sw’as

So far this year I’ve managed to hit the shutter button more than 4915 times. Since not all of those clicks turned out well, I’ve made a selection of the photos I think are worthwhile looking at and uploaded some of them to my Flickr account. There will no doubt be more appear there over time, but this is a good start after being behind in uploading for most of the year.

You can find photos from England, of course, as well as all our trips to other European destinations. You can check out the sites of Belgium in the dead of winter where we froze in beautiful places like Bruges and Brussels. Take a look at Germany where we hung out with friends and visited cities including Berlin, Koblenz and Frankfurt. There is a small set of pictures from Paris in 2008 to expand on the much larger Paris 2004 set.

We also managed to see much of Ireland and Aarhus in Denmark before going on an exploration of Norway to wonderful places like Bergen and the spectacular Sonja Fjord. We have also just recently returned from Spain where we spent a relaxing few days in San Sebastian and visited the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Hope someone enjoys having a look at our travels.

This morning there was a good point, very well made over at skepticlawyer.com.au about the relative skills of men and women. Helen noted that she has now conceded an argument she had made much earlier in life that many typically ‘girly’ pursuits (like beauty contests and debutants’ balls) are nothing more than sexist rubbish and should be dismissed as such. This kind of argument seems to abound in (what little I know of) the feminist movement, as does the argument for gender equality. That reminded me that I think some feminists paint their argument with too broad a brush when suggesting women and men should be considered equal.

Is equality per se really the end game? Surely it’s ok to admit that men and women are different, and that men are better at some things than women. I’m happy, even eager to admit that women are better at some things, probably a great many things, than men. That so many feminists seem to consider gender equality so important, a point also made relatively recently at thefword.org.uk, seems odd to say the least, if not somewhat counter productive.

I’ve recently watched a couple of episodes of Dangerous Jobs for Girls^[1] and was given the dirtiest of dirty looks by Laura for making the comment “I think I like this show because it knocks some feminists on their asses a bit”^[2]. In retrospect, that was a very crude expression of my actual thoughts; really I just wonder why there’s this constant quest by a good portion of the feminist movement^[3] to prove women are as good as men at things which for whatever reason men are predisposed to do very well.

There’s no doubt that some women are able to perform as well as some men in typically male jobs (like tree felling). But it seems a lot like fact to me that the best female will never perform as well as the best male in jobs like tree felling, or any number of other jobs which require skills or abilities that males are predisposed to be better at.

To my mind, feminism shouldn’t be about the broad concept of gender equality, or involve wholesale denunciation of typically ‘girly’ activities. Feminism needs to focus on attaining equality in specific factors where it doesn’t exist, but should. The other all but insurmountable challenge is figuring out a way to change antiquated, hypocritical or just plain disrespectful attitudes.

1. A couple of episodes has probably squeezed it dry of entertainment for me. [↩]
2. Even while doing that it manages to very adeptly demonstrate to both the audience and the participants that highly capable females, no matter what the task is, are still highly capable. [↩]
3. In fact, I suspect it’s probably the idle feminists who are most guilty of this. The people who (rightly) like the idea of feminism, but haven’t thought about it in any depth. Though there’s no doubt that some very staunch feminists take this kind of (presumably well considered) stance. [↩]

The now very tired debate^[1] going on between MSM and the journalistic Blogosphere went another round recently thanks to this piece by Christian Kerr in The Australian and some mud thrown back.

I distinctly remember a time when I enjoyed reading The Australian. It hasn’t been that way for a while, and they seem to just keep putting nails in the coffin, becoming more and more conservative and petty (among other adjectives).

Here is a post in reply by the blog being heavily trashed by Kerr. I hope this unavailing and pointless slinging match is abandoned by both sides soon.

Update: More of the same sentiment from Andrew Bartlett.

1. Yeah, it’s not really a debate, is it. [↩]

A while ago I was asked by my employer to write a short article on something web related to add some decent content to the company’s new website. I ended up writing a short article on blogging for business promotion which included a short (and very incomplete) list of what I think are essential elements that must be included to count a website as a blog.

I am sick of stumbling across websites labelled as blogs which are missing one or more elements which I believe are essential to the blog paradigm. This miss-labelling is particularly prevalent within traditional media organisations and other businesses who want to have a blog because it’s now the done thing.

Today I found an article by Merlin Mann (via Daring Fireball) which is a much better, and more comprehensive (even if slighlty different) list of what he thinks consitutes a good blog. I can’t say (as he suggests I should) that I disagree with any of it but, that doesn’t mean this blog meets the mark (or, neccesarily that I’m trying to have it meet the mark).