Why Rape is Everyone's Problem

I started writing this as a response to MB's post and it turned into an enormous rant so I thought I'd spare her comment box. It's only tangentially related to what she wrote, it's more a comment on the perceptions informing the article she linked to.

"On the subject of rape, when will people realise it is not a form of entertainment?"

Even for women who are turned on by what we would see as sexualised violence? I'm always wary of the, 'it exerts a subtle influence' argument.

Society is what makes rape acceptable. A media that pillories an entire ethnic group because of a few rapists while giving socially important rapists a pass is what makes rape acceptable. In that you can see the concepts of 'our women' being possessions that can be protected from some and given to others. That's what makes rape acceptable. It's the same kind of chauvinism that insists that women are so fragile in society that they must be 'protected' even from imaginary sexual violence. Culture and art of all kinds is largely a *reflection* of society as opposed to a director of it.

There is a well known perception that people hold. It's that media of all kinds is always more influential on the minds of others than themselves. You can completely ban all sexual expression deemed to be inappropriate, but you will still be more at risk of sexual violence in Saudi Arabia than in Japan because they are different societies with different things being acceptable in each. Japan isn't necessarily perfect either but the point here is that when a society determines something should not happen, it will not happen, regardless of imaginary depictions. Just look at paedophilia. 20-30 years ago, the most common way to deal with a paedophile was to simply get kids to avoid them, "don't let person x alone with the kids". Now it is completely and totally beyond the bounds of even inadvertent tolerance in society.

Rape games would be illegal in Australia and yet we have adolescent kids forming rape gangs and sexually assaulting a young girl on film and then selling copies for $5. As far as I can tell, none of them went to prison. I think that says much more about rape as entertainment in our society than the existence of any kind of depiction of rape ever can.

Rape is tolerated in our society and it is all but encouraged as part of our sexist society (we rank only behind the US in the developed world in measures of benevolent sexism). This means that a significant number of women hold the same attitudes towards rape as well. Focussing on games, books, ideas of rape etc. is at best dodging the issue and at worst a flat out waste of time and detrimental to the shared cause of every sensible person who values human rights.

There's no point messing about worrying if this or that depiction of women leads to a society condoning violence against them. We already know the facts. In developed nations at least, when there are high levels of benevolent sexism, people will be more likely to blame a person who is raped by someone they know as opposed to someone they don't know. When the victim is judged to have violated gender roles (this is a benevolently sexist society) people will be more likely to blame the victim. And when the perpetrator has high status compared to the victim, the victim is again more likely to be blamed. This is no mystery. there are mountains of evidence that describe this aspect of our society.

This is why you are fucked if you go out for a good time, wear a short skirt, pash a footy player and wind up being raped by 20 of his mates. Because the people around you will blame you and our society will turn on you like a pack of rabid animals because you stepped out of the bounds of the role that had been defined for you.

Certainly we can screw around with porn, etc. but until we cut through the bullshit and realise that rape happens because someone you know thinks it's excusable under certain circumstances, we're all just wasting our time.

Gold Coast beachfront millionaires demand ratepayers' help

Every time this happens, and it happens on the Gold Coast with alarming regularity thanks to their history of approving pretty much any and all development applications despite the environmental ramifications, I laugh.

I mean, come on. Everyone knows building on sand right on the beachfront is a stupid idea, and these moronic gits are bleating about how the council should pay to stop their precious McMansions from falling into the sea? Screw you guys! I hope they all fall into the sea! Idiots.

If there's anything to sue over, it's whoever allowed the environmental rape-fest to occur in the first place. The Gold Coast is notorious for approving buildings on what should be left as dunes. But to sue for that would basically be to admit that your stupid beachfront McMansion should never have been built in the first place, and you don't want that, do you? Even though your stupid house is about to be washed into the sea, you want to stay there and enjoy the multimillion dollar ocean views and force ratepayers to to pay to shore up your goddamn backyard. Oooh the Courier Mail found a single person in the neighbourhood who was a pensioner and not a multimillionaire (except in assets!). Fuck. Off. Rich. Whiny. Bogans. I hope you have to pay and then I hope your stupid houses are washed into the sea. I guarantee you, I will enjoy, savour even, the footage broadcast on the commercial TV channels that will air 'heart-wrenching' sob stories of how your godawful McMansions were eaten up by nature. Good bloody riddance.

New Zealand's international woman of idiocy

I saw a spate of headlines recently, all on the websites of Murdoch-rags, on a 24-year-old moron mother-of-one lost 45kg over 8 months by drinking 'nothing but the energy drink Red Bull'. Somehow it was spun into a story on the dangers of Red Bull, a tale that would take an incredible amount of ignorance to conjure up, and even more to believe.

If this silly young woman did go to such extraordinary lengths to lose that weight, the reason she developed a heart murmur was more probably a result of a nutritional deficiency- my guess would be potassium- than the particular brand of energy drink that she was consuming. Eight months drinking nothing but any kind of fizzy drink, or even coffee and a person would be lucky to be alive. Despite this, talk of bans on the product abounded in the media, with a pretty obvious insinuation that the 'dangers' posed by the product meant the same should happen in countries where bans had not already been implemented (i.e. most of them). As for the 'anxiety attacks' being caused by Red Bull- pffft.

Given that she lost a relatively piddling amount of weight for her eight months on such a stupid diet, I highly doubt the woman's tale that Red Bull and the odd handful of cereal was all she consumed. She lost only 5.6kg per month- about 1.4kg per week, an amount achieveable through a healthy diet or a commercial weight-loss diet such as Jenny Craig. If this woman had consumed only Red Bull she probably would have suffered muscle wasting and lost quite a bit of weight due to that alone.

Not a single article I read on this 'story' bothered to quote a doctor or a dietitian on any of the following:

a) the veracity of the story

b) the likely cause of the health problems attributed to Red Bull

c) the complete and utter stupidity of a 'diet' of this kind and the actual health problems and nutritional deficiencies that could be expected to arise should anyone else (and it's plausible, given the typical readers of the papers this story was printed in) be stupid enough to try it.

State of Origin Swine Flu Fears!!!

