• "Check my what?" On privilege and what we can do about it - if you only read one thing, read this one. I want to quote the entire post (A SUMMARY: you aren't bad for having privilege, but it's real and you have it (yes, even me))


• Fighting Through the Confusion of Anger


• Calling out Privilege is not an Attack


• Mind Your Language on the role that word choice plays in opinion and situation and feeling.

A list of things around the internet this week:

• The Crafty Crow - a blog filled with crafts to do with kids. It seems kind of fun, and I thought some of the parental types on my flist might like to have a look around (and some of the non-parental types, too).


• This is visually quite stunning - lost cities.


• Articles on steampunk: New York Times; The Phoenix.


• Rejecting the model in 'model minority,', a really interesting piece about stereotypes and staying quiet.


• A blog for old times: What Claudia Wore.


• Storm Troopin' - Storm Troopers just hanging around. It's an awesome flickr set.


• I would love these: Earth bowls.


• No Impact Man talks about the worst and the best of corporate efforts on climate change.


• Chinese airships on a mission of conquest at brassgoggles.


• On Indochic, and the sort of cultural appropriation that makes me get angry and also makes me question myself (and write long blog posts that I never post).


• Bush says he quit golf over the Iraq war, like maybe that's supposed to make people feel better.


• There is allegedly a Fraggle Rock movie in the works.


• Camouflage, a series of photographs by Liu Bolin. It wasn't until I was looking at this photo that I realised that the names of the five mascots together create "北京欢迎你“ which is so clever it's nerdy.


• Series of photographs of a guy hanging out of a skyscraper, and other awesome aerial tricks.


• I can't watch TCM presents "race and hollywood: asian images in film," but everyone who can should watch it and then should tell me all about it.

• If I'm writing in Chinese, turning the capslock on allows me to write in English. I am quite excited by this discovery! It means swapping between English and Mandarin is suddenly much faster and easier.


• A newish blog: Penang - My Everlasting Love, a daily photo blog. Bercinta <333


• I had no idea that Nanyang Technological University looked so awesome. One of the really great things about Singapore is that a lot of the big buildings really do look quite awesome, like all the architects have been given free reign and gone mad in a really cool way.


• This is my new favourite photo blog: One Love Photo, she does a lot of weddings but I love the lighting she uses and some of the ideas she has. She also has some engagement sets, and, as an aside, engagement photos are things that I don't really understand.


• Article: Penguin's wetsuit puts him back in the swim of things.


• Other article: Naked cop surprises NZ car thief.


• The weather is getting cold, and I'm turning more back to curries and cookies and things that heat the kitchen up, misting the windows and warming my toes. I will miss this kitchen when we are gone from here.


• I miss salads, but they just don't feel the same when I'm wearing a heavy jumper.

1. I have a new blog: Vegan About Town, specifically for talking about things I cook and restaurants at which I eat (mostly in the Perth metro area).
   
2. Shirts and Tie, fashion tips for men.
   
3. From SMH: They sought help, but got exorcism and the Bible.
   
4. 7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable.
   
5. A recipe that I really want to try: Indian Watermelon Curry.
   
6. A blog that is new to me: Elana's Pantry. Gluten-Free blog, interesting stuff, easily modifiable recipes (not vego).
   
7. Davyd and I have been learning to swing dance through Swing It. Our current course (Lindy 1) has just finished, and due to the upcoming Really Big Party we can't start on Lindy 2 yet. But it would be awesome if some of our friends who wanted to learn Lindy Hop went to Lindy 1 next Monday (the 31st), and then joined us for Lindy 2. How exciting!
   

• Perhaps these will be new to you, and perhaps they will not: 50 tips for frugal living.
  
• Beautiful imagery in The Dark Willies.
  
• From awesome_places, topiary garden and church in Zarcero, Costa Rica.
  
• 16 young Chinese acrobats flew to the USA to perform and were then stranded by the circus promotor who brought them across, arranging for them to be collected from the airport by a homeless shelter: Chinese acrobats end up in homeless shelter.
  
