The point is that the US government has passed unconstitutional laws with regard to the First Amendment, not least of which was the Sedition Act of 1918, which did criminalize mere opinions in opposition to government policies.
Mandarin is as popular as it is in Taiwan because when the KMT came after the Civil War they used their position of power to actively suppress indigenous culture in an attempt to remake the island into a bastion of Han culture and unify identity. Even after that ceased a few decades later the momentum has remained, especially and unsurprisingly in the urban areas.
People no longer need to invest in unknown quantities. They can take projects directly to the public and get funding, and the public gets products they want without the middlemen of distribution. Since they are paying for the costs of production up front, nobody can bitch and moan about what gets lost by copies made later.
False scarcity of intangible goods should and will die.
I like how rather than provide any evidence to the contrary, you just assert that I'm wrong, and pretend that makes you look 'in the know'.
I used to work for Boeing as a contractor on 777 final assembly. My wife still works for Boeing, and we're both the third generation from our families to do so. I probably know more about aircraft and the industry surrounding them than you do.
And what you say of visiting manufacturers is true of any industry. By that logic it would be universal. It doesn't matter whether you're buying widebody aircraft or some retail shelf fodder, if you're about to contract for millions of dollars worth of goods, you'll probably take some time to scope out your supply chain.
Whether you want to admit it or not, part of the continued existence of tradeshows is institutional momentum. When something has been happening the same way for generations, it's hard to dump even when it makes potential business sense. However there is a sea change coming, because once gen x & y hit the executive levels in force, businesses will be adjusted more in line with new realities.
Oh, and in full pedantry, my parents don't have a basement, so it would be pretty hard to live down there with my own kids.
So put your arrogant, wrong assumptions to bed, dumbass.
PAX is very much a community event that enables exchange. It's not primarily a trade show (though it contains that component), and it doesn't display the largely unidirectional dissemination mindset that other trade shows like E3 or the now-dead COMDEX used to embody.
Everybody who is saying that nobody needs trade shows to make announcements in the internet age is right. Quite frankly that trade shows for other industries are less effected so far is probably more an indicator of lag than anything else. Because the 'tech' industries are closer to the internet as a matter of course, it is only natural that things like COMDEX would implode first. Someday when most of the analogue photographers are retired, it wouldn't surprise me if things like Photokina either disappeared or reoriented to be less disseminatory and more community exchange. (Yeah, the internet facilitates that too, but the internet doesn't have hotel parties, and don't kid yourself, that's the best part of shows/cons.)
I think that for things like cars and planes trade shows will be eternal, simply because their physicality is so important. Gadgets are sold on feature lists. Even while features remain important to purchasing decisions, vehicles are sold on a visceral impression of their sturdiness, comfort, and design. Because safety and ease of maintenance etc. are so important to vehicles, people really want to be able to touch them to be assured of their quality before they sign any commitment that might put themselves at risk. (Assurances from regulatory agencies notwithstanding.)
Natural selection results in 'good enough' genetics. There isn't any reason why people couldn't have eyesight as good as predatory birds (though some diet changes would be needed), or hearing as good as bats, or olfactory senses as good as canines, etc. but the conditions under which we evolved did not include pressures that selected for senses beyond our current state. Our sense were not maximized, simply good enough for most to survive, and that is natural selection's ultimate standard.
Speciation is not about some 'ultimate lifeform' so much as it is about lifeforms that are best adapted to their niche and environment. Predatory birds need top eyesight to catch quick small prey on the ground. We don't need it because our prey was usually bigger, or stationary (being omnivores). By the same token mice might just not have needed more strength to survive. Furthermore, and more importantly, if environmental pressures were such that only stronger mice were surviving, you could damn near bet money that these sorts of genetic changes would occur naturally. In a model of punctuated equilibrium, you'll find that changes usually occur when they have to, not simply because they are 'objectively better' in some abstract sense that doesn't significantly impact survival rate in a given environmental condition.
