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A. je stigao nakratko iz Moskve, pa je moj tzv. "drustveni" zivot zivnuo malo; izasli smo par puta, a veceras je pozvan na rijetku zabavu: "fondling my books"--tek sam naknadno primijetila kakva se igra rijeci moze iz toga napraviti, ali necu skretati paznju onima kojima promice. :) On je knjigoman mog intenziteta, ali drugog tipa: ja sam opsjednuta njihovim citanjem, a on njihovim posjedovanjem. Medju mojima ima i raznih raskupusanih jadnica, spasavala sam i polu-spaljene, polu-utopljene, izvakane, razasute, tko-zna-koliko-ruku ih je diralo, samo ako su zbog necega bile zanimljive, rijetke... On voli "djevice", a i one iz druge ruke moraju biti dobro ocuvane. Knjige su mu postrojene kao vojnici--SAVRSENE geometrijske linije, rubovi ostri kao noz, knjige iz pojedinih edicija iskljucivo jedna pored druge--ima jedan cijeli ormar sa zelenosivim Penguinima (britanska edicija, americka je crna), recimo, on ce tako i skupljati knjige bez obzira na naslove, ako mu se neka "collana", edicija svidi (nisam sigurna kako mi to zovemo). Mene bi takva uniformnost polica izludjela--ja mijesam knjige bas zbog toga da bi hrbati dosli do izrazaja i da mi je lakse orijentirati se. No, ove razlike su sitne u poredjenju sa slicnostima naseg ovisnistva: novac i brigu koju nas kostaju, opsesivnost s kojom o njima mislimo, i nelagodu koju osjecamo pred ljudima bez slicnih sklonosti: gotovo kao da bismo se morali ispricavati. Zato, kad smo zajedno, slobodni smo kao djeca. Kada uzme knjigu u ruke, A. je prinese celu, zatim pomirise. Ja isto mirisem knjige--ili bar, primijetim miris. A. najvise zanima filozofija i umjetnost. Ja nemam "specijalnost"... Prica da je bio ljut i tuzan kad je cuo za Derridinu smrt s nekoliko dana zakasnjenja. Donio je role filmova iz Petrograda i Moskve, pregledavali smo ih povecalom. Maltretira ga moskovska policija--lici im na Cecena. |
EJ Bellocq, New Orleans, 1873-1949
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Njegov zivot posluzio je kao osnova ili bolje receno motiv filma "Pretty baby" s dvanaestogodisnjom Brooke Shields. Bio je fotograf, usamljenik, cudak, kazu STRASNO ruzan covjek--patuljak, grbavac, sepavac, sve odjednom--a najvise je volio slikati prostitutke iz Storyvillea, bordello cetvrti belle epoque New Orleansa.  |
LA woman pisala je o ovome... Sto znaci graditi kule od karata (Amerikanci kazu: zamkove na pijesku).  The newly built, $2.5m white house began to slide down a hill after torrential rains hit California in January. |
Izlozba o kojoj sam ranije pisala... "Modigliani, Beyond the Myth" includes masterworks of the artist who dies in 1920 aged 35 of a lung ailment, including portraits of his companion Jeanne Hebuterne, who committed suicide, eight months pregnant, the day after he died. An entire room has been set aside for his drawings of caryatids, female figures used in place of pilasters of columns to support a building. From 1909-1914, he drew and redrew more than 200 variations on the theme he dubbed "columns of tenderness." His "Landscape at Cagnes" marks a rare departure from the human form, and the comprehensive exhibit also reflects the interest of the artist, from a Sephardic family, in the universality of religions and mystical teachings of the Kaballah. He sketched for example St. John the Baptist surrounded by a star of David and a fish, a symbol of early Christians, with the world Jerusalem written plainly to the side. |
Obituary: Ernst Mayr (1904–2005)
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 One Sunday in 1953, my father, a physician and haematologist at Harvard University, invited a newly recruited colleague to lunch at our house. Dad had just launched a study of possible associations between human blood groups and diseases with him. At that time, scientists widely assumed that blood groups were 'selectively neutral' — that is, that they had no effect on human survival. Our guest was an evolutionary biologist who suspected that they must have some effect, perhaps one far removed from blood's familiar functions. Dad and his co-author went on to discover an association between ABO blood groups and stomach cancer, one of the first studies to show that blood groups are indeed influenced by natural selection. The co-author was Ernst Mayr, widely regarded as the greatest evolutionary biologist of the twentieth century, who died on 3 February 2005. When I met Mayr that Sunday, I was a 16-year-old schoolboy. He later inspired me to launch a second career, parallel to my work as a membrane physiologist, on the evolutionary biology of New Guinea birds, his own early speciality. For 30 years he and I collaborated on analysing a mammoth database that he had accumulated on the distributions of island birds. The result was a co-authored 556-page book published soon after his 97th birthday. That Sunday lunch and its consequences illustrate many keys to Mayr's greatness: his capacity for close friendships and collaborations with younger scientists as well as with peers; his broad perspective that let him recognize new significance in the work of many specialists; and his capacity for sustained hard work and complex analysis. The achievements for which Mayr is best known fall into six areas. First, as an ornithologist he was the leading expert on birds of New Guinea and the tropical southwest Pacific; he described more species and subspecies of living birds than anyone else of his or subsequent generations. Second, as a systematist he was a principal architect of what is termed the 'evolutionary synthesis', which finally succeeded in showing how the adaptive changes that natural selection produces in single populations result in the evolution of biodiversity. That synthesis fused the hitherto separate research programmes of geneticists and field naturalists, and explained how evolution has given rise to organisms ranging from microscopic bacteria to redwood trees. In that process lies Mayr's third major achievement, his assembly of overwhelming evidence that most species are not collections of individuals arbitrarily delineated by taxonomists but real entities: "a group of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations reproductively isolated from other such populations", to quote his widely cited formulation. He also demonstrated that new species of birds and mammals arise through allopatric speciation (geographical isolation of initially conspecific populations) — thereby in effect solving the problem of the origin of species that had eluded Charles Darwin despite the title of Darwin's great book. Fourth, as a biogeographer Mayr's studies of a fauna's composition, origins, history and boundaries have served subsequent biogeographers as models for testing their own results. Fifth, as an evolutionary biologist, Mayr traced in detail the combined operation of population genetics and evolutionary processes in diverse phenomena throughout the animal kingdom, as illustrated by the study of blood groups that resulted in my meeting him. Finally, as a historian and philosopher of science, in recent decades Mayr clarified the regularly misunderstood central concepts of biology: teleology; the foundations of biological classification; proximate and ultimate causation; the special problems posed by historical sciences to which experimental methods cannot be applied; and the distinctness (autonomy) of biology as a science. The facts of Mayr's career can be briefly summarized. He was born in Germany on 5 July 1904, at a time when evolution's co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, was still alive. On weekends, his parents took Ernst and his brothers on walks to observe animals, plants and fossils, among which birds in particular kindled his interest. After a rigorous