Today, 30 years into feminism, we have models who look not just weak and unsophisticated, but also dumb and victimized. Academic feminists haven’t complained because the models are supposedly playing a subversive role and subversion is inherently politically correct. Moreover, many of the young photographers are female. But now we?ve moved into ?fashion vérité? and…
A good man-eating plant needs a deep root structure to anchor it in place when the man it’s eating flails and fights for its life. So the deeper the seed, the stronger the root system. This is why you need so much blood meal. The man-eating plant doesn’t care where it gets its blood. Whether…
Matt Hoy writes: They sell rare earth magnets. Incredibly strong and small. I ordered a bunch of them. These would be useful for creating the “hard drive killer” door frame [Neal] Stephenson mentions in “Cryptonomicon”. They sell one monster with over 350 lbs of force. I’m afraid I had to buy smaller ones, since I…
Huge slabs uncovered in Marion Garry’s garden in Buckhaven, Fife, had experts convinced they had found evidence of an early Viking village….Mr Speirs admitted that his team mistakenly ignored the finds of a World War II child’s gas mask and old television remote in their hunt for Viking evidence. —‘Historic find’ is old garden patio (BBC)…
The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts is the title of this book. To have called it the survival and transmission of ancient literature would have been pretentious, but not wholly untruthful. Manuscripts, we all know, are the chief means by which the records and imaginings of twenty centuries have been preserved. It is my purpose…
Over the last two decades, academic [book] titles have become increasingly cumbersome, and it is rare to find an academic book title that is not lashed together with a subtitle and its colon. Some books even boast two subtitles, glued tenuously to the title with two colons. —Jennifer Jabson —No Mark of Distinction (Chronicle) The title…
The game’s artificial intelligence borders on idiotic. At one point, I conversed with the civic manager of Upper Seattle in his office. After our chat, he conveniently walked into the hallway and blankly looked on as I hacked into his safe and stole secret information. I was especially disappointed with Invisible War because its ambitious…
“It was the Critic, in the New Yorker, with the essay.” —Eric Mayer —Who Killed the Detective Novel? (Eric Mayer) Not, says Eric. Similar:Insipidest. Play. Ever. –Pepys, on "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Sort of.After attending a performance of Midsumm…CultureWhat's a Snollygoster? Even lexicographers are wrong sometimesThis is an amusing little story about ho…CultureBeowimp (spoof I wrote for…
They’re the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority — perhaps even…
Suddenly the cold white marble warmed up and flushed a deep golden brown, and the cold white pupils were suddenly swept by a wash of black. They turned to stare at the sculptor who was still kneeling in supplication. When he felt a warm hand upon his shoulder, he jumped back with alarm, but when…
LBV-1806-20 may have formed in what Eikenberry called “violent, triggered star formation.” In the process, a huge, massive star reaches the end of its lifespan and explodes in an intense supernova. The shockwave from that supernova then hits a young star just as its forming, compressing gas around it quickly — over a period of…
Well, That was Unexpected.Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I showed my five-year-old son the two recent blog entries in which he features (Johnstown Flood and The Meatball), and to my surprise he spent the next 40 minutes dictating responses to all the comments left by readers. It was interesting watching his composition process… the sentences are choppy…
At first some girls were intimidated by the power drills, but soon they were vying for access to them…. After building their own siege engine — a medieval invention to catapult objects — they launched the head of a Barbie doll, to mimic the practice of launching diseased corpses over castle walls, to introduce disease…
My sister let herself into my hotel room and sat on the edge of my bed. I said: “This was awful. I threw up in front of two members of the search committee.” Her response was kind and gentle: “It could have been worse. You could have thrown up on two members of the search…
RSF counted 42 journalists slain in 2003, while CPJ concluded in a separate report that the total death toll was 36. Both groups said the toll was about twice as high as in 2002 and that the war in Iraq was the primary reason for the increase. —Jim Lobe —2003 Bad Year for Press Freedom…
Notwithstanding all his efforts, the only semblance of a revolt of the poor is the antimodern Islamic tide, which from the Marxist point of view floats in a medieval dream. With us he seemed pathetically hungry for some kind of human contact. Brilliant as he is, spirited and resourceful as his people are, his endless…
He never learned to use the MLA citation method, but today he’s a successful engineer who supports the local arts council. | What counts as intelligence depends almost entirely on context. I find that my students are as smart, diligent, and idealistic as they have always been — as I was. But what they know,…
Pygmalion is a legendary sculptor (whose role as King of Cyprus seems unimportant to most versions of the story) known for carving Galatea, a statue of a woman so beautiful he is no longer interested in real women. Moved by his devotion, the goddess of beauty Aphrodite brings the statue to life, and the artist…
The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in…
This afternoon, I took my son to our local Borders for a talk on the Johnstown Flood documentary. The flood was caused by the 1889 collapse of a dam originally built for Pennsylvania’s canal system, then abandoned when rails came along. The presenter, Richard Burkert, a museum director whose commentary is included on the DVD…