It’s pretty clear I’m a supporter of equality.  Sexuality equality is what I talk most about, but also sexual, racial, and any other type I tend to argue for.  So let me explain why.

You see, I am a straight white male from Sydney Australia.  See?  No?  Oh wait, that’s got nothing to do with it.  You see, I am right handed.  Wait, that’s got nothing either.  I have my car license?  I uhh … I uhh … I guess I don’t have any personal reason to support equality…

I’m not personally restricted in the slightest by the lack of marriage equality.  You see, the REAL reason why I care about equality is because it’s just the right damned thing to do.  It’s the ethical thing to do.  It’s the moral thing to do.
The fact that those leading and funding the push against equality also claim to be the moral authority just deplores me.

People, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of sex, as long as they are:

• Human beings.
• Of an age generally accepted to be of mature mind and able to make informed legal decisions for themselves (or in short are considered legally an adult).
• Are of sound mind.
• Are making the decision with no duress and of their own free will.

… then that should be all that counts!

If we really have to stretch things to find a way in which it may be said to affect me, it would be in confusion.  The way marriage currently stands under Australian law confuses me.  I don’t understand the point of it, I don’t understand why anybody would do it.

Marriage in Australia is not about having kids.  There’s no legal requirement to have kids once you’re married, nor is there a requirement to be married before you have kids.  Legally you’re more than welcome to remain unmarried when you have kids, or even be single while having kids.

I’ve heard the argument made that the term “marriage” in other contexts is the combining of two items to make a third, just as two people coming together and having a child makes a third.  These people cannot even get analogies correct.  Marriage in other contexts is taking two items, combining them into a single.  When you marry two items you do not end up with more, with three.  No, when you marry two items you end up with less, up with one.  This makes the whole reproduction thing a horrible analogy with the term “marriage” in other contexts.

On top of this, there’s no fertility tests as a prerequisite for marriage.  To counter those who say “Oh but there’s still a potential”, there’s not even upper age limits on marriage (where there’s no potential).  Kids are completely irrelevant to marriage.

Marriage in Australia is not about religion.  Over 50% of marriages these days are performed by civil marriage celebrants rather than religious leaders/priests/etc.  There is no religious requirement at all in legally recognised marriage, only the legal contractual requirements and government forms.  Most religious celebrants insist on both people converting to their religion before they’d perform a ceremony, which is why civil celebrants perform more than 50% of most marriages.  You’re also allowed to marry if you’re an atheist.  Religion is completely irrelevant to marriage.

Marriage in Australia is not about love.  Controversial I know, but if it was about love then everyone would be allowed to marry the person they love.  One common idiotic cry from those opposed to equality is “They can still marry, if it’s a person of the opposite sex”.  My first thought when I hear this is usually along the lines of “I’m sorry you’re in an unhappy marriage with someone you do not love, but that’s no reason to force a loveless marriage on everyone else”.

That is precisely what people are suggesting when making this argument though.  They’re wanting non-hetero people to have loveless marriages.  They are denying them the ability to have one based on love.  If those in charge of the laws etc are so against this, it means only one thing:  Love is unfortunately completely irrelevant to marriage.

There’s only two things I can figure out marriage in Australia is about: discrimination and convenience/cost savings.  Convenience of benefits afforded to married couples when it comes to tax savings, family benefits, health benefits etc.  There’s many luxuries still not afforded to default couples or people with civil unions.

Discrimination, well, you can thank lil jonny howard for that.  He changed the definition of marriage in 2004 introducing lines that specifically talk about one man and one woman, including certain hurtful and hateful sentences that must be said word for word.

Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

These changes discriminate quite blatantly against a certain subset of the population.  They turning marriage from something that was simply not available to non-heterosexuals, into an institution that actually specifically promotes discrimination against non-heterosexuals.

That, and lil jonny howards rushing it through parliament absolutely disgusted me.

To me, marriage should not be about discrimination nor about convenience, but those are the only things I can see that it is about.

What marriage should be about, to me, is love.  It should be a symbol of the bond you feel towards someone, a symbol of the unity you feel with them, the oneness you feel with them.

