Last month the Herald revealed that at least 74 women and dozens of children die in Australia each year at the hands of violent men. Experts warn the real rates are even higher because of weaknesses in the way homicide data is collected.
I'm femalean excerpt from Dorothy Porter's mesmeric poem novel, The Monkey's Mask.
I"m not tough
droll or stoical.
I droop after
wine, sex
or intense conversation.
The streets coil around me
when they empty
I'm female
I get scared.
great illustration by Harry Afentoglou to accompany article by Paul Myers December 6, 2008
I do my bit for drag racing here in Newtown, I snark gaily.
The heart of your question concerns the equilibrium state of the universe, and how the one of the laws of thermodynamics, that “entropy always increases”, seems to be defied by the buildup of a net charge difference between materials that shows up as static electricity. I need to spend a little time on thermodynamics. At its essence, the thermodynamics of a system really describes an energy balance; like balancing a checkbook, the energy going into a system or flowing out of a system is in balance with the rest of the world. (Money is a VERY good analogy to energy in a thermodynamic sense). Here is my favorite description of the laws of thermodynamics in a colloquial sense:
1) You can’t break even (i.e. entropy always increases).
2) You can break even, but only when hell freezes over (i.e. you can stop entropy from changing/increasing at absolute zero temperature).
3) Hell isn’t going to freeze over (i.e. though you can get close, you can’t get to absolute zero).
All changes of energy are in balance on the scale of the universe; locally
we can change the balance of energy in apparent defiance of the first law of thermodynamics. It takes substantial effort to roll a large rock up a hill; perched on the top of the hill, it retains potential energy that would be released if the boulder rolls back down the hill under the force of gravity. Static electricity is a lot like the energetic state achieved when the builder is perched at the top of a hill but has not begun rolling down.
80 killed in a terrorist attack in Mumbai
"Our key concern is that the increased number that we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are a lot more women dying in domestic violence-related fatalities than what we know about," said Betty Green, the co-ordinator of the NSW Domestic Violence Coalition.from Shameful Secret of Our Family Murder Epidemic, SMH by Ruth Pollard
Despite education campaigns, there were still significant misunderstandings about domestic violence in the community and in key services such as police, leading many to miss clear danger signs women and children were at extreme risk, she warned.
"Women do not die by accident, they don't die because of a mistake, they die because of a culmination of a repeated pattern of violent behaviour," she said. "There is no passion, there is no love in a domestic violence fatality. It is really, really important that we name it for what it is - in most cases it is premeditated, it is anger, it is revenge and it is the ultimate act of control."
The NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, first recommended the establishment of a domestic violence review team in 2006, after reviewing police practice in response to domestic violence. Since then dozens more women and children have died, and NSW is no closer to finding out why.
"We can see that looking at … the way families and individuals interact with a range of different government departments and services providers … can give you the benefit, certainly in hindsight, of seeing what you could have done differently," Mr Barbour said.
"By trying to identify factors that continually crop up where you see fatalities in a domestic situation will help identify risks and allow you to intervene in a relationship earlier, with the obvious benefit of preventing a fatality."
The review would also help agencies to improve their capacity to respond to potentially fatal situations, he said.
In this unique and groundbreaking book, business consultant and New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni turns his sights on the most important organization in our lives—the family. As a husband and the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.
more from Howard Rheingold of Smart Mobs and other fame.
THE proportion of women on corporate boards and in top management in leading companies has fallen, and the head of the Business Council of Australia has called for affirmative action quotas.
Katie Lahey, the chief executive of the council, which represents the heads of Australia's top 100 corporations, said promotion of women on merit had not worked. "I've pooh-poohed quotas for years, but other strategies have not worked, and it's time for a national debate on quotas for women," she said.
The 2008 census on women in leadership, to be published today, shows Australia has gone backwards in the promotion of women to executive management positions in top corporations and to boards.
The number of women coming through the pipeline in "feeder line" management positions is back to pre-2004 levels. Women who make it to senior roles are clustered in human resources and legal services rather than in operations, sales or finance, the usual routes to the top.
Where Australia once ranked second behind the United States in the number of top companies with a woman senior executive, it now ranks last in a list of comparable countries, including New Zealand, Britain, South Africa and Canada. The census is the fifth undertaken for the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency to measure the progress of senior women in the top 200 publicly listed corporations.
