12 Years a Slave

Best movie at the Oscars: 12 Years a Slave. We had planned on seeing it in Newtown today. It would have involved taking a very early train to Sydney. However, we did find out this morning that this movie is already being shown in our local cinema. There is a session at 12,15. So we decided we are going to see it here in our neighbouring suburb this afternoon.

Peter had already informed our children via Facebook that we would be all day in Sydney. He also pointed out that they would not be able to reach him via mobile phone the reason being that he cannot find the phone. The other day when he went out for a run and I was out too, he hid the phone in a secure place so the robbers would not be able to find it. Now he cannot find his phone any more!

While he was looking for his phone, he found his new watch which he had also been hiding in a secure place and could not find for a few days. The problem is, Peter tends to hide his valuables in different spots all the time, instead of just sticking to the same spots which would then be easier to remember. I happen to know a few of his hiding places. But I have not idea where his mobile phone could be. By now we looked everywhere and we just cannot find it.

I do not own a mobile phone of course. I am happy to just use our house phone.

Please have a look here what it says here about the book and the movie: 12 Years a Slave:

http://www.dw.de/for-new-yorker-12-years-a-slave-is-personal/a-17404840

Arguments

Berlioz says a discussion with a female may turn into an argument about male/female relationships the female thinking that the male wants to win a point over the female. So Berlioz says that of course males do want to win the point, but on its merits and not in order to put the female participant down.

Cam anyone please tell me, what this argument is about? Well, of course it concerns male/female relationships. But what is the argument actually about and what kind of points do males want to win? Do males ever let a female win an argument?

I started the discussion a few days ago with:

Are we Equals?

22FEB

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/no-sex-please-were-equals-20140217-32umo.html

I just read the above article in the Sydney Morning Herald. It is an edited version of an article first published in The New York Magazine.

So I am asking myself now can married couples be equals? The answer is of course, sure, they can be equals. However in a sexual way they definitely cannot be equals unless they are happy to live more or less in a kind of sibling relationship.

I think the French did get it right a long time ago: Viva la difference!

Apologies to the Author

I did get the following from a reply to:

About

Crossborder Operational Matters

posted February 1, 2014 at 10:21 am by d0tski

I do not know how to contact d0tski to get his permission to reblog. I did find what he wrote an excellent contribution. I wished I was articulate and knowledgeable enough to write something similar myself. d0tski wrote this:

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately:

Polling shows that 59% of people polled do NOT believe that most asylum seekers who arrive by boat are genuine refugees. Only 30% believed that most boat arrivals are genuine refugees.
Now, those of us who get our news from someone other than Murdoch know this not to be true. We know that greater than 90% of people who arrive by boat will later (much later), be recognised as ‘genuine refugees’.

Of the 1000 people surveyed, 60% felt that boat-arrivals should be treated more harshly.

59% of those surveyed felt that boat-arrivals should not receive financial government assistance.

All these figures tell us that the majority of Australians have no idea who is on these boats. No concept of the types of persecution they are fleeing. No idea that there is no ‘queue’ for asylum seekers to be processed and re-settled. They don’t realise that (for example), in 2011, only 0.7% of the worlds refugees were resettled. These figures also show us that people do not know, or do not believe, that the conditions on Manus and Nauru are tantamount to torture.

Personally, I refuse to believe that people don’t care. I’m convinced that the problem is that people DON’T KNOW.

This needs to change. Television shows such as those shown on the ABC’s “4 Corners”, and SBS’ “Go Back To Where You Came From” are great. I always watch them. But truly, they are preaching to the choir.
Add to that the fact that it is nigh-on impossible to get decent reportage out of these places. Successive governments have made it increasingly difficult for us to know what is going on. For the Abbott government, it’s pretty much their modus operandi.

How do you get the rest of Australia to listen and learn? I don’t know. If we knew that, we wouldn’t have this problem.

I don’t have any answers here, so if you read this far hoping for a revelation, I apologise 🙂 I just think it’s important to know what the problems are before trying to come up with a solution.

Actually, there’s one other thought I’ve had. Have you heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? If you did psych in highschool, you probably covered it. It’s basically the idea that humans have a hierarchy of needs that looks like a pyramid. The greatest needs are at the bottom, and include physiological needs like breathing, food, water etc. We move up the pyramid through Safety, Belonging, Esteem, and eventually (so the theory goes) we reach Self Actualisation at the top.
Now, it’s my personal theory that governments like to try and keep most of their constituents near the bottom of the pyramid. If we’re all worrying about where our next meal may come from, job security, and mundane things like that, we’re never going to get to a point where our greatest needs are ones like morality, truth and creativity. It is in the governments’ (not just in Oz, but all over) best interest that we live in a permanent state of fear. They want us to always worry that someone is going to come and take what is ‘rightfully ours.’ They appeal to our most basic emotions of fear and greed.

Once again, I don’t know how you change that.

1. March – Autumn in NSW

I reblog this post of Peter’s so all my blogger friends get a chance to see it too.

Berlioz1935's Blog

Today is the First of March – the beginning of autumn on the Southern hemisphere.

Normally we wouldn’t notice any difference from the summer of yesterday and the autumn of today. But when I opened the front door today this is what I saw.

Rain in the morning

As it is a rather slow rain the plants love it.

The Grevilleas are in full bloom and are producing nectar for the Rainbow Lorikeets.

In the backyard it is not much different and we won’t be out there for tea later in the day.

Aunty Uta was heading straight for her computer and she is busy hammering out another blog.

View original post

Beginning of Autumn in Australia

Today is the first of March 2014. The first of March is officially the beginning of autumn in Australia. Here at the East Coast of Australia we are at present in a rain period. For quite a few days there’s been some steady, drizzly rain. However since last night the rain seems to have increased a lot. Probably we are going to have quite a bit more rain before the sun shines again. The temperature is still a bit above 20 Celsius most of the time. This is why I would call this rain a ‘warm’ rain and I like it. Everything looks beautiful fresh and smells nice. Who knows, our area may have been a subtropical rainforest area in earlier times? With all this vegetation growing we seem to be getting more and more birds here. We can often hear lots of different birds, but hardly ever see any. They are mostly well covered in the dense bush along the neighbouring creek. Sometimes we notice a flock of galahs or rosellas.

We, Peter and I, had been discussing that we should visit one of the waterfalls in our area some time soon. We haven’t been to a waterfall for quite some time. Would be good to take some pictures there. We decided now, it’s better to wait a bit until the rain has eased off a bit more. Peter reckons in this kind of weather it can be very foggy up in the escarpment.

This morning I had another look at my January pictures. Bear with me when I publish once more a few more of these sign pictures I took. What I did this morning is that I cropped all these pictures quite a lot so as to make the writing better visible.

Outside my window it’s pouring, pouring. A really huge downpour. I think it is best to stay home today!

Wishing all my blogger friends a very good weekend.