'Sex(ism), Sport and stupidity' is the proud moto of the UK originated men's weekly magazine *Zoo*. The Australian arm of the publication has sunk to new lows this week announcing a competition for male readers to win their girlfriends' a round of free plastic surgery. As the cover of the magazine explains " *WIN A BOOB JOB FOR YOUR GIRL. *Want to turn those fried eggs into massive mamms? We'll give you ten grand to do it". And no, they're not kidding.

A report called *Generation whY?*,
released by the University of Canberra
last week, reveals that in 2007,
men still enjoy higher wages than
women employed in the same occupation.
The gap is largest in the clerical, sales
and service field where men earn an average $135 per week more than their
female counterparts. "There is still
extensive evidence showing that the
gender wage gap in Australia is well
and truly alive with estimates of a 15
per cent wage differential between Australian men and women" the report
says. Is it really that much of a surprise
for a generation to whom Germaine
Greer is best known for her comments
about Steve Irwin?

There's a line in one of my favourite books of recent years -Lionel Shriver's "We Need To Talk About Kevin"- that describes the protagonist Eva crossing the street to avoid walking past a rowdy group of pre-pubescent boys. To misquote her, Shriver's character comments "nobody is unnerved by a
group of little girls". I've found myself even at the age of 23 doing the same thing-surely at this age I shouldn't be batting an eyelid at a cluster of 11 year old boys. But a pack of alpha-males, however young, can be a threatening and disturbing thing. Everyone in Australia has no doubt seen footage this week of Australian soldiers binge drinking and parading around the army barracks in Ku Klux Klan outfits. Another online video showed a soldier pointing a pistol at a fellow Digger dressed in Arab headdress.'Male bonding' many have dismissed the incident as, but I think that Shriver would
disagree.

There's a small village in China called Buffalo where couples who wish to have multiple children (against the country's one child policy) do so by taking fertility drugs that cause the women to have twins, triplets or in some cases quintuplets (the loop hole is such that couples can legally have more than one child if they are born at the same time). I wonder what it would be like to live in a town where almost every child is a twin?