From Western Bloke (formerly Bloke on M4):
I saw Billy Ocean live. I wouldn’t describe myself as a big fan, but the gig was at the park near me and not very expensive, so I went and he was great.
OK. So which year was that? For we’ve also a recently arrived commentator around here, Norman. Who played in Billy Ocean’s touring band. So, did one commentator see the other live?
Someone attacked millions of sites yesterday. Not specific to us here.
March 7 posts are in a queue to be restored somewhere, somewhen….
From a commentator called Dunno:
Sex determination in humans is complicated. Most of our 20,000 genes have switches on them that allow them to work in ‘male’ and ‘female’ modes, in response to chemical signals. The idea is that a Y chromosome triggers the development of testes, which release hydroxytestosterone in the womb, which triggers the release of more sex hormones, signalling proteins, structural changes, which changes what signals those organs produce, and so on in a tree-like cascade throughout the body. Each bit of the body plan is switched to one design or the other, from bone growth to hair follicles to genital structure to brown fat deposits to brain structure. For example, which sex you are attracted to is obviously a sex-linked function of the brain that is hardwired in. And there are plenty of others. Personality traits. Talents. Introversion/extroversion. Risk-taking. Nurturing. Promiscuity. The ability to read a map. The ability to ask for directions. As our bodies are different, so are our brains. The brain is just another organ, after all.
But nature is messy and imperfect. So a lot of those ‘switches’ are broken. They’re jammed ‘on’, or jammed ‘off’, or missing entirely, or mutated to do something different and not have the intended effect. A lot of the time this doesn’t matter. So the sex-linking of gene activity and anatomical structure is statistical. Some features appear in 99.99% of one sex and 0.01% of the other. Some features appear in 99%, or 90%, or 70%, or some similar number. They’re clearly sex-linked, but there are an awful lot of people with the ‘wrong’ version. Like – men are taller than women, but there are short men and tall women and the distributions overlap. And even for the 99% sex-linked genes, about 1% of them occur in the ‘wrong’ version. With 10,000 genes, it’s pretty much certain that everyone has a mixture, and some small fraction of the population are more of a mixture than most.
So, the theory is that homosexuality, for example, isn’t a mental illness/delusion, but a case of the ‘wrong’ sexual attraction module in the brain being installed. Males get the female version, or vice versa. It’s not a matter of opinion or belief – you’re hardwired to be attracted to a particular sex, you don’t have a choice, you can’t be persuaded otherwise, and it’s biologically normal for this sort of thing to happen. To evolution, a 99% success rate is good enough. Perfection is expensive, so it’s better to make them cheap and throw the rejects away than implement an extremely expensive manufacturing process with fewer rejects.
It’s biologically entirely possible for the effect to be asymmetric. You can get a characteristic appear in 99% of males and 5% of females, for example.
It’s also possible that the difference is social. There’s a lot of social pressure to conform, and that pressure may be stronger on one sex than the other. It used to be that women with short hair wearing trousers and going to work were seen to be as aberrant as men with long hair in dresses and doing housework. Women had a revolution, and men didn’t. It could be that girls feel more able to express a male-like social persona in public than boys do vice versa because of that.
And of course it’s also possible for people to pretend to have medical conditions they don’t, because it’s fashionable, or it gets them sympathy and support, or it’s more socially privileged, or to claim welfare and other advantages. I’ve noticed it’s currently fashionable to claim to be on the autism ‘spectrum’. That doesn’t mean autism isn’t a thing, biologically speaking. But a lot of people are clearly not, and are just making excuses for personal advantage.
So it should be entirely legitimate to question whether any particular person or group of people have a particular medical condition, without necessarily denying that the condition exists.
The basic problem is intolerance. People used to be intolerant of homosexuality. Then we were persuaded that it was biologically natural and shouldn’t be persecuted. So we switched to being intolerant of ‘homophobes’ and persecuting them instead. The particular issue we’re being intolerant about is irrelevant – race, sex, gender, religion, nationality, football team, geekiness, whatever – some people just feel the need to define what other people are allowed to be and do and believe and enforce their opinions by unlimited nastiness. Fashions in what is enforced change, but human nature remains the same. ‘Wokeness’ and ‘political incorrectness’ are just the same tribal intolerances they’re supposedly trying to eliminate, rebranded. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.
It’s the general, abstract “tyranny of the majority” that you have to fight. We don’t care about the reason. We need to learn to let other people get on with their own lives, without feeling the need to interfere, or tell them what they are required to or not allowed to believe or do. If women want to go around in trousers – it does no harm to anyone else. If people want to express their opinion that women should not be bifurcated in public – it does no harm to anyone else. So what if other people don’t agree or don’t like it? It’s a free country.
Remarkably sensible. So, everyone should see it, not just those following that comment stream.
PS Fully recovered and the last blood test had a PSA of 0.
BiND.
Delays the readership of this blog falling…..
Cost to me £128 a year to make it so. So, play nicely folks. There’s no advertising that pays for that (latest Google numbers were 50 pence for 10 days).
There were 56 spam comments killed off in 10 minutes this after noon. Dealing with that by hand is what has made comments stutter this past week.
The comments system – sorry, the spam system about comments – has been upgraded so, obviously, that has meant a decline in performance. Apparently now I’ve got to retain it as to what is spam and what isn’t. So, we’re on a Spud level of moderation for a bit until the auto system settles down again.
Well, OK, it won’t be a Spud level as view and language won’t define what is spam but you know what I mean at least….
Far right white supremacism; libertarianism for white men, forced birth for white women. Eugenics for everyone else.
Seriously?
“I thought everyone played the game Out-of-Date-License-Plate when they were in the car. Turns out it was just the kids of a highway patrolman.”
“On more than one occasion, he would take a road trip, get within 200 kilometers (~124 miles) of his destination. (Max tow limit of his CAA plan). He’d pull his fuel pump relay, then call a tow truck to take him the rest of the way and save gas.”
Nowt to do with me, this is the engine room doing its stuff. Not settled down as yet I think…..
Following are some topics that I believe could be a perfect fit for your blog:
Top Benefits of CBD for your Sexual Life
Great dieting hacks you need to know in 2022.
All-Year-Round Benefits of CBD you should know!
Those are all subjects the readership here will be overly excited by, yes?
The code monkey was playing, has now had his bananas confiscated and we’re back.
Joy, eh?
O/T A bleg. I have a Brasiliera been mugged in Milan. Lost her docs, cards & money. Doesn’t know anyone there, speak Italian or understand the place. (WTF she wanted to go to Milan in the first place? Shithole of a city.) Currently I have her roosted in a hotel in the burbs & I’m feeding her via plastic. Need someone there I can transfer money to for her. Some working money to get her mobile to do the consulates (Brasil for a passport, Spain for a visa, replacement NIE). I don’t fancy having to retrieve her, deported, from Brasil.
Any ideas? Nearest person I’ve got’s a Cubana in Naples.
From Bloke In Spain of these parts.
A pair of professional race grifters and outright liars whom no one in their right mind would take any notice of.
So, I repeat, fuck off.
Here.
Bandwidth sucking nonsense with floaty graphics, obviously, wouldn’t be the place we know and love without that…..
I seem to recall that at least one reader here is from Pittsburgh? Possibly, maybe, might still be in Pittsburgh?
Another reader and contact of this blog has recently landed a job at U of P in P and given the common interest of reading here perhaps could be taken out for a beer and a “don’t eat the hoagies here, this is the right place” sorta thing?
Or, maybe there isn’t a resident, just an escapee from, reading here. Let me know please.