The Triptych Post

Serious Stuff

Last night's Four Corners was worrying - a story about the alienation felt by many young Muslim Australians from the rest of Australian society, and the possibility of it leading to "home grown" terrorism.

It's an important issue, one I hope the Government takes seriously; the consequences of neglect could be dire. But...all of the disaffected youth who appeared last night were males. What about the women? Although the males must have a hard time, the young women are dealing with alientation and also the cultural restrictions their families and communities may impose on them. Don't they ever get angry? For that matter, most of the racsim from the white Australians shown on the program involved young, white Australian males as well. It's as though culturally, whatever happens to a community only happens to the males in that community; anything that involves females is a "women's issue".

Less Serious Stuff

In a bookshop window this morning, I noticed a large display of Dummies books, including Pregnancy for Dummies. I'm not sure "dummies" are people who should be encouraged to have children. On a similar note, a clinic in Oregon is promoting the college basketball March madness as a great time to get a vasectomy, giving the patient an ideal excuse to watch the games on TV undisturbed. It's probably a good idea - if a guy is looking for an excuse to watch hours of sport on TV, he wouldn't make a great father anyway.

Sweet Stuff

You've no doubt heard the story of how in their tour rider, Van Halen would demand a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. What you may not know was why they did this.

The band's tour contract contained a bunch of instructions on the correct way to handle and set up their technical equipment. The M&Ms request was inserted in amongst these. If the band showed up and there were brown M&Ms in the bowl, or no candies at all, they knew no one had bothered to read the contract properly and it was unsafe for them to play.

Now isn't that just the best story you've heard in ages?

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