Oct 11 2014
Every once in awhile the stories pile up and in trying to remain current, I publish a compendium of transgender news stories. I know that makes for a long read, but if I didn’t do this, some storries wouldn’t get any overage at all.
I hope you’ll at least scan the stories. A better educated public is a fairer public.
Jan 11 2013
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that 2012 was the warmest year on record since it started keeping records in 1895, eclipsing 1998 by 1ºF.
The 1°F difference from 1998 is an unusually large margin, considering that annual temperature records are typically broken by just tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. In fact, the entire range between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous record warm year of 1998 was just 4.2°F.
The year consisted of the fourth-warmest winter, the warmest spring, second-warmest summer, and a warmer-than-average fall. With an average temperature that was 3.6°F above average, July became the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous U.S. The average springtime temperature in the lower 48 was so far above the 1901-2000 average – 5.2°F, to be exact – that the country set a record for the largest temperature departure for any season on record. [..]
With 34,008 daily high temperature records set or tied the year compared to just 6,664 daily record lows – a ratio of about five high temperature records for every one low temperature record – 2012 was no ordinary weather year in the U.S. It wasn’t just the high temperatures that set records, though. Overnight low temperatures were also extremely warm, and in a few cases the overnight low was so warm that it set a high temperature record, a rare feat. [..]
Not alarmed yet? Australia is not only experiencing its hottest Summer but its also on fire.
Australia Climate Change? New Colors Added To Forecast Maps To Track Potential Record Heat
Right now, things are pretty hot in Australia. So hot, in fact, that meteorologists Down Under have added new, never-before-used colors to temperature maps in anticipation of record-breaking heat.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology amended its interactive weather chart Tuesday, adding the colors deep purple and pink to indicate a temperature range of up to 54 degrees Celsius, or 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous range had capped at 50 Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
The change was based on one weather prediction model that forecasts temperatures to climb above 50 Celsius early next week.
The all-time hottest temperature recorded in Australia was 50.7 Celsius on Jan. 2, 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport in South Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
According to the current model, the forecast for next Monday will bring a “Tasmania-sized” area of heat in excess of 50 degrees to South Australia.
50ºC is 122ºF. That’s hot. Too hot.
Australian heatwave puts south-east on alert as wildfires burn out of control
by Alison Rourke, The Gusardian
Fire service issues ‘catastrophic’ warnings in New South Wales with temperatures expected to breach 45C in coming days
A record-breaking heatwave and high winds across south-eastern Australia have produced some of the worst fire conditions seen in the country, with blazes destroying thousands of hectares of land (video) and threatening properties, but – so far – sparing lives.
Emergency teams fought more than 130 fires across New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, on Tuesday, with at least 40 burning out of control. Fires also continued to burn in Tasmania, after blazes at the weekend destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of land and dozens of properties. [..]
The NSW rural fire service issued “catastrophic” fire warnings for four areas in the state – the most severe fire warning level.
“The word catastrophic is being used for good reason,” the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, said on morning television. “So it is very important that people keep themselves safe, that they listen to local authorities and local warnings. This is a very dangerous day.”
Alarmed after the NOAA report, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a new climate bill.
Sanders announced the bill a day after federal officials reported that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the lower 48 states, smashing the record set in 1998 by a full degree Fahrenheit.
The bill from Sanders would create a “transparent fee on greenhouse gas emissions from the biggest polluters,” his office said in a brief summary.
“After the hottest year on record and extreme weather disturbances such as Hurricane Sandy, we must take strong action to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” said Sanders, a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I intend to introduce legislation in the Senate to do just that.” [..]
Environmentalists are pressing President Obama to take tougher steps using his administrative powers, including establishment of first-time carbon emissions standards for existing power plants.
Sanders’ plan also aims to boost green energy development and nix tax incentives for oil companies.
Not just the US but countries around the world need to take action to curb carbon emissions. The Unites States should be taking the lead and setting the example.
