Notes: Thursday, August 30-Monday, October 8, 2012

1. On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, Ms Gillard launched "Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development", which is an initiative—reportedly a personal one of hers—for propagating Feminism throughout the Pacific Islands at a cost of $320 million (over a decade) to Australian taxpayers, part of which sum will be spent on "reproductive health (including family planning) education, awareness and service programs".

My source for saying that Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development is a "personal initiative" by The Hon. Jullia Gillard M.P. is the article "PM gets lift on way to raise status of women", by Daniel Flitton, dated August 30, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/pm-gets-lift-on-way-to-raise-status-of-women-20120829-2512n.html?skin=text-only

My inference that part of that $320 million will be spent on "reproductive health (including family planning) education, awareness and service programs" follows from the identification, in the "PACIFIC LEADERS GENDER EQUALITY DECLARATION" (Annex 1 to the "43rd Pacific Islands Forum Communique"), of "[e]nsur[ing that] reproductive health (including family planning) education, awareness and service programs receive adequate funding support" as one of the "specific national policy actions to progress gender equality in the areas of gender responsive government programs and policies, decision making, economic empowerment, ending violence against women, and health and education"; one can also infer it from Ms Gillard's media release of Wednesday, August 29, 2012 titled "Addressing gender inequality in the Pacific", which says that

We know that violence against women and poor maternal health outcomes persist in this region.

Promoting gender equality is about addressing these injustices. …

See also this AusAID web-page and the downloadable brochure there:

http://www.ausaid.gov.au/Publications/Pages/brochure-pacific-women-development.aspx

and "‘Shaping Pacific development', speech at the Pacific Islands Forum", given by Ms Gillard, Wednesday, August 29, 2012, downloaded from the "Press Office" section of the Prime Ministerial website:

http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/%E2%80%98shaping-pacific-development-speech-pacific-islands-forum

Labels: abortion, contraception, Julia Gillard

2. "Greater Exposure to Sexual Content in Popular Movies Predicts Earlier Sexual Debut and Increased Sexual Risk Taking"

The quotation in that headline is the title of an article (doi: 10.1177/0956797611435529) by Ross E. O'Hara et al. in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science; that article's abstract is available here:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/9/984

(That article came to my attention via Adam Taor's "PULSE" column on p. 5 of the "HEALTH" section of the "WEEKEND PROFESSIONAL" supplement in The Weekend Australian, September 1-2, 2012, First Edition, No. 14901, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited, a version of which column is available on-line, but behind a paywall, here.)

Labels: films, vice

3. "Israel and Taiwan are the biggest national supporters of trips by Australian politicians, recording 44 and 16 partly or fully funded trips respectively."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "All the little extras in an MP's grab-bag", by Stuart Washington, Tom Allard, Lawrence Bull, and Frances Mao, dated September 1, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/all-the-little-extras-in-an-mps-grabbag-20120831-255mu.html?skin=text-only

(That article came to my attention via the version of it, with the same headline and by the same authors, which was printed on p. 3 of the "News Review" supplement in The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, September 1-2, 2012, No. 54572, ISSN 0312-6315.)

Labels: State of Israel

4. "only 2 per cent of the population is gay"

The quotation in that headline was attributed to "Andrew Grulich, head of HIV epidemiology and prevention programs at the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW," in the article "Suicide a bigger danger to gays: health experts", by Adam Cresswell, dated September 13, 2012, downloaded from The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/suicide-a-bigger-danger-to-gays-health-experts/story-e6frg8y6-1226472976036

For more on the homosexual proportion of the (Australian) population, see the "Sex in Australia" report in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, April 2003, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 103–256, available on-line here, the most relevant—in the present context—parts of which are "Sex in Australia: Sexual identity, sexual attraction and sexual experience among a representative sample of adults" and "Sex in Australia: Homosexual experience and recent homosexual encounters", both of which have Prof. Grulich as one of their co-authors.

(Those "Sex in Australia" U.R.L.s came to my attention via the Frequently Asked Questions page at the Australian Marriage Forum website. (And the Australian Marriage Forum came to my attention via the opinion piece "Gay marriage is not the cure", by Dr. David van Gend, dated Sepember 14, 2012, downloaded from The Australian's website.))

