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dick dworkin

Published Letters: 3324
Editor's Choice: 5

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 10:10 AM
Original article: The end of men

no but what is gendered is the fact that because mens basic emotions are in conflict with each other there is room for the idea that their strongest feelings don't completely and totally define the meaning of everything.

Specifically since men don't have babies and therefore have to prove themselves to women by making sacrifices that damage themselves by, at the very least (and often this really is the least of it) diverting resources to others that they get no benefit from the use of, the instinct to preserve and advance ones well being is in conflict with the instinct to reproduce. For women their is no conflict: their long term well being and long term successful reproduction, i.e the well being of their offspring are served by the same things. For this reason men are more open to rationality to mediate this tension and women are more inclined to treat a summation of all their emotional responses as the final word on everything.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 10:33 AM

if there are SUSTAINED high prices or a widespread persistent belief in their likelihood then people will be motivated to change the status quo regarding sources of fuel and this is something OPEC is desparate to prevent

so I think you can pretty much rely on them doing something to try and prevent this situation from occuring.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 11:10 AM

I agree that high European prices haven't lead to as much innovation as might be expected

but then they aren't and have never been as car dependent as the US. There is a lot of evidence that with a big investement there are different ways to power personal transportation.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 11:14 AM

the other thing is the US has a lot of it's own natural gas and the europeans don't

so the benefits of doing things differently might just be greater here.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 02:11 PM

jojoba is MUCH BETTER than ethanol

it is more productive and grows on marginal land

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 02:40 PM
Original article: Goldman Sachs' solar play

it's not environmentalists that are fighting solar it is the oil soaked bush administration using the environment as an excuse to delay it's development

to help their oil industry friends for as long as they can. This time though the outcry over their obvious scheme forced them to back down.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 04:32 PM

with algae you may be able to get 1000 times improvement

obviously this requires captial investment beyond what it takes to grow a crop (although not power plant style, we're talking mostly plastic tubing). Sapphire energy claims they could, or nearly could, produce economically at current prices with technology they have in hand, but it's tough to get huge investments, private or public, for a massive scale-up when there's no guarantee oil prices won't fall by half or more any time.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 06:08 PM

there will be big problems but the effects will be inversely proportional to the amount of money you have

and everyone will tell themselves they did what was reasonable under the circumstances.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 07:57 AM

if the truly economically functional by traitional middle class standards (that would be about the top 10 percent of the population)

are the only ones fit to reproduce and therefore will be expected to produce the entire population (since everyone else will be responsible and not have kids) it would appear that without a massive importation of third world populations we will be faced with devastating labor shortages.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 08:08 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

in other words women can have sex whenever they want with whoever they want and men have to pay and pay and pay

just like lots of us have been trying to explain all along.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 08:18 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

they can get them any time they pay for a massage

and men can't.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 08:35 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

an average woman can get her male massage therapist or any other average guy to get her off anytime she wants

and an average man has to work at it by going to a specific place, paying more and taking legal risks. Yes EXTREMELY ugly men and women and EXTREMELY attractive men and women are in the same position: either no one will touch them or everyone will, but for the 90% of people who are not in one of those two categories women can do what they want when they want and men can't. No amount of denial will change this.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 09:01 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

we're saying the same thing trudy but i'm not sure you know it

women can get all the happy endings they want from ANY male massage therapist, they just don't want them (or your friends don't or they don't tell you).

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 09:16 AM

how about nagged sex, is that forcing?

a lot of women don't like sex or at least don't care about it and just do it to keep the guy happy, when that is that case inevitably there will be many cases where they have to discuss how happy he should be. Or should the guy just dump her as soon as she stops demonstrating by frequent and intense initiation that she REALLY cares. A related question is how many years should he require this demonstration before he trusts her enough to marry her or have kids.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 09:22 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

so I guess we agree then: all the women who want happy endings can get them anywhere anytime

but most just aren't interested so for both of these reasons the subject is just less visible and less widely discussed.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 09:29 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

since your friends tell you everything you must know how many of your horny friends have asked for sex from the pizza delivery boy

obviously the answer is zero. I'm not saying women can't be frustrated. I'm saying the average women can always easily find an average guy to get her off and the average man isn't similarly guaranteed to find women. Why is it that whenever someone says women don't have a SPECIFIC problem so many women hear "women don't have ANY problems".

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 09:40 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

once more with emphasis because this seems to be strangely difficult to grasp:

there is a difference between:

1) ANY women being able to pick any man on earth and be guaranteed that he will fuck her (not true), and

2) any average women being able to easily and quickly find lots of average guys who will fuck her (true), and

3) any average guy being quickly and easily able to find lots of average women who will fuck him (not true).

Does this sort it out for you?

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 09:44 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

"where are these places" and "how soon can I get an appointment?"

have you read the original article, I'm sure you can figure out what to do.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:22 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

no he's have a more like 1 or 2 percent chance if that unless he went somewhere specifically offering those services

and either way if he got them he'd have to pay extra which the women wouldn't.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11:01 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

(Presumably the situation is reversed for a female urologist, but I don't know for sure.)

You presume absolutely wrongly, there is no such practice and in fact in most situations it constitutes illegal sex and employment discrimination to have such a system because the added restriction has the potential to adversely affect female career performance. In male prisons for example female guards cannot be excluded from any jobs or practices, unless it is done for their own physical protection, because it might adversely affect their pay and advancement. Needless to say male employees in female prisons don't have their career prospects protected in this way.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11:40 AM

confusion not possible except when fabricated by rape apologists

"If a husband breaks a woman's back while anally raping her and he STILL says it isn't rape - even though she said no over and over and over..."

"And yeah, that means letting your wife get some sleep when she begs 'not tonight."

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11:47 AM
Original article: So much for my happy ending

however it should be the law is clear now

and the law and practice is different for men and women. The prison example is pretty clear cut and dramatic but the same rules apply generally.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:17 PM

it's deliberately inflammatory to provoke discussion I think

seriously intended competent propaganda is much more insidious.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:24 PM

it dioesn't mean inequality between PEOPLE is declining it means inequality between coutnries is

in fact there is MORE inequality between people as part of every country becomes rich and part stays poor when before everyone was poor. Not say the change is bad but it doesn't address the issue of inequality.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:35 PM

I don't see much female interest in men who are raped in prison but the main reason men don't get involved in the "rape movement"

(apart from the fact that women, in reality, don't want them involved) is that rape has come to mean "anything women don't like".

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