It shows the proportion of women senior executive managers - who directly report to the CEO - has declined to 10.7 per cent from 12 per cent in 2006 and is lower than in 2004. The number of women in these positions has fallen to just 182, down from 246 in 2004. While the size of executive management teams has fallen, women's representation has fallen faster.
Naseema Sparks, the incoming president of Chief Executive Women, which promotes the development and use of leadership talent, said "it's disgraceful". At the time of the census on February 1 there were four women CEOs. Women comprised 8.3 per cent of board members, a decline from 8.7 per cent in 2006, and barely higher than in 2004.
The number of top companies with no women executive managers had risen sharply since 2006, from 39.5 per cent to 45.5 per cent. And more than half the ASX200 boards had no women directors. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, said the most disturbing figure was the decrease in women in line executive management from 7.5 per cent to 5.9 per cent.
"This figure is particularly discouraging for younger women trying to climb the corporate ladder. Are we sending a message to women waiting in these feeder positions that their opportunities for advancement are drying up, and if so, why?"
A number of male-dominated mining, materials and energy companies have joined the ranks of the ASX 200 since the last census.
But Wendy McCarthy, a feminist business woman, said women had been graduating with first class honours degrees in geology and engineering for 25 years, "not in large number but with outstanding results, but they go back to academic life because the culture [in these companies] is unsustainable".
 clipped from gizmodo.comWe honestly haven't kept up with the television documentary Vanguard or its sponsoring Internet/Cable channel Current TV, but this trailer for their upcoming show Japan: Robot Nation has our interest piqued. We're digging all of the robots, the ties of said robots to evolving Japanese culture and the overly dramatic score supporting the whole thing. The show doesn't air until December 10, 10PM EST & 10PM PST on Current TV. But if you've got the channel, now might be a good time to set the DVR. Otherwise it'll probably be viewable on the web at that time, too.
|
I've had a play at wordle.net, where this blog cloud was generated, and it's lots of fun.
"solar" by Janet Barker "it's a house i dreamt of living in"
The term Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for Art Brut (meaning "raw art" or "rough art"), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane asylum inmates. (from Wikipedia)
Outsider art generally refers to creative works by people with no formal training. Their art is based on their inner experience, with no reference to mainstream art practice. (see essay 'Outsider Art and the outsiderish' by Professor Colin Rhodes)
There are obvious connections between poverty and being positioned outside of society. If you have no access to training, education, materials, then you are unlikely to be recognised as an artist, no matter how strong your inner vision and how appealing or stimulating your expression of it is.
)
That's pretty cool! Roseanne Barr gets 2 Swords of Awesome on my rather tough scale of services to women warriors everywhere.
I enjoyed reading her capsule version of the appropriation of religion and the female. A book I loved back in the Women's Press days was 'The Wild Girl' (or the Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalen) by Michele Roberts - published by Methuen.
You raise an interesting issue. What is barren? Can you have had and lost or relinquished children to be barren? What does society hate most - barren women or bad mothers? By bad, I mean as mildly offensive as outspoken, angry, non child-centred, professional or passionate women.
I'm too daunted to tackle the really bad mothers issue - women who kill! although abortion is considered part of that spectrum disorder.
A couple of years ago, I was planning to start a 'bad mother' blog but discovered that assorted pornographic sites had appropriated the idea.
Back on topic, I see barrenness, like feminism, as the willingness to witness. To not be a slave to biology and gender, to speak out and not apologize.
Conversely, my Obama information is, he's black and very popular. Does he have a family? I figure he has a wife somewhere or else the absence would have been noted. Some say he is inexperienced and can't cut it.
But it is not her labours on the platform which have seen the cash rolling in. It is rather Tama's irresistible charm which has brought tourists flocking in their thousands to the western city of Kinokawa to see the feline worker patrolling in the uniform of her office - a Wakayama Electric Railway cap.
With 55,000 more people having used the Kishigawa Line than would normally be expected, Tama's contribution to the local economy is calculated to have reached as much as Y1.1 billion ($A13.5 million) in 2007 alone, according to a study announced last week. from SMH
