For Halloween this year Miss 2 and I got out my mum's shoulder pads and hoop earrings and cranked up the beats. It was our inaugural "assault the neighbours with 80's music" evening. Miss 2 has taken a liking to Roxette. It was a real hoot! I don't think we'll wait until next Halloween to do this again.
Here's our playlist. Let me know any important people I missed, so i can make sure they're included next time.
Wham- Club Tropicana,& wake me up before you go-go
MJ- Billie Jean,& Beat it
ABC- The look of love
Marvin Gaye- heard it on the grape vine
Alice Cooper- Poison
Culture Club- Karma chameleon
Roxette- dangerous,& It must have been love,& Dressed for success
Billy Joel- uptown girl, & It's still rock and roll to me
The Police- every breath you take,& message in a bottle
Bonnie Tyler- total eclipse of the heart
Run-DMC- It's tricky
Whitney- i wanna dance with somebody
Rick Astley- Never going to give you up
Eurythmics- who's that girl,& sweet dreams
George Micheal- faith
Frankie Goes to Hollywood- relax
Duran Duran- Hungry like the wolf
Finally, because it isn't an 80's night without band aid
Sir Bob Geldof (et. al)- Do They know It's christmas
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Total destruction of my family
I'm not one to hide my feelings and opinions. Sure, I realise there is a time and place to get up on my soap box. I also accept that there is a tactful and respectful approach to pointing out another's fallacious arguments. Catching more bees with honey, so to speak.
Perhaps my patience for believers, misinformed, and non-critical thinkers stems from the fact that not long ago I belonged to that group. In fact, I'm still very much a student of reasonable thinking. Perhaps my compassion for believers, misinformed, and non-critical thinkers is because I'm a fairly sensitive person who knows all too well how it can feel to be brutally shut-down. Perhaps my persistence with the education of believers, misinformed and non-critical thinkers is because I realise that people aren't stupid. It is simply that there are in fact misinformed and non-critically thinking about a topic that they are uneducated about.
However, no amount of patience, compassion or persistence could prepare me for how I felt reading a facebook post on Saturday, and continued to feel ever since. A member of a group of opposing thinkers wished for the 'total destruction' of my family (in fact all members of my group and their families). I was horrified.
Obviously I realise that there is no real threat to my family. What bothers me is the amount of personally directed hatred this man felt. The violence. He hoped to throw household items at us and burn us with acid, among other things. My beautiful little girl. My happy, kind, generous, confident, often demanding little girl? Just because her mother belongs to a group who intellectually disagrees with him?
There may be a layer of pity there too, but mostly it is horror.
History is a broken record of violence stemmed from hatred. All I can hope is that this man is never in the position to act upon these emotions, or to influence others into acting. In fact, I'd like to see him get some serious help. One small mercy is that another member of HIS group had the good conscience to flag his comments, and there have now been removed. Due to the integrity of his peer, my faith in the human-race has been restored.
Perhaps my patience for believers, misinformed, and non-critical thinkers stems from the fact that not long ago I belonged to that group. In fact, I'm still very much a student of reasonable thinking. Perhaps my compassion for believers, misinformed, and non-critical thinkers is because I'm a fairly sensitive person who knows all too well how it can feel to be brutally shut-down. Perhaps my persistence with the education of believers, misinformed and non-critical thinkers is because I realise that people aren't stupid. It is simply that there are in fact misinformed and non-critically thinking about a topic that they are uneducated about.
However, no amount of patience, compassion or persistence could prepare me for how I felt reading a facebook post on Saturday, and continued to feel ever since. A member of a group of opposing thinkers wished for the 'total destruction' of my family (in fact all members of my group and their families). I was horrified.
Obviously I realise that there is no real threat to my family. What bothers me is the amount of personally directed hatred this man felt. The violence. He hoped to throw household items at us and burn us with acid, among other things. My beautiful little girl. My happy, kind, generous, confident, often demanding little girl? Just because her mother belongs to a group who intellectually disagrees with him?
There may be a layer of pity there too, but mostly it is horror.
