Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more

Now there could be a number explanations for this:

It could be that the nerdy-head-banging-slightly-scared-of women over-grown boys make up a clear voting majority of Triple J's audience, it could also simply be that the music world was once male dominated and for whatever reason it has never caught up with the advances of wider society, or maybe it has been the sexy stereotypes that women have to fall into to succeed- stereotypes that just don't fit with stinging social critcism or a pioneering spirit. Or maybe it was just blatant sexism.

The response to this embarresment (as MusicMax viewers would be aware) was from Hummingbird, a women's beer company who organised a countdown of the 100 Hottest Female Songs of all Time.

Now I know what you're thinking, no this wasn't a marketing exercise; this was purely about enfranchising the disenfranchised and putting the lost voices of amazing women into the Pantheon of great artists where they've always belonged.

So if I was picking the under-listened, well off the top of my head you'd probably expect PJ Harvey with the stunning Good Fortune to be near the top.

I mean she was Nick Cave's muse and she ended up making Stories by the City, Stories by Sea- a break-up album that well outshined his depressing effort- The Boatman's Call.

You'd also probably expect to see Billie Holiday. A woman that was unbelievably beautiful, haunting and inspiring- especially when she sang the spine tingling Strange Fruit.

Now the purists out there might be angry because she didn't write it, but who cares?

Her cool, down-played voice and her bubbling bitterness turned a poem you'd be touched by, into a song that painted you an unforgettable picture of Southern lynchings.

Then for me you'd put up It's, Oh, So Quiet by Björk, the Icelandic Queen of Quirky. An amazing woman who has constantly experimented, constantly pushed the bounds of weird and wonderful and constantly given us a sound that is as rich as the Icelandic fishing industry used to be.

Then before I burst a blood vessel in anger with the news I have to tell you; I would also throw Joni Mitchell in, with California. I challenge anyone to find a voice more angellic than Joni's; she's absolutely stunning, has had a lot to say and always looks like she's enjoying herself when she 's playing.

So would you like me, be very disappointed to find out that not one of these amazing artists made it into Top 10 or even the Top 100 Hottest Female Songs of all Time?

Instead we got:

Just Dance and Poker Face both by Lady Gaga and both in the top 20, Katy Perry with I Kissed a Girl came in at 12th, ABBA with Dancing Queen at 4th.

I could continue but I wont.

So two quick questions to be controversial:

Should we be as worried by the absolute ignorance of these great pioneering women and their amazing art as we were at Triple J's 'gender bias'?

And when do we begin the re-education of the voters of this strange and bitter crop?

Sorry. If you were wondering, I'm not going to give you the link to the web-site. It is ridiculous and should be viewed by no-one

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A couple of weeks ago, guest Hoyden Orlando asked why Triple J’s first draft of a “potted history of music” failed to showcase significant numbers of women. (The history has since been edited.)

The “Hottest 100 Of All Time” has since aired, and audiences have been shocked to find that only two songs in the top 100 – two! – were sung by women. Only six female-fronted songs made it into the second batch of 100, so it wasn’t as though the men just edged women out in the final vote – women are just overwhelmingly absent. This sort of discrepancy doesn’t happen by accident; we can quibble about the locus of the problem till we’re blue in the face, but it’s a clear sign of entrenched, largely-invisible sexism in action. Quibbling about the locus is pointless because the locus is everywhere. This is the Matrix.

TripleJ afternoon talkback show Hack today called for a bit of feedback on the testostofest finale. It was great to hear people phoning in making intelligent and feminist observations – women and men both.

A couple of folks stood out as particularly unhelpful, of course, too. One bloke phoned in talking about how women just can’t sing with the same emotion as men can, which was an eyeroll moment. And JJJ presenter Zan Rowe was flailingly defensive, taking the “It’s not us, it’s you!” approach and saying over and over and over again that it was “democratic” and not Triple J’s fault, instead of engaging with the issue in a substantive way or taking responsibility for a plan of action.

The show can be downloaded (it will be up for a week) at the Hack site.

Originally posted at Hoyden About Town.

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Part of the HomepageDAILY crew has just relocated to Mexico City, and yes we are a little overwhelmed and yes this place is a little bigger than we anticipated!

Probably the most confronting aspect is not the massive changes in language, clothes, demographics or the relative cheapness of cervezas, rather it is the slight cultural nuances that make you truly realise that you have stepped from one side of the world to the other.

The expected peso's to be handed over to mariachi singers on street corners, a man hanging his jacket on a knot of a tree as he steps out of a car, the child playing a neverending game with an elusive squirrel for a biscuit and the bloke with an odd looking bike pushing his mate down the street at a frenetic pace.

So what does this mean? While we are definately moving towards a global society, cultural disparity shall always exist, and it is for this purpose we enjoy travel and the new experiences that it brings.

Bring it on! viva la revolucion cultural!  . . read more

Do not, and I repeat do not, live beyond your means. 

A child could explain it- you can't get something for nothing.

And even if all these fancy economic and finance models create even more complicated ways to make debt manageable, eventually it will catch up with us.

There will be a point where everything collapses. 

Why can't we be a little more patient?  . . read more