This comes under "We Told You So"

Women stretched to snapping point
Adele Horin
July 4, 2009

The 1.5-earner family became the predominant form between 1997 and 2006, from 35 per cent of all couples with children under five to 46 per cent. But life for parents grew harder and less equal. By 2006, all parents were more likely to report feeling stressed

“There was reduced gender equity and strikingly increased reported time pressure,” the study found. Based on 772 families in 1997 and 652 families in 2006, and using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, the research will be presented at the Australian Social Policy Conference next week.

It shows part-time working mothers put in as many hours overall as full-time working mothers – when paid work, housework and child care were tallied – and worked longer than their 1997 counterparts.

The Howard government promoted the 1.5-earner model with family tax policies that provided most benefits to single-earner families and to couples with an 80:20 income split.

.

Side Effects of Chemotherapy – Xeloda (Capecitabine)

Xeloda (Capecitabine) – Side Effects of Xeloda – Chemotherapy Drugs: Xeloda — Generic Name: “Capecitabine”
www.chemocare.com/ bio/ xeloda.asp

Hand-Foot Syndrome

Xeloda (Capecitabine) cancer treatment, side-effect: Hand-foot syndrome (Palmar-Plantar Erythrodysesthesia or PPE) Skin rash, swelling, redness, pain and/or peeling of the skin on the palms of hands and soles of feet.
(See www.chemocare.com/ bio/ xeloda.asp)
(link)

A mild version, the reddness doesn’t show up very well. On the hands it is on the last joint of the fingers and thumb, with another patch where the thumb joins the palm. On the feet, it’s on the bottom of toes and mostly the ball and non-arch middle section of the soles. Skin is peeling on some of the left (lymphodaemic) hand, the balls of both feet and some toes.

(link)
Xeloda belongs to the category of chemotherapy drugs called antimetabolites, subcategory “Pyrimidine antagonist”. It is prescribed to treat Metastatic breast, colon or rectal cancer.

Saying Yes to Mess?

Saying Yes to Mess – by PENELOPE GREEN
Published: December 21, 2006 New York Times

Last week David H. Freedman, another amiable mess analyst (and science journalist), stood bemused in front of the heathery tweed collapsible storage boxes with clear panels ($29.99) at the Container Store in Natick, Mass., and suggested that the main thing most people’s closets are brimming with is unused organizing equipment. “This is another wonderful trend,” Mr. Freedman said dryly, referring to the clear panels. “We’re going to lose the ability to put clutter away. Inside your storage box, you’d better be organized.

Firestorm

William Strutt, artist. Black Thursday, February 6th 1851. Oil on canvas, 106 x 343 cm. H280049. La Trobe Picture Collection – No 75 Autumn 2005 – La Trobe Journal: “William Strutt, artist. Black Thursday, February 6th 1851. Oil on canvas, 106 x 343 cm. H280049. La Trobe Picture Collection”

Very Useful story – soon for sidebar

Manuel Garcia, Jrin Counterpunch 27 August, 2007: “You Are Now Entering a Black Hole. 911 Emergency!”

… but …

kirktoons – cartoons by Kirk Anderson: Remembering Reagan (June 2004)

Relationships

Reminds me of a song by Judy Small I still remember quite well.
[Links to lyrics: unionsong.com/ u295.html and
deafpagan.com/ 2007/ 05/ 27/ a-womans-song-for-memorial-day]

The chorus is

The first time it was fathers the last time it was sons
And in between your husbands marched away with drums and guns
And you never thought to question you just went on with your lives
‘Cause all they’d taught you who to be was mothers, daughters, wives

[ sample (RealMedia) or Amazon and full-tune midi ]
I think it’s originally from ‘Ladies & Gems’, aka ‘Mothers, Daughters, Wives’.

Links:

www.folktrax.com/ sound/ cmr005_4.ram
www.amazon.com/ Best-Judy-Small-Word-Mouth/ dp/ B0000023YC
www.singout.org/ midis/ 444/ mothe.mid

My mother would have been about the age of the generation she’s singing about.