• A great looking piece of fabric on wood art: I Love you more than all the Stars in the Sky.
  
• Brand New, a blog about corporate branding designs and alterations.
  
• Meet the World, political commentary via flags.

• Ni Hao Kai-Lan is a new Nickelodean show that introduces kids to Chinese culture and language, whilst focussing on issues common to pre-schoolers such as taking turns. It looks adorable!
  
• Rang – the colours of life is a thoughtful, beautiful blog.
  
• Bridesmaid's prenups in the Age. Favourite answers included not putting on weight, not falling pregnant intentionally and not changing a hairstyle before the wedding day.
  
• I love the idea of this: Farmer hides castle from building inspectors. My favourite line is Fidler's wife Linda told the Daily Mail newspaper the children grew up looking at straw out of the windows of the house and that they kept their son away from playschool on the day his class were due to do paintings of their houses."We couldn't have him drawing a big blue haystack," she said. "People might ask questions." Too awesome!
  
• I found this article very interesting: Weight Watchers Works. For Two Out of a Thousand. (And They Probably Weren't Fat to Begin With). This article was very interesting reading for me, particularly given how many of my friends are currently doing Weight Watchers/considering it.
  
• These articles on meat production and environmentalism: Care about the environment? Eat less meat and Reconsidering the Meat Guzzler
  
• The March 2008 Vanity Fair photo shoot. I always love them, and this one, too. There are more of the photos in the comments if you scroll down. And also more HQ images and outtakes here.
  
• The ad that Jorja Fox did for Peta is adorable.
  
• Penguin of Arabia
  
• In LA, a billboard advertising Murakami's exhibit was graffitied, then taken down - Murukami was so taken with the graffiti that he had the billboard sent to him in Japan.

• Every bride should begin a series of facials or a good home beauty routine at least six months before. Or, as someone commented when I complained about this today, it's so that you can be crazy every morning for six months.
  
• 6-12 months before, you should book caterers and floral arrangers. AHAHA.
  
• I don't know how you feel about made up words, but "skintelligence" is a new one for me and not a good one.
  
• wedding day emergencies: peeling sunburn, flushed skin or rashes, puffy eyes. Look, I would not call these emergencies. Your marquee collapses with everyone inside it and someone gets hilariously trapped, yes. The celebrant falls out of a tree and is unable to attend, certainly. The government declares war and suggests everyone curb excess, maybe. Puffy eyes, not so much.
  
• Most couples experience stress while planning their big day. GOSH GEE

• I love looking at Something Old, Something New. I enjoy reading it for the design elements, but the author of the blog is a professional stationer, and often has a lot of visually lovely links.
  
• Enjoy Cando is another blog that I read for its design elements (that is, unrelated to weddings), and is really pretty.
  
• Wedding Bee - this is a semi-pro site run by a woman who was so inspired by the planning for her own wedding that she became a wedding planner or something. The posts are made by about a dozen bloggers, each in different planning stages of their own weddings. This site can be really frustrating, sometimes the things they're obsessed with just make no sense to me.
  
• my big fat chinese wedding - this site is now inactive, but going back through it is interesting and sometimes helpful to see the details.
  
• Manolo for the Brides - this site is zero use in prep etc, but good for reporting on crazy stuff, like a wedding cake shaped to be a likeness of the bride and manicures advertised as specifically for brides (because nobody else gets their nails done...).
  
• portovert - I actually find this site a bit wanky, but it has been recommended as worth reading, so. It's 'for eco-savvy brides and grooms.'
  
• Ethical Weddings
  
• the VegNews Vegan Weddings

• BitterSweet, a food/craft blog
  
• WA coastline cameras, at Swanbourne, Trigg, Scarborough and Hillarys
  
• Buy Handmade
  
• Radar Copies Infamous Vanity Fair Cover for Politics Issue, and it's kind of crazy and kind of cool.
  
