Spoiler tags

I finally worked out my spoiler tag system so that it works in Blogger and when feeds are displayed in a feed reader. It's not as pretty as the design I wanted to copy, but it works. Finally.

Script is as follows:

This goes in the css style section:

.spoilerz { color:#ccc; cursor:pointer; }
.despoilerz { color:blue; cursor:pointer; }

This script goes somewhere before </body>:

<!-- spoilerz scripting -->
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.4.js"></script>
<script>
$(document)
.ready(function() {
$('.spoilerz')
.live('click', function() {
$(this).toggleClass("despoilerz");
});
});
</script>
<!-- END spoilerz scripting -->

Then the text is formatted as follows:

<div style="color:#ccc; background-color:#ccc;">
<div class="spoilerz">
Text to be spoilerified.
</div>
</div>

Like I said, not brilliant, but it should at least work.

Thus, a test: click on the gray box and all should be revealed...

Please let this work.......

John Birmingham about trolls

I have only read one of John Birmingham's books -- World War 2.1: Weapons of Choice -- and, to be frank, I found it pointless and irritating. I believe it was intended to be pulp airport literature and that may have been my problem with it (although I zipped through three Dan Browns happily enough!). I do remember one of my main problems was that he kept introducing characters and then killing them off, without there ever seeming to be a reason for introducing them in the first place.1 BUT: I have never read any of his other books and I know some people love He Died With a Felafel in his hand and its subsequent movie. So, let's give literary merit the benefit of the doubt and that of other people's taste than mine and move on.

Now, Birmingham is someone whose tweets and articles are occasionally retweeted into my twitter feed. He's normally quite good, by which I mean to say: his political convictions are not too far from mine. (Also, he hates Andrew Bolt and that's all to the good.)

Anyway, there was an article that he wrote recently which I wanted to post. In praise of artful bludgers is from the Brisbane Times website and refers, among other things, to middle-class welfare, dole-bludging, and pathetic small-minded trolls. I think it's worth reading.

1Interestingly, it seems Andrew Bolt had a cameo as an SAS demolitionist. This does amuse me.

Off The Shelf Challenge 2011

I'm starting to think that I may well be signing up for too many challenges. But it's not like they don't all overlap anyway...and it's good motivation, so there.

So: new challenge = the Off The Shelf Challenge, hosted by Bookish Ardour. The aim is to read the books on your to-read pile. As mine is slowly reaching gargantuan proportions, this can only be a good thing.

I have chosen the second level -- Trying: Choose 15 books to read -- and, in a spirit of unusual optimism, I am going to list them all now:

  1. The King's Daughter -- Mary O'Connell
  2. The Planets -- Dava Sobel
  3. Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA -- Brenda Maddox
  4. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell -- Susanna Clarke
    • (These first four are all gifts from various years from my cousin, who is wonderful and gives books to an ungrateful relative who forgets to read them. Mea culpa.)
  5. Rum Rebellion -- H.V. Evatt
    • Rightly or wrongly, Evatt is my hero and so when I saw this 1936 tome in a second-hand bookshop, I had to have it.
  6. The Prime Minister Was a Spy: an Australian mystery explained -- Anthony Grey
    • About the mysterious disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt. I'm suspect he's taking the "kidnapped in a Chinese submarine" line rather than the "abducted by aliens" line, but I live in hope...
  7. A Woman's Place: Women and politics in Australia -- Marian Sawer & Marian Simms
    • From my mother's collection of 1970s feminist literature. (To be honest, the main reason I'm reading this is because it's written by not one, but TWO Marians.)
  8. The honest politician's guide to crime control -- Norval Morris & Gordon Hawkins
    • Recommended by both my parents as an adjunct to my studies of law.
    See. Gargantuan proportions. And this was taken back in July!!
  9. The Devil's Advocate -- Morris West
  10. Am I Too Loud? -- Gerald Moore
  11. My Brilliant Career -- Miles Franklin
  12. Birds, Beasts and Relatives -- Gerald Durrell
  13. Bugles and a Tiger -- John Masters
    • An Indian Army memoir, given to me by a friend. It promises to be hilarious.
  14. Geomancer -- Ian Irvine
    • A piece of trashy fantasy to round out the list. I read a series of his when in high school and enjoyed it, and this one was $1 at a fete. It's been sitting on my shelf for too long.
  15. Uncommon Law: being 66 misleading cases revised and collected in one volume -- A.P. Herbert
    • Legal humour. Yes, I know.

There's a link over at the hosting website for adding reviews and a link to declare completion.

Challenge: A Year of Feminist Classics (2011)

Another challenge! This time it's about reading a selection of classic feminist tomes, one (or two) for each month. The people of A Year of Feminist Classics are going to have discussion questions on their blog, so that should be fun. (And, you know, academic!)

The book list is:
  • January: A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft AND So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba
  • February: The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill
  • March: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
  • April: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • May: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
  • June: God Dies by the Nile by Nawal Saadawi
  • July: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
  • August: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
  • September: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
  • October: Ain’t I a Woman? by bell hooks AND Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism Anthology
  • November: Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
  • December: Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
I might not read all of them (hell, I might not read any of them -- or in fact, I might not be able to get hold of any of them) but it's an interesting concept.