high-school education in Dresden, Ernst obeyed Mayr family expectations by preparing for a medical career and completed his preclinical studies in 1925. However, his observation and careful description of a pair of a rare duck, last recorded in Germany 77 years earlier, led to his introduction to the Berlin ornithologist Erwin Stresemann. Recognizing Mayr's talent, and also his thirst to visit the tropics, Stresemann offered Mayr two irresistible enticements: a position in the Berlin Museum, and prospects of a bird-collecting trip to the tropics, if Mayr could complete an entire PhD programme within 16 months. Mayr accepted the challenge, worked 16 to 18 hours a day to receive his PhD in 1926, and took up the promised museum position. In 1928 Stresemann, now armed with money from Lord Rothschild and from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, delivered on his second promise by sending Mayr to the southwest Pacific for more than two years. The instructions given to Mayr were to explore five New Guinea mountain ranges, to solve the long-standing mystery of New Guinea's apparently rarest birds of paradise (he did, and they proved to be hybrids), and to collect birds on islands in the Solomon group that had been considered too dangerous to visit by previous collectors. Mayr succeeded beyond everyone's expectations. Having re-explored six of those mountain ranges and islands between 1974 and 2004, under the less-threatening conditions of the late twentieth century, I can testify that they are physically gruelling even today. Mayr managed to amass comprehensive bird collections there from 1928 to 1930, despite the perils of diseases, capsized canoes, forced descents of waterfalls and periodic threats of natives to kill him. Soon after his return from New Guinea, in 1931 Mayr was appointed by the AMNH to curate the museum's overflowing collections of Pacific island birds. For the next decade, all of his publications were technical taxonomic studies of birds, giving few signs of his broader interests, until the publication in 1942 of his first book, Systematics and the Origin of Species, which completed the evolutionary synthesis. In 1953, a desire for contact with students and for wider intellectual horizons led Mayr to move to Harvard, as Agassiz Professor of Zoology, where he also served as director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1961 to 1970. Following his official retirement from Harvard in 1975, he continued to publish with undiminished productivity. Fourteen of his 25 books were published after the age of 65, including one of his most important ones, The Growth of Biological Thought, which appeared when he was 78. He celebrated his 100th birthday with the publication of What Makes Biology Unique? in 2004. Whenever I talked to him during his nineties, I would ask him: "How many books are you working on now?" The answer was never less than two nor more than four. What accounted for Mayr's remarkable originality and productivity? I came to realize that there wasn't a single explanation but the combination of a dozen of them — cognitive, organizational, emotional and social. Among the cognitive ones, he had an outstanding memory. When, in 1965, 24 years after the peak of Mayr's work on New Guinea birds, John Terborgh and I asked him to identify the stuffed bird specimens that we had just collected in New Guinea, we saw that, for each of the 1,400 species and subspecies of birds that he had discussed in his 1941 Checklist of New Guinea Birds, Mayr still remembered who had described it — and when and in what journal, its differences from its relatives, and its alternative names. To that memory for facts were allied outstanding visual recall (for example, he was alert to slight subspecific differences between bird specimens seen at different times in different museums) and auditory recall (the ethologist Klaus Immelmann related how, while he and Mayr were sitting on a garden bench in Germany in the 1970s, Mayr correctly identified a brief call note of an unseen bird as a grey wagtail, which he had not encountered since leaving Germany 40 years previously). Mayr was also a quick learner: in the month before he reached New Guinea in 1928, he learned to speak Malay and Neo-Melanesian, to shoot a gun, and to skin and stuff birds. Like Darwin, he was a constantly curious field observer; also like Darwin, his wide interests let him reinterpret the work of specialists, as he did with my father's data on blood groups. In my own collaboration with him, I was struck by his comfort with complexity: unlike many other scientists, he did not force facts into a one-factor explanation, but acknowledged the possibility of different multi-factor outcomes (such as different evolutionary trajectories for different bird populations). Mayr himself spoke of his Sitzfleisch or capacity to stick to a job, just as the composer J. S. Bach attributed his prodigious musical output to mere Fleiss (industriousness). During Mayr's years as a museum director at Harvard, a job that absorbed his daytime hours, he maintained his scientific output by writing each morning from 4:30 until 7:30 a.m., then spending the evening reading. In the 16 months that it took him to complete his PhD by age 21, he took all of the required courses in zoology, learned and passed an exam in botany, completed a minor in philosophy, and researched and wrote his thesis. When he arrived at the AMNH on 20 January 1931, he was given a one-year appointment with the understanding that reappointment would depend on productivity. He published his first paper two months later (a reclassification of kingfisher subspecies based on measuring hundreds of specimens), and finished 11 more papers by the year's end. (That convinced the AMNH to renew his appointment.) Despite not visiting an English-speaking country until his twenties, Mayr mastered English as a second language to the point where his English prose style was widely admired for its clarity. In addition to publishing 25 books and more than 700 papers and directing Harvard's museum for nine years, he designed the AMNH's bird exhibit hall, integrated the Rothschild collection of 280,000 bird specimens into the AMNH collection, and edited the last eight volumes of the Checklist of the Birds of the World (a critical reassessment of all bird taxa down to the subspecies level). Each of those 'additional' achievements was a mammoth undertaking in itself. Mayr was self-confident without being overconfident. And he could change strongly held views when presented with new evidence, as when he abandoned his initially lamarckian belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. His confidence in his abilities included recognition of their limitations: for instance, he resisted friends' suggestions that he expand his 1963 book Animal Species and Evolution to include plants and microorganisms, because of his insufficient familiarity with them. Those limitations also involved mathematics beyond algebra, which he did not use. He maintained a low opinion of the value of the cladistic methods now dominant among taxonomists. That contributed to the distance, in his later years, between his views and those of some other evolutionary biologists now active. They felt that his work belonged to the past; he felt with exasperation that they ignored much of the knowledge already gained in the past. A widespread misconception is that great scientists tend to be loners. Actually, outstanding success in most areas of science requires outstanding social skills, as illustrated by Mayr's relationships with a wide variety of people. He achieved such good understanding with New Guinea and Solomon tribespeople in the 1920s that they not only led him in and out of areas where other Europeans feared being killed, but they also taught him their local names for birds and brought him hundreds of specimens of bird species missed by other European collectors. He once explained to me that a secret of living happily past age 90, after most friends of the same generation have died, is the continued willingness to forge friendships with younger people. All of these qualities contributed to Ernst Mayr's scientific greatness and his productivity. They also lie at the root of the love felt for him by several generations of colleagues and friends. Jared Diamond |