I have had a Dell Inspiron 1121z (aka "Mini 11z") for half a year and can honestly say it's not crap. I know Dell makes a lot of crap, I've had to service Dells in one way or another for much of my decade of IT work, but seriously for the price it's very solid and well designed. Performance is better than most thanks to the fact that it runs a Core i3 instead of a shitty Atom or Celeron. The only annoying things about it hardware wise are that arrow keys tend to stick when debris gets anywhere near them, and the old DB15 port doesn't let you screw in. Battery life with a 3 cell (default) is mediocre, but if you spring for a 6 cell it's competitive.
It's all moot now that they're exiting the space.
Something you need to bear in mind is that companies like HP and Dell don't make their own shit, they buy it from designers (Original Design Manufacturers, ODMs) in Taiwan, and contract to have their logo slapped on to it. That's why quality can very so much model to model, because Dell might be using Quanta for one and Compal for the next, and HP might use Arima (now Flextronics) and later Wistron. Buying by brand name from somebody who just farms everything out is pretty pointless, and there is no major laptop brand in the US that makes its own stuff. When you buy anything like that it should be based on expert reviews, not brand name, especially in any kind of "budget" category since you usually get what you pay for.
While I was trying to think of good counter-argument to the possibility of a society where physical strength is subservient to mental prowess at all social levels, I started with the premise that such a balance would be untenable over time, then I remembered slavery. Considering the nature and outcome of such things as the Servile Wars and Helot rebellions, I have scuttled my own argument in that dimension. However, there is another aspect that is more difficult to assuage, namely the pressure and momentum of surrounding cultures and the nature of cultural exchange (and envy). Any such society would have had to have been very isolated, otherwise consistent interactions with patriarchies probably would have inspired the males therein to realize that their physiological strength would enable them to reset their society by simple force. At the same time surrounding societies would have potentially held them in disdain and dealt with them less fairly if not with outright hostility (there are modern and ancient examples of this, for the former it is known that the more heavily patriarchal societies in the Middle East have been bigoted in their relationships with female representatives of foreign governments and businesses. As an example of the latter, the Shang Dynasty was overthrown because it was considered to have become too 'feminized' and willing to accept women in roles that wielded political power). This would have put the culture at a competitive disadvantage with virtually all others, which over any reasonable length of time would have led to its ultimate collapse.
"Transphobia"? Wow, that actually got a laugh out of me. Let me be frank, I'm as close to being trans as a cis can be. I have been through years of psychiatric therapy for gender identity issues. I've come so close to transition that I was pricing homone treatments and working on vocal training regimens to try to find a voice for myself that I thought would pass (the fact that I couldn't contributed to my not transitioning, but like anything so radical the ultimate decision was a patchwork of far more serious reasons). To this day I have this nagging fear that I'm going to end up regretting my many-faceted cowardice as some kind of middle age crisis, and try to transition at a bad age, and end up hideous (if you don't transition while you're still growing somewhat, in your teens/twenties, but rather while you're aging wholesale... ugh... the results are... seriously unflattering).
Furthermore, while I don't conflate gender identity and expression with sexual identity and expression, I think it bears mentioning that I am also pansexual (if the whole "I like FtMs" wasn't a big enough clue, which apparently it wasn't).
So, with all that background being aired, you have to understand that my positions on gender identity are the result not simply of study and theory, though I have plenty of both, but from living with a personal gender identity problem all my life.
This is really quite a layer cake, and the potential to oversimplify is great. In the first place, all identity is ultimately self-selective. A person may suppress their own identity in favor of an appearance that conforms better to societal norms, but that to is ultimately a decision made by the self within a framework of cost-benefit analysis with regard to impact upon personal and professional relationships and goals. (This is assuming a modern liberal society, not a brutally oppressive one where "abnormal" gender behavior is criminal.)
The problem with an identity that is contrary to physiology is two-fold. First, the biological topology can be pushed and pulled and bent, but even with HRT and SRS it never fundamentally changes. An MtF is still going to need to be screened for prostate cancer, unlike any biological woman. Second, and more germane to the issue, is that a desire for a gender-specific mental/emotional/psychological development and end state are not the same as an actual intrinsic possession thereof. Many MtFs lament their lack of
I should thank that AC, whoever he was, but suffice to say this is a case of simple modernization of Amazon-esque mythology. The Greeks were neither the first nor the last to fantasize about a society of masculine women, but the source of the fantasy is almost always men for the implicit purpose of glorifying masculinity as something women would want to possess and express if they could only do so. (This foundational assumption of the Amazon mythos by extension eschews femininity as an expression that women would actually reject if only they could do so.) This fantasy has on occasion even been coaxed, by men, into reality. For example the Dahomey Amazons, who were a female military unit formed at the express desire of the king of the now-dissolved African state of Dahomey. (I grant that the scale is not analogous to a society.)
