Has the Tell the Truth Coalition has reared its ugly head again?

Maybe, maybe not. The US style scare tactics are similar, I wonder if Trevor Grace, who has put 'election campaign' posters up, has started to deliver pamphlets yet?

I wonder if Trevor Grace is using public money for his 'campaign'? It seems to me that any reasonable person would know that a graphic anti-abortion campaign is a sure fire way not to get elected. Then again, it also seems to me that running for a seat with public money is a great way to get publicity for your anti-choice campaign. Just sayin'

Unfortunately the website does not have forums for discussion, but if anyone reading this has had a termination in SA could they please fill out their questionnaire. Might provide some balance. The questionnaire does require that you give personal details so... not that I would encourage anyone to lie... but fake addies if you feel that it's none of their business who you are. My favourite fake addy is:

1 MyPrivacyPolicy Drive, YouDon'tNeedToKnow, Vic 3000

Usual warnings about graphic photos apply. Site is filled with the standard lies.

http://abortSA.com

Interestingly enough, they are whois savvy with the domain name registered to... um... no one in particular. However, it does seem that you can send that no one in particular an email or post something to their Post Box. It appears that this kind of Domain Privacy is becoming the norm these days.

What's weird is that if Trevor Grace has boldly associated himself with abortSA.com then he shouldn't have anything to hide from a whois search.

So whois hiding??

I strongly suspect that some digging might produce some familiar names, however, I don't have time to dig, I have to get back to work!

omain Name.......... abortsa.com
Creation Date........ 2008-10-14
Registration Date.... 2008-10-14
Expiry Date.......... 2018-10-14
Organisation Name.... abortsa.com
Organisation Address. P O Box 59
Organisation Address. Collins Street West
Organisation Address. Melbourne
Organisation Address. 3000
Organisation Address. VIC
Organisation Address. AU

Admin Name........... Admin PrivateRegContact
Admin Address........ P O Box 59
Admin Address........ Collins Street West
Admin Address........ Melbourne
Admin Address........ 3000
Admin Address........ VIC
Admin Address........ AU
Admin Email..........
Admin Phone.......... +61.386242485
Admin Fax............

Tech Name............ TECH PrivateRegContact
Tech Address......... P O Box 59
Tech Address......... Collins Street West
Tech Address......... Melbourne
Tech Address......... 3000
Tech Address......... VIC
Tech Address......... AU
Tech Email...........
Tech Phone........... +61.386242485
Tech Fax.............
Name Server.......... ns32b.ssggrp-wc.com
Name Server.......... ns32a.ssggrp-wc.com

Roxon's response to AVN and a dig at her take on home birth.

From a press conference with Nicola Roxon, the Health Minister, and Jim Bishop, the Commonwealth's Chief Medical Officer.

Question: Do you think an element in the slow take-up has been misinformation from the internet and from groups like anti-vaccination network?

Nicola Roxon: I think we've been quite clear about the anti-vaccination network's objections to any type of vaccination which is not based in any of the science or medical advice that we have.

I can't explain or predict how many people pay attention to that. I think it is irresponsible material, by and large, and I would encourage all Australians to act on the advice of the Government, of course based on the advice from the Chief Medical Officer, our specialised teams that meet to provide us with information, the very rigorous TGA process to ensure that this is safe for children, and we are satisfied of all those things and I think it is foolish for people to spread misinformation about a vaccine which can actually provide protection where we know there have been some bad consequences in paediatric situations, so for young children, and this is a way to protect against that.

Though I wholeheartedly agree with her this time, it's a depressing thought for me that she lacks credibility due to her involvement in restricting home birth. Roxon, unfortunately, appears to do none of the research herself. Rather, she seems to take as gospel anything anyone with a white coat or an AMA membership says.

Music for Agnostic Ears

I DO like this Father Peter Kennedy guy: "I think it's much more wonderful to believe in evolution, it's such a mystery, it's so wonderful and it's breathtaking, but that doesn't destroy my faith in God - in whatever God is."

This, coming from a recovering catholic priest, is music to the ears of an agnostic like me who believes that a common belief and regular gatherings are good for a community. For those who are under the erroneous impression that we agnostics are 'fence sitters' may I remind you that a a true agnostic is one who believes that the existence or not of a god is something that we, as human beings, CANNOT POSSIBLY KNOW.

