Getting it on and on and on

The New York Times has a piece titled 'The Shelf Life of Bliss', on the proverbial itch that may or may not occur after a period of 7 years. Or more. Or less.

This has always struck me as an odd concept. I probably first encountered it in Cosmopolitan magazine, that fount of information on all the sex and relationships my teenage self wasn't having. The subject came up with perhaps more relevance in college. Gam was warned by a senior male resident not to move out with me because people who did always got sick of each other within 6 months, and besides, it would cramp his style and prevent him from bringing home a different woman every night. Or something like that. Gam thought it was very funny. We discussed the subject of a 'honeymoon period' and how we would know if it was over, and what it might mean. At that time we were pretty much having sex constantly- missing classes and frustrating any friends who thought we should also be having a social life. The idea that at some arbitrary point the feelings we had for each would start to dim was laughable. It still is.

“There is not necessarily anything magical about year three,” Professor Musick said. “We know that typically when marriages end in divorce, half end before seven or so years and half end after. This is the same idea.”

At a bit over 5 years, I suppose we can say for certain that there definitely isn't some magical dissolution of love and lust after 3. A cynic might say we're not yet at the magic number. I think the more likely reason for myth of the lucky number 7 is that a lot of people have a culturally-based expectation that love must by necessity lead to marriage, and a great many also confuse the initial heady chemical reaction of lust for love. By the time it wears off, they have a ring on their finger and may well be raising a kid or two. They do their best to conform to society's expectations, finally realise they can't bear the idea of spending the rest of their life with this person and decide to call it quits.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the findings have some foundation.

Bart Blasengame, a 33-year-old freelance writer from Portland, Ore., was with his former fiancée for three years. “I felt like, by year three, we were both forcing it,” he recalled.

“It’s the whole cliché of pursuit,” he said. “Your dates are planned out like some Drew Barrymore romantic comedy with unicorns and rainbows. By year two, we were cruising along, living together, relatively happy. But from a growth standpoint things had started to atrophy. We were happy, content is a better word, but there was no spark.”

There is a very fairytale aura around our culture's perception of love and marriage. The idea that a ring on a finger, a solid commitment, acts as an 'off' switch for the same biochemical factors that led to our first highschool crush, the first sexual experience, sexual fantasies and any other attractions, is a myth. A harmful one at that. The realisation that relationships aren't exactly like a Hollywood romantic comedy and the experience of sexual desire for a person other than one's partner may lead people, wrongly, to question the relationship.



I think these kind of myths underlie, for example, the negative response that many women have to a male partner's use of pornography for masturbation- the idea that sexual attraction to another woman is equal to sexual infidelity. Or the 'office romance', where proximity between two co-workers leads to the magnetic first attraction, leading them to wonder if problems exist in their home relationship that have somehow driven them to have feelings for another person. Perhaps they look for problems where there were none, or perhaps they look for problems that suddenly loom a lot larger when they provide an apparent answer for a culturally manufactured question. The real answer lies in human biology and the drive for sex.

But a dissipation of that all-enveloping rapture is no reason to give up on a relationship, many people insist.

“At times, sure, I’m bored,” said Sean Meehan, 51, a therapist from West Hartford who has been married for 14 years. “Who isn’t? But you talk about it with your spouse and you can switch things up.”

That's the sort of solution that is only effective for a relationship that is fundamentally workable. Plenty are not. I'm sure I'm not alone in having found a guy attractive and yet known that never in a million years would I find them suitable for a long term relationship. Not every relationship is workable or worthwhile maintaining, and plenty of unhappy marriages have continued under the impression that this is somehow the case.

Paul D. Neuthaler, a divorce mediator in Westchester, said: “The fizzle tends to bubble out within a three- to five-year period when the basis for the marriage was purely physical or related to some attraction not closely associated with each partner’s essential character.”

I think that pretty much nails it. A relationship without a strong inherent sexual attraction might be a chore, but a relationship where one partner displays character traits or morals unacceptable to the other is going to be downright repulsive.

Permanent link to article here.

Rise of the eco-wanker

"Who needs a $100 organic cotton singlet anyway?"

The fact that an article such as this appears in the Style section of the New York Times says it all, really.

Things become cool and desirable when they are elevated beyond the reach of ordinary people. That is essentially what's happened with the eco-conscious products and services that are currently experiencing surging market share in their various categories.

Then comes the bandwagoning, with shows like Better Homes and Gardens proclaiming that after the next ad break they'll tell you how to reduce your carbon dioxide output as long as you promise not to turn off your plasma screen TV. No-one ever said the bogan noveau-riche couldn't become eco-wankers too.

After saturation of the masses is reached, fashion moves on. Rather than moving with it, the real challenge might be to abandon it:

“The assumption that by buying anything, whether green or not, we’re solving the problem is a misperception,” said Michael Ableman, an environmental author and long-time organic farmer. “Consuming is a significant part of the problem to begin with. Maybe the solution is instead of buying five pairs of organic cotton jeans, buy one pair of regular jeans instead.”

Or, instead of forking out for an eco-friendly hybrid car, take up walking or cycling. Replacing most car trips that are within walking distance of the home is probably better for the environment than forking out for a new car (for which the environmental costs of manufacture never seem to be taken into account), not to mention better for the bank balance.

“After you buy the compact fluorescent bulbs,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, “you can move on to greater goals like banding together politically to shut down coal-fired power plants.”

It's touching to see such childlike optimism, but compact fluorescent bulbs aren't exactly a magical political motivator that will make people vote according to common sense rather than fear and/or avarice.

John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, argued that green consumerism has been a way for Wal-Mart shoppers to get over the old stereotypes of environmentalists as “tree-hugging hippies” and contribute in their own way.

This is crucial, he said, given the widespread nature of the global warming challenge. “You need Wal-Mart and Joe Six-Pack and mayors and taxi drivers," he said. “You need participation on a wide front.”

