Well, wearing my Blogcritics books editor’s hat it seemed a requirement, and it did give me the excuse to drop (almost) everything to read a book straight through – something I do far too rarely these days, so over on BC I’ve reviewed Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows – in summary, a fun tale of almost James Bondish derring-do, but lacking in the more interesting depths of Half-Blood Prince.
I think I’ve found it today on the cricket field. It was the first time I’ve played in a year, no practice, and I batted better than I have in years – so don’t play, don’t practice, then just go out there.
And I got to see probably the best legspin bowling I’ve ever seen, from the sharp end, and survived the experience, if only by an inelegant scramble of bat, pad and any other bit of the body that came in handy.
I was just there for the cultural experience.
Honest.
* The good – MPs suggest that the age of starting driving on the roads be lifted to 18:
Young male drivers are now the biggest killer of young women in the UK, according to the report from the transport select committee. They are also a danger to themselves: more than three times as many are killed as young female drivers, although they are more likely to pass the driving test.
* The bad – another leak from the quake-hit Japanese nuclear power plant, which may have been built on a fault line!
* The informative – a story about a Portugese woman who fooled everyone by dressing as a man for two decades – amazing how easy this is in societies with rigid gender divides – shows you how much gender is performative.
The mess on the London Tube is one example of the danger of commercial outsourcing, but it would seem to be harder to argue against “outsourcing” government services such as drug treatment, help for families etc, to non-government organisations that might already have skills in the area. But there’s a powerful argument in this American piece about homelessness among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth:
…with the Black Church whoring for Bush’s faith-based monies coupled with its particular brand of homophobia has both unapologetically and unabashedly closed its doors to its LGBTQ population. And despite the fact these kids looked to the church for help these youth have neither a chance nor a prayer for assistance.
You’ll often meet them here (there are so many more than you might have thought), but this time I’m talking medieval Japan, specifically the six women who between them were ruling Japan eight times between 592 and 770: Suiko, Kogyoku/Saimei, Jito, Abe, Gemmei and Gensho.
A piece (PDF) just posted on Medievalists.net tells their story.
Its thesis is that while traditionally they have been regarded as simply keeping the seat warm for male relatives, in fact most of them were powerful, active sovereigns in their own right.
Also just up there is a nice piece on 13th-century noble English widows (PDF), who seem to have also been a notably strong-minded lot.
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