In the Name of Honour - Mukhtar Mai **/*

Mukhtar Mai came to prominence in June 2002, when journalists in Pakistan first learned of her gang rape, punishment for an 'honour crime' allegedly committed by her brother, an offence for which there was never any proof.

After the horrific rape, custom dictated that she would kill herself. But Mai defied custom. In an unprecedented act if courage, she took her rapists to court.

In this rousing and moving account, Mai describes her experiences and readers get a rare look inside a world of ancient tribal justice, rampant illiteracy, poverty, and economic and sexual bondage.

Mukhtar Mai pitted herself against the system with extraordinary courage and strength of purpose. Timely and topical, In the Name of Honour is the inspirational true story of a woman who continues to fight against exceptional odds; since the trial some of the convictions have been overturned, leaving Mai in a decidedly dangerous situation.

Nevertheless, Mukhtar Mai remains in her village where she runs the first ever school for girls- seeded with money awarded to her by the Pakistani government in her historic settlement - and is a eager pupil there herself.

"It is because of the support of the world that I feel brave" Mukhtar Mai

This was good, but not as good as Shame. I feel this is most likely because the story has been verbally passed on, then translated twice whereas Sanghera in Shame was able to write her story herself, as a native English speaker. It lacks the extreme determination and enormously inspirational feeling that Shame had. If I had read them the other way around it may have been different but I would still highly recommend Shame over this.

2.5 / 5

Moronic thought of the year, #472

"I wonder if we'll ever progress to our computers being mini ATM's...... when we do our online banking we could withdraw money from say the disk drive......that would require the machine being filled quite regularly though.....which would mean your computer would have money just sitting in it.....you could just bust it open anytime.....*~*~*~*...... right.......thats why we'll never have ATM's in our homes.....moron...."

We all knew work was bad for us.....

Click on strip to see better

Blog.....

funnies

Corset-ed funness

I disagree with the fug girls on this post in all but one, the bottom of the skirt does look a little like a miniature theatre. BUT I can forgive her for it, as I think she looks great and I love the corset on her. Remembewr when corsets were really in and Neve campbell was really popular and everyone still wore their bra under them, ina constrasting colour?
*sigh* I miss those early nineties.....

weird and wonderful

This thing I think revolutionises travel for women. Its a thing you slide into your fly, and allows you to pee standing up!!! And they're only $20!!!! For more info, WhizBiz.

These X-ray images show the leg of a chair embedded into the eye socket of a Melbourne teenager who miraculously survived a random attack outside a city nightclub earlier this year.

Tell the Truth Telstra.
An interesting venture to promote High speed broadband in Australia. Take a look, I'd recommend it for enlightening reading.

A Fear of Heaven is known as uranophobia.
A fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is known as arachibutyrophobia.
A fear of knees is known as genuphobia.

Persuader - Lee Child ***/*

Never forgive, Never forget. That's Jack Reacher's standard operating procedure. And Francis Xavier Quinn was the worst guy he had ever met. He had done truly unforgiveable things. So Reacher was glad to know he was dead. Until the day he saw him, alive and well, riding in a limousine outside Boston's Symphony Hall.

Never apologise, Never explain. When Reacher witnesses a brutal attempt to kidnap a terrified young student on a New England campus, he takes the law into his own hands. That's his way, after all. Only this time, a cop dies, and Reacher doesn't stick around to explain. Has he lost his sense of right and right? Just because this time, it's personal?

Lee Child writes good books. I ended up in bed for six hours or something Saturday morning to finish it. I'd recommend reading earlier Reacher stuff first though, this would be a bit of a full on introduction to a good character.

3.5 / 5

New Tolkien? Oh wait.....right.....

'New' Tolkien book hits the market

By Vivien Cuttle. ABC's Articulate.

All those millions of J R R Tolkien fans out there suffering withdrawal symptoms from a lack of new films or books can now breathe easy.