Environmentalists are still seen as tree-hugging hippies and will continue to be seen as tree-hugging hippies. 'Environmentalist' has become a tainted word, and it is never mentioned in conjunction with the new eco-wanker movement. Joe Sixpack wants to be Bono, not David Suzuki.

None of this is to say that it's not better to buy 'green' alternatives when purchasing a product. But a lot more good could be done if people stopped to ask themselves whether they needed said product in the first place. Deciding against keeping up with the Joneses is not only more eco-friendly but it might go some way to reducing the $1 trillion in household debt that Australians have managed to accumulate.

Permanent link to article here.

Obsessed With Porn

Strangely preoccupied with certain things...

THE porn industry has denied that its mail-order product is fuelling problems in the Northern Territory as calls grow to have the supply of X-rated material restricted across Australia.

The chief executive of the Eros Foundation, the adult industry's peak lobby group, Fiona Patten, said the ACT's legal pornography industry was unlikely to be part of the problem in the Northern Territory.

As the federal Government moved to restrict the circulation of X-rated pornography in the Northern Territory as part of its crackdown on indigenous child abuse, Ms Patton said only 144 orders were received from the Territory by the largest mail and internet order company last year.

The stance has enraged former Nationals leader John Anderson, who says it is "mind-boggling" that the industry and the ACT Government claimed pornography was not causing harm.

"What these people who march across bridges in urban areas need to do is think about what Noel Pearson says: ask the children whether they want some paternalism when they are cowering under the tables," he said.

Ms Patten said the largest of two main companies made $17,000 from sales -- which could include material other than pornographic films or magazines -- to the Northern Territory last year.

The 144 orders to the Territory last year compared with 4686 for NSW, 4057 for Queensland, 2336 for South Australia, 949 for Tasmania, 3292 for Victoria and 5950 for Western Australia.

She said some of the orders were for multiple DVDs.

Ms Patten said reports that pornographic films were being watched "all day" in some indigenous communities probably referred to adult channels freely available via satellite TV, which she said featured R-rated rather than X-rated material.

The Howard Government is looking at ending the Northern Territory's liberal censorship laws, which allow for the sale of X-rated material. It is also looking at restricting the supply of similar material out of the ACT, which has a large mail-order business.

The Australian, caution: rots brain if read enough.

So what does it take to order porn through the mail?

1) Internet access. They don't send out catalogues, you need to log on to their websites and order there. You also need a computer.

2) A credit card. You gotta pay for your porn.

3) A fixed address. Duh.

4) At least $24.

Once your porn arrives you have to watch it.

1) A TV

2) A DVD player

3) A place to use both.

I'm having some real trouble with the idea of people living 20 to a house with no electricity accomplishing this. Something tells me that very few of those 144 orders to the NT went anywhere out of Darwin.

On the other hand there's probably plenty of porn readily available right there. Fine publications such as Kerry Packer's The Picture is readily available at newsagents, petrol stations and convenience stores countrywide. It (usually) doesn't even come wrapped in plastic. Within its glossy pages you can read about:

"Gemma's super smoo",

"Sisters doing it to themselves"

and a "mother daughter strip off".

It costs around $3 to buy. Of course it's a nice little earner for PBL, through ACP, being "Australia´s biggest-selling men´s magazine, boasting audit figures that dwarf all others in the field." We all know that internet adult retailers don't support the Libs anyway. I wouldn't expect to see it on the ban list or featuring in John Anderson's loopy rants. A man who 7 years ago was saying things like:

"Community opinion against a treaty will harden as people learn more about what it would contain and I am concerned that continuing advocacy for such a document will do real harm to reconciliation," Mr Anderson said.

"A treaty must be removed from the agenda or Aboriginal leaders risk dividing the nation in an acrimonious debate about issues that should not be on the agenda if we are serious about improving the lot of indigenous Australians."

Who now all of a sudden cares so very much about Indigenous Australians, especially relieving them of the onerous burden of their land rights. So much for the party of 'individual freedom and personal responsibility'. More like a pack of land grabbing, nanny state, agrarian bolsheviks.

Entertainment by Google Analytics

Some of the latest keyword searches that landed at VTAY:

do women sniff mens used pants [Random or partner-specific panty-sniffing, I wonder? 'Boxer brief sniffing' doesn't have the same ring... I'm picturing women opening up a laundrette just so they can surreptitiously sniff their male clients' used pants!]

pygmy goat gay [another one??? Am I missing something?]

barley leagal [yes, really spelled like that]

women armpit nice to smell [maybe they are]

how to inform parents of atheism [sounds sort of like coming out- I suppose both are difficult if you have religious nutbag parents]

bellybutton torture [thanks MB!]

urethra penetration [thanks Larry!]

pube styling [last time it was 'male pube styling'- I'm starting to think there's a serious dearth of good pube styling advice out there... if nutrition doesn't work out I can always reinvent myself as a pube styling guru]

ikea shit for dickheads music brisbane [I've no idea what they were after, but they don't sound happy]

12 different variations on a keyword search for pictures of a pantiless Nicole Trunfio in this month's Playboy.
75 different keyword searches containing 'lara bingle'. 75! My favourite two are 'lara bingle vagina' and 'was there only one lara bingle nude'.

UPDATE: I just thought of another favourite- 'pictures of assophagus in the body'. Clearly they were looking for 'oesophagus' (or esophagus, for americans), but instead wound up at a very educational post by Gam in which they would have discovered that an 'assophagus' is a distinct possibility in the future of many smokers.

Hating women

I was reading an interview by Hannah Poole with Dita Von Teese in the Guardian earlier today. Here's an excerpt:

Can you be a feminist and a burlesque performer?

Having your own choices, having equal rights - how is it not being feminist?

But you are encouraging people to see women as objects.

How am I being objectified more than an actress? When they sit down and they make a deal about their role in a film, the attorney says: "If we see a nipple, how much is that worth? If we see her butt, how much is that worth? Full-frontal nudity, what's that worth?" It's worked out to the dime. How is that different?

