These otters were snapped at the Canberra Zoo by Stephen Dann. Posted with permission.
You can see the rest of the set here at flickr.
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 good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
I went to see Kick-Ass today.
Good movie. Well-written. Trigger warning for gore, brutal violence, stalker-y behaviour, and teen angst. Also, Nicholas Cage’s character is kinda creepy. I still think it’s shite that the perspective chara is Kick-Ass, rather than Hit Girl.
My daughter just recognised a schoolmate in the crowd of teen Justin Bieber fans chanting outside Sunrise’s TV studio in Martin Place. They obviously woefully underestimated how many fans were going to turn up, and had no crowd barriers outside the studio to deal with the disappointed fans after the concert cancellation.
Those poor police.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee this week condemned preventive detention laws operating in NSW ( and in other Australian jurisdictions).
Despite the fact that these laws are currently only used to detain reviled sex offenders, they open the way for further removal of the presumption of innocence.
How is our government going to respond to the UN?
Does anyone care about the damage these laws do, not only to our legal system but also to our international reputation?
http://archive.nswbar.asn.au/database/in_brief/inbrief.article.php?i=2525
Thanks for the link, Maggie. The creeping corrosion of our liberties just keeps on happening, with barely a whimper.
I’ve been deliberately avoiding discussing any Melbourne Storm stuff, but Alan Moran opining on The Drum about how the salary cap system is an unacceptable restraint of trade – what a dill!
This month’s (April’s) Australian edition of Marie Claire magazine featured a story about a woman who wanted to give her husband a surprise threesome with another woman as a ‘gift.’
I thought, ‘ah well, consenting adults, blah blah blah’, slightly-hetcentric-though-not-terribly-offensive fluff piece.
And then, towards the end of the article, the author describes lesbian sex as feeling “incestuous” and says “I like it much better with my man, cause I love that men and women are DIFFERENT!”
ARRRRRGGGGGH!!! Can’t you just say “it’s not for me”? Why do they always have to do the whole “gross” “icky” “narcissism” bullshit? So stupid.
More human rights erosions up for grabs here: http://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/documents/Guidelines%20and%20Assessment%20Framework%20for%20the%20recognition%20and%20endorsement%20of%20eligible%20midwives.pdf
If you, the already qualified and practising midwife, as per the interntional definition of midwife, jump through approximately 25.4849 hoops we will deem you an “eligible midwife” even though as yet we have no idea what that means and even though the document states that being “eligible” doesn’t make you worthy of MBS or PBS because that’s up to Medicare to determine. There’s no mention of homebirth anywhere in the document so again “Eligible for what??” raises its head as a question. This is one of the greatest loads of bunk I’ve read in the last two years, and I’ve read a lot of bunk.
Utterly redundant, insulting, pointless, stupid bullshit.
How the fuck does anyone write a response to that? Dog turd in a box is all I can think of. Not to mention the govt released it Friday before a long weekend with a due in date of Tuesday. Yup they’re big on the consultative process alright.
I think we tend to believe that loss of rights comes about after loud, recognisably violent behaviours and campaigns force it upon us but in reality it’s the quiet mushroom creepingness of oppression which endangers us more than anything else. We seem to sit still till colonised and then it’s too late to do anything. I have no hope whatsoever. The loss of women’s bodily autonomy in Australia is coming. Two years of campaigning hasn’t changed a single outcome. Personhood of the foetus is upon us. Reproductive rights are dashed. Women will no longer have the right to call a midwife and book a homebirth. We will be expected to ask permission of doctors at every step of our pregnancy and birthing journeys and accept their right of veto over our “care” ie our bodies, in every way. When will they take the precedent set by this and turn it to abortion? Will more women pay attention then?
All that’s left is conscientious objection so bring it on, I say!
Since it’s off topic on the thread, I’ll add the link I was about to drop here instead.
On a lighter note, I have quite a few double-passes to shows to give away for Sydney Comedy Festival shows this weekend and next week. Check them out on Gagging For It (Oz Comedy News).