Tolkien, the world-famous author of The Lord of the Rings, may have died more than 30 years ago, but that hasn't stopped his son (who is also his literary executor) from publishing his stories.

Children of Hurin already makes an appearance in The Silmarillion but this version pulls together parts from other, unpublished manuscripts.

The story follows Turin and his sister, Nienor, who are cursed by a dark lord called Morgoth.

It is set long before hobbits walked Middle Earth and is reportedly much darker than any of Tolkien's offerings so far.

I heard this on the radio this morning and had to txt Re to check he was dead. And yes, he is, thoroughly. I don't understand post-humous Publication of books, or release of music. Seems a bit weird.

Gahhhh

So incredibly busy at work atm. Need to decompress~!!!!
We're operating a two man show atm, half capacity, and our system's gone down, our massive shipment arrived (so everyone wanted their stock), just a madhouse I swear.
*breathe*

In other news, I have photos to upload soon, but can't make the cd work so not quite yet, and life is good. Had a good easter, don't think I ate too too much, just some too much. I've walked each work day this week and I was able to load some songs onto my new-ish shuffle so I am more entertained along the way, and I'm trying to get the gym a few days a week still too. I hope it all lasts and doesn't get too boring too soon.....
:(

Salut everyone : )

Soul - Tobsha Learner ***

In 1860, twenty-year-old Lavinia Huntington is transported from her Irish village to start a new life in Mayfair, London, as the wife of a gentleman anthropologist thirty years her senior. One year later she is standing trial for his murder.

In modern-day Los Angeles, forty-year-old Professor Julia Huntington, geneticist, returns from a field trip to Afghanistan. She has received a prestigious commission from the US Defence Department to research a genetic propensity to kill without remorse.

Soul is the story of two women, across two eras, and their struggle with obsessive love and revenge. Part murder mystery, part psychological thriller, part commentary on genetics and human behaviour, sexual jealousy and betrayal, it is both provocative and unputdownable.

Firstly I am going to kick off saying I honestly think unputdownable should be banned from books. It isn't a word. Secondly, this is good, but nothing to write home about. It reads as one 1860 chapter, one modern, and there isn't enough time to really get into either story before it changes again, which makes it difficult to empathise with the characters.

3 / 5

Killing for Pleasure; the definitive story of the Snowtown Serial Murders - Debi Marshall ***/*

"Keep your friends close.

Keep your enemies closer.
A simple philosophy that John Bunting-the sadistic mastermind behind Australia's worst serial killings-used to fool everyone, from his lovers and friends to his victims and police.

Five years in the research, investigative journalist Debi Marshall takes you deep inside thew sinister world of the killers and the veil of secrecy that shrouds Adelaide society. A stark account of the story that would come to be known as the "bodies -in-barrels" murders, Killing for Pleasure presents material never before seen-a harrowing interview with Buntings' last lover and her son, key eye witness Jamie Vlassakis, Marshall's conclusions will haunt you long after you turn the last page. In a subculture where abuse and revenge intertwine, John Bunting and his accomplices were indeed, Killing for Pleasure.

Twelve bodies, three killers, one accomplice and a maniacal murder spree that went undetected for seven years, Killing for Pleasure examines the systematic abuse endured by both victims and killers. It is a chilling tapestry of torture, dismemberment, ritual fantasy and cannibalism, a no-holds barred investigation that asks : Why? And why Adelaide, South Australia once admired as the City of Churches, now known as the City of Corpses? Is twelve the final body count?"

Hmm Creepy. Good, but a bit of a slog if you're not into it, I was into it and it still took me a week. A very interesting look into the fabric of lower class Australia, that I think middle class Oz pretends doesn't exist. That's the feeling I get anyway. Lots of child abuse and paedophilia assosciated with the killers (as young victims) and their victims (at the hands of others). It is almost a way of life in their class. Hmm....

