I can’t get my head around this.
Essentially, Ashley X is a three-month old child mentally, despite her physical age of nine years, thanks to brain damage of some sort.
Her parents and the medical team at Seattle Children’s Hospital decided, when Ashley was six, to pursue a course of treatment to ensure that her body remained essentially childlike for the rest of her life. According to The Gaurdian this involved removing her “uterus to prevent fertility, excision of early buds on her chest so that she would not develop breasts, and medication with high doses of oestrogen to limit her growth by prematurely fusing the growth plates of her bones”.
Continue reading ‘Discussion Post’
I came across a fascinating and disturbing story the other day. At the turn of last century, when ‘radium’ was being promoted for its health giving properties, an American inventor, William J. Hammer, created a glow in the dark paint. The secret ingredient of his ‘Undark’ paint was radium salt crystals, and Undark was used by the US Radium Corporation to make watch dials and other bits and peices with glowing faces, which could be easily read by infantrymen during the war.
This tells exactly what happened to the primarily female workers of the US Radium Corporation. I bet you can see what’s coming, can’t you?
Continue reading ‘Radium Girls’
A little while ago, I was interviewed by Kathy Fox from feminist online magazine Wo! Magazine about blogging, feminism, and the intersections between the two. I spoke mostly in general terms, but I also mentioned LP as a site that offers a more gender equitable space than many of the ‘big boy’ political blogs.
Anyway, there’s lots of interesting reading in this issue of Wo! Magazine and I’d encourage anyone with an interest in feminist discussions in Australia to head on over there and have a read.
However, given recent discussions here about the nature of blogging and the intersection of the personal and political, I thought I’d reproduce my comments below the fold:
Continue reading ‘So just what is ‘political’ anyway?’
Today’s deep and meaningful question: how is it that Ruth Ostrow continues to have paid regular employment as an ‘advice’ columnist?
From this weekend’s Orstrayan Magazine, we have this question in the Modern Dilemma section:
My Boss has offered me a promotion but it seems my first task will be to sack two junior staff members, with whom I am good friends. What should I do?
Ostrow’s reply is a doozy:
Continue reading ‘A thousand monkeys on a thousand keyboards and Ruth Ostrow’
Over at Footpath Zeitgeist, where Mel cooly dissects the ‘meaning’ of certain hipster fashion trends, she has a post about whether certain fashion items can or should be called silly or labelled ‘bad taste’. By dismissing some fashion as inherently stupid, Mel says:
We’re not only creating arbitrary categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste; we’re also creating a bogeyman of ‘bad taste’ — saying that it doesn’t follow the same embodied, pragmatic and affective processes that ‘good taste’ does. That it can only be observed with farcical incredulity and that people with ‘bad taste’ are fundamentally retarded in some way because they aren’t ashamed of the way they look.
Continue reading ‘A short post on clothing that went awry’
I often have nightmares about turning up for work when no-one else is there, or being invited to a party and being the only person showing up, or not being able to find the place I’m going to and so getting desperately lost somewhere unfamiliar. So I arrive at Southbank on Thursday morning with my notebook worrying about if I am in the right place and at the right time and double-checking all my printed-out notes and bits and pieces to ensure I haven’t stuffed up my itinerary or gone to the wrong venue.
The white marquees along the riverbank emblazoned with ‘Brisbane Writer’s Fesitval’ are a good sign; however, as is a general milling about of bespectacled literary-looking people, so I relax. Coffee. Biscuit. Plan.
Continue reading ‘At the Brisbane Writers Festival’
Going to the Brisbane Writer’s Festival, Part One
I haven’t been to Brisbane in seven years. Last time I was there we — my three best friends from uni; Heather, Carolyn, Marc, and I — drove up from Armidale in a battered old Ford Falcon. We stayed at a backpackers on Roma street and drank vodka and bummed cigarettes from Irish boys. We went to Livid at the Showgrounds and drank more and smoked more, and got lost and danced in the moshpit and found each other at the end of the night, stoned, drunk, tired, ecstatic.
The next day we drove back the ‘Dale — or we tried to, but the old Falcon broke down somewhere on a freeway. We sat by the side of the road in the sun while we waited for roadside assistance. They turned up and announced that we wouldn’t be going anywhere that day but they could fix it by tomorrow.