For as long as marriage in Australia is an institution that promotes discrimination, I cannot condone it, and I will not be a part of it.  Even getting engaged is something that I personally will not even idly consider until such a time as marriage equality, true marriage equality, becomes a reality.

The problem is, because I’m not very good at it I usually get in to cycling every year or two, it lasts anywhere from a week to three months, then the bike doesn’t get touched again for another year or two.

Right now I’m in another of those resurgences, and the world as I know it is completely different.

My distances are usually less than 10 hilly kilometers, for the first few days I get highs after cycling, really feeling great.  However I don’t improve at all despite getting in to it, so I start pushing myself a little harder to get that improvement.  Maybe once a week I’ll get a slightly faster time (barely), but the extra effort means at the end of the ride I no longer have that high, then that night and most of the next day I’m just sore.  Eventually this keeps building up ride after ride until I can’t talk myself into going out again – I stay in, the bike starts gathering dust.

My constant giving up wasn’t helped by the fact that when I get in to something, I like to do it in an informed way.  I jump online, search out educational resources, community forums etc.  On quite a few cycling forums I’d see new people come along, people bigger, unfitter than me.  They’d get advice on buying a bike, then take it out for rides … 10km long ones … longer than I could do myself at the time.  I couldn’t believe it.  Then they’d increase it.  Not only their speeds, but their distances at rates that I just couldn’t comprehend!  Brand new people to cycling, coming from a worse position than me, improving 10 times faster that I could!  HOW?  Surely not every single one of them was on flat roads while I’m stuck living in hilly areas?

This time around though, things changed.  _Every_ _single_ _time_ I have taken the bike out, I’ve seen an improvement.  Not just any improvement either.  My very first ride in itself this year was faster than the same route 13 months earlier!  Unheard of!  Six rides over three weeks (effectively two weeks because the middle one I didn’t go riding due to stress/anger from work), and every single day an improvement.  In four rides I dropped my time by a minute (from 35:41 down to 34:38).  The fifth ride another minute on top of that (33:24).  Sixth ride, another 30 seconds on top of that (32:53)!  These aren’t the tiny increases I am used to.  To me these are huge!  They’re also on-par with what I read from others who were new to cycling.

So what’s going on?  I’m struggling to figure it out.  I have done absolutely zero exercise since I got my current job.  This is actually the main reason for wanting to do this – my fitness which was already bad has just plummeted – or so I thought.  Things I should consider a walk through the park weren’t – including but not limited to the occasional walk through a (national) park that I’ve done (namely the walk from Wentworth Falls back up to the carpark).  But to be increasing my speed by these amounts, highs EVERY night after the ride, being cooled down within 20 minutes for a shower, not being sore that night, not being sore the next day.  How?  Why all these unheard of things?

Could smoking really have held me back _that_ much previously?

I’ve been smoking since I was 18 give or take.  In a few days I’ll be 34.  On previous attempts to quit smoking I also took up exercise or changed my diet at the same time, and I felt that was possibly too many changes at once – this time round I decided I’d do one thing at a time.

I started taking Champix in early October of 2012, by the end of December that ran out and I stopped.  I then went two months without the quit-smoking medication to ensure the cravings wouldn’t come back and they didn’t.  At this stage, I wasn’t feeling all that different from when I was a smoker.  This is when I took up cycling again, and only now am I realizing a change, something different, something new and better from not being a smoker – and words cannot express how much I love it.

Here’s hoping I can actually keep up the cycling for once.  It’s something I enjoy when it doesn’t make me sore, I’d really like to keep it going.

This is a sore topic with me because I am sick of being told I am a lesser person for being an introvert myself.   I am sick of being told I am inadequate for being an introvert myself.  I am sick of being told I am broken for being an introvert myself.  I am sick of being told there is something wrong with me for being an introvert myself.  All of these things I am told, are wrong.  They are incorrect.  They are insults whether they are intended as insults or not, and I am sick of it.

Today for example LifeHacker had an article up about uncomfortable people.  It starts off by talking about introverts, and right off the bat it insults them.  “People who don’t know what to say”.  What?  No.  Introverts are not idiots.  We are not clueless morons.  We are not social retards.

