Privileges

Female Privilege List
Privileges I have as a woman, that "others" - mostly men - don't have.

1. I’m under less pressure than others to engage in risky, dangerous and unhealthy behaviors - one of the reasons I get to live longer than others do.
2. I can choose professions that are less lucrative, and not be called a loser.
3. If I don’t rise to the top of my profession, it’s OK – people won’t judge me the less for it.
4. I’m entitled to the benefits of a safe, orderly society, but no one expects me to risk my personal safety to maintain it.
5. I have the right to have the overwhelming majority of personal risk suffered in defense of my country handled by others.
6. I’m allowed to avoid violence, and even run from it, without the risk I’ll be laughed at.
7. If I see someone else in danger, I’m allowed to stop and think carefully about my personal risk before saving them, without my courage being called into question.
8. I have the right to avoid risky, dangerous challenges, and not be called a coward.
9. I’m allowed to cry as a child and tell my parents I’m scared of something - my parents won't be disappointed with me.
10. I have the right to have most of the really dangerous professions handled by others.
11. If I commit a crime, I get less jail time than others would get for the exact same crime.
12. When I find myself with others in a terrifying, life-threatening situation, I have the right to be evacuated first, once the children are safe. Others can wait.
13. If I get slaughtered as part of some atrocity, people will be especially outraged and will call particular attention to the fact I was slaughtered. When others are slaughtered, it isn't quite as upsetting.
14. I have the right to give my child up for adoption, and thus totally repudiate any personal and financial responsibilities I might otherwise have.
15. I can choose whether I want to be a parent or not, knowing that society will compel the other parent to meet their financial responsibilities - whether they want to or not.
16. If I am personally attacked, I expect otherwise safe, otherwise uninvolved people to come to my defense.
17. If I see someone else being attacked, I’m not expected to risk my own safety to defend them. It's OK for me to wait for others to intervene, and it’s also OK for me to criticize others if they don’t.
18. In any dispute involving custody, I’m granted the presumption that I am the better, safer parent.
19. I have the right to interact with children not my own, and not have people look at me suspiciously.
20. If I choose to become a parent, people understand if I want to focus entirely on the personal, day-to-day care and nurturing of my children. Society expects my spouse to make enough money to make this choice possible.
21. I can get real nasty when someone makes me mad, and call them ugly, a loser, a nerd, a geek, a disgusting creep, a revolting little worm, a worthless piece of garbage, a scum bag, a wimp, a pervert, a jerk-off, an old fart, or a fat slob. After all, I have the right not to be treated meanly at work, and the right not to hear harsh things that might make me uncomfortable. I have legal recourse if that right is not respected, and I have the right to make this perfectly clear on my job interview.
22. I’m allowed to embrace and cultivate my spiritual qualities, and adopt a more elevated and more refined view of life - because other people handle all the "dirty work" like: yard work, garbage hauling, construction, fishing, mining, sewage disposal, street cleaning, long distance trucking, baggage handling, painting, sandblasting, and cement work.
23. If I fail at something, I can go to college and study the historical forces and social constructs that make it harder for people like me. If others fail, it’s because they just don’t have what it takes.
24. If I fail at almost everything, I can always teach college courses that explain why people like me fail a lot.

Please acknowledge http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/ when forwarding or copying this list

Company Boycotts

There are companies that I no longer do business with due to treatment I received and despicable behavior.

Cannon - Ripped off my father in 1982
TrueCredit - No cancel button on their Credit monitoring website.
HP - Purchased EDS and became a competitor
EA - Charged me for 6 months of WoW when I canceled the account 5 days into the renewal period. I asked them to reconsider their decision, they failed.
Geico - Provided a quote that was better than my existing auto insurance and then tripled the quoted price after I'd gone through the steps to switch to them.
Gateway - Sells crappy computers. Luckily, I've never bought one of theirs.
FOX News - If you call yourself news and can't provide it honestly, you and your advertisers don't deserve my attention. Wholly, despicable.
Whole Foods - CEO spoke out against Universal Health care Legislation

Male Bashing:
Ford Motor Company
Progressive Insurance
Reebok
Hefty Trash Bags
American Furniture
Red Lobster
J.C. Penney
Lifetime TV
Dish Network
Hummer
Heinz Soup
Post-it Notes
Budweiser
Heineken
The Body Shop
Walls Ice Cream (UK)
Factory Mattress
FluMist
Washington Mutual
Dairy Queen
Capital One
Cooper Tires
Trident
Liz Claiborne
Mass Mutual
Toys R Us
Target
Quantas
MOVIE
Kraft Foods
V8
Dodge
Trojan Condoms
RONA
Budweiser
Macy's
Penney's

A Two week vacation

Making a list, checking it twice, ... So far this has been a highly fulfilling and satisfying hiatus. Recently, went to spy museum, american indian museum, smithsonian museum, and holocaust museum. Also, looking to do the Baltimore Zoo, National Aquarium (with 4d theatre), and the inner harbor today.

I think also visiting Dupont Circle, the national zoo, the power plant, conowingo dam, and the new york zoo might be fun.

As for movies, Ive seen Star Trek 3 times, wolverine (xmen), Up, Wargames 2, and Terminator. This combined with an active instant Netflix account (and Hulu for rewatching arrested development) has provided a whirlwind of new cinema to parse.

Flea market and Family Reunion may be on the plate. Probably time to find some time to meditate.

Clearly

If only using the word 'clearly' was a substitute for science, how easy life would be.

Tim Minchin

I discovered Tim Minchin on YouTube and think his music is interesting.

Sell All the Gold in Fort Knox?

$129,711,120,000 is the value of all the gold in Fort Knox. 129 Billion $. The Bailout could have bought 6.5x all the gold in Fort Knox.

810 Billion $ Quote

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." - Toq.

Confidence

I keep falling back into Macro News instead of focusing on the technology I know. Today is no different.

When a society only has "confidence" as a means to stabilize its financial markets, its an indicator of bad things to come. "Competence" is what we need. Not all investments cause losses. A competent financial Guru should easily be able to give me a guarantee of positive return. Any financial professional who has lost a single client money should be barred from working in the financial services industry ever again.

Correct Response to privacy

From:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886

"The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." "

Universal Truths

Scavenged from: boreme.com

Universal truths

1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.
2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.
3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.
4) You've never quite sure whether it's ok to eat green crisps.
5) Everyone who grew up in the 80's has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator.
6) Reading when you're drunk is horrible.
7) Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.
8) You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden.
10) Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.
11) You never know where to look when eating a banana.
12) Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.
13) Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.
14) Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.
15) You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.
16) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.
17) The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mum or dad.
18) The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the
first given opportunity.
19) Some days you see lots of people on crutches.
20) Every bloke has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.
21) Old women with mobile phones look wrong!
22) Its impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee.
23) Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.
24) You never ever run out of salt.
25) Old ladies can eat more than you think.
26) You can't respect a man who carries a dog.
27) There's no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you've got your hand or head stuck in something.
28) No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.
29) Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan.
30) The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug.
31) People who don't drive slam car doors too hard
32) You've turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood
specifically to stir paint with.
33) Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.
34) Bricks are horrible to carry.
35) In every plate of chips there is a bad chip.