Cav's Place

Certain activist sites are in an uproar for the past few days because, they claim, women are forced to have hysterectomies in Uzbekistan, as the country’s authorities are desperate to curb its excessive population. However, after looking for something that I believe to be a reliable report about the situation, I really have to say that they certainly don’t seem to be forced to do anything. In many cases they appear to be persuaded to undergo the procedure, though it does seem that some may be tricked into it, which can be a problem, but that’s very different from forcing. Yet even if they would be forced, how exactly would that be a problem in itself, considering that human overpopulation is the worst threat to the world?

Let’s analyze what we know about that situation for a moment. The officials deny such orders, but say that the normal childbearing age is between 20 and 30, that it’s really not recommended for women under 20 or over 35 to have children and than a woman should wait at least three years between births, which all seem to be pretty sensible and fair recommendations, so no problem so far. The only mention of hysterectomies is an order that describes these procedures as a safe and effective form of contraception if performed properly and specifies that they should be conducted only by experienced physicians, free of charge, and with the consent of the patient, while also ordering provincial health officials to offer voluntary surgical contraception at hospitals. The authorities also state that the recommended methods of contraception take into account the woman’s health and perhaps her ability to care for any more children, which also seems perfectly fair.
However, some women and activists claim that doctors try to persuade them to have hysterectomies by stressing all the possible advantages and ignoring any potential problems that may be caused by the procedure. That’s not fair, but at the same time people are being persuaded to do a whole lot of things, including having children, by that same method. I’d really like to know how many doctors stress all the potential problems and disadvantages, affecting either the individual person or the world as a whole, that can be generated by having a child to patients who come to them with fertility problems, or even simply appear to consider having a baby! Now two wrongs don’t make a right, but I’d like to see both of these situations viewed and handled in the same way.
The real potential problem, if true, is that some women appear to be tricked into having a hysterectomy by doctors who tell them that an operation is required in order to solve a “dangerous gynecological disease” they supposedly suffer from. That’s still far from forcing them to have it done, but it is certainly a bad approach. However, I don’t particularly blame them, because if you’re stupid enough to go along with it without at least demanding to know exactly what the “dangerous disease” is and how exactly will it be solved and researching the answers you receive, you likely shouldn’t have children anyway.
As for actual forcing, even according to the activists that seems to only happen to women over 35 who have just had children, as those may either have the hysterectomy performed or at least have an intrauterine device implanted right after giving birth. Admittedly, if true, that certainly counts as having it done to them by force, but is it necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think so, because the frequency of complications caused by pregnancies does indeed increase after the age of 35, so this seems to be doing two good things at once, seeing as there are far too many people as it is and preventing further births can only help. It may be argued that a very small number of women over 35 who have already had one child could have one more because they possess truly extraordinary qualities that should be passed on to future generations, but those cases are extremely few and, considering the seriousness of the overpopulation problem, truly not something to worry about at this time. And besides, for example I know that in Finland it’s illegal to have a hysterectomy if you’re under 30, which seems no different from where I’m standing, yet I’m not seeing activist organizations in an uproar over that!

Overall, even if the activists are right, what’s going on in Uzbekistan doesn’t seem wrong to me. Sure, men should obviously also be targeted and it would be fairer to do without the trickery and at least openly force the procedure upon those who really should have it done, but it seems a step in the right direction from where I’m standing. Only a small step though, as something needs to be urgently done to drastically reduce birth rates everywhere in the world.
Still, it depends on what exactly the procedure entails. I’m saying it’s not wrong because that report states the procedure involves partially removing the uterus, no mention of the ovaries as well. Removing the ovaries could obviously have serious negative consequences and that would change my opinion, though those consequences wouldn’t be significantly different from those of spaying a pet, and nobody seems to agree with me when I say that spaying or neutering pets is very wrong…

I’m still pushing for much more drastic measures, but I could also work with what may currently be happening in Uzbekistan and make some recommendations to improve the program, if it indeed exists:
Firstly, it’s mandatory to target men as well as women. It may be that the baby develops in the woman’s body and therefore she has more say in whether or not the pregnancy will be carried to term than the man, but it takes two to make a baby.
Secondly, people who appear willing and capable of understanding and applying other safe methods of contraception should be given the benefit of the doubt and not pressured to use surgical methods if they don’t want to unless they prove to be undeserving of such trust by unwillingly getting pregnant or causing pregnancies. Actually, such people should still be allowed to use other methods of contraception even if they make one or two mistakes, though no more than that, as long as they show responsibility by terminating the resulting pregnancies within the first trimester.
Thirdly, if indeed that’s what’s currently happening, the authorities and doctors should stop hiding behind words and tricking people into undergoing such procedures, openly forcing them upon those who are either unwilling or incapable of properly avoiding pregnancies by using other methods.

