Warner’s copyright troll acquisition Larrakin Music won the right to “Land Down Under” royalties in the High Court, and Astrolabe Inc shut down the widely used zoneinfo timezone database. Not the public interest’s best day in copyright-land.
Culture
The milieu through which we swim
Slutwalk: why can’t it be better than this?
The sentiment that whatever we wear and wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no is what got me Slutwalking earlier this year. Those campaigning to “reclaim” the word “slut”? I didn’t totally hate the idea, but it wasn’t one that particularly inspired me, because I’m skeptical regarding reclamation of marginalising slurs in concept and feel it’s of limited utility compared to actively challenging prejudices more radically.
It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it
George Carlin’s Final 2005 Words To The World…sounding hugely relevant right now.
TW for rape analogy
Links of the day: gendered slurs as social signals
On the subject of gendered insults (in this case, the use of specific terms to signal acceptable behavior):
Guys, Don’t Do That
Months later, the woman who spoke these four words is still dealing with cyber-harassment including rape and death threats
Today in Evo-psych Gender essentialism…
Gender essentialism at its best.
Friday Hoyden: Emilia
In Othello, it is Emilia, unfortunate wife of the villainous Iago, who delivers the woman’s equivalent of Shylock’s more famous “Has not a Jew eyes?” speech.
Such is the focus on the central couple that it is easy to forget that two husbands kill their wives in this play.
Quick Hit- Will anything change?
A new, unflattering, book about Tony Abbott, to hit the shops 1 October 2011.
Today’s Dose of Awesome: Desaturated Santa
This was all over the intertubes a while ago, but I missed it at the time. Anyway, the image is not photo-manipulated – this is pure art-concept theatrical costuming executed with meticulous attention to detail.
Andrew Bolt has been found in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act
… with respect to statements made by the serial trollumnist in published articles from 2009/2010 questioning whether the Aboriginality of certain pale-skinned indigenous people was genuine…”contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language”
Hoyden About Town 