Date: 2008-05-11 15:29 Subject: Best Mother's Day present ever Security: Public

So you'll never guess what I got for Mother's Day... a new native garden outside my window!

This was the previous outlook from my bedroom window:






A little bleak, no? More:



You can see that the bricks are all coming up from the roots of that pigawful tree.





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Date: 2008-05-11 10:42 Subject: Sunday Neato: Earth-bowls Security: Public

Fluidforms "Earth-bowls".

Just pinpoint your chosen location in Google Earth, choose a height scale, and these clever Austrians will make it out of wood for you, terrain and all.


[Via Oohsome]

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Date: 2008-05-11 10:06 Subject: Happy Mother's Day! Security: Public

To all the mothers among us, I hope you have a joyful day (and year, and life!) How's your day going?

I'm thrilled... because I'm getting a new native garden and birdbath outside my bedroom window, to replace the current root-addled red brick paving and UglyTree! Pics will follow when it's done, though it won't look much at first.

Already the laughing turtledoves and spotted turtledoves come down each day for the food and saucer of water that I put out. We chose the plants from Lullfitz to attract nectar-eating birds as well.

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Date: 2008-05-10 11:03 Subject: Otterday Security: Public

Caturday is so last month. Here: Otters doing rhythmic gymnastics moves with pebbles.



[via gigglesugar]

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Date: 2008-05-09 18:35 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

How to put a pre-primary kid into raptures:

Buy him an ancient iMac.

He is eight kinds of over-the-moon, and typing away like a demon as I post.

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Date: 2008-05-09 13:22 Subject: "Without doubt, innocent young girls have contracted syphilis through permitting such acts of famili Security: Public

The first Ladies' Handbook post is here. This instalment, "Syphilis" and "Personal Responsibility", completes Chapter III: "Outside The Marriage Circle". [Bold is mine.]

I don't really expect everyone to be as interested in old medical descriptions as I am, but oh my I find them utterly compelling. For reasons you can gather from the description below, syphilis is known in medical circles as "The Great Imitator". This is why House M.D.'s minions frequently raise it as a possible diagnosis in their medical mystery cases, along with lupus, another great mimic.

The spirochaete that causes syphilis is now called Treponema pallidum. However, the natural history of the disease in an individual had been known for a long time. (And yet, white Americans still performed the cruel, racist Tuskegee study.) There was quite a period of confusion, however, in which it was thought that syphilis and gonorrhoea were the same disease. This confusion was caused by an experiment gone wrong. John Hunter, an 18th-century pathologist, in the true spirit of pioneering investigators everywhere, infected himself deliberately with gonorrhoea, using the pus from an infected patient. Unbeknownst to him, the patient was also infected with syphilis, and Hunter contracted both diseases. His well-publicised conclusion that the two diseases were the same set back STD knowledge for fifty years.

The first well-documented syphilis epidemic was in Europe in the 1400s, but the origin of the spirochaete is disputed. Some believe it originated in Europe or Africa, as early as Hippocratic times; other believe it originated in the new world, and was brought back by sailors around the time of Columbus.

T. pallidum was only just discovered around the time the Ladies' Handbook was published. At the time, it was treated with potassium iodide or mercury (orally or as topical ointments). Salvarsan (arsephenamine) injections took their place around five years after publication of this book, hailed as a miracle cure at the time, despite the inevitable arsenic toxicity. Penicillin wasn't to come along till the 1940s.

It is not clear from this writeup that the authors known that congenital syphilis is transmitted through the placenta. They don't seem to. Before that was known, it was thought that congenital syphilis somehow came directly from fathers, or from wet-nurses. Still women are notably invisible in this piece. Note that prostitution is seen not as a danger to women, but as a threat to the "enlightened man", and that they authors are promoting a sort of demand-side abolitionism.

