“Anatomy is one of the key sites for the production and maintenance of sex and gender as embodied dualities, as these excerpts imply. It offers an institutionalized discourse rife with vivid representations which claim the body for medicine and then… Read More ›
Science
Fundiewatch: a Catholic prenatal diagnosis “counselling service”
Two of our local Catholic hospital networks have collaborated to offer a new so-called “counselling service, dubbed “Mamreh”. These two hospitals combined have a lot of community credibility already, as they provide the vast majority of private-hospital maternity services in… Read More ›
New study results: recent global warming not due to solar effects
From The Australian (!): THE key plank of a controversial British documentary has been discredited by new research showing that the sun is not causing global warming. The findings are in stark contrast to claims made in the documentary The… Read More ›
Konkokted Kreationist Krap
This would be side-splittingly hilarious if it wasn’t so evil. A digg-er spotted this scan of a restaurant children’s menu: Front Back Alongside the cheeseburgers and corndogs is a list of “DiNoSaUr FuN fAcTs”! These include: “The most up to… Read More ›
Solstice rose
Happy winter solstice, all!
New Yorkers always tell us not to bother with Long Island anyway
If I never go to Long Island then I never have to worry about some unfortunate accident bringing me or someone I love under the knife of neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, who is a professor of neurosurgery and paediatrics at State… Read More ›
Gigantoraptor: 1400 kg bird-like dinosaur!
It’s not every day paleontologists discover a new dinosaur! These discoveries take me back to the wonder of imagining the dinosaur world when I was a child. We weren’t saturated with the pre-digested smoothly-animated imagery* of Jurassic Park and Walking… Read More ›
1Q: How relevant are motives in assessing the public policy stance of a politician or commentator?
This week’s One Question is from Harry Clarke, who writes in an earlier post: In assessing testimony in a court of law motives are important. Elsewhere they are less so but they pervasively affect our attitudes. Some have argued that… Read More ›
Blood on her shoes: hospital safety equipment and embedded sexism
There were no size 5 gumboots on the surgical unit. I was doing a six-month obstetrics & gynaecology residency. I looked all through the women’s theatre changeroom. I found nothing but single-use elasticated paper shoe covers, and a few pairs… Read More ›
Harradine’s poverty legacy continues
Sue Dunlevy writes an excellent column today on the legacy of Senator Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Australian Senate for long enough to drag our foreign aid policy into a position whereby, Dunlevy argues, we… Read More ›