Eideard

Thailand’s community of “ladyboys” have complained…they were being marginalized in next week’s general election because their ID card pictures were too confusing for polling officials.

It is the latest in a series of gripes among members of the Trans-Female Association of Thailand which groups transgenders and transsexuals known collectively as “katoeys” or “ladyboys.”

“We have a big problem when we use our identity cards in banks, schools, hospitals and now when we vote,” said Yollada Suanyoc, president of the 2,500-strong organization.

“The picture may show a woman but it says ‘mister’ on the card. Or the picture may show a teenage boy and the person now looks like a woman.”

Everyone in Thailand has to carry a national ID card with them at all times from the age of 15. It is renewed every seven years.

Transgenders and transsexuals are accepted in Thailand more readily than in most other countries, with one new airline hiring only ladyboys as cabin crew. They are especially common in cosmetics shops and health stores and in bars in some of Bangkok’s racier entertainment districts.

“The government says if they change our title and sex, it’s going to make society confused,” she said. “The government worries that they won’t know about our past.”

As usual, it’s the stodgy bureaucrats in government who are confused at best, as likely to be stuck in the treacle of their own ignorance and misunderstanding.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Almost half of Mississippi Republicans say they believe interracial marriage should be outlawed, a poll indicates.

A survey conducted March 24-27 and released Friday by Public Policy Polling of Raleigh, N.C., showed 46 percent of Republicans in Mississippi said they believe interracial marriage should be illegal.

The survey indicated 40 percent said they felt mixed-race weddings should remain legal, while 14 percent said they were not sure.

The poll showed 76 percent of those who responded considered themselves somewhat or very conservative with 68 percent of the respondents age 46 or older.

Interracial marriage in Mississippi became legal in 1967 after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state’s laws.

Is there anything that would differentiate the essential outlook on life of a Mississippi Republican from, say, AlQaeda? Aside from the fact that the Republicans probably pray more often.

The detailed survey is over here [.pdf].

Ntlhoi Motsamai – Speaker of the National Assembly

Lesotho sits like pearl in a shell, surrounded by the land mass of South Africa. But this tiny kingdom of 1.8 million people boasts another jewel, which is perhaps astonishing given its size.

Lesotho is ranked eighth in the world by the World Economic Forum when it comes to bridging the gap between the sexes. The reasons are cultural, political and economic, but one explanation keeps being repeated when you probe the gender issue, and it relates to Lesotho’s recent past.

Historically, large numbers of men from Lesotho crossed the border to work in South Africa’s mines, forcing women to step into their shoes and take up school places and jobs. Many of the men have now come back, having been retrenched from the mines, and they face a more female-focused world.

Dr Mphu Ramatlapeng, Lesotho’s minister for health and social affairs, attributes this to the government’s pro-women policies. But more than that, she emphasises Lesotho’s culture of learning. “The defining factor is education. I think a lot of women have realised early on that they have to educate their daughters,” she says.

Primary education is free in Lesotho and literacy rates among women exceed those of men – with 95% of women able to read and write, compared with 83% of men. This is filtering into the jobs market – the chief of police is a woman, so too is the speaker of parliament and there are at least a dozen senior female judges presiding over the country’s courts…

Fifty per cent of Lesotho’s population live in the rural areas. Until recently, customary laws applied in the countryside dictated that women were virtually redundant when it came to making key decisions in the home…

The statistics that put Lesotho at the top table in the equality game may look impressive but they risk glossing over the challenges. There may be less of a gap in health, education and political participation than in many other countries, and clearly there is greater political will to recognise the important role of women in society.

The article walks away from the ideological quotient. Religion is a powerful factor in a society still stuck into peasant lifestyles, rural world view. A contradiction in terms if there ever was one.

The predominant religious force is Christianity. The missionaries who accompanied colonial exploitation did their job well. Fortunately, folks haven’t much of a tendency towards Lord’s Army nutballism. Still, acceptance of the status quo, Christian fatalism, distracts attempts to modernize further.

Consumers may place a high value on information to predict their future health, and may be willing to pay out of pocket to get it. In a national survey conducted by researchers at Tufts Medical Center, roughly 76% of people indicated that they would take a hypothetical predictive test to find out if they will later develop Alzheimer’s disease, breast or prostate cancer, or arthritis…

The study examined individuals’ willingness to take and pay for hypothetical predictive laboratory tests in which there would be no direct treatment consequences. Overall, researchers found that in most situations, people were willing to pay for this ‘value of knowing’—even if the tests were not perfectly accurate.

Responses to the survey varied according to information provided about the disease risk profile and the accuracy of the hypothetical test. Of the 1463 respondents, willingness to be tested was greatest for prostate cancer (87% of respondents), followed by breast cancer (81%), arthritis (79%), and Alzheimer’s disease (72%). Average willingness to pay varied from roughly $300 for an arthritis test to $600 for a prostate cancer test.

“This study brings us a step closer to understanding people’s preferences and motivations for wanting a diagnostic test, even if it has no bearing on subsequent medical treatment,” says lead author Peter J. Neumann…“While we have to proceed cautiously in this area, given that tests have costs and risks as well as benefits, our study suggests that many people value information—both for its own sake and because they will adjust lifestyle and behavior choices accordingly…”

In the Tufts Medical Center study, the researchers also found:

Gender, age, and education influence test participation. About 24% of individuals sampled elected not to take the predictive test. Generally, older respondents, women, those with a bachelor’s or higher degree, and those with healthier behaviors were less inclined to undergo testing, even if it were free. Among those not wanting the test, major concerns expressed included the cost of the test, living with the knowledge of one’s disease risk, and the lack of preventive measures.