If writing a review just after you finish a game is hard, writing it nearly six months later is even worse. But waiting longer wasn’t going to make it any easier, and I think it needed to be done because this game received far less attention than it deserved. Or at least that’s the case for the fully patched version, because all I heard about the problems the original release had made me keep my distance until they got around to working them out.
Of course, fixing most problems later doesn’t make releasing a game in such a state any more acceptable, but I can only write about what I saw when I played it, which means this review will deal with how the game was in version 1.7 and not before. And it will be split rather awkwardly into good and bad parts, because there are good and bad things about most aspects of the game but I am writing this for MobyGames and I have to make it fit their review format.

The first good thing I need to mention is something you’ll notice before actually starting the game, and that’s the menu song. It’s a matter of taste, but it really caught my attention since I wasn’t expecting such a song in a game, and especially not at that moment. Several times I just sat and listened to it, and hardly ever loaded my last save to resume playing without allowing the first minute and a half of the song to play. The game’s soundtrack has a few other nice moments, but this really stands out.
Moving on to the game itself, the massive and very open map, containing several very different areas, needs to be pointed out. There are very few places where you’re not allowed to go before reaching a certain point in the story and you’re not really pressured to focus on the main quest either. In fact, since the amount of experience you get for completing a quest increases along with your level, the game actually encourages you to explore as much of the map and kill as many enemies as possible before advancing the story. Sure, strong enemies can theoretically stop you from reaching many areas too soon, but if you’re careful, patient, good at sneaking and at finding alternate routes, you’ll be able to go pretty much anywhere at any moment. You can even find ways to climb mountains that probably shouldn’t be climbed, which will often reward you with nothing but empty terrain and perhaps a nice view, but occasionally you’ll find some useful plants, perhaps even a few more enemies to kill and potentially even manage to reach certain key areas without having to deal with the enemies that would normally block your way. Plus that riding feels pretty nice, and in fact until the very end of the game I almost always chose to ride back and forth across the map instead of using the teleporters, except when I was trying to sell items gathered after a battle and needed several trips to carry them all.
And, as I said, the story gives you an equal amount of freedom as well. You have a main quest to complete and the character usually acts as if in a hurry while talking to others, but in fact there’s absolutely no rush and you can take your time to explore everything the game has to offer and do all the many side quests you’ll get from NPCs everywhere. I’m sure someone could even finish Two Worlds in a few hours if they knew exactly what to do and really set their mind to it, but the game can offer over 100 hours of gameplay just as well, if you’re very thorough and take your time. In addition, many killed enemies leave behind ghosts, which appear at night around the area where they died and can even justify exploring the world twice over if you want to see just how much experience you can gather. (I finished the game at level 95, and I’m sure there were a fair number of ghosts left.)
The fact that the game doesn’t restrict you according to class, allowing you to freely develop your character as you see fit, was another thing I liked, as was the game’s difficulty. This may bother those who want games to be a challenge, and in fact even I chose to play it as a regular RPG, ignoring the fact that you’re resurrected with no penalties at the nearest shrine whenever you die and reloading my last save whenever the unfortunate event happened, but it does encourage you to explore the world more when you know that, once you gain a few levels and a few useful skills, there’s hardly anything that has much of a chance against you. That’s especially true as a mage, one particular spell standing out as ridiculously overpowered, even more so since you increase the power of your magical arsenal by simply putting together identical spell “cards”, just like you improve your equipment by combining identical pieces.

