This one's been doing the rounds at work - mainly because one of my colleagues does a spot of cake decorating herself. But you may be more interested in the second extract.
No doubt pressured by the likes of the Daily Mail, six months ago the UK government launched a review into the "Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood". Oh yes. It was led by a chap called Reg Bailey, who's the Chief Executive of Mothers' Union. The organisation then criticised the report for "not going far enough" in its recommendations. Ho hum.
The recommendations include:
I've just read this Independent article about the recent attempts to overrule Judge Vaughn Walker's 2008 ruling on Proposition 8.
So I then hopped onto Google News, and discovered that Judge James Ware has now ruled that Walker's judgement stands. Here's one article briefly mentioning the decision, and the Google News feed.
While trawling YouTube the other day (as you do), I found a one hour documentary (split into four parts) about a 17/18 year old trans girl called Lucy. As well as narration, it features contributions from her mum, grandparents, therapist, breast augmentation surgeon, best friend and Lucy herself (through video diaries). Needless to say, as well as the usual tensions, there's also friction between Lucy's typical teenage "I want it all and I want it now" attitude and reality.
Courtesy of a link on Warwickshire's corporate intranet homepage, I've discovered that apparently today has been "IDAHoT 2011" - International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
Apparently May 17th was chosen because the date is the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s May 1990 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
It looks as though Waterloo Road (which bills itself as a "Contemporary drama series set in a challenging comprehensive school") is including a TG storyline in the current series.
From the synopsis of tonight's episode (already available on iPlayer): "A shy and effeminate year 12 pupil is branded a 'perv' when he is caught poring over a lingerie magazine - but the truth is far more complicated than Chris imagines." (Judging by the cast list, Chris is probably Christopher Mead, Deputy Head)
As a counterpoint to the discussion over T* related labels, I thought it might be interesting to have a more light-hearted discussion of the various other labels we may apply to ourselves (i.e. not related to gender, sexuality or political affiliation) to describe certain aspects of who we are and what we do.
For example, as I'm more knowledgeable than average about computers, and actively enjoy using them, I consider myself a "Geek" (although according to some definitions, I'm actually closer to "Nerd").
I don't normally post two blog articles in succession, but BBC News is carrying the story of a rather unusual orchiectomy...
A mother of four accused of biting off her boyfriend's testicles has denied grievous bodily harm. Maria Topp, 43, allegedly attacked Martin Douglas at his Newcastle flat at 0400 GMT on 18 February. He required emergency hospital treatment for his injuries.
The Malaysian authorities are at the centre of an increasingly heated row after it emerged that 66 Muslim boys identified by teachers as "effeminate" had been dispatched to a special camp to discourage them from becoming gay.
You may have noticed that neither I nor PS have been updating the Bike summary spreadsheet recently. Unfortunately, we've both been quite busy recently, and as I often now read it first thing in the morning before heading to work, I don't have time to update it until the evening, when I tend to forget to re-read the last episode and update it.
In the desire to enhance their environmental credentials, many local authorities have started installing cycle facilities (e.g. cycle lanes, shared use paths). One UK cyclist has started noticing there are some excellent (*cough*) examples of cycle facility design out there, and for the past few years has compiled a "Cycle Facility of the Month" page.
It may seem a slightly odd question, but a new charity launched yesterday, called "Action for Happiness" (I kid you not - here's proof!).
Apparently, they've worked out that although average incomes have consistently risen over the past five decades, happiness hasn't.
To attempt to make us happier, they've published a list of fifty actions, most of which appear to be backed up by videos, text explaining why you should do it, and a bunch of resources.
So apparently Prince William is feeling pre-wedding nerves. He's also inviting everyone from the helicopter base where he's currently training to the wedding.
But evidently, that's not quite newsworthy enough for the Daily Wail (a far more appropriate name for the newspaper!). So they've done some digging and found one of his colleagues is transgendered... and yes, the tone of the article is about what you'd expect from that publication.
The other day I was sufficiently bored to browse my way through a lively comment war on one of Stefani Germanotta's videos (no prizes for guessing either the song or the entrenched sides), and came across this interesting theory, which I've quoted verbatim (so spelling / grammatical errors in the quote are the commenters, not mine!):
Apparently this week is the 100th anniversary of the Cheltenham Festival, so a betting company commissioned some designers to create some appropriate footwear to auction off for charity.
Apparently they feature an imitation hoof made from carbon fibre and up to 5,000 individual horse hairs. And have a guide price of £1,300.
A slightly odd story idea that came to me in a dream...
A group of teenagers arrive at a disused holiday camp (in the dream it appeared as a pair of linked islands, the North containing a mini-mansion designed for group leaders, the South containing deteriorating simple log platforms and structures designed for use for camper accommodation) determined to 'do it up' as they enjoyed their times there and didn't want it sold off to a developer.
OK, so they're more Batman than Superman (i.e. no extraordinary abilities), but according to The Currant Bun, there are at least sixteen patrolling the streets of Britain. And they're probably not TG, but nonetheless may be of interest to fans of the Comics Retcon Universe (and similarly themed stories)...
Here's something for fans of a certain pedal-powered form of locomotion - a series of ten radio programmes about the social and cultural history of the bicycle. It started on Monday, so there are currently two programmes available to listen to, but as they're only being made available for a week after broadcast...
Completely off-topic, but it's doing the rounds and worth a giggle.
You've probably all seen people busy texting on their mobile phones while walking around the streets, probably not paying too much attention to where they're going. Well, a few days ago, in Pennsylvania, one woman got her comeuppance in a shopping centre - and it was caught on CCTV...
So as the first complete calendar year of my presence here draws to an end (I signed up sometime in 2009), I thought I'd kick off the greetings. And what better way to do that than via this message which is currently going viral in Facebook statuses...
Just a quickie to let you know I'll be offline for a few days - so you'll have to cope without your daily dose of random weirdness in the comments section of your stories :) No doubt you'll also spot plenty of catching up comments when I return mid-week :)
Anyway, on with the main point of this post: wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Or, for the benefit of some readers, Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.
Apparently a few days ago, the Gawker network of sites was hacked and the perpetrators managed to get hold of the password database of contributors. In amongst the stuff they've republished is an anonymised list of over 188,000 entries from the password database.
I remembered a few minutes ago that it had been a while since we had a new chapter for Goddess' Tears, so sauntered over to Persephone's author page to find out more...
...only to find that only the title pages for her stories (Frozen Balance, Goddess' Tears, Healing Dagger) remain, and all the story content appears to have been pulled. I don't recall reading any blog entries announcing her departure, so does anyone know what happened?
Something that may be of interest to Whateley-ites and Retconners - an infographic about Marvel ®, courtesy of an outfit called "Online Schools".
They normally expect it to be embedded in pages, but since it's about 4,700 pixels tall, I thought it more prudent to link to an embedded copy elsewhere - i.e. the site where I found it.
So, if you're interested, click on this link to view.
...but since 140 tunes would be a big stretch for anyone to complete on their own, I've made it world writable, so if you click on the link above, you can fill in the ones you can solve there and then... as well as seeing what others on BCTS have found.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