---

Chapter III: "Outside The Marriage Circle" (Part 2)

SYPHILIS

NATURE AND CAUSE.- Syphilis, like gonorrhoea, is a contagious disease. It is also caused by a micro-organism, or germ, known as the spirochaete pallida. Outside the human body this germ survives but for a few hours. Within the body, however, it lives not only for one, but for even two or three generations. In other words, the germ of syphilis not only outlasts its unfortunate victim, but destroys his progeny as well. Syphilis is propagated by two methods: inoculation, and hereditary transmission; the first form being known as acquired syphilis; the second, as congenital syphilis. Acquired syphilis is invariable caused by contact with discharges from the sores of a syphilitic person. This contact is generally sexual, though from a sore on the lips or tongue it may be transmitted through kissing. It cannot be transmitted through the air, as drying destroys the germ of syphilis, but it may possibly be conveyed by utensils or clothing.

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Date: 2008-05-09 11:59 Subject: New icons! Security: Public

I have two new CFS icons! Drawn just for me, they're based on these pictures. The drawings are (C) 2008 Sean Willard, so please don't nick 'em.

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Date: 2008-05-08 21:51 Subject: Linkfest: Random Thursday Night Edition Security: Public

Technollama writes about a legal threat sent to a knitter by BBC Worldwide. Her crime? Putting a free knitting pattern for an Adipose critter on the internet:

"Doctor Who: Partners in Copyright Crime"

[Hat tip to Clive]

---

Bluemilk hits it out of the park on maternity leave not being the same as a "holiday":

"Let’s get something straight about maternity leave".

---

News.com.au brings us a steaming heap of woman-blaming. Amber Petty feels for the poor put-upon cabbiejohns tempted by drunken "fare maidens" with "hairy chequebooks". This burst of sympathy occured after one tried to solicit her, a fact which seems to have gone right over her head:

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Date: 2008-05-08 12:31 Subject: "...it is not strange that men and women who do not recognise the sacredness of marriage should deci Security: Public

[X-posted to Hoyden About Town]



Another instalment in the Ladies' Handbook series: "Chapter III: Outside The Marriage Circle". The original post is here.

The madonna/whore dichotomy is hard to miss in this one. It is the polluted prostitutes that infect promiscuous men, who then carry their diseases to their innocent virgin wives - the intended audience of the piece. The women are primarily reproductive machines, who are to birth clean white babies for the Greater Good of Society. The danger that STDs pose to the wives themselves is secondary (and the danger to prostitutes completely ignored); the dangers to good wives' reproduction capabilities and newborn babies get a much higher billing.

For a little background, this piece was written in 1905. The gonococcus was only discovered in 1879 by Dr Albert Neisser (hence Neisseria gonorrhoeae), so the specifics of germ theory were still amazing, fresh, state-of-the-art medicine. The natural history of the disease was very well known, of course, and had been for a long time. Routine silver nitrate prophylaxis for newborn eyes (Credé's prophylaxis) was begun in the late nineteenth century, and is still used in many countries, where it hasn't been displaced by the use of topical erythromycin or tetracycline. The most appropriate prophylaxis, if any, remains controversial.

Chlamydia was not yet discovered, and urogenital chlamydia was nowhere near being well-described. The vacuoles associated with intracellular chlamydial infection were first spotted under the microscope in 1907 and named Chlamydozoa, but not classified with other bacteria. As Chlamydia is an obligate intracellular parasite, microbiologists couldn't use ordinary culture methods to culture it. Chlamydiae were thought to be viruses until the second half of the twentieth century, and were only properly described as a group of disease-causing agents in the 1990s. Only then were chlamydial sexually transmitted diseases separated out from the umbrella term "non-gonococcal urethritis/cervicitis".

This turn-of-the-century guide falls well before the antibiotic era. The sulfonamide family of antibiotics were synthesised in the 1930s, and penicillin hit the market the following decade. So "treatment" options were generally metal-based: silver or mercury compounds. Salvarsan (arsenic) treatment was to be discovered shortly after publication.

Chapter III: "Outside The Marriage Circle"

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Date: 2008-05-07 21:01 Subject: Before the snip Security: Public

I just remembered a conversation I had with a hairdresser last week. She was just about to do the Dramatic First Cut.


She paused just before cutting, and checked, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said, "Totally sure! Go ahead!"

She started to move the scissors, then paused again.

"Hon, is your husband ok with this?"

