Today’s otter image comes via Project Gutenberg. It’s a rendition of an otter skull, from Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon, Robert A. Sterndale, 1884. The author’s introduction makes it clear that he believes there had been no previous study of regional mammals outside of central Empire holdings. He goes on to begin his natural history with a cataloguing of the Indigenous humans of the area, and some speculation about “Monkey-men” of the jungle.
Huge apologies for my failure to post a Thursday Cheezburger yesterday! School holidays has me all in a muddle, schedule-wise. To compensate, I have bonus Honourable Mentions today.
It’s also our monthly Delurking Day! If you’ve been reading along, give us a shout and let us know you’re there. You’re welcome to post your favourite macro (post the link and wait for Admin Image Magic), introduce yourself, or tell us what’s impressed or disappointed you lately.
Would have been nicer if I hadn’t had to wait weeks to see an Ear-Nose-Throat specialist for less than five minutes to hear that my bump in my mouth* that refuses to go away is nothing to worry about.
*1cm diameter, hard palate, just left of the medial line and about 2cm behind my gumline.
Many Nestle-bloggers seem to be continuing to believe that by taking their questions straight to the company, they will get honest replies, and will clear up all these decades of silly misunderstanding in a jiffy. Under great pressure, Nestle corporate representatives have finally joined in on twitter, as @nestlefamily, to try to defend the brand, and the bloggers that they roped in, uninformed and untrained, to be their PR agents.
Here was one of the first questions asked of Nestlé at their @nestlefamily account, by @momslant:
– “75% of the people polled wanted Roman Polanski arrested and brought to justice. So hold onto those freedom fries, and ask yourself: why is the idea that raping a thirteen-year-old girl is wrong so hard for some people to grasp? If Polanski had raped a thirteen-year-old boy, his ass would be toast. In fact, the Catholic priest scandal didn’t break wide open till it affected boys. Girls, though? Girls are evidently non-persons. It’s open season on them. “
– “She’s not motivated by sympathy—in fact, she has explicitly said she harbors no “hard feelings” but also feels “no sympathy” for Polanski, and in recent years publicly stated she wished he’s come back just so she could put the whole thing behind her, irrespective of the outcome.brbrWhat Gailey quite evidently wants is this shit to end. She wants closure—something Polanski has been cruelly denying her for three decades while living as a fugitive.”
– “Neither man here (Mansfield and an academic) mention that for crimes of rape, globally, prosecution and conviction rates are appallingly low and that in this saying this is an insubstantial or unworthy crime to follow through on is denigrating every single rape and child sexual abuse survivor in the world.”
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.
Dr Galbally will present evidence from Shut Out – a report recently released by the National People with Disabilities and Carer Council. Shut Out provides the first comprehensive picture of what contemporary life is like for Australians with a disability and their families. The report is the result of an extensive Australia-wide consultation which asked people with a disability and their families what their lives were like and, most importantly, what they would like their lives to be like. As a result of this consultation process, the report is alive with the voices and stories of hundreds of Australians.
Shut Out is a damning indictment of the discrimination and exclusion experienced daily by many people with a disability and their families. Shut Out exposes a national disgrace for Australia – one of the wealthiest and most liveable nations in the world; a country where people with a disability find themselves shut out. Shut out of schools, shut out of jobs, shut out of housing, shut out of health care, shut out of community groups. Shut out of anything like a fair go – shut out of the Australian way of life.
Shut Out demonstrates that people with a disability face barriers, discrimination and disastrous government policy effecting every aspect of their daily lives. Children prevented from attending local childcare, kindergartens and schools; children with disabilities not learning to read or write. Qualified candidates for jobs screened out and rejected because of their disability. People unable to access public transport, buildings and activities such as shopping, going to the movies and eating in a café. Kids with disabilities excluded from local sporting groups and recreational clubs.
Shut Out is a shocking indictment showing that governments at all levels – national, states and local – are failing to provide people with the support, access and resources they need to meaningfully participate in and contribute to the community.
This is not a shades-of-grey issue. This is not a “Romeo & Juliet” statutory rape case. This is not a “barely legal” case. This is not a “technicality” case. This is not a “well, some reasonable people might see it another way” case. This is not a “it was only just illegal” case. This was not an “oops, well, he was a nice guy who made a minor error in judgement” case.
