Firstly, for a while I've been having a problem with Snow Leopard on my Mac Pro in which it runs incredibly slowly every so often. It seems as if this revolves around Safari and/or Flash. In the forums I discovered that there are many other people having similar problems with Snow Leopard, mainly apparently relating to Safari and possibly Flash, so I hope this is something Apple have fixed in the new OS update they've released today. If not, I've got a few solutions I can try, such as removing old plugins and fiddling with Flash. This isn't great, but it's still early days for Snow Leopard and there are always teething problems with new operating systems.

Secondly, I was having weird problems with my iPhone in which it would start functioning incredibly slowly and third-party apps would not launch at all. I suspected this was due to storage so I freed up some space and the problems went away. The way that I freed up space was to untick the option to fill up remaining storage space with music. Since that option clearly causes problems, I have no idea why Apple put it in there. I'm sure it wouldn't have taken much testing to throw up the sort of problems I've been having.

Finally, Apple have done something in the latest OS update to prevent Snow Leopard from running on Atom processors, which means that many 'hackbook' users such as myself can no longer run the latest version of that operating system on their netbooks. This doesn't bother me too much in practice as I am quite happy with Leopard on mine and I wasn't sure if I could be bothered with all the hassle of trying to get Snow Leopard running on there. However, I'd love to know why this has happened. It could be that Apple have just added something which requires non-Atom processors, but I would have thought if that were the case then Snow Leopard would never have worked on Atoms in the first place. The other possible explanation is that Apple have done this deliberately to stop people from installing OS X on netbooks. If that's the case then it's very stupid, because Apple don't offer a netbook-class computer themselves, and if I can't run OS X on my netbook then I'm going to use something such as Ubuntu Linux instead (if I can ever get the bloody thing to boot), which is probably going to make me less likely to consider Apple products in the future...

Edit: It looks as though the OS update might have cured the 'Snow Leopard being slow' problem. Fingers crossed...

At first the bonfire was all like:



But later it was like:

I call this one "The March of Technology through an Excessively Wide Aperture".

(In case it's not clear, the blue one has five hundred times the capacity of the black one. And the front and back are all blurry.)

I posted here (f-locked) about an article by Julie Bindel and a refutation that steerpikelet is writing. I had read the article after reading some of the arguments on steerpikelet's post, and my reading of it was coloured by them. I understood her to be arguing that claiming that gender dysphoria exists implies acceptance of outdated gender stereotypes. But some of the comments on my journal made me question my understanding; and now I'm not sure what I think.

The points arguing against Julie Bindel have been explored very thoroughly in steerpikelet's post and the comments on it. But some of the points that commenters on my earlier post made I think are valid; for example:

- The author doesn't express herself very coherently. But in my view, how we handle that lack of clarity says as much about us as about her.

- I see the author as asserting that we shouldn't offer the fantasy of a "sex change" to everyone who feels they were born the wrong sex, because a) the procedure is very imperfect and b) there's no "robust scientific evidence" that it resolves gender dysphoria.

- I think Bindel presents a very balanced argument and the central point (as I see it) remains true: gender surgery doesn't change your sex. Only DNA reassignment could achieve that.

- I would also suggest that gender reorientation is body mutilation - you remove functioning organs and replace them with a non-functioning simulcrum of the opposite organ. I wouldn't say that all body mutilation should be avoided, but I do think doctors have a greater responsibility to ensure this is really what the patient wants before proceeding

- I do think that gender is defined by society and so reoriented men and women should be treated as being their chosen sex; however, I also think that transvestites should be, and that way there is no need for surgery. People should just define themselves as they please. (This wonderful piece of logic from rickbot)

The ever-useful (this is a compliment!) friend_of_tofu pointed me to this article from November 2008 on a similar topic. friend_of_tofu describes this article as being offensive and unpleasant, but reading it with fresh eyes, I'm not sure it is. (By which I mean to say, not that I think it is inoffensive and pleasant, but that I actually don't know whether I think it is offensive and unpleasant or not.)

From this November 2008 article: I questioned whether a sex change would make someone a woman, or simply a man who has had surgery.

Seems to me a sensible question to ask. Putting aside her views that the surgery is regrettable in retrospect, even if we were assuming (equally without evidence from my point of view) that it is always successful and the people who have it are happier (yes, I so agree with herringprincess when she says that the NHS is here for our mental health as well as our physical health), male to female trans people are, factually, people who were born men and have had surgery to cure gender dysphoria, and who are now treated by society as women.

I think that if someone is a woman in how they feel and how they are seen then they should be allowed to work in a female-only rape crisis centre (whether they've had surgery or not), but this is somehow irrelevant to the central question. After all, they should also be good at dealing with the job as well; and there are plenty of women (whether born male or female) who wouldn't be.

I had a quick look at the new (9.10) release of Ubuntu Linux. Basically, I'd say it's roughly comparable to Windows XP only with an even worse GUI. Seriously, why do they need a menu bar at the top of the screen when there's already a menu bar within each application? It's so irritating and wasteful of space. Also, there are far fewer applications available than on Windows XP.

I thought the new Ubuntu One cloud service might make it more attractive, but when I tried to access that from the File Browser I got an error saying it wasn't compatible. That's absolutely hopeless. Do they actually test any of this stuff before releasing it?

Linux on the desktop continues to be a huge disappointment. I know it's free, but in this case you really do get what you pay for. I like the fact that the Ubuntu guys are trying to push desktop Linux, but surely someone can do better than this?

So, yesterday I was felled by illness. The night before, I lay wake hour after hour, aching and uncomfortable with stomach pangs. As the day went on, I felt worse, with hot and cold flushes, more pangs, total exhaustion, and I crept back into my bed for much of the day for further fretful sleeplessness. Even one of usual salves – watching one of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies – failed, as I just couldn’t concentrate. Inevitably, feverish thoughts roved to whether I had the dreaded swine flu.

Today, the day began with some queasiness, but as time has gone on I feel immeasurably better – I’m chipper, punning and have a renewed bounce in my step. Whatever battle my body was fighting, it reached some low points but it eventually won.

Which is what made me think of the parallel with narrative. Kurt Vonnegut said all stories boil down to ‘Man in a hole’: “Somebody gets into trouble and gets out of it. People never get tired of this.” Legions of Hollywood screenwriters (eg Blake Snyder, whose Save the Cat! book is quite interesting – and I’ve only just discovered he died a few weeks ago; or Christopher Vogler, who applies Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ analysis of myth to blockbuster movies) have made a career out of amplifying Vonnegut’s summary into detailed scene plans for film scripts. Everyone knows there are only three, seven, 20 or 36 plots (or eight, nine, 37, 69…) – or just one, really.

All of life is full of these little mini-dramas, overcoming challenges, confronting enemies, battling illness. It’s no bloody wonder we like stories so much – especially the ones where we win.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.