Rave: I like doing this charity thing, because I got pancakes

If that was breakfast, I've had it. Staying up all night seemed like a perfectly good reason to break out our pancake mix, which makes beautiful pancakes, and is made in Australia, but which can only be bought in New Zealand. My partner had no problems breaking out the gold dust for me thismorning, and he even made the pancakes. He's given up a day of doing stuff with me for the weekend for this blogathon, so this is my note of appreciation to him.

My waistline is not going to thank me for this, I can just tell.

Rave: I love Hanna Pakarinen, a.k.a YouTube rocks (part 2)

Now, I don't get exposed to a lot of new music here in Aussie, partly because I don't have a car and don't have any other radio either. It doesn't actually matter, because by the time I left New Zealand, I was thoroughly sick of the samey shit the radio was playing anyway; it seems you get a choice of hip-hop or emo whining and that's it.

This has changed my approach to checking out new music, though, and so with Hanna I did what I always do: I went straight to YouTube. There I found a number of covers from the idol show, and her original audition tape (for what it is worth, the Finnish Idol stuff seems less hip-hop heavy and crap than the American stuff, the Kiwi stuff, and the Aussie stuff). That stuff wasn't the real gold, though. The real gold was finding her original work, like Fearless, Stronger Without You, Go Go, and Kiss of Life. There was a lot of other stuff too, most of it softer and slower -- also good, but those are my favourites. From checking all this out, I know I like her, I know she has great stage presence, and I know she writes her own music.

Youtube let me get a glimpse to see that I definitely wanted to invest cash in this artist -- all for nothing but time and keystrokes. Because of that, I am going to follow up with a local music store, who can stock her work because there is demand from people like me who have gone on the internet and found they like Hanna -- often in ways the music companies would idiotically and quite cheerfully shut down.

Hanna is cool. And so is Youtube, for letting me learn enough about her that my next stop is the music store (right after I swing by Dilana's website to tell her to check Hanna out).

Rave: I love Hanna Pakarinen, a.k.a YouTube rocks

Forgive me if this post sounds a little odd. Hanna Pakarinen is Finnish, and that means some my thoughts about her are in Finnish, which sounds a little strange translated.

Hanna Pakarinen, on paper, should be bloody awful. She is the winner of a Finnish Idol contest, and she was an entrant in the Eurovision song contest; these two things do not usually imply talent or credibility on their own, much less together!

Eurovision was shown on TV here, and we watched most of the acts (after Lordi winning last year, I was really curious to see what would be on offer this year). I can only remember four or five acts, and a number of those I remember because they were terrible (notably the English entry). I remember the Bulgarian entry because performance was cool, and the woman in it was hot, but Hanna grabbed me right away.

Her song Leave Me Alone is well in the vein of Finnish not-really-happy pop (I do not know of a single Finnish pop song that is entirely happy -- and when I discussed it with some Finnish workmates, and Finnish family a few years ago). Even better, she sounds uncannily like rockchick and superstar Dilana.

continued in next post

Rant: Does Australia really say no to violence against women? (part 2)

A second example of how Australia does not say no to violence against women is this study. Basically, it says that in a survey of Australians, many of them including women (let it not be said that this post is a rant against men) believe a guy should get off lighter for raping a woman if she is drunk or provocatively dressed. Some of this attitude is what the ads are trying to address, but nonetheless, the Australian public is not yet saying "no".

A third example is this bloke, who normally inspires me to faith in the Australian male, but who had sex with a prostitute who wasn't really up for it because it is better than being celibate. Now, I am not a prude, and I don't believe that all sex needs to be within the confines of a relationship, but I do believe paying someone who clearly isn't interested for sex muddies the waters of consent considerably. To believe that sex is something you should be able to pay for to me equates rather uncomfortably with disrespect for women as whole beings, and is a form of violence against women -- and here we see it being portrayed as normal bloke stuff.

