Linky Love - Volume 1

I've been quite inspired by the link farming work that Ampersand does over at Alas, and have decided to do a bit of it myself, although no doubt on a much smaller scale.

My intention is to semi-regularly put together a post that links to a whole lot of posts that I've noticed and got something out of in recent times. Mainly these are going to be from NZ pol blogs, because that's often what I read, but also feminist blogs. They'll be the posts that I probably haven't written about but wanted to. Sort of like a recommended reading list, but I'm not vain enough to think that anyone will follow my recommendation. More like an acknowledgement to the author that I appreciated their post even if I didn't comment or write my own post on the subject.

I've decided not to call it a link farm though, as Wikipedia tells me that has pejorative connotations as it is a spammer tool. "Linky Love" seems to more reflect what my sentiment is, so I'll see how that goes as a name.

So here is my first go at it. Hopefully it won't be the last!

Anarchia - Mental Illness: My Struggle - thought-provoking post from Asher about responses to disclosure of mental illness

Put Up Thy Sword! - Repentant Kiwi Bloke - don't agree with everything AJ says (no surprises there) but this is a revealing and interesting (if somewhat paternalistic) piece about rape and the responsibility men take (or don't) for sexual violence.

Capitalism Bad: Tree Pretty - Hating your body is for losers - Maia writes about feminism and body image, wondering what we can do collectively to stop the hate.

Hard News - Appeasing Osama - Russell Brown has covered the outbursts from Dinesh D'Souza, blaming the left for 9/11 because of our support for liberalism (in the sense of homosexual rights, feminism, etc). An interesting discussion has ensued in the forum thread.

Inside Higher Ed - Against Phalloblogcentrism - Article by Scott McLemee about the perception that political blogging is dominated by men, and how that culture may be maintained. (Hat tip to Make Tea Not War's post at What We Said, where there is also some discussion in comments of this notion) (Apologies to MTNW for not adding the hyperlink, fixed 24th Jan)

I See Red - Minimum Wage 1980 - 2007 - Tony Milne has done a very helpful graph of the level of the legal minimum wage year by year since 1980, thus under both National and Labour-led governments, plus an additional graph showing it in today's dollars. While the evidence is not surprising it is certainly good to have.

Long Ago and Not True Anyway - "Post Abortion Syndrome" - Terence succintly sums up the wrongness of anti-abortionists arguing on the basis of protecting women's mental health.

NZ Human Rights Lawyer - Mad Bad and Unparoleable - given all the recent reactionary palaver about parole, Mark Lillico's contribution is refreshing, imho.

Ranting on the ROK - Vanity Size Me - a post by Stef about the irritation and impracticality of the practice of labelling a size 12 as a 10 (etc) that seems to be infesting women's clothing.

Red in Roskill - As the Bishop Said to the Editor - Michael Wood returns to blogging with a piece about (Anglican) Bishop Randerson's comments about faith, inciting what must be the longest non-spam comment I have ever seen.

Ok that'll do to start with.

If you have a post of your own, or some else's, that you'd like to highlight please feel free to add it in comments, or to discuss the above posts, or indeed most anything else. In particular I'd appreciate some feedback on this concept, good or bad.