History is a broken record of violence stemmed from hatred. All I can hope is that this man is never in the position to act upon these emotions, or to influence others into acting. In fact, I'd like to see him get some serious help. One small mercy is that another member of HIS group had the good conscience to flag his comments, and there have now been removed. Due to the integrity of his peer, my faith in the human-race has been restored.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Those beautiful people
Since I don’t think anyone reads this anyway, I’ll going to use my blog as a tool to let of some steam. Today it’s my overwhelming envy of beautiful people. Why is it that the ‘cool’ girl in school could pull her blond hair up in a pony tail and look like a goddess, even when the ‘fly-aways’ start to fall out. I spend at least 10 mins in front of the mirror and I look like I just fell out of an airplane! Maybe 10 minutes just isn’t enough for a plain Jane like me. *sigh* Like I said, jealousy. That is all.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Taking the plunge
It was brought to my attention that conducting a long-winded conversation over twitter is probably not particularly good netiquette. As a result I have started this blog for those times when 140 characters just won't cut it. I have no intention of providing educational, entertaining or informative posts. Having said that, I have come across numerous blogs about people's pet cats, herb gardens and housekeeping tips. So perhaps I'll get the hang of this and surprise myself.
I think at this point it might be polite to properly introduce myself. My twitter bio says:
Skeptic, Mother & Arts student. An advocator for critical thinking & focused on raising my daughter to be a tolerant, reasonable and logical human being
But like I pointed out earlier, 140 characters just isn't enough. So let's expand this a little. I'm Studying a Bachelor of Arts through Griffith University in Brisbane. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I study on-line from the rural New South Wales town of Batemans Bay. I'm hoping that my education will lead to a career in primary school teaching. I hope that I can instill a love of science, literature, arts and a desire for knowledge in the children I have the privilege of teaching. (Though, I'm not completely delusional, I realise there will be those who simply do not listen.)
Madeline, my two year old, is my inspiration. Like any good parent I want to help her in anyway that I can. I want to teach her to be a productive, well adjusted, rational member of society. To succeed in this I think it's important that I set her a good example. In this way Maddie has made me a better person. I could go on about her for hours, but there will be plenty of opportunities to do that in future posts.
Last but not lest, I am a skeptic. I am still a skeptical rookie. I still get my logical fallacies muddled and I often miss SGU podcasts. But it's a far cry from the barefooted, folk festival, vegetarian who only three year ago was enrolled in a Bachelor of Chiropractic Science... so, you hardcore Skeptics, be nice- "Don't be a Dick".
I think I've done it, I might actually have 'blogged'. However, It's now two in the morning, so I guess I should sign off.
Warm Regards to you all. (And exceptionally toasty regards to @bastardsheep , our music related discussions will never be detrimental to your twitter followship again)
Heidi
Link to Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (SGU podcast) http://www.theskepticsguide.org/
Link to Phil Plait - Don't be a Dick. (Speech @ TAM8) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/17/dont-be-a-dick-part-1-the-video/
I think at this point it might be polite to properly introduce myself. My twitter bio says:
Skeptic, Mother & Arts student. An advocator for critical thinking & focused on raising my daughter to be a tolerant, reasonable and logical human being
But like I pointed out earlier, 140 characters just isn't enough. So let's expand this a little. I'm Studying a Bachelor of Arts through Griffith University in Brisbane. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I study on-line from the rural New South Wales town of Batemans Bay. I'm hoping that my education will lead to a career in primary school teaching. I hope that I can instill a love of science, literature, arts and a desire for knowledge in the children I have the privilege of teaching. (Though, I'm not completely delusional, I realise there will be those who simply do not listen.)
Madeline, my two year old, is my inspiration. Like any good parent I want to help her in anyway that I can. I want to teach her to be a productive, well adjusted, rational member of society. To succeed in this I think it's important that I set her a good example. In this way Maddie has made me a better person. I could go on about her for hours, but there will be plenty of opportunities to do that in future posts.
Last but not lest, I am a skeptic. I am still a skeptical rookie. I still get my logical fallacies muddled and I often miss SGU podcasts. But it's a far cry from the barefooted, folk festival, vegetarian who only three year ago was enrolled in a Bachelor of Chiropractic Science... so, you hardcore Skeptics, be nice- "Don't be a Dick".
I think I've done it, I might actually have 'blogged'. However, It's now two in the morning, so I guess I should sign off.
Warm Regards to you all. (And exceptionally toasty regards to @bastardsheep , our music related discussions will never be detrimental to your twitter followship again)
Heidi
Link to Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (SGU podcast) http://www.theskepticsguide.org/
Link to Phil Plait - Don't be a Dick. (Speech @ TAM8) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/17/dont-be-a-dick-part-1-the-video/
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