Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

Give the chimps some dignity

March 15, 2008 – 10:59 am

This is a slightly confused story in its reasoning, but I can only agree with the sentiments: using chimpanzees in advertising as a figure of fun, as mock humans, is a practice that should be very firmly consigned to history.

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Historical miscellany

March 15, 2008 – 10:54 am

* Archaeology sheds unexpected light on 17th-century Cornwall, with the discovery of a series of pits lined with swan pelts revealing a previously unknown folk tradition/religious practice. I’m calling it that rather than The Times’s “witchcraft”, because who knows how the practitioners saw it… One of the fascinating things about it, however, is how late this tradition survived without making any impact on the historical record.

* One of Ramses’ sons has been revealed as having what would surely have been in his terms a miserable afterlife – mistaken for a female temple dancer.

* From my inbox, an exploration of just how much use a Viking’s shield would be to him (or perhaps her) – tested out in fun, if slightly frightening, detail. What would it have been like were you fighting in a real-life epic?

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A big day

March 9, 2008 – 11:45 am

Unfortunately I couldn’t be at the Million Women Rise March yesterday, or the Abortion Rights Women’s Day event, due to a regular six-hour Saturday meeting (Caroline Lucas, lucky woman, got to leave at lunchtime to address the Trafalgar Square rally), but I have been enjoying The F-Word’s report, and a lovely collection of photos.

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Portable antiquities

March 8, 2008 – 9:40 am

Anyone know what is happening with the Portable Antiquities Scheme? This is a brilliant, cheap and popular government scheme, so naturally its funding is under threat.

It allows and encourages people who find antiquities to report them, with the details being registered for researchers – as chronicled on its blog.

More than 200 MPs backed an early day motion supporting it, but can’t find anything since then….

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Reading and listening

March 7, 2008 – 12:58 am

On the usually excellent In Our Time on Radio Four, an account of the importance of Ada Lovelace. (That link will only work for a week – I’d recommend downloading immediately so you don’t miss it.)

And I didn’t think there was any real doubt about this, but further evidence has emerged that the Victorian army doctor James Barry was actually Margaret Ann Bulkley, daughter of a Cork grocer.

And on the Times, a rather rightwing slanted list of 50 green bloggers. But there are some good ‘uns to add to the blogroll.

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Carnival of Feminists No 54

March 7, 2008 – 12:52 am

You can have a long, long, long drumroll for this one, and an apology for extreme tardiness from me, but I can now tell you that the Carnival of Feminists No 54 is now up on In a Strange Land.

It’s great – and don’t waste a second here, do go over there and check it out.

(Then you can come back to my excuses – my problem is that I can just keep up when I keep going, but as soon as I do something like take a week’s holiday, I come back to an avalanche – and in this case I’m still making frantic swimming motions and have a small air pocket.)

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