Freedom of movement

I can hardly believe this. After their trouncing in the March 8th election you would think Barisan politicians would try harder to not be total megalomaniacs. Apparently they don't think so:

Ministry wants women going abroad alone to get family consent

KUALA KLAWANG: Local women intending to travel abroad alone may need family consent in a bid to prevent them from being used as “drug mules” by international syndicates.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said a proposal to this effect would be made soon to the Cabinet, following several incidents where women were used to smuggle drugs overseas.

Out of 119 cases of Malaysian women hauled up before foreign courts, 90% were linked to drugs, he said.

“Last night, my ministry, together with the Home Ministry, have jointly forwarded a report to the Cabinet on the matter.

“Both ministries agreed that factors like family, religion, immigration laws and preventive measures need to be considered before a Malaysian woman goes abroad alone,” Rais told reporters after officiating at the Malaysian Silambam Association's Jelebu branch here yesterday.

On the proposed requirement for family consent, he said it would enable the woman's family to monitor her departure and serve as a preventive measure against her being duped by international drug syndicates. – Bernama

And here's the BBC story about it, making our government sound like clowns as usual, not that that's difficult.

Fuck you, Rais Yatim, until you bleed to death from your stinking asshole. People like you would have us become Saudi Arabia where women are virtual slaves, apparently.

My original goal for this blog was to write mostly about science and science fiction and a bit about my personal life, ignoring politics entirely, but it's slipped this year. So many things to be excited about, so many things outrage.

Warrior queens

Catherine Asaro is my new favourite writer. Her Skolian Imperialate series deals with a future where three human civilizations exist: the Allieds (Earth), the Skolians, and the Eubians/Traders. This is a rough outline of her history:

• About six millenia ago, unknown aliens transplant a bunch of humans from South America to another planet.
• The humans form the Ruby Empire, which has space travel and highly psi-based technology. The Ruby Empire is ruled by warrior queens who keep their men in seclusion.
• Ruby Empire collapses.
• A few hundred years ago, humans redevelop spaceflight.
• Genetic engineering accidentally creates the Aristos, a race of anti-empaths who derive pleasure from torturing psions. The Aristos rule the Eubian Concord.
• An Aristo project later creates the Rhon, extremely powerful psions who escape and establish the Skolian Imperialate, rediscovering and using ancient Ruby technology. The Imperialate is a semi-democracy with a parlimentarian system but the Ruby Pharoah (female, as in the ancient empire) and other nobles holding considerable power.
• About a century and a half from now, the Allieds develop spaceflight and meet the two other human empires.

I rather like Asaro's approach to gender relations - feminist without being the sort of dreamy New Age or the Valerie-Solanas-man-hating-radical types. Here's a sample from the preview of her latest, The Ruby Dice:

Across the amphitheater, the Majda queens were sitting at their consoles, tall and aristocratic. Only their women held Assembly seats; even in this modern age, they followed ancient customs that forbade their men to inherit power.

When Earth's people had finally discovered the Imperialate, they had scandalized the noble matriarchs of Skolia. Apparently on Earth, men historically held more power than women. The matriarchs claimed this was why it had taken Earth's people so long to reach the stars. They asserted that if women had been in charge, Earth would have achieved that pinnacle of technology thousands of years earlier. Their arguments conveniently ignored the fact that their ancestors had developed star travel because they had starships to study.

Earth's annoyed males responded by pointing out that Earth had achieved a far greater degree of peace than the Imperialate, which surely had to do with the fact that bellicose, aggressive women had been in charge of the Imperialate rather than peaceful men. Naaj Majda hadn't understood why Kelric found this so funny. She even acknowledged the Earth men had a point. Kelric told her to go read Earth's military history.

Asaro herself has had a really interesting career - she went to college to become a ballet dancer but ended up becoming a physicist - and a terrific SF novelist. Her writing is truly unusual in that the stories have both deeply emotional character development as well as "hard SF" math and physics.

Body jewellery selection versus gauge

One of my favourite sites for window shopping is Bodyartforms. I'm increasingly fascinated by the idea of poking holes in myself in weird places, but I dislike the stereotypical hardware store aesthetic of stainless steel jewellery. You know, like when you see someone with twenty identical rings dangling from the helix of their ear and barbells with ends that look like ball-bearings poking out of everything else. BAF has a huge selection of amazingly pretty things that don't look like that, like titanium anodized in a rainbow of colours, semi-precious stones, glass, silicone, and organic materials like wood, bone, horn, and amber.

I got my earlobes pierced the regular way for my 14th birthday after much begging. My mum and pa were originally going to let me get them pierced for the 10th, but around that time HIV/AIDS started becoming a big concern in Malaysia. Last year I stretched them up to 14ga just for the heck of it (in the USA, body jewellery is measured in American Wire Gauge/Brown & Sharpe while outside it's measured in millimeters) using some cute spiral-shaped tapers similar to this one.

(I pierced the inner conch of my left ear with a 14ga needle but put in 16ga jewellery to heal with. Swapping it out for a 14ga stud later wasn't a problem, presumably because cartilage doesn't grow back much. It's just going to stay at that size though, since I don't want to try stretching cartilage...)

In order to determine the smallest gauge my earlobes should be at to access the maximum selection of jewellery, I made this graph of Bodyartforms' stock: As you can see, the curve flattens out at 8 ga, except for the little blip at 4. 8 is also the smallest you need to be to really wear plugs or eyelets. If my ears get that big I'm going to purchase a pair of transparent silicone eyelets in order to be able to still wear "normal" earrings also.

iii will Always love youuu

I like the Always feminine wipes (basically the same thing as the wet wipes that people use for babies' nappy changes) when I'm on the rag, and even more so now that I've noticed the Always logo contains a Moebius strip in the shape of a lemniscate (infinity = always, get it?)

Unfortunately since the target market for this product is biologically female, I think only a tiny fraction of consumers will be dorky enough to think that this is cool. (I've just edited the Wikipedia entry on Möbius strip to bring this subtle visual pun to public attention, haha.)

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My period has been freakishly regular for the last 4 cycles - exactly 31 days apart.

[Peeks between legs] I don't remember installing an atomic clock in there...

Uterokinesis

For the post title see this strip from the New Adventures of Bobbin!

I think I need to be less of a smartass:

Monday --
Chiu: I'm having menstrual pain today.
Angela: Oh...
Chiu: It's just the first day.
me: You know, if we work in the same lab long enough, we're all going to be going at the same time.

Today, I ran into Chiu in the toilet. Since the two cubicles in the women's toilet have a common pad bin under the barrier between them...

Chiu: Synchronized! I just remembered the word yesterday.
me: Yeah. [groan roll eyes]

For the record, trying to learn a new lab technique when you're crampy sucks.