Oct 12 2012
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Australia’s first female Prime minister, Julia Gillard delivered a 15 minute blistering smackdown of opposition leader Tony Abbot for his hypocrisy in attacking a member of her party over sexist text messages. This is want Mr. Abbot said:
Mr Abbott was perfectly within his rights to put forward the motion that speaker Peter Slipper should be immediately dispatched. Most Australians feel likewise. But the words Mr Abbott chose to deliver this message were not only vicious but monumentally stupid beyond belief. Who are his advisers – the Sydney University young liberals?
Here is what Mr Abbott said: “I must allude to the vile anatomical references to which this Speaker appears to be addicted in his text message… Should (Gillard) rise in this place now to try and defend the Speaker, she will shame this parliament again… And every day the prime minister stands in this parliament to defend this Speaker will be another day of shame for this parliament, another day of shame for a government which should already have died of shame.”
Can you believe Tony Abbott used that phrase? Can you believe, after every drop of water that has flowed under the bridge since (Alan) Jones’ ill-advised speech to the young libs, that the would-be Prime Minister of Australia still thinks it fitting to poke further fun at the death of the sitting Prime Minister’s father. Can anyone believe that?
Alan Jones made the remark that M. Gillard’s father had “died of shame” over her politics at an Abbot fund raising lunch. The aftermath caused advertisers to pull ads and Mercedes Benz took back the $200,000 car on loan to the broadcaster.
The Prime Minister, who is 51, unmarried and has no children, has been told to “make an honest woman” of herself, a “slut”, taunted with signs saying “Ditch the Witch” and worse.
At naked capitalism, Yves Smith notes that Americans politicians could take some lessons from PM Gillard:
Look how Gilliard speaks effectively and energetically, referring to notes only when she needs to read quotations, for fifteen minutes. As YY indicates, the context is clear enough that you don’t need the backstory to infer what happened.
Do we have a single politician in the US who could command attention for that long and deliver a blistering attack with so little in the way of props? I suspect this is one of the by products of the Commonwealth tradition of “question time,” in which government ministers have to deal with the cut and thrust of Parliamentary debates, while in the US, we have far more staging and far less real controversy in our political discourse.
Aug 18 2012
Every so often I find there is a series of stories which just aren’t likely to get their own diary…even though they very well may deserve one. Time is a limited quantity after all and it’s about to become a much more limited quantity quickly, what with the new semester about to run us over. Syllabi are due next Thursday and classes start the following week.
So you can think of this as a Friday trans news dump…stories with not enough lurid interest to grab bigger headlines given short shrift on a Friday evening…or you can think of it as the news from the transgender community on a reel.
Oct 22 2011
I figure international news includes the United States. There’s a pretty even split between stories from other countries and national stories, presented so the public might know a little better what’s happening of interest to people in the trans community.
Anna Grodzka, 57, became the first ever Polish lawmaker to have had sex reassignment…which makes her the only current transsexual national legislator on the planet. Spain’s Carla Antonelli is transgender, but has not had sex reassignment surgery.
Grodzka runs Trans-Fuzja (website is in Polish), a foundation which supports Poland’s transpeople and says she decided to run in order to promote the work of the foundation. She won 19,451 in the Krakow II electoral district, making her the top vote-getter for Palikot’s Movement in that district and thereby winning one of the 460 seats in Poland’s lower house, the Sejm.
The world’s first transsexual MP was Georgina Beyer of New Zealand’s Labour Party, from 1999 until she resigned her seat in 2007.
Today, Poland is changing. I am the proof along with Robert Biedron, a homosexual and the head of an anti-homophobia campaign who ran for office in Gdynia.
–Anna Grodzka
Grodzka says that the time has come for sexual minorities to enjoy equal rights in Poland.
Enough of this concealing of the truth. This group of people, even if small, has its rights and they should be respected. They should not be pushed into oblivion.
On her to-do list are legal partnerships, job security, and state funding of sex change procedures.
Dec 12 2010
I read this Raw Story comment early this AM and I couldn’t pass up the chance.