There are MANY reasons why people may not talk, less than half of which have anything to do with introversion.  For an introvert it could be because they have nothing to contribute to the conversation.  We’re happy to just listen to a conversation taking place.  We tend to be thinkers, and add to conversations when there’s something worthwhile to say.  We’re not empty noises.  It’s not that we can’t think of something, it is that we quite simply are often happy not to.

What do LifeHacker suggest to remedy this?  “Ask A Simple Question That Requires An Opinion”, “Show Them You’re OK With Their Discomfort”.  In other words either dumb things down for them and belittle them, or get in their faces and make the situation extremely uncomfortable, all the while trying to jack-knife and force words out of a person.  Yes, a great way to endear someone to you is by annoying the crap out of them and getting in their face, not giving them any escape.

Some better advice would be quite simply DBAD, something LifeHacker itself has trouble with.  DBAD of course stands for Don’t Be A Dick.  Find someone else to converse with, and let the introvert remain happy and comfortable.  You do NOT cheer an introvert up by annoying, aggravating and draining them.  You cheer them up by giving them the space they need to be happy, and leaving an opening there for them to join in when they do in fact have something of value to contribute.

What’s worse than their suggestions for a quiet person, is that in it they link to an article where they quite blatantly call introverts weirdo’s.  Yet again they get introversion wrong, confusing it with a psychological disorder where people are afraid to go outside.  Introverts aren’t afraid of the great big outdoors in the slightest.  What I think you’ll find they’re referring to is Agoraphobia.

The association to Howard Hughes was just downright insulting.

Below is a little feedback I left to LifeHacker.  I’m posting it here on this blog because they really did piss me off by their articles, but I suspect I won’t hear a single thing from them.  I am highly insulted and hurt by their thoughtless and incorrect writings.

I would like to point out something about the following two articles:

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/05/ask-lh-how-can-i-avoid-becoming-an-introverted-weirdo/
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/12/how-to-handle-lifes-most-uncomfortable-people/

Both articles refer to introverts as being weirdo’s and freaks.  That is in no way shape or form the case, they are a much larger portion of the population than you may realise, and the kind of language used here by your writers and editors is also EXTREMELY abusive, insulting and offensive.  I am very hurt by such flippant inaccurate comments being made about me.

Introverts seriously aren’t that hard to understand.  They are simply people who get drained by contact and confrontation rather than getting recharged by it.  They have limits to social time (for some these limits are VERY high).  They also have the capability to spend time happily with their own thoughts and little more.

They are NOT afraid of human contact, they’re simply not recharged by it.  They are NOT afraid of going outside, they are simply capable of spending time without it to no detriment.  They are NOT too stupid to come up with things to talk about, they simply don’t always have something to contribute and don’t feel the need, the desire, to open their gob anyway for the simple need of hearing their own voice.  They are NOT lacking self confidence, if anything they are more comfortable in themselves and don’t feel the need to get external validation for confidence.

Please have both of these articles removed until such time as they can be corrected, and take more care in the future not to insult and abuse your readers.  Introverts are a significant percentage of the population after all.

Links to positive information and facts about introverts and introversion:
The Power of Introverts – Scientific American – A positive article about introverts.
The Power of Introverts – TED Talks
Caring for your introvert – The Atlantic – How to treat an introvert (unlike LifeHacker’s advice).
10 Myths about introverts – CarlKingdom – All 10 myths are mistakes LifeHacker regularly makes.
The Upside of Being an Introvert – Time
Extraversion and introversion – Wikipedia

Edit 15/02/2012: As expected, no response was ever given to the feedback I provided to LifeHacker through the “proper channels” (ie, their feedback/contact forms).  They have however finally put up a story that is positive towards introverts rather than insulting to them.  I’m hoping this article isn’t an exception to the rule as far as their treatment of introverts goes.  It really is a brilliant article, I very highly suggest you read it and check out other things by Dr Boyes.

Edit 19/02/2012: I was suspecting the previous article was more an exception to the rule rather than a turning of the tides, and it appears that suspicion was accurate.  Another article appeared yesterday that angered quite a lot of introverts long before I got to it.  Personally I didn’t find this latest one as insulting as the previous two, nor as insulting as most of the other commenters seem to find it, though they still did get things very wrong in misattributing shyness and social anxiety to introversion.