Where do you draw the line?

I have done a lot of things - I've made erotic films, I've posed nude, I've danced nude.

Isn't there something tragic about all that?

Yes, I think there definitely can be, and that was all part of burlesque too. Not every burlesque dancer was Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand. There was maybe some prostitution involved at some point.

I hate the whole idea of burlesque clubs.

Have you been to one?

No. I don't want to encourage it.

Well that's OK. If you saw it, then you might see some things that you liked and some things that you didn't like.

I hate the women that go. I feel they are letting the side down.

I have more female fans than male fans - maybe they go home and dance around for their boyfriend. It's harmless. What makes one person feel completely empowered makes another person completely degraded. Have you been to a strip club before?

No, again, I don't want to encourage that either.

Charming. So many self-professed feminists love to proclaim the superiority of their choices above those of other women, and hold to a belief system that degrades women who make choices they disapprove of.

Photo at top is from Flaunt magazine via Fleshbot.

Who do you trust?

Trust the Daily Telecrap or the SMH?
Alan Jones or Mike Carlton?

No, it's not a John Howard post, though god knows that particular rhetorical question is well past its use-by date.

There's an item in the SMH today by Darren Levin questioning whether we can 'trust' the content of blogs in the same way we can trust in the mainstream media.

Trust? As in the kind of trust we have that the information we're provided with on the nightly news is correct every time? Trust that if they get it wrong they'll make time for a correction the following night? Trust that we won't consistently be fed material that's highly biased in favour of a particular interest? Or trust that we have to gather information from as many different media outlets as possible in order to gain a better picture of the real situation?

Or, are we talking about 'trust' in the mainstream media professional bile-spewers like Miranda Devine, Paul 'Miracle Water' Sheehan, Janet Albrechtson, Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair et al., who often write misleading columns based on junk information or flat out lies? Many of them have blogs. Are we to trust their columns in the paper but not their blog? Or are their blogs especially trustworthy simply by virtue of their authors' employment in the mainstream media?

Of blogs, Levin writes:

Populated by anyone with a viewpoint and an internet connection, it's a daily ping-pong match of unfiltered opinion. But without the traditional checks and balances of mainstream media, can we really trust what's being said?

The short answer is no. The long answer is that only a moron would trust someone's opinion rather than the quality of the information that supports it, and that even the 'traditional checks and balances' that supposedly exist in the mainstream media have let the public down often enough for anyone with half a brain to maintain a healthy sense of scepticism of anything they read.

UPDATE: Anonymous Lefty and Bekk have responded to the article by Levin.

Cool Stuff

Rocks. Not as good as the comics though. Must get my hands on them.

Look harder, Mr Anderson

This is what hetero marriage is all about...

Magic Bellybutton pointed her readers in the direction of a post by The Gay Curmudgeon that aimed to help our sadly ignorant former Deputy PM identify those now widely publicised areas of Australian law that discriminate against gay and lesbian couples. The Gay Curmudgeon suggested that everyone should send Mr Anderson a copy of the report so he can bring himself up to date on the facts. I thought this was a pretty good idea, so I used the text of TGC's letter as a form response to John Anderson, attached the HREOC report to the email and added a small response of my own at the end:

To: John.Anderson.MP@aph.gov.au
Subject: Found: the missing rights for gay and lesbian aussies

Hi John,

In a June 21st 2007 article in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled "Entsch to push for Gay rights," you were quoted making the following comments regarding civil rights for gay and lesbian Australians (underline emphasis added):

However, former Nationals leader John Anderson was sceptical about whether gays and lesbians should be given more rights.

"It depends what they mean by rights," Mr Anderson told reporters.

"I think I have to say that I think there ought to be positive discrimination in favour of traditional marriages.

"Beyond that in other areas I think it's a matter of pointing out, apart from anything else, that I find it very hard to identify any rights that they don't have."

Along with some other helpful souls, I'm pleased to be able to help you identify just some of the rights that gay and lesbian Australians don't have today. I've attached for your immediate attention the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Report entitled "Same-sex: Same Entitlements" which covers only financial and work-related rights and entitlements that are denied to gay and lesbian couples and their children.

Pay particular attention to page 389 where the 58 legal instruments that create these inequalities and require your attention are laid out in full.

Please note, I'm getting married in the 'traditional' fashion in the not-too-distant future, and I don't feel the future of my married relationship will be impinged upon in any way if my gay friends are given the right to do exactly what I'm doing. What exactly is it that keeps you up at night regarding the impact that a couple of queers getting hitched will have on your marriage? I've yet to see this phenomenon explained by the gay-marriage-phobes, and I'm genuinely curious. If you're uncomfortable answering then perhaps your friends John Howard and Tony Abbott might be willing to help out.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Today's Apathetic Youth

Don't you just love that line about 'positive discrimination'? Great party line, that. Pity it's a load of bullshit.

Enough with the 'poodle' jokes

George Bush has finally got wind of the fact that Tony Blair has been ridiculed as being Bush's poodle since he followed panting after the US when it invaded Iraq. Now, Tony has spent the last months of his Prime Ministership desperately trying to create a 'legacy' for himself in which there is no room for the "I word".

"I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle," the president said of Blair, who has been heavily criticised in Britain for his decision to stand by the United States first in its invasion of Iraq in 2003, and later in its refusal to criticise Israel for its bombing of Lebanon last summer."He's bigger than that.

I take that to mean that Blair is perhaps not the toy poodle he is often depicted as in the cruel cartoons featured in newspapers around the world. Rather, he is one of the larger standard poodles.

That would make John Howard a toy poodle, I suppose.

As for the above photo, the blogger I pinched it from put it perfectly:

I was going to take it upon myself to Photoshop this little bugger, but I decided not to. It would make this political, and also, it is too easy. So enjoy.

