Even more bric a brac

[dreamer_easy]

"Sleepy is like a cloud of pink neutrinos"

He gets away in "The Room With No Doors" with minimal damage, except for being killed.

Godwin's law becomes a problem

Green Wing blooper (Stephen Mangan makes Tamsin Grieg crack up beautifully.)

Pulp Fiction

Orman Jingle Bell

(Apologies if you posted one of these links and I nicked it from you. I've lost track of where I got most of 'em.)

Comments

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

"Sleepy"
-- To be fair, it's my least favorite of yours.

"Killed"
-- Zomg, i remember this post! We were all so young....sigh.

"Godwin"
-- I got turned on the XKCD from Wil Wheaton -- source of many fine recommendations.

"Pulp"
-- ....okay.....

"Jingle"

Jingle Bells, Orman sells
All those books, hooray!
Of them, some
Have got Jon Blum --
They're married, it's okay!

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

O_O Awesum!

A link of my own

[judiang.livejournal.com]

Kate,

What do you think of this? This doesn't diminish my ambivalent attitude about visiting Australia because of its treatment of aborigines.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/06/21/australia.pornography.ap/index.html

Re: A link of my own

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

My initial impression is that this is a band-aid solution, with overtones of victim-blaming. It's not impossible it might do some good, but it'd be more effective to provide Indigenous Australians with the same basic living conditions as other Australians - medical care, safe drinking water, and so on.

Re: A link of my own

[judiang.livejournal.com]

That was *exactly* my reaction. What do you think is the general attitude towards indigenous Australians today? Here in the US, they are hardly ever referred to, similar to our Indian tribes.

Re: A link of my own

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

The general attitude to the First Nations people here is 1/ Ignorance is bliss (if you're white) 2/Oh my god do something, government! but we don't want to know about it 3/ It's all their own fault.

This abuse and neglect has been going on for decades. The basic problem is we are dealing with a culture that was systematically destroyed via institualitation in the 1950/60/70's. A whole generation were taken from their families, raised and abused in a variety of ways in religous and government institutions, then sent out in to a world that feared their skin colour and discriminated against them. They then had children, and the cycle goes on. This is a fairly simplistic outline of one of the main causes of injustice against Koories. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse, violence all stem from their culture being fractured by white society. And it can't be put back the way it was.

What do they need? Water, decent housing, decent medical care, respect from whites. A lot of these problems are compounded by the remoteness of some settlements. <A HREF="http://wimmera.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=national%news&subclass=political&story_id=1010560&category=political>Wadeye</A> (the settlement that was in the news about 6 months ago), is cut off from anyone for up to 6 months of the year by floods. Yet nobody in power seems to think that building a bridge would be a good idea... Sorry Kate, Didn't meant to rant on your blog.

Re: A link of my own

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Bugger I can't get the formatting right. Sorry for the mess.

The link is

http://wimmera.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=national%20news&subclass=political&story_id=1010560&category=political

Re: A link of my own

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Good rant. I've been hiding from the news in recent months - you're more up to speed than I am.

Re: A link of my own

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

I have a personal interest. You see, I've lived in the Territory (okay only 2 years, in the Alice nearly 20 years ago now), and I remember the whites' attitude then, and I doubt it has changed much. A nurse friend of mine thought I needed to see how the other quarter lives, and gained permission for me to come out to a town camp (I was the children's librarian at the local library, and I went with her to do some story telling at school there). It was probably one of the most shocking experiences of my life. You don't expect third, even fourth world conditions, in your own country. And yet, I haven't done anything to help, mostly, and I think I'm like a lot of well-meaning Australian here, I don't know what to do. I'm very aware that my culture has irrepairably damaged their culture (actually cultures, there are many different Koori societies), and having read about past damage done to them, I don't want to inflect my well-meaning white middle class ideas on them. They don't need it.

I think the best thing we can do as whitefellas is: pressure the State and Federal Governments to get water into the communities. Most diseases in the remote communites can be controlled by hygeine. Swimming pools are great for these places. The instances of diseases drops 50% when a swimming pool in installed. Build road to these places so people can get to medical services easily (good for whitefellas too).

And if you are going withold welfare payments from drug/alcohol abusing parents, make sure that you do it for black and white kids. Because there are white kids who could benefit from the same intervention.