A layman’s very brief summary of the post in question, PZ Myers decided to get a few things off his chest that have been annoying him for a while.  One of those is what he refers to as “Dictionary Atheists”.

“Boy, I really do hate these guys. You’ve got a discussion going, talking about why you’re an atheist, or what atheism should mean to the community, or some such topic that is dealing with our ideas and society, and some smug wanker comes along and announces that “Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term.””

He then attempts to explain why, in his opinion, this is not what atheism is about.  Why to him, there is more to atheism than just a lack of belief in a god or gods.  After calling people names (dumbass, dogmatic, blind) he gives us a brief summary of what brought him to his atheism.  The events in his life that lead him to it, the positive values that lead him to it.  However, after giving us this story, he then tells us this isn’t his definition of atheism.  He then goes on to give us half a dozen other reasons and values that brought other people to atheism too.

So does that mean any / all of these events and values combined are what atheism is, what it stands for?  Apparently not that either, because if you keep reading down to his “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings” section, he points out that these events, this values, are also shared by theists.

The second sentence is false. Religion does not turn you into a terrorist. The overwhelming majority of religious people have similar values to yours; my church-going grandmother would have been just as horrified at people using their faith to justify murdering people as the most hardened atheist, and there have been atheist individuals who also think they are justified in killing people for the cause. So stop saying this!

So in other words, every single thing he claims to be that which adds more to atheism than just the dictionary definition does, is also shared by that which is the opposite to atheism.  If they lead to both, they cannot inherently be part of both, but rather they are part of being human.  Trying to claim they are part of theism or atheism is nothing more than falsely attributing them.  Take all these shared and falsely attributed things away, and what are you left with?

The dictionary definition.

Some *ism’s are defined by the journey (humanism, skepticism), some are defined by the destination (feminism, atheism, theism).  PZ Myers is trying to move atheism from being one of a destination, to a journey.  I don’t see why what atheism is has to be that which leads you to a destination.  Surely due to the large number and widely contradicting variety of ways to get to that destination (historical accuracy & skepticism vs conspiracy theories of Acharaya S as just one example of contradictory methods), atheism’s definition should be the destination.  A lack of positive belief in a god or gods.

In an attempt to counter this, we’d like to try to get as many people as possible to vote instead for Professor Ian Frazer (#32 in the list), the inventor of the Gardasil vaccine.  Reasons why you should support him are given below the jump.

Margaret Court (#24 in the list) has recently courted controversy at the start of the Australian Open tennis tournament by speaking out about her opposition to marriage equality.  Her speel came directly from the books of right-wing fundamentalist christian apologetics, with plenty of blanket assertions and outright lies that are unsupported by any evidence, and actually fly directly in opposition to all the evidence and science on the issues.

The ACL are a right-wing fundamentalist religious group, and therefore any information about sexual activity is seen as bad.  Although I cannot find a location where they explicitly express as much in their press releases or on their website, things like sex education, safe sex, and anything healthy related to it their spokespeople tend to oppose.  They consider it all the “sexualisation of society” and promoting of an evil act, rather than just encouragement for people to do safely what they would otherwise be doing unsafely anyway.

For this reason, the ACL and many other right-wing fundamentalist religious groups are generally highly opposed the Gardasil vaccine.  Having Professor Ian Frazer outvote Margaret Court would be a direct slap in the face to the ACL.

If you need more reasons, then what better can you find than that it will also be a slap in the face to the AVN.

The AVN (Australian Vaccination Network) are a misleadingly named anti-vaccination lobby group from northern NSW, Australia.  They actively promote the misinformation and blatant lies about vaccines, scaring innocent victims and families in to not vaccinating their children.  The results of this can be seen as measles, whooping cough, and other easily preventable diseases are making a massive comeback globally.

Please, vote for Professor Ian Frazer for National Living Treasure.  Please also spread the word.  Help piss off the ACL and the AVN in one swoop.

The CFI is a sheet of paper that certifies that the person does not already have a legally recognised partner and is free to marry.  Since 2004, thanks to the changes added by phil ruddock and lil jonny howard, LGBT people cannot receive these.  Without these, they cannot marry.  Well, could not.  They will be able to once again after February 1st.