One aspect of the results I found interesting was what happens when folks “got the bad news”?

Daily, we read about murder-suicides where it’s possible the healthy half of the relationship was killed before a suicide – as well as the other way round. I’ve been to funerals in the Navajo Nation where folks killed the favorite horse of someone who had died – and buried the horse alongside. And, yes, I’ve known folks who contemplated the possibility of a terminal illness and going about ridding this Earth of several lowlife creeps – on the way out!

Cripes! The headline is just about everything you need to know, right?

An Idaho judge on Wednesday set bond at $100,000 for a Boise woman police say posed as a physician and duped at least two other women into having their breasts examined by her at Boise-area nightclubs.

Kristina Ross, 37, remains in Ada County Jail in Boise on two felony counts of practicing medicine without a license…

As part of her ruse, Ross gave the women the telephone number of a real licensed plastic surgeon in Boise, the state capital, authorities said.

Staff at that medical office became alarmed at the number of calls they received from women in recent weeks attempting to confirm appointments or surgeries with a Berlyn Aussieahshowna, according to charging documents.

And, then, there’s this twist to the plot:

The suspect’s gender is unclear. Idaho court records show that Ross was arrested for petty theft in the spring and that the arrest warrant was issued to a Kristoffer Jon Ross.

The Idaho Statesman website reported that Ross has a previous criminal record as a man but identifies herself as a woman and was booked into Ada County Jail as a female…

Court appearance is set for December 1st and I can hardly wait.

Prosecutors say a 65-year-old British Columbia man ran dating Web sites targeting Americans that took in more than $1 million but never provided a dating match.

Investigators said Barrie Turner, of Delta, B.C., operated 200 Web sites, some in business since 2005, that scammed clients with fees as high as $997 for a six-month membership and the promise of two to seven introductions a month, The Seattle Times reported.

Turner was arrested Friday after crossing the border into the United States to pick up mail at a post-office box in Point Roberts, Wash..

He created fake profiles of “eligible” singles and sent them to customers of his sites as potential matches, court papers said. Customers who responded would get e-mailed responses from fictitious potential matches saying say they’re no longer available, prosecutors say.

“The investigation has not yet identified any customers who received the services advertised,” said Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The sites included Executive Jewish Dating, Executive Catholic Dating, Executive Gay Dating and Executive dating sites for U.S. cities and interests.

Ain’t nothing like feeling you’re special.

The scenes being examined in this office may seem like random shopping bloopers, but they are meaningful to stores that are striving to engineer a better experience for the consumer, and ultimately, higher sales for themselves. Such clips, retailers say, can help them find solutions to problems in their stores — by installing seating and activity areas to mollify children, for instance, or by lowering shelves so merchandise is within easy reach.

Privacy advocates, though, are troubled by the array of video cameras, motion detectors and other sensors monitoring the nation’s shopping aisles…

Companies that employ this technology say it is used strictly to determine characteristics like age and gender, which help them discover how different people respond to various products. But privacy advocates fear that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will eventually cross the line and be used to identify individual consumers and gather more detailed information on them…

Some degree of privacy, experts say, is necessary as a matter of decency.

“When someone’s watching me, I’m going to act differently than when I think I’m alone,” consumer advocate, Katherine Albrecht said. “Did I pick my nose? What was I doing? What did they see..?”

The companies that install and analyze video for retailers say that they are sensitive to privacy issues but that the concerns are overblown. They say they are not using the technology to identify consumers but to give them easier and more enjoyable shopping experiences. And, they added, they have the sales results to prove it…

But industry professionals said interest in analyzing shoppers was growing. Video analysis companies said nearly every major chain was or had been a client, including giants like Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy.

So, remove the words “shoppers” and insert “voters”, “office-workers”, “students” – does the question become more or less meaningful?

RTFA. A few examples which illustrate why you should be interested.

South African President Jacob Zuma was forced to defend his right to have three wives after he was put on the spot during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Polygamy is legal in South Africa but remains a subject of contentious national debate. Zuma has married five times in total but has faced criticism from opponents who say the practice is out of step with modern times and inherently unfair to women.

On the second day of the WEF, Zuma told Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria it is part of his culture. “People interpret cultures differently,” he said. “Some people think their culture is superior to others, that it is the only one accepted by God.

“That is a problem and one we need to deal with. We (South Africa) follow a policy that says we must respect the cultures of others…”

Too bad Americans don’t feel the same. Goodness knows, I’m the happiest man on Earth – having found the right woman to be with after decades of wandering – and marrying. That doesn’t mean I support all the religious folderol that somehow mandates gender, number and whatever else in defining what constitutes a family unit.

Zuma told Zakaria that his cultural choices do not influence his political beliefs or his views on female equality.

Asked if he treated his three wives equally, he replied: “absolutely,” much to the amusement of the packed conference hall.

Individual freedom of choice is another one of the subsets of Liberty proudly used by Westerners – especially Christians – to demand the rest of the world conform to their folkways and mores.

There are other religions as backwards on many questions. The operative word being religions.