Read more at www.abc.net.au

For Melbournites - Birth Choices Meeting

Wanna bet I'll be moderated off the AVN blog?

Below is my response to AVN's blog post that jumped on the Sunday Express front page "Jab 'as dealy as the cancer'"!!! Headline. I'm betting it won't make it past moderation, because the AVN won't be at all interested in what Dr Diane Harper actually had to say about the HPV vaccine.

That's because this 'woman' - Dr Diane Harper - was contacted for comment by Ben Goldacre and it turned out she did not say any of the things above. She made a complaint and the article was removed from the Sunday Express website. Obviously, however, the damage it caused remains.

To read what she actually thinks of the HPV vaccine and to learn some important distinctions between the UK vaccine and the US vaccine, try:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/oct/10/ben-goldacre-cervical-cancer-jab
This was published in the Guardian. You will note that Dr Diane Harper has not asked the Guardian to remove this column.

Prochoice Comfort Food

A great interview demonstrating why any religious body should steer clear of interfering with the state - They have NO idea how legislation enforcing their moral codes would work. Enjoy.

Large Hadron Rap. Making physics funky.

Ever wonder what the Large Hadron Collider did? Also check out Marty's blog for photos of the Gordan Freeman look alike :)

Women Deserve Better

Thanks to Leslie Cannold for passing this on. As she said, strap in, and hold on. Folk using readers may have to visit to see...

I think I really am two people.

I'm getting more than I bargained for with this multi-disciplinary thing. Whenever I read medical or scientific papers my philosopher persona continually shakes its head in disbelief at the all too frequent internal contradictions and ambiguity caused by sloppy choice of words. Yet if I try to read philosophy my scientist persona thunks its head on the desk in frustration at subtle distinctions it sees as time-wasting bickering over definitions or processes that can't be tested.

I just wish they would talk to each other for a bit and leave me alone!

Letter to Essential Baby re AVN link

Sent this a few minutes ago. It would be so nice to get a reasonable response! We'll see:


Dear Editor,

I write regarding the article in Essential Baby entitled "Vaccines and Your Child".

I have no complaint about the article, but I am gravely concerned that it links to the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN).

The AVN are currently under investigation by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission for providing misleading information to parents who are researching vaccination.

I am deeply worried that if this link to AVN is provided by Essential Baby it will give the AVN a credibility that I am convinced they do not deserve.

They are demonstrably anti-vaccination and it would be extremely difficult to find a doctor in NSW (where they are based) who would recommend them as a balanced or reliable source of information on vaccines.

I have personally gone through their claims and found most of them to be outdated or cherry-picked. (I have a BSc/BA Hons and have worked in an industry where we create anti-bodies for research.) I published my (long) findings on my otherwise uninteresting blog - http://emervents.blogspot.com/2009/06/critique-of-avns-10-reasons-to-think.html

I recommend you change the link to the Victorian Government's information page which also has vaccine information available in languages other than English and has links to recent data on vaccine coverage etc. http://www.health.vic.gov.au/immunisation

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Extension vs Intension

If you have arrived here hoping for a clear explanation of extension and intension I would read no further and go to Garth Kemerling's page on Meaning and Definition which is excellent. In this post I'm just having a play with the words and I'm likely to muddy the waters rather than enlighten you. (Also, it's very probably false.)

The extension of the term ‘extension’ consists of every word that could be said to be extensional.

Whereas the intension of the term ‘extention’ is the criteria for extension which is that the word be extensional.

The extension of the term ‘intension’ consists of every word that could be said to be intensional.

Whereas the intension of ‘intension’ is the criteria for intension which is that there be criteria a word must meet before the word intension applies.

OK?

An honest account of motherly anger? About time.

Film-maker Julia Black, a BAFTA and Grierson nominated independent documentary maker, is making a film about motherly anger. As a mother of two, she is interested in shifting the taboo that surrounds a mother's anger towards her child or children and wishes to research into how many mothers, like her, have been shocked by the level of anger they experience.

Please take a few minutes to fill in this online questionnaire. All answers are entirely anonymous and cannot be traced to your e-mail address.

www.survey.ingenious2.co.uk

I did it, and it can be done in ten minutes or so. There's also room for the more loquacious of us to comment at the end which was nice (for me anyway!).

