This is about putting the interests of the thousands of Australians, many elderly and of limited means, second to the banks and retail funds.
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
ethics & philosophy
ideals, breaches, disappointments and inspirations
DUFC #69
Welcome to the 69th Down Under Feminists Carnival. This month read some of the best posts from January 2014.
Today in Anti-Harassment: moving forward with #CoCPledge
#CoCPledge took off on Twitter after Ashe Dryden posted A year+ in: codes of conduct at tech confs on her blog and then initiated the discussion with this tweet: “I will not attend or speak at conferences or other events that do not have a code of conduct. #CoCPledge”
Today in Tangential Learning: the smell of chloroform
As part of following PZ Myer’s account of a campaign against him on campus from the editor(s) of a right-wing student newspaper, I have learnt what chloroform smells like, and it smells like something present in every office and classroom and most private homes.
Then I searched online for a bit more information about chloroform…
Reimagining the C.W.A.
Guest Post by Alex Skud Bayley
…mutual support, community service, skill-building, learning about issues facing women both locally and overseas, and advocacy on behalf of women. So far so good! So why is it that, on the whole, the Country Women’s Association is so ossified?
Media Circus: NSW govt goes into one punch crackdown edition
Is any single one of Barry O’Farrell’s proposed new laws that are meant to curb alcohol-fueled violence evidence-based? Or is it all based on good old “common sense” knee-jerking?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
Today in despair for the future of humanity: Caleb Hannan writing for Grantland
Caleb Hannan wrote a wanna-be-gonzo journalist-as-protagonist article outing a trans woman, shortly after that woman committed suicide after explicitly warning Hannan that his journalism was leaving her no other option: Hannan has committed an utterly reprehensible failure to emulate an ethical human being. Grantland’s ethical failure in publishing Hannan’s article is equally appalling.
The ethics of scolding the dying
So what happens when a woman who has been blogging and livetweeting her treatment for breast cancer for many years decides to keep on livetweeting once she receives a terminal diagnosis of metastatic disease?
Columnist Emma Keller decided that it was her place to get all finger-pointy about “the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness” on the opinion pages of a prestigious international masthead, that’s what. And then NYT columnist Bill Keller (her husband) decides to tag team on the finger-pointing and double down.
Media Circus: man who shouldn’t be in govt gets way too much attention edition
And the Abbott government is loving that everybody’s looking at Bernardi instead of keeping an eye on them. C’mon, we’re smarter than this, right?
What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?
The Totally Esoteric Thread (and follow-up on ARC funding cuts)
While we sit around waiting for someone with some political muscle to actually weigh in on the issue of ARC funding cuts and the disrespect being shown to expertise, let us occupy ourselves in a positive way by opening up eilish’s suggested Totally Esoteric Thread. Please take this opportunity to share with the rest of us which esoteric pocket you can be popped into, especially if you are generally a lurker, and let’s find out what we, collectively, know.
Hoyden About Town 