So from the 1st of February, Australians will be able to get married overseas, just not in Australia.  Their marriage unfortunately will still not be recognised in Australia either (according to amendments added by johnny howard in 2004).

Anyway, to get to the point of this blog post, I started looking around further at laws, restrictions, and other such things in regards to sexuality equality.  Eventually found myself on this wikipedia page.

It’s quite interesting that the first officially recorded gay marriage was in 27BC, with gay marriage first being outlawed in 342CE … by a christian emperor.

So much for the “tradition” argument against equal marriage by bigots.

That’s also about the same time christianity started (despite there being christians, christianity as we know today really started during the council of Nicea, 325CE when they codified gospel and doctrine), so you can say that the homophobia and bigotry we still see today is all thanks to christianity!

Every time someone uses it, I die a little inside.  Every time someone uses it, I feel a deep sense of foreboding rage building inside of me.  Every time someone uses it, a hipster gains his/her skintight jeans and thick glasses with no lenses.

What exactly is wrong with it?  Well, just about everything. 

The skill in taking good photos comes in capturing the scene, the beauty as it is seen in your own eyes, the capturing of what makes that thing to you so beautiful.  The capturing of colours that nature displays.  The finding of an angle that would turn a normally boring scene into something amazing.  The small little piece of beauty, inside an otherwise unremarkable location.  The capturing of fine details to really show off what a location can provide.

These are the reasons I’ve been making a concerted effort to get in to photography over the last few months, because I want to share some of the beauty I see, and what I personally see in different locations.  My attempts at photography are quite poor, but I’m working on it.  This entire rant about Instagram though is something I have thought for well over a year now, since it first came out in fact.  I was just spurred in to finally posting it due to a run of Instagram “photos” I saw on twitter and facebook last Saturday morning.

Instagram, by its very nature discourages all of these skills, and by its nature ruins any attempts to capture any of these things.

It doesn’t even work as a photo sharing site either.  It operates solely as an iPhone application.  The screen on an iPhone is a mere 8.9cm (diagonally), which means even full sized images are for all intents and purposes nothing more than thumbnails.  If you want to then browse (through the app) through someone’s past photos, you’re stuck with 1cm x 1cm sized thumbnails.  I have good eyesight, but even this is too small.

If you want to view it through any other device, whether it be another brand of smartphone, laptop or desktop computer, you’re stuck.  If you go to the Instagram website, you can do nothing other than look at their front page telling you to get the iPhone app.

Even when you do have a link to someone’s photo already, it won’t let you click on their name to see the history of photos.  If you like one of their images and want to see what else they took photos of in that area or elsewhere, without the app, you’re stuck.  This is a massive photo sharing fail.

The website is a massive photo sharing fail in more ways than just the limiting of browsing to small-screened iPhones.  The thumbnails it enforces on people mean you lose all detail from a photo.  The photo above-left was taken by a friend of mine, WeezMGK.  If you click on the above-left image and then select “view full size”, you can see the image in all its detail, zoomed in to a full sized image to look in awe at the fine details.  If you try that on the above-right image, you’ll find you can’t.  You’re stuck with the thumbnail.  Even if you did have the iPhone app, the small screen would stop you from zooming in enough to see those details anyway.  Can you even see the Sydney Harbour Bridge?  In this way, Instagram discourages the capturing of anything that has any detail.

The image above-left is another photo taken by WeezMGK of the sunset.  In this image he captures the colours and actual view from that moment in all its glory.  It really is an amazing picture.  Instagram though, encourages the use of filters to modify an image and make it “artistic”.  Above-right, I’ve applied the filter that best suited that image, and as you can see it completely ruins it, washing out all the colour and what really made that scene beautiful.  In fact, for all the viewer of the above-right photo can tell, it may well have just been photos of clouds on an ordinary day, with all colours added by Instagram.  There is no beauty in faked colours like that.  It’s not capturing what the person actually saw, the actual beauty in the scene.

