Did I link to this before? I can't remember. The Saga of Biorn. Ah, those vikings.
Of dogs and surfs, or the privilege of the male life and how that affects publishing and story writing in our society. There's not much else to say about it, except part way through my own novel I realized 1) all the bad guys were Chinese and none of the good guys were and 2) except for a sex (not exactly romance, she wields sex as a weapon) interest I didn't have very many women in the book (although they were all over the place in mental pictures). So I made a conscious decision to place more women and Chinese in. Also I made a conscious decision to include the panoply of females (from one you do not want to get on the bad side, executives, receptionists, and the old Chinese women who knit the society together). (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
A story about how we're geared towards fatty foods. I have noticed in my dieting that if I can avoid starting to eat unhealthy foods, I can stay away from them. But once I break that diet (eating chips, or my current failing - milkshakes) it's hard to break back out of that cycle. For the record, I buy a shake about twice a week, but that's still too often. So my own dietary issues match to this study (and yes, it does feel like quitting an addiction to stop pop/chips/fatty foods). (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Satire FTW! (Pointed to by Dan)
A school board reverse a decision to remove The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie from school reading lists after, you know, they actually read it. Hey, they liked it. Strange, that. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)
The 20 worst restaurant meals. People eat out 4 times every week? (Pointed to by John)
Jim Wright takes a larger and future look at the current debt ceiling circus. Very wise Jim is. I only have one critique, the Chinese still tie the yuan to the dollar (albeit not as much as a decade ago). They couldn't uncouple it fast enough to also not be taken down with us.
A side comment about all the wunderkind speaking about how the President is lying, and we have plenty of money to pay the bills, blah, blah, ba ba. Okay, the President has shown his math, and has practically every economist (or at least all of them I've heard, there are some who say it'll be very bad, but we ought to do it anyway)on his side. Time to show your math. If I was a total SOB and didn't care about the pain (economic and physical) we would inflict, I would say, "Let's do it. And if it's okay, I'll join. I'll sign up. You'll have converted me. But if it doesn't go so well, you all sit down, STFU, and let the adults run the store." However, all big name TP people know they can vote against it, and it'll still pass. They're just signaling that their votes will be "no" so the whips can do their calculus. It's a cynicism. I guess to be polite, it's because if the government does nothing but pay military people (no contracts, not supplies, no gas… guess how long a military will function on just pay) and service the debt, we've go plenty of money (and, oh, they would like it if the government did only those things… until they realize they still need government functions to go forward with business, unless you're willing to trash all our laws). Personally, I'll agree with the laws that prioritizes who gets paid, but only if House Representatives and Senators are the very last on that list.
More evidence of the Tea Party having mission creep. (Grokked from Jay Lake)
Tweet of my heart:
kristenschaaled: We are told the tax break to the rich increases jobs and yet the unemployment rate keeps rising. Get a new lie. (retweeted by bigbadchang and 100+ others)
5 comments:
My favorite from the Tea Party mission creep article is this:
Mattos said she enjoys showing off the manatees to her grandchildren, but she had little use for the Save the Manatee Club, explaining, "If some of these environmental movements had been around in the days of the dinosaurs, we'd be living in Jurassic Park now."
Vince, I'm often reminded of the local community, who's residents fought tooth and nail to keep any zoning out of their township. After, who is the government to tell them what they can and can't do with their own property.
Then the asphalt plant moved in (highway construction just up the road). They very same people now decried that they couldn't stop it from happening. And "couldn't (they) pass zoning now to stop them?!" Uh, sure you could try that and they'd sue your community into bankruptcy and STILL put in their asphalt plant.
It's like they put up metal barriers that they can do whatever they want and the world would be just the same because nobody else would do something that infringes on their territory.
Oops, "mental barriers" not "metal barriers."
The dogs and smurfs article hits the nail right on the head. Cannot tell you how many times that people continued to refer to my dog as "he" - despite being told "her name is Laura" and when she was wearing a flower-patterned scarf around her neck.
I did notice in most early video games, sci-fi/fantasy novels, and popular movies that if there was a woman, she was either a princess that needed to be saved or a sex kitten with no brains.
Even now, my hubbie has a hard time getting me to go see a movie -- not only because of the smurf factor, but also because it seems like many of the movies these days are heavy on special effects but thin on plot.
Sheila, fortunately it's changing. a little. but not fast.
And video games are the worst, still.
Some of the smurf thing is cultural (remnants of languages that have sex assigned nouns). But it's something that, now we're aware, we shouldn't do as much.
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