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Robarts Library nosi preko 3500 naslova s tematskom oznakom "Croatia" (ne ukljucujuci nasu beletristiku, mislim). Prvi put citam Cengiceve zapise razgovora s Krlezom (izaslo u nakladi od 10000! Deset tisuca! Na zemlju od 23 milijuna!), uzela sam Jergovica (Historijska citanka, Naci bonton), jos pet-sest iz izdanja Durieuxa... doma ne bih smjela potrositi na sve ove knjige. |
  Warren Russell Leonard and James Joseph Skelly were married yesterday at the Crowne Pointe Inn in Provincetown, Mass. Rachel E. Peters, a justice of the peace, officiated. Mr. Leonard (above, left) is 46. He is the manager of operations for the board of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in New York and the director of development for the ASME Foundation. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University. Mr. Skelly, 54, is the manager of care coordination at the Columbia University Medical Center, part of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He has a diploma in nursing from the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Worcester, Mass., and graduated from Emmanuel College in Boston. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Britanska kraljevska mornarica pocinje kampanju aktivnog regrutiranja homoseksualaca. New Course by Royal Navy: A Campaign to Recruit Gays Pet godina nakon dizanja zabrane homoseksualnosti u vojsci, kraljevska mornarica je zapocela aktivno ohrabrivati pristup gayeva i obavezala se da im olaksa zivot u njoj. U ponedjeljak mornarica je objavila da je zamolila Stonewall, grupu koja lobira za gay prava, da joj pomogne osmisliti strategiju regrutiranja i zadrzavanja gayeva i lezbijki. Takodjer su objavili da bi jedan pristup ukljucio oglasavanje u gay casopisima. [...] Gayevi u Britaniji beneficirali su nizom novih zakona, ukljucujuci onaj kojim se zabranjuje diskriminacija na osnovu seksualne orijentacije na poslu. Prosle godine parlament je prihvatio mjeru o gradjanskom partnerstvu koji daje prava slicna bracnim registriranim gay parovima. Cijela vojska podlijeze ovom zakonu i od jeseni registrirani homoseksualni parovi u vojsci moci ce zatraziti stanove u cetvrtima prethodno rezerviranim za vjencane parove. Beginning in 2000, the military said gays would no longer be prohibited from serving. It also stopped monitoring its recruits' sex lives, saying that sexuality, as long as it did not intrude into the workplace, should not be an issue one way or another. Recently, gay men and women in the British services have lived and fought in Iraq alongside heterosexuals without problems, according to military officials. "I would say that before the European court ruling, it was difficult to see this policy happening or working," said Lt. Cmdr. Craig Jones, a gay naval officer who often speaks publicly, with the navy's approval, on gay rights issues. "People were quite hot under the collar about it; the admirals, generals and air marshals were really concerned," he added. "I'm quite sure that these folks look now and think, 'What was all that fuss about?' " Most European countries, including France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Denmark, have lifted their bans on gays in the military. But Britain, and particularly the navy, has gone further, said Aaron Belkin, director of the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military at the University of California, Santa Barbara. [etc] |
Filmovi! Bonton! Dalmacija u mom oku!
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Daklem, proslog vikenda isla sam na Murnauov "Phantom"--da, jos jedan crnobijeli nijemi film, nikad mi dosta. Svakom svoje--niti ja tjeram nekog na njih, niti moze neko mene povuci na najnoviju ljigu, stajaznam, Meg Ryan ili Toma Hanksa. I, u svojih 20+ godina samostalnog "idjenja" u kino(teke), navikla sam da, u principu, na te nepopularne i/ili starije stvari idu uglavnom ljudi koji ih vole, pa je publika bar sofisticirana (u smislu da znaju sto da ocekuju), mada cesto vrlo mala. Recimo, u Splitu sam redovito na nekim stvarima bila sa--istinu govorim--cetvoro, petoro ljudi... Pretprosle godine, onaj mrzovoljni starac sto propusta znao bi reci nama zalutalima, "Da vidmo oce li jos neko doci, ili projekcije nece biti..." E, u vecim gradovima i posjecenost je bila veca; u NYCju i ovdje u Torontu, ako se ne pojavis bar po sata prije, sjedit ces s nosom uz ekran ili do nekog smrdljivca od koga su svi pobjegli. Kanadjani su, opcenito, vrlo fini ljudi, a ovo je valjda najodgojenija filmska publika u kojoj sam ikad bila. Zato mi je bio ruzan sok, kad se na "Phantomu" pojavio jedan par... Jedan par koji nisam ni pogledala, ali sam ih zato istrpila cijelom duzinom filma, jer su sjeli tocno iza mene. Po glasovima, koji ce me sad pratit do groba, bar sredovjecni. Prijatelji, nista vise: gospodin s nepodnosljivo prodornim brundavim basom i tvrdim akcentom pricao je dobrih deset minuta o svojim internetskim avanturama i kako je upoznao--ZAMISLITE!--neku poliglotnu Poljakinju koja si je "uvrtila" u glavu da je plemkinja. Njegova pratilja cenila je od smijeha. Zapravo--to je bilo najgore--OBOJE su se cerekali CIJELO vrijeme, tokom filma, koji je bio izvrsna melodrama i ni po cemu cerekavo smijesan--nikome osim njima. Da se doda muci, gospodin je toliko zaudarao na duhan, da sam JA to osjecala, sjedeci ispred njih. E, a gospodja se nije dala nadmasiti poljskom plemkinjom, nego je objavila cijeloj dvorani kako je Internet jako dobra stvar i kako ona posebno cijeni mejlove koje je dobila od MARGARET ATWOOD. Da, da, potvrdjuje gospodin, MARGARET ATWOOD je BRILJANTNA, DUHOVITA...SJECAS LI SE KAD...! Onda se pojavio pijanist--nijeme filmove ovdje uvijek prati ziva glazba--i pokazalo se da su novaci, jer su se iznenadili. Odmah sam znala da je gotovo, ali nisam se imala kamo premjestiti... Nakon filma, samo sam se nadala da ih nikad vise necu sresti/cuti. Danas sam isla na "Financije velikog vojvode", koji sam jedva cekala jer je pisalo da je snimljen na "zivopisnoj dalmatinskoj obali". Bilo je puno manje ljudi nego prosli put--film je manje poznat, utorak popodne je, pa je jos napadalo proklete snjegulje... A meni super! Uvalila sam se na dobro mjesto, odahnula, spremila se... I onda zacula ono FATALNO basovsko brundanje, i polupijani kikot... Omajkumunebesku. Je, ovaj put su bili par redova dalje, ali sto to znaci kad se netko niti ne trudi da snizi glas. Ljudi su im opet psikali i sistali, ali sta je raja plebejska spram gospodina u borsalinu i kaputu od kamelhara koji si je na netu naso groficu, a ide u kino s korespondenticom MARGARET ATWOOD. Al dobro. Uzivila sam se u film--divota jedna, samo sam mislila gjde da ga nadjem, pa kako cu istampati kadrove, Dalmacija, more, skune, jedrenjaci, otok, ne znam koji--da li Brac? Pucisca?--ne prepoznajem, a ovo je sve prije Drugog Svjetskog, gledam lica--nasa lica--a onda: SPLIT! PALACA! Peristil! Vocni trg! "A. Matosica: Radnja konopa", neki natpis Schekl... ne vidi se dobro, ali dovoljno da znam da nikog vise tog imena u Splitu nema--uglavnom, kamera miluje grad, luku, Marjan, pa sa Vidilice--prava turisticka brosura... ali OVO je najbolje: kad se prvo pojavila Palaca, onako preko cijelog platna, s Rivom ispred, ona nesnosna koza iza zamjauce: "Florence"... a ja... ma nisam nista glasno rekla, a da sam se mogla prosut onako pred svima... I mislim se, prascadi neodgojena i neobrazovana, pa da se dopisujes s Tolstojem, jebes si i manire i znanje. Jer, ako je vec previse od bilo koga ocekivati da prepozna Split, netko tko se pravi da ZNA kako izgleda Firenca, bar bi morao znati da nema izlaz na more, a da bi onaj blatni potok od Arna mogao primiti jedrenjak samo na kotacima... Firenca! |
