A woman speaking up for men

This post is essentially meant for men - and those (very few-) women who have genuinely human rather than merely feminine sensibilities: as the writer of this obviously is. My heartfelt thanks to her, though she might never know.

I am in especial sympathy for what has been said in items 8 and 7. Regarding 5 and 4, I am deeply thankful that I have never personally suffered that way, but I know a lot of fathers who have, and I feel awful for them. As I have written before, 'feminists' should have the guts to openly acknowledge that lots of women are very bad parents, and some men very good ones.

Item 1 made me smile and grimace at the same time. In a supposedly 'advanced' and 'liberated' society too, it seems, lots of little girls are being brought up by mothers who tell them to stay away from the boys because 'all boys are icky, mean, and have cooties'. Nice to know.

I am glad that women like Kelly Barkhausen-Rojahn exist, even in this day and age.

Simple pleasures

People talk of the simple pleasures of life. Are there too many things that can beat the pleasure of a cool drink of coconut water or lassi or simply lemon, sugar and salt in cold water when you have come home half blinded by the sun and drenched in sweat? Or – like today – when the rains came down at last, just when it seemed that summer this time round had become too horrible to bear? Or – also like today – when you are told that some people are quoting lines from your book?

Today was a good day. I read in the newspaper that the electric tooth drill is soon going to become part of our barbaric history thanks to a new, minimally invasive form of tooth cavity treatment that is being developed in the UK right now, and is expected to be on the market within three years. I’ll say amen to that, and I am sure millions of sufferers will concur fervently.

A lot of fatsos around!

As this editorial in my newspaper observes, the number of fatties has been rising alarmingly and continuously: as of 2013, there are 2.1 billion overweight-to-obese people in the world. Which means there are far more people around now who are in danger of dying of eating too much than those who are at risk of death from starvation or malnutrition. Says something about the kind of 'progress' we have been making over the last century, doesn't it? God bless science and all its marvels. How much longer before the Wall-E kind of syndrome becomes an everyday reality? 

Likewise, in an age which fanatically worships youth and all its follies as never before in history, the proportion of elderly people is steadily getting bigger. If current trends continue, then by 2050 many countries will have far more people above 60 than below 20. And everything from government to economy to culture is all unprepared to handle such a never-before situation...