Now it's likely that people will mistakenly infer from my commentary that I believe in pigeonholing/stereotyping vices/virtues/behaviors by gender role. This could not be further from the truth, I think virtues and vices are universal, and that one of the primary barriers to understanding between genders is an unwillingness to embrace virtues considered to be 'across gender lines' or worse to marginalize or rationalize vices within one's own gender group as simply misunderstood by the other(s)*. However to assess the history of culture and society as it relates to gender, one often has to be able to see it through the lens of the majority, so to speak. Even if I don't agree with exulting or marginalizing gender roles/identities/expressions, it must be understood that these were the motivations (subconscious or otherwise) of the cultures which spawned these fictions and their sentiments.
I hope my dense ramblings have some merit for you, and I apologize if they are rather too pretentious or officious, but it's something I can't really turn off when I hit my 'academic' stride. I have to say I do rather appreciate your intellectual honesty in not merely accepting but expecting skepticism as the default response to claims. This is a rarity of character in anybody anymore, and you are admirable for it.
*I personally feel that MtF, FtM and "genderless" persons constitute separate genders, but at present they are so few in number within the population as to have very little noticeable effect. (Much to my own personal chagrin, as I have a weakness for MtFs like you wouldn't believe.) I also understand that this is frequently in direct opposition with the feelings and goals of transgendered persons who strive desperately to be accepted as the gender expression they emulate as their identity. While I am more concerned with realities than feelings, at the same time I think the sincerity of the effort deserves genuinely respectful treatment as though they were the emulated gender, but that is not the same thing as accepting as a fact of classification that they are the emulated gender. (They are not their "original" gender either.)
I don't think that women's predilection toward cooperative behavior is completely an effect of socio-political cause(s). As tired as thought experiments in evo-psych may be, you can see in other animals that gender roles do not require social structures, let alone civilizations. Humans and their primate ancestors doubtlessly had gender roles before both, and before the political power hierarchy established by civilization, the gender roles were pretty simple. Males provided physical protection, keeping mate(s) and offspring safe, females provided emotional protection, keeping family and tribal groups together for more competitive advantage.
When rudimentary civilization came along, based more often on brute force than deep cohesion, these roles were subverted. Physical strength was used to make women second class citizens at best and chattel or war prizes at worst (though the latter was probably always a problem, since humanity has long issues with extending in-family or in-tribe respect to 'the other' outsiders, who may even be viewed as sub-human regardless of gender... which leads to societies permissive of cannibalism and human sacrifice). This led to the subversion of women's social talents, which were now divided between nurturing and conniving, so as to be able to position themselves by playing people off each other, having no direct power to wield effectively.
The problem with your hypothetical culture of women who act like men is that it is a fantasy that has never been known to have existed in human history. The closest thing was probably Sparta (at its cultural peak), which was renowned for having women who were almost as rough and tough as Spartan men, and perhaps not coincidentally it is historically considered one of the most gender equal societies of the time, but at the end of the day it too was a patriarchy, and "more equal" is not equal, let alone a reversal. The whole concept of Amazons is a masculine conceit, which praises masculinity by holding 'masculine' women and a society created by them in awe and respect.
The point here is that the structured political hierarchies which led to the marginalization of women are fairly new social constructs in terms of the broader human history, having been present only a few thousand years. The biological imperatives, niches, and predispositions as they relate to human genders developed over tens of thousands of years, and those too were outgrowths of the development of hundreds of thousands of years of primate development. On these scales, social development is almost if not completely exclusively a function of subverting earlier biological tendencies. As another poster said above, cultures come from biology, specifically brains, and they reflect all of the hormones by which each gender is influenced.
China has frequently fractured into a patchwork of local states run by strongmen. This happened as recently as the 1920s during the Warlord Era, but has been happening every few centuries since the decline of the Zhou Dynasty. Besides this, China has been home to many minorities which have occasionally been independent. Tibet and Turkmenistan are the most obvious modern examples.