• NYT article: Woman finds one million dollar painting in trash

naissa

bossymarmalade

The thing is, *especially* where costumes/acting is concerned, it's always been okay for white people to "play" a different ethnicity as well as white. Whereas if you're dark-skinned, you can play ... other dark-skinned people.

• Two of my favourite people can't marry each other (if they want to).
  
• Work Choices.
  
• Both the Senate and the Lower House are controlled by the one faction, leading to legislation that was previously blocked passing. The Government no longer requires the approval of other parties to pass legislation.
  
• The abolition of CSU.
  
• The crazy new anti-terrorism legislation (under which Dr Haneef was detained).
  
• The most back-flippy, useless environmental reforms ever.
  
• The Northern Territory National Emergency Response.

• Greens Blog, where members of the Greens Party post memes and make commentary on the government (and opposition).
  
• I will be honest, Possyms Pollytic is not for the political novice, and it's probably not for anyone who isn't that great with graphs and numbers. It is always very thought-provoking and often raises quite interesting points, offering moderately indepth analysis of polling and a very cynical attitude towards strategy. I found the post on the Liberal Party's pre-announcement strategy and how it is alienating the Liberal Party stronghold quite an interesting one.
  
• crikey (subscription required) is a collection of political commentators, sometimes satirical and sometimes harsh but always pretty insightful. The crikey book was released earlier this year, a sort-of preliminary analysis of the election, and it's good read too, if you want to get a feel for the electorates and their issues. It's dated, obviously, as any book is in this blogging world, but still a good read.
  
• Andrew Bartlett's blog talks about the humdrum and sundries (not in a bad way), and makes commentary on various government and opposition actions.

Things news.google.au is telling me right now:


• Election might be called tomorrow: Prime Minister John Howard is expected to call a November 24 election tomorrow, ending the phoney election campaign today with a 33-page manifesto on his vision for the future.
  
  
• uhm: An Australian performance artist has astonished his contemporaries by having a third ear implanted into his arm.
  
  
• The DPP admits the Haneef case was a bungle: [DPP] Bugg says he has learnt from the matter.
  
  
• A teacher raped a 13 year old student after telling her "she was going to learn how to be a good girlfriend." I WAIT WHAT.
  
  

1. This has already done the rounds, but for those who may not have heard, Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new decree that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead". This is so super ridiculous I can't even talk about it right now.
   
   
2. Nuns in LA who work with undocumented migrants are being evicted from their convent by the Church in order to raise funds to cover payouts to victims of paedophilic priests. Okay, pretend that sentence was grammatically correct and not incredibly run on. You can read the story here.
   
   
3. This is old, but Today Tonight (I know, well known for hard hitting current affairs and all), tried to prove that Asian migration is outnumbering everyone else.
   
   
4. Also a bit older, Tests of trainee doctors find signs of race bias in care.
   
   

• I love this icon because it is from one of my favourite books, Shaun Tan's The Red Tree, but I worry that people think the icon is about September 11.
  
• Last week, in my ploy to encourage Es by posting/creating gluten-free veg*n recipes, I posted a cottage pie recipe. It is an excellent way to hide mushrooms in a meal.
  
• The Chaser boys were arrested this morning for breaking through APEC security lines in a fake motorcade.
  
• In other APEC news, K-Rud gave a speech this morning, partially in Mandarin, and I love him. That article is kind of lame, though. You can see a sample of his speech here.
  
• I am moderately excited by Veganomicon, now available for preorder. I want it, though it's not available until November.
  
• This is an older thing, but still important, on the Trade Practices Amendment (Small Business Protection) Bill 2007, which would work to directly gag people calling for boycotts, apparently including bloggers.
  
• Last week at the Save the Children Book Fair, I picked up a lot of awesome looking books. Included in this pile was the Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking, which we have just started using and it looks so awesome. And we just cooked a vegan halava, and it's delicious!
  
• We've been watching Heroes and we just ran out at 1.19. Does anyone have 1.20 through to the end of the season? TRS has provided.