Allgemein

Kaczynski on the maths of human sexuality.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski apparently tries really hard to become respected by his peers. And since politics often is such a nonsensical game he probably figured that it will be best to do what he thinks politicians do when in Rome (incidentally that joke is not so funny these days) – make no sense.

Interestingly, today’s Welt am Sonntag has an interview hopefully ironically titled “I am realist (in German)” in which Mr Kaczynski repeates his understanding of the nature of human sexuality, which he already explained during a speech at Berlin’s Humboldt University, where he was interrupted by a group of gay rights activits protesting some limitations of gay rights in Poland.

Following the incident he stated, and he apparently doesn’t mind to repeat that in print, that gays are in some sense dangerous because they are promoting their lifestyle as an alternative for the majority (sic!).

“Imagine a world in which 50% of men were no longer interested in women, that would be a different world, and that would be dangerous from a biological point of view as well as from a cultural one” (my translation)

I believe he did not really think this argument through. Imagine the benefits – in such a situaion there would be roughly two women for each of the rest of us. Statistically only, true, but still. Thus, as there will not be too many heterosexual men arguing against having more choice among women, President Kaczynski’s overly transparent display of short-sightedness might very well raise some eyebrows in his staunchly conservative constituency…

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almost a diary, compulsory reading

Bin ich Deutschland? Am I Germany?

Well, not quite. But I ordered the domain “www.ichbindeutschland.de” as soon as I heard in early 2005 that there would be a huge social marketing campaign telling me that if I weren’t Germany yet I certainly should become Germany as quickly as possibly. I humbly complied with their demand, if only on the internet.

When the campaign began last September, I initially covered it in German on www.ichbindeutschland.de, but eventually I felt that I should use the domain for something more personal, and point it to my – so far English language only – personal blog and finally make almostadiary.de bilingual.

I had been thinking about writing in German, at least a little, since I started blogging a couple of years ago. Now, with a domain pointing to this site that is in some sense promising to the occasional reader to present the very personification of Germany, I feel I may finally have sufficient incentive to blog in German, at least every now and then.

It will be interesting to see how this works out – I certainly won’t solve the linguistic challenge by translating every post. So, welcome, gentle readers from Ichbindeutschland.de – herzlich willkommen auf almost a diary.de.

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US Politics

South Dakota

Will America ever be able to have a grown up discourse about abortion? It’s a serious and difficult issue involving a lot of complicated aspects, it is, just as the South Dakota representative interviewed by Time.com’s Nancy Gibbs states, a question of “balancing rights”. Quite right – but then again, why did he and his fellow lawmakers come up with a law that seems utterly inadequate to do just that, but very appropriate to make it to the newly staffed supreme court as quickly as possible…

I particularly like the part where the representative explains that an abortion is not an abortion as long as the women does not/cannot positively know she’s pregnant…

TIME.com Print Page: Nation — When Is an Abortion Not an Abortion?

I talked to Representative Roger Hunt, the main sponsor of HB 1215, about why the bill was written as it was. Why, for instance, did they reject the standard exception to protect the health of the mother? Because, he says, that phrase is far too stretchy. ‘If we were talking of pure, serious health concerns,’ that would be one thing, Hunt said. But ‘health’ can mean economic health, mental health. ‘It becomes an open barn door for anyone who wants an abortion. We might as well not have the legislation at all’.

But what about cases of rape and incest, where there is overwhelming public support for allowing abortion as an option? Here the lawmakers admit that they carved out a little gray area. Hunt notes that the bill forbids doctors from prescribing any drug or doing any procedure on a pregnant woman ‘with the specific intent’ of ending a pregnancy. It also protects the right of women to use ‘a contraceptive measure, drug or chemical, if it is administered prior to the time when a pregnancy could be determined through conventional medical testing…’

In other words, a woman presenting herself to an emergency room immediately after a rape, Hunt says, would be able to use emergency contraception; the trick is that she has to do within the first few days after the assault, before any test can determine whether she was pregnant in the first place. The lawmakers concluded that it’s OK for a rape victim to have an abortion, so long as she doesn’t know for certain that she’s doing it.

So why not have an exemption for all rape victims, including the ones who are too shattered to report an assault right away? Hunt calls it “a fine line that we’re walking, but some of this is just to show that we’re being fair and reasonable. In cases where we cannot determine if there’s an unborn child or not, we’re trying to be sympathetic to a woman who alleges she’s been raped.’ But the sympathy expires after about a week. ‘Very honestly,’ Hunt adds, ‘We don’t want to have a lot of abortion clinics questioning a woman and having the woman say ‘well, I was raped four months ago, I need an abortion.’ We’re trying to be sensitive to women who are legitimate rape victims—and not give abortion clinics a chance to commit fraud on system.’

‘It’s so hypocritical it just blows my mind,’ Planned Parenthood’s Looby counters. ‘They understand that this is a problem for the public, so they had to come up with a way to get around that and this is their attempt to do so.’ The majority of rape victims, she notes, are victims of date rape, and the majority of incest victims are quite young. ‘They don’t present themselves at a hospital or doctor’s office to ask for contraceptive measures to prevent pregnancy,’ she says. ‘So I think it’s very disingenuous of him to suggest this is an exception for rape and incest. It’s not.’

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Economics

13,9% arbitrage yield. Sealed in plastic.

The German discounter PLUS is taking the concept to the next level, selling a limited amount of 100€ Euro bills, albeit sealed in acrylic glass, for the bargain price of 92,95€ including shipping. They must be pretty sure it will be impossible to get the bill out of its plastic case… I’m not sure they know that any central bank branch will replace a broken Euro bill with a new one provied more than half of the original is handed over, and the bill’s number is intelligible. (via lawblog.de)

update:only 3 pieces are sold per person. The Bundesbank will not replace intentionally damaged bills, ie it’s not possible to hand them the entire block of plastic with the bill, it has to be damaged ‘unintentionally’ during the removal attempt.

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oddly enough, photoblogging

No more dark corners.

See, I love living in a liberal country. And, personally, I believe that prostitution between consenting adults is a transaction increasing welfare, possibly considerably, so there’s no reason for state interference whatsoever. And, thanks to the Schröder government and a realistic court verdict deciding that prostitution was not ‘sittenwidrig’ (against the ‘ordre public’) anymore, Germany now has one of the world’s most progressive, and, in the long run hopefully most useful, laws regulating the oldest trade of the world.

Still, I’m too sure what to think about the fact that brothels and other establishments in the horizontal business are now extensively using their rights to advertise their services in public. There’s a chance it’ll help the public to deal with this facet of their life. But for the moment I feel it’s a little strange (not least because the advertised brothel is situated at least 2 hours from where the cab stood…).

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