"This is a f***ing family game you c***k s****ing c***t, i'll f***ing well f***ing teach you to f***ing bring swine flu here you s***t faced mother f***er!"

Funny how you haven't seen that headline. Funny how the media are all over quarantining ships and telling kids to stay away from school but a massive sporting event in a disease vector cauldron is untouchable. I think we've just seen another example of the media knowing on which side its bread is buttered.

Another horrific reminder

I read this article a couple of weeks ago- another horrific reminder of the kind of callous, inhumane treatment of refugees that occurred under the Howard government- and still occurs, albeit with some significant improvements, to this day.

IMMIGRATION staff plotted to distract a seven-year-old girl with toys so they could take her away while her father languished in solitary confinement.

The father was duped by a former manager of the Baxter Detention Centre, which closed in 2007, when the manager asked if he and his wife could take the child shopping.

"No problem, yes, go and enjoy yourself," the father replied.

In the meantime, another staffer made sure the father would never see his child, dubbed Y, again, and clandestinely spirited her back to Iran.

"If Y requests to say goodbye to her father I will advise her that it is not possible as it could stop her from being returned to her mother in Tehran. We will have several toys for distraction purposes," a file note said.

The "disturbing" case from 2003 was highlighted in a report by the Commonwealth Immigration Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, which was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. It has prompted the minister, Chris Evans, to seek ways to compensate the family.

Sickening, no?

So why, on the rare occasion that John Howard pops his slimy little head out of whatever hole he's been hiding in since he was booted out in the 2007 federal election, don't journalists confront him, hound him, and demand to know how he could have created and defended a system where such a disturbing act of cruelty could be carried out?

But if you think it couldn't be worse than the scenario described above, read on. All these acts- and if none of this is a crime then it should be- were carried out on the same man.

The plot to distract the girl - who had arrived on a boat with her father in 2001 - was revealed among a string of other callous acts against the asylum seeker.

The girl was probed by child protection services after they received a tip-off from the government-contracted detention company at the time, Australasian Correctional Management, that she was being sexually abused by her father.

Checks by youth services and child protection officers found no such thing.

By contrast South Australian Family and Youth Services recommended the girl be returned to her father's care and the pair be moved to another detention centre immediately.

Again the Immigration Department ignored the advice, even though the father went on a hunger strike to support his wish to move.
By August 2003, two months after his daughter was taken away, the man was diagnosed as severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and prone to anxiety attacks. In October that year he slashed his wrists with a razor blade.

The department also ordered a psychiatrist not to tell the man his daughter had been taken from Baxter.

Stomach-churning, yeah? Utterly indefensible, you'd think. Anyone who took part in this shit needs to be named, and if they are still working for the department they ought to be deprived of their jobs with immediate effect. God knows there are enough psychopaths active in that particular section of the bureaucracy, and the opportunity to remove them should not be passed up if we never want such an incident to happen again. Anyone with any credibility and even an ounce of humanity would have refused to take part in the abuse of this man and his daughter by the Australian government. They would have blown the whistle.

To top it all off, the Howard government applied its famous 'pay for your own indefinite mandatory jailing' to the guy, who has not seen his daughter since she was stolen.

The man was later charged with a detention debt of $288,000, including the cost of his daughter's removal from Australia. The debt has since been written off.

He was given a temporary protection visa in 2005, thereby owed Australian protection - and he now lives in Melbourne.

The department has since apologised to the man and will soon issue an apology to his daughter.

Oh, all better now! Thankfully, current immigration minister Chris Evans is looking at ways to compensate the guy for his mistreatment at the hands of the Howard government. He has also instructed them to assist the daughter and the mother if they wish to apply for visas to join the man. However much they fork over in compensation, it's unlikely to be enough.

What's most galling about all of this is that we paid for it. We paid to have this guy and his young daughter thrown into a prison, we paid the sons-of-bitches who carried out the kidnapping and deportation of his daughter. We paid the people who posted out letters to the man, informing he owed the Australian government a quarter of a million dollars in spite of all they did to him- or because of it. We paid the salary of possibly the most inhuman sicko to become prime minister in at least the last 50 years, and we are paying compensation for the despicable acts carried out under this man's orders.

I won't ever forget the things that were carried out in our name, and I will never vote for someone who supports or attempts to justify treating a person like that.

Cage eggs producer fined for cruelty.

From the Hobart Mercury:

A MARGATE egg producer has been fined $3000 for leaving decomposing chicken carcases in cages with live hens.

[...]

[Department of Primary Industries agricultural officer Colin Jessup] did an audit of Balke's Minchins Rd farm on March 4 last year and removed 18 dead birds from cages that housed live laying hens.

"The birds were easy to detect by the smell of decomposing tissues," Mr Jessup said.

It appeared many of the hens had been dead for up to two weeks and one was being cannibalised.

"The carcases had been trodden on and were pressed deeply into the mesh on the bottom of the cage," Mr Jessup said.

"Some had manure on top of them and I noted eggs laid by the other birds in the cage either on top of or against the decomposing birds."

Yummy!

Anyone who buys cage eggs has rocks in their head.

Also, a $3000 fine is not nearly enough. That guy ought to have been banned from owning chickens. It's well overdue that cage egg production was banned altogether and standards to define 'free range' egg production should be set in stone- without consultation with any of the big producers. Too bad if people want to eat cheap shit from abused animals and will whinge if the cost of eggs goes up by a couple of dollars a box. Deal with it- or get your own chooks.

Liberal Party Makes Decision to Not Make Decision

After meeting with his opposition buddies it looks like Malcopops (stolen enthusiastically from the pollbludger's comments) has decided what to do about the government's emissions trading scheme. He's decided to wait till someone else makes a decision before getting together to try and make a decision. Pathetic.

In his press release, Malcopops stated that Kevin Rudd only wanted to pass an ETS so he could show leadership at the next world meeting in Copenhagen. YES!!! you slimy little toad! Leadership is the whole fucking point! We might not be going fast enough but at least it'll be in the right direction, as opposed to a collection of decrepit halfwits still arguing about if climate change exists while their electorates are flood and drought declared at the same time! His argument is basically that he won't show any leadership on the issue until someone tells him where to go. Hopefully someone foreign. Pathetic. The Liberals always want to be the absolute fucking last people on earth to do the right thing. They don't even have enough balls to outright oppose the ETS they can only decline to make a decision on the future of the fucking planet.