**btw-photo pages in the middle**

3.5 / 5

Environmental Myths *busted*

1. Water from a rainwater tank is not fit to drink
2. I can't go solar because I'm already connected to the electricity grid
3. Recycling is a waste of time
4. I refuse to drink recycled water
5. Conservation is something that should happen only in national parks
6. Calling a product organic means it is organic. Right?
7. Most environmental damage was done by our colonising forebears
8. Our economy was built on the sheep's back
9. You need lots of space to grow food

To read more on each of these points, check out this article in the SMH, the first in a new series called Eco, which I for one, am looking forward to.

Sidenote to Water post

this post below looked a lot cooler before the HTML f'ked up and it made all the writing giant and you couldn't read it. It was cool, and multi sized for emphasis, but no. Grr.

Twenty Thirst Century ; the future of water in Australia - John Archer ****/*

Who will be the first to run out of water?

That's the question the experts are asking.

Could it be Goulburn or Sydney or Perth or perhaps Brisbane?

In the midst of the worst drought for a hundred years, many cities and towns are looking with increasing concern at record low levels in storage dams, diminished river flows and pessimistic rain forecasts.

Computer models predict permanent drought conditions over eastern Australia. If this becomes a reality, we need to plan for our survival as individuals, as communities, as a nation.

Twenty Thirst Century explains why the big package solutions-desalination, recycling and groundwater-may not be as effective as we have been led to believe.

Twenty Thirst Century is a disturbing, incisive and realistic perspective on Australia's water crisis and our options for the future.

This book was amazing. I would urge everyone to read it. It was published in 2005 which I think makes it even more alarming as two years on we're in an even worse off position more than likely.
Its quite a slim volume with quite short succinct points making up the entire work. It took a bit of concentration for the most part, but was still a very compelling read I think. John Archer is the author of twenty books on building, architecture, transport, medicine and the environment. This book is his sixth book on water issues, the most recent Australia's Drinking Water : The coming crisis.
Essentially the issue is loosely broken down into three options Desalination, Recycling the water we use, and Groundwater. I think one of the important points of the problem is accepting that these are the options, there is no fourth hopefully ethereal choice of "rain will come". We are at crisis point, as of today Warragamba Dam is only 38.48 % full. With an estimated "empty date" of 15-6-2012 if water trends continue as they have been. While it may seem far off, that's really only 5 years of water. What are we meant to do then? This is where we come to our three choices which I will attempt to summarise here as I see it

Desalination-which Archer refers to as the great white elephant. Desal technology has been around for more than fifty years. But surprisingly little advancement has been made in the technology in this time. Unlike say cars, or computers, or even toasters, desal isn't that different now to what it was. Essentially its about taking the salt out of the sea to make it drinkable.
Major drawbacks include- it is a very power hungry process, requiring massive amounts of energy to operate the machinery required. This then leads to more greenhouse gases being produced, making climate change and global warming even worse, leading to less rainfall, more melting of polar ice caps. None of these good things. It also produces a poisonous brine by product which is re-pumped into the sea. Which makes the sea saltier, making the next batch produce more brine byproduct which is put back into the sea.... it's a vicious cycle (not to mention destroying the ecosystems of the ocean). There is an argument that the sea can absorb whatever we throw at it, the brine will simply mix into the sea again and all will be happy..... You can't really imagine the sea would tolerate that forever though without some serious side effects.
{Also Desal plants are extremely expensive to build (Millions and millions of dollars) take forever (to build), are problematic and expensive if they break AND the proposed one for Sydney will actually only produce enough water for Sydney's consumption for about 1.5-2 hours per day based on current consumption rates}

Recycling- is loosely broken into two halves, grey water and black water. Grey water is from the kitchen sink, laundry, shower. Black water is toilets. While this is extremely unpopular, only 2% of water used in households is actually used for drinking and cooking. Main problems with using this as an encompassing solution is that homes would need two pipes, one for drinking water and one for grey water and this would cost billions to implement. Rouse Hill apparently has communities being built with this technology which I think is great. To get around the problem of needing two pumps is the idea of treating the water and redirecting it into the dams. Problem with this is fairly obvious, but in actual fact the catchment runs over animal droppings etc all the time as it feeds into the river system anyway... Hmm.

