Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind.

You can't just add up all the pleasures and subtract the pains, or add up all the accomplishments and subtract the failures, or add up all the knowledge and subtract the ignorance and deception.

It was an ultimate attempt to divert the direction in which the earth was heading, a way of interrupting cycles of ignorance and destruction which kept on repeating themselves.

The British envoy was represented as bearing tribute to the Son of Heaven, and his refusal to kowtow was put down to outlandish ignorance.

But our minds are not evolved to think about strangers, and we obsess,needlessly, about what people think of us and how these insults will diminish us in the eyes of others.