"Captain Turnbull! We just hit an iceberg!!! What should we do?"

"Well, I think we should delay any decisions till the passengers have a meeting and decide how they want to handle the situation. Now give my hammock a push and close the cabin door on the way out."

Miranda Devine's Rugby Screed

What's everyone looking at? It's not like you haven't seen me disgrace myself before!

Much to my misfortune, every now and then I'll click on an item in a 'top 5' or 'top 10' most read articles list on the SMH website and be directed to a Miranda Devine screed. I've said before that I have a policy of not clicking through to her articles because I do not wish to contribute to her ongoing employment (as Gam said "Fairfax has been firing journalists, but they keep Miranda Devine?!"). In truth, I should have realised from the incredibly stupid headline for the article that Devine (or one of her equally stupid Opinion contributers, Paul Sheehan or Gerard Henderson) would be responsible for the article. "Natural men scolded into timidity", FFS. What was I thinking?

In the article, Devine claims that the recent spate of coverage of the behaviour of some Rugby League players amounts to an attack on men in general. A claim so mind-bogglingly baseless and stupid it's barely worth raising the obvious fact that, perhaps with the exception of some tiny, extremist-feminist enclave of a website somewhere (to which I would give the same credence as a Miranda Devine article, and be even less likely to read), absolutely no-one, not a single commentator in the media or elsewhere, has turned this incident into a criticism of the behaviour of all men. Except Miranda Devine, oddly enough, who invented the idea that someone everyone had.

The 'War Against Masculinity', Devine calls it, is currently underway. A war in which men are forced into acting like women (by a powerful army of women who refuse to act like women, apparently). The last remaining bastions of true masculinity are sports in which guys like to biff each other. Mind you, apart from pissing against the walls of hotels (hotels that contain bathrooms), Willie Mason-style and biffing each other, Devine provides scant detail of what actually constitutes 'traditional maleness'.

Although it is, apparently, not necessary to have a hairy chest. Which is just as well, since Miranda's writing implies a preference for the smooth, hairless kind.

Perennial dickhead Willie Mason's latest escapade- peeing in the street outside a hotel- is defended for its 'discreet' nature, and the fact that he is held up as an example of one of the many things wrong with the behaviour of NRL players is just a disgrace. A disgrace! Devine castigates Mason's 'mistreatment', under which he was handed an unimaginably harsh sentence by his club... a $2000 fine. Pissing against hotel walls, while (unjustifiably!) against the law, is merely a way by which a real man expresses his masculinity. Deriding or condemning such behaviour, therefore, is clearly a condemnation of every person with a Y-chromosome who hasn't yet been castrated by the maurauding feminist army. A word of advice to homeless guys, Indigenous men and anyone of Lebanese ethnicity: Miranda probably won't be so quick to defend any of you if you're caught doing the same. Indeed, if you happen to splash her shoes as she's leaving a hotel you'll probably find the next day that she's written a column about how you and everyone like you is some kind of scourge on society. At least make sure you're wearing a nice suit and you might get off more lightly.

Devine compares poor Willie Mason's plight with that of blonde uber-bogan Annaliese Smoel, who was ostensibly busted for stealing a bar mat at some Aussie bar in Thailand but had apparently verbally abused the cops who spotted it in her bag. Miranda might have had a point, given the sympathy perhaps unjustifiably extended to Smoel, but she perverts her own claims of a double standard by implying that Smoel should have been given a going over in the media while still claiming that Willie Mason should have got off more lightly. Note to Miranda: that pretty much amounts to reversing the double standard. Additionally, Annaliese Smoel was just some random drunk bogan. Mason, while a bogan, is also a public figure and is paid damn good money to be one. You don't see Hazem el Mazri getting drunk and pissing in public, do you?

Next, Miranda touts Rugby League as society's cure to problems 'men' have with aggression and 'sexual motivation':

Killing off rugby league isn't going to stop men being aggressive and sexually motivated. In fact, such games are the few outlets boys have left for excess physical energy.

Well, where to begin? The sexist assumption she makes that all men are aggressive? Or the ignorant assumption that men are the only people who are sexually motivated? Miranda's a bit abnormal, sure, but no cold fish, if her drooling references to hairless male chests and Schapelle Corby are anything to go by. There's a slight possibility that she's just a bit out of touch with reality. Here's a newsflash, Miranda: pretty much everyone past the onset of puberty is sexually motivated to some degree. It's learning to use that motivation to get what you want without causing hurt or distress to any other party involved in the process that's important to society. Funnily enough, playing Rugby League really doesn't seem to have been so effective in helping certain NRL use those urges appropriately.

Try not to shudder as you read the next paragraph...

In sanctioned team violence on the football field, young men can test their courage and express what it feels to be male, to have testosterone surging through young bodies, building huge muscles and attack instincts for which society has little use any more. It is teaching them, not to be violent but how to control their violent urges.

What a confused mess of concepts. First, does Rugby League create attack instincts, or control the ones that are already there? Frankly, I'm inclined to say neither is the case. As for the reference to the 'violence' of the game- what of it? To my knowledge, no-one has been stupid enough to link the mechanics of Rugby League to some players' apparent inability to determine whether the sexual situation they have entered into is consensual and appropriate. Well, until now.

As for 'expressing what it feels to be male', erm, where to go from here? How does Rugby League allow muscular, virile young men, bodies surging with testosterone (bucket of cold water, please!) to 'express what it feels to be male' any more than any other team sport? Oh, and Miranda's boys- it might be a good idea to discourage mum from attending your games if any of your friends are literate and unfortunate enough to have read her column. It'll only creep them out.

The rest of the article is such a mish-mash of Miranda's popular bugbears- 'androgynous feminists', women who learn that sex undertaken purely for enjoyment is ok (it's not!!1!!!1), and 'popular culture' that sexualises children. You might have thought that that last one was the creation of a host of corporate and media entities in order to sell shit to kids, but you'd be wrong- it's those damn androgynous feminists who run the world these days.

