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The internet has had some influence but isn't the full story. At some point the gay community lost its confidence and romanticism. These days so many of my friends have two Gaydar accounts: one for looking for a relationship, the other for when they're horny. Tuesday night they sit in with a bottle of poppers and wank off with some twink. On Wednesday, they go around to their boyfriend's to cook linguine and pesto. Our aims have changed. Maybe hypocrisy is an inevitable sign of maturity. The gay community grew up and became respectable. Or appeared to. What changed? The 1980s HIV/AIDS crisis gave rise to massive homophobia, a moral crisis and Clause 28, the law that banned the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. The gay community was on the back foot. In response, the new gay movement placed an emphasis on easy issues of identity, such as equalising the age of consent, and we became willing subscribers. Radicalism, perhaps naive, eventually withered. Whereas once we gave a two-finger salute to straight society, now we wanted to be just like them. Being accepted meant compromising and becoming compromised. The victim was the cottage.

Under The Microscope: Feminism, Scientists and Sexiness

When Carl Wittman, the American writer and activist, wrote A Gay Manifesto in 1970, it galvanized the gay liberation movement. The document was a ballsy critique of homophobia in North America, but also an unrepentant plea for courage and change within the community itself, proclaiming, "A large part of our oppression would end if we would stop putting ourselves and our pride down." Forty years after the Manifesto and the infamous Stonewall Riots in New York City, a new generation of twentysomething urban gays-my generation-has the freedom to live exactly the way we want. We have our university degrees, homes and careers. In Toronto, we've abandoned the Church Wellesley Village. We're tattooed and pierced and at the helm of billion-dollar industries like fashion and television. We vacation with our boyfriends in fabulously rustic country homes that belong to our parents, who don't mind us coming to stay as a couple. Hell, we even marry our boyfriends, if we choose to, on rooftops overlooking Queen West. Our sexual orientation is merely secondary to our place in society. We don't need to categorize or define ourselves as gay, and who we sleep with-mostly men and, hey, sometimes women-isn't even much of a topic of conversation anymore. The efforts of Wittman and his peers produced a whole new type of gay. Say hello to the post-modern homo. The post-mo, if you will.

So we got it. Women are not merely sexual objects of desire. But what happened to men in the process of their feminist education? Poet Robert Bly, in Iron John, was very critical of typical "New Age Sensitive Males" who had essentially cut off their own genitals in the effort to distance themselves from the macho idiots that incur the wrath of women, and to become the thoughtful feeling blokes women claimed they wanted them to be. There was a rude awakening for many of us though, when we discovered that yes, women wanted us to be sensitive and respectful friends and fellow workers, but more often than not, they still often preferred the "bad boys" in the bedroom. We were duped, and gypped.

'For decades, The Playboy Mansion has been a playground For Men where Playmates have entertained millions of guests with their bunny costumes, a genius concept perfectly executed by a once young and vivacious idealist. However, that once young man, along with his rabbit tricks, are now old, decrepit and stale. It is time for a new mansion, a new playground where women set the standard. The Hans F Hansen Mansion will be a place of Elegance and Mystery, where guests will reach a level of thorough entertainment not only through it's intoxicating atmosphere, but also by the exotically beautiful, multitalented, and worldly Hans F Hansen Dames. Isn't it time for change? We say YES.. It Is.' The Hans F Hansen Mansion aims to provide an environment where women can be empowered, sexy and adored by… er…gentlemen. You know, like Spearmint Rhino, that famous 'gentleman's club' that the feminists love so much.

Wife/girlfriend somehow assumes that husband/boyfriend does not watch porn (guess that's what she means by "he's one in a million"). One day, his porn watching comes to her attention (he leaves something on the screen, she searches his website history, he gets an email or bill from some friendly porn site, etc.). She freaks. She decides what his porn watching "means": * He doesn't care for her * He's been faking sexual desire or enjoyment * He'd rather be with other women (or men, or kangaroos, or whatever he's been watching) * He's a pervert * He's unfaithful Needless to say, these interpretations make his porn watching her business. And frequently, she decides she has the moral high ground from which to dictate what his problem is, the fact that he must get it fixed, and what the treatment needs to be. With slight variations, a new version of this case walks into my office almost every week.

Before Mr. Strauss-Kahn's release from house arrest, two well-placed law enforcement officials in New York said that the case against him was on the verge of collapse because of major questions about the credibility of his accuser, a hotel housekeeper who said he had sexually assaulted her in a suite at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan in mid-May.

Christine Lagarde, on the other hand, is very much the Beyoncé of international finance. She is problematic for these reasons: first, she is not above touting about all the ancient stereotypes of femininity, which egregious tropes are what keep women out of high office in the first place. She talks about her "feminine and understated" negotiating style, and how helpful it is, though frankly, her immediate stance on Greece - belt up and get on with it - won't strike protesting Greeks as at all understated, I shouldn't think.

"To talk about rape in terms of a savage cultural psyche locked to the past is to miss the dense wood for the most exotic trees if that discussion does not examine how the same government appealed to now by Udwin is backed by Hindu right-wing political groups which wielded mass rape as a weapon against Muslim women in Gujarat in 2002 where Modi was chief minister. (One Hindu supremacist recently called for even dead Muslim women to be raped). To not note the ways in which rape has been systematically used to keep Dalit women and communities "in their place" by upper-castes threatened by change is to fail rape victims. To not think about how class rage can be lethally displaced on to the bodies of women in a context where economic disenfranchisement crackles like lightning through the body politic of India is to fail rape victims. To reduce rape to a matter of a generic Indian male mindset is to fail rape victims. It is, at best, embarrassingly facile. At worst, it is to collude in the silences about gender exploitation and sexual violence as very modern problems inseparable from every other form of global exploitation that blights our supposedly emancipated times."