However, this low difficulty and lack of focus can make it rather boring after a while, especially if you’re not as keen to explore every nook and cranny as I am. A game with a great story and nice side quests can greatly benefit from being easy, as that allows you to focus on those elements instead of game mechanics and challenges, but this is not really the case here. There is an interesting twist in the main story and you may be surprised by a few more nice moments here and there, but overall it’s nothing to write home about, few quests standing out and many making you wonder why are you the only person in the world who can do such apparently simple things. Then again, extremely few games stand out when it comes to this…
Another potential problem, for those who are not as determined to always play mages as I am, is just the fact that spells can be so overpowered. Sure, focusing on your fighting abilities and combining powerful pieces of equipment can easily turn you into a walking tank, but enemies will basically never even reach you if you focus on your magical abilities. This is especially important when fighting the most powerful enemies, as those can deal insane amounts of damage if allowed to reach you. And still on the issue of warrior characters, mounted combat is handled quite poorly, the increased speed and damage often not being enough to make up for the significantly decreased maneuverability.
And then you have the voice acting… From what I heard, it was even worse when the game was originally released, but even so it just doesn’t express anything. It’s all too obvious that the people who recorded the voices were simply reading lines, without caring or even knowing what it was all supposed to be about. At least you may amuse yourself a little when the camera closes in during dialogues by noticing that the character models tend to have heads that are too small for their bodies… Anyway, this is a game that should have done without voice acting, as the text alone would have often been better.

Overall, Two Worlds is not a game that you must play, but certainly one that you can play without fearing that you’ll be too disappointed. If you like exploring a large and diverse world, and especially if you like doing it with the help of spells and cloaks instead of weapons and armor, it should provide a fair amount of entertainment and keep you interested for quite some time, despite never excelling in any area.

One of the events that caught my attention earlier this month was the women’s topless march that took place in Portland, Maine. And no, I don’t mean it caught my attention in the sense that it caught the attention of the several hundred mostly male onlookers mentioned in that article, but in the sense that it touched on both the problem of public nudity, which in a way is one of my many pet peeves, and a gender equality issue, which is actually something I do care about despite what some may think and the fact that I oppose affirmative action and other common methods that are supposedly meant to deal with this problem.
Though I did raise an eyebrow at the fact that such a march was organized in a state where the law apparently doesn’t discriminate anyway, the article stating that only exposing one’s genitals is illegal in Maine, regardless of the person’s sex. Admittedly, it couldn’t have been organized in a place where it’d have been illegal and the point was trying to change society, not laws. But the organizer’s attitude seems to be somewhat counterproductive in that case. More on that later.

First, I’m still wondering what do people have against nudity. We all have bodies, right? Astral projection aside, we couldn’t be without them even if we wanted to. Those bodies are, by definition, naked, clothes being something used to cover them up. People are obviously born naked, are frequently naked in the presence of others as children, may get naked when seeing a doctor, may become sick and need others to bathe and dress them, may see each other naked in locker rooms… That said, there couldn’t be anything inherently wrong with the idea of a naked body. Nor could there be anything inherently sexual about it, for the same reasons.
Sure, the sight of a naked attractive person of one’s preferred sex may generate a physical response identified as arousal, but nudity in itself is nether necessary nor sufficient for this response. And besides, arousal is just the body’s way of expressing interest, no different from the various ways in which the mind expresses interest due to a person’s words or actions. I could also include what I believe to be the soul’s way of expressing interest, which is true love, but since there’s no real evidence to either prove or disprove that theory I’ll leave it aside. The point is that all of these things only show that you like or at least are somewhat interested in the person, and I really can’t see anything wrong with that in itself. The way in which you’ll express that interest, if you’ll express it at all, can say a lot about who you are as a person, but that’s an entirely different matter.
On the other hand, the sight of a naked person who’s certainly not attractive can induce undesirable physical responses, but nudity in itself is once again neither necessary nor sufficient, as those responses can also be induced by the sight of a person who wears clothes that really displease the viewer or any number of other things. Not to mention that said responses are just the body’s way of expressing displeasure, no different from the many ways in which the mind expresses displeasure at another’s words or actions. Should we ban anything that can bother people then? Wouldn’t that imply banning absolutely everything?