Crkva protiv religije
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 Sinoc sam do jedan citala najnoviju biografsku knjigu Karen Armstrong, eskperta za religiju. Bila sam je posudila s nekim specificnim drugacijim ocekivanjima, no ono sto sam nasla ih je premasilo; knjiga je izvrsna, uzbudljiva, originalna. Znala sam otprije da je Armstrongova prvoklasan um, iz ovoga izbija i fenomenalan covjek...Od 1962-e do 1970-e K. A. je bila opatica (nun), a svom redu je pristupila sa 17 godina, na veliku zalost svoje rimokatolicke, no ne posebno pobozne obitelji. U 25oj godini, na drugoj godini faksa (na Oxfordu, studirala je englesku knjizevnost), napustila je red, potpuno razocarana, i pokusala se opet integrirati u svjetovni zivot, kao novopeceni ateist... Izvrstan je opis njenog studija i postdiplomskog, tokom kojeg je zivjela kod jedne ekscentricne, beskrajno simpaticne akademske obitelji ne placajuci stanarinu jer im je pomagala oko autisticnog sina. Ne mogu ovako na brzaka postivati sve nijanse njenog duhovnog razvoja, a svaka je vazna, ali: dakle, mlada Karen osjeca "poziv", no opaticki zivot je konacno porazi besmislenoscu svoje (u mnogocemu okrutne i glupe) discipline i ozbiljno joj ugrozi zdravlje: godinama pati od nesvjestica koje opatice smatraju pukim odrazom njene "melodramaticne", preosjetljive prirode. Sama Karen prihvaca da su to i jos neki simptomi (halucinacije, kratkotrajne amnezije) znak njene dusevne slabosti i mozda sklonosti ludilu, sto je, nevjerojatno, potpomognuto nekolicinom psihijatara kod kojih bespomocno ide, da bi joj 1976-e KONACNO neurolog dijagnosticirao klasicnu epilepsiju temporalnog reznja... Dobija prave lijekove i rijesava se mentalnog balasta straha od ludila i kompleksa o "slabosti". Bitno je i njeno razocarenje "odsustvom Boga", naime, time sto joj se u tih sedam godina nije obratio, nije pojavio, niti su duhovne vjezbe i meditacija pomogle. Nakon prve biografske knjige u kojoj je opisala sedam godina u samostanu, pravi u Izraelu seriju o Isusu za BBC, "Prvi krscanin"; to je pocetak njene karijere pisca i komentatora religije. Boravak u Izraelu cini da shvati kako su krscanska ucenja o judaizmu lazna i nepotpuna, istovremeno se pocinje interesirati za islam--jos uvijek kao agnostik/ateist. Jer, tokom pisanja "Povijest Boga" (njena najuspjesnija knjiga), otkriva da ju je kvazi-religijska PRAKSA dovela u stanje vjere ili religioznosti--da se, kako kaze, moze biti religiozan (ili se mozda samo TAKO zaista moze biti religiozan) ako se ne vjeruje u objektivno postojanje Boga i onih nevjerojatnih ucenja o bezgresnom zacecu, uskrsu itd. Bitna je jako interakcija s jednim rabbijem koji joj isprica anekdotu o rav Hillelu: dosla mu skupina barbara i kazu da ce preuzeti judaizam ako im moze izreci tu vjeru stojeci na jednoj nozi. On digne nogu kao roda i rece: "Ne cini drugome ono sto ne zelis da drugi cini tebi. To je cijela Tora, ostalo su komentari. Sad idite i procitajte." Ali, da, poanta mog naslova: i u ovom slucaju Crkva je paralizirala i onemogucila duhovni razvoj umjesto da ga potakne, jer je Crkva prije svega jedna politicka organizacija koja hlepi za politickom i ekonomskom moci i kao takva razara daleko vise nego sto stvara. |
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Andersenova "Venskabs-Pagten" na engleskom: The Bond of Friendship. Zao mi je, ne mogu naci komentar koji je pratio izdanje koje sam citala. |
Govor kanadskog premijera Paula Martina o prijedlogu zakona o braku
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ADDRESS BY PRIME MINISTER PAUL MARTIN ON BILL C-38 (THE CIVIL MARRIAGE ACT) I rise today in support of Bill C-38, the Civil Marriage Act. I rise in support of a Canada in which liberties are safeguarded, rights are protected and the people of this land are treated as equals under the law. This is an important day. The attention of our nation is focused on this chamber, in which John Diefenbaker introduced the Bill of Rights, in which Pierre Trudeau fought to establish the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Our deliberations will be not merely about a piece of legislation or sections of legal text - more deeply, they will be about the kind of nation we are today, and the nation we want to be. This bill protects minority rights. This bill affirms the Charter guarantee of religious freedom. It is that straightforward, Mr. Speaker, and it is that important. And that is why I stand today before members here and before the people of this country to say: I believe in, and I will fight for, the Charter of Rights. I believe in, and I will fight for, a Canada that respects the foresight and vision of those who created and entrenched the Charter. I believe in, and I will fight for, a future in which generations of Canadians to come, Canadians born here and abroad, will have the opportunity to value the Charter as we do today - as an essential pillar of our democratic freedoms. There have been a number of arguments put forward by those who do not support this bill. It's important and respectful to examine them and to assess them. First, some have claimed that, once this bill becomes law, religious freedoms will be less than fully protected. This is demonstrably untrue. As it pertains to marriage, the government's legislation affirms the Charter guarantee: that religious officials are free to perform such ceremonies in accordance with the beliefs of their faith. In this, we are guided by the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada, which makes clear that in no church, no synagogue, no mosque, no temple - in no religious house will those who disagree with same-sex unions be compelled to perform them. Period. That is why this legislation is about civil marriage, not religious marriage. Moreover -- and this is crucially important - the Supreme Court has declared unanimously, and I quote: "The guarantee of religious freedom in section 2(a) of the Charter is broad enough to protect religious officials from being compelled by the state to perform civil or religious same-sex marriages that are contrary to their religious beliefs." The facts are plain: Religious leaders who preside over marriage ceremonies must and will be guided by what they believe. If they do not wish to celebrate marriages for same-sex couples, that is their right. The Supreme Court says so. And the Charter says so. One final observation on this aspect of the issue: Religious leaders have strong views both for and against this legislation. They should express them. Certainly, many of us in this House, myself included, have a strong faith, and we value that faith and its influence on the decisions we make. But all of us have been elected to serve here as Parliamentarians. And as public legislators, we are responsible for serving all Canadians and protecting the rights of all Canadians. We will be influenced by our faith but we also have an obligation to take the widest perspective -- to recognize that one of the great strengths of Canada is its respect for the rights of each and every individual, to understand that we must not shrink from the need to reaffirm the rights and responsibilities of Canadians in an evolving society. The second argument ventured by opponents of the bill is that government ought to hold a national referendum on this issue. I reject