Finally, Miranda finishes with the admonishment that men aren't all violent and predatory. Thank god someone came out and said it, because I was getting afraid to leave the house, thinking they were all rapists and stuff. Yeah. Where would we be without Miranda Devine? From defending a small group of NRL players accused of sexual misconduct to defending the game itself from the imaginary attacks of 'teh androgynous feminists', to defending men from wholly imaginary accusations of being violent sexual predators- while at the same time insisting that all men have violent and sexual urges that can only be contained through the playing of Rugby League and other sports that are Traditionally Male... Maybe it's just a long time since I've been Devined, but isn't that deranged even by her usual standards?

Rich Dad, poor Dad

I recently read about this assault at the Wickham Hotel in Brisbane recently, in which a man punched another man in the jaw, breaking the guy's jaw in two places and causing him to have metal plates inserted. It was impossible not to think that the offender, sentenced to two years in prison, with parole after 6 months, would have done well to have himself a rich daddy who could hire a great lawyer and mount a PR campaign. And maybe confess to a drinking problem and anger management issues (for which, of course, he would be undertaking therapy and 'consider' abstaining from alcohol- hahaha). After all, that's what got Nick D'Arcy his wholly suspended 14-month sentence- and the injuries Simon Cowley wound up with sounded even worse than those the victim in the Wickham incident received.

Xiaoxiao and Feifei, May 2009

November 2008:




May 2009:

With 'Grandma', May 2009:

Bouquets for BOQ

Earlier in the year Gam and I switched our everyday banking to Bank of Queensland, through their Toowong branch. We had some issue with a screwup of the balance transfer on our credit card, which I thought had been resolved but has only been partially resolved, so we've had cause to visit the branch maybe twice in the months since signing up.

The girl who set up our accounts not only recognised us and knew us by name when we went in there as a couple (we seem to be fairly recognisable as such, I suppose) but also when I went in there on my own. She was also incredibly helpful and always called back with updates of what was going on. That kind of service is amazing enough for a bank.

But today I phoned the Toowong branch to follow something up. I haven't been to the branch since late March. The same girl who we've dealt with on previous occasions answered the phone. And when I said who I was, she actually knew my name and the issue I was calling about without having to type it into a computer and see what came up. Seriously. I am blown away. I emailed my compliments about her to BOQ... I hope they pay her a lot of money to stay around, because customer service like that from a bank is so, so very rare.

I used to seriously resent it when Commonwealth charged $5 per month without telling me my student status had expired, but we happily pay our $4 per month to BOQ... even if it cost more than Commonwealth we would stick with them because the service is so good. Let's hope they never indulge in the same sort of cost-cutting crap that leads to job losses at the big banks, because dealing with real people makes a huge difference.

Food Investigators fail: In defence of baked beans, common sense

It was much to my surprise that new SBS show Food Investigators and I got off on the wrong foot right from the start. That it improved significantly from their first, pretty disgraceful, gimmick was a huge relief.

What annoyed me so much?

The stupid 'quiz' they presented to people on what contained the most salt 'per serving'- was it baked beans, cornflakes, chips or (bread? I can't remember)?

See, while it's pretty obvious that serving sizes can differ between products for a good reason- you're going to eat a much larger quantity of baked beans as part of a meal than, say, soy sauce, serving sizes can also differ between products as part of a ploy by the manufacturer to make the product look like it doesn't contain a lot of a particular 'undesirable' nutrient.

For example, you might buy a bar of chocolate and see on the package that the chocolate provides only 16% of the recommended 'daily % fat' per serve. Pretty good, huh? You don't have to feel 'guilty' about eating your chocolate. That is, unless you read the small print in the nutrition panel where it states that one serve equals a measly 4 squares. And seriously, who limits themselves to 4 squares of chocolate if they have a whole bar? Pretty much no-one, that's who. The food manufacturers are entirely aware of this.

It's a trick of psychology whereby the manufacturer uses a tiny figure for serving size that they know makes the product appear healthier than it really is to the average consumer (who is generally too lazy to check out the nutrition panel). The average consumer will then eat more of this product based on the belief that it's really not too bad for them.

I'm willing to bet that the 'serving size' stated on the chips used in Food Investigators was somewhere around 50g, certainly no higher. When you put that up against a 150g serving of baked beans (note the serving size is three times larger) of course the baked beans are going to look bad. Not as bad as you might expect, however: the 50g serving of chips will probably contribute around 300mg of salt to the diet, while the 150g of baked beans will contain around 400mg. Looking at the amount of salt per 100g, the baked beans contain around 267mg of salt, while the chips contain a whopping 600mg. Not so much shock value in the baked beans now, is there?

Now, I'm not inclined to believe that the people behind Food Investigators are ignorant of this kind of gimmick by food manufacturers. So I can only put their decision to play the same trick on ordinary consumers as indulging in sensationalist crap where none was necessary. It's mean, and it's deliberately misleading.

In addition, with very few exceptions it makes no sense at all to look at a single nutrient in isolation from the nutrients contained in the rest of the food and using that as basis to condemn the food to exclusion from the diet. Rather than singling out, for example, baked beans as being 'bad' based on the fact that they contain higher amounts of salt 'per serve', we need to look at what a single serve of baked beans will contribute to a person's diet compared with what a single serve of chips will contribute. And let's get to the point: chips contribute shit-all when it comes to nutrition.

That 50g serve of chips is likely to be consumed as a snack, not a meal, meaning that the salt you consume in the chips comes on top of the salt contained in every other meal that day. The baked beans, on the other hand, are more likely to constitute a meal in themselves, maybe served with a bit of (preferably wholegrain) toast. For someone with salt-sensitive hypertension, they might want to choose salt-reduced baked beans, or make/bake their own lower-salt beans and bread, or choose something else entirely. But for the average person, 2 pieces of wholegrain toast with a 150g serve of baked beans is not an unacceptably salty meal- indeed, it contains less than one gram of salt (the recommended daily intake for adults is no more than 4g). In addition, the meal contains very little fat- certainly something chips cannot boast of, is high in protein, dietary fibre and complex carbohydrates, all of which are lacking in chips.