But this psychosocial connection between nudity in itself and sexuality is a vicious circle. The more society tries to get rid of nudity, explaining that it does so because of its sexual nature, the stronger that connection will become, making arousal an even more common response to the sight of a naked body that’s not particularly displeasing to the viewer, which is likely to fuel the actions puritans even more. In that sense, actions like this march could help a lot by making the sight of a nude, or at least partially nude, person less of an extraordinary event, but the mention of aggressive action aimed at discouraging oglers can shoot the idea in the foot.
It’s perfectly normal for such a display to draw crowds of oglers at this moment in time. The sight is extremely uncommon on city streets, but has the potential of being pleasing, so it’s quite natural for people to seek it out. As the sight will become more common, it will also become less interesting and the number of oglers will naturally start to dwindle. But if people will not be allowed to stare at the display at this point, it will remain a “forbidden fruit” and therefore just as interesting and sexualized as it currently is, resulting in no change. The way to make people stop seeing nudity as inherently sexual is to stop treating it as such yourself, going about your business as if you were clothed and not caring how others see it, as long as they don’t actually do anything to you of course.

As for the gender equality issue, it’s simply that female breasts are seen as sexual organs and male chests are not. The same things that I said about nudity in general apply here too, so I won’t go through it again. But the fact that this march was legal in Maine only goes to show that in certain areas this discrimination exists only at the level of the society and not at that of the law as well. Sure, what actually happens is far more important than what the law states should happen, but it’s a start.
On the other hand, speaking of what actually happens out on the street and not even mentioning full nudity, I doubt that a man wearing nothing but briefs in public would be greeted too warmly, and one simply wearing nothing above the waist would almost certainly draw some odd looks as well. Admittedly, a woman in that situation would likely draw far more attention, but in fact I think it likely that more people would react positively to it than in case of the man, so that discrimination can go both ways.

That said, when a law discriminates in such a situation, it should be targeted and changed. But when it comes to the general public, the general issue of nudity should be the target, making a point of proving that there’s nothing inherently wrong or inherently sexual in not covering certain body parts, regardless of the sex of the person they belong to.
How to do that? Well, one way could be to organize such events, but perhaps without trying to draw attention to the fact even before it happens. But a more effective way would be for those who take part in such actions to split into small groups made up of people of varying ages and genders, both attractive and unattractive, scatter around the chosen city when the weather allows and simply go about their daily business in the nude, or as nude as possible considering the laws that apply to the chosen location, until those will be changed as well. That’s far less likely to be considered an extraordinary event and therefore more likely to really promote the idea that nudity is quite normal.
If people will stare, let them stare. After some time, if this will keep happening, the sight will become less interesting. And no, less interesting on the street certainly does not mean less interesting in the bedroom. I remember a discussion about public nudity that took place among the contestants of the first edition of Big Brother in Romania, which pretty much ended after one of the guys asked the girl who was most opposed to the idea, saying that being able to see certain body parts on the street would deprive them of any special quality they have during intimate moments with your significant other, whether she got aroused when her boyfriend kissed her neck. A body part’s role or “value” is just a matter of circumstance…

It’s no news that any attempt to offer teenagers proper sexual education puts one on very treacherous ground, but what one district attorney from the state of Wisconsin did borders on ridiculous even by these standards. I could call it worse, but that’s probably the most lenient term that can be used to describe the actions of a person mandated with upholding the law who threatens to put people behind bars not for breaking a law but for following it, especially when the law in question makes perfect sense and was long overdue anyway.
For those who don’t feel like reading the article, the story is that a new law requires those who teach sexual education classes in the state of Wisconsin to adopt a comprehensive approach, offering students all the relevant information about birth control and other things related to having safe sex as opposed to preaching about abstinence and little else. The law doesn’t require schools to offer such classes, nor does it take away parents’ right to refuse allowing their children to participate in them. It just states that, in case the school does offer such classes and the parents do decide to allow them to participate, those teenagers will actually be offered the relevant information they need. However, this didn’t go well with one district attorney, who sent a warning to the teachers in his county that anyone who will teach students how to put on a condom or take birth control pills will face criminal charges, as that would encourage minors to have sex and therefore contribute to the delinquency of a minor, seeing as it’s illegal for minors to have sex in that state. I would hope that this will serve to remind some people how idiotic it is to make having sex illegal for teenagers and have that law repealed, but that may be too much too soon unfortunately.
Sure, this is just the sort of reaction one would expect from a conservative and religious fundamentalist, especially since his position grants him a high degree of authority. I’d expect him to also be one of those who wants to ban violent games and certain kinds of music because of the way they supposedly influence behavior. Not to mention most definitely one of those who support the “go forth and multiply” approach, regardless of the terrible effects this has on the environment and even on human society, as he certainly seems to think that procreation is the only purpose of sex anyway. But perhaps this will raise enough eyebrows in the right places and result in some attempts, hopefully at least some of them successful, to take such powers away from him and others like him.