this - not out of a disregard for the view of the people, but because it offends the very purpose of the Charter. The Charter was enshrined to ensure that the rights of minorities are not subjected, are never subjected, to the will of the majority. The rights of Canadians who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers. These rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority. We embrace freedom and equality in theory, Mr. Speaker. We must also embrace them in fact. Third, some have counseled the government to extend to gays and lesbians the right to "civil union." This would give same-sex couples many of the rights of a wedded couple, but their relationships would not legally be considered marriage. In other words, they would be equal, but not quite as equal as the rest of Canadians. Mr. Speaker, the courts have clearly and consistently ruled that this option would offend the equality provisions of the Charter. For instance, the British Columbia Court of Appeal stated that, and I quote: "Marriage is the only road to true equality for same-sex couples. Any other form of recognition of same-sex relationships ...falls short of true equality." Put simply, we must always remember that "separate but equal" is not equal. What's more, those who call for the establishment of civil unions fail to understand that the Government of Canada does not have the constitutional jurisdiction to do so. Only the provinces have that. Only the provinces could define such a regime - and they could define it in 10 different ways, and some jurisdictions might not bother to define it at all. There would be uncertainty. There would be confusion. There would certainly not be equality. Fourth, some are urging the government to respond to the decisions of the courts by getting out of the marriage business altogether. That would mean no more civil weddings for any couples. It is worth noting that this idea was rejected by the major religions themselves when their representatives appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in 2003. Moreover, it would be an extreme and counterproductive response for the government to deny civil marriage to opposite-sex couples simply so it can keep it from same-sex couples. To do so would simply be to replace one form of discrimination with another. Finally, Mr. Speaker, there are some who oppose this legislation who would have the government use the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights to override the courts and reinstate the traditional definition of marriage. And really, this is the fundamental issue here. Understand that in seven provinces and one territory, the lawful union of two people of the same sex in civil marriage is already the law of the land. The debate here today is not about whether to change the definition of marriage - it's been changed. The debate comes down to whether we should override a right that is now in place. The debate comes down to the Charter, the protection of minority rights, and whether the federal government should invoke the notwithstanding clause. I know that some think we should use the clause. For example, some religious leaders feel this way. I respect their candor in publicly recognizing that because same-sex marriage is already legal in most of the country, the only way - the only way - to again make civil marriage the exclusive domain of opposite-sex couples is to use the notwithstanding clause. Ultimately Mr. Speaker, there is only one issue before this House in this debate. For most Canadians, in most parts of our country, same-sex marriage is already the law of the land. Thus, the issue is not whether rights are to be granted. The issue is whether rights that have been granted are to be taken away. Some are frank and straightforward and say yes. Others have not been so candid. Despite being confronted with clear facts, despite being confronted with the unanimous opinion of 134 legal scholars, experts in their field, intimately familiar with the Constitution, some have chosen to not be forthright with Canadians. They have eschewed the honest approach in favour of the political approach. They have attempted to cajole the public into believing that we can return to the past with a simple snap of the fingers, that we can revert to traditional definition of marriage without consequence and without overriding the Charter. They're insincere. They're disingenuous. And they're wrong. There is one question that demands an answer - a straight answer - from those who would seek to lead this nation and its people. It is a simple question: Will you use the notwithstanding clause to overturn the definition of civil marriage and deny to Canadians a right guaranteed under the Charter? This question does not demand rhetoric. It demands clarity. There are only two legitimate answers - yes or no. Not the demagoguery we have heard, not the dodging, the flawed reasoning, the false options. Just yes or no. Will you take away a right as guaranteed under the Charter? I, for one, will answer that question, Mr. Speaker. I will answer it clearly. I will say no. The notwithstanding clause is part of the Charter of Rights. But there's a reason that no prime minister has ever used it. For a prime minister to use the powers of his office to explicitly deny rather than affirm a right enshrined under the Charter would serve as a signal to all minorities that no longer can they look to the nation's leader and to the nation's Constitution for protection, for security, for the guarantee of their freedoms. We would risk becoming a country in which the defence of rights is weighed, calculated and debated based on electoral or other considerations. That would set us back decades as a nation. It would be wrong for the minorities of this country. It would be wrong for Canada. The Charter is a living document, the heartbeat of our Constitution. It is also a proclamation. It declares that as Canadians, we live under a progressive and inclusive set of fundamental beliefs about the value of the individual. It declares that we all are lessened when any one of us is denied a fundamental right. We cannot exalt the Charter as a fundamental aspect of our national character and then use the notwithstanding clause to reject the protections that it would extend. Our rights must be eternal, not subject to political whim. To those who value the Charter yet oppose the protection of rights for same-sex couples, I ask you: If a prime minister and a national government are willing to take away the rights of one group, what is to say they will stop at that? If the Charter is not there today to protect the rights of one minority, then how can we as a nation of minorities ever hope, ever believe, ever trust that it will be there to protect us tomorrow? My responsibility as Prime Minister, my duty to Canada and to Canadians, is to defend the Charter in its entirety. Not to pick and choose the rights that our laws shall protect and those that are to be ignored. Not to decree those who shall be equal and those who shall not. My duty is to protect the Charter, as some in this House will not. Let us never forget that one of the reasons that Canada is such a vibrant nation, so diverse, so rich in the many cultures and races of the world, is that immigrants who come here - as was the case with the ancestors of many of us in this chamber - feel free and are free to practice their religion, follow their faith, live as they want to live. No homogenous system of beliefs is imposed on them. When we as a nation protect minority rights, we are protecting our multicultural nature. We are reinforcing the Canada we value. We are saying, proudly and unflinchingly, that defending rights - not just those that happen to apply to us, not just that everyone approves of, but