The Herald is just getting better and better:
Rather than educating children, television soaps may be making matters worse, writes Brad Newsome.
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Archive for July, 2006
According to a study of 61 male university students men who are hungry are attracted to heavier women. Perhaps they also should’ve asked if they have canabalistic tendencies.
And the following tends to be a tad contradictory:
The hungry men also paid much less attention to a woman’s body shape and regarded less curvy figures as more attractive.
So which one is it?
And did they record the “hungrier” men’s own bodytype as well? That’s not to say that people are attracted to people of their own bodytype but heavier people could have more realistic standards. But of course they didn’t, because this society only judges women on their figures silly. [Of course that’s not true for those who are notably overweight but as far as the media goes…].
Check this:
The men were then asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 women of varying weights, all within a healthy range, who had been photographed wearing tight grey leotards and leggings.
Not only that, the researchers admit that there really wasn’t that much of a difference anyway:
“Obviously we only saw a small shift in preference but it is a significant shift. If you were to extrapolate it onwards to people missing many meals and getting hungrier and hungrier over a longer period of time you might start to see a bigger shift.”
Australian universities can’t even get enough money to fund research into cancer, well pack up your belonging ye scientists, Britain is obviously just giving research funding away.
Via the Australian
WOMEN will have to wait up to another 150 years for equal wages to their male counterparts, according to research published today in British newspaper, The Times.
The gap in pay between men and women had been narrowing for the past 30 years, but has now started to become static, analysts at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics (LSE) said.
[…]
“We are used to each generation of women making progress relative to the one before,” the report, authored by LSE Professor of Economics Alan Manning, said.
“But this process has slowed with the current generation doing only slightly better than the previous one.
“It will take 150 years for this gap to disappear.”
So, I guess all that post-feminism rubbish is good for business – just not so good for women.
Book me in.
The States have caved into, our fascist Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock’s attempts at tightening literature classification laws in an attempt to “combat terrorism”, read: turn Australia into autocracy.
Of course it will only affect: “Material which urges or advocates terrorist acts” which, “should not be available for sale,” said Ruddock. “We are not about curtailing freedom of speech.”
Oh, then why does the article also mention:
He also wants reality television checked by classification rules less tolerant of sex and nudity.
And what this has to do with terrorism is anybody’s guess:
Mr Hulls also called for a national approach to people who take lewd photographs without subjects’ knowledge.
He said the use of mobile phone or pen cameras for practices such as so-called “upskirting” - snapping pictures up a woman’s skirt - had forced the issue to be addressed.
Not that that’s a cool thing to do, I’m just a bit perplexed at its inclusion in an article about banning “books of hate” (in rhetoric speak).
If reclaiming the night wasn’t a big enough task for women
to take on, female drivers are now being encouraged to reclaim that dog-eat-dog battleground that is our raging roads. But put the brakes on, ladies. Before undertaking any such campaign, it’s recommended that you employ the services of a man - and more specifically, an instantly inflatable man named Buddy.
Specialist women’s insurer Sheilas’ Wheels has news today for solo female motorists, with the unveiling of its “Buddy on Demand” prototype. Buddy is a guy who’s ready to protect you whenever you need him. He is content to live in the glovebox and if you feel threatened, he leaps into action, transforming himself into a heroic passenger at the touch of a button, and allowing you to breathe a sigh of relief.
No comment.
I won’t mention any names but look, surprise, surprise Peter Debnam is using it as an excuse to have a press conference about the evils of injecting rooms:
A bin full of exposed syringes was planted near a Kings Cross injecting clinic to discredit the centre, its medical director says.
A Sydney newspaper today published photographs of about 100 “potentially deadly blood-tainted needles” dumped near the clinic and called for the centre to be shut down.
[…]
But Dr Ingrid van Beek, who heads the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, said the syringes did not belong to the centre.
“It would appear likely to be a stunt,” Dr van Beek said.
“None of the many syringes had actually been used. They had been taken out of their packets, the caps were removed, and they were strewn on top of a garbage bin.
