vanna,

You wrote: (in your efforts to blame it all on the mummys)

"with obesity there is now the belief that it is directly connected to the type of food being fed to children at a young age..."

...ahem, this is related to lifestyle.

But then, so is sitting on your bum watching telly...or sitting on your bum behind a desk at school....or sitting on your bum in a car while mum ferries you around....or sitting on your bum at the football, cinema or MacDonald's.....

All of the above is, of course, applicable to adults as well - and most of these activities are usually enhanced by scoffing a vast array of sugary or fatty crap.

Consumer society, it's called - and it lends itself rather well to fashioning obesity in humans.

Off topic but

"That is all based on risk management, but I have not heard of any so-called Australian universities with those policies."

http://www.unisa.edu.au/policies/policies/corporate/C06.asp (University of South Australia)

"Objectives

1. Minimise OHSW risks with the aim of achieving zero harm to employees, students and any other person associated with University business." - 2 minutes on google.

I've not bothered looking at other Uni's but targetting zero injury rates is pretty common.

I've not bothered to look for zero energy statments. I suspect that most will have something about minimising energy usage.

runner get some more balance about universities, academics and women.

R0bert

Sorry, that last connect was intended for vanna, not runner.

R0bert

On the subject of human evolution and development - Alvin Toffler offers an helpful perspective in his book "Future Shock".(written in the seventies)

"It has been observed, for example, that if the last 50,000 years of man's existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 lifetimes. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves.

Only during the last seventy lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another - as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th lifetime.

This 800th lifetime marks a sharp break with all past human experience, because during this lifetime man's relationship to resources has revealed itself. This is most evident in the field of economic development. Within a single lifetime, agriculture, the original basis of civilisation, has lost its dominance in nation after nation. Today in a dozen major countries agriculture employs fewer than 15 per cent of the economically active population"

Poirot,

Your Toffler quote is not as off-topic as it might seem:

" .... Within a single lifetime, agriculture, the original basis of civilisation, has lost its dominance in nation after nation. Today in a dozen major countries agriculture employs fewer than 15 per cent of the economically active population."

And what freedoms have opened up to women in that shift ? How many women, or their daughters, can get out of the fields, go off to uni and into professional careers, who could never have dreamt of doing so a couple of generations ago ?

And what sorts of cultural shifts have been necessary for men to re-think their perception of women as nothing much more than weeders, harvesters, child-bearers and home-keepers, as an unreliable burden to their fathers when single, as a submissive accompaniment to their husbands, and as a burden on their male children when they are past child-bearing age and widowed ? In a way, a shift from commodities to colleagues ?

With the notion of equal rights, men have had to quickly change their perceptions, from those halcyon agricultural days to the hectic and uncertain conditions of today's post-industrial societies.

And some of us find it very hard to keep up. After all, women are so cute and round and sexy, men are all useless straight lines, except around the paunch. Give us time :)

'I've been talking about genders as classes, as stereotypes if you like, which no doubt all individuals fit imperfectly. Your obstinate misogyny, I'm bound to say, is much less considerate'

I call bollocks. A generalisation is a generalisation. A stereotype is a stereotype.

'It's a dilemma, however; do we kill off the Humanities'

Literally? I'd be all for that! I don't think we even need slaughter them humanely.

squeers,

'do we retain (develop) the capacity at the social/cultural level for self-reflection and critique?'
That capacity is innate, no need to teach it at a institution of propaganda. I see far too much navel gazing going on, when the bogan who looks out at his back yard or tinkers with his V8 has much more profound insights and a more pragmatic way of acting on them than your average 'intellectual'.

'Western capitalist cultures are as profoundly incapable of self-reflection and self-criticism as gendered identities, corporations, governments and institutions are. '

Rubbish! Just because people don't come to the same conclusions as yourself they are 'profoundly incapable'. How pompous!

'The truth is just to hard to bare, and breaking the addiction is unthinkable.
As addicts, we even have ready-made defences to throw at the critics of our degraded humanity: Leftists! Greenies! Academics! etc.'

Well, that;'s your truth. You keep self-flagellating while I get on and enjoy life in the most privileged of manors man has ever been
able.

Just how is humanity 'degraded' any more than it has ever been? Off you go and romanticise about times you never lived in where everyone dies by 40.

poirot,

'For the hundredth time - Western women are tethered to the system. What part of that do you not understand?'
Oh! So it's all men's fault, because they made the system? Nice step, make a feminist out of you yet. I'm trying to map women and responsibility in feminist doctrine, and I cant even get them in the same room.

pelican,

It's late but...

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/women-better-managers-than-men-study/story-fn7ki9fd-1226017669263

PS: Good work on the toilet seats discussion by all. It's apposite to the relevance of feminism today.