The prefix peta refers to numbers of the magnitude 10 to the 15th power, a million billion, and that’s what they’re talking about in the computer world these days.
Yes, it is doing my head in too – and I’m marginally well hooked into this stuff. But if you want to understand what’s happening, I’d reckon you should read this article. I’ve read it three times and think I’ve almost got a handle on it.
It could multiply their pay five times. As a result of a deal with the unions 15 years ago, dinner ladies are earning as little as 20 per cent of what men doing similar unskilled/semi-skilled jobs receive.
One of those cases where you have to ask just what unions and managers thought they were doing…
A more liberal approach to marijuana use over the past three years has cut the number of users in England and Wales by 600,000.
An estimated 2.775 million people aged from 16 to 59 in England and Wales used cannabis in the year up to April 2006 – 8.7 per cent of that age group. This is the lowest level in the past 10 years when figures have been collected by the British Crime Survey….
Even in 16 to 24-year-olds, where drug abuse is more commonplace, the use of cannabis has significantly declined. In 1998, 28.2 per cent of that age group were estimated to have taken cannabis. That figure has dropped to 21.4 per cent, or 1.338 million, in the past year.
Some degree of commonsense has prevailed and the effects are obvious. Now if only the commonsense could be extended to total decrmininalisation…
Of course that’s not how The Times puts it, at least not in the headline or intro – using instead “lost lover” and “Deb the maid” … and they wonder why they have trouble getting and keeping women readers.
Nonetheless, there is an interesting story, even if it is one, quite likely, of continuing abuse by a much older man of a young woman almost entirely within his power.
Research now shows that Pepys re-established contact with the maid’s family three years later and suggests that the dirty diarist had the opportunity to resume the affair….
Willet married Jeremiah Wells, a theology graduate, in January 1670. Wells soon wrote to Pepys to ask if the writer could use his contacts in the Royal Navy to get him a job. Pepys obliged, securing Wells a job as a ship’s chaplain. The diarist therefore knew not only where his old flame lived, but also that her husband was away at sea.
Dr Loveman said that there was no direct evidence that Pepys returned to his mistress, but it would not have been out of character. “Given Pepys’s past obsession with Deb, his continued contact with her family raises suspicions about the nature of their relationship,†she said.
In Victoria, Australia, an open-cut coal mine is on fire, and expected to burn for days. (Plenty of greenhouse gases there – the sort of positive feedback mechanism the scientists are getting worried about.)
It is just one of 230 fires in the state, and its neighbour, NSW, is also expecting a great number as the same weather conditions reach it.
It is October. Early October. That never used to be fire season. But judging by someone to whom I was speaking yesterday, Australians really are getting worried about this apparent effect of global warming – as they are about the wheat crop, likely to be less than 50 per cent of last year’s, an estimate that is falling even lower by the day.
World wheat reserves are at their lowest level since 1981.
“The concern now is what happens next year. If we have poor conditions for growing wheat again, supplies could get very tight and we might see some demand rationing,” said Dan Cekander, grains analyst at Fimat.
James Barnett, grains analyst for Man Global Research, part of the Man Group, said there was more concern in the global corn market after the USDA cut crop estimates in the US by 209 million bushels to 10.9 billion after it said that 800,000 fewer acres were growing corn than had previously been expected. The US is the world’s largest corn grower.
“We are looking at a structural change in the corn market, because demand is going to increase next year from the ethanol industry, and we might not be planting corn in enough acres to satisfy that demand,” said Mr Barnett.
OK, I give up – I’m afraid Friday Femmes Fatales is going to have to become an “occasional” series rather than a weekly one. (I’m going to aim for but not promise fortnightly.) I just can’t spend any more hours at the computer than I do now. (But — small bribe — if you send in lots of nominations it could be more regular!)
Now that my little whinge is over, on to the ten great female bloggers with ten killer posts…
Regular readers will know I aim to promote women bloggers even when I don’t necessarily agree with them, so I’ll start with Jo22 on I Can’t Fly, and her take on Jack Straw and the Muslim veil issue.
But I entirely agree with the sentiments of the blogger on Politics’n’Poetry, who highlights the environmental misdeeds of the Saskatchewan Power Corporation (Canada).
Staying green, Anna on Bitchinspin, who’s obviously a far more serious cyclist than I, reports on a university free bike scheme. Amazingly it seems, they aren’t being stolen!
I’m equally in tune with Kuri on Thought Interrupted, who picked up and reshaped the currently popular meme to make it five things feminism still has to do.
Ronni Bennett (no relation, that I know of) on Time Goes By, subtitled “what it’s really like to get older”, wonders how plastic surgery comes into the ‘women’s health category’, concluding “they’ll force us to become grotesque simulacra of youth to not offend their delicate sensibilities of what is attractive”.
On the superb group blog Our Bodies Ourselves, Christine C. contemplates that old question: can men be feminists?. One powerful obituary certainly supports that possibility.
On another question that keeps being asked – what is university (college) for? the Blue Gal provides some great stats, and interesting thoughts on the changing American experience.
Turning more personal, although still eminently political, Liz Connor reflects on being a teenage bulimic. She reflects how this is merely the other side of overeating: ”
With any addiction self-loathing and self-comfort become bound within a mutually sustaining, closed system.”
After that, some healthy, sensible eating – Jennifershmoo on Vegan Lunch Box offers (with pictures) vegan bento. (I have to admit that after eating almost entirely vegan at the recent Green Party conference I felt remarkably healthy considering the other ways I was abusing my body – e.g. alcohol and lack of sleep. But still not sure I could stick it full time.)
Finally, to finish, the one post you really, really must read here – leave on an inspirational note: The Sappho Manifesto tells the story of Elizabeth “Lizzie” Jennings, a 24-year-old schoolteacher, and apparently unlikely revolutionary.
***
If you missed the last edition, it is here. (If you’d like to see all of them as a list, click on the category “Friday Femmes Fatales†in the righthand sidebar. That will take you to a collection of 650, and counting, women bloggers.)
***
Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience†(particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment. It really does make my life easier. Or don’t be shy – nominate yourself! (Thanks to Penny and Val who sent in nominations this week.)
About