![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Random Linkage
Apr. 13th, 2007 12:20 pmCADBURY EGGS ARE SMALLER!
a) Proof at last!
b) So that's why I can never find leftover Cadbury eggs for sale in the post-Easter season.
Atonement trailer
Hold on... they've made Atonement into a movie???! That's one of my favorite books (and one of the few to make me consciously try to change my writing style). And they've cast... Kiera Knightly? With direction from the most recent P&P crew?
Hrrrm.
I think Atonement is a hard book to translate to the screen. And casting/direction choices make me suspect this film might be good in its own right, but won't be the Atonement I know and love.
Vanity Publishing takes off
I don't know that "taking off" is the operative phrase so much as "satisfying a market need that can no longer be provided by publishers requiring massive print runs to make profits." It has implications for both the academic publishing world (see Peter Lang) and non-mass-market SF (see recent ICFA discussions). Interesting.
news in general
Bad week in Afghanistan for NATO troops
...because that other war is still going on.
Update: Something just occured to me about the language of this article. What is a "foreign troop death"? Who are the "foreign troops"?
To the Afghans, all the troops are foreign. But I doubt that's what's meant by the term. Given that the binary seems to be between the "US" and "NATO" (is the U.S. not in NATO?), I suspect that the reporter is using the language of US news reports: American troops are "ours" and our allies are "foreign."
...except this article is, at least in its circulation, intended for consumption by a Canadian audience. (Canadians, after all, contributed a lot of the "foreign" troops killed this week.) We're being told - not just here but in the other repackaged American news reports that circulate in Canada - that our fellow countrymen are "foreign." The presumed viewpoint is always American.
This language isn't just limited to this article. As Canadians we're so used to hearing our soldiers lumped in with "foreign troops" that it's become very easy to refer to ourselves as "foreign." I caught myself using that term last night when discussing the situation in Afghanistan with at least one fellow Canadian. It disturbed me.
Anyway:
Turmoil Grows for Wolfowitz at World Bank
This wasn't on my radar at all. I'm left feeling bewildered and ignorant.
On the lighter side
The Science of Speed-dating
Trust the Germans to figure this out:
"Similarly, according to the study, a 5-foot-0 guy would need to make $325,000 more than a 6-foot-0 man to be as successful in the online dating market. A 5-foot-4 man would need $229,000; a 5-foot-6 man would need $183,000; a 5-foot-10 man would need $32,000. And if that 6-foot-0 man wanted to do as well as a 6-foot-4 man, he’d need to make $43,000 more."
Queer theorists might be interested in this article:
Sexuality in the genes
Such experiments do not show the same clear divide with women. Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, “Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate — they get aroused by both male and female images,” Dr. Bailey said. “I’m not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men.”
a) Proof at last!
b) So that's why I can never find leftover Cadbury eggs for sale in the post-Easter season.
Atonement trailer
Hold on... they've made Atonement into a movie???! That's one of my favorite books (and one of the few to make me consciously try to change my writing style). And they've cast... Kiera Knightly? With direction from the most recent P&P crew?
Hrrrm.
I think Atonement is a hard book to translate to the screen. And casting/direction choices make me suspect this film might be good in its own right, but won't be the Atonement I know and love.
Vanity Publishing takes off
I don't know that "taking off" is the operative phrase so much as "satisfying a market need that can no longer be provided by publishers requiring massive print runs to make profits." It has implications for both the academic publishing world (see Peter Lang) and non-mass-market SF (see recent ICFA discussions). Interesting.
news in general
Bad week in Afghanistan for NATO troops
...because that other war is still going on.
Update: Something just occured to me about the language of this article. What is a "foreign troop death"? Who are the "foreign troops"?
To the Afghans, all the troops are foreign. But I doubt that's what's meant by the term. Given that the binary seems to be between the "US" and "NATO" (is the U.S. not in NATO?), I suspect that the reporter is using the language of US news reports: American troops are "ours" and our allies are "foreign."
...except this article is, at least in its circulation, intended for consumption by a Canadian audience. (Canadians, after all, contributed a lot of the "foreign" troops killed this week.) We're being told - not just here but in the other repackaged American news reports that circulate in Canada - that our fellow countrymen are "foreign." The presumed viewpoint is always American.
This language isn't just limited to this article. As Canadians we're so used to hearing our soldiers lumped in with "foreign troops" that it's become very easy to refer to ourselves as "foreign." I caught myself using that term last night when discussing the situation in Afghanistan with at least one fellow Canadian. It disturbed me.
Anyway:
Turmoil Grows for Wolfowitz at World Bank
This wasn't on my radar at all. I'm left feeling bewildered and ignorant.
On the lighter side
The Science of Speed-dating
Trust the Germans to figure this out:
"Similarly, according to the study, a 5-foot-0 guy would need to make $325,000 more than a 6-foot-0 man to be as successful in the online dating market. A 5-foot-4 man would need $229,000; a 5-foot-6 man would need $183,000; a 5-foot-10 man would need $32,000. And if that 6-foot-0 man wanted to do as well as a 6-foot-4 man, he’d need to make $43,000 more."
Queer theorists might be interested in this article:
Sexuality in the genes
Such experiments do not show the same clear divide with women. Whether women describe themselves as straight or lesbian, “Their sexual arousal seems to be relatively indiscriminate — they get aroused by both male and female images,” Dr. Bailey said. “I’m not even sure females have a sexual orientation. But they have sexual preferences. Women are very picky, and most choose to have sex with men.”