My final example of how Australia fails to say no to violence against women is the Werribee DVD case. Seven young men sexually assaulted a developmentally delayed young woman, set her hair on fire, and made a DVD of it, which they sold at school. Sounds pretty horrific, and like a court case should be cut and dried, right? Well, they pleaded guilty for sure, but it looks as though they will avoid jail. In a country that says no to violence against women, the perpetrators of this kind of violence are locked up, and the key is thrown away.

While I commend ... whoever it is who wants to change things here (and indeed anywhere in the world), running ads that say "Australia says no" doesn't change things, and in fact can make it harder for women who are victims of violence, because after all "Australia says no". The ads are a good start, but they need to be backed up by AFL player bans, real rape sentences, and a massive attitude shift. Having said that, Australia is doing something, which is more than can be said for many countries.

Rant: Does Australia really say no to violence against women? (part 2)

My first argument against whether Australia says no to violence against women focuses on a national sport, that is particularly popular in Melbourne. So far as I can tell, it is a weird form of rugby played on a round field, but I refuse to have anything further to do with it, because I refuse to support a sport where the players are downright badly behaved. Now I know this isn't a phenomenon restricted to Aussie rules, American footballers in particular are known for their callous attitudes towards women, and NZ rugby has its own scandal. Nonetheless, in the time that I have been here, there have been numerous incidences of AFL players committing violent acts against women and other members of society, and most of them are till on the field. If Australia (or NZ, or the US) really said no to violence against women, these guys would never play again.

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Rant: Does Australia really say no to violence against women?

Recently a series of pretty unrealistic television ads began showing here in Australia. They are shown from the perspectives of both women victims of violence, and 'everyday bloke' perpetrators, who "don't hit [their] girlfriend[s], they just shove them around a bit". The campaign was based on the tagline that "Australia says no to violence against women". Now, to be fair, I don't really think anywhere in the world truly says no to violence against women, except maybe some of the Nordic countries, and even they have issues like wide pay disparities.

Nonetheless, Australia is the country for which I have data, and Australia is the one running the tawdry ads, so Australia is the place I am going to comment on.

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Rave: That's what I like in a student (part 2)

I respect these guys not because they were the best at computing (some of them really weren't), not because they had a passion for my subject (they didn't), and not because they were the best and brightest (though this may well have been true). I respect them because even though my subject pissed them off, they didn't try to cheat, lie or weasel their way out of it; instead they did the work. It's like that line from The Life of David Gale

"Berlin, I will give you an A for the course if you will only...just...study"

These guys did study, and they respected me, and used me well as a teaching resource. If the egos majoring in computing were half as dedicated, respectful, and downright decent as these guys, the IT world would be a better place. I shook one of their hands at the end of the semester; I never got the chance with the others. Guys, you know who you are, and my hat is off to you.

Rave: That's what I like in a student

As some of you may (hah! like anyone is reading this) know, I taught computer science for a long time, as a university tutor. I had a lot of terrible students; students that were rude, foulmouthed, whiny, even one that grabbed my ass. I had a student who complained when they scraped through an assignment to code a compression algorithm with a passing grade; never mind that their program made everything bigger. I had one student discuss her private life with me at length while we were walking past open office doors (and there was nothing she told me that I wanted or needed to know). I was heartbroken by students who were really good, but couldn't be bothered doing the work.

I'm not talking about those students today, though. There were quite a few students I loved, who made me laugh, and who kept my tutorials lively, but I don't want to talk about them either. Today I want to talk about the students I respected, in particular one group of young men I had in my classes in the last semester I taught. They were a group of engineering students, and while there were some slackers, a few of them were wonderful.

These guys were completing a requirement for their degree, and had no real interest in computing at all. In fact, in some cases, programming downright pissed them off. They had the heaviest workloads of any of my first year students, but they showed up to class, treated me with respect, and did the work. One time, when I caught one of them doing something he shouldn't be, I reamed him out for it and expected belligerence in return. Instead, he thanked me for drawing attention to his behaviour. When it came to the final assignment of the course, they were busier than anyone else taking the course, at least as far as their university work. Nonetheless, they worked right up to the last minute, and they did the work themselves, and none of them blew the assignment off.

