Girl's Own Paper

My Oregon ballot. Some reasons why.

In Oregon, all votes are by mail, and they have to be received by election day. First I tried simply mailing mine, but Australia Post read the back of the envelope (which has a very scary looking computer readable address and signed affidavits) instead of the front and returned it to me. For my second try I used the free "Express Your Vote" service from FedEx, and now I have a signed receipt. :)

Here in Australia, Nov 4th is "the race that stops the nation". I hope the US presidential race will (re)start the nation. One person at a time, the old fashioned way. Trying to figure out how I can best participate...

*waves to all*

OK, this is Kathleen Parker in National Review telling Palin to resign from the race, but I had to laugh at the phrase, "hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood"...

Palin Problem: she's out of her league.

Hope to post more news soon (from me) but for now I'll just say that today I am wearing one of my many pairs of Birkenstocks, and although I remove my facial hair (in response to strong suggestions from my US family, my Australian family, and the beautician my mom took me to) I don't fuss with the rest of it, and so she must be talking about me. (CAB: "Must you be such a cliche?" Moi: I am comfortable, and can use the time for other things...)

As a USian living abroad: one thing that seems to anger people is that (generalisation alert) in matters economic AND military, the US seems to have double standards, preaching one path (to other countries - saying don't invade other nations, be fiscally responsible) and itself taking the other path (BushDoc, speculative markets). We had our chance at being a good superpower, we blew it, and now we have to pick up the pieces and be (responsibly) one nation among many, not THE superpower any more. I am trying to stop brooding about how we failed to stop this and starting to think about being part of the solution again...

Thinking of all my friends far away, with great affection / J.

Juxtaposed headlines on the cover of this morning's (Sydney) Sun-Herald:

"Pope apologises to sex abuse victims" - "Special souvenir edition"

"Having been on the ground in Baghdad and in the nexus of strategic intelligence at the Pentagon, I think conservative-leaning news outlets, from Fox News to a variety of websites and commentators, tend to downplay negative aspects of the war, and individuals who rely exclusively on these news sources honestly believe that things are going better than they are. This creates an unfortunate situation in which a partisan divide is not just over issues, but over information, and both sides think the other is being disingenuous. It is interesting that conservative popular media tend to be news-oriented (Fox, Drudge, talk radio) while progressives tend to gravitate toward analysis (blogs, op-eds), and I think this divide has greatly -- and regrettably -- contributed to the political polarization over the Iraq war. Polling indicates that opinions about the Iraq war break far more along political lines than even Vietnam, and this may be largely because people are getting their news from different sources."

- A. J. Rossmiller, Still Broken (Ballantine 2008), p.214

Related link recommended by Rob:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8560/

Not what you think - although I am also working to reply to many long overdue emails this month - but this morning the Australian PM apologised on behalf of his and all previous Australian governments...for what? You can read more about it in these 2 documents:

Sorry FAQ

The Apology Mythbusters (from GetUp!)

Also: happy anniversary, Butch and Barbara!

A very special day - my niece's birthday! Happy birthday to yoooooou!!

My new year's resolution is to get online again. If I manage it, this journal will resume erratic "news from Australia" bulletins. Today Sydney Morning Herald readers are voting on the latest cricket controversy, or rather a sub-portion of it, Peter Roebuck's call for the national captain to be sacked.

What seems most Australian about this poll are the NUMBERS of people participating. Almost 20K have voted so far - twice as many as for any other SMH poll on this page - and it's not even lunchtime (AND we've had a power failure - power just came back). Compare this to 1 person who voted on the firework display question! (Possibly because it was a silly question AND everyone was hung over or out of town.) The other two high-participation polls shown on the current poll page were about the "traditional outfits" for the APEC conference (10.5K voters) and the Liberal leadership stoush (11.5K) - much more participation than for the ones on global warming (1K) and desalination - although I must say I liked the answers on those as much as I liked the Drizabone answers.

My idea on the high participation is that it reflects the number of Australians who are aware that one of the few negative perceptions people overseas have about Australians is that in the past some of "our" sportspeople have been "poor sports" - even when winning, sometimes especially when winning. All except the "just a game" answer are an attempt to say We're Not All Like That - either saying, Ricky was NOT being a poor sport, his actions were justified, OR saying Ricky WAS a poor sport and public contrition is indicated.

The page is at http://www.smh.com.au/polls/results.html but it will change over time, so I've put an excerpt of its contents ( within the cutCollapse )

Love to you all and my prayers are especially full of thoughts for journeyrose and necturus and their families.

Happy April Fools' Day from Sydney! I'm stuck for what to do this year. Last year I filled a large Nutella jar with purple icing. I sealed the top properly and everything. My favourite Nutella-eater was quite stunned. I got her honorary aunt (a close family friend since her birth) to tell her that Nutella had changed its formula and was henceforth going to be purple. (It's currently hazelnut and chocolate.) I don't think I can top that this year, but I have a few hours to think of something small to do...

Tonight I am doing my 2004 and 2005 US taxes. Have just done my Australian 04-05 taxes (here the tax year starts July 1). Argh.

Soon it will be July:

Readercon

and

Anne Lamott: "Let's have a revolution! Does July 14 work for you?"
Salon link, must watch ad if not a subscriber

First post-Katrina Mardi Gras - I'm thinking of everyone!

Octavia Butler died this past weekend. ( Here are some quotations from a recent interview.Collapse )

I will always be glad that we have her work to re-read (she started writing very young, and kept at it, and I hope to say more about it in the future), and that we had a chance to honour her at Readercon.

Now off to get ashes on my forehead...

( New Year's Day in SydneyCollapse )
( Notes from AshfieldCollapse )

*moment of silence*

Not posted on time due to net outages - but I've been thinking of all of you and wishing you a year of being fully present. Or whatever you are most wishing for!

This project was underway while I was contracting at the Broad Institute, and now they've published! ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_he_me/dna_map

(A project I worked next to has NEVER been on the Yahoo home page, which seems to be mostly about celebrity divorces!)

I'm starting to write e-mail again, but it's been soooo long since I've been in touch, that in the effort to catch up - well, the few people who have gotten e-mail so far say the e-mails are too long and overwhelming. (In usability terms, they're not very usable.) So I'm working on responding to user feedback. If you've not gotten one yet, you'll I hope get one of the more usable ones, saying something more high level, like: AM FINE AT LAST, BUT MISS YOU.