To demonstrate further the point of not really capturing the scene, I took a photo of some rocks and rubbish (above-left), then applied some Instagram filters (above-right).  There was no skill used at all in this photo, nor attempts to capture a moment yet now it’s “arty”, or at least according to hipsters “DUHH! I CAN ART!”.  So with both the sunset and rocks examples in mind, what is it you’re actually showing me through Instagram?  Is it a beautiful moment that is no longer what you are trying to express (sunset photo), or is it something extremely dull and boring that you’re faking to express (rocks&rubbish photo)?

The heavy focus on the filters also takes away some of the skills in getting a good photo.  The framing of the shot, the balancing of the elements in the scene, the ability to find an angle that turns something ordinary in to something wonderful.  In the above photos for example, above-left I have the ordinary scene.  Above-centre, the unique angle to improve upon it (a view from road level), and finally above-right is the framing and balancing of the scene (the solitary girl walking down the road on the left, and the road rolling and weaving in to the distance on the right).  These are three things that many don’t bother with any more due to such single-click filters, making the images on Instagram even more dull.

And it does very heavily push the filters.  Just take a look at this screenshot, taken from a website that allows you to view Instagram through a web browser (yes, you need to find third party sites to do that one basic task).  Look at how few of those images are not retouched.  The filters themselves are simple sing-click things, so it’s not like any thought even goes in to applying those either.

—

Instagram is the bane of photography.  Every time you use it, you may as well be defecating all over the scene you’re pretending to capture.

It discourages the skills of framing a photo, finding an angle, and attempting to capture beauty by its heavy pushing of filters.  The filters mean you can never tell if the person was trying to convey what they were seeing, or are simply going “HERP!  DERP!  I HAZ AN ART!!!~1″, and make it too grainy to even see the subjects natural beauty and detail (sometimes to even see the subject).

Please, for gods sake (or what ever deity/lack of deity to prescribe to), PLEASE, STOP USING INSTAGRAM!  It fails at photo sharing, it ruins pictures, it removes any moment or beauty you wish to capture and share, and just leaves you with a generic, grainy, try-hard bunch of pixels that demonstrate less artistic ability than my two year old nephew with a pack of crayons.  If you use it, I WILL think less of you, I WILL hate you, and I most certainly will NOT look at your image.

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“While Tankard Reist has not gone so far as to issue court proceedings yet, she complains social media has intensified the level of vituperation against outspoken figures such as herself.

”Things have gone too far, people think they can just trash you,” she said yesterday. ”Why does being a blogger exempt you from the laws of defamation?””

The area where Melinda Tankard Reist has made a very serious error is one area that journalists and “professional commentators” very regularly get wrong.  She has claimed that social media and blogs have “intensified the level of vituperation against outspoken figures”.

No Melinda, it hasn’t.  What you see and read in blogs and social media are the exact same things people have always been saying to each other in conversation.  The comments and commentary from the general public has not changed at all.  The only difference with blogs and social media, is that we now have a way to express these thoughts and opinions in a way that you can see them.

Previously you were blissfully unaware, only the few that were specifically selected for “letters to the editor” do you read, and that’s only if people go to such effort.  Now, social media and publicising our own thoughts is an every day, every hour, every minute occurrence, so you’re seeing a lot more of it.  These are the publics actual thoughts, rather than your disillusions of what they were.

If you do happen to stumble across this particular blog, I should point out I’m using the “royal you”.  Yes, it is directed at you personally Melinda, but at the same time these comments are directed with equal value to everyone else who uses the press to criticise bloggers, commenters, and social media users.

—–

If anyone’s wondering my thoughts on Melinda Tankard Reists feminism or religious fundamentalism, well, I wasn’t overly familiar with MTR prior to the article which seemed to kick all of this off.  I knew her as an anti-abortion campaigner, and that was about it.

As I read through the article, I read nothing to make me consider her as a feminist other than the regular claims that she was.  All the descriptions of her and her activities sounded to me to come straight from the play books of the religious conservatives.  The people who insist that everyone, religious and non-religious alike, need to play by the same rules of their particular interpretation of god.  The people who insist that laws must be the way they want them and anybody who thinks differently is attacking their religious freedoms.  The people who love to discriminate, offend, and act like schoolyard bullies, but when called out on it seem to somehow think they’re the victims.