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Rave: BodyJam makes most women hot (part 2)

I guess the phenomenon is best summed up by a conversation Belinda had with a guy using the sports hall before her class one day, which she later related to me:

" Hey, oh, um, do you have a class starting in here?"
" Hey, yeah, it starts in about ten minutes"
"Oh, okay, cool. What class is it?"
"Body Jam, you can stay for the class if you like"
"Oh man...this room is going to be full of hot girls, right?"
"Yup."

The best thing about it? No-one in that class is being hot for society, her partner, god, or anyone but herself. Thanks, Belinda, for giving me 1:45/week, where I too, am hot.

Rave: BodyJam makes most women hot

The gym I go to runs a Les Mills program, including Body Jam, a dance aerobics class taught by the talented, enthusiastic Belinda. Jam is choreographed by a guy from NZ who I have seen on TV and don't much like, but nonetheless it is a fun routine.

There's something pretty weird about Jam, though, especially at my gym. The Jam class in the area I live in caters predominantly to white middle class women from (at a guess) age 18 up. Most of us (again, at a guess) are youngish professionals, in the 20-30 bracket. Not that any of that is weird, though; what is weird is that twice a week these women come out and hip-hop, latin dance, bollywood it out, house dance, dance like dirty early 90s rock music video girls, and generally shake their booties -- not what you would expect of this group, right?

What's really weird is that, at the beginning of the class, 10-20 normal looking women walk into the room (and so does Belinda, who is way too cool to be merely normal). Once the music turns on, though, you have 10-20 women getting loose, having fun, and enjoying their bodies (there are often also 10-20 gawkers looking in the windows, but as a participant you learn to ignore that fairly quickly). This is not to say that every woman there is completely comfortable with every move, but when a woman is having fun at that class (and yes, where I go the participants are almost invariably women), she looks great even if she isn't doing the right moves. It's because she feels great, and is enjoying her body. At the end of the class 10-20 normal, if slightly sweaty women walk back out of the class again.

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Rant: Courtesy in an apartment building

I live in a block of townhouses, which are called row houses in other places. Before I moved here, I also lived in a block of townhouses. Townhouses are wonderful, because you do not have neighbours above you, only to either side. This means there are fewer directions from which noise can come, and therefore one could reasonably expect the environment to be relatively peaceful.

If you expected peace here, however, you would be dead wrong. I am sitting here, at 846 on a Sunday morning, listening to my neighbour's son bounce a soccer ball off their wall. He started at precisely 830 AM, which is presumably when his mother said it was alright to wake us up (doesn't worry me, I've been up all night, but the noise is repetitive and annoying, it's like bloody Chinese water torture). His mother is well aware that we can hear the noise quite clearly, because we have asked for the kid to stop before. She has told us that she will not stop him, that it is only for an hour a day (lies), and that it cannot possibly disturb us (also wrong). There is a yard out the back of the child's house, but that is not acceptable because apparently he cannot keep his soccer ball inside the fence (we have a basketball in our yard which I suspect is his; it has been there for months and nobody has asked for it back). Using the other outside wall of her house is also unacceptable, apparently, because it would mean she could not see her son. She has signed a contract stating that she will not disturb her neighbours, but she seems wildly disinclined to honour that contract.

In a previous townhouse block, there were consistent dramas because people felt the need to park wherever they wanted, instead of in the marked parking spaces, often meaning others could not get their cars in our out. Given that this was in NZ where you are totally dependent on your car to get anywhere, this was not a happy scene. In this same block there were issues with people interfering with the private courtyard garden spaces of others.

Frankly, unless you consider your neighbours, living in a townhouse just doesn't work. That means no loud music late at night, no really noisy sex, no 6am home maintenance with a hammer, and certainly ball sports must be confined to outdoors. You must accept the limit on your parking space, and accept the fact you can see the plant in your neighbour's garden that bothers you. If tolerance and respect of others isn't in your vocabulary, I suggest you get a standalone house, or, better yet, a farm.

