One of the ideas I'm playing around with for my essay is the difference between scientific and intuitive risk assessment. When science looks at a risk, it considers the gravity and the likelihood of the consequences. When people look at a risk, they think about heaps of other factors as well - like, who will be affected, and how much choice do they have about exposing themselves to the risk?

This kind of thinking was made obvious in an article in today's Australian. The headline states: "End to Chechen siege costs 118 lives." The last line of paragraph two states: "...at least 118 hostages and 50 Chechen guerillas were killed."

Right then. It looks like the 50 Chechens who died didn't possess "lives". Personally, I didn't think a person's status as alive was dependent on moral worth. In the context of this article, however, "lives" can be equated with "innocent lives". The fact that the Chechens voluntarily exposed themselves to (in fact, caused) the threatenening situation, coupled with the fact that they were "terrorists", means that their deaths are not considered part of the cost of Russian action in Moscow.

Hmmm....it looks like I'm an angry little tiger today. Douglas just sent me this piece of reportage from the Sydney Morning Herald: "Bare Bellies Provoke a Wobbly." In essence, the article describes a shock jock's heinous remarks about women and the protest that ensued. Now for my ten cents (my two cents is free).

I'm going to say it loud and say it proud - this kind of comment is not OK:

"At an age when girls should be striving to be pleasing to the eye, the male eye, these young women were going to serious lengths to expose an acre of wobbling excess. Haven't they looked in the mirror?..."

and again...

"The midriff look is for young women with flat stomachs, which is why it is so delightful on Ms Spears and co. It might be pleasantly decorous on a girl with the slightest hint of a roll, one whose diet has gone off the rails just recently," Corbett wrote. "But when it's blubber it is abhorrent, the visual version of scraping a fingernail on the blackboard."

I don't CARE if the remarks were made deliberately to irritate vocal young feminists like myself. I don't care if Corbett was just trying to get a rise...the excuse so often trotted out by shock jocks. Just because something is self-aware in its sensationalism doesn't mean it's acceptable.

Likewise, I don't care if the egos of repressed chauvinists were stroked by Corbett's outburst. It's a common complaint of people with oppressive views that political correctness has gagged them. Well keep the gag on, I say, if it protects our vulnerable teenage girls from horrendous streams of judgemental and hurtful drivel like the comments above.

And as for the SMH piece - they can't have it both ways. The amused, condescending tone of the article amounts to tsk-tsking Corbett while reinforcing his slurs. Any article that begins with the line "Don't mess with a girl from Newcastle, especially if she's carrying a few extra kilos around the girth" is not going to help women.

I'm going to go and take a deep breath now. Wear what you want, everyone.

The first ever Shambala Miss Tibet competition will be held next week, amidst a storm of awkward responses. The Guardian wrote an article about the event, pointing out some bizarre compromises. The swimsuit round will be closed to the public. The event will be held in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's seat in exile in India, so 90% of Tibetan women won't be able to attend. None of the judges appear to be Tibetan.

The debate over the rights and wrongs (or helpfuls and unhelpfuls) of this issue has consumed a fair whack of bandwidth. For a start, there's the official home page with information about contestants - including pictures, manifestos and vital(?) statistics.

Then there's the chatrooms, like Phayul, where Ikhenrap suggested Tibetan people shouldn't "encourage our women for naked appearance and funny steps." Posters on this site also queried the wisdom of holding the competition in India, a country with a history of resentment towards beauty pageants.

At first I was surprised to see so much internet interaction on the "Miss Tibet" issue. Then I realised that there were two features of the story that made cyberspace a really appropriate discursive forum. First, this is about exile. One of the main groups of people who will hear about this story and care are Tibetans living outside Tibet, who still have a stake in how their country is perceived internationally. They're likely to use the internet to keep in touch with their diasporic community.

Secondly, this is a story where the idea is more catchy, interesting and shocking than any actual event could be. The contest itself will probably be very dull. It's the heady clash of gender, politics, marketing and cultural issues that makes the concept of a "Miss Tibet" worth discussing. No wonder it's got cyber tongues wagging.

The press releases for the summer music festivals have started trickling out, and I for one am very excited. What's slightly less exciting, though, is this revolution in event management: P-Mates.

"Another difference may be shorter toilet queues, thanks to the availability on the day of P-Mates, cardboard tubes that allow women to urinate standing up. Mr Lees said the devices were introduced at European music festivals last year amid "controversy and humour" but had been accepted this year." (from The Age.)

That just doesn't sound comfortable. And cardboard? Does anyone else see a problem with that? South Africa's "Financial Gazette" ran a piece on P-mates, where we discover important additional information - P-Mates were invented by an Amsterdam artist named Moon Zijp and they resemble a French Fries Cone. Huh? Who has their French Fries in a cone? Who's called Moon Zijp?

There's also a description of the body mechanics involved. Apparently you just have to laugh and the rest happens naturally. Well, hooray for progress and lateral thinking, but I'm not entirely convinced on this one. If you are, however, feel free to purchase one online. The come in a range of snazzy colours and patterns, and you can get a pack of 6 for 18 euros.

Once you've used one you can't do without.

No news is as good as a quirky statistic, and this one's a bottler: 1 in 20 British people will dump their partner before Christmas or Valentine's Day in order to avoid buying them a present. It's not hard to gauge the social response to this factoid. Aren't people just so stingy and mean? This conclusion is helped along by the framework of the study, which was all about the extent of British tight-ass-edness.

Well, I like to look at the scrooge-lover syndrome a different way - as an affirmation of the valuable role of presents. Sure, they can be meaningless or manipulative, but presents can also allow us to stop and think about the person for whom we are buying/making something and what they mean to us. I know, I'm very sweet and quite possibly a little naive.

As far as the other stats go, I am guilty of taking my own lollies to the movies, helping myself to shampoo from hotels and (ah, the paradoxical climax of the survey) allowing banks to rob me blind.