Is Melinda a feminist or a fundamentalist theist?  I’d say she’s probably both, but her actions to me seem to lean more towards the latter.  This does need to be taken with a very big grain of salt though due to my lack of real knowledge about Melinda.  I could be and most likely am extremely mistaken, these are after all only early impressions.

As to her outrage to all of this, it’s very much a Streisand affect which she’s created here.  Turned lots of people against her.  I can only see this as another person throwing their hat in to the circle, wanting to joint he likes of Andrew Bolt, Kyle Sandilands, Germaine Greer, and doing anything for publicity in any way shape or form.  The more controversial, the better.  They’ll unfortunately get ratings and people fawning to listen to them just so that those people can be offended.

It really is quite disgusting both that people act like this on purpose, and that it works.

I’ve spoken about the Australian Vaccination Network before, but those have generally only been mentions and references, I’ve never really gone in to who and what they are.

EDIT: BREAKING NEWS! It appears StopAVN have done something fantastic and unexpected at Woodford Folk Festival!  Please scroll down to the next bolded “EDIT:” and ensure even if you don’t read most of this, you at least read that!!!

Who are the Australian Vaccination Network?
The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), despite all claims to the contrary, are an anti-vaccination group.  They are headed up by Meryl Dorey and claim they’re not, they claim they just support informed choice and provide a counter to the governments provides.  However, the information the AVN provide is wrong on almost all counts which means it’s not really an informed choice they’re providing but a misinformed one, and if the governments provides is pro-vaccine, then any stance counter to that surely must be anti?

Their preferred sources of information are not scientific studies, but rather conspiracy theorist sites such as whale.to (a site that collects any and all articles and claims no matter how crazy and unsubstantiated they are), conspiracy theorists such as David Icke (who promotes world leaders and the royal family being lizard people), and people with revoked medical licenses such as the disgraced Andrew Wakefield.

They’ve had their charity license revoked.  In the last two years, only two issues of their 6/year magazine “Living Wisdom” has been released (and despite being so far behind in issues owed, they’re still actively pushing subscriptions).  They regularly cry oppression, censorship and demand free speech, despite blocking/banning anyone who dares counter their supposed-not president Meryl Dorey with information that is nothing more than factual. They have also been caught filing numerous false DMCA requests to hide public and factual information they don’t like.  The Australian Vaccination Network about as hypocritical as one can get.

Who are Stop The AVN?

Fortunately there’s also groups out there who try to combat the Australian Vaccination Network‘s misinformation campaign, one of which is called Stop The AVN (StopAVN).  Despite being completely banned from the AVN‘s mailing list, FaceBook page, and google group for the reasons mentioned above, they’re doing an amazing job at countering the AVN‘s misinformation campaign.  With their own FaceBook page and information website they regularly counter Meryl‘s false claims, and have done some great work putting the AVN in its deserved place.  The ABC for example have been told globally not to use her as an expert in vaccines, and that if she is to talk at all it’s to be made clear she’s an anti vaccination promoter.

Unlike the AVN which was a charity (license revoked) and is still a registered non-profit business, StopAVN is just a loose collection of people with common interests.  They don’t have any official structure, nor do they ever campaign for funds.  Anything and everything is done entirely on the individuals time and with their own personal funds, simply because they care and are passionate about the wellbeing of others, helping out those who are too young to be vaccinated or who are immuno-comprimised so vaccines cannot help.

Woodford Folk Festival?
Last but not least in this little sordid tale is the Woodford Folk Festival (WoodfordFF).  It is a music/culture festival held near Woodford in Queensland every year between Christmas and New Years.  For the last few years they’ve invited Meryl to talk and give her false information on the topics of vaccines and autism.  Two years ago Meryl spoke as well, and all attempts to have this stage removed from her failed.  In fact it became quite clear that the people behind WoodfordFF were very in support of things like alternative (read: Ineffective) medicine, anti-vaccination, and just about anything not supported by evidence or science.  This extends to the point where they even have a homeopathic first aid tent on site.