Reflections: Is Harry Potter really getting kids to read?

Harry Potter has been touted again and again as the next big thing in getting kids to read, and JK Rowling is certainly not arguing with this. The cracks are beginning to show in the evidence though, as the early readers of Harry Potter get older and haven't the time nor the inclination to read the books. People are even beginning to admit, sacrilege of sacrileges, that they are no longer enjoying the books.

Despite the intense and wide-ranging following the books have, it simply is not reasonable to expect one series of books, often released more than a year apart to really make a difference to children's reading habits, just as it is not really reasonable to expect one bad computer game or TV show to put children off. The biggest reason why Harry Potter isn't going to make a difference to children reading, though, is that each of the books is being made into a movie, and each movie is more feature packed than the last. For most kids, the movie will be enough, I would think, and the book will be irrelevant.

Rant: Just 'cause I am a chick doesn't mean I am not serious about being here and other gym rants

Thanks Brett, for the topic.

I like to go to the gym. Many days I do group fitness, but at least a couple of times a week, I like to go and do weights with my partner. Yes, you heard me, I lift weights. No, I am not trying to tone so much as I am trying to gain muscle mass, if not muscle size.

I go with my partner so we can spot each other, encourage each other, and do technique checks. I also go with my partner, because if I am there with a guy, I get noticeably less aggravation from other gym goers -- fewer 'friendly tips', fewer stares, and definitely fewer people who refuse to treat my workout as though it is a real workout.

My gym is a small gym, and there is not a lot of room to move around. The space to monitor your technique in the mirror is limited (not that technique seems to matter for the vast majority of people using the gym). Recently I was doing front shoulder raises with a 4kg dumbell in each hand, and standing a few feet from my partner; it wasn't clear that I was 'claimed'. One of the guys who uses the gym decided it best to walk in front of me instead ot taking the four extra steps to go around, interrupting my flow. I suppose he thought that since I was a girl, and using a light weight, and he did me the huge honour of saying "excuse me" as he interrupted me.

Well, now I am pissed off and intolerant, so here are the new rules:

• Do not talk to me unless you have something relevant to say to me, like 'are you finished with those weights'. If you do talk to me, listen to the answer.
• Do not fuck with my workout. Wait, or go around. If you go through, I will hit you with my weight, even if you say excuse me.
• Do not sit on the machines and talk to your friends; if you want to talk there are couches in the lobby, or there is the sauna. There is only one of each machine, so chances are, people are waiting to use it.
• Do not touch my bag, I left it where I wanted to find it. I am sure you have some compelling reason why you need my hook more than I do, but I am afraid telling me that reason would mean telling me something irrelevant.
• If you sweat on something, wipe it up -- yes, even if it means wasting 30 seconds of precious personal trainer time in an hour's workout.

Speaking of trainers, here are some rules for you, because frankly, members take their courtesy cues from you, and the cues are clearly not good enough.

• Do not monopolise any machine with your client -- I know you have your favourite exercises, but I would like to use the puley machine before the gym closes.
• I do not need to hear what exercise your client is going to do next from the other end of the gym. That is their business, and yours, so keep it down.
• Watch and correct the technique of anyone doing something dangerous, not just ypur client. Safe moves take up less room, and I will be pissed off if I can't use the weights because someone else hurt themselves.
• Oustide the stretch space is not an appropriate venue for boxing-based cardio training. Go down to the sports hall or out to the poolside.
• Greetings are not irrelevant.

It sounds as though I hate my gym, or at least the people in it. This simply is not true; despite the fact the gym is small, it has state of the art equipment, and generally speaking is more woman friendly than my old gym. When all you have to bitch about is peple getting in your way in a small gym, you're doing pretty well, really.

Rant: New Zealand gave women the vote, and then did nothing else (part 3)

Not only is birth control expensive in NZ, you have to see a doctor twice a year to get it (for anything other than condoms), and they are expensive too. Tubal ligations are fully funded, but there is a waiting list and they are more dangerous, more invasive, and more permanent than vasectomies (which are not funded, unless there are exceptional circumstances).