all fundamental rights - is at the very soul of what it means to be a Canadian. This is a vital aspect of the values we hold dear and strive to pass on to others in the world who are embattled, who endure tyranny, whose freedoms are curtailed, whose rights are violated. Why is the Charter so important, Mr. Speaker? We have only to look at our own history. Unfortunately, Canada's story is one in which not everyone's rights were protected under the law. We have not been free from discrimination, bias, unfairness. There have been blatant inequalities. Remember that it was once thought perfectly acceptable to deny women "personhood" and the right to vote. There was a time, not that long ago, that if you wore a turban, you couldn't serve in the RCMP. The examples are many, but what's important now is that they are part of our past, not our present. Over time, perspectives changed. We evolved, we grew, and our laws evolved and grew with us. That is as it should be. Our laws must reflect equality not as we understood it a century or even a decade ago, but as we understand it today. For gays and lesbians, evolving social attitudes have, over the years, prompted a number of important changes in the law. Recall that, until the late 1960s, the state believed it had the right to peek into our bedrooms. Until 1977, homosexuality was still sufficient grounds for deportation. Until 1992, gay people were prohibited from serving in the military. In many parts of the country, gays and lesbians could not designate their partners as beneficiaries under employee medical and dental benefits, insurance policies or private pensions. Until very recently, people were being fired merely for being gay. Today, we rightly see discrimination based on sexual orientation as arbitrary, inappropriate and unfair. Looking back, we can hardly believe that such rights were ever a matter for debate. It is my hope that we will ultimately see the current debate in a similar light; realizing that nothing has been lost or sacrificed by the majority in extending full rights to the minority. Without our relentless, inviolable commitment to equality and minority rights, Canada would not be at the forefront in accepting newcomers from all over the world, in making a virtue of our multicultural nature - the complexity of ethnicities and beliefs that make up Canada, that make us proud that we are where our world is going, not where it's been. Four years ago, I stood in this House and voted to support the traditional definition of marriage. Many of us did. My misgivings about extending the right of civil marriage to same-sex couples were a function of my faith, my perspective on the world around us. But much has changed since that day. We've heard from courts across the country, including the Supreme Court. We've come to the realization that instituting civil unions - adopting a "separate but equal" approach - would violate the equality provisions of the Charter. We've confirmed that extending the right of civil marriage to gays and lesbians will not in any way infringe on religious freedoms. And so where does that leave us? It leaves us staring in the face of the Charter of Rights with but a single decision to make: Do we abide by the Charter and protect minority rights, or do we not? To those who would oppose this bill, I urge you to consider that the core of the issue before us today is whether the rights of all Canadians are to be respected. I believe they must be. Justice demands it. Fairness demands it. The Canada we love demands it. Mr. Speaker: In the 1960s, the government of Lester Pearson faced opposition as it moved to entrench official bilingualism. But it persevered, and it won the day. Its members believed it was the right thing to do, and it was. In the 1980s, the government of Pierre Trudeau faced opposition as it attempted to repatriate the Constitution and enshrine a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But it persevered, and it won the day. Its members believed it was the right thing to do, and it was. There are times, Mr. Speaker, when we as Parliamentarians can feel the gaze of history upon us. They felt it in the days of Pearson. They felt it in the days of Trudeau. And we, the 308 men and women elected to represent one of the most inclusive, just and respectful countries on the face of this earth, feel it today. There are few nations whose citizens cannot look to Canada and see their own reflection. For generations, men and women and families from the four corners of the globe have made the decision to chose Canada to be their home. Many have come here seeking freedom -- of thought, religion and belief. Seeking the freedom simply to be. The people of Canada have worked hard to build a country that opens its doors to include all, regardless of their differences; a country that respects all, regardless of their differences; a country that demands equality for all, regardless of their differences. If we do not step forward, then we step back. If we do not protect a right, then we deny it. Mr. Speaker, together as a nation, together as Canadians: Let us step forward. |
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Koji zivi ocaj vijesti iz Hrvatske. Rekordni vanjski dug, 81% GDPa (onaj stare ex-Yu nije presao vise od 25%, ali ta drzava nije bila na prodaju), Gotovina se ne predaje ni po cijenu pada ugovora u ulasku u EU, ta neopisiva popovska sranja o umjetnoj oplodnji, to licemjerstvo, neukost, barbarstvo i kriminalno diskriminiranje zena i homoseksualaca--a sve zacinjeno guzicama srednjoskolski iz Srbije (valjda da se pohvalimo kako nase dobre male katolkinje svoje ne vjesaju po Internetu?) i lajavom hajkom na gejeve. Bijednog li kruha, prostackih li igara i bijednih li prostaka koji od TOGA zive. |
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Najpopularniji Danac, Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen je bio homoseksualac. Jedna od njegovih prica koju niste imali prilike procitati opisuje vjencanje dva muskarca na Balkanu (u Crnoj Gori, koliko se sjecam) obred kojem je Andersen prisustvovao i koji ga je duboko taknuo. |
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Razuzdane srpske srednjoskolke? "Gay imenici" u trista verzija na deset linkova? Petparacko smece kojim se podilazi najbenavijim idiotima, da bi se pametni imali cemu zgrazati. E, da, pogrijesila sam i bacila oko na Monitor.hr. Malo je kasno za potpuni odlazak, prirasli mi srcu neki ljudi, ali odsad cu se cuvati tih naslovnica. |
Kupila sam karte za cijelu gomilu filmova F. W. Murnau-a. Odgledala: "Der letzte Mann", "Sunrise" (opet), "Faust" i "Schloss Vogelod". "Faust" je predivan, s fenomenalnim Emilom Janningsom kao Mefistom.  |
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Zanimljiv clanak o jednoj spisateljici koju jako volim, Marguerite Yourcenar: BECOMING THE EMPEROR. |
Nachtfresserov me komentar podsjetio na likove iz djecjih zabavnih programa, sto crtanih, sto lutkarskih, koje su americki "cuvari morala" dosad prokazali kao nepodobne. To im je omiljena zanimacija, svake godine neki novi jadni crtic bude ocrnjen. Najnovija zrtva: SquareBob Spongepants, lik koji je: kuhinjska spuzva. Optuzba: gay je. Zasto: jer ponekad drzi ruke s najboljim prijateljem, a i inace nesto pocesto crtic prica o prijateljstvu i toleranciji. To izgleda ni u ludilu nisu "krscanske" vrijednosti. Prijasnje zrtve: Tinky Winky (ljubicast--"gay" boje su, zna se, sve nijanse rozih i ljubicastih; neodredjenog spola, nosi torbicu), likovi iz Sesame Streeta (isto sve neka seksualno-neopredijeljena tolerancija i opca ljubav), pa cak i nepodnosljivi Barney, ljubicasti dinosaur koji meni osobno vise baca na kanibalskog pedofila. Javnost se uglavnom dobro iscereka tokom ovih "skandala", ali pitas se kako odrastaju djeca tih konzervativaca koji pale Harryja Pottera i gase Muppete i "Ulicu Sezama". |
