I received some frightening news.
In the 15 years I've been this way, I tried to be a girly girl. Yet one time a woman said that she thought I was a Navy Seal. Another woman thought I'd done Black Ops. Not even in heels and a pink dress was I girly. :( Lately, I've decided that the transgender stuff was bunk, but there is no rewind. So now, I'm just ME, and that's fine. Still not wearing pants if I don't have to !!!
So, in my research in the last couple of days, Wiki says that I am a Eunuch, and that we usually live 15 to 20 years longer than intact males. Routinely we live to 100 years. Yikes!!! That may happen because I don't smoke or drink heavily, though I do have COPD but mine does not seem to be as severe as some have.
It seems that many Eunuchs in the Middle, Far East, and South Pacific dress as women. So, no change there...
It seems that the Asteroid Apophis might hit us in 2029, and if it doesn't it be back in 2037. It's around 1,000 feet in diameter, so perhaps if it does not hit a city, maybe it won't be too bad. I guess one recently came screaming in from around Texas and finally stopped in New Jersey after punching a hole in the trunk of a car. A football sized rock survived. It hit a plymouth. Should we call it Plymouth Rock?
Then there was Chelyabinsk, which came in from Kazakhstan and blew up south of Moscow. I am ashamed of the fact that many locals thought that America had attacked them. :(
Lastly there was the Tunguska Asteroid which was around 120 feet big. Had it hit a city, it would have killed many. This is such an uncertain world. Wish one of you would pick me up and take me out for a beer or three. No, I'm not driving.
Comments
Don't Worry About Apophos...
Subsequent observations of its orbit (more than ten years' worth) have eliminated the 2029 possibility and left the chance in 2036 at less than one in 150,000; it'd have to go through a "gravitational keyhole" in 2029 that's only 800 meters in diameter -- and Apophos is 400 meters wide. 2088 is still on the table, though -- at least until we see just how much its orbit gets perturbed by the 2029 and 2036 flybys.
Eric
Feynman's characterization...
... of one in 100,000 (in the context of the space shuttle) is that one could fly the space shuttle once a day for three hundred years and expect only one mishap. He also noted that only management had the idea that the space shuttle was that reliable. Engineers working on it gave it far less reliability.
Let's be clear, in this case it's the astronomers and astrophysicists who give us the number of one in 150,000 regarding the asteroid. This number is highly reliable.
-- Daphne Xu
Don't Spoil The Fun! :)
I was just having a bit of fun. I have the belief that if we get hit, it will be by something previously undetected. Perhaps one of those "Lurker Asteroids"?
Plymouth Rock?
Much better than Dodge Rock, don'tcha think?
What, exactly, is a "eunuch"?
It's funny you should use the word "eunuch." Some of the stuff I read goes into the history of the social construction of gender (Trans Like Me is one book), and one tidbit is that, whereas these days, "eunuch" means a castrated male, two millenia ago it meant any male person who had chosen a life that did not involve fathering children (which was the only aspect of sex that society cared about.) So it included men who had taken a vow of chastity, and it also included what we would nowadays call trans women.
The thing is, the constructs of gender that most people nowadays are convinced are eternal, unchanging and immutable fundamental parts of the fabric of reality have varied wildly over time, even in "western" culture. In our heads, we know that most, if not all, of the assertions that the transphobes bring out to hurt us with are purely ahistorical BS and nothing but rationalizations for their bigotry, but when you find out how different things were in other times and places, and see documented how people like us have existed as far back as we have any records (e.g., ancient Sumeria), I think it helps to actually feel how much we are and always have been an intrinsic part of humankind.
We exist. We have always existed. And we are the way we're supposed to be (aside from the maiming society has done to us.) As one person has said, "God don't make mistakes. You are the way God made you and intended you to be." It is not our duty to be what would be most convenient to society, our duty is to be what we were made to be.
Labels
re "I am ashamed of the fact that many locals thought that America had attacked them.": Dear Gwen, do not be ashamed for the locals buying the "bill of goods" that their leaders sold them?
re "Wiki says that I am a Eunuch": Apply labels with care. Without caution, you risk ascribing attributes of the (label) which are not present. At most, look at each attribute of concern and ask, "Does this attribute of (label) really apply to me?" Perhaps use the attributes as "check points" to help anticipate possible issues to be addressed, since the "issue" may not really exist in the case at hand.
The risk magnifies if we apply labels to others. It leads to prejudging them for what the label expects rather than what they really are.
For now, you are what you are. You are a good and caring person. I like you.
[Dismounting my nonagenarian soapbox]
Sara
Between the wrinkles, the orthopedic shoes, and nine decades of gravity, it is really hard to be alluring. My icon, you ask? It is the last picture I allowed to escape the camera ... back before most BC authors were born.