Russia effectively didn't exist until the collapse of the Mongol Empire(s), and could even be argued as a primary effect of the power vacuum created by that collapse after the previous consolidation. The Rus simply reconsolidated in an imperial conquest, and those holdings were reconsolidated a second (or third, depending on your perspective) time when the communists took over. However the identities of the locals were largely unaffected even over the centuries of Russian and earlier Mongol rule, which is what lead to the many breakaways after the USSR's collapse.
The take away to these lessons from history is that the 'empire' only lasts so long as the people at the core of it have the will and the power to rebuild it over and over. That is the case with China and Russia (to a far lesser extent). It *almost* happened with Rome, people are largely unaware that the Byzantine Empire was on the verge of a massive campaign to retake the West that was only scuttled by the cruel twist of the arrival of the plague from Asia. Hard to say how different history might have been if such an effort were successful.
This of course ignores the fact that the US is fucking huge, and that (of course) half the states have population densities lower than the national average. Alaska is among the least dense territories on earth. The central US, especially the north, is especially sparse compared to the coasts.
You're conflating the grotesque with the impossible. Wholly natural development (and I'm not saying that magazine ad is natural) has produced some pretty bad things between glandular disorders, dietary deficiencies, and simple bad genes. For instance, just because dwarfism is not 'normal' and most people don't have the skeletal configuration of dwarfs does not mean that dwarfism is not natural, let alone impossible.
And yes, there are bad plastic surgeries, but in such cases there is a separation of the intended goal from the achieved result. Anything can be done badly.
I've never let sexuality be the primary driving force of my long term relationships. The most important thing is to find somebody with whom you want to spend time, and that they have the same feeling about you. Sex is great and all, but even in peak condition there's really only so much time to kill that way.
My exposure to porn started even before puberty, and I'm a living example how wrong such assumptions are about the corruption of minds with wild standards that can never be satisfied. It's really just as much nonsense as those people who say violent games make violent people. Violent games attract violent people, and porn attracts superficial people who are likely to objectify others. However, this does not mean that all people who play violent games are violent, or that all people who consume porn are superficial jerks who put physical appearance above more abstract personal values.
Is that you Buzzkillington? Who let you out of the 19th century? This being 2011, you don't see much hotness on 'the street' anymore. If you're lucky there's a five minute transition period where the sports car is handed over to the valet, and then they head to the VIP.
It just boils down to jealousy in the end. That predates photoshopping and airbrushing by millennia. The bell curve is a harsh and relentless force, and the 1% of people who are intrinsically more fit with better skin/hair etc. will always rise to be the inattainable physical standard. Boo hoo. People need to accept who they are and work with what they have. Anything else is irrational, and it is the job of parents to get that through to their children in spite of the overwhelming peer pressure herding them to the contrary.
What's the point in fantasizing about average girls? Fantasy is at its best when it is as far from real and achievable as possible... that's why it's fantasy. If you're really fantasizing about average girls you've never even met, you're probably deficient socially. Develop some social skills and get laid in real life.
If you think such things are 'anatomically impossible' I rather doubt you're a medical doctor. Aside from spherical boobs, both the goal and the result of plastic surgeries are generally such physical characteristics as can be found in nature but not in the patient. Plastic surgery did not invent the flat stomach or pouty lips or what-have-you.
And all you need for your fantasy scenario to actually happen is for fertility rates to freeze in place, which of course has never occurred in human history. Fertility rates have dropped in virtually every country on earth for the last half century. 76 countries have rates below replacement, and all the most populous nations have reduced the number of children per woman by 2-3 in the last half century. Real demographics analysis that doesn't artificially freeze key elements to create doomsday scenarios indicates that population growth is and will continue to level off. Population is likely to stabilize (if trends continue) at 9-13 billion.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that the US government has passed unconstitutional laws with regard to the First Amendment, not least of which was the Sedition Act of 1918, which did criminalize mere opinions in opposition to government policies.
Mandarin is as popular as it is in Taiwan because when the KMT came after the Civil War they used their position of power to actively suppress indigenous culture in an attempt to remake the island into a bastion of Han culture and unify identity. Even after that ceased a few decades later the momentum has remained, especially and unsurprisingly in the urban areas.
