Today’s otters are brought to you via the Telegraph: “Guinevere and Lancelot, Asian short clawed otters at Chessington zoo, ferry their six-week-old triplets away from the water’s edge”.
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 
Moonageddon is coming! In two weeks, the moon will be the closest to Earth that it’s been since 1993, and is expected to be large and photo-worthy. Time to dust off the tripod, methinks.
Apparently there are also woo-merchants out in force on the supposed astrological import of this astronomical event. Le sigh.
One of those weird research things…
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/do-companies-pay-women-more-if-a-male-ceo-has
“We observe that when a daughter was born to a male CEO, wages paid to the CEO’s female employees rose relative to the wages paid to male employees. ”
You can see why it might be so, but then you just get more depressed.
It is a working paper, and the post linked to doesn’t have information about methodology so it might be complete rubbish. For one thing, how much influence does a CEO have on wages? I suspect this means they might be more open to hiring women for higher-status higher-wage positions rather than giving raises.
This man is considering running for President next year:
Keep on talking, Huckabee. Let’s see how “likeable” you look to the undecided voters in a few more months as you keep on this path.
Terrifying uni is terrifying. So much pressure!
Just reading Yes Means Yes on the recent study that seems to knock Clark and Hatfield’s study and the whole evopysch Sexual Strategy Theory of why men seek/agree to casual sex more than women off its undeserved perch. Pleasure Theory is where it’s at! Women judge that a strange man approaching them for casual sex is unlikely to be fun in bed, men judge that a strange woman approaching them for casual sex probably will be fun in bed, this pleasure evaluation disparity totally tracks the gender willingness disparity. Women are even just as likely to agree to casual sex with a strange woman approaching them as the men are! The authors also looked at perceived risks, which is definitely a factor, but minor by comparison.
The former governor, who is also a pundit on Fox News
Are Fox News going to fire him if he runs, so as to remain “fair and balanced?”
My new job is excellent but tiring. I have somehow managed to write three blog posts thus far in March. I felt the need to complain about some politicians 😛 And also about how some of my ebook purveyors have been forced to close.
Hilariously, someone found one of them the other day by googling Tony Abbott. I hadn’t even thought of including him as a tag, but they found me anyway 😀
Some guy who we’ve been corresponding with for work called me Jules the other day and it was just like bleahhh. I mean, here I was being professional, and he calls me a nickname? 😦 😦 It just seemed really inappropriate to me.
And after four hours I found out how to load my DRM protected epub and pdf files onto my ipad (happy day!) Also, tomorrow is a public holiday. Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!! *kermit arms*
I just bought tickets to see Geoffrey Rush play Lady Bracknell in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest. This makes me extremely happy 🙂
@mimbles, EXCITEMENT!
@The Amazing Kim, @Jules, university and work – blechhch. Don’t talk to me about university and work…
/Marvin the Paranoid Android
But what I came to this thread to post is that the change in news headlines about Libya from “uprising” to “civil war” is making me very sad and worried about those brave people.
From the BBC, last updated 25 minutes ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12668169
Bigger picture, and bleaker: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12660095
Better news from Tunisia, though: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12669461
Thanks for the links. What is most frustrating is the way that Gaddafi has systematically over decades got rid of all institutions in Libya that could possibly challenge him and then claims to have no official position from which to resign. It makes it so easy for him to equivocate when weaker groups attempt to challenge him, which of course was the point.
Am seriously not sure about this skit on Adam Hills’ show. Adam dresses up as a middle-aged man and harasses a lady and her friend while they’re out for dinner. He’s trying to be as obnoxious as possible, because the lady has previously mentioned she has troubles saying no to people.
I’ve been in that situation hundreds of times. Just last week some weird old man cornered me on a train to interrogate me on my hygiene routine.* Why would you do that deliberately to someone? It’s like real life trolling.
*For the record, I cover myself in jam and run through a wheat field. Excellent exfoliation.
It looks like her friends set her up, because otherwise how would Hills have known which pub she’d gone to with them? So it looks like he wasn’t the only one who thought this would be a huge old laugh.
Most of the other stunts on the show make me feel good while I’m having a laugh. This one didn’tl.
The campaign to digitise The Dawn, Louisa Lawson’s journal for 19C Australian women, reached its fundraising goal on International Women’s Day. Yay! I think it is scheduled to appear at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ some time next year.
News from Yemen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12697077
Most of the other stunts on the show make me feel good while I’m having a laugh.
I don’t know how funny or nasty Hill normally is, but I despise shows like that in general. Mainly because my formative exposure to them was Jeremy Beadle.