This is a global distributional issue. This is about getting enough to eat. (I make no claim to originality here: several women* are writing on this issue right now.)

Women are roughly 50% of the world’s population, do two thirds of the work, but earn 10% of the income and control just 1% of the world’s wealth.

The price of food everywhere is going up. The major rises in agricultural yield came about because of mechanization and petrochemical fertilizers, both of which become more expensive when energy prices go up. Worse, politically attractive but resource-stupid forays into ethanol have pushed the prices of some food crops higher.

The New York Times this week said that in Peru, women urge action on food prices:

Ken Zucker is a psychologist at the Clarke Institute (aka "Jurassic Clarke") in Toronto. Zucker is famous for forcing gender-variant children into reparative therapy to conform to his expectations for male and female behavior in children. He considers transsexual women a "bad outcome" for gay men.

Zucker is a darling of the "ex-gay" movement because of his work "curing" gender-variant children. Here is a piece featuring his work via ex-gay group NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuals):

From the wonderful book "the man who would be queen" a bible of tolerance and understanding (ha)      

Zucker found several predictors of adolescent GID: lower IQ, lower social class, immigrant status, non-intact family, and childhood behavior problems unrelated to gender identity disorder. Obviously, none of these factors can be considered very specific. Parental divorce and low social class are both very common, and most males who experience them do not become transsexual. The factors do, however, suggest a common theme: early adversity. I will speculate later about what this might mean. When I have discussed the theory that homosexual transsexuals are a type of gay man, I have met resistance. I was surprised at this, for the idea is neither new nor, it seemed to me, controversial. Some of the resistance was emotional. People who believe that homosexuality is not a disorder tend to dislike the implication that a subset of homosexuals are disordered.

I’m Mrs. Lifestyles of the rich and famous
I’m Mrs. Oh my God that Britney’s Shameless
I’m Mrs. Extra! Extra! this just in
I’m Mrs. she’s too big now she’s too thin
I’m Mrs. ‘Most likely to get on the TV for strippin’ on the streets’
When getting the groceries, no, for real..
Are you kidding me?

Experts Dispute Report Critical of Antidepressants

Eve Bender

Conclusions about antidepressant efficacy based on a meta-analysis of FDA clinical trials raise serious questions.

In late February some headlines heralded bad news for those being treated for depression: "Prozac does not work," declared one headline from the UK Guardian, "and nor do similar drugs...."

The news was in reaction to a metaanalysis of trials of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1987 to 1999. The report appeared in the February 26 PLOS Medicine.

"These findings suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression," the authors wrote, "but show significant effects for only the most depressed patients."

.........

In their editorial, Turner and Rosenthal pointed out that the criterion set by NICE is "problematic, because it transforms effect size, a continuous measure, into a yes or no measure, thereby suggesting that drug efficacy is either totally present or absent, even when comparing values as close together as 0.51 and 0.49."

They also noted that the NICE criterion is not a definitive measure, but a value that could be problematic as a litmus test for drug efficacy.

In the article, Kirsch and his colleagues noted that drug efficacy did not change as a function of initial depression severity, whereas placebo efficacy decreased as initial depression severity increased. "Efficacy reaches clinical significance only in trials involving the most extremely depressed patients," the authors wrote, "due to a decrease in the response to placebo rather than to an increase in the response to medication."

[link]

Brothels will be legal in WA in a matter of months after landmark prostitution legislation was passed last night, despite political and community opposition to the State Government’s controversial reforms.

The Upper House passed the Prostitution Amendment Bill by 14 votes to 13, with ousted Labor MP turned Independent Shelley Archer proving to be the difference in the close count.

Ms Archer backflipped on her stance in recent weeks after brokering a deal with the Government to fund sex and drug education programs in the State’s North-West, which virtually guaranteed the Bill’s passage.

Opposition MPs and anti-prostitution campaigners declared yesterday was a dark day for WA which would lead to tragic consequences and the exploitation of women.

One of the most controversial aspects of the legislation is allowing brothels with up to two sex workers to operate in residential streets without being licensed.