Belladonna's extras

Fleshbot has a short post up on Belladonna, after her 'dirtiest girl award' win at the Erotica L.A. FAME awards.

People are fascinated by the idea of Belladonna, often commenting to her that they watch the Behind the Scenes footage from her movies before they watch the movies themselves.

"What does that tell you?" I asked.

"That people really like me?" she suggested.

It's so true- the extras (interviews, extra footage and the like) in Belladonna's DVDs really show a lovely, human aspect that you just don't get with the gonzo-style porn that makes up most of the DVD content. I find a lot of her stuff just too extreme (in the sports sense of the word, not in the prudish sense) to be sexy. Like she's going for gold in the bloody anal olympics or something- she's got to be one step ahead of everyone else in the business (which is no doubt true). On the other hand, she has relatively good taste in women (read: her movies lack the preponderance of fake blonde, fake breasted pornidentikit types that are so common in porn), and she comes across as having bucketloads of personality.

Melbourne people will be able to see her at SEXPO later this year. Brisbane SEXPO, meanwhile, has never managed anything more than the aforementioned pornidentikit types. Boo.

Holiday food

Being on holidays means I have more time for baking and trialling recipes from my latest cookbook. Since exams finished I've successfully baked the tomato and anchovy tart (my only modification to the recipe being a handful of organic unprocessed wheat bran to the shortcrust pastry), an orange and almond cake (not the flourless one, rather a modified version of the almond cake on p285), and a cherry frangipane.


The frangipane was technically successful, but Gam wasn't too keen on the morello cherries. I would have used blueberries but they're currently $13 a punnet at the fruit shop, and frozen blueberries are always sour and gross. Probably ok in cooking, I suppose.



My other criticism was of the pastry- I love a good sweet shortcrust pastry, but the 'sweetcrust' recipe in every day in the kitchen is not particularly short or sweet. It does hold together very well, though, and to be fair, it's just a matter of preference- Gam really liked the pastry. So I believe I can improve on the frangipane recipe. Gam suggested making a mixed-berry sauce from frozen berries and swirling it through the frangipane mixture after filling the pastry shell, which sounds worth a try.

I won't be making it again in a hurry, though. The pastry plus the frangipane filling used up the better part of a 500g block of butter. Better give our arteries a rest and stick to 'healthy' cake for a while...

Shrek this

Consumer advocacy group The Parents Jury have decreed that Shrek the Third-branded food products are currently the worst example of junk food marketing aimed at children. I would say they're right.

Since the movie was released (or perhaps even before), there have been massive displays of Shrek-branded food products in the local Coles Toowong supermarket. Early on, they even had the green footprints on the floor. All of it was junk food, and a vast array of it at that. There's no way a parent could have taken a route through the supermarket that ensured avoidance of the Shrek promotions- they were everywhere, starting right at the supermarket entrance. Try switching that one off, Tony Abbott. The only way a parent could avoid the pester-power is by leaving their kid at home, and that's quite often impossible.

If we'd been really principled I suppose we would have refused to buy the Shrek-edition Crispy M&Ms... instead we just grumped about it and bought them anyway. Bitches.

The 25 million commandments

"Join my cult, kids!"

Showing he's got his priorities right as fucked up as possible, John Howard announces another $25 million funding to provide Australian schools with a chaplain. What the hell is up with pouring public money into the pockets of christian churches at a time when fewer and fewer Australians identify as christians?

If he really has $25 million to splash around, why not spend it on qualified counsellors, as the Greens have suggested?

US 'insurgent' murder oopsie.

On SBS news a few nights ago was coverage of an incident in which the US claimed to have killed 17 'Al-Qaeda gunmen' in the village of al-Khalis, north of Baquba. The US military had provided media outlets with footage of the dead bodies of those who they claimed were the Al-Qaeda militants.

Gam said to me, "How can they even tell?". The bodies looked like ordinary people. There were no weapons visible, no rocket launchers.

It turns out they were ordinary people.

On 22 June the US military announced that its attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen who had been trying to infiltrate the village of al-Khalis, north of Baquba[...]

The item was duly carried by international news agencies and received widespread coverage, including on the BBC News website.

But villagers in largely-Shia al-Khalis say that those who died had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They say they were local village guards trying to protect the township from exactly the kind of attack by insurgents the US military says it foiled.

They say that of 16 guards, 11 were killed and five others injured - two of them seriously - when US helicopters fired rockets at them and then strafed them with heavy machinegun fire.

Minutes before the attack, they had been co-operating with an Iraqi police unit raiding a suspected insurgent hideout, the villagers said.

What we get fed in the nightly news is directly and uncritically reported straight from the US military press releases. Propaganda. It's only when there's someone left alive to tell the tale that the media is able to occasionally patch up their coverage. There ought to be a disclaimer on every such broadcast.

Looks Like We'll be Voting Liberal...

Where did our river go? That's right, it belongs to Multiplex now!

Ugh.

At the next state elections and only as a second preference. Still, god damn you Peter Beattie and your mob of crooked, bought off kleptocrats for making us do this. We've talked about the North Bank eyesore that the govt. has sold the river to Multiplex to rape. Like you don't have enough money and power already. Leave the river alone, bastards.

Why are we the only QLD bloggers talking about this? There are plenty of Queenslanders and Brisbanites who read this blog. Come on, make a post that we can link to!

Do you want to live here?



Or here?

The rehabilitation of Alex Hawke

I wouldn't have thought that the Sydney Morning Herald would be the place we'd see the beginnings of the rehabilitation of that creepy fellow pictured above, the far-right Liberal and extremist consort Alex Hawke.

The presumed religious zealotry of Clarke and Hawke has prompted controversy. But it is a misinterpretation of what brings them together. Clarke is Catholic; Hawke was raised an Anglican who occasionally is attracted to Hillsong's happy clapping.

