by Colin Hyde
It took a while for this story to make its way around the world, all the way from 2022 – truth crushed to earth will rise – well, surprise, surprise – I bet no one in Belize is – yes, surprise, surprise to people outside of Belize, they put transgender women – that’s men who think they aren’t, men – yap, they put transgender women in a pen with bona fide women, and penis woke up and went to work, and bam now baby di baan.
The story, by Joe Atmonavage in a news medium called Corrections1, said 27 transgender females were housed along with biological ones at the Edna Mahan prison in Trenton, New Jersey. Some women who know the time complained about housing biological men with them. But some people are like the king’s advisors who were in some kind of stupor while he walked about town with no pants on.
Atmonavage said, “Last year, two Edna Mahan prisoners filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to immediately remove ‘any and all male pre-operative transgender inmates,’ alleging that some had harassed them and engaged in sexual contact with other women.”
You can bet that wise Solomon didn’t allow any pre-operative transgender women into his harem. Back in those old days people were short of university degrees but they were long on common sense. It was simple back then: If you had a penis you went with the guys. Of course, it is a dilemma, putting guys who think they’re women in a pen with guys who have no such confusion. The conscionable way to prevent trouble is to fence off a little section for this group, not to go silly and put them in cells with the girls.
We have to hope these people stop dehn nonsense before they sneeze and this idiocy gets into our curriculum. Sorry, Daaling, but the only way anyone born with a penis gets in the girls bathroom is if dehn—”cut it aaf.”
Getting inside our heads; making what is private, public
You might remember the story about the foreign lady in Russia who scolded that country’s female KGB for tampering with her mail. The foreign lady had gotten mail from her Russian husband who was working abroad, and oh sacrilege, when she got mail from him, prying eyes had read all the tender thoughts the lovelorn husband had sent to his devoted spouse. When the nice foreign lady told the damned prying eyes that in civilized countries people respect other people’s mail, the lady philistine looked at her scornfully and retorted, “That’s not how we do it in our country.” From then I decided I would never go to live in Russia.
Some people are natively intafayring. They spend hours practicing lip reading and that kind of thing so they can get into other people’s business. Some dangerous people put “bugs” around. Life is such a letdown sometimes. You’d think that life would have found a way to shut those scoundrels out. But no, those interfering bohgaz have hit the Jackpot! Sigal Samuel in a piece in Vox says an AI gadget, a brain decoder, is now here to read people’s minds. This gadget will turn “unspoken thoughts swirling through our minds – into actual speech.”
Samuel says in times past researchers planted electrodes in people’s brains and used “algorithm that reads the brain’s activity and translates it into text on a computer screen”, but they didn’t get far with that because it required surgery, and it was only worth the cost when used on people with paralysis. This new gadget “can decode continuous language from the brain, so somebody else can read the general gist of what we’re thinking …”
You know this world’s glory ends when people can read our minds. Thank gudnis this one won’t amount to much more than a toy. There isn’t a mind on this earth that is so boring, so flat that an AI machine can put into words what they’re thinking. Lie detectors are toys. People who are natively nervous sorts get pegged with a lie detector. And people who born fu lai are declared innocent. My first bet is that those ladies with the crystal ball can match any decoder because they study human minds. But maybe the AI brain decoder will be superior to the crystal ball and the horoscope and those types of things because of more human input.
I still think Augusto Quan should have sent a gift
Belize City has been moving west for decades now, and there’s no clearer indicator of the times than the closure of name brand businesses, the latest being the very popular Hofius which had a show window to rival Brodies and Romac’s in December. The present government’s main initiative to keep alive the old downtown is the City Council supported Super Sale, a kind of fair featuring food, music, and the best prices from the old stores. Another initiative has been parking meters. For various reasons, parking spaces are hard to find in downtown Belize City. The verdict is out on the parking meters, but since they were installed I bought a pot that likes a fire hearth, and on another occasion some small items at Hofius, because for 50 cents I could park in front of the store.
