The empty feminist pews

Some interesting thoughts in the Herald newspaper today:
http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/todays-girls-just-want-to-have-fun-with-the-boys/2005/12/30/1135915694082.html?page=2

"But still there remained that niggling uneasiness, that internal voice that asks how it is we've brought up a generation of young women who appear to equate equality with a striving to behave like boys but whose feminine role models exhibit a stereotypical womanhood, one in which the overtly sexual and physical is paramount. Ariel Levy's book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture documents beautifully what I had vaguely noted and not quite understood.
Her argument suggests that while feminism aimed to liberate women from the bonds imposed by male culture, today's young women have taken on self-imposed chains in the mistaken belief they empower them.

Empowerment for women, she writes, has been bent to the point that the Playboy logo is common on teenage girls' T-shirts and nighties, that stripping and pole dancing are the norm in the average rock video (the Herald ran a story about young women attending suburban stripping classes just this week) and so much of what was the province of the porn star - Brazilian bikini waxes, breast implants, full body depilation - has become the fodder of teen zines.

Levy observes that the young women she interviewed, who both absorbed and gave life to this raunch culture, also argued that theirs is simply a form of sexual liberation, that all they are doing is being one of the boys. But Levy argues the opposite is true: how can women conforming to stereotypical male fantasies do anything to enhance female choice?"

Indeed, where are the ideals of the powerful woman, independent of male demands and approval?

If the pews of the churches are emptying, things in the feminist church are no better.

Maxi Sydney-Hobart yacht race

The leaders of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race this year (2005) are all called "maxi" yachts. I'm not sure whether this refers to their design or only the size, but they all look the same to me. Sort of overgrown one-class tupperware dinghies covered with advertising.

It seems the days are over of individually owned yachts, ketches, wooden boats and the varied collection of boats which used to start this race. It is now a vanilla race with vanilla boats, paid for by crass advertising.

Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ)

The text of the JDDJ is at:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html

This has been signed by representatives of the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches

themes for World Youth Day 2006,2007 and 2008

Themes Picked for Youth Days of '06, '07 and '08
Benedict XVI Draws on Old and New Testaments

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 21, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has selected the themes for World Youth Day for the next three years.

The events in 2006 and 2007 will be at the diocesan level. The 2008 event, in Australia, will be international.

In 2006, young people of the world will reflect on verse 105 of Psalm 119: "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path."

The theme chosen for 2007 is from the Gospel, John 13:34: "Love one another, as I have loved you."

The World Youth Day to be held in Sydney from July 15-20, 2008, will focus on the theme taken from the Acts of the Apostles (1:8): "You will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses."

The news was confirmed in a letter of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, dated Nov. 28 and addressed to the "national representatives of WYD and international youth movements, associations and communities." A copy of the letter was posted by Korazym.org.

In the letter, the Vatican council also invites the addressees to a meeting in Ciampino, Rome, next April 7-9, to review the Cologne World Youth Day and to begin preparations for the Sydney event.

Representatives of the organizing committees of Germany and Australia will attend this meeting. Each country, movement, association and community can send two delegates.
ZE05122106

Quiet Christmas

What a different day Christmas is these days. I didn't see any kids riding new bikes around the streets. In fact there were no kids around the streets - I suppose that reflects parents who are afraid to let their children out of their sight. Better to buy them trampolines, ping-pong tables, video games and keep them around the house.

I can understand why they do it, but what does it do to a society?

Christmas carols and Mary

Can anyone explain why so few Christmas carols mention Mary? I looked at a list of carols and...

these mention Mary:

1. Angels we have heard on high
2. God rest ye merry, gentlemen
3. Once in royal David's city
4. Mary's Boy Child

and these do not mention Mary:

1. Away in a manger
2. Did you hear what I hear?
3. Go tell it on the mountain
4. Hark the herald angels sing
5. It came upon a midnight clear
6. Joy to the world
7. O come all ye faithful
8. O holy night
9. Silent night
10. The first Noel
11. We three kings
12. While shepherds watched their flocks

I find it amazing that so many Christmas carols do not mention the Mother of Christ.

The future of the Australian cricket team

• I don't want to be a doom-sayer for the Australian cricket team, but
  the signs of decay are there......