I love this sentence...

...from an old essay:

Deleuze and Guattari state that “The problem of philosophy is to acquire a consistency without losing the infinite into which thought plunges.” (p 42). It is the conceptual persona that drinks from the infinite and vomits possibilities onto the philosopher's page. They are the explorers, the provocateurs and engineers of thought, the part of the philosopher that ventures into the new, awake while the remainder wallows in dogma anaesthetic. This aspect of the creative process is a necessary part of thought and thus for Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical ontology, indispensable.

...and I can't help wondering where all of my conceptual personae have got to :(

In support of Ken McLeod's complaint against the AVN

Better late than never I guess...

To whom it may concern,

I write to support Ken McLeod's complaint against the Australian Vaccination Network. I found AVN after a rather heated discussion with friends about vaccination and was so appalled at the misinformation on the AVN's website that I wrote two lengthy blog posts calling them out on their errors.

http://emervents.blogspot.com/2009/05/thinking-about-vaccines-thinking-of.html

http://emervents.blogspot.com/2009/06/critique-of-avns-10-reasons-to-think.html

I have two degrees, one of them in science, and sometimes I use my advantages (education and access to university resources) to call out organisations who would seek to sway the public with, if I'm kind, mistakes and outdated information.

In summary, the AVN use information that is often outdated, cherry picked, or just plain erroneous, and I think that it is of grave concern that well meaning parents might use their information as a basis for an important decision regarding their children's health.

Please keep in mind that these are blog posts, the tone is meant to be conversational and sometimes acrimonious (I get grumpy when tired). Nonetheless, the second one especially should give a clear indication of the kinds of untruths the AVN are happy to have parents believe. I am not happy about it at all. Hence this letter of support for Ken McLeod's complaint.

Brief birth language...

Quite often when an unusual birth story hits the news you'll read about the hero civilian (or other non-medico) delivering the baby as though the mother was so much chopped liver. Nice to see a news article getting the labour the right way around for once!

What do I want?

Good food, good drink, to be warm in winter and not too hot in summer, to have moral, well-rounded and content children, to have a small circle of good friends who get my jokes, a devoted partner who can make me laugh even in my blackest moods, a vegetable garden and to figure out what makes humans, well, human. I want to have all this while living in an equitable society.

I’ve very nearly got them all. Australia is slowly getting there. I haven’t planted anything this year but planning to be raring to go for autumn and the 3yo is slowly getting the all important “Do unto others” maxim. It’s the penultimate one that’s going to be the corker. What makes humans human? What are humans anyway? What are we? WHO are we? What on earth are we for? and most importantly (for me anyway), how do we work?

I’ve done a science degree majoring in biological molecules, I’ve explored the world of plants, microbes, insects, reptiles and mammals and it still amazes me that something as complex as an ant could emerge from an exquisitely organised cluster of molecules let alone a thinking, feeling, acting human being capable of immense wonders, dire atrocities and love that makes my heart flip every time I encounter it.

When I crumble homemade compost through my fingers I wonder: how can we be made from essentially the same stuff as this? It is naught but luck that some of the carrots in our house turned into compost and some into human via hungry kiddie tummies. No wonder people invented a divine creator (apologies to those who don’t think the creator was an invention) - something to stop the wondering that could drive most men mad. Fortunately for me I’m not most men (I don’t envy them their genitalia to be honest and seriously, if there is a creator, I think they’ve got some explaining to do in that area) but the question is driving me mad. Not because I don’t like the wonder, but because (despite my husbands Herculean efforts) I get to spend so little time devoted to it.

Parents simply don’t get to swim in entrancing questions the way people can when they do not have caring commitments. And when the question is one of human consciousness, there’s a great deal of swimming needs to be done. So what do I want? I don’t want a Nanny, I like my children most of the time and they need their parent around. Maybe I’d like an extra 72 hours a week just for me. Yep, that’s what I want. A little speedy time capsule so I could nab an extra 72 hours while the others slept. I might age a little faster than my husband, I might use some of those extra hours for sleeping, who knows? The point is they would be just for me. Some guilt-free hours just for me, that’s what I really want.