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Date: 2008-05-06 22:49 Subject: ihasatardis strikes again Security: Public

*dies of Dr Who/roleplaying macros*

*iz ded*

Spoilers through Sontaran Strategy.

http://community.livejournal.com/ihasatardis/1209037.html

addit: Anyone know of any other comms in which F/SF nerdery and cat macros are being remixed into this new fanfic form?

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Date: 2008-05-06 19:10 Subject: Reader question: your pipe dream in print? Security: Public

Khukuri at "Do you have anything in an aquarium?" discovered this book in a university library:



["Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeeth-Century Caribbean", B.R. Burg.]

Given a fantasy world with unlimited resources and knowledge, and as many researchers and ghostwriters as you like, what book would you write?

(And while you're at khukuri's, check out the archive of snake photos and stories, some of which include sentences like, "This week I discovered that eight snakes, no matter how well bagged, do not fit on the average human lap". Plus, cute puppy.)

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Date: 2008-05-06 13:20 Subject: Birthplans and Expectations Security: Public

[X-posted to Hoyden About Town]

Just a few highlights from the OB-GYN-L list, in a thread dated last October, "Birthplans and Expectations". Most of the posts can be found here.

In this thread, OBs discuss amongst themselves the issue of women forming their own birth plans. (Quelle horreur!)

Easily panicked control-freak Steven Richman opened the proceedings:

hello listers.......very busy day today and last pt. presents me with her "birth plan" at 36 weeks. The plan was entirely reasonable and certainly within the scope of how we practice......As I was tired and she was only 18, I kinda freaked and told her that we would not honor the plan and that the Dr/pt relationship requires mutual trust etc. etc.... With over 20 yrs of experience I truly feel I have gone along with the ebb and flow of obstetrical practice and procedure .......But I object to being put in a position where the "well-informed customer" feels it necessary to dictate the mode of operation.

How would you have responded to Richman? Here's what some of his colleagues said:

Garry Siegel:

My ideal birthplan:

The patient chooses the color of the baby's room and the baby's name.

Eberhard Lisse:

I use the Ontario ANC record and it has a check item "Birth Plan". When I reach the item I say "We don't do that here.", tick it off and move on.

John Provatopoulos:

When patients ask me how I feel about a birth plan, I tell them the best birth plan I can think off is that the birth will be a happy occassion for everyone involved and will result in the birth of a healthy baby; then i tell not to be to be to uncompromising and inflexible in thier expectations as they are just setting themselves up for disapointment and feelings of having failed.

[later]

El are you saying there may be a corelation between the worsening perinatal mortality rate in the U.S. and the proliferation of birth plans, you may be on to something, someone should do a randomized controlled clinical trial.

Dr Ainsworth:

I've always seen the downside of birth plans to be that anything a patient expressly wished to avoid would be by a fluke of nature absolutely necessary during her delivery. It's like the stars line up against them and our attempt to meet their expressed needs.

Louana, a midwife:

I think, IMHO, that the point of the birth plan is being missed in this conversation. Hospital routines and how they are applied in the L&D unit in many places put women in the position of being treated like an object without choices or rights. Essentially the birth plan, although it looks like something else with it's check lists and all that, is a request to be treated like an individual and give the parents the respect that the miracle of their own individual bringing a child into this world deserves.

Dr Anna Meenan:

I would not look on it so much as "dictating the mode of operation" as expressing her preferences for the way she hopes the most important event in her life will be allowed to proceed. I find that quite reasonable and wonder why anyone else wouldn't, especially if the plan was quite reasonable and well within the scope of your practice. You speak of mutual trust. Does that mean she must trust you to know what her preferences are? Most docs I know do not have ESP. I wonder, if her birth plan called for induction at 39 weeks, early amniotomy, high-dose pitocin, forceps, and a midline episiotomy, would you accuse her of dictating the mode of operation?

Eberhard Lisse, responding to Dr Meenan:

Anna,

Blah Blah Blah.

Sue, a midwife, replied:

Translation-I do no have respect for you enough to listen to your wishes, try to accommodate them and help/encourage you (to do what your body does naturally on its own, big secret)to do one of the most important things in your life in a way that you desire. Oh and by the way, thanks for choosing me and paying me to care for you!! Flame away.