While Food Investigators inevitably reached a sound conclusion in this segment, namely that people should rely less on processed foods, they did a disservice to anyone interested in improving their health via good nutrition. Looking realistically at the place for baked beans vs chips in the diet, it makes no sense to single out and sensationalise the fact that baked beans contain more salt 'per serve' than chips.

==================================================

The only other thing I found particularly bothersome was one aspect of the 'superfoods' segment. Given that one of the presenters is a food technologist, I can only presume that he, just as I did, learned about the process of picking, cooling, packaging and transport of different fruits and vegetables as part of his degree. Although it was 'Emergency Room (!?) Doctor' Renee Lim who presented the segment and made the blunder I'm about to mention, I feel that whatsisface-the-food-technologist probably has a duty to correct these kind of idiocies.

While it should be pretty obvious to all that $50/kg dried Tibetan gojiberries are a massive rort of the public's hunger for 'superfoods', Dr Lim decided to single out blueberries for their high price per punnet ($6.95).

That's dead stupid for a couple of reasons. Not only are blueberries a highly seasonal product, they are unable to be ripened after being picked like, say, tomatoes are. As a result, upon picking the fruit are ripe and fragile and soft and so naturally have an extremely short shelf life. They must be subjected to immediate cooling (as close to instant as technologically feasible), which requires expensive equipment, then packaged and shipped around the country as quickly as possible before they start to deteriorate. God knows they, like so many other fruits and vegetables, are probably sprayed with some horrible chemicals to slow the inevitable deterioration, too, but their shelf-life is still extraordinarily short compared with a lot of other fruits. In addition, the short shelf life probably means that the seller- let's say a supermarket- has to throw out a lot of product, which costs them money and raises the price for consumers.

What's more, blueberries have always been expensive, thanks to the reasons mentioned above. The fad for blueberries as a 'superfood', however, only began around 5-7 years ago, and yet the price doesn't appear to have increased significantly more than any other fruit or vegetable. You will note that other berries are equally, if not more expensive than blueberries for the very same reason.

So, yeah. Food Investigators: STFU about blueberries. I'm sure retailers do their fair share of ripping off customers when they can get away with it, but this isn't one of those times.

====================================================

Apart from these gripes, the show is streets ahead of anything you'll see on the commercial channels. A great concept, if not perfectly executed. I think the average person could get a lot out of it, as long as they don't have to sort through too much dross of the kind mentioned above.

SBS Food Investigators

This show looks great- hopefully really educational stuff for the average Australian, who, contrary to the show blurb's claim, isn't nearly as 'fascinated by what we eat' as is good for them, given the amount of packaged shit they call food that they regularly shovel down their kids' throats in place of anything recognisable as nutritious and natural. Mind you, it doesn't look like preachy crap, either. Give it a go- it never hurts to know what you're eating!

SBS, 7:30pm. 13-part series.

Sex ed for journalists: Separating group sex, adultery and rape.

One bothersome aspect of the NRL 'group sex scandal' is the very name it has been given by virtue of the fact that no crime was found to have been committed; thanks to the unsavoury nature of the incident, commentators everywhere have rushed to condemn 'group sex' willy nilly.

Group sex is when three or more people engage in mutually consensual sexual activity. There's absolutely nothing wrong with group sex. It shouldn't be considered scandalous if NRL players like to have group sex. It could be considered somewhat strange that a whole bunch of guys in a particularly homophobic subsection of society, none of whom are openly bisexual or or gay, all like to get their dicks out in the same room with a single woman essentially being a facilitator for some pretty homoerotic activity. But I digress. Group sex between consenting adults, hopefully all disease-free and practicing safe sex as well as enjoying themselves mightily, shouldn't be considered a behaviour worthy of condemnation.

Nor should a player be condemned for engaging in this practice with someone other than his wife or partner- unless, of course, he's dishonest about it with her (I won't say 'him', given that there isn't a single 'out' player in the entire league). Even practicing safe sex, the risk of STD transmission is not zero and therefore the player has a responsibility to inform his partner that he is engaging in an activity that may place her at a slightly higher risk of contracting an STD. Besides which, if your partner is someone you can't be honest with about the sort of things you like to do, maybe it's time to consider a) growing up a little and learning the value of honesty or b) ditching your narrow-minded partner for someone whose views and values are more closely aligned with your own, thus freeing up said partner to find someone more sexually conservative.

Funnily enough I get the impression that most of the players are fairly conservative in their home lives and don't involve their wives in this kind of 'fun', let alone inform them of what they're getting up to if the desperate phonecalls by players' wives to the manager of the hotel in the Jones incident were anything to go by.

There is also the question of why these guys feel the need to do the whole 'walk in through the unlocked door after your mate has taken a woman into the room and join in' thing. I'm sure any one of them with a driving need to engage in that specific scenario could easily arrange for it to happen with the knowledge and consent of the woman involved. If there is an obvious lesson to be learned from the revelations of the sexual subculture of the NRL it's that there's no shortage of women wanting to fuck NRL players, and not necessarily just one at a time. Which again begs the question why just one woman, guys? I'm truly baffled. I mean, from an extremely straight woman's point of view, the more cock the better (note: purely from a desirability point of view, not from experience, at this point in my life!), but I was under the impression that most straight guys' fantasies revolved around having lots and lots of girls and not too much man-meat. It's not like footy players have to make do with limited numbers, like so many guys!

One thing's certain, and that's that this sausage-fest with a side of vagina is not about team bonding or whatever bullshit has occasionally been put about by commentators in the media. If there was any real 'bonding' then I'm pretty sure that Matthew Johns' 11 'mates' wouldn't allow him to be copping the fallout from the Four Corners episode solo without coming forward to cop their share of what's happened- particularly since Matthew Johns was one of the two players the woman went to the room with voluntarily.

