Today’s Book Review is It’s a Boy, edited by Andrea Buchanan. A very interesting project, it’s a collection of essays from women writers on raising sons. I found it quite startling just how many (the overwhelming majority) were about the woman’s experience of coming to terms with the fact thatContinue Reading
It’s census time, and, frustrated statistician that I am, I was very excited to see the form on my doorstep last night. Last census, I was 8 months pregnant with C, and we were a couple with two very demanding jobs. This census, we have two children, and one full time andContinue Reading
I’ve been pondering, after my last post, just how feasible it is to have a workplace with different attitudes to working hours. It’s a horrible time of year right now, which exaggerates the problem, but I’m working in a workplace which has (at one extreme) someone who sent me emailsContinue Reading
The ABS released a study (as part of their annual social trends review) of fathers and how much they are working these days. In previous posts, I’ve trawled through various ABS products to find out how many stay-at-home dads there are. This study answers the question – 3.4% of familiesContinue Reading
There’s been a fascinating discussion at Slate (via 11D) about whether Wal-Mart is good or bad for the US. Go and read it, but my take is that at least some of the argument boils down to: 1 Wal-mart reduces prices by driving a hard bargain everywhere, but particularly onContinue Reading
My cousin’s in the International Maths Olympiad, which is currently on in Slovenia. It’s a competition for those who are under 20, haven’t been to university yet, and with those conditions, are the top mathematicians in their countries, and hence the world. Six contestents per country. After we found theContinue Reading
After my gloomy posts on global warming, I had to link to RealClimate’s recent post on tipping points – a superb summary of all the various things that might tip the planet into a new (probably unpleasant) climatic stage.Continue Reading
My employer has recently introduced a new policy for all sorts of family friendly stuff – among them, a “breastfeeding friendly workplace”. I work in the CBD. We have employees spread across a few different buildings. They have put aside one room in one building for expressing breastmilk. Completely uselessContinue Reading
Today’s book review (I’m not promising weekly any more!) is Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, by Elizabeth Kolbert. It is a fairly slim book, based on a series she did for the New Yorker in 2005, and I read it after reading the review onContinue Reading
I’ve been reflecting, during the World Cup, at how good we Australians are at watching sport in the middle of the night. But it’s part of being a sports fan, here. We’ve grown up watching pretty much any world class sport in the middle of the night. Think Ashes tests,Continue Reading