Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Wait - so, pumping out kids isn't the healthiest thing in the world?

This just in from the land of the obvious - larger families are harder on the parents' health than small ones

I'll wait while you fetch the smelling salts.

[waits]

Ha ha, just a bit of drollness in keeping with the absolute hilarity that anyone ever doubted that having zero control over reproduction is bad for women.  From the article:

The researchers, from the University of Utah, analysed nineteenth century data from the Utah Population Database.


They found that the couples had an average of eight children each, but family size ranged from one to 14 or more children.


The data showed that the more children a couple produced, the higher their risk of early death.


The situation was worst for women, because they were affected by the physical costs of bearing the children. [emphasis mine]
Are you listening to this, Jim-Bob and Michelle?

Friday, December 22, 2006

Decemberween Round-up

Having just handed in my last paper of the term yesterday, I'm now trying to make up for the many weeks (and months) of neglect that most other non-school-related parts of my life have been suffering.  Such as: talking to friends/family; drinking; watching season 5 of Xena; reading for pleasure; catching up on holiday cheer; successfully waging war on Christmas with wishes of 'Happy Holidays' (wishing people to be happy?  Over the holidays? What an evil, oppressive sentiment!  Time to go back to my original saying of "Shove a snowball up your a**!"  Yes, much better.); drinking (the second one's a pre-emptive drink - it's only been one day, give me some time!) and finally, commenting on a few of the awesome and awful things that have been going around:

Item the first: Ironwoman sent me this vid a while back - coincidentally, the day myself and a fellow grad were discussing this exact topic - we laughed our collective asses off and raised our glasses to toast the destruction of the patriarchy (a fine toast if ever there was one).  As much as this particular text is pretty funny, there's still an element of truth there as any woman who's worked in a male-dominated field will probably tell you.  Like, say, being a political assistant who has to deal with smug little boys in expensive suits explain Parliamentary procedure to you incorrectly - and then smile at you smugly when you point out they're incorrect like a bunch of freakin' smugwads...you know, if I just had to pick a random example.

Item the second  - don't know if this made the rounds outside the merry land of Blog, but my current academic institute was a hot topic for December, when the student union voted on a motion to deny support to anti-choice student groups, either through funds or use of space.  Had a lively discussion in my class the next day about how I am ABSOLUTELY 100% SUPPORTIVE of this decision.  FACT: CUSA is not the student government or the university government. FACT: A loss of $250 and a couple of spaces on campus is not an attack on free speech.  FACT: The student union should stand up for the rights of students; groups that want to make 100,000 Canadian women into soulless murderers, groups that think the intelligence, humanity and morality are only carried on the Y chromosome, groups that would lie, threaten and manipulate women out of their rights, these groups have no place being funded or in any way supported by the students' union.  Students shouldn't be supporting groups that then use the money to actively attempt to strip them of their rights; anti-choice groups deserve as much funding as KKK, Nazi or anti-LGBT groups.  If they want to spout their hateful bullshit in the open air, they can pay to photoshop their own "OMG, look at this 8-week aborted fetus, yes, it DOES TOO have fingers and toes and weighs 6 pounds at 8-weeks, you baby-murdering whore!" photos. 

Item the third - Apropos of nothing - Green Christmas this year, much like almost every single year of my child and no year of my adulthood.  Save us Al Gore!

Item the fourth - How to sum up the movie (and, I'm assuming, book) Eragon: "Man, I hate being a teenaged-boy!  I wish I lived in a different place, and was 17 going on 21, and had my own dragon that only served me, and magical powers, and a hot girl who was totally into me, and like, fought sorcerers and stuff...that would be soooo awesome."

That is all - happy holidays to you and yours!