Ruzicasti zeke
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Muci me jedna prava glupost. Kupila sam necaku (3.5 mjeseca) papucice sa zecjim glavama, izgleda kao da nosis zeke, imaju duge usi i sve. Papucice su tamno roze--samo takvih je bilo sa zecevima, a oni su mi ono bas zapali za oko. Bile su jedne zuto-plave sa zvijezdama--skroz nezanimljive. Bila sam prosla ispred izloga puno puta, svaki put "pozdravljajuci" te zeke, ali mislila sam kako moj brat i zaova vjerojatno ne bi htjeli decku kupiti roze papucice, pa sam oklijevala. Bio je cijeli red tih papucica i kako sam gledala kako nestaju, kad je doslo do zadnjeg para, ja kupim te zadnje zeke. Nemate pojma kako su slatki. A kako su bas za male bebe (do 6 mjeseci), mislila sam, ma daj, pa valjda nece biti bas takve seljacine, bebac je malecki, sta ga briga... I tako sam ih poslala i samo zamolila da ga bar jednom slikaju u njima, jer su pre-sla-tke, i... ne znam, nece. Da se ne bi "momak" okuzio "zenskom" bojom, valjda. |
Zoo tempts gay penguins to go straight A German zoo has imported four female penguins from Sweden in an effort to tempt its gay penguins to go straight. The four Swedish females were dispatched to the Bremerhaven Zoo in Bremen after it was found that three of the zoo's five penguin pairs were homosexual. Keepers at the zoo ordered DNA tests to be carried out on the penguins after they had been mating for years without producing any chicks. It was only then they realised that six of the birds were living in homosexual partnerships. Director Heike Kueck said that the zoo hoped to see some baby penguins in the coming months. She said that the birds had been mating for years and one couple even adopted a stone that they protected like an egg. Kueck said that the project has the support of the European Endangered Species Programme because the penguins, which are native to South America, are an endangered species. A biologist will be on hand to monitor the experiment. But introducing the Bremerhaven penguins to their new Swedish friends may not be as successful as hoped after earlier experiments revealed great difficulties in separating homosexual couples. In case they show no interest, the zoo has also flown in two new male penguins "so that the ladies don't miss out altogether", Kueck added. |
MARDI GRAS!
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Danas je Debeli Utorak. Slike iz jednog od mojh bivsih gradova na ovom linku: New Orleans Carnival Photos from 2005 Boje karnevala (i sluzbene boje New Orleansa):  Ta lutkica je "King Cake Baby", umijesi se u tradicionalni kolac karnevala i tko je pronadje u svom komadu mora dati sljedecu King Cake zabavu.  |
UN panel criticize eight countries for maintaining sexist laws
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UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- A UN panel in charge of promoting women's rights said on Thursday that Italy, Algeria and six other countries still maintain sexist laws and have lots of stereotypes of the inferior woman. The countries which submitted reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for scrutiny were Algeria, Croatia, Gabon, Italy, Laos, Paraguay, Samoa and Turkey. The committee gave the countries detailed recommendations on how to revise specific laws, increase the number of women in public office, provide scholarship to women for training in non-traditional fields and train law enforcement and health care workers on supporting female victims of violence. "There was no state in which the committee could say women's dejure equality has been achieved," CEDAW chair Rosario Manolo told a press briefing in New York. "Discriminatory laws remain on the books everywhere and there is a lack of legislation adequately to protect women from violations of their human rights or the impact of a neutral law that is discriminatory of women," she said. In all eight countries, negative female stereotypes were found throughout society, "whether it is traditional practices, or patriarchal structures, or attitudes about women's and men's proper roles in the family and in society," she said. All the governments had significant additional work ahead to abolish prejudicial laws, customs and practices and to mount information campaigns about women's rights, especially in employment and education. Women were often unaware of their rightsand of existing mechanisms for getting redress, Manolo said. |
Dvadeset-osmogodisnja Ellen Macarthur postavila je novi rekord u solo jedrenju oko svijeta, i postala najmladja pocasna Lady (ili Lord) u povijesti par sati nakon zavrsetka plovidbe.   |
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Women at work Pakistan's traditional ways have blocked many women's careers in science. But, as Ehsan Masood discovers, women are now fighting for their rights, both in life and in research. "When I was doing my PhD, my husband and children would come to the department if I wanted to stay after 9 p.m.," recalls Zahida Maqsood, a professor of chemistry at the University of Karachi. This wasn't just to keep her company; nor to hassle her to come home and cook. In most Pakistani families, women are simply not allowed to work late alone, or to socialize after work with male colleagues. Even today, some 25 years since Maqsood's graduation, things are much the same. "If my students want to stay late, their families come and wait for them outside on the lawn," says Shakeel Farooqi, assistant professor of genetics at Karachi. But the winds of change are beginning to stir. Secular women's liberation movements have had very little impact in Pakistan. But the country, like many predominantly Muslim states, is witnessing the birth of Islamic feminism, in which women are demanding rights that they say Islam accords to them. It is being fuelled in part by more women going to schools and universities, and also by a generation of women evangelists such as Farhat Hashmi, founder of the worldwide Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation, which teaches women about Islam. Hashmi's lectures draw crowds of up to 10,000 women. Employment rights M. SEDDIQUI, PANOS To love, honour and assay: chemist Shazia Anjum had a clause put in her marriage contract allowing her to continue working. The effects are being felt throughout the country — including in its labs. Chemist Shazia Anjum, for example, is using her Muslim marriage contract to ensure that her science career moves forward. When she married she insisted upon a 'right to work' clause that would prevent her husband or his family from stopping her getting a job. Such legally binding, bespoke clauses are allowed in Muslim marriages, and can be inserted by the bride or groom; a woman may ask to be paid for her housework, for example. But a combination of low levels of female literacy and established social conventions mean that few of Pakistan's women are aware of these rights. Even fewer would think of using them. For Anjum, it has made possible her assistant professorship in chemistry at the International Centre for Chemical Sciences at the University of Karachi. Some, including a former head of Pakistan's Medical Research Council, claim to have had even fewer problems advancing their professional lives. Tasleem Akhtar comes from the North-West Frontier province, which is governed by an alliance of Islamic parties and is better known in the West for its role in nurturing the Taliban. Yet she still made it to the top job in medical research without, as she puts it, "needing to play golf with the minister for health". She claims never to have felt the cold pressure of a glass ceiling; nor did she find opposition from within her own family. "I was allowed to study in