Back on my side of the pond, a proposal that’d have taken things one step further in the right direction by making sexual education compulsory for British teenagers aged 15 and over has been dropped due to fierce opposition. The main argument seems to be that, by taking away parents’ right to pull their children out of such a class, the family is taken out of the game and parents are forced to raise their children according to the will of the government. Which is a rather interesting line of thought, because it takes us to a whole lot of other ways in which governments force people to bend to their will, many of which very rarely being challenged.
Let’s think about that for a moment and just focus on school, to make it more relevant. Couldn’t that same reasoning be applied to, say, geography, just in case some parents want to believe the Earth is flat? Or how about the English language, for those who don’t care to speak it and perhaps really don’t speak it at home? Or mathematics, even if only because it’s quite unlikely that most of what’s learned about it in school after the first few years will ever be useful to the vast majority of students… Not to mention the fact that school in general is compulsory, at least according to the law, despite all the useless, conflicting or even harmful, especially if you take every parent’s views into account, information it shoves down students’ throats, the stressful and damaging environment it creates and all the physical and mental health risks that can be associated with it.
So why’s sexual education so different from all those things? Why’s it singled out? Then again, it probably should be singled out, but as by far the most useful class taught in school after the first few years, since pretty much everyone will need that information, some of them quite early, which can’t be said about the vast majority of things taught in pretty much any other class… Not to mention that governmental policies aimed at preventing pregnancies and STDs are badly needed, especially considering the United Kingdom’s outrageous teenage pregnancy rate, so taking families out of the game when it comes to this is likely necessary.
I do, however, agree with the complaint about the inclusion of information about adoption and bringing up children in these classes, as the proposal suggested, simply because that has nothing to do with sexual education. When one of the main goals of these classes is to avoid accidental pregnancies, this would have ended up sending conflicting messages. Information about proper abortion procedures should obviously be offered during such classes, as a last resort in case the undesired event somehow still happens, but that’s about as far as sexual education goes. Pregnancy, birth and raising children are completely different matters and, while I fully believe that taking such classes should be required before a couple would be allowed to have children, I also believe that extremely few should ever be in a position to apply this knowledge, knowing how I feel about overpopulation. But since this was far from the main reason for dropping the proposal, it’s pointless to dwell on it.

And yes, I’m quite aware of what happened today, but I’ve been trying to write this post since yesterday. And there’s not much to say about that plane crash anyway. Such things just happen…

That I feel like shit is nothing new. What may be new is that something seems obviously wrong physically as well, however. Or multiple things, actually. Not that I don’t constantly worry about this and that or that there aren’t some usual problems in that area as well, but this is worryingly different. Fair warning, this will likely fall under “too much information” and not interest anyone anyway. Basically just writing it so anyone reading this will be able to figure out what happened in case I vanish. I’m serious, that’s pretty much where my mind is right now.

