miscellany

is feminism MIA?

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:25:00 +0000

You may remember an email petition about Women in Afghanistan that went around in the late 1990s. It was started by a student at Brandeis university, and I recall it became one of those email chain letter/petitions (if you are the 100th person to write your name at
the bottom, send it to whoever) that served no real purpose - other than bringing attention to the plight of women under the Taleban - the 'signatures' were pointless, and not going to be passed on to anyone in a position to do anything. Note that the feminists who campaigned - rightly - about the suffering of women under Taleban tyranny have gone strangely silent now about the treatment of women in other parts of the Middle East (unless they can blame that treatment on the USA or Israel). As Sarah Baxter wonders here are the feminists of the left too blinded by their anti-Bush, anti-Blair anger to see the abuses of women's rights in the Middle East? Cultural relativism leads to ignorant equivalences being drawn.
As a feminist - or as Hezbollah would put it, 'infidel whore who deserves to die' - I feel we need to keep speaking out against women's mistreatment, even - or especially - when it is committed in the name of religion. Any 'feminist' who stands shoulder-to-shoulder
with Hezbollah and their fundamentalist cronies is betraying the concept of 'women's rights'.

word count

Tue, 01 Aug 2006 04:14:00 +0000

occasional visitors may (or may not) have noticed that while I haven't written much here lately I have been regularly updating my little word count gizmo at the right.

I am NOT one of those people who churn out 200,000 words for their dissertation and then trim it down (unfortunately). So I am limping upwards towards the word count, very very slowly...

The Facebook...

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:30:19 +0000

...is leeching away my life! Yes I am on there, and if you are reading this
you probably are too. See your world in STALKERVISION, who's been
photographed with who, doing what, especially in the photos where they are
in the background and not tagged as being in it.

ah my dissertation

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 11:14:09 +0000

Well I am in Sydney and in chaotic typical fashion have no idea what
I am doing but that I went to see Superman yesterday and today spent
all day in the library at the art gallery reading about twentieth
century Chinese and Japanese art. The ideas of modernity and how I
can weave it into my nascent dissertation and not sound either
pretentious or like I have no idea what I am talking about (or both).

brief update

Tue, 30 May 2006 16:02:00 +0000

Having received comment that I had not updated this in a while...
I have updated my nifty little word count on the right, showing my avalanche of progress with the dissertation.
Last week I was been giving myself optic nerve damage going through microfilms of newspapers from Japan in the 1920s. Now I am writing various rambling paragraphs that I hope will give the illusion of knowledge.

I am krill

Fri, 12 May 2006 13:07:00 +0000

During the Truth Laid Bear site redesign, my status has fluctuated from wiggly worm to flippery fish and now to 'multicellular microorganism'. Not really so kind to a girl's self esteem!
(so while I disdain those who panhandle on their sites, asking for PayPal donations or Amazon gifts, I am not above asking for some gratuitous linkage - please pull me out of the evolutionary sludge!)

Grad School Barbie

Tue, 09 May 2006 23:02:00 +0000

Graduate School Barbie? from Apartment 11D.

Optional extras should include 'a guide to working at Starbucks' and bill for overdue library books.

the extinction of the blog?

Tue, 09 May 2006 21:51:00 +0000

An odd piece from Crikey about the fading of the blog fad.

They point out the number of 'dead' blogs, with only one or two posts, several years ago. What is more interesting is that these blogs often managed to attract in their short lives an inordinate number of incoming links, which are still carried on other people's sites.

The comparison made for blogging is to CB radio, but surely the more accurate parallel is to shortwave, ham radio enthusiasts being able to broadcast without knowing if they were being listened to or not.

(It used to be that you could send a reply paid coupon to shortwave radio stations and receive back a card. I wrote once to one in Paris and got no reply. My interest in shortwave is for another post however.)

The early death of many blogs is one thing - I've never liked the word 'blog' by the way, even WEB LOG is a bit technical, nobody refers to their personal diary as a LOG.

Online Journal is better, but seems to have been betamaxed by 'blog' unfortunately.