Kickstarter.
People no longer need to invest in unknown quantities. They can take projects directly to the public and get funding, and the public gets products they want without the middlemen of distribution. Since they are paying for the costs of production up front, nobody can bitch and moan about what gets lost by copies made later.
False scarcity of intangible goods should and will die.
I like how rather than provide any evidence to the contrary, you just assert that I'm wrong, and pretend that makes you look 'in the know'.
I used to work for Boeing as a contractor on 777 final assembly. My wife still works for Boeing, and we're both the third generation from our families to do so. I probably know more about aircraft and the industry surrounding them than you do.
And what you say of visiting manufacturers is true of any industry. By that logic it would be universal. It doesn't matter whether you're buying widebody aircraft or some retail shelf fodder, if you're about to contract for millions of dollars worth of goods, you'll probably take some time to scope out your supply chain.
Whether you want to admit it or not, part of the continued existence of tradeshows is institutional momentum. When something has been happening the same way for generations, it's hard to dump even when it makes potential business sense. However there is a sea change coming, because once gen x & y hit the executive levels in force, businesses will be adjusted more in line with new realities.
Oh, and in full pedantry, my parents don't have a basement, so it would be pretty hard to live down there with my own kids.
So put your arrogant, wrong assumptions to bed, dumbass.
PAX is very much a community event that enables exchange. It's not primarily a trade show (though it contains that component), and it doesn't display the largely unidirectional dissemination mindset that other trade shows like E3 or the now-dead COMDEX used to embody.
Everybody who is saying that nobody needs trade shows to make announcements in the internet age is right. Quite frankly that trade shows for other industries are less effected so far is probably more an indicator of lag than anything else. Because the 'tech' industries are closer to the internet as a matter of course, it is only natural that things like COMDEX would implode first. Someday when most of the analogue photographers are retired, it wouldn't surprise me if things like Photokina either disappeared or reoriented to be less disseminatory and more community exchange. (Yeah, the internet facilitates that too, but the internet doesn't have hotel parties, and don't kid yourself, that's the best part of shows/cons.)
I think that for things like cars and planes trade shows will be eternal, simply because their physicality is so important. Gadgets are sold on feature lists. Even while features remain important to purchasing decisions, vehicles are sold on a visceral impression of their sturdiness, comfort, and design. Because safety and ease of maintenance etc. are so important to vehicles, people really want to be able to touch them to be assured of their quality before they sign any commitment that might put themselves at risk. (Assurances from regulatory agencies notwithstanding.)
Sounds like a ringing endorsement from Borat.
Natural selection results in 'good enough' genetics. There isn't any reason why people couldn't have eyesight as good as predatory birds (though some diet changes would be needed), or hearing as good as bats, or olfactory senses as good as canines, etc. but the conditions under which we evolved did not include pressures that selected for senses beyond our current state. Our sense were not maximized, simply good enough for most to survive, and that is natural selection's ultimate standard.
Speciation is not about some 'ultimate lifeform' so much as it is about lifeforms that are best adapted to their niche and environment. Predatory birds need top eyesight to catch quick small prey on the ground. We don't need it because our prey was usually bigger, or stationary (being omnivores). By the same token mice might just not have needed more strength to survive. Furthermore, and more importantly, if environmental pressures were such that only stronger mice were surviving, you could damn near bet money that these sorts of genetic changes would occur naturally. In a model of punctuated equilibrium, you'll find that changes usually occur when they have to, not simply because they are 'objectively better' in some abstract sense that doesn't significantly impact survival rate in a given environmental condition.
I have had a Dell Inspiron 1121z (aka "Mini 11z") for half a year and can honestly say it's not crap. I know Dell makes a lot of crap, I've had to service Dells in one way or another for much of my decade of IT work, but seriously for the price it's very solid and well designed. Performance is better than most thanks to the fact that it runs a Core i3 instead of a shitty Atom or Celeron. The only annoying things about it hardware wise are that arrow keys tend to stick when debris gets anywhere near them, and the old DB15 port doesn't let you screw in. Battery life with a 3 cell (default) is mediocre, but if you spring for a 6 cell it's competitive.
