Thursday, March 27, 2008

Marriage as an institution does it work?

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found 45% of marriages will end in divorce before a couple's 50th anniversary. There is 31% chance that your marriage will end before your 10th year anniversary, and calculating divorces and deaths, only 10% of all couples will celebrate their 60th anniversary, not to say that there are many people getting married in the first place, since marriage rates are continuously dropping and keep hitting record lows.
Of course this is due to many things such as development of contraceptions, economic independence of women, changes in social norms including family norms, and also it may have to do with the fact that we are not meant to be monogamous in the first place and now its the era where people are not restricted to this myth.

This generates several schools of ideas, those who think why bother? and those who believe, do it anyhow and two is always better than one, do it but don't do it in the institution,,,,

but seriously are we going into the era of singles? (who are the majority already)
But then why is it that EVERYONE around me is already hooked up?

I guess one of the reasons that make people want to pair up is due to the fact that since everyone else is, you can't avoid it. Its like playing that game you used to play in grade school where someone shouts out a number and you must team up with others to form a group of that specific number. If you don't you are out of the game. Since I feel like I would like to be in the game, I think I have to team up, and this day and age, its still "two" that is being shouted, not one.. or three. Of course the beauty of it is that due to the ease of breakage of the relationships, even if you're out of the game this round, there is another round coming up, if you wait long enough. Then again, there is no guarantees there as well.

But maybe we should just all give up trying to find the person who you will spend "the rest of your life" with and accept the fact that this is just for the time being. All relationships being a long term fling of some sort, that will end eventually.

This should not be taken all too negatively. For this means that you don't have to worry about whether this person is perfect for you, if that person is "the person", and don't have to think that this will and or has to be the last decision you will ever make on relationships. Really choosing Mr./Ms. Good enough for now, will be the only choice you need to make, yes that and if you want to invest in that person for at least during that period of your life, and you rather be two with that person rather than one.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Rethinking Aid donations

It has been reported that 40% of the money promised/delivered to aid Afghan has been spent on "corporate profits and consultancy fees" and that "much of the money earmarked for aid is diverted to political or military purposes."

It makes one think about the realities and purposes of aids especially when one considers the conditionality the aids entail, such as world bank's conventionalities which include liberalisation and privatization of public goods etc. This of course has to be considered in addition to the amount of tax deduction companies and individuals get.

These problems have been addressed, such as UK charity organisation asking their government to withhold money from the world bank until it changes the conventionalities of their funds, which unfortunately did not succeed. Last year UK's development secretary, Douglas Alexander handed £2bn-plus to the institution no strings attached.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Sex in Public Park legal in Amsterdam

Earlier this month it has been announced that it will be legal to have sex in Vondel park from this summer onwards (in english)

Paul van Grieken, an alderman (city council member) for the Oud-Zuid(old-south) district of Amsterdam said . "Why should we try to maintain something that is actually impossible to maintain, which also causes little bother for others and for a certain group actually signifies much pleasure?"

There are some rules behind this though.
1. you must take your "trash" with you afterwards
2. you cannot have sex in/near the children's playing area/playgrounds
3. you are only allowed to have sex during the evening till night but not before and after..

however there will be more restriction on walking your dog and you will always have to keep it leashed while in the park not to disturb sun-bathers, cyclists.

In addition the police's National Diversity Expertise Centre (LECD) wants sex allowed in all public parks in the Netherlands, expanding this movement to Rotterdam and Utrecht etc.

In response to this the CDA(Christian Democratic Party) leader Pieter van Geel, has called for ban of sex in the park, saying "We aren't restricting people from having sex in open spaces because no one wants to enforce it. If we keep pushing the limit up, what will be next?"

In the dutch news today

there are some very interesting headlines that I would like to share..

1. Sperm donors can take more active roles as fathers..
as the study by a researcher of family law at Tilburg University shows based on the cases where the donors asked some type of rights through courts based on their biological links.. he says the cases go through quicker as well

2. The Dutch feel happy
85% of dutch replied the glass is half full, not half empty (15%) and on average feel happy 5 days out of the week..75% feel lucky/good about their job,and 60% are happy about their outer appearance.

