This morning

An early start today...


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Quiksilver promotes women! Hang on, what?

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This is an ACTUAL video that Quiksilver have on the Quiksilver Pro website to promote the competition. Come one, come all to watch the Quiksilver Pro on the Gold Coast!! Everybody is welcome - even women! As long as you're a sick chick who is willing to have guys ogle her and comment on her body openly and in a way that is apparently encouraged by Quiksilver. But seriously, this is not a joke. That video is on the homepage of video section on the Quiksilver Pro website . On a website that includes women surfers who are also competing. Women who Quiksilver likes to suggest they consider athletes. I sort of wondered for a while if I would even post the clip here, because posting it is promoting their product and site, so I want you to know that I'm not unaware of the complexity of my including it on my blog in order to critique it. But I also want you to know that I think Quiksilver clearly employs some moronic promotional techniques that encourage and even permit sexist ...
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the sea is all about us

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From The Dry Salvages   by T.S. Eliot (published in 1941) The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land's edge also, the granite Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses Its hints of earlier and other creation: The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone; The pools where it offers to our curiosity The more delicate algae and the sea anemone. It tosses up our losses, the torn seine, The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices, Many gods and many voices. ---------------- I just read this at the beginning of the Afterword by Jeffrey S. Levinton in the 1989 edition of Rachel Carson's,  The Sea Around Us. It is a section of a much longer poem, that itself is part of a set, Four Quartets , that were largely written during World War II. The Dry Salvages was written during the air-raids in Britain, and it is very sad. I'm not vouching for the whole thing, but ...
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Cars and surfing

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For most of us, cars are a central part of going surfing. In Australia, cars were an historically important part of the spread and reach of surfing and surfing culture in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when cars became mass-produced and car ownership became affordable for younger people. Photos of groups of young men and women taking off to explore the coast have become iconic. For example, I see this photo by John Witzig of Bob McTavish at Noosa all the time - in books, online and even in films. This image is even the front page image on John Witzig's website . In Australia, surfing has really significant connections to cars; historically, symbolically, stylistically and practically In a similar way to the freedom they provided to surfers last century, cars have been really important for my surfing life. Because I live in Brisbane and especially because I ride longboards, if I didn't own a car, my access to the surf would be entirely reliant on the kindness and genero...
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