It's all moot now that they're exiting the space.
Something you need to bear in mind is that companies like HP and Dell don't make their own shit, they buy it from designers (Original Design Manufacturers, ODMs) in Taiwan, and contract to have their logo slapped on to it. That's why quality can very so much model to model, because Dell might be using Quanta for one and Compal for the next, and HP might use Arima (now Flextronics) and later Wistron. Buying by brand name from somebody who just farms everything out is pretty pointless, and there is no major laptop brand in the US that makes its own stuff. When you buy anything like that it should be based on expert reviews, not brand name, especially in any kind of "budget" category since you usually get what you pay for.
No true Scotsman would wear cosmetics!
"[...] and carbon credits and which politician is banging their stenographer."
;-p
They're called 'office assistants' now, get it right.
That... took a lot out of me.
Bleh "magically resolving" should be "magically resolve" and I'm sure there more typos.
Not enough sleep.
Goodnight.
While I was trying to think of good counter-argument to the possibility of a society where physical strength is subservient to mental prowess at all social levels, I started with the premise that such a balance would be untenable over time, then I remembered slavery. Considering the nature and outcome of such things as the Servile Wars and Helot rebellions, I have scuttled my own argument in that dimension. However, there is another aspect that is more difficult to assuage, namely the pressure and momentum of surrounding cultures and the nature of cultural exchange (and envy). Any such society would have had to have been very isolated, otherwise consistent interactions with patriarchies probably would have inspired the males therein to realize that their physiological strength would enable them to reset their society by simple force. At the same time surrounding societies would have potentially held them in disdain and dealt with them less fairly if not with outright hostility (there are modern and ancient examples of this, for the former it is known that the more heavily patriarchal societies in the Middle East have been bigoted in their relationships with female representatives of foreign governments and businesses. As an example of the latter, the Shang Dynasty was overthrown because it was considered to have become too 'feminized' and willing to accept women in roles that wielded political power). This would have put the culture at a competitive disadvantage with virtually all others, which over any reasonable length of time would have led to its ultimate collapse.
"Transphobia"? Wow, that actually got a laugh out of me. Let me be frank, I'm as close to being trans as a cis can be. I have been through years of psychiatric therapy for gender identity issues. I've come so close to transition that I was pricing homone treatments and working on vocal training regimens to try to find a voice for myself that I thought would pass (the fact that I couldn't contributed to my not transitioning, but like anything so radical the ultimate decision was a patchwork of far more serious reasons). To this day I have this nagging fear that I'm going to end up regretting my many-faceted cowardice as some kind of middle age crisis, and try to transition at a bad age, and end up hideous (if you don't transition while you're still growing somewhat, in your teens/twenties, but rather while you're aging wholesale... ugh... the results are... seriously unflattering).
Furthermore, while I don't conflate gender identity and expression with sexual identity and expression, I think it bears mentioning that I am also pansexual (if the whole "I like FtMs" wasn't a big enough clue, which apparently it wasn't).
So, with all that background being aired, you have to understand that my positions on gender identity are the result not simply of study and theory, though I have plenty of both, but from living with a personal gender identity problem all my life.
This is really quite a layer cake, and the potential to oversimplify is great. In the first place, all identity is ultimately self-selective. A person may suppress their own identity in favor of an appearance that conforms better to societal norms, but that to is ultimately a decision made by the self within a framework of cost-benefit analysis with regard to impact upon personal and professional relationships and goals. (This is assuming a modern liberal society, not a brutally oppressive one where "abnormal" gender behavior is criminal.)
The problem with an identity that is contrary to physiology is two-fold. First, the biological topology can be pushed and pulled and bent, but even with HRT and SRS it never fundamentally changes. An MtF is still going to need to be screened for prostate cancer, unlike any biological woman. Second, and more germane to the issue, is that a desire for a gender-specific mental/emotional/psychological development and end state are not the same as an actual intrinsic possession thereof. Many MtFs lament their lack of
I should thank that AC, whoever he was, but suffice to say this is a case of simple modernization of Amazon-esque mythology. The Greeks were neither the first nor the last to fantasize about a society of masculine women, but the source of the fantasy is almost always men for the implicit purpose of glorifying masculinity as something women would want to possess and express if they could only do so. (This foundational assumption of the Amazon mythos by extension eschews femininity as an expression that women would actually reject if only they could do so.) This fantasy has on occasion even been coaxed, by men, into reality. For example the Dahomey Amazons, who were a female military unit formed at the express desire of the king of the now-dissolved African state of Dahomey. (I grant that the scale is not analogous to a society.)