3. Women rather talk to their girlfriends than their partners
More than half (55%)of Dutch women rather talk to their girl friends than their partners and one out of three women speak to their girl friends more/longer than to their partners..

Banned Commercial: mocking christians?

Ad watch dog decides to ban a commercial on women's hair product due to complaints that it was mocking the Christian faith.
It shows women in various praying positions, saying that the new product is a new religion..

According to an article in the Guardian

The Advertising Standards Authority received a total of 23 complaints, including one from the Archdeacon of Liverpool, objecting that the ads were offensive to the Christian faith. The complaints particularly highlighted the use of the phrase from the Lord's Prayer and the depiction of the letter "t" as a cross in "thy".


Judge for yourselves..



I think its more of a complement if you asked me..

This one exploits little children as well..



Here is another one from the same company ... using the same theme "a new religion for hair" which apparently they have used for the past seven years..

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The new ten commandments

The Vatican has made a new list of sinson top of the one Moses made while he was trippin, and the Seven Deadly Sins .. since they are not suffice to keep people feeling guilty enough to spend their time and money in/for the church for salvation.

the list includes..
· Environmental pollution;
· Genetic manipulation;
· Accumulating excessive wealth;
· Inflicting poverty;
· Drug trafficking and consumption;
· Morally debatable experiments;
· Violation of fundamental rights of human nature.

Pope Benedict, in support of the move has noted that "We are losing the notion of sin ...If people do not confess regularly, they risk slowing their spiritual rhythm."

Just a couple of things I feel about this list of modern sins.. one, I like some of them, such as environmental pollution and inflicting poverty, but one can see that they are more abstract then the old ones but also they are on politically sensitive issues that people cannot agree on as being morally right or wrong(in comparison to things such as thou shall not kill, which I think most of us agree upon).

This makes me think that the church has made a move implying that they will indeed act as a political body, not just as a spiritual, and take stances/mostly conservative/ on certain issues such as abortion, homosexuality, scientific experiments and etc. They will use this list.. which this time around we all know that it was NOT given by GOD..(but maybe has been made when the priests were indeed high).. as grounds in which they can argue for their position and to (pressure politicians to)change policies to fit their conservative agendas.
If it is not enough that George W. is using God as an excuse for all his "deadly sins" committed to the rest of the world.

On a similar note, the new Korean neo-liberal conservative president Lee named as his new minister of social welfare and health in Korea someone who has written in a newspaper that the lack of belief in God increased social polarization of Korea and that we must over come issues of poverty and inequality through enhancing our religious beliefs... of course on top of that he has been found for plagiarism, not paying his health insurance contributions, tax fraud, real estate fraud and use of public funds for personal use.

Do as Christians say not as Christians do.

------------
here is a nice link of a book Hwa wrote in comments, but the link is broken there.
It is called The Vatican World Politics

Monday, March 10, 2008

Mixing friends

Charlie Brooker on why you should not mix friends at your party...

"you have work friends, and college friends, and various groups of random friends you've picked up along the way ... and since they're all quite different, you behave differently with them. I might be a swearing lout with one friend and an urbane sophisticate with another. Mix them all together in the same room and it gives me an identity crisis: suddenly I don't know who I am any more, and I panic and smash chairs against the wall until everyone goes home."


Charlie Brooker

Monday, March 03, 2008

Slap me like the Fender Jazz Bass that I am

I love bass players
I have always loved bass players. I don’t know when it all started since I didn’t notice my fascination until I had a collection of boyfriends or crushes with one thing that connected them all, their ability to play bass.
I never fully understood why I fell for these men, but one reason would be that I myself love bass sounds and music with good bass lines.(This is why I love funk)
However, recently I figured another reason why I like them. I feel like I am a bass, and when I hear good bass lines I feel like it, may it be the music, the bass line or the bass player, is playing (with) me. This is related to the theory that all sounds/tones hit a certain part of your body, like drums are connected to the human heartbeats, and etc. And well in relation to this, I realized when you slide your finger on the lower E bass string, it hits right there at my G, if you catch my drift. So when I date these men, I date them in hopes of them being able to play me, my body just like they funk their bass.
Oh btw did I mention of all the bass techniques I love the slapping and popping technique?