Girl Day is Fun!
I remember when my dad used to take me to his work for a day. I later would have to make give report in front of my class telling of the adventures while following my dad. Honestly, it was quite boring. He was a university professor and going to work with him was like going to school on a day for fun. In Germany, yesterday was Girl Day. This means that girls went to work in jobs that are male-oriented. This has to be fun. If I were a girl, I would really like to go one day to work as a mechanic, plumber, sailor, contractor or something like that, maybe even a pirate! I think this exercise is really good to prepare men to see women in their work sphere, and also to show girls who want to work in these “male-oriented-work-areas” how they should prepare.
If you are a girl, what job that is “male-oriented” would you most like to try?
Filed Under Modern Life
Endangered species on the menu
![Beer Claw, Tiger Penis[1].jpg](http://www.benettontalk.com/Beer%20Claw%2C%20Tiger%20Penis%5B1%5D.jpg)
The carnivorous Chinese have done it again. The more affluent are outsourcing prized delicacies in the form of endangered animals. More and more exotic animals are making their way onto expensive restaurant menus. The cruelty is unfathomable, it makes one sick. How anyone could treat a fellow living thing in such manner? These wild animals are believed to have medicinal values and the Cantonese are known to ‘eat anything that has four legs and is not a chair and anything that flies and is not an airplane.’
The Chinese’s eating habits have been permanently lodged in their minds. Perhaps education is the key to teach the younger generation how barbaric it is to treat animals as such. I wish for more young activists in China to protest against such cruelties.
Read more.
Filed Under Environment
Anti-graffiti law? I sue you!
Seven young artists sued New York because of its strict anti-graffiti law, saying it violates their constitutional right to free speech. Gabriel Taussig, a lawyer for the city, countered those arguments, saying the law “strikes a proper constitutional balance between the First Amendment rights (to free speech) and the need to control the long-standing plague of graffiti.”
Let’s get one thing straight here. It shouldn’t be illegal to own spray paint, regardless of age. I believe that whole-heartedly. But another thing I believe in is the idea of “personal property.” Because as much as I love street art, there’s a lot of ugly, amatuer work going up on beautiful buildings. And if you really respected the form of street art, then you’d understand that too. Like anything, street art can inspire, but also annoy. It’s illegal for a reason, but that doesn’t stop the true artists.
Leave the law out if it. Stop your whining. Get off your high-horse, and just “get up.”
(artwork by SWOOON, not involved in lawsuit.)
Filed Under Modern Life
Chernobyl: let’s not forget the workers
Looking back at this week’s twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, it seems a little strange for me. Twenty-years isn’t that long ago, but as an American, Chernobyl seems to be very far away.
And what of the survivors? I’m sure it feels like yesterday for them, and perhaps this recent media hoopla of the anniversary brings them closer to some sort of reconciliation or acceptance. Maybe not though.
Last year, for the 19th anniversary, 30 former Chernobyl relief workers went on hunger strike in the Voronezh region.
Nineteenth Russian regions were exposed to radioactive pollution after the Chernobyl tragedy. “If there had been no 260,000 relief workers, the catastrophe would have been much worse,” Kitaev said. He added that in the late 1980s 95 percent of the rescue workers were healthy. At the moment 78.4 percent of them suffer from chronic illnesses. And it seems to be getting worse.
As we remember the Chernobyl catastrophe, let us not forget the living, working, fathers and sons employed at the facility, as well as those relief workers sent in after the tragedy, and their continuing struggle for health, compensation, and welfare.
Filed Under History & traditions
Drank too much? Take this bus
From the students of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya to metropolitan nomads, a bus, called Durmibus will solve the youngster problems during the night. If you drank too much and you can’t drive or there’s any kind of emergency, that place will be a shelter.
There are small capsule-beds (similar to those that are quite common in Japan), showers, acoustic isolation and privacy is a guarantee. The design is curated by good architects, and the bus can go wherever it’s needed: the customer enter, sleep, and leave.
Everybody’s welcome, even though I think I might have a claustrophobia attack in there…
Filed Under Modern Life
And the two princes lived happily ever after
An elementary school teacher is facing parental objection and discontent as he read a Gay fairy tale “King & King” to a class of 7 year olds.
“The crown prince rejects a bevy of beautiful princesses, rebuffing each suitor until falling in love with a prince. The two marry, sealing the union with a kiss, and live happily ever after.”
The debate continues that parents were not informed of the curriculum involving sex education, but the teacher sees that gays should be given equal standing in society. Personally, I agree. If you teach children how to isolate differences and ostracise others who are different, they inevitably grow up narrowminded. This fairy tale could no way increase a child’s chances of turning gay, in fact, it serves to educate and highlight differences in people, breeding less discrimination and disgust.
Filed Under Diversity
From courting to castration
During a session to consider a new sex crimes law in the Kenyan Parliament, a group of Kenyan women lawmakers walked out in protest. The protest took place after the commentaries by the male parliament members which included downgrading comments on the law piece by saying it would make impossible for young men to court women. The law was named a “Pandora’s Box of false accusations” that would destroy Kenyan society. This law has been controversial because of certain clauses, like castration as a punishment for rapists. To understand the need of a new legislation for sex crimes, it is important to understand that in 2003 according to a survey, half of the Keyan women older than 15 had suffered some form of sexual violence. Do you think legislation against sexual crimes in your countries is enough to prevent against sexual violence?
Filed Under Politics