Now it's likely that people will mistakenly infer from my commentary that I believe in pigeonholing/stereotyping vices/virtues/behaviors by gender role. This could not be further from the truth, I think virtues and vices are universal, and that one of the primary barriers to understanding between genders is an unwillingness to embrace virtues considered to be 'across gender lines' or worse to marginalize or rationalize vices within one's own gender group as simply misunderstood by the other(s)*. However to assess the history of culture and society as it relates to gender, one often has to be able to see it through the lens of the majority, so to speak. Even if I don't agree with exulting or marginalizing gender roles/identities/expressions, it must be understood that these were the motivations (subconscious or otherwise) of the cultures which spawned these fictions and their sentiments.
I hope my dense ramblings have some merit for you, and I apologize if they are rather too pretentious or officious, but it's something I can't really turn off when I hit my 'academic' stride. I have to say I do rather appreciate your intellectual honesty in not merely accepting but expecting skepticism as the default response to claims. This is a rarity of character in anybody anymore, and you are admirable for it.
*I personally feel that MtF, FtM and "genderless" persons constitute separate genders, but at present they are so few in number within the population as to have very little noticeable effect. (Much to my own personal chagrin, as I have a weakness for MtFs like you wouldn't believe.) I also understand that this is frequently in direct opposition with the feelings and goals of transgendered persons who strive desperately to be accepted as the gender expression they emulate as their identity. While I am more concerned with realities than feelings, at the same time I think the sincerity of the effort deserves genuinely respectful treatment as though they were the emulated gender, but that is not the same thing as accepting as a fact of classification that they are the emulated gender. (They are not their "original" gender either.)
I don't think that women's predilection toward cooperative behavior is completely an effect of socio-political cause(s). As tired as thought experiments in evo-psych may be, you can see in other animals that gender roles do not require social structures, let alone civilizations. Humans and their primate ancestors doubtlessly had gender roles before both, and before the political power hierarchy established by civilization, the gender roles were pretty simple. Males provided physical protection, keeping mate(s) and offspring safe, females provided emotional protection, keeping family and tribal groups together for more competitive advantage.
When rudimentary civilization came along, based more often on brute force than deep cohesion, these roles were subverted. Physical strength was used to make women second class citizens at best and chattel or war prizes at worst (though the latter was probably always a problem, since humanity has long issues with extending in-family or in-tribe respect to 'the other' outsiders, who may even be viewed as sub-human regardless of gender... which leads to societies permissive of cannibalism and human sacrifice). This led to the subversion of women's social talents, which were now divided between nurturing and conniving, so as to be able to position themselves by playing people off each other, having no direct power to wield effectively.
The problem with your hypothetical culture of women who act like men is that it is a fantasy that has never been known to have existed in human history. The closest thing was probably Sparta (at its cultural peak), which was renowned for having women who were almost as rough and tough as Spartan men, and perhaps not coincidentally it is historically considered one of the most gender equal societies of the time, but at the end of the day it too was a patriarchy, and "more equal" is not equal, let alone a reversal. The whole concept of Amazons is a masculine conceit, which praises masculinity by holding 'masculine' women and a society created by them in awe and respect.
The point here is that the structured political hierarchies which led to the marginalization of women are fairly new social constructs in terms of the broader human history, having been present only a few thousand years. The biological imperatives, niches, and predispositions as they relate to human genders developed over tens of thousands of years, and those too were outgrowths of the development of hundreds of thousands of years of primate development. On these scales, social development is almost if not completely exclusively a function of subverting earlier biological tendencies. As another poster said above, cultures come from biology, specifically brains, and they reflect all of the hormones by which each gender is influenced.