Last year Meryl didn’t attend due to schedule conflicts, but this year she was invited back and accepted.  StopAVN first approached WoodfordFF to let them know just what/who they were providing a platform to, and they didn’t care.  If anything, their response yet again showed they supported the unhealthy and dangerous stance Meryl promotes.  StopAVN then went to the media contacts.  This second approach has proven more successful, with numerous sponsors pulling out due to the misinformation claims not only of Meryl and the AVN, but also of other stalls and speakers at WoodfordFF.  Numerous organisations including council/governments who support but don’t sponsor the festival requested their names and logos be removed from sponsor lists.

Through some great activism, StopAVN have managed to get WoodfordFF to reluctantly act, although not as much as I and many others would have liked.  WoodfordFF have decided to step back from giving Meryl an unchallenged stage to spout her lies and misinformation, and have allowed an immunologist to go up in debate against her, with a person from the World Health Organisation as the moderator.  This is great news, but debates still aren’t the best either.  They are won not by who is correct, but who is the most confident.  You need to keep your information short and sharp.  It is much easier to do that with lies and false statements that sound like “statements of fact” when said confidently.  Here’s hoping the moderator keeps her on a tight leash, stopping her on any lies.

It’s a good step, but Woodford Folk Festival are still not doing enough for the wellbeing of their patrons.  Remember, this isn’t censorship.  It isn’t silencing her either.  It is just refusing her a stage.  She is still free to spout her misinformation, but she’ll have to do it elsewhere.

EDIT: OH MY FRACKING GOD!  News has just come in that Stop The AVN have managed to pull something off I would not have expected in a hundred years!  They had people handing out these awesome pamphlets to counter the misinformation they’re expecting Meryl Dorey to be spouting.  Not only that, while Meryl was on stage spouting her misinformation (and for two hours after), StopAVN managed to hire a plane to fly over the festival with a banner in tow stating “Vaccination Saves Lives“!  This would have been flying above WoodfordFF right in Meryl‘s face during and just after her talk!  BRILLIANT!

So much praise to Stop The AVN!  My hat and pants go off to them.

EDIT 2: Stop The AVN have released some banners we can put on our blogs.  I’ve added them to the top and bottom of this post and will shortly be putting it on my blog sidebar as well.  I’m still waiting (hoping) for pictures of Meryl‘s talk and the plane, and will edit this a third time when I can get them. Bravo StopAVN, Bravo.

Links and Resources:

• Vaccination Saves Lives – Press Release from StopAVN.
• Vaccination Saves Lives – Pamphlet being handed out at WoodfordFF.
• Vaccination Saves Lives – StopAVN.
• Chain of Protection.
• My past blog posts about Vaccines/AVN.
• HCCC Public Health Warning about the Australian Vaccination Network.
• Stop the Australian Vaccination Network Facebook Page.
• Stop the Australian Vaccination Network Website.
• Scopie’s Law (details about whale.to).
• Disgraced Andrew Wakefield.
• David Icke.
• AVN at Wikipedia.

At the time, Christopher Maloney was throwing out threats of lawsuits left right and centre, and twisting anything and everything he possibly could to make it falsely look like he was being persecuted.  Not long after this, all news on him died off and this was the last the blogosphere heard.  This wasn’t the end of his actions though.

It has now become apparent that Christopher Maloney, Quack, N.D. had utilised his wife’s legal services to sue the original blogger.  A S.L.A.P.P. suit was filed against Mr Hawkins.

Fortunately, Mr Hawkins approached Ken White for suggestions of good legal defence, and instead got Ken White offering his services Pro Bono.

The case has now concluded, and Christopher Maloney has lost.  For the details of what transpired you’re probably best off reading Mr Hawkins’ blog on the topic, and/or that of his lawyer, Ken White.

This is great news, not only another loss for the quacks but mainly for another S.L.A.P.P. suit slapped down.

Links:

• Pharyngula: Christopher Maloney is a Quack.
• Pharyngula: Christopher Maloney is still a Quack.
• Pharyngula: Do not harrass the Quacks.
• Pharyngula: Andreas Moritz is a cancer Quack.
• Pharyngula: Why Quacks ought to lie low.
• FTSoS: Christopher Maloney and the lawsuit that almost was.
• PopeHat: Pro Bono victory in a Junk Science SLAPP suitagainst a Science blogger.