I'm in a somewhat similar situation. I just learned that I have liver cancer, and it's pretty much a coin toss whether I'll see the end of the year or not. Fortunately, I have friends who take care of my three dogs but, unfortunately, they live 3,5 hours away. They're here for Easter, and as I write this they're…

Drinking and any sort of unhealthy lifestyle makes anyone look like old hags, bet they women or men. :-)

And Norway was under the rule of Denmark since the 1500s, and then we got traded off to the Swedes. And Terje Vigen rowed in a small rowboat from Grimstad (just 20 kilometres from where I live) to Denmark and back to get three barrels of barley for his starving family, because of the Napoleonic Wars and the English…

OK, the things you're telling me now changes my perception of your friend. Religion. Gangs. Gangbanging. Drinking. Quitting school.

Your friend, despite all of her imperfections, is a unique person who relates to the world around her as she sees it. She has issues, but so has each and everyone of us to some exent.

So, I'm Norwegian. Norway was under Danish rule for hundreds of years, and then we were traded off to Sweden. I can assure you that the leading European countries, the ones that colonised countries around the world, never identified with us or other insignificant European nations. They looked at themselves as…

OK, I'm about to give up, so this is my last post.

Aaand I STILL would love to know how every country in Europe is to blame for colonialism.

I'm a sociopath. Of all your opinions, that one tells me everything I need to know about you and your ability to debate anything.

Well, starvingjurno, I don't know why I bothered to answer your first post, where you called me a sociopath. You have such a way with words, don't you? I bet you're proud of your superior language skills.

Aaaand I still would like to know how all of Europe is to blame for colonialism.

This isn't a question of "if-or", it's a question of how women as individuals feel the need to live up to an ideal, whatever that might be. I opted to have "some doctor cutting holes in me" to get my B-cup breast size back after dieting. Doesn't mean that I aspire to measure up to the ideals that I AM bombarded with.…

What I'm saying is that I can't fix racism, because I can't speak for women of colour. I don't know a single feminist who states that they want gender equality but not for non-whites. Nor do I know any feminists who believe that racism doesn't exist.

I've been reading this exchange with fascination, because I don't see why every person who identifies with a movement - in this case, feminism - has to explisitly include all aspects that are related to it.

"For those of us who were colonized by Europeans"

I am a woman with chest implants, and it's not for reconstruction. I didn't like my breasts. They looked like sagging, half deflated bags after I lost weight. Then I gained weight again (as one so often does) but my breasts remained the same. So I got implants to make me feel better about my physical appearance. Not…

I guess it's correct to say that tattoos have always been outside the norm, at least in western history, but that's not to say that the tattoo-loving fringe groups were always society's outsiders. Here's an interesting article on the popularity of tattoos in the upper classes of Britain (including Edward VII).

Thank you. To bring this back in the direction of the original topic, I wonder how many children develop respiratory problems due to air pollution and unhealthy houses. I don't often hear of kids getting pneumonia, but asthma and allergies are fairly widespread here in Norway. Probably not because of air pollution,…

I definitely don't have the symptoms of bacterial pneumonia, like you describe them. I've never had any sort of pneumonia before, but I do have a respiratory condition where, at the end of a regular cold, I start coughing violently. This can go on for anywhere between a week and six months, and it's a result of having…

I'm currently suffering from (a rather mild case of) pneumonia, and my doctor told me to stay away from children, the elderly, and people with respiratory problems. I opted to not take antibiotics as long as the fever doesn't return, and I'm staying at home for a week so as not to pass it on to my coworkers. Pneumonia…