As far as commentary goes, most of it has been full of condemnation of group sex of any kind, as if it's almost as barbaric and despicable as rape itself. Margie McDonald of The Australian, however, takes a different tack, condemning the idea of a woman having sex with more than one guy at a time and making the pretty despicable suggestion that it should be obvious to any woman who wants to fuck a footy player that there is every likelihood of the entire team busting in and wanting a piece of her too. Essentially putting out for one (or two, or three) is putting out for the whole team. Phew. I'm not kidding- here it is, straight from the horse's mouth:

I make no judgment, but I do have a problem with women who can't make an educated choice: "If I go back to that player's hotel room or even out to a toilet cubicle at the back of a nightclub, can I really trust that the player I left with will be the only player there when I arrive, or even half-an-hour later?"

Ahh... thanks for that, Margie. You've just undone god-knows-how-many hours of hard work by the NRL's 'consent training seminar' facilitators and essentially told women who sleep with players to expect to be raped by their team mates. Is it just NRL players, Margie? Or does every woman who hooks up with a guy who plays team sports of any kind have to sign away her right to have a say in who she has sexual contact with? Christ. I'm sure there are enough NRL players who are decent people to be offended by what Margie McDonald has told every woman they'll ever hook up with to expect. Imagine having to spell out to your date/potential shag that no, you're not going to secretly invite the whole team into the room while she's on all fours facing away from the door. Because apparently that's what every single non-rape-minded player is going to have to do if Margie's proposal gains any traction!

Evidently there are a whole bunch of men and women in Australian society who need to better learn just what 'consent' means when it comes to sex. Less of a priority but still important is the need for journalists to learn to distinguish between consensual sexual activity, adultery and rape.

The first is a matter for peoples' private lives, whether they are NRL players or not. It doesn't matter how many people are involved in said activity. The second depends on the definition adultery is given by two parties in a marriage. You never know- there might be an NRL wife who has to get up there in front of the cameras and pretend to be shocked and outraged by her husband engaging in sex outside of their marriage when she has been fine with it all along, simply because society views an open marriage as deviant and genuine infidelity as perfectly normal.

The third is a crime and should never be covered up or excused.

Australian journalists, just like the rest of Australian society, have fucked up on all three.

Matthew Johns just a product of Aussie society

Now aside from the interesting dichotomy between the aggressively yob/macho culture of NRL and many of its players penchant for participating in some of the most homoerotic 'straight' group sex I've ever heard of, I think there's something missing from many peoples' interpretation of what 'group sex' actually means.

See, group sex involves known quantities. It involves consenting adults.

What it does not involve is a woman consensually hooking up with a guy who, unbeknownst to her, has invited all his mates to come along and do whatever they like to her. That's rape, plain and simple.

There is no tipping point at which a woman consenting to sex with a defined number of men has suddenly given de facto consent to a free-for-all on the part of a whole bunch of men she has never met, let alone consented to have sex with.

The way society treats rape victims, though, it's difficult enough if they're not a virgin, let alone if they've consented to sex with more than one guy at a time. In for a penny, in for a pound. If she enjoys having sex with two guys at once, can you prove she didn't ask for twelve? It's practically the same thing, at least in the eyes of any defence lawyer worth his salt.

Watching the Four Corners 'Code of Silence' on Monday night, I couldn't help noting the responses by participants during the 'seminar on consent' for junior (under-20's) players- the NRL's 'Rape is Bad, mmkay?' programme: A drunk woman (an actor) is shown entering a bedroom with a guy, who then sneaks out so his mate can go in and have a go, only to have the woman storm out in distress after discovering that the guy having sex with her was not the guy she went home with. Several of the young players said, in essence, that she was asking for it. "She flirted with both of them". "She put out first". One even joked that whether the rapist would wind up in trouble depended on how good his defence lawyer was.

They were then shown a video of a very drunk young man being taken home and into bed with another guy. The young man wakes up in the morning, realises a guy has had sex with him and leaves in a hurry, obviously distressed. This, according to the young players, was simply not fair. Sure young guy was incredibly drunk and went home with another guy, but in their opinion no-one in that situation is ever 'asking for it' when 'it' involves a guy being done up the arse by another guy. Their hypocrisy was duly pointed out by the session facilitator.

What wasn't noted, however, was that these young players weren't seasoned NRL veterans who'd spent years as professional players. They were not a product of the NRL, they were young, fresh and a product of their community. The Australian community. That same community that, when a woman alleges rape by NRL players launches into a debate as to whether provocatively dressed young women providing (consensual) sex-on-tap for NRL players means that every one of them is 'asking for it'. Even when they're not. After all, 'she flirted with him...'.

This isn't the NRL's problem, it's an Australian problem. As much as I detest the game and the bogan/yob culture surrounding it, it really is just a distilled version of all the worst characteristics of Australian society. For the NRL to change, we need to change.

UN engages in mild hand-flapping over Sri Lanka civilian deaths

With untold thousands of innocent people dead and the Tamil Tigers backed into a corner, the recent shelling of a civilian 'safe zone' and resultant 378 civilian deaths has finally drawn the ire of the UN down upon the Sri Lankan government. Oh and don't forget the 45 dead in the bombing of a hospital by the Sri Lankan government (who as usual deny all knowledge and blame the Tigers for, erm, deliberately murdering the people they're fighting to protect). They're calling it a bloodbath, and that's strong language from those quarters. But where is the real action? You know, sanctions and whatnot? I mean, it's pretty much all over. This has been going on for ages and the UN has scarcely said 'boo'. Calls for 'restraint', which have been the strongest 'criticism' emanating from the UN and Western governments so far, is tantamount to condoning every single action of the Sri Lankan government- it's what western governments do when it's a case of "We're perfectly happy for you to keep doing what you're doing, just please manage the PR side of things a bit better".

After all, the UN is happy to slap a new sanction on Iran every time someone in that government draws breath, yet Iran isn't committing mass murder. And sure it locks up the odd journalist, but it doesn't actively hunt them down and shoot them or blow up their offices like the Sri Lankan government does. Sri Lanka, thanks to its litany of murder and intimidation of any member of the local press who dares question the status quo, is ranked 165 out of 173 countries- lower than any other democracy- on the list of press freedom produced by Reporters Without Borders. The three British journalists recently deported from the country probably ought to thank their lucky stars that as foreigners they are merely abused and not murdered in cold blood.

