Update 16 Sep 2009: Last year’s $211 million figure for taxpayer-funded obstetric care, mostly of pregnancies and births that are or could have been normal, has blown out further to $298 million. [Via the Courier Mail.] ~~~ The Maternity Services… Read More ›
social change
All those social networking website widgets may as well remove the Facebook button now
Seeing as Facebook has decided to claim that they own rights to any content on a website that has a “click to share on Facebook” style button, nearly everybody will be removing that particular button ASAP
SUNDAY FEMINIST LINK-AROUND (now with crunchy Monday topping)
OK, a selection from the last week of memorable and topical posts. There’s quite a few links, so I’m putting them behind a cut so as not to clutter up the front page of the blog. Add your own links to posts you recommend in comments:
Salma Hayek cross-nurses needy baby in Africa
Remember the fuss over Salma Hayek being “abusive” because she was “still” feeding her toddler?
Salma Hayek took a humanitarian trip to Sierra Leone. This video[1] shows her being there for the death of a baby from tetanus, speaking to a UNICEF representative, and travelling to a remote part of Sierra Leone.
I defy you to not at least contemplate trying #15
25 Things I Didn’t Want to Know About You
Honestly, the way some journos react to Facebook memes is a dead giveaway that they’ve only just joined the digital social revolution.
Essure-thetics: “What mark will you leave? None.”
Anyone remember “What Cheeses Me Off” on Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday?
No?
Hrm. Nevermind. (This homophobic crapola was about the usual level of it. Largely linked here for the spunky 80s fashion choices of Daryl Somers.)
Anyhow. What cheeses me off today is this advertising for the Essure tubal occlusion system, an alternative to laparoscopic tubal ligation for female sterilisation.
Australian of the Year 2009 finalists
We haven’t talked about the Australian of the Year nominations here yet. What struck me immediately with the 2009 field is that this time around, only two of them are (as far as I know) white men.
Note, however, that none (again, as far as I know; I’m open to correction on this) are women of colour. For this year’s Australian of the Year, you can be an indigenous or immigrant person of colour, or a woman; but not both.
Friday Saturday Hoyden: Caroline Chisholm
This fairly blunt profile of Caroline Chisholm presents her as an impressive but uncomfortable woman due to her uncompromising standards, and came as a bit of an eye-opener to me in terms of sanitised school history: the fact that the young immigrant underclass women that she was training had been lured to the Australian colonies where they were left to fend for themselves and would have no options other than prostitution or crime to earn a living was very heavily glossed over
Friday Hoyden: Nancy Bird Walton, by Guest Hoyden Chally
Nancy Bird Walton, AO, OBE, DStJ, Dame of the Knights of Malta, was a legendary pilot and about as hoydenish as it gets. At age 19, she became the first Australian female pilot to receive her commercial license. She went on to be instrumental in running early outback air ambulance services in New
South Wales and commandant of the Women’s Air Training Corps during WWII as well as founder and long-time president of the Australian Women Pilots’ Association. I’m tearing up as I tell you that she died on Tuesday afternoon in her home in Mosman, northern Sydney.
Things annoying me today
Firstly this headline “Ten-year-olds given permission to marry”. It’s not about ten year olds wanting to get married, it’s about ten year old girls being given to fifty year old men as wives. FFS MSM tell it like it really is.
Admittedly, I don’t know a lot of ten year olds at the moment, but remembering back when I was ten I wasn’t in any hurry to get married, and certainly
Hoyden About Town 