by tigtog on February 9, 2010
in blogging
Items of interest found recently in my RSS feed. What did I miss? Please share what you've been reading (and writing!) in the comments.
- Misogyny in Music: Art vs Science
– “Generally what happens is this: I’m driving along, listening to a new song, usually enjoying it – maybe even for the first few times I hear it. And then I really listen to the lyrics, and there’s a grunching moment. There’s rape culture, right there on my radio, right there in the songs crowds are rocking out to at this years’ festivals. Right there in the words being joyfully screamed out from moshpits everywhere. And it’s bloody depressing.”
- Islam And Feminism | Muslim Feminists
– “This patronising discourse arrogantly assumes the way to overcome patriarchy is to abandon Islam and adopt ”Western values”. How can a constructive effort to improve the situation of women begin when the conversation is so unsophisticated, demeaning and primitive?”
- Battlestar Galactica: Disability In Space
– “Despite the fact that some people turn up their noses at science fiction and all it stands for, it is often the most striking television in terms of depicting equality;”
Disclaimer/
SotBO: a link here is not necessarily an endorsement of all opinions of the post author(s) either in the particular post or of their writing in general.
The latest Nielsen polls seem to show an electorate that’s not quite sure who’s offering what on climate change:
Crucially in this election year, support for [the Rudd government's] emissions trading scheme (ETS) proposal is down 10 points [since last November] to 56 per cent.
When voters were offered a choice between Labor’s ETS and Mr Abbott’s alternative fund to finance emissions reductions, 45 per cent of those polled preferred the fund and 39 per cent backed the trading scheme.
But when voters were asked to choose between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s broad approaches to climate change, 43 per cent supported Mr Rudd’s approach and 30 per cent backed Mr Abbott.
That looks like an electorate which has absorbed negative messages from all sides about the ETS being environmentally inadequate (true) and financially threatening (arguable), yet who still don’t trust Abbott to take climate change as seriously as they do themselves.
The Poll Bludger sums up the Neilsen poll results:
The latest Nielsen poll has Labor’s two-party lead at 54-46, down from 56-44 in November. The Coalition is up four points on the primary vote to 41 per cent, with Labor steady on 42 per cent (no figure is provided for the Greens as far as I can see). The Prime Minister’s personal ratings have taken a hit, his approval rating down six to 60 per cent and disapproval up four to 33 per cent. The poll is the first since Tony Abbott became Liberal leader, and finds him with 44 per cent approval and 41 per cent disapproval. Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister is 58-31, compared with 67-21 in the twilight of Turnbull’s leadership. The sample size was 1400.
No doubt Possum Comitatus at Pollytics will have some more analysis (and graphs!) later this morning.
That’s still a solid lead for Labor and for Rudd as preferred PM. The best that can be said for Abbott is that he has lifted the figures from Turnbull’s nadir, but I’m sure the Libs were hoping for a bigger bump from the change in leadership than this. The comfortable figures for Labor/Rudd also indicate that climate change rhetoric alone will not be a big enough pull for voters to tick the Libs box on a ballot form.
by tigtog on February 8, 2010
in Life
Morbidly concerned with appropriate discipline for a teen who downloaded several gigs of Youtubes the other weekend for a start. I’m on 64kbps until next Monday unless I dive into my netbook’s mobile broadband allowance.
How was your weekend?
From the Things I Love files today: Beautifully covered cookbooks.
Sure, the other cookbooks get pulled out plenty for their content. Mrs Beeton’s, the C.W.A. Cookbook, The Cook’s Companion, Complete Vegetarian, How To Eat, 101 Muffins, Trattoria Pasta, the Women’s Weeklies – all these get plenty of bench time and are suitably be-dripped and bedraggled.
But every time I get out Thompson’s* thai food or Maggie’s Harvest, I have to stop to admire and stroke the cover, spend just a moment with it, before opening. Embroidered trees and birds! Hot pink silk! They’re the whole package.
If we’re right into confession time, every now and then I get them out just to admire and stroke the covers.
(* Ever notice that we tend to call these cookbooks “Stephanie”, “Charmaine”, “Maggie”, and “Nigella”; but people typically don’t refer to “David”?)
Tell me about your cookbooks and recipe repositories, or your favourite strokable book covers. Or both.
