Month: June 2012

Understatement OTD: “One of the things we will be looking at urgently is the communications team”

Says the representative of the Argyll and Bute Council in Scotland, whose heavy-handed response streisand-effected a regional scandal into a worldwide media storm about attempts to censor a schoolgirl blogging their school lunches. Now the school lunch menu is being reformed, and the furore helped her raise more than £80,000 for development charity Mary’s Meals. Martha Payne is authentically awesome.

Sunday Singalong: Dolly Parton

Look at Dolly Parton in her Mad Men era, isn’t she beautiful? Parton is famous for her sly winking ‘dumb blonde’ routine but she is obviously incredibly talented as a recognised and award-winning singer-songwriter, a multi-instrumentalist, actor and philanthropist –… Read More ›

Some useful things you might teach your children in our rape culture

This particular nugget comes from Pharyngula, where a post from PZ addressing rape culture led to a predictable influx of the usual victim-blaming rape myths as if they were commensense truths, leading to a predictably forceful pushback from the Pharyngulites, who do not let that crap stand. If readers would like to add their own favourite links addressing rape myths/culture in comments, I’d really like to see them.

Otterday! And Open Thread.

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?

Perth Stormageddon Thread redux

We’re getting a fair few hits on a post of Lauredhel’s about storms around Perth in 2010. Here’s a new post to discuss the south-western Western Australia storms from the past weekend. Our thoughts are with our friends and the 27,000 homes currently without power in WA.