This week's top sporting headline sees yet another footballer embroiled in a case of assault.
The perp this time is Cronulla player Greg Bird, who has allegedly glassed his girlfriend in the face, leaving her in hospital and waiting to have surgery on her eye-socket.
If this isn't bad enough, he's also colluded with his manager and solicitor to pin it on his so-called 'friend', Brent 'Patsy' Watson.
I barely know where to begin with pointing out what is wrong with this picture. A word of advice to Brent Watson first...
Brent - a man who commits a violent crime against his girlfriend, and then attempts to get you to take the rap for it and cop a criminal record in the process, is not a friend or a mate. The correct word for a person in your life who does this is 'arsehole.' And if you help him out of this one, you're perpetuating the idea that Greg getting to play sport next weekend is more important than the fact he committed a violent crime.
I'm also disgusted by the efforts of people around Bird to help him weasel his way out of this. Where the hell are people's priorities? One would think that more effort to make sure his (hopefully about to be ex) partner has somewhere to go and appropriate support at this time would take more importance than helping a criminal wriggle off the hook.
I know I'm living in a dream world here. Not a single footballer has done jail time over the last decade, despite all the various assaults and acts of thuggery they've been implicated in. I would love to see the legal system prove me wrong, but I doubt that anything is going to change in this case. What's more, statistics would indicate that the first thing Ms Milligan will do when being discharged from hospital is run straight back to Bird in order to try and 'sort things out.'
I don't have anything particularly bad to say about football players as individuals. I work out at the same gym as half the Carlton AFL team, and although they are predictably noisy and boisterous, and swear a blue streak when talking between themselves, they are always unfailingly polite to me. But when a football code closes ranks in order to protect one fucktard in the group, it only helps them get away with it.
Bullshit.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Acne sucks, but abortions are evil.
I was left laughing my head off reading this article in the SMH, titled 'Acne drug 'may lead to more abortions.''
The upshot of this one is that extending prescribing rights of Roaccutane to GP's is going to lead to a sudden up-surge in young women seeking abortions. Come again? A brief note about Roaccutane, if you bear with me.
Roaccutane is basically a massive dose of Vitamin A, and it is very effective in treating certain kinds of acne. But Vitamin A, in large doses, also causes birth defects. For this reason, females prescribed Roaccutane are also put on the oral contraceptive pill as a matter of course - because you CANNOT be pregnant while taking Roaccutane.
Presumably, any GP's looking at prescribing Roaccutane for a patient would be issued with such a strict guideline, and hopefully anyone smart enough to qualify in medicine would be able to retain this rather large and important piece of information. Roaccutane - contraindicated in pregnancy. Not so tricky, is it?
However, Dr Stephen Shumack, who is head of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, manages to come out with this stupefying piece of logic;
"The college fears that appropriate people may not be given it, inappropriate people may be given it, and the side-effects may not be managed appropriately.
"And, overall, far more people will be given it, which increases the risk of pregnancies, especially if this is not properly screened for, and then there's more abortions."
What the...? Increase in prescriptions for acne medication have a direct causal link to an increase in rates of conception? At any rate, I doubt that a dermatologist is likely to have any greater skill in 'properly screening' for pregnancy than a GP would do. And I would think that a risk of unwanted pregnancy would be substantially LOWER in a sector of the population who were given explicit information about, and access to, various methods of contraception, than it would in the wider populace.
Yes, Roaccutane is associated with some unpleasant side effects and there is no doubt it should be a prescription-only medication, and not avaialble as an over-the-counter option at the pharmacy. But not everyone in Australia lives in an area where access to a dermatologist is easily available - and that doesn't preclude them from having problems with acne. If I was sixteen years old and living four hours away from the nearest prescribing dermatologist, and my social development and confidence was being hampered by a severe case of acne, I would damn well hope I could get something from my GP that is proven to actually work.
Methinks that Dr Shumack may well be whipping out the old 'ABORTIONS ARE VERY BAD' public moral panic whisk in order to hang onto what is likely to be a lucrative part of private medical practice.
The upshot of this one is that extending prescribing rights of Roaccutane to GP's is going to lead to a sudden up-surge in young women seeking abortions. Come again? A brief note about Roaccutane, if you bear with me.