How to approach women in public 101

One day, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away when I worked in science.... a bunch of girls and one bloke were sitting in the tea room talking about self defence. We talked about the general differences between men and women, strength, centre of gravity, and vulnerable body bits. Each contributed something: knowing when to run, how to fight when cornered, what to yell (FIRE!) and how to defend yourself with a pencil or a set of keys.

The one bloke listened with his mouth agape, "You girls have REALLY thought about this haven't you?"

Well, yes, we have. Because we have to, because every strange bloke we meet might be a strange assaulter. Men are generally so much stronger than women it's almost obscene, we have to think about our safety all the time. That's life.

This excellent post, Schrodinger's Rapist, sums up why we girls might treat really nice men like they're lepers if they approach us in public. It's a beautiful job, reasonable and non-hackle-raising. Essential reading for any bloke still looking for Ms Right.

Whining about writing - my monkey

Months into an assignment and as usual I find that I can't sit down and write like a sensible person. The kind of person that writes summaries of papers as she reads them, for example. As usual I am stuck with a bloated brain full of convoluted unpaved roads, too many cul-de-sacs and nothing on paper. It would be nice to be able to, just once, read a paper and write 100 words or so on what the author wanted to say, in other words, be capable of churning out a literature review. Reading, understanding, then writing – how hard can it be? Instead, as I read my brain is a cacophony of implications and disagreements, none of them hanging around long enough to be scribbled onto a notepad, let alone make it into the lofty realms of the text editor. Maybe the problem is that I read actively, and I need to find a way of getting my analytic side to butt out on occasion. Maybe the problem is that I find the activity of reading with summarising in mind dead boring. Well, to be fair, it is. What's the point of reading with nought but reiteration in mind?

Well, none for you Emma dear, let's face it, criticising and lampooning is more your thing; but it does help the newbies jack into your thought process doesn't it? Gives them a bit of background, lets them know what it is you know, solidifies your context, outlines the sources of your premises.

See? I know why summaries are useful, I just-can't-do-them.

I blame my monkey.

I go to all this trouble to acheive quiet, to make the area nice, to excercise and tire him out, to caffeinate him into oblivion yet he insists on cracking jokes in my head at every opportunity! Goading me into playing games, twittering, checking my stocks… I hate him. I want him dead.

Now I'm officially procrastinating by having a jab at middle class whiners.

Someone tell me to stop with the politics and get back to work...

What Jason from Melbourne said. And also, though people who earn 150K a year may be supposed to pay 44K in tax, most of them don't because they pay expensive tax agents to exploit loopholes in our ludicrously complex tax system. I know because I've been there. We were bewildered by all the "middle-class welfare" coming our way. We took it because, hey, we're human and by no means asset wealthy. But in our Lefty Greeny heart of hearts we knew we didn't _need_ it. We also don't need the 30% tax rebate (but we take it). We have also experienced first-hand the benefits of being privately insured when we had a child with a condition that threatened his sight. He was treated that night instead of six weeks later (his fate under the public system). The middle-class only feel poor because we mortgage ourselves to the hilt and buy things we don't need. The middle-class on 100-150k, particularly folk with no carer responsibilities are doing better than fine, and I think some of us need to spend some time in a soup kitchen to remind ourselves of the things we're missing out on.

Commenting on SMH re Abortion Decriminalisation.

... or rather, having fun with the anti-choicers again. What can I say? It's a hobby.

This is my latest post just in case the SMH don't let it through (it would be comment 31). It does have a tiny ad hominem element... teeny weeny...

Wow, only 16 comments before the Nazi's were mentioned by an anti-choice advocate. It's not a record but it's impressive nonetheless. I'd respond in full, Adam, but I think a) you have me confused with Amy and b) your comparisons re democracy and majority rule are invalid anyways. This is because your examples refer to harm to conscious, sentient beings and also to the status of scientific knowledge. It is unlikely that we would find common ground as I do not believe that life begins at fertilisation (see daniel's response above for some of the excellent reasons why) due to research in the areas of embryology and fertility a lot of which I have read - we have come a long way since the majority believed the earth was flat. Your references to an objective morality betray a religious viewpoint. You might remember that it was the Church who forced Galileo to recant before finally subscribing to the heliocentric hypothesis. It is my hope I will live to see the demise of all Churches still clinging to the belief that a conceptus is a life form worthy of rights that trump those of a fully grown human. These people (most of them blokes) are gravely mistaken, and women the world over still suffer for this error.