Saturday, March 29, 2014

Warning signs

This is proper signage. We need more of this.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Meh

Bad day at work.
So I decide to eat allll the chocolate and get fat.
That'll show 'em.

Nothing much to say but



A bit of '5th Element' that I love.

Friday, March 14, 2014

A calm reasonable debate

"Yes. By all means. Let’s have a calm, reasonable debate about abortion. Let’s have a calm, reasonable discussion about my basic humanity, and my basic human right to physical autonomy. Let’s have a calm, reasonable discussion about whether I should be forced, by law, and at significant risk to my own health and safety and life, to donate my organs for nine months to an embryo/ fetus. Let’s have that discussion again. And again. And again and again and again and again and again. And again. 

"And then, perhaps, we can have another panel at another atheist conference about why there aren’t more women in the atheist movement.
" - Greta Christina on FB.

All the yeses.

I used to hang out at some atheist message-boards, and it was mostly filled with white middle class guys in the US bemoaning how oppressed they were by the word God on the dollar. They were winning at the oppression olympics and would throw me under the bus, no problem, if violence against women, consent or reproductive rights came up. That was something to play devil's advocate about, that was something to intellectually wank over. Yeah, fuck you guys.

This is why I no longer hang out in those places, because nothing mattered beyond masturbating over how smart they were to be able to pull apart the Bible or piss on homeopathy. I'll do that too, but I want more than that: I'm an idealist (and a cynic), I want a better world. For women, for LGBT people, for people of colour. I don't want the same shit, run by the same section of society, just sans religion.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Bloody amazing

I absolutely love this story about an Indian man who has battled through taboo and ignorance to create a machine to help poor women and girls make their own sanitary towels, which protects their health and enables girls to keep going to school: the drop-out rate at menarche is 23%. It's a shock to me how much I take for granted these necessities and my access to sanitation. These issues never fricking occurred to me #shame-faced#.

"There are still many taboos around menstruation in India. Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply - essentially they are considered untouchable. 

It took Muruganantham 18 months to build 250 machines, which he took out to the poorest and most underdeveloped states in Northern India - the so-called BIMARU or "sick" states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. 


Here, women often have to walk for miles to fetch water, something they can't do when they are menstruating - so families suffer. 


"My inner conscience said if I can crack it in Bihar, a very tough nut to crack, I can make it anywhere," says Muruganantham. 


It was hard even to broach the subject in such a conservative society. "To speak to rural women, we need permission from the husband or father," he says. "We can only talk to them through a blanket." 

There are also myths and fears surrounding the use of sanitary pads - that women who use them will go blind, for example, or will never get married. But slowly, village by village, there was cautious acceptance and over time the machines spread to 1,300 villages in 23 states." 

And better yet, this man is not making his fortune out of his invention.

"He believes that big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas he prefers the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," he says." 

Isn't that beautiful?

Muruganantham now lives with his family in a modest apartment. He owns a jeep, "a rugged car that will take me to hillsides, jungles, forest", but has no desire to accumulate possessions. "I have accumulated no money but I accumulate a lot of happiness," he says. "If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom - and then you die."

Oh man.


Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Give us a shout

"What are you doing with your life, you stupid whore?!" (courtesy of footballing youths).

Well quite, an excellent question, elegantly phrased... It certainly gives me something to think about, some existential angst. What indeed?