Nov. 9th, 2004

dreamer_easy: (currentaffairs)
Some good news (but don't let this dissuade you from writing to Health Minister Tony Abbott - there's a party room debate coming up):

Costello digs heels in on abortion - the federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, said it was a matter for state governments; NSW Premier Bob Carr said he would protect abortion rights in NSW if they were threatened federally.


A good point (from today's SMH letters):

___

Tony Abbott, as Minister for Health, has been expressing great concern for the unborn child with his very vocal abortion debate.

Would he please become as passionate for children already in this world - namely Aboriginal children in remote areas of Australia.

With significantly higher mortality rates, and diseases not seen in the wider Australian community - such as rheumatic fever with all its complications, kidney disease including kidney stones, rare normally in children - and Third World living conditions, it would not be unreasonable to expect Mr Abbott as Health Minister to be equally vocal about their plight.

J. Faulkner, Nelson Bay, November 8.

US politics

Nov. 9th, 2004 10:03 am
dreamer_easy: (currentaffairs)
First, some words to soothe and inspire.

From Suheir Hammad: "We must all love harder, fiercer, in defiance of those who aspire to own and mandate love."

A fascinating look at Bible passages about supposedly pious leaders from [livejournal.com profile] daegaer. "For I know how manifold are your transgressions, and how mighty are your sins - ye that afflict the just, that take a bribe, and that turn aside the needy in the gate from their right." (Amos 5:12)

From Michael Moore: 17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists, from silliness to hope.

From the Onion: US Inspires World with Attempt at Democratic Election. Heh.

Sorry Everybody! - a funny reminder that half of America didn't want Bush.

__

Now, about that election. The US news is full of reports of voting bungles all over the place. After the farce of the last election, some of this will just be the result of additional scrutiny, but there are enough incidents - particularly those involving electronic voting machines - to raise serious concerns of either serious mistakes or deliberate fraud, especially in the crucial state of Ohio.

Earlier this year, Mother Jones magazine reported on ties between voting machine manufacturers and the Republicans. The folks running blackboxvoting.org demonstrated on live TV how to quickly and easily hack the vote result.

Whether or not the election was won fairly, at the inauguration next January you may wish to Turn Your Back on Bush.
dreamer_easy: (Default)
Now this is interesting. As part of their retrospective for issue 350, DWM have a little box talking about why they decided to kill off Ace in Ground Zero. Erstwhile editor Gary Gillatt describes the enormous awkwardness of trying to tie the comic strip in with the books. Ace "had become the character that was most representative of the books. That was a real 'look at us!' kind of thing."

Now these are very reasonable, er, reasons for bumping off Ace - the need to separate the strip from the books for sheer practicality, and a publicity stunt. But the caption to an accompanying panel of the original strip gives the game away: "Continuity nuts began to gibber..." In other words, fuck you, book fans.

Normally I'd be the first one cheering on any department of Doctor Who which gave the finger to the fanboys. But reading back over the discussion of Ground Zero in r.a.dw, continuity is the least of peoples' concerns: that particular strips' poor artwork, dodgy script, and cliched heroic death drew fire. For once readers were concerned about the actual quality of the product! In particular let me quote Lance Parkin:

"As far as I can see, from a biased perspective, I admit, 'Ground Zero' was meant to offer the 'real' reason Ace left that allows fans to ignore the NAs. Fine - I think it's backfired: 'Set Piece' offered a vision of a mature Ace, coming to terms with herself and the Doctor, it redefined her, redeemed her and released her into the universe a stronger character. In 'Ground Zero' she blows herself up trying to kill a badly-drawn giant flea."

Obviously I get a warm and toasty feeling from reading that Set Piece did a good job of writing Ace out, but the point here is that "continuity nuts" were not the ones irked by DWM's anti-book stance at the time - which included giving free publicity to the audios while ignoring the books as much as possible (something the magazine has corrected in recent years). Ground Zero was politics.
dreamer_easy: (readit)
Via [livejournal.com profile] kitzen_kat:

There's a meme floating around:
Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal...
...along with these instructions.

If I had died even once, how could my hand still be there?

Hex Appeal

Nov. 9th, 2004 06:57 pm
dreamer_easy: (Default)
Heh. The SMH's Spike column nailed the downside for women of the popularisation of witchcraft:
___

Ladies, forget feminism. It seems all you need to succeed in life these days is a few nifty spells. A copy of a new book, Hex Appeal: Seductive Spells for the Sassy Sorceress, landed on the Spike desk yesterday, and boy did it make for some interesting reading. Did you know that if you want to make your man call you, all you have to do is light incense, carve an arrow into a candle and recite the following: "Hear my will, I am in your heart, I am in your mind, I am in your thoughts, you need to call me, you want to call me, you will call me," nine times. Or then again you could just call him. The book also advises how to stop men falling asleep after sex, curb a boyfriend's bad habits, and turn an ex into a toad. Very useful.
___

Wicca and Paganism can teach women the confidence to find and use power, but it can also divert us into games of powerlessness. Spells, like prayer, are only part of achieving your goals - as in the familiar story of the chap on the roof of the flooded house who refuses rescue because God will save him, or the oft-quoted Buttprints in the Sand.

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