For starters, the numbness seems to have mostly moved to my left side as of a few days ago. For the past several years there was this partial numbness, for lack of a better term, on my right side, with the affected areas varying from just a couple of fingers and toes to about half of my arm and leg, as in all the way from my shoulder and hip but only on one side. No loss of mobility or control that I could ever notice, save for anything caused by the shaking, which is another long-term issue, and it wasn’t as if I couldn’t feel a touch in the affected areas either, but… The best I could describe it is that it seemed as if I had another layer of clothing on me, any touch that actually was directly on the skin feeling as if it wasn’t. Well, as of a few days ago, that sensation lingers only on a couple of fingers and toes on my right side, but has become noticeable in my right hand and foot as well, though there is nothing above the wrist and ankle. Since I thought I felt something catch in an unusual way in my back the night before I first noticed this, I can assume that the spur I know is on my spine may have caught a nerve or something in a different way, since that’s what I usually blamed for the problem on the right side as well, as soon as I learned for sure that I had that thing there, some five or six years ago.
Then there’s a troubling headache somewhere over my left eye. And some other headaches in general, but I wouldn’t pay much attention to that normally. The thing is that the pain I feel in that area lately seems very different from how headaches usually feel, so that worries me. Sure, it could be explained by the fact that I spent so much time watching things lately and my eyes are very tired, which means that my left eye is especially tired since it’s the better one and the brain will obviously strain it while more or less ignoring the other one…
Then there’s the fact that my pee seems somewhat darker in color. Not that this is especially new, been thinking this for quite some time, but now it adds up, not to mention that my left kidney has nudged me a few times with a little pain every now and then over the past several months. And there may be a little nudge now and then from my liver as well, which could also explain it, though it’s not something I’d pay attention to unless associated with something else, like now. The problem is that I can’t see the color well enough to know for sure in the toilet, so it may still just be an impression. Sure, I could pee in something and look then, but the thing is that I don’t really want to know. I mean, it’s not like I could get myself to go to a doctor unless dragged there either by force or unconscious, especially since I’m too afraid of too many other things as well lately, so knowing that yet another thing is wrong wouldn’t exactly help. Not unless someone could figure out what the problem is and how to solve it without me seeing a doctor, that is…
The next issue appears to be that my heart has decided to act up more lately. There’s the usual slight arrhythmia that has developed back when I was living in constant terror because I was forced to go to school and that scared me so much, but this is starting to become annoying! A couple of nights ago it even decided to skip beats a few times per hour, which included one moment just as I was falling asleep, and feel rather weak overall as well. That was very annoying because the way my body has learned to deal with this is by producing a small adrenaline rush whenever this happens, which also usually involves me making a sudden move, as that usually puts things back in order immediately. As you can imagine, an adrenaline rush just when I was in that state between being asleep and being awake made me jump straight up and look around in panic, so it was quite a long time before I could try falling asleep again.
And, with the potentially serious issues out of the way, there is also the annoying matter of the skin problems that have decided to act up a lot lately. The diagnosis was atopic dermatitis, which seems to fit the bill well enough, but it had left me mostly alone for some months. Then, a couple of months or so ago, the affected area on and around my private parts decided to flare up and hasn’t calmed down since. I kept thinking that it’d calm down on its own after a while, as it kept doing whenever this happened for the past few years, but this feels really nasty and it’s terribly infuriating! And of course there’s also that yeast infection in that area, which hasn’t left since it decided to visit me over two years ago. Sure, we seem to have reached some sort of agreement after a few attempts to get rid of it during the first several months, in the sense that it no longer causes the affected area to itch or crack and I no longer try to get rid of it, but it still bothers me that it’s obviously still there and noticeable when I look. At least there’s nobody to have sex with, so it’s not a problem in that aspect…
There would be a few other minor annoyances and worries, but that’d be pretty much it. Well, that and the fact that I seem very close to a panic attack, which is in part caused by thinking about this, in part by all the other things I worry about and in part seems to just come on its own.

I’ve been craving a lot of sweets lately and not really eating many, though still more than I usually do. Actually, since some time ago I switched the cereals I was usually eating, which contained dried fruit, with some others that don’t contain that, some of these symptoms could be explained by low blood sugar. I mean, since I usually just eat once per day, and that’s late at night, it seems likely. And I certainly remember a few other times when this was the case, most notably once when I hadn’t touched any sweets in two months, not counting the dried fruit in those cereals, and I ended up with numb arms and legs, headaches, heart acting up more than usual and the feeling of an imminent panic attack until I figured out what the cause was and I sat down with a jar of jam and a spoon and slowly ate from it until I started feeling better. But this time it seems to be more than that, and it still wouldn’t explain the piss.
So let’s see what will happen next. Since seeing a doctor isn’t exactly an option for me, I’ll just sit here and worry about it. Such problems were much easier to handle back in 2006, when I just hoped to die. Now, when what I want is obviously another chance and I’m fully aware that there’s no way that could ever happen unless I’m alive, it’s harder to put up with…