the United Kingdom, no problem," she says. "Instead of being forced to marry, daughters from poor families are often encouraged to get an education and earn a living for the rest of the family. It is in lower- and upper-middle-class families where you find the pressure to marry instead." Although Anjum and Akhtar's experiences are a sign of changing times, many cultural barriers remain. Women rarely live alone in Pakistan, unless they are widowed or divorced. Most live instead in extended families, in which parents, husbands and brothers often have the final say in decisions affecting their lives. Women cannot apply for a university place, a public-sector job or even a passport without completing a section on an application form that asks them for details of their father or husband. Most are forbidden by families to travel long distances without a male escort. Few drive cars beyond the limits of a handful of large cities and none ride bicycles or motorbikes on public roads. Women cannot marry without the written consent of a male, usually their father. Liberal attitude This kind of life may look painfully restrictive to Western eyes, but women's rights is now a cause with top-level backing from no less than President Pervez Musharraf and the chairman of Pakistan's Higher Education Commission, Atta-ur-Rahman, who was Anjum's PhD supervisor. Some of this support comes in the form of minor initiatives, such as encouraging higher-education institutions to provide women-only transport to ferry them safely home late at night. Other actions are much more significant. Musharraf, for example, has piloted a new law that formally recognizes 'honour killings' as a crime in their own right — punishable by death or life imprisonment. The killings, in which families in some rural areas punish women with death if, for example, they marry without permission or have premarital sex, results in about 1,000 deaths every year. The statistics for girls in schools and universities are also improving. In 1991, women accounted for one in five of the 60,000 students in the country's public universities. By 2001, their numbers had reached a third of the student population of 118,000. Pakistan's overall efforts in science are on the increase, too. The country's military dictatorships have historically been more generous to scientists than civilian administrations have been, and the Musharraf regime is no different. Science spending has multiplied 60-fold since 1999 and a major programme is under way to upgrade laboratories and boost the numbers of PhDs (see Nature 432, 273–274; 2004). The results of these changes can be seen at the universities in Pakistan's larger cities. At the Usman Institute of Technology in Karachi, a dozen researchers — male and female, young and old — gather to discuss these developments, and how women can make their voices heard in science. Anjum attends, dressed in what has become the international uniform of Muslim feminism: a long, loose-fitting coat and hijab, the scarf that covers hair and head. But she is silent at the beginning of the two-hour meeting. Girls from most Pakistani households are mostly not encouraged to voice opinions in public; in addition, a tradition of deference and respect for older people means that they are unlikely to disagree with the views of senior colleagues present around the table. The ice only really beings to melt when the group gets on to the question of women needing the permission of a male relative to stay late in the lab. Most of the women acknowledge that they cannot work late without the consent of their parents, husbands or in-laws. The men nod in agreement. Solo projects Such attitudes present a significant obstacle to researchers working in rural or remote parts of the country. These places may provide a gold-mine of unexplored opportunities for research in areas such as geology and geophysics, hydrology and biological diversity. But university research managers are wary of assigning such projects to women. For this reason, says Nayyer Alam Zaigham, a geologist at the University of Karachi, his department has produced just one female PhD in seismology in the past 50 years. "In North America or Europe, you may be able to travel alone," he says. "But in my country, women have to be accompanied. It's a social thing. I cannot send women out to remote areas on their own. I cannot always go with them. And I cannot always arrange an escort. This is a big problem." Quddusi Kazmi, director of the Marine Reference Collection at the University of Karachi, has plenty of experience of men telling her what she can and cannot do. When she was a student contemplating a research career in marine zoology, she says, one of her professors told her: "We can't allow a lady to do marine zoology. You have to go to the field. You have to go to the sea at odd times. Will your parents allow this?" Kazmi got her degree anyway, although she says that she will never be allowed to learn how to swim or dive to assist her research. Bathing in public is considered immodest for women, and publicly funded women-only swimming does not exist anywhere in Karachi, she says. While she was doing her degree, collecting specimens meant wading out to sea at low tide and rushing back to shore before the tide came in. "We would feel awkward," she recalls. "People would stare at us as if we were animals." These days, she has to hire fieldmen to do the actual collection. The good news is that the percentage of female university lecturers has been steadily rising — from 13% in 1990 to 24% in 2002. The female student population of the two largest universities is high: 67% in Karachi and 50% at the University of the Punjab. Even at universities in the more rural provinces of Sindh and Balochistan, one third of the students are women. It will be tough to get women into an equal position in the lab, admits Rahman. From their earliest years, men and women are discouraged from mixing, he notes. Even in public places, men and women automatically line up in separate queues, and public transport tends to be segregated. But Rahman is convinced that mixed labs are better for research. Having women work alongside men, he says, leads to obvious improvements in the atmosphere of a lab or research institution. "It does a lot of good. We find that men behave better, dress better and are more punctual," he says. Rahman's director of public relations, Mamoona Amjed, who is sitting in on the interview, breaks into a laugh when she hears this and asks jokingly whether the comment applies to the minister himself. The fact that a Pakistani female civil servant (admittedly, a senior one) can tease a minister in the presence of a journalist is a small sign, perhaps, that life for tomorrow's women may be easier than for those of yesterday. |
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Update mog znanstveno-opatickog zivota svodi se na jedno: eksperimenti. Prijedlog za novi grant. Student "sad-ga-vidis, sad-ga-ne-vidis", razumijem ga, okupiran je bebom, ali opet... imamo i mi neke deadlinese... Bila u Cinematheque na "It came from outer space", u 3-D, dobra zabava.  Ovih dana citam o Strindbergu, i njegovu autobiografsku prozu. Fascinantan lik. |
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Tek sad vidim da mi je ovo g**** od sitea pojelo prosle postove, o Munchu, Modiglianiju itd. Zao mi je vasih komentara. Dva puta sam kliknula na "Upute za vracanje izgubljenih postova" i oba puta me g**** od sitea nogiralo skroz van. Mozda kasnije. |
Godina Pijetla
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Isprintaj -
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Ovom nesretniku nece biti dobra--doveli su ga na klanje. Preksutra pocinje kineska nova godina, u znaku Pijetla, s ovakvom prognozom.   |