Damien Murphy presumes that the proclaimed Catholic and Anglican religions of Clarke and Hawke make them somehow religiously incompatible and serves to distance Hawke from Clarke. That extremism isn't a religion in and of itself. For many politicians, their religion is just a label to help them attain a sense of respectability. John Howard isn't very christian in his attitudes towards refugees, something that puts him more at odds with many protestants than it does with Tony Abbott, a catholic. The same goes for Hawke and Clarke: religion is used as an excuse for certain bigoted and narrow-minded beliefs. If Clarke wasn't religious he'd be called a Nazi. Thanks to his religion, he becomes a more respectable 'conservative'. That applies also to Hawke. The 'happy clapping' of Hillsong is not what attracts him to the religion, it's the power. Hawke envisions a time when the political situation in Australia mirrors that of America even more closely than it does now. When the far right are able to claim religion as their sole domain and use it to legitimise their bigotry. That's why Hawke his his finger in the Hillsong pie, not because he loves to wave his hands in the air and sing about Jesus.

Murphy is quite careful not to make it a puff-piece. No-one would buy it, given Hawke's background and association with Clarke. The article is designed to appeal to the sort of people who would be tempted to like Hawke anyway but need to gloss over the fact that he is a close associate of a Nazi-lover. Little bits of Labor-bashing permeate the piece- references to the "porcine, potty-mouthed" Joe McDonald, to Albanese's 'smears' enable Murphy to scrape up a little heap of dung to use as a pedestal for Hawke.

It wouldn't surprise me to see more such items, steadily more grovelling, appear in the media in the lead-up to the election and beyond. Hawke has a bucketful of ambition; he does not intend to stop at obtaining a seat in parliament- he intends to float all the way to the top.

Alex Hawke in his own words:

On the stolen generation: "There is no generation. I think Keith Windschuttle has got it exactly right. There has been this deliberate attempt to rewrite history. To say we came here and raped and pillaged and murdered - and they do, they carry on awfully about it - is quite appalling."

Religion and politics: "Do I inject my religion into my politics? No, but my religion guides the values and the ethics of the things I do."

Hawke thinks Australia will move increasingly towards an American model of conservatism. "The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they're blended it's a very powerful duo."

John Howard once said the Liberal Party was a broad church but Hawke is not so sure. "People say it's a broad church. My response to that is you've got to agree it's a church. It's not a brothel, for instance. If people want to legalise drug-injecting rooms, lower the age of consent, go with all these trendy things, this is not the party that believes in those things. We're not that broad."

On Malcolm Fraser: "We are still suffering the effects of Malcolm Fraser's government. We ought not to suffer the effects of him, as a human being, still attacking our party and our ideological beliefs! Let's get him into the Greens where he belongs."

Tassie salmon with special antibiotic soup

Given the huge problems associated with the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogenic bacteria, I would have hoped that Australian governments would know better than to continue to allow industry to pump farmed animals full of antibiotics. If disease is a widespread problem, it is merely a consequence of keeping the animals in unfit conditions. The Tasmanian farmed salmon industry is no exception:

The use of antibiotics on Australia's favourite farmed fish, Atlantic salmon, has risen disturbingly as diseases flare in their sea pens.

The increase has raised strong private concerns from the Tasmanian Government, which said it was nearly double the amount expected.

It was a threat to human health, the environment, and salmon's clean market image, the Primary Industries Minister, David Llewellyn, warned in documents obtained by the Herald.

The antibiotics are appearing in wild fish near farms, and the Government has called for an end to the use of one drug, amoxicillin, also used on humans. The $250 million-a-year industry, which produces 22,000 tonnes of the fish, is insisting on continued access to antibiotic treatments.

From 12 kilograms a year a decade ago, the antibiotics used at salmon and trout farms totalled almost eight tonnes in the first three months this year, according to departmental figures.

How can the farmed salmon industry 'insist' that they be allowed to continue a practice that poses a demonstrable public health risk? How about the government actually creates some laws to prevent the practice, rather than just whinging about the problem in private letters to the industry body? Voluntary self-regulation never works.

Public health and safety ought to be paramount in the government's considerations, not whether disallowing the practice of large-scale antibiotic use in fish farms is going to hurt someone's bottom line. What's more, they should act to prevent foreign imports of farmed fish that are raised using similar practices where government regulation is even shoddier than in Australia. It doesn't matter if the price of fish goes up. The long term cost to public health will far outweigh the benefits of having more productive fish farms in the short term.

Lesson? Don't buy Australian farmed salmon. Actually, from what I've read, I wouldn't buy any farmed salmon.

Why It Won't Work

Is that statement true? It doesn't matter so long as the man holding the sign thinks so.

Howard's great plan for Indigenous Australians won't work because he doesn't get it. I'll just talk about one way he doesn't get it. Sending lots of white cops to communities that have previously only received the gift of a loaned pair of handcuffs is guaranteed to fail. Cops arrest people. It's just what they do. Of course sometimes the best law enforcement relies on NOT arresting people. For example a drunk person sitting under a tree who might later die in a cell in your custody. Or a man who swears at you while you're arresting someone else who also later dies in your custody after "tripping on a step". Like I said. It's just what cops do, arrest people. All that will happen with extra cops is more arrests.

To Howard this is a good thing, show the Abos a bit of basskap and they'll fall into line. This is because measures like that would work for him and most of us. Unfortunately this is a situation where arresting someone gives them a warm cell and a better meal than they've had in a long time. The risk of being accidentally fallen on by a police officer notwithstanding. Prison loses its deterrence value when your circumstances are much worse than prison. More cops also ignores that the fact that when the cops aren't locals, don't talk to locals unless they're arresting them and are hated by the locals it means when someone calls for help the cops won't show up. Or worse, that they will. A bit pointless getting more cops then. It also ignores the fact that there are two justice systems in Australia and that the real problem is the apartheid that Howard doesn't believe exists. I might not be Aboriginal but the people who've called me abo, coon etc. certainly didn't stop to ask me. If it's like that for me in Brisbane imagine what it must be like in Townsville. I've certainly heard enough about Townsville to make me absolutely refuse to even consider working there.