It is brutally unfair as well as sexist towards men, that a mother can decide she does not want a child, and abort the child or place it after being born at a fire station, deserting the child with no consequences. She will never be required to pay child support. A man does not have that option. He cannot even stop the child from being aborted. It takes two people to have sex. Both should be treated equally under the law, instead of forcing men to act as a welfare system for women.

The authors also wanted to look at issues of morality by examining children's punitive nature when confronted with mean actions. The authors clearly interpret more mercy for the guilty as a higher level of morality. But that is an ethical, and not a scientific, question. Is it really more moral to avoid punishment no matter what the circumstances? Indeed, there is a balance between punishment and mercy that all of us must consider. Some tend to err on the side of punishment and some on the side of mercy, but almost all of us will punish and almost all of us will have mercy under the right conditions. Is it moral to punish a mass murderer with a $100 fine? Most of us would consider that an injustice. Is it moral to punish a traffic ticket with a ten-year jail sentence? Most of us would consider that unmerciful. We all draw that line between mercy and justice somewhere. It seems that the authors have determined that the proper place to draw the line is closer to the mercy side. They judge the kids closest to where they will draw the line as more moral. Since at least the lead author has identified himself as secular, it is not surprising that secular children are closer to that line than religious children.

The world lit up for Paris today. The world marched for Paris when the Charlie Hebdo shootings happened. Yet the world struggled for decades to publicly & hearteningly give that same level of acknowledgement of suffering to the people of Palestine who have lost & continue to lose every day. The people of Iraq. Afghanistan. The Rohingya in Myannmar. Will the world march for all these places & the victims in them? Will the world march for the 250,000 dead in Syria? Will the world march for Beirut? Will the world march for the blood & bodies holding non-Eurocentric pain? Because Muslims know more than anyone what it's like to lose people through senseless violence. Through the machinery of militaristic capitalism, war & global apathy. A machinery of empire that decides the hierarchy, the value of lives, that decides who gets to be mourned & who doesn't. We stand in solidarity with you & your pain. We want it to stop. But it won't unless the world can snap awake & recognize our common humanity. The biggest lie the world order sells us is the notion that we stand opposed. We must refuse to believe the systems that have worked tirelessly to drain us of our humanity, for it is precisely this that has allowed the dichotimization of the victims of terror and it is precisely this that has allowed acts of terror like this to continue to happen.

In describing the work that had gone into the book, Hong noted that the final product might not provide the easiest read, with plenty of documentation and footnotes provided. Wryly noting that Poh's account would undoubtedly be placed under scrutiny by the establishment and combed over for any inconsistency or opening for rebuttal, she commented that the ability to write without having to provide heavy documentation is a "privilege of those in power". Both Hong and Poh welcomed the scrutiny and expected debate, but expressed hopes that the discussion would be in the furtherance of knowledge and understanding, rather than attempts to re-assert the dominance of the 'Singapore Story'.

For all our gleaming skyscrapers and steel faux trees, we really are just a showpiece city for the rich and powerful. Perhaps the Gardens by the Bay presents a poignant vision of what Singapore will be like in the future: an artificial exhibit constructed by underpaid foreign labour, open to all Singaporeans, but enjoyed only by those wealthy enough to afford the ticketed attractions. A place where the gentle curves of nature are replaced by the sharp edges of trimmed hedges and overpriced gift shops. A garden where stray branches and unsightly weeds do not belong. That is not something I wish to see Singapore become.

"genes matter more when you equalize environmental influences in the United States, but not in many other countries.  By the way, this also holds if you control for race and the greater racial diversity of the United States.  One possibility is that there are greater environmental differences to be equalized in America in the first place, compared to say the Netherlands, one country where the gradient is quite different.  In any case an interesting piece."

In the Olympics, a country's size and wealth predict its medal haul fairly well. In soccer, however, tiny, poor countries like Bosnia often field excellent teams. The system in which young players develop, and the way it influences their play like the Brazilians' hallway soccer, helps explain why. Current U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann has cited the lack of soccer culture in the United States as an obstacle, saying that "One thing is certain: The American kids need hundreds and even thousands more hours to play." FiveThirtyEight recently reviewed the work of Stefan Szymanski, author of Soccernomics, which found that the best predictor of a country's success in the World Cup is the number of games the national team had played. According to Szymanski, this means the U.S. men's national team not only has less experience, but it has missed out on adapting strategy from the rest of the world by playing significantly fewer games -- the U.S. is still catching up from missing the World Cup from 1950 to 1990. After all, the thesis of the 10,000 hour rule, as debated by psychologists, is not merely that masters need lots of practice, but that the type of practice matters. Klinsmann, the U.S. head coach, has placed increased emphasis on recruiting Americans who play in European leagues and face "the best competition in the world on a daily basis instead of only a few games every few years", as is the case for MLS players on the World Cup team.

"In some cases, people's desires may actually clash with the goal of improving productivity. Social media, for example, has often been derided as a feeble or even negative contributor to productivity. But productivity is not the point of social media. What people value about it is the connectivity, interaction, communication, and diversion that it enables. In fact, for many individuals, particularly in wealthier countries, the top priority is not simply becoming richer, but rather living a richer life, and it is toward the latter goal that they will channel their time, income, and creativity. As societies become richer, the relative value placed on different dimensions of life may shift."