Roaccutane is basically a massive dose of Vitamin A, and it is very effective in treating certain kinds of acne. But Vitamin A, in large doses, also causes birth defects. For this reason, females prescribed Roaccutane are also put on the oral contraceptive pill as a matter of course - because you CANNOT be pregnant while taking Roaccutane.
Presumably, any GP's looking at prescribing Roaccutane for a patient would be issued with such a strict guideline, and hopefully anyone smart enough to qualify in medicine would be able to retain this rather large and important piece of information. Roaccutane - contraindicated in pregnancy. Not so tricky, is it?
However, Dr Stephen Shumack, who is head of the Australasian College of Dermatologists, manages to come out with this stupefying piece of logic;
"The college fears that appropriate people may not be given it, inappropriate people may be given it, and the side-effects may not be managed appropriately.
"And, overall, far more people will be given it, which increases the risk of pregnancies, especially if this is not properly screened for, and then there's more abortions."
What the...? Increase in prescriptions for acne medication have a direct causal link to an increase in rates of conception? At any rate, I doubt that a dermatologist is likely to have any greater skill in 'properly screening' for pregnancy than a GP would do. And I would think that a risk of unwanted pregnancy would be substantially LOWER in a sector of the population who were given explicit information about, and access to, various methods of contraception, than it would in the wider populace.
Yes, Roaccutane is associated with some unpleasant side effects and there is no doubt it should be a prescription-only medication, and not avaialble as an over-the-counter option at the pharmacy. But not everyone in Australia lives in an area where access to a dermatologist is easily available - and that doesn't preclude them from having problems with acne. If I was sixteen years old and living four hours away from the nearest prescribing dermatologist, and my social development and confidence was being hampered by a severe case of acne, I would damn well hope I could get something from my GP that is proven to actually work.
Methinks that Dr Shumack may well be whipping out the old 'ABORTIONS ARE VERY BAD' public moral panic whisk in order to hang onto what is likely to be a lucrative part of private medical practice.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Girl (maybe) gets laid, makes headlines....
I can't believe this story is still getting grift in the news press.
I don't give a crap about what Tania Zaetta may or may not have done with some men in uniform while touring in Afghanistan. If anything, I actually hope she did have sex with a few of those hot soldier guys - I know would've, in her shoes. What the hell is the big deal anyway? The 'allegations' are that she may have had consensual sex with one or more other consenting individuals - it's not a murder rap, people.
Yes, it's shitty and unfair that these statements about Ms Zaetta's possible sexual proclivities ever made news. But I also feel that Tania's decision to sue The Daily Terror for damages to her professional and personal reputation is pretty much what people mean when they say; "You don't have to make a federal case out of it." I would have considerably more sympathy and respect for her if she had just said at the time; "It shouldn't matter if I lined up the entire SAS and fellated the whole lot of them - the real point is, it's nobody's business."
The whole thing just looks like a grown-up version of shaming a girl in the school-yard by calling her a 'slut' for daring to have any sort of sexual agency. I wish Ms Zaetta the best of luck, and hope her court action gives her the closure she seeks.
I don't give a crap about what Tania Zaetta may or may not have done with some men in uniform while touring in Afghanistan. If anything, I actually hope she did have sex with a few of those hot soldier guys - I know would've, in her shoes. What the hell is the big deal anyway? The 'allegations' are that she may have had consensual sex with one or more other consenting individuals - it's not a murder rap, people.
Yes, it's shitty and unfair that these statements about Ms Zaetta's possible sexual proclivities ever made news. But I also feel that Tania's decision to sue The Daily Terror for damages to her professional and personal reputation is pretty much what people mean when they say; "You don't have to make a federal case out of it." I would have considerably more sympathy and respect for her if she had just said at the time; "It shouldn't matter if I lined up the entire SAS and fellated the whole lot of them - the real point is, it's nobody's business."
The whole thing just looks like a grown-up version of shaming a girl in the school-yard by calling her a 'slut' for daring to have any sort of sexual agency. I wish Ms Zaetta the best of luck, and hope her court action gives her the closure she seeks.
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