Posts by Deborah
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A trinity of unrelated thoughts:
I rather like Christians. However I've only ever met a very few of them.
In my singing group, I'm am the one who does the most to help the person with disabilities whose presence in the group is disruptive and difficult. I am the godless atheist; all the rest profess some version of Christianity.
Miss Six the Younger: "But Jesus did exist, didn't he?"
Miss Six the Elder: "Oh, don't worry about that. God did exist, but he's dead now." -
Yes, I was mistaking a base surge for a pyroclastic flow. Now I can tick the "learned something new" box for the day. Thanks, craigm.
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I thought that Auckland museum video was a little misleading, though I could be wrong about that. My understanding was that pyroclastic flows occur when columns of ash and gas collapses. So there's a few hours while the column builds and builds and builds, until you get the devastating collapse. The video implied that it all happens very quickly, so no one has any time to get away. But motorway and highway havoc aside, if an eruption of the sort that generates pyroclastic flows starts in Auckland, there would be a bit of time to flee. Showing it all happening so quickly might encourage people to think that there's nothing they can do anyway, so it's not worth making emergency preparations at all. Wind up radios aside, of course.
Any volcanolgists about? Or geologists? Or enthusiasts who know a bit about what might happen? (C/f me, whose only knowledge of volcanology comes from reading Pliny and going to assorted museum exhibitions. And crashing one undergraduate geology lecture 26 years ago.)
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Paul Litterick has an excellent post up at The Fundy Post: Climbing Mount Unpronounceable
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Right, there's another episode I'll be watching through my fingers.
I've taught my girls how to hide behind the sofa.
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the [prison] muster
I loathe this way of referring to the prison headcount. It makes me think of mustering sheep, with all the attendant implications that prisoners are not human beings, but animals.
The question we should be asking is not, "How big is the prison muster?" but "How many women and men are we holding in our prisons?"
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I don't think women like Linda aren't willing to speak here because of my hiphop posturing.
I am. I gave up on this thread a few days ago, and only came back to take a look because someone mentioned it to me elsewhere. I am distressed that this community which I value is filling itself with talk of breaking balls and stepping up to each other, with implied notions that physical size and the ability to be menacing matter, that some people wouldn't dare to say some things to other people if only they met them face to face. In other words, "I'm so big and tough looking that I don't need take anything you say seriously." I thought we had moved beyond being a society where what mattered was physical might.
I really, really don't want to read threats of physical violence here, no matter whether they are part of some sub-culture or not.
[edited to remove typos]
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@ Sacha
Thank you.
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Cactus Kate has scans of the Canvas article on feminism.
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A rousing Guardian column by Carrie Hamilton, which takes its cue from the second episode of Women, which we watched last night -- and which did, indeed, turn out to be an irritating hour of chatter about who does the washing up in middle-class homes.
Yes, but as well as quoting the two paragraphs from Hamilton's column that lament the extent to which 'feminism' is missing the point by focusing on the sex industry, it's worth looking at her last paragraph as well.
Luckily there are lots of other feminists out there, from different generations and backgrounds, making links between violence against women and other oppressions. One group recently posted a Manifesto for 21st-Century Feminism that emphasises women's exploitation in all areas of the labour market, not just the sex industry, and recognises the sexualisation of society as part of contemporary consumer capitalism. That's the kind of feminist resurgence we need.
'Feminism' is a very broad church. Until the last paragraph, Hamilton's column sounds as if "feminism" = "working against the sex industry". It's a standard tactic for denigrating contemporary feminism. (1) Feminism = empowerment by raunch culture. (2) This is bad. (3) Why isn't contemporary feminism working on x, y and z? (4) Feminists are doing it WRONG WRONG WRONG. (5) Silly naughty feminists... we can just ignore them.
There was a silly wittering piece in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday by Paul Sheehan which pulled this kind of move: Feminism's failure to lend a hand. Australian feminist Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony wrote a great takedown, including this paragraph, which, mutatis mutandis could be applied to a large part of Hamilton's article.
Trope two: Feminists in the West have failed to fix the world for women in other countries. Which, of course, is exclusively the responsibility of feminists. Female ones. This, of course, conveniently allows the Sheehans to criticise without offering any kind of “fix” themselves, that is, ways of helping that don’t involve invasion or other forms of coercion. I don’t think western women ignore the terrible things that are done to women in other countries. That’s not my experience. But for most of us, our traction to achieve change is limited, and where it is possible, it goes ignored by the Sheehans of this world.
@Grace
I'm not loving being the only Ladyperson in this thread so far! Where is everybody?
At school, helping with reading, then doing some work, now racing around frantically to get some chores done before heading out for my singing lesson... I would love to stay and play all day, but I've got things to do. Ka kite ano.