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Michelle Goldberg: Sex, Power and the Future of the World

This is infinitely interesting

click it, doit

Berkeley, CA
Hillside Club
Apr 16th, 2009

In a groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, the author of the New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming exposes the global war on women’s reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences for the future of global development.

As networks of religious fundamentalists, feminists, and bureaucrats struggle to remake sexual and childbearing norms worldwide, the battle to control women’s bodies has become a high-stakes enterprise. The Means of Reproduction travels through four continents, examining issues such as abortion, female circumcision, and Asia’s missing girls to show how the battle has been globalized and how, too often, the United States has joined sworn enemies such as Iran and Sudan in an axis of repression.

Reporting with unique insight from both the rarefied realm of international policy and from individual women’s lives, Goldberg elucidates the economic, demographic, and health consequences of women’s oppression, and shows how women, strengthened by a solidarity that transcends borders, are fighting for freedom. Michelle Goldberg is an investigative journalist.

A former senior writer at Salon.com, Goldberg has written for Glamour, The New Republic, Rolling Stone, The Guardian (UK), and has taught at New York University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The Means of Reproduction won the 2008 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award.

I call him “Pan-dorrrr!”

In 20 years time when people will ask me “Thao, what was your greatest achievement in life?”, I will close my eyes, take a deep breathe, and whisper to them “To ride the giant mechanical panda”

My life has been a prelude to this moment… “I call him Pan-dorr!” “Ride on pan-dor! Tally-ho!!”

Bible, fun-size!

In latest news, the wizards at the Israeli Institute of Technology have set a new world record by squeezing all 308, 428 words of the Old Testament (in original Hebrew no less) onto a 0.5mm square microchip using particle beams, silicon ions, and other such science. This makes it 50 times bigger than the last record holder, and in my mind at least 50 times less practical. Reducing the world’s thickest and most influential text to one-eighth the size of a pinhead is not so useful, methinks, unless (maybe) we’re on some kind of missionary to salvage the souls of amoeba (you fools, mitosis is sin!). Luckily, our friends at the Institute have also bore this in mind and to celebrate the shrinking of the text by officially enlarge it to a 7×7m poster so that it may now be “possible to read the entire Bible with the naked eye”. Nothing I couldn’t have done without $2.50 and a colour copier, but I’ve never been a science type, I don’t think I’m quite that silly. I’d like to say that knowledge was the winner in the end, but unfortunately it may have been at the cost of common-bloody-sense.

Oh hell, what do I care, I don’t speak Hebrew anyway.

Concluding video: I imagine the process to be somewhat like this.

….

Israeli boffins put Bible on microchip

SMH | 12 December, 2007

Israeli scientists said on Tuesday they have created the world’s smallest Bible, fitting a Hebrew-language version of the holy book on a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead.

Researchers from Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, were able to pack the 308,428-word Hebrew Bible – known to most as the Old Testament – on a 0.5 millimetre square, Ohad Zohar, who directed the project, told AFP.

“This is the world’s tiniest Bible,” Zohar said. “The Guinness Book of World Records has a Bible 50 times bigger.”

The scientists managed their feat by sending focused beams of tiny particles, called gallium ions, onto the surface of

the silicon chip.

“By sending a particle beam towards various points on the substrate, we can etch any pattern of points, especially

one that represents text,” said Zohar, a physics doctoral student.

The nano-Bible was developed by the Haifa-based institute as part of an educational programme aimed at increasing interest in nanoscience among teenagers.

The scientists now want to take pictures of the miniature Bible and blow it up to a seven-by-seven metre poster, which will make it “possible to read the entire Bible with the naked eye,” he said.

Blossoms really are lovely

Oh, I’m sailin’ away

I’ve fallen back in the habit of erratic blogging which, coincidently, correlates with my habit of travelling and not being a depressing and whiny bint.

Note: Consistency of posts is proportionate to number of smiles that day.

So, I would like to have a regular blog (I really would) but it hurts my heart too much.
Moving on… since we last met I’ve been here, had one of these, and popped home for a bit of rest and/or relaxation (not that I’m living a particularly strenuous lifestyle but wishing a fiery death on self-righteous roommates is surprisingly emotionally draining).

Highlights were of course Hadaka Matsuri, literally Naked Man Festival (are there three more glorious words?) the annual event where over 9,000 participants strip down to loincloths and fight for a sacred stick while having cold water poured over them. Women are strictly forbidden to participate, which is for the best I think as they do carry the burden of having ’shame’ and ’sense’.

Apparently though it hasn’t always been a naked festival, originally clothes were allowed but competition became so fierce that they were always torn off or reduced to tatters. Unfortunately noone died this year but it is common thing, and is also a serious thing with the winner receiving luck for the rest of year as well as a cash prize (and possibly also white goods).

Anyway, for the most part I’ve spent the last month back home re-familiarising myself with the shocking public transport and commercial T.V. It’s something I’ve missed (English telly that is) but it didn’t take me long to realise that bar Margaret and David there is literally nothing on…ever. But I’m back in Japland now, so inevitably I miss it terribly.

Note: The allure of an object exponentially increases the further away it is from me. This is how I explain why the meal the next table over is always much more appetizing looking then my own. Despite having ordered the same thing.

Fortunately for me though home was wonderful and people/person were, if not more, wonderful than I remembered. Sigh, I do miss you all, very, very much. But hey now, the blossoms are out and it is difficult to be depressed in the spring. More news later. Much love.