Labels: demography, G.L.B.T.

5. "''When they're younger both men and women tended to aspire to a larger family size. When they were older they tended to revise down their expectations,'' Dr[. Daryl] Higgins[", the deputy director of research at the Australian Institute of Family Studies,"] said."

The quotations in that headline come from the article "Just your average couple: one for mum, one for dad … and none for the country", by Stephanie Gardiner, dated September 14, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/just-your-average-couple-one-for-mum-one-for-dad-8230-and-none-for-the-country-20120913-25v8x.html?skin=text-only

Labels: contraception, demography, families

6. On recent Russo-American relations

See the article "Russia boots US aid out amid accusations of meddling in elections", by Alan Cullison, dated September 21, 2012, and the comment piece "Vladimir Putin doesn't want to be buddies", by Tony Halpin, also dated September 21, 2012, both downloaded from the The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/russia-boots-us-aid-out-amid-accusations-of-meddling-in-elections/story-fnay3ubk-1226478359601

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/vladimir-putin-doesnt-want-to-be-buddies/story-fnb64oi6-1226478312416

Labels: Russia, Vladimir Putin

7. "When [equally ]well-educated families were compared, marriage lifted a child's chance of avoiding poverty by 75 per cent."

The quotation in that headline comes from the article "Stability a big factor in poverty", no by-line, p. 15, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, September 18, 2012, Vol. 1, No. 2646, ISSN 1038-8745, published by Nationwide News Pty. Ltd. That article is not available at the Tele's website, but a longer version of it is available at the British Daily Mail's website under the headline "Growing up with married parents is as important as a good education to escaping poverty", by Simon Caldwell, dated September 16/17, 2012:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204263/Growing-married-parents-important-good-education-escaping-poverty.html

The report on which those articles are based—"Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty", by Mr. Robert Rector for The Heritage Foundation, dated September 5, 2012—is available here:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/marriage-americas-greatest-weapon-against-child-poverty

See also the LifeSiteNews.com article "Marriage is the most effective weapon to fight child poverty, study finds", by Ben Johnson, dated Thursday, September 13, 2012:

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/marriage-is-the-most-effective-weapon-to-fight-child-poverty-study-finds

Labels: marriage, poverty

8. "Bottle-fed infants experienced a 4.6-fold higher risk of PS[, i.e., pyloric stenosis,] compared with infants who were not bottle-fed."

The quotation in that headline comes from the abstract of a Pediatrics article titled "Bottle-feeding and the Risk of Pyloric Stenosis" (doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-2785) by Camilla Krogh et al. That article is available on-line here:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/08/28/peds.2011-2785

(That article came to my attention via the second item in Adam Taor's "PULSE" column on p. 47 of the "HEALTH" section of the "WEEKEND PROFESSIONAL" section in the "SPORT" pages of The Weekend Australian, September 15-16, 2012, First Edition, No. 14913, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited. According to Dr. Taor, pyloric stenosis is "a narrowing of the opening from the stomach to the first part of the small intestine", and it "can cause severe vomiting." (Apparently, that installment of "PULSE" is not available on-line.))

Labels: breastfeeding

9. "Schools in sex education revolution"

The article "Schools in sex education revolution", by Natasha Bita (national social editor for the Sydney Daily Telegraph (among other newspapers?)), dated September 17, 2012 is available at the Tele's website:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sex-educaction-gets-physical/story-e6freuy9-1226475402901

(It came to my attention via the version of it which was published under the heading "Sex ed revolution in schools", by the same author, on p. 03 of the Sydney Daily Telegraph of Monday, September 17, 2012, Vol. 1, No. 2645, ISSN 1038-8745, published by Nationwide News Pty. Ltd.)

See also the article "Puberty lessons to begin in grade five", no by-line, dated September 17, 2012, downloaded from The Sydney Morning Herald's website:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/puberty-lessons-to-begin-in-grade-five-20120917-261yd.html?skin=text-only

Labels: A.C.A.R.A., education, sex ed, vice

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bridget, Widow, A.D. 2012