So where is the West in all this? Why are our governments compelled to engage in nothing more than vigorous hand-wringing on this issue when so many human lives are at stake? I haven't even heard so much as threats of diplomatic sanctions and restrictions on travel of Sri Lankan government ministers and their families to Western countries. Zimbabwe was slapped with sanctions of exactly that sort the minute it started reclaiming the immense tracts of land owned by white farmers in that country. Somehow that was worse than mass murder. How far will the Sri Lankan government be allowed to go before we lift a finger?

I don't like the way you talk

I hadn't heard about these proposed new 'move on' laws that allow police to force people to move from an area if they are slurring their words.

Aside from the fact that these laws are typically designed to be (mis)used against homeless and indigenous people, I'm wondering how long it's going to be until the police humiliate themselves by using these laws to force someone with a disability to move on- a car-accident victim, or someone who has suffered impairment of their speech as a result of stroke, or tongue cancer, say?

Way to go, NSW...

Australia: failing to scrape together a collective ounce of humanity since 2001

From the New York Times:

KAKINADA, India — Fleeing the bitter end of a quarter-century-long war, the refugees turned to a boat. It was first a shelter from artillery shells, then a frail craft to safety. Finally, it became a coffin.

The boat was adrift on the Indian Ocean for nine days. Jaya Niranjana’s 3-year-old daughter died. M. Yesudas lost his father, sister, nephew, brothers, and uncle — six in all. An 8-month-old baby, Kuberan, survived only because his mother somehow managed to breast-feed him until just hours before she died.

By the time these refugees fleeing the war in Sri Lanka reached Indian shores last Wednesday, 10 of the 21 original travelers had died or jumped overboard. They had nothing to eat and only saltwater to drink. The scorching sun beat down on their heads. Diarrhea struck. The first child died on April 24, then the others. S. Indira Meenan, 25, recalled it in halting English: “One by one. Dead babies, children. No food, no drink.”

“Twenty-fourth, dead; 25th; 26th,” he went on. “One by one. Dead.”

Guys, give Kevin Rudd a call! Clearly the solution to the problem is to turn back the boats! Or better still, to ensure people are never able to leave the place in which they are being bombed and brutalised. After all, that's what I've been hearing from both the Rudd government lately, with Kevin Rudd repeatedly boasting of his 'hardline' stance on refugees 'people smugglers', and (of course) the opposition who have a policy along the lines of 'if in doubt, resort to stirring up racial hatred'.

India should take a leaf out of Australia's book: if innocent men, women and children are dying before your very eyes, if you see people in desperate need, in dire circumstances, just look the other way. I mean, if a tree falls in the woods...

Media Rant #30994

I heard a journalist talking about Egypt's mass pig slaughter. Apparently the Egyptian government is in a bit of a tizzy about swine flu and is trying to slaughter all the pigs in the country. No journalists have been harmed at this time. Thank you, I'm here all night. Anyway this is contravention to WHO advice. The journalist went on to say that Egypt had been hit hard by bird flu. 36 people had died of bird flu in the last 5 years. I often wonder to myself if a requirement of journalism is an ability to say the most monumentally stupid things without a hint of self consciousness.

I think that the 7 or so people killed in Egypt by bird flu per year would pale in comparison to thousands of people who die from things like typhoid and good old regular flu which STILL kills more people each year than bird flu or swine flu and which we STILL have no real cure for. I'm really sick of the media beat up over swine flu. The endless lies about 'everyone wearing masks' when we can see a street full of people NOT wearing masks right behind the lying bastard filing the report. The constant misquotings and panicked speculation and the flagrant, offensive abuse of statistcs to try and create an aura of fear and dread about something that no one really know much about, except that you will be FAR more likely to die from drinking the water at your exotic foreign destination than from swine flu.

Just this evening there was another idiotic story accusing Kevin Rudd of scaring people over swine flu, from the very same people who have been running a round the clock scare campaign over swine flu. This sort of garbage reporting, which anyone with an ounce of decency should be ashamed of, is why governments feel compelled to do things like arrest and quarantine Mexicans for no reason and is why Mexicans are starting to feel even more discrimination in places like the US. Because of irresponsible reporting aimed solely at creating fear and panic instead of informing people about what's going on. Seriously, fuck off and die.

War by other means

Apparently Rudd has delayed the start of the emissions trading scheme and has dropped the price of carbon from $40 to $10. This has pretty much resulted in a ETS that no one can really oppose. It's not enough, but from that point of view there's always the argument that an ETS is better than no ETS and once we have legislation for trading carbon, the government of the day can change prices etc. without having to pass further legislation.

More importantly this seems to be another massive Howard style wedge on Turnbull, who of course has no climate change policy despite having been environment minister under Howard, where the ETS started and having been part of the debate for months. Climate change seems to be an issue that cuts accross party affiliation. Turnbull will be trapped between Liberal moderates who are pro an ETS and Howardites who are anti-anything-Kevin-Rudd.

Also the 'save the world' aspect of climate change and the timing of the legislation, long enough after the last election to avoid election fatigue, to give the government the attractive option of having an issue to take to an early election that isn't the economy. An issue that Labor has control of and that they seem to poll well on. I'm not sure that the govt. would go to a double dissolution, though it might solve a lot of their problems, they should still be able to call an early election and get a similar result if the Liberals play along and look intransigent when it comes to Saving The World (TM). The Greens quite rightly oppose the watering down of the ETS, which I suspect is part of the plan. The idea is to put Turnbull in a hard place and force him to capitulate publicly and ruin him before the next election, or be obstructionist and face annihilation in some sort of emotive issue election of doom. There's no way you can campaign against 'I know it's hard, and I know it's not what everyone wants, but I'm trying to save the world.'

Sarah's first fun-run

Gam and I took up running two months ago, motivated by a few of our friends doing the same. We (minus Gam) all took part in our first fun-run a month ago- a mere 3km, but that's 2.7km more than I was capable of doing when I started out. So here we are before the race:



And here's me, on the final stretch... look pretty good, don't I? Pretty fit, huh? Let's just pretend I wasn't struggling by this point...




