Men's Memes: News round-up

Sunday, January 21, 2007

News round-up

Peter Hitchens: Should Saddam have been executed in public or at all

Probably the most intelligent and perceptive article I've read on this subject. Hitchens makes some good points, amongst them how we find executions of those found guilty by trial more troubling than 'accidental' killings, by the police or military, of those who are innocent or who have not had the benefit of a fair trial. Equally, he points out how throughout history, we've had a tendency towards Human sacrifice, and how Christianity basically ended this through stressing that Christ had died on the Cross to save all of us, and that this was now enough to atone for all our sins (therefore no more Human sacrifice was neccessary. And if you study history, you will see how disturbingly frequent such barbaric and unneccesary acts were).

The author of the bestselling 'Dangerous book for boys': Superdad will make a man of you, lads

The success of this book is surely a sign of how people are sick of boys being overly constrained in our misandric and risk-adverse culture.

Robots: Robot nurses ready for hospitals in three years

The technology of robotics seems poised to make a greater impact on our lives within the near future. Bill Gates wrote an article for last month's Scientific American making the point that home robots will soon be common.

Back to the moon: It's been 35 years since man walked on the moon and now NASA plans to go back

Anyone else notice how the stalling of the space program co-incided with the rise in feminism? All these things are probably connected at some level. I think it's something to do with as the political and economic power of women increased from the '70s onwards, we became more of a culture that liked to play it safe, and make baby-steps towards things rather than take on big bold risks. Ironically, the space shuttle turned out to be anything but safe, and the International space station turned into pretty much an expensive dead-end. Maybe theres an important life lesson there? Sometimes by thinking you are playing it safe by taking baby steps, you aren't, and you'd have been better off making the big bold risk in the first place.

Also, less seriously, if you are considering a career as a space engineer perhaps it might be worth growing some big whiskers, as Professor Colin Pillinger (the man behind the British Mars robot Beagle 2) and Burt Rutan (the maverick American behind SpaceShipOne, which Richard Branson is turning into the centerpeice of a business that will be taking members of the public into space within a couple of years) demonstrate:

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Turn of the tide: feminists begin to regret

Cosmopolitan (The women's magazine that urges women to use men for sex) Editor Lorraine Candy has a change of mind and now urges women not to have "Soul-less sex":

"We didn't feel ashamed about one-night stands...this, we thought, is what feminism is about."

70s feminist Fay Weldon now says:

"It is the fault of me and my like, who... got it wrong.

So were we wrong, we feminists, setting women free? The results have been devastating – greater than we ever imagined.

We steamed ahead, changing the world with too little caution, and I hope the future will forgive us.

The pendulum has swung too far over. But it may yet swing back again. Societies, thank God, tend to be self-righting."

"Once a man could look forward to starting a family and the dignity that came from being the provider. Forget it. At best as a man you're decorative, look after the kids and earn a bit sometimes; at worst you're a write-off. Women are elbowing the men out. The boys get anxious, the girls swagger. The male suicide rate goes up, female down. Twenty-eight per cent of us now live in single person households - a lonely and unnatural state - and most of the 28 per cent consist of young men. It is strange that it is left to a woman to suggest, in the normal nurturing way, that men start some kind of movement to promote their gender's status and self-esteem - call it masculinism, brotherism, machoism, what you want - and some mark of the success of the feminist movement, that it needs to be done."

60's feminist Doris Lessing now says:

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

An excerpt from an interview with Joan Rivers:

"She's not with the feminists when it comes to matters of the heart. For her, they're to blame for the current parlous state of our relationships, as depicted in these television Shows (Such as Sex in the city) and films. "I saw this coming. You cannot be equal to a man, you cannot make a man feel 'I don't need you' or 'I'll take my sex when I want it'. All these shows are so sad."

Camille Paglia :

"Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."