When you come back, we’ll have to make new love

Lucky 17

I’ve been admiring the wonderful holiday snaps from C+L’s magical whirlwind tour of Vietnam with envy. Oooh the sunshine, aaaaah the smiles, what ho! have you ever seen so many pineapples! Gosh, what I wouldn’t give to travel round a beautiful, exotic country with nothing but the clothes on me back and the twinkle in me eye. But wait, you did, you jerk. You’re in Japan. Get a grip! Pull yourself together! You’re not so a sad a human being as to become bitter from facebook happy-snaps? To lash out irrationally at loved ones? To sit alone in your room and plot dastardly ends to your irritating but well-meaning neighbours? Guh…

I think the cold is messing with my ‘grip on rationality’ function.

Oh dear, I think this going to end up quite the gloomy post, this. Apologies in advance, I think it was the terrible dinner I made myself. I tried ever so hard. I hate ruining perfectly good ingredients…they were so fresh, so succulent, they could’ve made a perfectly good stew before I got my mitts on them. I wouldn’t have even fed it to my dog if I had one, I’m quite sure he’d prefer the taste of his own nonexistent anus than to my cooking. Dammit, I used a bay leaf and everything.

I think it’s about time for quarterly assessment. Come on now, you did cool stuff, you’re cool… let’s go through the list

1. Had Christmas in Kyoto spending time in jazzclubs, extravagant and delicious restaurants, and various temples and shrines
2. Ate succulent oysters the size of my fist and petted deer in Miyajima
3. Browsed through skin samples of A-bomb victims in Hiroshima
4. Saw Ki-chan in Nagoya in a bar filled with the lost souls of American tourists
5. Shopped in Harajuku through streets bustling with gothic lolitas
6. Went to host club
7. Explored the backstreets of Shibuya and the messed-up sex culture in Akhihabara
8. Woke up absurdly early to go to Tsukiji fish market to see the most messed up see creatures, ever
9. Had New Years in a giant club, amongst people I didn’t know, seeing a band I’d never heard of, drinking something I can’t remember
10. Spent hours in hot springs and karaoke joints
11. Stayed in the hotel from ‘The Shining’ in Nikko and was too scared to sleep lest the hotel warden his man servant hack us to pieces in the night
12. Harassed by a white-man-in-denial-has-awesome-case-of-Japan-envy ryokan manager in Nagano, but on the plus side trekked through beautiful national park covered in blankets of snow to see macaques bathing in hot springs
13. Went to see a geisha drag show starring a Japanese Tom Jones
14. Consumed my body weight in sushi and plum wine in Osaka. I am now composed of 1/3 marine animal.
15. Stayed in capsule hotels which were not completely dissimilar to the interior of red dwarf
16. Saw Don Cab. YES.
17. Played host to Nixon, Crumpet, Frin and Ruuku

And of course the wonderful Kieran.

… that is a list. A good list. Yes. I think so. I feel better already. Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Yeeeeeeaaaaaah. I think my jadedness has temporarily subsided, I shall take this time to indulge in some long overdue optimism. Good times ahead methinks. Fuji rock is on the cards, the S-bomb comes to play next week, birthdays (21), Cherry blossoms, naked man festivals, and of course… back in Canberra in March. See you then?

unravel

While you are away
my heart comes undone
it slowly unravels
like a ball of yarn…

Back

And she’s back!
Sorry about the lack of updates folks, pesky loved ones and beautiful Japanese countryside be getting in the way of me bloggin. My brief offline hiatus was for the most part spent travelling and for the other parts divided g between illness, lethargy, and complete and utter contempt for the world outside my room. A kind of cranky hibernation.

Okayama is one of those frustratingly mild cities; mild climate, mildly populated, if it were a pizza you’d say “There’s not enough salami and they left out the olives, but it was surprisingly cheap and big enough to feed us both. Overall, not completely an unwaste of money”. What I’m saying is that it’s the Canberra of Japan. And in winter this is all especially obvious when it becomes kindof mildly cold, and you succumb to a kindof mild depression. Not a real one with sorrow, and anguish, and Nirvana and stuff, but the kindof disdainful one where you spend most of my time squatting in your room thinking of elaborate ways to tell people to fuck off, wherever possible incorporating “and the horse you rode in on”.

I for the most part blame the post-war-bleak-exposed-concrete motif that the council has for the city. Everything is grey; all the buildings are grey, and the streets are grey, and the trees are stripped grey in the winter, and the sky is always grey. And as a result all the food begins to taste a bit grey, and the water is grey, and you yourself begin to look grey and you think “Jesus, what I wouldn’t do for a big red tomato.”

I don’t mind the cold so much as long as it is properly cold and properly winter. Blankets of white instead of these hideous expanses of grey! White is like a canvas that frames everything on it making beautiful things profoundly more beautiful. Compare: deer nibbling on moss…vs… deer nibbling on moss on snow capped mountain. Bloody beautiful…unlike grey, which voids everything of colour! of life! of vitality! It adds nothing and takes everything. It dulls, it tarnishes, it blands.

(It leaves the toilet seat up. It puts the lotion on its skin…)

But I digress… what I’m saying is…for those of you at home, sweltering in the summer heat, exhausted from nothing and sticking to your couch, spare a thought. At least you’re seeing more than grey.