Oh, wait! What's that?! Shit... is that a 12-year-old?



Yeah... it's a 12-year-old... The 3km? That's for the beginners and the small children. This particular kid was one of the slower ones- the fast ones were already sprinting toward the finish line by the time I hit the half-way mark.



And guess what? Pretty much everyone else only got one photo taken of them. But the photographers obviously liked the sight of me being humiliated by a small child so much that they decided to take a whole series of photos!





As if the sight of numerous grandpas geared up to run the full half-marathon- and finishing it- wasn't depressing enough...



Or is that inspiring? Go grandpa! Maybe if I keep this up I'll be able to run a marathon by the time I'm 100...

Xiaoxiao in a bucket

Xiaoxiao doesn't seem to be getting a whole lot bigger these days (at ~7-8 months of age), but for a short while she seemed to be getting rapidly larger in the horizontal sense. She has always made a point of stealing Feifei's food (Feifei, even when he was five times her size never seemed to think he could stand up to her!), but it really started to show for a while, with Feifei dropping a kilo or two and Xiaoxiao stacking the same amount on. She also seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to food, and magically appears whenever I try to sneak some to Feifei.

Despite the food-stealing, they're still getting on like a house on fire. Xiaoxiao hasn't yet realised that things she could do easily when she was a trim little kitten are no longer possible as a budding fatty.






She is, however, still a furry bundle of cuddles- none of that 'defiant teenager' stuff yet (though she has a definite naughty streak). Without being unkind, I have also concluded that she is nowhere near as bright as Feifei. Unfortunately, Feifei recently made a very silly mistake and ventured across the road. Luckily Gam was watching and called me. Feifei hid under some old guy's house and refused to come when I called him, before finally coming after I gave it one more try before we gave up and went inside. Needless to say, Feifei is never, ever being allowed out again after that- the front balcony is going to be his only experience of the outdoors without a leash from now on. We've never allowed Xiaoxiao out, partly because we think she'd actually be capable of killing wildlife, unlike Feifei, but mostly because she is bolder and we feared she'd be more likely to explore outside the grounds of the complex. It took Feifei more than 5 years to go there, but eventually he did... so now he's cooped up inside full-time, much to his chagrin. It's a shame, but it's much better than having him hit by a car.

Flashback: Yamba, November '08

I never did get around to posting photos of our trip to Yamba last year. My Mum bought some kind of package deal where you paid $80 and got to stay 3 nights at 'Moby Dick Waterfront Resort Motel' in Yamba for $120. She got two and paid for one of the 3 night stays for us as a present for my birthday.

We stopped at Coolangatta so we (I) could get turkish pizza at Adana's Palace; we also went to a second-hand bookshop down the road. That was just as well, given that the weather took a turn for the downright crappy. I picked up a second-hand copy of The Playboy Reader, a tome published in 1960-something and filled with a selection of interviews, fiction and the like published in Playboy. It caught my eye because it contained the Playboy Interview with Martin Luther King, among other things.



Our expectations for our accommodation were minimal, but we were very surprised by how nice our room was at Moby Dick (odd name for a motel?). That was just as well given that we had to spend the entire first day inside because a) it was raining and b) I was laid up with the worst period pain I think I've ever experienced and was popping Panadeine Forte and Nurofen all day (to little effect). Our room was extremely neat and well-kept, even if somewhat dated. That matters little to me, as long as there's a comfortable bed and everything is nice and clean- which was exactly the case. The shower was nice and big. If a couch mattered then I would have been disappointed- it was well past its take-it-to-the-tip date, but I prefer bed for everything but eating, so it was tolerable.






Best of all was the beautiful view (thanks to a wall-to-wall window overlooking the river), but a close second was the fact there was a stovetop in the room upon which I could make coffee- and I had just happened to bring our Bodum stovetop espresso-maker thingummy and had ground up some beans just before we left. So there was none of the ordeal of bad coffee we went through when we stayed in Coolangatta, and thank god for that.




On the second day (my birthday, I think?) the weather hadn't exactly cleared but it stopped raining long enough for us to go for a walk in the morning, head into 'town' to buy some food and go for a drive in the afternoon. Still, I think we spent a fair portion of the day tucked up in bed reading our books.

Even with the pretty awful, grey weather it was easy to see what a nice place Yamba is for a holiday. Driving around, we saw lots of advertising for 'pet-friendly' holiday rentals- it definitely looks like the primary market is families, many of whom must own dogs. As with most of the towns along the east coast of NSW that I've been to, there was a real sense of familiarity. Certainly a world of difference from the tacky horrors of the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland.



















On the third day we went for a bike ride out onto the breakwall and around the beach there. Saw an awful lot of crabs, including a very pretty dead one.









Later we took the 10-15 minute drive to Maclean. We bought snacks at a bakery and had a brief look around but didn't really do much. It's a pretty little town that looks largely geared towards tourists of retirement age; it was incredibly tidy and well-preserved for country town... I just don't think I'd want to live there.








That afternoon we went for a drive out to Angourie Blue Pool- that was really pretty, and if the weather was warmer it would have been a great place to swim. It's a freshwater pool right next to the beach. It was created, I think, when there was some kind of quarrying operation carried out.












For dinner on that final night we went to 'Sassafras', a pizza and pasta restaurant in Yamba. We'd received a $10 voucher upon check-in at Moby Dick, and as we were leaving the motel to head into town we spotted a Sassafras delivery car pulling up to deliver a pizza to someone at the motel. We asked the delivery girl (Swedish? There were a lot of Scandinavian girls in Yamba, for whatever reason!) for directions and she said we could follow her back, so we did.



We decided to do take-away rather than eat in, a decision swayed by the presence of at least one family with noisy children eating in the restaurant. Gam chose the meatiest pizza on the menu and I chose some kind of pasta dish. I can't remember what it was, but it was really nice, with probably enough food to do me for two dinners!




The next day we made our way home in pouring rain and near-zero visibility... that was when we stopped at the Logan Pound and adopted Xiaoxiao, who we brought home the next day. No wonder Yamba didn't rate a mention!