Monthly Archives: March 2007

Miscellaneous

What does a herd of kerfuffles look like?

I’ve been musing on this question – I imagine them as being as fast and agile as mountain-bred goats, but as scatty as little-handled sheep, prone to suddenly fling off in unexpected directions, usually that of a cliff or a boggy piece of ground that you’ll have to spend hours digging them out of. They are impractically white and fluffy, spindly legged and fragile, and with innocent, open faces, such as a child might draw a cow.

I’ve spent nine hours today, formally or informally (two hours in the pub at the end when much work got done) in a meeting today, after being up until 4am finishing a report for it. Does it show?

Environmental politics

The Formula 1 Dinosaur

Not only is it the most boring “sport” on earth (a procession of screaming cars with almost no overtaking or interesting dicing of the type you find in simpler motorsports), not only is it one of the last refuges of the use of women in swimsuits carrying placards advertising cigarettes, but Formula 1 is also a serious climate villain.

Over 17 weekends this year, Jensen Button’s car will emit more than 50 tonnes of carbon dioxide:

The cars emit around 1,500g of carbon dioxide per kilometre, which is almost nine times more than the amount of the average new road vehicle.

And then of course there’s the flying of the whole circus around the world every week… not you would have thought, what a decent, ecologically aware manufacturer would have wanted to be associated with.

Theatre

Do you care about Gynticide?

Over on My London Your London I’ve a review of an Icelandic production of Peer Gynt that opened last night at the Barbican – full marks for surrealism and staging, lower marks for characters about whom you can care.

Environmental politics Feminism

Books on ecofeminism

Just been pointed to a list of books on ecofeminism maintained by professional librarians. If anyone has any comments on any of these I’d be interested to hear them – particularly recommendations.

Update: Apologies – it has just been pointed out to me that the link I had above didn’t work – it is one of those annoying uncopyable ones. It seems you have to go here, then click on “search the collection”, then choose ecofeminism. Sorry!

History

Should you need a laugh

The book helpdesk in action – actually probably should be about 200AD, but the setting appears medieval. I’ve often written and thought about the book being a type of technology – this illustrates that rather nicely.

Feminism

Women speaking out

The spring edition of Girlistic magazine is now online, and there’s some great stuff in there – the focus is on technology (and I liked “how the internet introduced me to feminism”) but there’s also an excellent history of the pill, and an exploration of the gender stereotype of the librarian – it actually goes back to Dewey, I learnt.

An account in The Times of what would be a fascinating resource – a “correspondence magazine” shared among mothers from the mid-1930s onwards charting their pains, problems, and suggestions they made to each other … “its members were mostly middle-class housewives — educated, opinionated, excluded from careers by convention and legislation (teachers and other professionals were barred from working once married), often intellectually frustrated and harassed by the demands of household management and child-rearing.” Just in case anyone is looking for past golden ages.

Which ties neatly, if unhappily, with the news in Britain that women with children under 11 are the group most discriminated against in the workforce.