The response from Eberhard Lisse?

Hey, isn't it dangerous to fly a broomstick with poor eyesight?

These are mostly USAn contributors, but I can state from experience that the attitudes amongst my colleagues here follow a similar range. Some accept that women have bodily sovereignty, even embrace the idea; many don't. And you can't tell by looking at them.

So. Yeah. Pregnant readers: you might want to have an in-depth chat with your care provider about their attitude to you having control over your own body.

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Date: 2008-05-05 15:37 Subject: Troy Buswell survived the party room today Security: Public

Update 5 May 2008: Despite global public censure and an apparent lack of local electoral support, serial sexual harasser Troy Buswell today survived a spill motion in the party room, and continues to lead the Liberal Party of Western Australia.

The State election is due anywhere between 21 June 2008 and 2 May 2009. Anyone got an over/under on the Queen's Birthday long weekend?

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Date: 2008-05-04 17:11 Subject: Asylum seekers, Australia's retraumatisation policy, and healthcare ally work: Carnival of Allies Security: Public

This post will be submitted to The Angry Black Woman's Carnival of Allies, May 5, 2008, and cross-posted to Hoyden About Town.


As white people working on being allies people of colour, we can't speak for or on behalf of POC. What we can do is speak out to each other against oppression, speak about what we have seen and read, and point to and highlight the work of fellow allies as well as the voices of POC.


The United Nations Committee Against Torture has been raising serious questions about Australia's compliance with anti-torture obligations. You can read more about the briefing here at Amnesty International.



Map of Australia's detention centre locations [Source: Immigration Dept]

Rudd's closure of the Nauru island detention centre was applauded by Amnesty, as was the government's commitment to time limits on detention and stated intention to consult on introducing a Bill of Rights. But why has the Rudd government stopped short of fully overhauling the mandatory detention policy? What about the new, enormous Christmas Island detention centre - the "Indian Ocean Solution", 2600 km northwest of Perth in the offshore "excision zone", which denies asylum seekers the rights they would have on the Australian mainland? The former government claims this was constructed as a "deterrent" and for "contingencies". What plans does the Rudd government have for it?

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle visits Christmas Island in this video:

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Date: 2008-05-04 12:11 Subject: Sunday Wibble: Laptop Ornamentation Security: Public

There is no substance here. I've just been poking around looking at laptop art. Some of it's gorgeous; some I find odd or scary. What do you think?

Engrave Your Tech has this beautiful piece, via Oohsome:








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Date: 2008-05-03 22:03 Subject: Weekend Links: A Day In The Life Security: Public

For anyone who is trying to fool themselves that the next generation is inheriting a 'postfeminist' world, read Hell On Hairy Legs' summary of a day in the life of a feminist highschooler.

This is what my schedule looks like on a Thursday:

Maths: 20 white guys in a 25 person class. The results are not pretty.

Chemistry: We learn how humanity has screwed up the environment and how we’re all screwed. In our spiffy extra credit in-depth study we also learn that nobody really cares.

Recess: “Progressive” group makes jokes about gang rape and I start playing bingo.

History: Women are a paragraph in every chapter or a chapter in every book.

French: Every noun is gendered; males take precedence over females in groups. There is no equivalent of Ms.

Lunch: Random White Guy “I don’t know why you feminists are so angry.”

English: Books written by white guys about white guys.

Then I have a 50/50 chance of being yelled and/ or honked at while I walk home. ’Tis delightful.

Here is the Hollaback Australia Website if you want to email photos or stories of harassment. The sidebar has links to other Hollaback websites.

~~~

"Woke Up Disabled": vassilissa talks about the "Woke Up Female" genre of genderswap fanfic, and wonders what a "Woke Up Disabled" genre might look like. Excerpt:

Well, today I realised that there's another genre waiting(?) to be written: Woke Up Disabled. And unlike Woke Up Female or Woke Up Black (Woke Up Gay is debatable) this one could actually happen. To anyone reading this.

[...]

And I can just see the fanfic now. It wouldn't be played for wacky hijinks like Woke Up Female and Woke Up Gay often are. It would be played for angst and hurt/comfort. Emphatically, it would *not* lead to the suddenly-disabled person finding (as the suddenly-female characters sometimes do) that the strangest and/or most frustrating part of his situation is how differently people treat him.

But that *is* the experience of a lot of disabled people. That it's like being female, or being black, in this society: a huge part of the suck is that society caters best for an ideal that does not include you, and is indifferent or actively hostile to your needs.

[h/t to baroquestar]

~~~

Twisty uncovers this invaluable daily-living hint from a Bra Fitting Advice page's "FAQs About Panties":

What is the proper way to put on a panty?

