Are Men Endagered?

"Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo daVinci

"For a long time, evolutionary psychologists have claimed that we are all imprinted with adaptive imperatives from a distant past: men are faster and stronger and hardwired to fight for scarce resources, a trait that shows up in contemporary life as a drive to either murder or win on Wall Street. Women are more nurturing and compliant, suiting them perfectly to raise children and create harmony among neighbours. This kind of thinking frames our sense of the natural order.

But now it seems as if those fixed roles are more fungible than we ever imagined. A more female-dominated society does not necessarily translate into a soft feminine utopia. Women are becoming more aggressive and even violent in ways we once thought were exclusively reserved for men. This drive shows up in a new breed of female murderers and also in a rising class of young female "killers" on Wall Street. Whether the shift can be attributed to women now being socialised differently or whether it's simply an artefact of our having misunderstood how women are "hardwired" in the first place is at this point unanswerable and makes no difference. Difficult as it is to conceive, the very rigid story we believed about ourselves is obviously no longer true. There is no "natural" order, only the way things are."

The quote above is an excerpt from an extract of an intersting book by Hanna Rosin in todays Observer/guardian.co.uk. Read more here "Hanna Rosin: are men an endagerd species?" (url)

Dad Again

Very early Friday morning my mother called me on the phone to tell me that my father wanted me to accompany him to the hospital. He had had a small sore - of unknown origin - on his calf that despite treatment from a registered nurse and antibiotics hade become very infected. He had not eaten or slept much for two days due to the pains.

I got there in 30 minutes and saw that he was not in a good state. The small wound had grown and the whole calf was red, swollen and extremely tender to the touch. He could not walk by himself and was too heavy for me to handle alone, so we called the home health care services and they arranged for an ambulance transport.

The ambulance arrived within twenty minutes and we were soon at the hospital.They immediately took a battery of bloodtests and after seeing the doctor he got morphine to kill the pains and an antibiotic drip directly into his blood stream. He was admitted to the Infection Clinic.

Later that day I learned that his blood sedimentation rate (SR) when he was admitted to hospital was sky high at 241, where it in men over 50 should be under 20 mm/hr.

On Saturday evening he was already feeling better after a few hours sleep, he was more alert and had even eaten half a meal. His SR had sunk to under 200 so he was responding well to the treatment and was in less pain. The doctors were considering draining the sterpto cocci inflammation but had not yet done so.

Although the doctors now tell us that everything should go well, I am still concerned about the how and why the small wounds arose and how it could get so bad so fast even with the ddaily care from the nurse and the antibiotics.

At this point in my life I am extremely grateful that we have excellent and afforable healtcare in Sweden and are not subjected the same worries so many others face in similar situations. That is something I gladly and willingly pay higher taxes to achieve.

Sleep Cycle

My sleep last night. The app tells me that my "sleep quality"
was 73 % even if it to me looks like I was awake a few times.

I have installed the app called "Sleep Cycle" (url) on my mobile phone a while back. It is actually the best alarm clock I have ever had in my life.

You put the mobile under the sheet at the head-end of your bed and it analyzes your sleep cycle pattern while you sleep. Of course you have all kinds of options in setting it, but I have set it to wake me up in a 30 minutes time-frame when it best fits into my sleep cycle. 

The thing that has always made me totally sick of other alarm clocks, the repetitive buzzes or other monotonous and noisy sounds, which have always freaked me out and made me very angry or irritated first thing in the morning have now been replaced by a lovely, kind and unobtrusive tune that is called "Warm breeze". After a while it adds a friendly vibration.

I highly recommend downloading it, I have never been happier to wake up than I have been since I started using it.

P.S. And of course (sic!) you can set the app to send messages about your sleep to post on Facebook.

Very Strange

Son of Man (1964) by René Magritte

When I was inworld today something strange occurred.

I was first talking with my son Guyke, who had returned today from a tour of "the gay saunas in Finland", i.e. the home of my son in-law Janttu Winkler. Suddenly the little brat stopped answering me - or so I thought. He could of course be away from hiis keyboard or deep in a serious discussion with his hubby, so I waited a long while, thinking he would come back.

When he did not come back, I tried striking up a conversation with Mrs. Vampi Twine-DeSantis-McMillan instead, who is my chief technical officer in SecondLife. Imagine my surprise when she also i-g-n-o-r-e-d me!

I thought (with a shitload of self-pity), "Well, it may just be a bad day. Everyone seems to be too busy to talk to you so you might just as well log off!"

As it turns out, they did not ignore me because when I checked my mail after logging off I saw their responses there. It was just SecondLife acting up in an unexpected way, that I hav never encountered before.

So you two who are named in this post, I still love you but didn't get your answers inworld! I hope everything works better tomorrow!

Want A Date With George Clooney?

Read about how you can makes your dreams come true and get a lunch date with megastar and sexy-as-hell George Clooney at alfred lives here: "Win A Date With George Clooney!

Do not forget that you must take the blogger Brahm along with you on the date, to thank him for tipping you about this possibility.

The Remembering Our Friends Memorial

I didn't know that a place like the Remembering Our Friends Memorial (ROF) existed in SecondLife until a few days after Doug/Ars had died when his brothers Dej and Jeb told me that a few of Ars´s friends had placed a plaque for him there.

Later the same week I was contacted by Kilara Banning, whom I had met at a function a few weeks earlier, who asked if she could place a memorial for Ars at Linden Park (SLurl thanks to Ziggy for reminding me) another memorial site in SecondLife. Linden Park is made available by Linden Lab.

Since the inception of Remembering Our Friends Memorial by Carlo Dufaux, Tina Barrett and Mike Burleigh , they have provided space in their Chapel and Annex Wings for plaques for loved ones that were SecondLife residents as well as those who never were residents.

Personalized memorial plaques are created with no cost obligation to the requester. Freestanding custom built monuments are also available at a small fee.

Remembering Our Friends Memorial is funded through donations and sponsorship. They do not profit from this revenue and any excess funding, after expenses, is used for expansion, upkeep and the causes they support.

All plaques and monuments feature an oil lamp, that can be lighted in memory of your loved one for a nominal fee. There are of course also a few donation boxes around the venue, but if I have the time I prefer the lighting candles method. You can light the candles of anyone you choose, I have made it my task to keep the candles in the section where Ars´s plaque is lit.

For more information you can visit Remembering Our Friends Memorial´s website (url).

The landmark to the sim Remembering Our Friends Memorial (SLurl) and to Ars´s memorial plaque (SLurl) (Their is a fixed landing spot, so the best way to find Ars plaque is to first look up the location on a map then red arrows will guide you once you land there.)

P.S. Yes, I detest the white angelic figures all over the place, but I try to ignore them for the good cause, mostly I succeed.)

Reconnecting With Family

Well, believe it or not, this huge, hot, scary, rough and sexy-as-hell looking man is actually my long lost brother in SecondLife.

Ladies and germs, it is with great pleasure I introduce you to  the one and only Martial Eisenhart.

Besides being one of the kindest souls I have met in both lives he is also crazy, intelligent, fierce and loving.

If you had poked me when I saw his name highlighted on my friends-list I would have lost my balance completely and ended up on the floor.

After only a few seconds hesitation I sent him an Instant Message telling him how happy I was to see him inworld again. As is Martial´s habit since he first came to SecondLife he was  AFK and did not respond right away.

A few minutes later I heard from him and we talked for almost an hour, trying to do the impossible of catching up instantly. We were not successful but there will be more chances in the future.

This encounter with my brother made my day and I was very happy when I logged off.