Today’s Asian Short Clawed otters are via the UK’s Telegraph. The triplets were born at Chessington Zoo to parents Guinevere and Lancelot.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: arts & entertainment, fun & hobbies, Life
100 books by women in 2016 
Vale David Bowie 
Jurassic World – Movie Review 
#AWW Book Review: Mateship with Birds 
Hoyden About Town 
Exploding Boy gives these otters his seal of approval.
Our dogs do this a lot, gnawing on each other with great affection.
A question: I’m trying to think of the name of that logical fallacy where if you give an advantage or right to one group, that means taking away from another group, because rights etc are somehow finite? I know it’s got a name but I just can’t remember it at the moment. It’s this post that’s got me thinking about it – best WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ???!!! post in a while! (and also continuing the wildlife photography theme.)
I discovered that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland has a sequel.
Needless to say, I was all over that shiznit.
@ Helen:
I can’t think of the formal name of the fallacy either, but it’s a very interesting phenomenon.
I’m also of the school that if sharing an advantage/freedom around more widely actually does take something away from one particular group, then that is a very clear demonstration that the particular group had privilege which is now being dismantled. e.g. more women in education leads to (eventually) more women in management, which does take away an advantage previously reserved to men.
So, in the long term, anything which gives more women access to higher education does threaten the advantages that men are accustomed to expecting. I suspect that this is where the hostility towards those donations to the women-led colleges in the US is coming from.
The trouble is where people confuse privileges with rights and freedoms. Nobody has a “right” to a privilege.
I’m a bit fuzzy about classifications, but it could be this fallacy (at least in terms of the zero-sum aspect):
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/badreasn.html
I’m happy today for the following reasons:
1 – have completed 22 hours of marking (woohoo)
2 – my father is recovering from a hip replacement (with complications) and is about to turn 90.
3 – had a great night out last night (margaritas and a good curry)
I have a friend who is so depressed he has given serious consideration to suicide in the States, and I feel so helpless from half a world away (he’s fine, and seeing a psychologist right now) while he is hurting.
My ankle is still, after more than two months since spraining it, swollen to the size of a Korean pear and hurting.
But, I didn’t have to get up early to spend all my spoons walking The Kid to the bus for school, so that is a small plus side.
Hope everyone enjoys a restful weekend.
Zero sum! That’s IT! Thank you, Tee!
@ Helen:
Ah, of course zero-sum is the proper term. Comes out of Nashian game theory, I think, and overly popular amongst Randian glibertarians who like to trumpet their rationality.
@ Ouyang Dan:
{{{Ouyang Dan}}}
What does your doc say about that ankle? It sounds like there could be a serious ligament tear there that simply isn’t going to fix itself.
Exploding Boy gives these otters his seal of approval.
This pun was no accident – it was made on porpoise! Helen’s clearly hoping we’ll rise to the bait. It’s an obvious case of keeping up with the Davey Joneses, which shoally shell regret starting. (Squids these days, their sense of humour makes me eel.)
Yesterday I taught my cat to fetch, and programmed a vending machine. Exciting times.
Didn’t want to make this comment on Lauredhel’s Mother’s Day post, si here is better.
Today, I miss my Mum. ‘Though I am rejoicing in my lovely daughters, who brought me coffee and flowers from the garden and home made cards in bed.
Deborah: I’ve started a Happy Mother’s Day post, too.
Anyone else enjoying Dirt Game on our ABC on Sunday evenings?
It’s nice to see a bit of WA on the screen, for a start.
Um…did anyone see the Four Corner’s report on the ‘code of silence’ regarding League players and their mistreatment of women?
Cos the SMH had a link to a “League HQ” article, which had THIS to say about the woman in New Zealand who has been claiming she was assaulted by Johns and other players:
Although there was no suggestion the woman had been sexually assaulted, Johns and Firman were named by Four Corners as being the first players to have sex with her. Asked why she had waited until now speak out, the woman said: “I wanted at least their wives or girlfriends to know what they had done at the very least. Part of me wanted them to know because I was so angry and I wanted their lives destroyed like mine was and part of me wanted them to know so that they could go and meet the better people that wouldn’t treat them like that.”
Um…there was NO SUGGESTION? There were complaints to the police, and slit wrists and PTSD, but there was no suggestion? Do they mean at all? Or by the report? And if by the report, can anyone confirm/deny this? Cos while I imagine the report would not say it did/didn’t happen, I think reporting on the facts very much suggests an assault.
I haven’t watched the show yet but have seen some interviews with the main reporter and noted that clearly they are dancing around the issue for legal reasons. If 4C says there was an assault, I guess they are open to a defamation case since no charges were laid. But yes, it is obvious this is exactly what the victim is alleging since she made a police complaint, but 4C have been going out of their way to not say that themselves. (and instead talk about it as a general “respect for women” thing.)
Sure…I mean Four Corners not SAYING it, not ALLEGING it is understandable – without some kind of concrete proof, they can’t say ‘This happened’ without a whole world of trouble. But ‘no suggestion’???
The show featured interviews with the woman who is straight up saying it, and they’re not (from what I have heard) discrediting that, so indeed there is a suggestion. This shit makes my head explode.
(I also just got an email from TBO who *did* watch it and said it was horrendous, that after all the training you still had guys saying ‘Yeah, a lot of it comes down to how you treat them after – if you get them home in a taxi it makes it easier to cover up’)
I’ve heard the “no suggestion that” phrase repeated a few times from them, so I presume they have robust legal opinion that is the term to use.
Sorry Amanda, I was misunderstanding you there. I didn’t realise you meant that ‘no suggestion’ was being said literally from the Four Corners reporters. Even so I still think that the guys in the SMH/League HQ would have been well advised to say ‘While the report did not suggest’ or something similar since there just *is* a suggestion given the woman’s insistence and the police investigation.
fuckpoliteness’s last blog post..Anyone care to clear this up for me?
But if they said that FP they wouldn’t be able to play the ‘false allegation, media whore’ card that they like so much. They might have to accept the fact that being a footy star doesn’t make you a solid gold human being or some such.
Mmm…http://www.leaguehq.com.au/articles/2009/05/12/1241893960798.html. An article in which they say that the woman “said her life had been ruined after having sex with Johns”. Um. No. She SAID her life had been ruined by being RAPED by those men. I’m tired of this shit, my brain hurts. I don’t have enough “Hole” in my itunes to get me through the rage.