There's little point going into where he'll find enough cops to last longer than 6 months or how he'll get enough doctors to perform health checks on children whose abusive guardians will predictably refuse to give consent. People go on about how the need to save the children outweighs the need to consult before intervening and to intervene only with consent and cooperation or not at all. This is why they're wrong. If you don't have community support the number of cops is irrelevant. If you refuse to listen to pleas to redress injustice, how can you bring justice? This is why it will fail.

Anne Summers on Rudd and Joe McDonald

I haven't read an Anne Summers column in the SMH for ages, but yesterday's caught my eye because of the headline (it had 'bitch' in it... I'm so mature). It turned out to be quite good. I'd been meaning to post on Kevin Rudd's expulsion of Joe McDonald from the ALP, but Summers provides a rather good analysis:

Most tellingly, [Rudd] seemed to have been manoeuvred into overreacting to a video of the CFMEU official Joe McDonald swearing at a boss on a building site. Rudd's response was to summon the national executive and demand McDonald's expulsion.

Anyone who has watched the video in full can see the exchange was more humorous than threatening and could hardly be construed as violent, certainly not within the norms of the building industry. Indeed, McDonald has even garnered some sympathy for the fact that he was trying to represent safety issues for workers when he was filmed: "On average one worker is killed on an Australian construction site every week," he said on Thursday. "Both of the jobs where I was filmed were plagued by safety issues and continue to be."

[...]

You might have expected a Labor leader to stand up for the more than 20 per cent of workers who are still in unions. They include large number of essential services workers - nurses, teachers, police officers - who generally enjoy high levels of public support. You might also have expected a Labor leader to point to the extraordinary financial success of union super funds which have consistently outperformed retail funds (Now that's union power!).

By appearing to accept that union power equals union thuggery, Rudd has closed off these options. He was also unable to frame a calibrated response to Howard's dramatic announcement of federal intervention to stop child sexual abuse in indigenous communities. He "me too-ed" when he should have questioned the lack of consultation with political and indigenous leaders and asked why it is necessary to seize land ownership to address welfare and police matters.

If he continues to veer back to the Beazley way of opposition, Rudd won't be moving to Canberra at the end of the year.

I think the expulsion of Joe McDonald was rather weak. I'm not a fan of (genuine, not hyped) thuggery, or bullying, or anything of the sort. But I think Rudd is failing to acknowledge the important role that unions play at the ground level in protecting workers. Unions don't just fight with words- they'd be ineffective if they did. There is far too much at stake for the ALP and the Australian public to be distracted by having to put on a school-marmish attitude to a bit of swearing captured on video.

Tiiiiiiny penis!

This isn't a new idea for an ad, but it's a good one. I've long held the view that dickhead drivers are overcompensating for inadequacies in the pants department, and I hold to the oft-repeated maxim that spoiler size is inversely proportional to penis size.

Ads from the $1.9 million campaign - which targets speeding among 17- to 25-year-olds - aired for the first time on TV last night. They show onlookers who see speeding male drivers wiggling their pinkie fingers.

The gesture represents a small penis in youth culture, but even an elderly woman employs it.

John Whelan, the RTA's director of business co-ordination, road safety and policy, said the campaign aimed to make speeding socially unacceptable.

It's a shame, though, that so many people are such massive dickheads that warning them about the fact that their behaviour might cost someone their life has little or no effect on the behaviour itself. They're too full of themselves to stop and think for a minute how they'd feel if they killed someone as a result of a very silly, small and entirely preventable action.

So we have to resort to making insinuations about their penis size. Let's hope it works.

UPDATE: The BBC has picked up on the story.

Seven

This is Seven. He and his partner Kenny were my 'babies' after a friend gave them to me as day-old chicks for my 15th birthday in 1998. They used to sleep in my left hand while I sat at my desk doing homework. When they were gawky 'teenagers' I went to boarding school for 6 months, during which time they largely forgot me. The relationship was re-established when I came back.

Seven had a horrible habit of attacking people. He had spurs that were almost as long as his (admittedly quite stumpy) legs, and could do serious damage. But he was also a sook, and misunderstood, although the people he tried to kill never quite saw it my way. He was so devoted to Kenny that when she went broody he would sit forlornly on the back step, or in the garden with his head stuck into a bush until I would pick him up and give him cuddles.

His favourite food was sultanas.

For this photograph, I perched him on my Dad's motorbike. I don't think I took many pictures of Seven, let alone portraits, but this is my favourite photograph of him.

"Little children are sacred"

I've been thinking over John Howard's weekend declaration of a 'national emergency' in remote aboriginal communities. While I read about the issues facing aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia when they appear in the media (more often in the British media than in Australian, it seems), and touch on it occasionally in the course of assignments for uni (usually from a community health-nutrition perspective), I haven't done any significant amount of study on aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and I'm largely coming from a position of ignorance; this despite the fact it's one of the areas I'm interested in studying further and perhaps working in some day.

Speaking from my position of relative ignorance, however, my gut feeling is that John Howard is pulling an election stunt. He's been in power for over a decade, and the appalling conditions in remote aboriginal communities have been largely ignored by his government. I received some insight into the lack of willingness of politicians to speak the 'A-word' when I read Mark Latham's The Latham Diaries a year or two ago; in it, Latham essentially says that no politician wants to mention aboriginal people unless it's in the context of dog-whistle politics and abo-bashing and stirring up community 'outroige' about how much money is spent on them. Perhaps John Howard has detected a change in the wind and is trying to get one up on Labor and the Greens by being seen 'doing something'.