“There were no traces of blood or drugs in any of the syringes. They were most certainly not syringes used by drug users.
“They were also not the brand of syringes distributed in this area.”
[…]
NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam, who has previously called for the closure of the injecting room, held a press conference on the back of the Telegraph’s revelations earlier today.
I’m not suggesting for a minute that it was the Opposition however, who just happens to have an axe to grind and a large group of young buzzards who luurve the dirty work.
Alternative title: Women’s rights are totally reinstalled in Afghanistan. Vive la liberation.
The Afghanistan Government looks like reinstating the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of the Taliban era. There has been a resounding silence from the UN and the US on the matter.
Women and human rights advocates fear a return to a time when “women were publicly beaten for wearing white shoes or heels that clicked, using lipstick or going outside unaccompanied by a close male relative.”
The repression of women was often cited in the West as a reason to intervene and oust the Taliban. Both the US First Lady and the wife of the British Prime Minister made passionate speeches on the subject.
Laura Bush took over her husband’s weekly radio address in November 2001 to boast that “because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment”.
Yet almost five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghan women are far from achieving these aims. There have already been more attacks in the first half of this year than all of last year and according to a UN official, barely a day goes by without a school being burnt or teacher killed.
With a parliament stacked with warlords and those accused of gross human rights violations, it looks like Afghanistan can only expect more of the same as the international community rolls back its involvement (not that they were doing all that much anyway).
This article in the Sunday Mail, rightly points out the sneak attack of unsuitable kids television in the Saturday and Sunday G-rated timeslot through music videos.
WOMEN in dog collars, make-believe pimps and prostitutes . . . welcome to children’s breakfast television in Australia.
I’m no big watcher of Video Hits and the like but I do find myself mesmerised when, sitting at a pub having a quite beer, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas starts showing me her hump or what have you. Music videos have been known for their raunchiness for a quite a while but has anyone ever studied their impact on children as far as attitudes to women?
The music director for PG-rated pay TV music station Channel V, Drew Michel, said the station regularly showed a video for the song Pimp by 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg, that included women in dog collars.
But community organisation Young Media Australia wants clips like this banned from children’s television.
“Having women led around in dog collars is degrading, sexist material,” YMA president Jane Roberts said.
“There is a whole generation of young Australians who think this is normal behaviour.”
Granted, music videos have become ever-raunchier and degrading but it has always existed in some form or another. Christina Aguilera’s raunchy clips perhaps could be comparable to some of Madonna’s early stuff for example. There’s a line that’s crossed, however, when kids are constantly bombarded with degrading images (and ideas/lyrics) of women, especially from the gangsta-rap arena.
YMA wants the clips banned from children’s television but should the regulation start at the source? Should the music industry be pressured into taking responsibility for the ideas they’re spreading? Or is that over-regulation and akin to censorship?
I can’t help but notice the hypocrisy of toning down songs by artists such as Peaches for mass release. For example she had to tone down her song Two Guys. The original lyrics go something like this: “I wanna take you home get you satisfied/ Drugged out, sexed up, however you fly/ Just one thing I can’t compromise/ I wanna see you work it - guy on guy…Slappin’ those dicks all over the place/ Rubbin’ that shit all up in your face.” But that toning down doesn’t seem to happen too much when the song lyrics involve “Bitch choose with me, I’ll have you stripping in the street/ Put my other hoes down, you get your ass beat”*.
Feministing points out the reluctance of stalwarts such as MTV in giving airtime to bands with feminist leanings.
*Said 50 cent song
Opposition leader, Peter Debnam comes out with more outrageous racism in a bid to hold the xenophobe vote for the next NSW State election:
Mr Debnam said in yesterday’s Herald that there were “200 Middle Eastern thugs” in Sydney connected with revenge attacks on beachside suburbs after the Cronulla riots in December.
If elected next year, “at dawn … on the 25th of March, my instruction to the police commissioner will be to take as many police as you need and charge them with anything to get them off the streets”, he said.
Technorati Tags: Peter Debnam
Way to ease international tensions. Bush goes the grope at the G8 summit.
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