Well, for starters, try one leg at a time, no matter how famous or important you are. Step both legs into your panty, then pull it up until the waistband is at the desired location. Check and make sure your crotch is centered and pulled forward. Now, starting at the sides, run your fingers along and under the elastic of the leg openings towards the back to make sure the back panel is properly cupping your buttocks. Finally, run your fingers around the inside of the waistband to set it evenly at the waist.

Have you, too, been doing it wrong all this time?

So much wrong with this FAQ, it really deserves a post of its own. Who knew that a lacy bra was an effective treatment for depression in women? That women wear "pantliners" (WTF?) to eliminate Visible Panty Line when they don't like G-strings? That your breasts "should" sit midway between your waist and your clavicles? Get out those tape measures!

To their "I want control but don't want a girdle. What are my options?", I say: Keep fighting the good feminist fight, women. We'll get there one day.

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Date: 2008-05-03 16:06 Subject: Max update Security: Public

I met wee nephew Max today! He is still half the size of a regular term baby, but double the size he was at birth. He has been off CPAP altogether since yesterday, and while he still has oxygen and is still taking his feeds by tube, has had his first couple of breastfeeding attempts, and has shown interest. (Go Max!)

It's all good news.

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Date: 2008-05-02 16:52 Subject: Feeling the breeze Security: Public

I have very short hair now (sorta an 'urchin' style, the hairdresser said), and a ziplock full of ponytails for Locks of Love.

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Date: 2008-05-01 15:47 Subject: BADD: The radical notion that people with disabilities are people, and Australia's 2020 Summit Security: Public

[X-posted to Hoyden About Town]



This post is a part of Blogging Against Disablism Day.

For most people, health is not life’s goal. Public health is not a religion, or, as recently seen in the United States of America, health is a journey, not a destination. Health is a means to an end, it is a resource for living the full life, not something to be pursued in an obsessive way that denies risk enjoyment and testing limits.

[John R Ashton and Lowell Levin, from "Beware of Healthism"]

How many people with disabilities participated in Australia's 2020 Summit?

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 19% of the young (aged 5-64) population have disabilities, and numbers are much higher after retirement age. If people with disabilities (PWD) are considered full citizens and had proportional representation at the Summit, of 1000 working-age participants, you might expect nearly two hundred people with disabilities having their say at the Summit.

Of people with disclosed or visible disabilities, however, the current count seems to stand at less than ten. According to one source, there were six. The fact that these numbers are difficult to obtain shows how important this issue is in the able-bodied national psyche.

On this information, that's PWD underrepresented by a factor of thirty. How many protests would there be if there had been only 16 women at the Summit? The country scrutinised gender inclusion closely and at length, both in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere. This disablist inequality puts that to shame.

You can download the Initial Report of the Australia 2020 Summit here.

The report opens with "The Productivity Agenda". The focus on a competition economy labels us as marginal citizens, if we are not economically useful. We are primarily a problem for capitalism, a burden to be reluctantly dealt with. We are not seen as people with thoughts and ideas and lives, people who may have unique perspectives and contributions to Australia's civic society and cultural life.

What mention there is of disability in the report marginalises or erases our humanity and agency, and treats us either as defective production units (the disability insurance scheme), or burdens (the carer support). Both of these aspects of disability and disability care are important, but where are the people with disabilities themselves? There is a note that "Carers often experience significant social exclusion", but the Summiteers gloss over the social exclusion of PWD themselves, apart from a nod toward "recreational services for disabled young people". Note that they're not even using "people-first" language - the Report also refers to us as "the disabled". (More information about people-first language can be found here and here.)

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