With regard to the plan to quarantine welfare payments to ensure they're spent on food and other necessities for recipients' children, I've mentioned before that I don't give a rat's arse about whether an action constitutes 'paternalism' when inaction results in harm to a child. But I'm talking about individuals. On a collective level, once applied to a certain group of people and only those people, ignoring the fact that the exact same problem exists in other groups to which the measures are not being applied, it's racist. I don't think it's racist or paternalistic to insist that money received from the government to care for a child be spent on the child. In fact, I think it's a good thing that the plan looks like being extended to all welfare recipients, not just aboriginal families. Not applying the same standard to all families in receipt of welfare payments would be racist, not to mention downright stupid.

When it comes to spending money on food, however, I have heard no mention on how the Howard government plans to improve access to food in aboriginal and TSI communities. There are huge problems with higher food prices and lack of availability of healthy food choices in these communities, and Howard's Great White Plan for the Black Man doesn't appear to have any measures in store to address these problems. Nor does it appear to have any measures in store to address the issue of massive overcrowding in housing in remote aboriginal communities.

With regard to the ban on the sale of alcohol in aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and the prospect of problem drinkers merely shifting to the city, where alcohol will remain available, I'd like to know why John Howard didn't just ban all sales of alcohol in the Northern Territory. If the situation really does constitute a 'national emergency', surely white people can do without their grog until the emergency is cleared up? Of course, no matter how great the problem, John Howard is never going to restrict white peoples' access to alcohol, let alone in an election year. This despite the fact that anyone, black or white, who simply can't cope without alcohol for any length of time by definition has a problem with the drug. Alcohol is most certainly not just an aboriginal problem. In fact, from what I recall of some recent reading on the dietary differences between Australians of different socioeconomic groups, the phenomenon in aboriginal communities of a low percentage of people who actually drink alcohol, but very high levels of excessive alcohol consumption among those who do, is something reflected among people of lower socioeconomic groups in Australia regardless of ethnicity.

It should also be noted that the liquor outlets in and around aboriginal communities had to be approved by government in the first place (state or territory government, I presume, but I could be wrong). These approvals were granted even in the face of the long-standing problem of alcohol abuse. These outlets were profiting from the misery created in the community by the problems associated with excessive drinking, and no-one cared. Why were they even approved?

Summary of the report

Full report (via BBC)

Other posts on this topic (I don't necessarily agree with everything said on this topic, but all the posters have something worthwhile to say):

Mikey 1 & 2

Anonymous Lefty (a much more comprehensive look at Howard's proposals)


Miss Politics

Harry Clarke (an articulate look at the problem from a non-left perspective)

Larry (sums it up in a succinct and rather humourous manner)

Hooray, I'm useful!

While there's more fun to be had with all the dodgy google searches that wind up at VTAY, I was pleased to see today that a grand total of 2 people probably got what they were looking for when they ended up here via their google search.

The first was for 'l-value microbiology': "The L-value is the time at 121°C equivalent in sterilising value to one minute at some other temperature."

The second was for 'spiders regrow legs': yes, they do!

Sachi in a Kempsey park

I think this was taken in 2000, when I was doing photography in year 11. It's become a tad discoloured over time, probably because I touched the print with hands that weren't pristinely clean after washing it (Dad would be ashamed!). The park is a native plants park close to Kempsey High and the TAFE- a really pretty spot.

Sachi (she of the recent baby boy) was a great model, very relaxed in front of the camera. She would have been staying with me over her winter holiday from boarding school. The dog in the photo is our family pet, Scruffy, who died in 2004 or 2005.

Playboy advisor: the 'Negro date' problem

Another one from the 1966 Playboy Advisor. Thankfully their response to this one was more in keeping with their supposedly liberal-minded nature.

I'm faced with a touchy problem. I have been invited to a dinner party next month, and the girl I plan to take is a Negro (I'm white). Would I insult either hostess or date by calling the hostess in advance to inform her of my intention? J.P., New York

Yes, you would. This sort of pussyfooting is tantamount in giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Certainly your girl has encountered prejudice before, and most likely she will again. With you at her side, it's doubtful that she'll be seriously distressed any possible turn of events during the course of the evening. And probably, in a sophisticated, urban setting, the evening will pass pleasantly and without incident

That was only 40 years ago...

"I just want a job"

Zimbabwean refugees at church in Johannesburg.
Photo: Benedicte Kurzen/EVE

Here's an idea we won't see John Howard touting before the next election: allowing a huge increase in skilled migration from Zimbabwe.

Given the situation there, with inflation at around 3500% and intimidation and harrassment (and worse) of anyone who is openly against the government, there are huge numbers of Zimbabweans migrating to South Africa and other neighbouring countries, including Botswana. In those countries, they are often persecuted for 'stealing' jobs, are used as illegal labour and then dobbed in to immigration authorities so the employer can avoid paying them, and are often suffer abuse by police and are used as a scapegoat by the public and media for crime problems in the country.

Many skilled Zimbabweans will take whatever work they can get; a teacher might end up working as somebody's maid. In Botswana, Gam's mother has hired numerous Zimbabweans as maids and for other jobs at various times. Just drives down town to an area where they congregate, waiting for work, and picks them up. They once had a Zimbabwean gardener who was fully qualified as a landscape artist but was reduced to touting for business in the same manner. No doubt others once had jobs of a higher status or skill level that were unable to sustain them in the Zimbabwean economy such as it is today. Mummy has complained on occasion that some of the Zimbabweans she hires steal things from the house; Gam explained that being so desperately poor, and likely supporting destitute families back home, people are often driven to do desperate things. Very few people want to lower themselves to common thievery. They might not have a blanket; they might not have warm clothes. The wages they are paid are set by the employer because they are part of the black market economy.

The teacher, who insisted on anonymity, said he had left his wife and two children behind because he was living in fear. He had been arrested and beaten after joining a union march in September, he said. “As we go forward toward elections in 2008,” he said, “we are again targets of violence. Every morning, my life was very much in danger.”

But he might have stayed, he said, had his monthly salary not been the equivalent of $15.