Groundwater -This is one of the options that seems to scream, why aren't they doing this? In Sydney the answer is-they can't. Groundwater is another term for the underground Aquifers around the country. Sydney's largest one is called the Botany aquifer and its located in South West Sydney sort of area, where there is a lot of industry and they have poisoned the water due to the chemicals and runoff seeping into the ground and eventually the water there.

For more info, check out this article.

Very good book, and I am much more water conscious now.

4.5 / 5

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Earth Hour

Lazy DVD day

Another Sunday passed with one member of our household hung over, and as such we ended up sitting around watching DVDs again. It was raining and horrible weather though, so it wasn't like we were really wasting that much of a day (right?).

First up with Jerome and Todd we watched SAW III.
For those uninitiated into the Saw movies, essentially they're horror movies about a serial killer that finds unique ways to torture his victims by making them suffer horribly for their misspent lives, while seemingly giving them a chance to live.
This one was particularly gory, and I don't know if it was quite as satisfying as the last two. Mark and I aren't into horror movies, (as anyone who knows me, I shrieked uncontrollably during Nightmare on Elm St whilst everyone was laughing at the corniness) but the Saw movies have such fantastic twists, they somehow seem worth it, even if some people think they're nothing but an excuse for gore.
As a group we declared there should be a ban on the following in slasher flicks
-flickering lights
-industrial settings
-mirrors and any other reflective surface.
-there may have been more too

Then after the boys left we decided to watch United 93 (or flight 93-turned out we had two DVDs with different names but they were the same film).
This wasn't quite the picker-upper we were looking for, I stupidly forgot it was likely to be very sad, rather than the interesting/fascinating movie I expected. United 93 is a docudrama focused on the fourth hijacked flight from September 11 that never made it to it's target. Worth a look.

So from being scared out of our minds, to crying, we moved onto a third movie Blood Diamond that was so interesting and thought provoking, I thought it was quite good. Centred around the Conflict Diamond trade in Africa, the movie is set in Sierra Leone in 1999. Leonardo Di Caprio I thought gave a convincing performance and maintained a fairly credible Zimbabwean accent for the duration. Jennifer Connelley was good, I forgot she was Sarah ( Labyrinth) which I always have difficulty with.

All in all an interesting day of DVDs.

Bone Machine - Martyn Waites ***/*

The body is discovered in a disused burial ground.
A young woman, ritualistically mutilated, her eyes and mouth crudely sewn shut. Her boyfriend is arrested and charged with the murder.

He might have a vicious temper and a history of violence against women, but is Michael Nell really a killer? Michael's lawyer doesn't think so. She's hired Joe Donovan to prove his alibi.

Donovan's investigations lead him into the murky world of people trafficking and illegal prostitution. But when a second body shows up, he realises it's not just local gangsters he's up against-but a deranged serial killer. A killer obsessed with the city's dark history. A killer who leaves clues pointing to his twisted plan. And if Donovan and his team can't decipher those messages in time, a killer who will kill again...

Hmmm, another blurb that seems to merely nod at the actual story rather than follow it. Not quite the way it all pans out, a good read, but not if you're squeamish. Even myself, an avid reader of psychological crime thrillers found parts of this just too much. Still a good read overall, but I won't rush out for more by Waites at this stage.

3.5 / 5

Ribena falsies

How amazing, Ribena has been caught out* lying for five decades about their product. Making false claims that the blackcurrant drink has four times the Vitamin C of orange juice.

Really, it begs the question, how the hell did they get away with it? And, do you think I could? Make some amazing product made of sawdust or something and say it has three times the Iron as red meat? Brilliant!

*they apparently came forward themselves and confessed, but only because they've been under investigation for twelve months already

*****update-hilariously they've taken down their website too!*****