But speaking of pain, I saw the Sydney production of the opera Dead Man Walking this week. It was pretty good. At the moment I prefer it to A Streetcar Named Desire, seen a month ago. They used the same bloke (Teddy Tahu Rhodes) to play the main male protagonist, he can successfully pull off the scene where Joe is doing & counting push-ups bare-chested, then sings quite a bit. (There’s also an odd little cameo by Alan Jones (check his cast listing to see why it’s odd).) Anyway, the show might ‘make one to think’ as well as feel.

BEARINGS GLOCKEN -World Premiere-

An instrument played by dropping ball bearings onto tuned metal plates. Think I’d rather hear an Ondes Martenot or Theremin. ANY would be preferable to the blasted helicopter manouevres happening over Central Sydney tonight. Ruddy APEC.

Bloggers Consider Forming Labour Union

Bloggers Consider Forming Labour Union
(Excite Money & Investing: Sunday August 5, 3:03 PM EDT): In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

Sitting at a panel titled “A Union for Bloggers: It’s Time to Organize” at this week’s YearlyKos Convention for bloggers in Chicago, Kirsten Burgard said she’d welcome a chance to join a unionized blogging community.

Committee to Protect Bloggers: http://committeetoprotectbloggers.civiblog.org
National Writers Union: http://www.nwu.org
Pew Internet & American Life Project: http://www.pewinternet.org

Hospital Ranking

One big trouble with “League Tables” for schools, hospitals & so on, is that it seems that the result is often the exact opposite of what you’d think would be the useful purpose of having them.

My idea of that purpose is that “struggling” places should get extra resources, funding, and an examination of what can be done to improve them, e.g. by comparing their input, treatment (including the physical situation of the institution) & outcomes with “successful” ones.

Yet what seems to often happen is that the differences get worse, as the struggling places are penalised and the successful ones supported.

"Family" (Guest Book comment)

From the ABC Radio National ‘Saturday Extra‘ guestbook

Phyllis Gorman: Three budget examples — 16/06/2007 4:10 PM
While the three families who presented how they budget in the current ‘boom’ economy were interesting, [] I am disappointed that, as usual, people like myself who are single, and living alone are invisible. We are a growing segment of the demographic, but are rarely referred to in the political rhetoric. Families are important to Australia, but so are we … we, who often do it hard; we, who often volunteer to help others; and we, who would like to have our voices heard too. Single person households take on the full responsibility for the mortgage or the rent. We have no one with whom we can share the electric or telephone bill. And we pay taxes to support ALL Australians, not just Australian families. Please include us in your examples should you revisit how the economy affects the Australian population.

Coming in to support Phyllis Gorman about the blinkered use of “family” in public debate. For several years before she died I worked part-time & cared, first with my partner, then alone, for my deaf, frail, increasingly demented mother only because she was my mother; we were family. Yet we were never included in any of the “family” policies or discussions I heard.

Now, widowed in my forties, I am back living & working as a single person, with the prospect of continuing so for some thirty or forty years. I hope to still be engaged and contributing for that time, but am worried that ‘my kind’ tend to be either ignored or treated as a problem. As Phyllis pointed out, we’re never in the standard “how the budget affects you” examples, nor in “your finances” recommendations, except sometimes as a throwaway glance at a ‘young single’ who’s just starting out.

Golden Compass film

Garvan Institute

Garvan Institute

Cancer Survival Rates in NSW & Australia

A Looking Glass

“Mirror” Reflects Slo Mo Images in Real Time
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/05/british_slomo_m.html

Picture House at Belsay Hall
http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/picture-house
This exhibition at Belsay Hall (near Newcastle, northern England) “sees the magnificent empty and austere nineteenth century Hall, fourteenth century castle and grade one listed gardens transformed by film directors, sound and music producers, performers, artists and fashion designers

As part of the English Heritage Picture House exhibition ( http://www.picturehousebelsay.co.uk/installations/artist.php?id=6&total=15 ), UVA created a video installation titled “Hereafter”. Hereafter uses a high speed camera to create a live history of the space, mixing previous recorded interactions, objects and people.
http://www.uva.co.uk/

Catalina Flying Boat & Man

Catalina Flying Boat Fam3_14-5-flyboat-man
Originally uploaded by Mezza.

Old-style flying boat plane (PBY Catalina) that can also land on solid ground with the wheels. I think it’s Ron standing by it. There is a framed photo (which I think another family member has) showing his father standing by a similar aeroplane.