Asian History Carnival #4

Fri, 05 May 2006 02:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the Asian History Carnival #4!

Several Asian history items - including the MIT furore - were included in History Carnival 30 earlier this week and I have not duplicated those here.

Thanks to everyone who submitted suggestions!

Debates & Debunking

The Gavin Menzies issue refuses to die, and another crackpot book has just been released.

I am reminded very much of Erik Von Daniken, who was apparently once asked by a journalist, 'Do you really believe in aliens coming to earth?', and responded with 'Have I shown you my Rolls Royce?'.

Meanwhile, a TV drama in China has sparked off online debate

Discoveries

Anand on a curious note among Nehru's papers

Discussion

John Kennedy on how bloggers haven't been discussing the May Fourth movement

The loss of a traditional Cambodian musical form

Popular Gusts on Korea's April Revolution in 1960

Deconstructing the Long March posted at Simon World.

The use of magnets in traditional medicine in the Philippines at Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan

Chapati Mystery discusses how to teach an introduction to South Asia and which books to use.

Kerim at Savage Minds discusses a Taiwanese commercial and its somewhat problematic portrayal of Taiwan's aborigines as living in an eternally static past.

Meanwhile, at Frog in a Well, Konrad Lawson has been looking at a stabbing incident and world history, with regard to what authors choose to emphasise and what they don't.

Stefan and Dave at Blogging...Walk the Talk offers us evidence of the early development of Hong Kong identity.

Also, Stefan talks about the the influence on sailing technology and the history of trade in Singapore.

More Reviews

Thu, 04 May 2006 11:06:00 +0000

See my reviews of the films Prime and Hell at Local Secrets.

Misquoting Thomas Jefferson

Mon, 01 May 2006 16:53:00 +0000

Misattributions of quotes is common - typically if the question is 'Who first said that?' the answer is likely to be Shakespeare, Dorothy Parker, or Oscar Wilde.
Apparently the line 'A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle' is an orphan - while often attributed to Gloria Steinem, she denies it is hers.
Now we have the claim that 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism', attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Of course it's tremendously useful if you want to claim Jefferson's figurative support for anything dissenting, and cloak yourself in 'patriotism' while so doing.
But as Mark Steyn argues:

'Thomas Jefferson would never have said anything half so witless. There is no virtue in dissent per se. When John F. Kennedy said, "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty" -- and, believe it or not, that's a real quote, though it's hard to imagine any Massachusetts Democrat saying such a thing today -- I could have yelled out, "Hey, screw you, loser." It would have been "dissent," but it wouldn't have been patriotic, and it's certainly not a useful contribution to the debate.'

read more here

What amuses and puzzles me is how many people are willing to keep using a debunked quote like this one, when any copy of Bartlett's will offer up a wealth of options to get 'support' for any argument from historical figures.

Asian History Carnival

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 18:50:00 +0000

As some of you know, I contribute to Frog in a Well on the China side. As you may also know, there is an Asian History Carnival, like the History Carnival

I'll be hosting the next edition of the Asian History Carnival here on Friday 5th May. It's held every two months and this will be number 4. So , anything Asian history related that you've come across (or indeed written your good self) since 6th March can be submitted.

Please get any suggestions to me before then by email

no title

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 19:22:00 +0000

somehow doesn't seem that way...

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:32:00 +0000

You Are Scary

You even scare scary people sometimes!

How Scary Are You?

...I don't stride in through the saloon doors and see people ducking under tables, while a trembling bartender quaveringly asks if I want a drink.

Have you Overheard?

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 18:39:00 +0000

As a long-time fan and occasional contributor to Overheard in New York, I was surprised to receive an email from Michael Malice announcing his (apparently unwilling) separation from the site, and his establishment of a new one: New York Overheard.

I don't know any of the people involved or what is going on, I assume Mr Malice had the new site in reserve as some kind of a contingency plan: his email implied he had been dismissed that day and yet his new site was already up - new domains usually take at least 24 hours to come onstream if not longer.

I have always admired his witty, literate and sometimes cryptic headlines on the original site so I wish him well with the new one, and another member of the franchise, Overheard at College