Monthly Archives: April 2006

Environmental politics Politics

The anti-4×4 campaign has a success

April 2, 2006 – 12:06 pm

THANDIE NEWTON, the British star of Crash, the Hollywood hit film, has become a crusader against gas-guzzling cars after a Greenpeace activist slapped stickers on her 4×4 accusing her of adding to global warming.
This week, Newton, 33, will make her support for the anti-emissions campaign public by writing to fellow Hollywood stars and other celebrities who drive such vehicles, asking them to join her in switching to greener forms of transport.

One solution to this problem is to make these dinosaurs in cities profoundly unfashionable; to make their ownership symbolic of ignorance and irresponsibility. (Which of course it is.)
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OK, that’s the bit of good news I’ve found for the day. In Zimbabwe, the situation is going from bad to worse – as shown by the rate of discarded babies being found around the city. (Warning, quite graphic story, complete with an astonishing quote from a quasi-official figure about how they block the plumbing…)
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Then, with Tony Blair (soon may he go, although from the Green Party perspective perhaps not until after the local election – he is so good for our campaign) seemingly wedded to nuclear power, a timely story on the anniversary of Chernobyl: the BRITISH farmers who still have to get their stock checked with a Geiger counter before they can take them to market.

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Environmental politics

Quote of the day from the doorstep

April 1, 2006 – 11:36 pm

Intercom: Buzz, Buzz

Mature woman’s voice: Yes?

Me: I’m one of your Green Party candidates for the local election. Have you thought about voting Green?

Voice: (Laughs.) No. I’m a member of the Labour Party, with all its horrors….

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The other event of the day was the young gentleman who dripped down the hall from the shower, wrapped in a towel, his face covered with shaving cream.

Sorry!

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History

History Carnival No 28 …

April 1, 2006 – 10:50 pm

… is now up on Patahistory, and it is a whopper. Not sure if there are record number of links, but it sure looks like it.

Some of the highlights include the collections of MUSTS for historical fiction set in the Victorian era – if you’ve read any Anne Perry you’ll realise just how true it is; some great Women’s History Month posts, and much more…

P.S. Do check out the booklist for Christian homeschoolers … showing just what a huge industry this is.

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Feminism

Australia’s shame

April 1, 2006 – 9:58 pm

Many years ago I covered the Aboriginal issues beat for a regional daily paper in Australia, and it was the most depressing subject I’ve ever had to deal with. My inability to find a legal way to report the abuse of an Aboriginal youngster counts as one of my greatest failings as a journalist. And Australia’s shame just goes on and on.

Jenissa Ryan, 15, was the great-granddaughter of the revered Albert Namatjira, Australia’s first celebrated Aboriginal painter. Was.

Police believe Jenissa was bashed by a teenage boy and a girl – almost her own age – as she walked the Alice Springs streets on the last Friday night in January. It may have been the injuries she sustained in this attack that killed her.
Attempting to walk home to the Hidden Valley camp, she collapsed unconscious in the gutter near the college. It was there that three teenage boys found her in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Police have testified that the boys thought Jenissa was drunk or dead. Instead of calling for help, they dragged her 10 metres behind a knoll on the verge of the college grounds and raped her. Discarding their condoms, they left the scene.
…Nobody knows how long Jenissa Ryan lay unconscious in the fierce morning heat as her life slipped away. But by the time ambulance officers arrived, honey ants were beginning to gather on her dishevelled clothes.
That means a number of residents of middle-class Grevillea Drive probably noticed. …It was not until around 10.30am that a female college employee called for an ambulance.

Now it has made the national media – two months later.

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History

A 15th-century rhyme that is still in use…

April 1, 2006 – 4:28 pm

Thirty days hath November
April June and September
Of eight-and-twenty is but one
And all the remnant thirty one.

The oldest known version of this is in a 15th-century manuscript, and I still recite a slightly modernised version to myself when trying to sort the 30s from the 31s.

It is a powerful demonstration of why so much early modern “technical information” is put in verse – while oral transmission and memory remains important, even if the material is also being committed to print, and other media – Thomas Tusser, author of a phenomenally successful book of housewifery, recommends that the “comely decked guest-room” be decorated with painted verses, such as:

“The sloven and the careless man, the roinish [scabby] nothing nice,
To lodge in chamber comely decked, are seldome suffered twice.”

A cobbler too, was expected to be able to readily “reckon up his tools in rhyme” – surely a good way of checking nothing was missing.

(From Jones, M. “Such pretty things would soon be gone’: The Neglected Popular Verse 1480-1650”, in Hattaway (ed) A Companion to English Reniassance Literature and Culture, Blackwell, 2000 p. 457. This is a mammoth tome, but has some really excellent stuff in it. I’m using it to try to ensure I haven’t missed anything important in various projects relating to the period.)

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