For many years there was a Flying Boat Base at Rose Bay in Sydney Harbour, and my childhood home was under the flightpath of the large Catalinas coming in to land. We were some floors up in a block of flats, and at night sometimes they were so low I could see the people behind the lighted windows in the passenger cabin. My memory is they flew to Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands.

The base closed down a few decades back, but has since reopened for much smaller planes. They run a more local service, e.g. to the Hawkesbury River, and probably joy flights around the Sydney area. I saw a similar small plane in Strahan, Tasmania (see TAS_4212).

Eternal Vigilance: Business Pushes Back Against Regulation

Business Pushes Back Against Regulation
http://money.excite.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt_top.jsp?news_id=ap-d8nq6sf02&

Sunday March 11, 5:00 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The push by business interests to ease the laws and rules laid down in response to the 2002 corporate scandals is getting a serious hearing in Washington that is giving the idea heightened visibility.

An array of companies and business leaders have been making the case that the requirements born of the crisis of corporate malfeasance are overly onerous and costly.

A high-profile committee of business, legal and academic figures put forward proposals in November to clip back corporate governance rules, class-action lawsuits against companies and auditors, and criminal prosecution of companies by the government.

A second group, formed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is releasing its report and recommendations Wednesday.

The Chamber also has been waging a legal assault against what it views as excessive regulation from an overreaction to the scandals, suing the Securities and Exchange Commission over rules and scoring several victories in high courts.

“Business is putting a big push on in the final years of the Bush administration,” said James Cox, a law professor at Duke University.

Some experts, including Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant, have warned against a softening of the rules

This week was difficult; we ain’t seen nothin’ yet

Sydney braces for APEC traffic chaos
au.news.yahoo.com/070225/2/12jc1.html

Sunday February 25, 01:43 PM
Sydneysiders angered by traffic chaos caused by visiting super-liners and by the visit of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, have seen nothing yet.

Mr Cheney’s visit to Australia caused traffic chaos throughout Sydney, particularly on Thursday and Friday.

With such a huge security operation in place, numerous roads had to be closed, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, causing traffic chaos.
But asked by reporters how NSW will cope with the APEC conference, when 23 world leaders including US President George Bush will descend on Sydney for the week-long summit, NSW Police Minister John Watkins said any disruption would be much worse than that of the last few days.

“With 23 leaders around the city at that time, moving to meetings there is going to be major disruptions, much worse than we’ve seen over the last couple of days,” he said. “But we do have time to learn the lessons of the last couple of days and communicate that as well as we can to the people of Sydney,” …

Might be interesting to follow

Global Warming 101

Venture out virtually on a polar expedition with environmentalist Will Steger and his team to see global warming in action.
Starting February 8, 2007, this group of educators and explorers will begin a 1200-mile, four-month dogsled journey across Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. You can be with them every mush of the way by following along online.
View their videos, see their images, hear their sounds, read their text.

Penn Jillette – Neil Gaiman’s Journal

Penn Jillette. On Neil Gaiman’s Journal he reports on his experience as guest on Penn Jillette’s radio show, titled: “…and in the time it took to say that Neil Gaiman wrote another two movies…”

Pre-Emptive Apology

Unfortunately, my video of the New Year’s Eve fireworks seems to start playing when you arrive on the page. I’d much prefer it awaited your click to start. Certainly that’s what I’d like as a visitor. If your connection is slow, it may delay things very much. Even getting to the stage where you can click on a ‘pause’ button might take a while. This is not what I am trying to achieve!

UPDATE: I think the video autoplay problem seems to have been fixed. Let me know if it hasn’t.

I can’t quite understand what the problem is, because I’ve seen plenty of pages where there’s just a still that you click on to start the player. If my fiddling with the code doesn’t stop it, I may just leave a bare link.

And I’ve always disliked pages that start blaring sounds at you when you arrive — altho a subtle atmospheric background or short not-too-offensive introductory noise of some kind can be a pleasant experience. Shorewalker used to have the sound of surf on the beach, just at a low level, on the first page, which I liked.