The Australian government is getting a LOT of pressure to support Assange and deny anything the US asks for. If you support Assange, send a message to Australia’s PM asking her to make sure he is not extradited to the US.
The pressure on the Australian government is working. After the open letter to Aussie PM Julia Gillard was published online last week, by 200 famous Aussies, and thousands of support comments were left on it by other people, only then did the Aussie Foreign Minister come out in support of Assange. The pressure needs to stay on them, so PLEASE spend a minute and send Julia Gillard a polite message.
Aug 30 2010
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
It seems as if many people have been paying more attention to the Beckapalooza in DC … and the whole furor had me initially confused, as originally I thought it was something to do with Beck the Mongolian Chop Squad …
But last weekend, there was an election in Australia, and on the night it seemed like it could be the closest in Australian history. As the week went on, that proved to be the case. And I got to thinking, listening to the various independents that hold the balance of power, that there could well be an unlikely working partnership available, where trains could help delivered a progressive governing majority on the most improbable of foundations.
NB: the grassfire in a dry lake bed shot that I use on occasion is in fact from Australia, suffering what has been characterized as a long running drought, but what seems more likely to be a secular shift to a dryer climate.
Aug 25 2010
I’ve written before about the rather limited reach of privilege. A conversation with a fellow writer and friend from Australia showed me yet another area where a lack of infrastructure, wealth, education, and crucial connections leaves people out. Oversights like these which yell out for alleviation are all too common, but not terribly sexy in the way only a massive disaster can be. While we were discussing LGBT issues, she mentioned a topic very enlightening and thought-provoking. To preface, my friend identifies as bisexual herself and so she listened intently, and with much interest, to the words and phrases I’d been throwing around regarding my own identity and its many nuances. Her immediate response raised another issue pertinent towards the need to spread resources beyond our liberal borders.
May 23 2010
History is full of “flashbulb moments” — when FLASH!
the course of History, changes instantly, on a dime,
as the result of some collective common experience.
This is not one of those tales.
Rather it’s another kind of story entirely,
when we all collectively sense something’s wrong,
but no one can really pin it down, to …
Exactly what the problem is.
Déjà vu [Deja vu] is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.
[…]
The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of “eeriness,” “strangeness,” “weirdness,” or what Sigmund Freud and other psychologists call “the uncanny.” The “previous” experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.
Nov 06 2009
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke at the Lowy Institute. Entitled Check Against Delivery, this is one of the strongest statements seen from a Head of Government of a ‘developed’ nation on climate change and, more specifically, contains very strong denunciation of those deniers and delayers and self-proclaimed “skeptics” who are obstructing movement to mitigate climate change in Australia … and, even more so, the United States.
The full speech is highly (HIGHLY) recommended reading. This is one of those cases where each read drives one to differing ideas as to which part to quote, which item merits the most attention.
But, as is sometimes best, let us start with the end and what might be termed as a beginning toward strong governmental confrontation of those so ready to mislead and deceive:
My message to the climate change skeptics, to the big betters and the big risk takers is this:
You are betting our children’s future and the future of our grandchildren.
You are betting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our economy and our future on an intuition – on a gut feeling; on a political prejudice you have about science.
That is too big a risk, too radical a departure from the basic conservative principles of public policy.
Malcolm, Barnaby, Andrew, Janet – stop gambling with our future.
You’ve got to know when to fold ’em – and for the skeptics, that time has come.
The Government I lead will act.
Rudd has chosen a quite direct challenge to those fighting against action, ready and willing to disseminate falsehoods and deception in their efforts to guard their current fiscal and other interests even at the cost of creating grave risks for all humanity.
Jul 04 2008
Happy 4th, everybody.
I’ve been back for a few weeks now and I’m finally getting my life back in order a bit; at least enough to do a little blogging again.
Where have I been? Only the most awesome place on earth: Manly Beach, Australia. I sold a piece of software I had been working on for quite a while and it was actually the second time this company bought the rights to something I had written, so I knew what I was in for.