Another teacher, a friend, had fled Zimbabwe last year after government spies mistook a wake in her parlor for a meeting of opposition members, and set fire to her house, she said.

“You don’t feel the pain on somebody when it’s not happening to you,” she said in a Johannesburg clinic for migrants seeking legal advice. “I never expected such a life. But I think there’s a reason why God wants this.”

But for the moment, she said: “I just want a job. I can do dishes. I don’t mind that I was a teacher.”

Why is Australia, with its supposed skills shortage, ignoring the opportunity to absorb skilled labour from the dying Zimbabwean economy? Zimbabwe has a great education system. Everyone speaks english (something Howard and his lackeys are always rabbiting on about with regard to migration). Most Zimbabweans are Christian, another trait that John Howard and his government supposedly love. From a purely selfish point of view, taking this opportunity would be good for the Australian economy and it would no doubt be another opportunity for John Howard to give one in the eye to crazy old Robert Mugabe. So why hasn't John Howard sent Alexander Downer and Kevin Andrews to South Africa to find a way of channelling the thousands of migrants from this vast pool of skilled labour into Australia?

There's little doubt that many Zimbabweans would be glad of the opportunity to earn some real money and send some of it home to their families. In every respect but one, Zimbabwean labour is what John Howard wants more of. The small matter of the connection between skin colour and Howard election victories would likely be the biggest sticking point.

Permanent link to article here.

Playboy advisor: the marriage machine

This 1966 Playboy Advisor book is a veritable treasure trove of 1960s goodness (and badness). Here's one on those funny machines they call 'computers':

I am a very technically inclined person and rather than waste time and money at night clubs and dances, I would like to use science to find the sort of mate I am looking for. I have heard of computers being used to make matches on the basis of similar interests. My question is this: Where are these machines located and how does one get in touch with the people operating them?

The organization you seek is Scientific Marriage Institute, located at 186 East 73rd Street, New York, New York 10021. But be careful- the machine might want to keep you for itself.

Sounds like something scientologists might do...

Michael Moore's 'Sicko'

Michael Moore in principled Paris

Magic Bellybutton has already posted on Michael Moore's upcoming movie 'Sicko'. The New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott (whose reviews are usually a bit wanky for me to bother with) has given the movie a favourable review. Not that its quality is contingent upon such a review. The importance of a public health care system, and its progressive dismantling under the Howard government, is something I've posted on numerous times before, using stark examples from the USA. I'll be going to see this movie not because I need to know how fucked up the US healthcare system is, but just to show my concern that our country does not follow the US down its murky path.

Anaemia

Passing out on a pile of homework is not uncommon!

The Sydney Morning Herald has a short article on iron deficiency that caught my eye mainly because I'm iron deficient more often than not. For my part, it's primarily due to a low intake of red meat (I don't eat chicken and I generally eat fish only once a week or less), plus the fact that I get fairly heavy periods.

I usually notice the symptoms when I start to feel overwhelmingly tired all the time despite getting more sleep than usual- a compulsion to pass out in bed in the afternoon after a solid 8 hours sleep the night before and only a light morning at uni- and find myself yawning nonstop. Then there are the 'headspins', which can become alarming when severe. The tiredness is what gets me, though. The inability to do as much work as I'd like to. That's why I try and eat red meat regularly, if not frequently: it's well documented that people who are iron deficient perform more poorly on cognitive tests, and I'm afraid of letting my diet impact on my performance at uni. When I became a vegetarian as a teenager my piano teacher and my parents warned me about becoming iron deficient, but at the time that was the least of my worries. Now, I suppose, I take more of an interest in my own health.

I still don't like to eat a lot of meat; I've always eaten a lot of legumes, which helps somewhat, but mostly it's about trying to walk the wobbly line between having a diet that suits my principles as an animal lover (along with the environmental concerns associated with the mass production of animals for meat) and having a diet that keeps me healthy.

Throw Howard overboard before you leap

Photo by Gam

This morning I heard on ABC Newsradio about the 'Throw Howard Overboard' boat cruise organised by the Refugee Action Collective. We only crawled out of bed at 10am, and the cruise was leaving at 11am from near the West End markets, but we figured we'd try and get there in time to photograph it all. We didn't manage to achieve that but we did take a poke around the market stalls, something we've been meaning to do for ages. And now something we'll do whenever we can, given how incredibly cheap and fresh the fruit and vegetables being sold there are. Also, there's a lot to be said for not having to share a supermarket aisle with bitchy, grim-faced middle-aged housewives- there were a lot of middle aged people at the market, but none of them grim-faced and bitchy.

As a bonus, we picked up a 1966 compendium of the Playboy Advisor for $4! It's interesting to see how the language of the writers differs from today's Playboy Advisor columns. It's also interesting to see how the advice differs. Despite Playboy's emphasis on the sexual emancipation of women, I detect some sexist overtones in their responses to some of the questions (though often not so much as in the letters themselves).

Here's one of the more blatant examples:

What can I do about a girl who has plans to marry me in the very near future? I feel the same way she does about marriage, but not about the date. I am still in college and naturally want to finish the year I have remaining. But I can't make her understand how impractical- financially and otherwise- it would be to marry now, and she insists that the date be set within the month (to keep the record straight, this is not a shotgun situation). I have strong feelings for the girl and would not like to lose her. Any suggestions?
BB., Albany, New York.

It would be a mistake to marry this or any other girl before you complete your schooling and have made at least a meaningful first step toward establishing yourself in your chosen career. If this girl is unwilling to wait for you to first establish the firm academic and financial foundation upon which a good marriage is built, you should probably have some second thoughts about her suitability as a wife. In any working marriage, the husband should have the final word and be the ultimate authority; if at this stage of the game she is giving you a hard time on a matter of practical judgment, the contretemps may bode ill for the future. More than her feelings are at stake here, and you should look most carefully before you leap