Skip to main content

Baby I'm hot just like an oven, I need some lovin'. And baby, I can't hold it much longer, it's getting stronger and stronger...


Some time ago I posted the shocking story of the natural world in all of its brutality. It should not take a Mensa-level EQ to recognise both the severity of the initial act and the trauma that inevitably, tragically echoes throughout the lives of all parties.

Shockingly, there were people on this very blog who felt the incident a simple lark, a joke, and maybe even that one party was asking for it.

Unfortunately this seems the way of modern life. The moral certainties provided by institutionalised religion, the rigid hierarchies inherent under a notion of the divine right of kings and feudal serfdom, the 'traditional' family and stark gender roles have all withered away leaving a hodge-podge of post-modern, post-materialist 'values' where anything goes but everybody reserves the right to be offended and offend in equal quantities.

Thankfully, the Hobart City Council are a more enlightened bunch, and they've erected these statues to recognise the horror the original Antarctic offence, and the horrors of inter-species sexual assault more generally. The shame in the seal's eyes when it realises the shame that the penguin feels. That's beauty. That's about real understanding, not simplistic explanations or condemnations.
Labels:

Comments

Debbie Courson Smith said…
They probably aren't going to ask you to be a tour guide for the city, are they? :)
10 February 2009 at 04:48
KL said…
Kris,
Seems like you know about Hobart policies. So, it would be great if you can one day write in your blog about about mathematics teaching and mathematics/science education and all such related policies in Hobart or Australia. Danke.
10 February 2009 at 05:54
Kris McCracken said…
Diva, I don't know, I can spin a yarn, add a bit of colour and what-not.

The statues are all about the exploration of Antarctica and so on, but I like to think that we can interpret statues however we like. This was me yesterday!
10 February 2009 at 08:45
Kris McCracken said…
KL, it has been a long time out of school for me, and I'll be honest and admit that Maths was not really my strong suite, so given that Henry and Ez are some ways short of school my knowledge is scant.

That said, the Tasmanian Curriculum is online , and may well hold some answers there.

I know that there was a lot of talk about the shortage of Maths and Science teachers a few years back, but they have churned a few out in the interim.

My main problem with the subjects at school was that the teachers didn't seem to put any effort into engaging students in the subjects (this was especially true in Maths). That said, I never had a 'specialist' Maths teacher in high school. Rather, they were:

Grade 7: an English teacher with less of a clue than 40 percent of the class. Gee she was dumb.

Grade 8: a Horticulture teacher with only the basic understanding of the subject. He was even dumber than the Grade 7 teacher.

Grade 9: a Business Studies/Social Science teacher who was too scared of the students to teach, and on stress leave for a fair whack of the time which meant a rolling period of substitute teachers who felt that just being in the room constituted teaching.

Grade 10: a Computing teacher who was actually pretty good really. I wish that I had him earlier.

I am really selling Parklands High School well there, aren't I?

I did a simple maths class at college in Grade 11 (when it was optional), but it was far too easy and I can’t say that I learned anything new.

I was always lazy with maths. I could do the basics easily and that seemed enough to coast once you were not streamed in the advanced classes.
10 February 2009 at 08:57
yournotalone said…
I can just add that I can not apply the term brutality to any life form other than Human.
10 February 2009 at 19:03
Kris McCracken said…
Aigars, I don't know about that, it's been shown that chimpanzees will kill and torture to make a point and for pleasure. Dolphins have also been observed to utilise rape as a mechanism in the same manner as human social groups.
10 February 2009 at 19:18
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...
5 comments
Read more

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...
38 comments
Read more

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.
36 comments
Read more