Kate's Journal

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Transgender, bisexuality and the promotion of other rather than diversity.
When pride changed its name back in the nineties to include bisexual and transgender it was on the basis that transgender people challenged 'traditional' assumptions about gender. It was with the assumption that transgender included drag kings, femme men, butch women, drag queens, androgynes, transvestites, m2F, f2M, MtM, FtF, transexuals, cross-dressers etc

The battle that has been fought since then has been about inclusion however a number of insecure transexuals have repeatedly over the years have transgender, trans, T*, anything with trans in the name re-assigned as referring just to them. The media have gone along with this, principally for the same reason that the media seeks to hide bisexuality or instead promote it as promiscuity. The media likes to see things as either/or male or female, man or woman, hetro or homo. The promotion of other rather than diversity.

Oxford is pretty north it seems..
Just for reference also at 51 degrees 45 minutes (Oxford) are Nijmegen, South Warsaw, between Calgary and Edmonton, on the border of Quebec and Newfoundland. Meantime Edinburgh is on the same latitude as Malmo, Moscow, Novosbirisk, Southern islands of Alaska, Thompson Manitoba. Or in the north, Lerwick, Shetland isles are about the same latitude as Oslo, Upsala, Helsinki, St Petersberg or a degree south of Anchorage

just caught a mouse
it wasn't being agressive, it seemed a really friendly mouse it just seemed to be trying to eat/scratch it s way into people stuff so i thought I had better stop it

so i put a big contanire over it and assumed that it would die albeit happily due to lack of oxygen. i then eventually looked up what i was doing to it on the net. NOT a nice way to die at all. Very very nasty. So i found mosue cage trap and took it of the container and put it in that. The mouse by this time was breathing very very shallowly and twitching, it offered little attempt to get away.

the container btw was scrubed with mult-surface cleaner inside and out and the washed. i would have used demestos if i could find any.

I feel guilty, i know i shouldn't but i do. if I was at home i would be tempted to buy it a plastic cage and a wheel and stuff and feed it till it dies of old age. here i don't know what to do.

let me explain one thing - i eat meat. i have no problem with killing animals for food. I belive in treating animals well as possible and then killing them so to reduce the distress as much as possible. i wouldn't have minded using a normal baited trap, they look exceedingly efficent at killing. the animal should feel little or no pain and then simply die. But i was making that mouse suffer and to be honest it seemed so tame it could have been a pet. i wish i could give it to the people i'm staying with as a pet but i suspect that's unlikely (i would buy the box etc)

anyhow last i saw the mouse looked somewhat better trying to naw through metal, it's nose looked so cute - but i know that it's vermin and carries disease etc

Ross Ching - really cool movie maker
Ross Ching is part of a new wave of movie makers shooting rebel style on DSLR's such as the Canon 5D mark 2. But he started with a simple point and shoot based Canon Powershot/Rebel. Ross made these movies using an intervilometer.
( Here his new video for Mexican band Jesse and Joy )

( He previously did a video for a death for cuties song - little bribes, that was liked by the band so much that they used it as their official video and it wa released on MTV )

( An HDnet interview with Ross Ching )

( Here he explains the background to his production technique in The Making of Eclectic 2.0 )

I first heard about him via the 'redcentre 39 podcast' by Wingrove and Seymour. His website is here

PS Have a look at his 35mm short: Hunting

Oh S***, - /. points at an article that links swine flu death to obesity
I'm obese, bmi over 40, I recognise what it talks about: from the WHO via bloomberg

"Bloomberg is reporting that the World Health Organization discovered a single, surprising characteristic that's emerged among swine flu victims who become severely ill: They are all fat. Infected people with a body mass index greater than 40 suffer respiratory complications that are harder to treat and can be fatal. The virus appears to be on a collision course with the obesity epidemic. WHO officials are gathering statistics to confirm and understand this development. 'It's very likely that if we went back retrospectively and looked at people who did poorly during seasonal flu, what would shake out is that obesity would be one of the risks.' Fat cells secrete chemicals that cause chronic, low-level inflammation that can hamper the body's immune response and narrow the airways, says Tim Armstrong, a doctor working in the WHO's chronic diseases department in Geneva."

I was wondering about the line from the government about "underlying illness" it sounded like "his heart just stopped working" suggesting a heart attack when a double tap to the head has the same effect.

"Of the first 32 people who died from swine flu in New York City, three-quarters had one or more underlying medical conditions, most often diabetes and heart disease, said Isaac B. Weisfuse, deputy commissioner of disease control at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Of seven with no known medical condition, at least four were reported to be obese, Weisfuse said."

wave looks seriously seriously cool
Warning this is an 80 minutes intro from the google IO conference

( I aim to add comments about it under this cut as i go along )

why I'm an agnostic solipsist
i'm realy really sorry