Rule Britannia . . .

"Knit your own royal wedding" CNN, by Lakshmi Gandhi (April 6, 2011)

(It speaks for itself.)

"Slut Walk" protest after misguided advice on preventing assault

Earlier this year a police officer told a class at York University in Toronto, Canada, that women can prevent rape if they "avoid dressing like sluts."

He has apologized, but his comment indexed the kinds of poorly-thought-through ideas which in the end cast blame on victims of sexual assault. It is especially worrisome in a person who should help enforce the relevant laws.

So on April 3rd 1,500 to 3,000 people participated in "Slut Walk," a protest march, in Toronto.

According to a commenter (UnabashedOpinion) on the Globe and Mail's website:

What we're hoping for is really simple: That Toronto Police Services (1) Revamp their training curriculum on sexual assault and domestic violence, using experts in the field to provide content (the current curriculum was developed exclusively by the police themselves; (2) That experts in the field be used to actually teach the material (currently it is inadequately trained cops teaching ignorant cops); (3) That good methods of adult education be used in the teaching so that the learning sustains and actually transforms ingrained attitudes (currently, no actual learning takes place, since no transformation of worldview and understanding occurs).

The Snowy Path of Canada's Nunavut

On April 1st, twelve years after Nunavut parted from the Northwest Territories to form its own political unit within Canada, the Globe and Mail published an investigation of life in the Inuit territory today.

@TheRevAl

Reverend Al Sharpton

43 years ago today Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. Let us remember his sacrifice for all of us.

43 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

1:27 PM Berlin time Apr 4th, Twitter.com

[Technical Note]

Apologies to the reader (if any) who is artistically offended by the current experiments with this blog's layout. The use of pink is trite but it is timely, at least, since the website looks like an Easter egg.

It could be worse,

Stumbled-On Photos: Cyrene and Eyjafjallajokull

"Greek ruins of Cyrene draw goats, cows, few tourists" [Kathimerini] (March 29, 2011)

From last year, via @rfg2edit (Rose Foltz): "More from Eyjafjallajokull" [Boston.com] (April 19, 2010)

Open Season for Visitor Hordery on the South Downs in England

Winchester Guild Hall (1871). In city which marks western end of the park. (by Wyrdlight, Wikimedia Commons)

As of yesterday Britain has a new national park on its southeastern shore: South Downs National Park, which spreads over 1600 square kilometres from Winchester to Eastbourne.

It is not entirely the stereotype of the lonely national park. Brighton, its environs, and its high population throng under the southern margin at the side of the Channel; London is an afternoon's outing away; and over 108,000 people live in the park proper.

Like a central nerve the South Downs Way, open for cyclists and horseback riders and walkers, stretches between the cities and threads the expanding park. Besides the attractions of Winchester and Eastbourne, there are the white cliffs not of Dover but of Beechy Head (which seems to have, however, also attained the importance of a cliché), sheep, rolling slopes, the ex-forest Weald of Sussex, &c., &c., and an Iron Age hill fort by name of Chanctonbury Ring.

Despite the prevalence of the species Homo sapiens, a gently written article in the Guardian paints a pleasing bucolic portrait:

"Bronze age farmers knew the area, medieval ironmasters hacked at its copses, and 18th-century owners enclosed its fields. It remains a landscape that Jane Austen, who lived at Chawton near its northern boundary, would recognise"

"There are still wild spots: chalk downlands and woods, heathland and beech hangers, but this archetypal English landscape bears the marks of many generations."

And the writer remarks that corn buntings and grey partridges dwell in the downlands while nightjars and woodlarks haunt the heathlands.

South Downs: bells ring out to celebrate Britain's new national park [Guardian.co.uk], by Stephen Bates (March 31, 2011)
In pictures: The UK's newest national park [Guardian.co.uk], (March 31, 2009)
"South Downs Way", "Looking after", "Interactive Map" (Southdowns National Park Authority, March 2011)
"The South Downs above Tilton." by penwren [Flickr] (May 21, 2009)