A bunch of Hollywood personalities have a petition going, in which they call this a “case of morals”.
Read the court documents for yourself. Read about what some people are saying is just a “hysterical witch hunt”.
We’re also in the last couple of days for submissions to the next and seventeenth Down Under Feminists Carnival , which will be hosted by Hoyden regular Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure. Multiple submissions are welcome, from your own Aus/NZ feminist blog, or those of others. Submit your posts at blogcarnival, or at qotblog at gmail dot com if you use a screen reader and can’t access the blogcarnival captcha.
Also, we currently don’t desperately need volunteers for the Down Under Feminists Carnival! We are subscribed through to September next year, which will be the 28th edition. Please check out the roster ASAP, if you put your hand up, as I haven’t emailed everyone individually. If you can’t do your allocated month, see if you can do a direct swap with someone else; if that isn’t possible, let me know and I’ll try to arrange a backup host. (I have Deborah and QoT in the backup possibilities file as well as my self; if you’d like to be a backup, just let me know.)
No spoilers in the rant (link below). In fact, it has anti-spoilers as the author appears to not have done his homework. Here is the perspicacious comment, posted By jimbo600 1 September 24, 2009 08:53:47 AM:
Surely the most cretinous, point-missing vision of the lovely, life-affirming Doctor Who ever committed to pixels. Please let it be a joke.
Den of Geek published a rant by someone who’s not fond of New Who. As it went on (and on and on) it appeared that he’d never been much of a fan of Old Who, either – just someone who thinks that the BBC and everyone involved with Doctor Who for the last 40 years has got it wrong by making it be a kids show that adults can also enjoy, when they should have made it much more hardbitten if it was going to engage him, gadzooks. I half expected him to sign it as “Disgusted, of Tunbridge Wells”.
Still, the rant is entertaining in a car-crash kind of way. Sure, there’s flaws in Doctor Who. That doesn’t mean that most of us want it to change as drastically as this bloke envisages (and his fantasies with respect to preventing the birth of dictators via time travel are not only sexist in the extreme but also betray someone who simply has not read enough time travel paradox fics).
[I'm updating the links roundup at the end, in case you're wondering why this post keeps popping up in your RSS feed.]
For those not following the #nestlefamily hashtag on twitter, it’s about a current ‘conference’ being held by Nestle. They’ve invited a bunch of advertiser “mommybloggers” to come and be feted and given freebies and fed Nestlé propaganda for a weekend. I don’t know what the other financial arrangements might be, but the bloggers are enthusiastically advertising Nestle all over their blogs and twitter accounts.
Unsurprisingly, people involved in anti-Nestle activism are unimpressed, and are providing a bunch of educational links (and the occasional rant) about the ethics and abuses of Nestle on the #nestlefamily hashtag.
If you’re unaware of the Nestle boycott and the reasons behind it, firstly have you been asleep for the past few decades?, and secondly, you can catch up here (and search any of my posts on the WHO Code):
One of two of the Nestlebloggers has at least pretended to say “hey, I didn’t know about that, I’ll check it out”. The rest are knee-jerking about how “high school” all the “drama” is, and about how THEY fed their baby formula and HE turned out FINE, and about how … well, there’s no other logic there, really. Check out some of their responses here:
While wandering around the internet yesterday I came across a comment that said something along the lines of “if you change your name when you get married, don’t expect to get taken seriously as a feminist”. Okaaay then. Now I know that this is a hot button issue for many people, but I’m not one of them. I am however, someone who came to identify as a feminist after I got married and changed my name. So does that make me a bad feminist, or not a feminist at all? Do I need to change my name back again to my father’s surname to be a real feminist? Or can I be taken seriously just as I am? Or does this rule only apply to feminists who get married while being a feminist?
SotBO: I don’t have an issue with anyone who chooses not to change their name when they get married. I don’t have an issue with people who choose never to get married. Whatever works for you, and it’s none of my business anyway.
Don’t miss Dr Rhonda Galbally on the National Press Club next week! Wednesday 7th October, ABC, 12:30 pm. 
For those not following the 
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