I called my uncle on a payphone and he came and got us and took us back to the Backpackers. We were all broke and the trip had turned grim, and Marc was moodily considering the cost of his broken down car. More than Austudy could provide for.
Continue reading ‘Memories of Brisbane’
Last night I finally went and saw Jindabyne, Ray Lawrence’s new film. My verdict: not as good as Lantana and I am a bit ambivalent about the way the film ended. I was also curious about the significance of the bee in the very last scene and I wondered if there were Aboriginal cultural references I was missing?
I also saw an ad for the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and it gave me the shivers. Not in a good way, of course. And it’s hard to imagine Al Gore as anything other than rather drab and earnest, so a whole movie about Al Gore talking about global warming is no doubt going to be a huge downer. Though Gore can be funny and self-deprecating: witness his turns on Futurama (youtube link) and SNL.
And finally: Snakes on a Plane is nearly here! From this review at The Village Voice:
Continue reading ‘Wednesday Movie Post (Rated M15+ For Language)’
So the PM claims sole responsibility for his government when it comes to Australia’s economic growth but won’t wear any blame at all when it comes to possible interest rate rises?
Right. So positive economic growth is all about what the government does, while negative economic factors have nothing to do with the government at all. Instead, it’s all about the bananas. Or am I missing something?
I’m a bit of a nimby when it comes to matters nuclear. This story in the SMH accompanying the pieces about the so-called ‘nuclear debate’ highlights some of the issues I have with nuclear power: that we humans are too fallible, as individuals and as a species, to deal with nuclear waste.
Continue reading ‘Glow in the dark roquefort!’
I mentioned in a throw-away comment downthread that whenever I’ve had my heart broken I’ve found myself listening to Nick Cave. Specifically, Are you the one I’ve been waiting for?, which has to be one of the soppiest songs Cave has ever penned.
Yes, I know lying in the dark playing Nick Cave post-break-up is one of those dreadful Gen X cliches that should best be avoided, but I haven’t had my heart broken since the late ’90s when I was a soppy university student reading Sylvia Plath and wearing long droopy dresses with Doc Martens. In those days I had my heart broken about once a month, and so my Nick Cave CD was pretty much the only thing I listened to. Good times.
Anyway, Jason Soon mentioned Lucinda Williams’ Those Three Days as being the ultimate in break-up music (lyrics below), which I think is an excellent suggestion.
Any other ideas for the ultimate break-up song or mixtape?
Continue reading ‘Break-up Songs’
Jim Schembri gives us what I’m sure he thinks is the most cutting satire on blogging, like, ever!!!!!
I’d love to give you, like, my totally uncensored and totally relevant opinion on this — because, there’s no EDITORS crushing my independent spirit, take that opressive media corporations — and it’ll be, like, totally controversial and ground-breaking. It’s, like, the new literature man!!!! And I don’t give a rat’s arse if you’re not interested, because this is my Hunk O’Blog. I don’t care whose nose I put out of joint. FACT-CHECKING IS FOR LOSERS!! !! !! !! Blogtastic! (Oh, and BUM!)
Come back tomorrow when I put up my totally unique and controversial post about Jim Schembri!!! Vive la blogolution baby!!!!!! I’d love to hear from you!!!!!
Commentor Tigtog is, it turns out, yet another excellent blogger and *gasp* feminist. Welcome to the Borg Sisterhood, Tigtog! You’ll find LP is a comfy place for a feminist, though we do have to occasionally form a ravening pack of howling she-wolves and eviscerate our enemies engage with the odd slightly misguided person who thinks feminism is synonomous with manhating and cultural relativism and hairy legs and the like.
Tigtog is organising an April Fool’s Day Picnic this Sunday at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney and she would like to invite any and all bloggers to attend. From 1pm, and the bloggers will be meeting on the lawn area at the east side of the main pond (in the centre of Farm Cove). Tigtog suggests bloggers bring “some comestibles and rugs/chairs.” Children are also welcome. More information plus photos of the spot here. It looks like Morgspace and Tim Lambert will also be attending.
Tigtog also linked to this blog about Cyclone Larry and its aftermath, and this particularly satisfying evisceration take-down of Miranda Devine’s heart-warming assertion that people who affected by Cyclone Larry should just shut up and stop complaining about how they just got hit by a Category 5 cyclone:
Continue reading ‘Meta + Miranda Hates on Larry Victims’
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