On the flip side of the coin, fertility treatment is easier to get if you smoke, if you or your partner has been voluntarily sterilised and changed your mind, or if you prefer not to have sex with a man. A couple that has no specific, diagnosed infertility has to wait five years before they can get help, making pregnancy and birth riskier, and the parents five years older.

So, in New Zealand, abortion is actually cheaper to acquire than any other form of birth control. There is no safe, reliable birth control for any woman who eventually wants children, but has anything wrong with her intestines at all (or indeed for teenagers who routinely drink too much, shag someone random, and throw up their pill). On the other hand if you want to get pregnant, you should make some poor choices there, too.

Frankly, I agree with the handwringing politicians, that New Zealand does need a unified approach to reproduction, including a review of the old laws, but since these things cost money (and NZ doesn't like to spend money on women's health), and they might get the government voted out, I'm not holding my breath.

Rant: New Zealand gave women the vote, and then did nothing else (part 2)

My rant on reproductive choice in New Zealand was spawned by an article I read on the state of NZ's abortion laws. Under the law, New Zealand women are not supposed to have abortion-on-demand, even in the very early stages of pregnancy, and so most women who get an abortion in New Zealand most women who have an abortion do so because to have the baby would 'severely adversely affect their mental health', which is patently bollocks. This law also means women have to jump through a number of hoops to get an abortion. The article quotes male experts acknowledging that the law doesn't work, but notes that the government doesn't want to touch abortion law because it pisses people off. This is a law that has not been reviewed since 1977.

New Zealand has a high abortion rate, and a high teen pregnancy rate, and the lawmakers in that article are wringing their hands and claiming that to really solve the abortion problem, we need a unified reproductive strategy. Having been a victim of NZ's present reproductive strategy (I was offered an IUD as my "best option" despite never having had children, wanting them, having a bleeding tendency and having an autoimmune disorder), this made me fume: In New Zealand, birth control options are the pill, the mini-pill, depo-provera (which is seen as being unsafe in many countries) condoms, copper IUD, hormonal IUD (if you pay yourself), and sterilisation. Even if you pay yourself, you cannot get the patch, the implant, the nuvaring, or any of the lower-estrogen pills, and if the pill that works best for you is not one of the ones the government thinks is okay you are going to pay a fortune for it.

continued in the next post

Rant: New Zealand gave women the vote, and then did nothing else

New Zealand, despite being the first country in the world to give women the vote, has a really crap record when it comes to womens issues. Some of the lowlights include:

• Well after the Helsinki convention was signed, doctors were performing cervical cancer experiments on women and girls without their knowledge or consent.
  
• In a completely separate incident, readings of screenings were botched for years in one region of NZ -- as a result of this NZ women now do not have adequate privacy protection for their smears or their medical records, as they are all part of a research programme to improve cervical screening.
• Despite NZ's purported interest in preventing cervical cancer, anyone who wants the vaccine there has to pay for it themselves.
• Herceptin, a breast cancer drug, inadequately funded in NZ
• Haemophilia patients (mostly male) have access to a wide range of treatments and uncapped funding, while rheumatoid arthritis (mostly female) patients have only recently gained access to world class care under strict funding guidelines.
  

This list has focused on health issues because this discussion is going to be about one of the biggest health issues for women: reproductive choice.

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Rave: The miralce of the internet, a.k.a. my friends in the black box (part 2)

Like offline friendships, my online friends and I support each other in bad times, and celebrate in the good times (because of time zones, one of my online friends was the first to know I was engaged). We also support each others' endeavours in whatever we do; much of the sponsorship and some of the topics for my blogathon have come from people I have never met in person (and, because someone is awake somewhere at all times, this is one of the many times my online friends will help me get through the night-- it's just the reason is much better this time).

Friendships where the parties have never met is not new, or restricted to the internet. When I was a kid it was the done thing to have a pen-pal in some far flung country that you hoped to travel and meet one day. What is new about the internet is the ability to seek out a community of like-minded people and meet a lot of them at once, incurring few or no expenses; this lower barrier to entry means that more people are able to try it.