China has frequently fractured into a patchwork of local states run by strongmen. This happened as recently as the 1920s during the Warlord Era, but has been happening every few centuries since the decline of the Zhou Dynasty. Besides this, China has been home to many minorities which have occasionally been independent. Tibet and Turkmenistan are the most obvious modern examples.
Russia effectively didn't exist until the collapse of the Mongol Empire(s), and could even be argued as a primary effect of the power vacuum created by that collapse after the previous consolidation. The Rus simply reconsolidated in an imperial conquest, and those holdings were reconsolidated a second (or third, depending on your perspective) time when the communists took over. However the identities of the locals were largely unaffected even over the centuries of Russian and earlier Mongol rule, which is what lead to the many breakaways after the USSR's collapse.
The take away to these lessons from history is that the 'empire' only lasts so long as the people at the core of it have the will and the power to rebuild it over and over. That is the case with China and Russia (to a far lesser extent). It *almost* happened with Rome, people are largely unaware that the Byzantine Empire was on the verge of a massive campaign to retake the West that was only scuttled by the cruel twist of the arrival of the plague from Asia. Hard to say how different history might have been if such an effort were successful.
Sort of like how the US has Alaska, one of largest, least-densely populated places on earth?
This of course ignores the fact that the US is fucking huge, and that (of course) half the states have population densities lower than the national average. Alaska is among the least dense territories on earth. The central US, especially the north, is especially sparse compared to the coasts.
Do you win a prize if you can find a Blockbuster store that hasn't shut down?
Considering the thousands of past and present porn stars I find that hard to believe. It sounds to me like you just don't know where to look.
You're conflating the grotesque with the impossible. Wholly natural development (and I'm not saying that magazine ad is natural) has produced some pretty bad things between glandular disorders, dietary deficiencies, and simple bad genes. For instance, just because dwarfism is not 'normal' and most people don't have the skeletal configuration of dwarfs does not mean that dwarfism is not natural, let alone impossible.
And yes, there are bad plastic surgeries, but in such cases there is a separation of the intended goal from the achieved result. Anything can be done badly.
I've never let sexuality be the primary driving force of my long term relationships. The most important thing is to find somebody with whom you want to spend time, and that they have the same feeling about you. Sex is great and all, but even in peak condition there's really only so much time to kill that way.
My exposure to porn started even before puberty, and I'm a living example how wrong such assumptions are about the corruption of minds with wild standards that can never be satisfied. It's really just as much nonsense as those people who say violent games make violent people. Violent games attract violent people, and porn attracts superficial people who are likely to objectify others. However, this does not mean that all people who play violent games are violent, or that all people who consume porn are superficial jerks who put physical appearance above more abstract personal values.
Is that you Buzzkillington? Who let you out of the 19th century? This being 2011, you don't see much hotness on 'the street' anymore. If you're lucky there's a five minute transition period where the sports car is handed over to the valet, and then they head to the VIP.
It just boils down to jealousy in the end. That predates photoshopping and airbrushing by millennia. The bell curve is a harsh and relentless force, and the 1% of people who are intrinsically more fit with better skin/hair etc. will always rise to be the inattainable physical standard. Boo hoo. People need to accept who they are and work with what they have. Anything else is irrational, and it is the job of parents to get that through to their children in spite of the overwhelming peer pressure herding them to the contrary.
What's the point in fantasizing about average girls? Fantasy is at its best when it is as far from real and achievable as possible... that's why it's fantasy. If you're really fantasizing about average girls you've never even met, you're probably deficient socially. Develop some social skills and get laid in real life.
If you think such things are 'anatomically impossible' I rather doubt you're a medical doctor. Aside from spherical boobs, both the goal and the result of plastic surgeries are generally such physical characteristics as can be found in nature but not in the patient. Plastic surgery did not invent the flat stomach or pouty lips or what-have-you.
And all you need for your fantasy scenario to actually happen is for fertility rates to freeze in place, which of course has never occurred in human history. Fertility rates have dropped in virtually every country on earth for the last half century. 76 countries have rates below replacement, and all the most populous nations have reduced the number of children per woman by 2-3 in the last half century. Real demographics analysis that doesn't artificially freeze key elements to create doomsday scenarios indicates that population growth is and will continue to level off. Population is likely to stabilize (if trends continue) at 9-13 billion.