The previous government’s initiative wasn’t about boosting hardware and kitchenware sales at those old businesses; it was about turning the old downtown into a tourist walk. They procured an investment from our friends in Taiwan or Japan and began refurbishing select structures on Regent Street and Albert Street that harked back to our colonial past. The PUP’s Albert Vaughan, who is no brown Kriol, has been vociferous in his denunciation of the restoration of things colonial, anything that reminds of the days when the governor went about in his pith helmet, and judges were eager to hang people. Vaughan is backed by former NICH Director, the very rebellious Yasser Musa, and I think the lady named Ya Ya is also on that ship.
It was just a glance through my mind, but when Augusto Quan closed down I felt the shop should have sent me a little gift, a token. I said, just a glance. We can’t stop the mind from running. You might remember that story from the time when I lived in Alta Vista, what I told you up and coming pastor, young Arthur “Mooni” Bodden told me when I asked him what the extent of one’s responsibility for his thoughts was. He said, one can’t stop a bird from pitching on his head, but one can stop that bird from building a nest. So, I had a thought about that token. A half pound of “putty powder” and a little bottle of linseed oil, a small paint brush, a 20-pound test nylon fishing line and a couple hooks, if I had gotten any of those things from Mr. Benito I would have framed it.
Of course, the best thing, the treasure would have been a little rubber ball. In my pre-teen years I lived in Belize City and I must have bought a hundred rubber balls from Augusto Quan. My grandmother had a govna plum tree, and every time my ball landed in there and got punctured, which was often, I went around begging for jobs to raise the 15 cents to go and buy a new one, at Augusto Quan.
Only by spinning a shilling
This American judge who declared that a frozen embryo is a child, he has caused a stir because the people who own these embryos choose which embryo or embryos will live, and which embryo or embryos will die. This ruling says all embryos are children, so all should live. I don’t have two cents; I don’t even have a penny here. When in doubt spin a shilling, and make a call while the coin is in the air.
Beginning at the beginning, my take on abortion is that it’s a woman’s prerogative, a matter between her and her God. I am definitely biased for a woman keeping the child. Hey, some of us are certain that our parents wanted us. Most of us can’t be. For selfish reasons, and one must be selfish on a matter like this, the best bet is to want mom to keep the child.
The story is that a sperm can live up to 5 days in the womb – I thought it was 3 – and the egg is viable for not more than a day. When a sperm meets an egg, wala, there is potential for life for three score and ten years, and more.
For various reasons, some people in technologically advanced countries go to a clinic and have their sperm or someone’s sperm and their egg or someone’s egg meet under laboratory conditions. The Mayo Clinic says many eggs will be fertilized because “some eggs won’t fertilize or develop correctly after they’re combined with sperm.” John Hopkins Medicine says a “successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle can result in multiple embryos, and some people choose to freeze the extra embryos for future family building.”
Human Fertilization & Embryology Authority, at the web page hfea.gov.uk says “embryos vary in quality – those that are of the best quality are more likely to implant in the womb and lead to a pregnancy. If you have more than one embryo, your embryologist will use their training and expertise to select the best quality embryos using criteria such as: the number of cells present.”
National Library of Medicine at the webpage ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, says “the technique of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is commonly explained as a way of checking the genes of embryos produced by IVF for serious genetic diseases.” Ah, some grey areas for women/couples when deciding on their embryos have to do with “the goal of creating a ‘healthy’ child; and sex selection of embryos for social reasons.”
America has a right to make her own laws. Disappointingly, because America feels it is God’s gift to earth, they like to impose their laws on others. Tragically, sometimes she doesn’t mind using her considerable wealth and military hardware to impose her ways.
The only thing I am reasonably certain of here with the frozen embryos is the potential for guilt. It is reasonable to conclude that the woman who has a child aborted from her womb is far more likely to experience mental trauma than the woman with the frozen embryos. I wouldn’t be surprised if when some women with the embryo babies went to the laboratory they acted like the red queen in one of those Alice in Wonderland books who went about saying, “off with his head”. I don’t remember how that story ended, but it wouldn’t surprise me ataal if she ended up under the guillotine herself, it being so that those who like to thrust swords deep into the hearts of their enemies, one day they end up getting impaled.