true, knows how society was. Even the statistics on rape support it. But people don’t want to concede that. They see this as an argument to put women back in the kitchen.

I say it’s just common sense – the more that unchaperoned girls freely drug around all night with absolutely no parental control, the more this sort of thing is going to happen. But parents refuse to admit any responsibility in this. They say it’s the type of animal now roaming around, raping girls. Nothing to do with them, the parents.

As for the aggressive male predator, the epidemic of porn and gaming on the web does affect their already jaundiced view of the female – have you seen some of those games? The porn of course you’ve already seen. We’re force fed it.

All of which does not take into account the unprovoked attack on an innocent woman.

[rape] seven short posts on the matter [4]

The way it should be

Vox Day who, like me, detests feminism and the PC mafia, says this about rape:

I think that the penalty for knowingly bringing a false charge against someone should be the same as the false charge brings. Although of course in Cool Britannia these days, it's entirely possible that two years in jail is the maximum penalty for rape.

One of his commenters says:

Rape is rape, no matter who the victim is. The degree of damage done though probably depends on the victim. Consider three cases:

1. Virgin

2. Faithful wife

3. 6-john a day prostitute

Another commenter says that we run the risk of a society of Prenuptial Contracts, where love and romance are the last things on anyone’s mind.

Germaine Greer thinks that date rape and one-on-one rape should be legally separate.

Ian Grey points to a Times article debunking the female case.

I still think it all comes down to neither side understanding the other’s biology.