That's all very dry and clinical, though. My online friendships have meant more to me than the sum of their parts, though; and because I know some of those people are reading tonight, I will try and explain why. I'm a bit lot of a hardass in person; I come across brash and brusque, and I try never, ever to talk about my feelings. I don't expect people to like me, and that's fine by me. If they do like me, then they know what to expect. Except, that's all bullshit. it's convincing bullshit, but it is bullshit nonetheless. Forgive me for the navel-gazing here, but having friends online, where it is easier to think before you speak, and where it is possible to take time out before you make a response has meant I have been able to try out the part of my personality that is not bullshit. And by seeing people like and respect that personality, for the most part, it comes out in everyday life more often. Do you know how much easier life is when you aren't constantly bullshitting?

Because my friends are kind and respectful, because they have hearts of gold and have accepted me, because I feel supported by them, my life has gotten easier. And that sort of story is the real miracle of friends on the internet.

Rave: The miralce of the internet, a.k.a. my friends in the black box

Thanks, Carole, for the topic and the title

A long time ago I wrote a post about how the internet is cool, because it is the mother of random creativity.

There is another reason why the internet is cool: because it can facilitate friendships. There are two ways that this plays out -- existing friendships, and new friendships.

The internet facilitiates existing friendships by allowing lighter and lighter weight communication. The teens of today are using email very little, and instead prefer their social networks. Email is lighter weight paper letters (or telephone), and IM is lighter weight than email. All of this means it is easier to keep in touch with people you have met off-line.

Using the internet that way isn't what this post is about, though. This post is about meeting wonderful people online, and becoming friends with them there. There has been a lot written about the negative aspects of meeting people online -- the marriage break-ups, the stalkers, that sort of thing -- but hardly anything about good experiences of meeting people online.

I personally have made a number of friends online, on a shared-interest community. I was lucky to find a place where genuine people congregate, and I have made a lot of friends there. These people are kind and caring; I rely on them for support and I enjoy interacting with them on an almost daily basis. Most of them I have never met in person, though when I have had the opportunity I have gone out of my way to do so.

continues in the next post

Reflections: Male birth control (part 3)

So why hasn't there been a push for male birth control sooner? I am going to be cynical and say I think it is because unintended pregnancy hasn't hurt men enough to be bothered until now, and that society doesn't care about the side effects birth control have in women, because they should count themselves lucky to have a choice. This has changed, though, and the push is on.

Currently, men have two birth control options: Vasectomy, and condoms. One of these is a little too reliable, and one of them isn't reliable enough. There are no really good options for men who do want children, but not right now (and men who want vasectomies so they never have children are struggling to get them). Drug companies claim they are close to having a birth control pill for men, but realistically this is probably still a good five years off by the time FDA testing and all that crap has been done. Even then, I think men are probably less likely to remember to take a pill, and men are already bitching about side effects they might get having seen what happens to women. What I can't understand is why hormones are the option being most closely investigated. It seems to me that the best option would be a reversible method of blocking the vas deferens, but then I guess no-one can make enough money off that.

Whatever the end result is, now that men actually want reversible, reliable birth control, I think we can expect to see it, and has got to be a good thing for everyone.

Reflections: Male birth control (part 2)

Increasingly, men are complaining that they are made to pay child support for their offspring when they did not choose the pregnancy, and suggesting alternatives ways of making the situation right. Many of these ways involve men opting out of parenthood in some legal manner, but like the Violent Acres' post, many are also talking about birth control.

Finally, after years of women having not just the control but also the responsibility for reproductive choices the financial impact of unplanned children is starting to make men (and mens' advocates) push for male birth control. In my opinion, a legal opt-out is a cop-out to maintain mens' privileged position of being able to have sex without consequences. Male birth control, though, is a step forward; it means men finally sharing the responsibility for family planning, including the cost, the side effects, the stress, and the bullshit with doctors and pharmacists.

to be continued in the next post