For this reason, I haven’t added in a player from La Cieca at Parterre to the sidebar, that will let you play some nice operatic music (Unnatural Acts of Opera), since it seems to also start playing automatically.

Sydney 2007 New Year’s Eve Fireworks by Mez

Midnight fireworks over Sydney harbour for New Year’s Eve (2006/2007). Rather dark & blurry, I’m afraid, but I like the atmosphere. Seen from the roof of a block of units in Surry Hills, close to the party scene around Oxford Street and Taylor Square, and with lots of other blocks of flats around, nearly all with parties of people on their balconies. Taken with a Canon A80 (original size 320 x 240).

YouTube Version

The still photo below shows almost exactly the same scene as the start of the video, and was taken with the same camera. The Canon Powershot A80 does very good photos. Its video is not as good, but the separate video we’d borrowed & set up failed to work.
<!–

–>

Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum

Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum:

“The Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum records the lives and experience and celebrates the achievements of people with mental health problems”

Originally St Mary of Bethlehem, now officially Bethlem, the common name for this place was Bedlam. It has become, of course, a word in itself with its own meaning.

It’s also the ‘place of deposit’ for the archives of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and its predecessors, including the records of Bethlem, the Maudsley, and Warlingham Park Hospitals, and the joint records of Bridewell and Bethlem.

Through the information that they contain, archives can help us to understand the past and show us how the past has shaped our own lives, our institutions, and our environment. Most people think of archives as ‘very old’. Some are, but they can also be quite recent: and the records which we create today will become tomorrow’s archives, enabling future generations to learn about how we lived and worked.

The Way Things Go: A classic piece that’s inspired many similar short films.

Rambles: Peace & Goodwill

We had some of the nicest Christmas weather in Sydney for a long time. It started with some rain on the days before over a lot of places that have been in drought or bushfires. A few spots, like Mt Wellington above Hobart, and some parts of Victoria, even had snow. There was some hail around too, one storm damaging around Armidale. Here it started quite cool (17C/63F) & cloudy, but by lunch and during the afternoon it was pleasantly warm (24C/75F) with cool breezes, like spring rather than summer.
With my close family dead & others scattered, I’d thought to have a quiet little time on the day, with some earlier celebrations like official and personal times at work, or visiting a neighbour of my late partner, now also a widow. But an old friend organised for me to go to the family group he is close to, which is a reasonably large ‘do’, but very friendly.
After visiting his mother, now in a retirement home overlooking a bushy valley, for the morning, with a tasty — but not overly-filling — lunch of baked vegies, seasoned chicken & ham, with fruit salad for dessert, we headed from the north-east to the south-west, well out on the outskirts of Sydney. Only practicably accessible by car (20 minute drive to nearest train at Minto). They have a lovely large yard, and after their lunch (coming in late, we just had a handful of fruits & nibblies and shared the green tea), singing and present-exchange it was host to a backyard “soccer” game …

Assembling Links to Carl Sagan Memorial blog-o-thon

I intend to add links to this over time

Ten Times Around The Sun Without Carl, his widow’s thoughts on the day: anndruyan.typepad.com/ the_observatory/ 2006/ 12/ ten_times_aroun.html

Memories Of My Dad thoughts from Nick Sagan: nicksagan.blogs.com/ nick_sagan_online/ 2006/ 12/ dad.html

On Carl Sagan (at John Scalzi’s Whatever): www.scalzi.com/ whatever/ 004702.html

Carl Sagan’s Pizza: a story from RICHH www.lunabase.org/ ~faber/ RICHH/ general/ Sagans_Pizza

See December 10th for Carl Sagan Memorial blog-o-thon idea from Joel Schlosbberg

Raw Material
www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/05/12

Titanic the Musical sinks in Sydney

Curse and Blast! Because of a majorly large bill ( nearly twice my annual salary) from the government in November, I’d put off a number of enjoyable but unneccessary expenses, including a visit to see “Titanic” the musical (in preference to, say, “Priscilla”).

Good news yesterday meant I was looking at getting to some Sydney Festival events (possibly now booked out), as well as ‘Titanic’. Now I’ve just found that’s gone. Closed. Sigh. Hoping to get into ‘Keating’.
Will have to keep my fingers crossed for ‘Spamalot’ turning up on these shores.