• there is arrogance in decision making, eg the decision to bat on in the test against the South Africans, putting personal records above the chance of a team result (sending England in during the first Ashes test indicated the same)
• erratic captainancy, for example when Ricky Ponting went out of his way to criticise his young bowlers after losing the last one day match against NZ. Aren't these bowlers the future of the Australian team, so why destroy their morale?
• there is pig-headedness in selections. Although several new batsmen have been tried (successfully), an underperforming player such as Andrew Symonds is perservered with (is there a "mate's" network as with Jason Gillespie during the Ashes series?).
• It also seems that the third-best bowler in the country, Stuart MacGill will be ignored for the Boxing Day test, as he was for the whole Ashes series.
• When you look at the statistics for the 2 ageing stars of the Australian bowling attack, it seems that Warney is doing very well, thank you, but Glenn McGrath is starting to feel his years.
• Compare the bowling figures for the tests this season, against the ICC XI joke team, the pathetic West Indies (rated just above Zimbabwe) and fifth-ranked South Africa:
• McGrath: average 25.00, economy 2.25, strike rate 67 (compared to his career figures of: average 21.41, economy 2.50, strike rate 51)
• Warne: average 21.86, economy 2.56, strike rate 51 (compared to his career figures of: average 25.01, economy 2.61, strike rate 57)

McGrath's figures are still good, but the deterioration against mediocre opposition is there to see. How will he be next season, when he celebrates his 37th birthday?

Intelligent Design 2001

I heard someone talking about the Stanley Kubrick film "2001 A Space Odyssey" and it occurred to me that this described the intelligent design theory.

The story behind 2001 is that extra-terrestrials observe life on Earth, and when we are ready, they intervene in our development by means of the singing monolith. They taught the apes to fight, and even taught the HAL computer to fight for itself.

Isn't this a bit like the intelligent design idea that the chances of life evolving by chance is so small that some intelligence must have intervened to push it along every now and then?

online resources

Try to check and use these regularly:

• Ubuntu forum
• Neowin forum
• MSDN forum
• Linux documentation project

• Bloglines newfeeds
• del.icio.us bookmarks
• protopage portal
  

install the Flock 0.4.10 social web browser

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=401019

This is a simple guide to installing the Firefox-based browser Flock v.0.4.10

Installing Flock 0.4.10 on Ubuntu
http://flackos.com/?p=21

Flock is a Mozilla Firefox-based web browser that isn’t officially out, but is available as a developer’s preview. This guide will help those of you running Ubuntu, or even some other versions of Linux, to install Flock and start bug hunting or hacking or whatever you would like.

First, run over to http://www.flock.com/developer/ and grab the latest version of Flock. For ease, download it into your ‘home’ folder.
In this installation we’re going to be using Flock 0.4.10.
Open up your terminal and use the following string of commands:

cd /opt
sudo tar -xzvf /home/yourname/flock-0.4.10.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz
sudo ln -s /opt/flock/flock /usr/bin/flock

Now you’ve sucessfully installed Flock, but you want to add it to your Ubuntu Applications menu, right?

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/flock.desktop

Now, add the following to the new file:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Flock Browser
Comment=Flock Browser
Exec=/opt/flock/flock %u
Terminal=false
MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/flock/icons/mozicon128.png
Categories=Application;Network
MimeType=text/html; text/xml; application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;
application/rss+xml; application/rdf+xml;x-directory/webdav;x-directory/webdav-prefer-directory;
image/gif; image/jpeg; image/png

After that, You should see Flock in your applications menu under ‘Internet’ (if you’re using Ubuntu).

Installing Flock 0.4.10 on Ubuntu - Neowin.net

When I did this, I got an error message "cannot open libstdc++.so.5"

I used synaptic to install libstdc++5 and then flock works.

Difference between Ubuntu and Edubuntu

In Ubuntu but not Edubuntu:

• amarok music player
• emacs
• koffice
• k3b CD/DVD creator
• kdebase desktop environment
• kde web development
• mozilla
• mysql
• php
• thunderbird
• xine-lib video player
• xine td - secure replacement for inetd - hosting
• xmms mp3 player

Edubuntu does have perl, python, gtk+

Install Edubuntu

I installed Warty Warthog 4.10 and that worked, but with Breezy Badger 5.10, there was no display. The difference is that Warty uses XFree86 for X windows, but Breezy uses Xorg.

With Breezy, I had to choose the vesa video driver instead of ati or fglrx.

At boot, select a terminal and enter

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and then select the vesa driver.