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Guys, what do you suppose it’s like, spending time and effort to draw a sexy teenage girl, lavishing loving detail on her revealing clothes and her cleavage and crotch, then creating a storyline for her that aims to prove that she deserves ill treatment because of the sexy way you drew her? Probably pretty exhausting, right?
Sep. 28th, 2012
This is old but interesting. From the Brookings Institute.
Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015
“Whereas it took 25 years to reduce poverty by half a billion people up to 2005, the same feat was likely achieved in the six years between then and now. Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time,” the authors wrote in the Yale Global Online Magazine.
Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015
The Globe asks a stupid question
Sep. 28th, 2012 11:48 amOn FB the G&M linked to this story with the question Is it okay to use kids for political reasons?
I don't know if it's OK. This could be like kids and coal mining when after due consideration it turns out the kids have to kept to the evening shift so they can attend school during the day. I do know it's customary, from the EFTO's interesting Vote Against the Kids campaign:
(anyone have a link to a better version of that ad?)
To the old Daisy ad from the 1960s:
I don't know if it's OK. This could be like kids and coal mining when after due consideration it turns out the kids have to kept to the evening shift so they can attend school during the day. I do know it's customary, from the EFTO's interesting Vote Against the Kids campaign:
(anyone have a link to a better version of that ad?)
To the old Daisy ad from the 1960s:
When I was tracking this, about a third of the books I got featured at least one rape. In the authors' defense, most of them as incapable of imagining another role for their female* characters as I am of melting tungsten by staring hard at it. Sorry, I'm being unfair: fictional women are also used to be motivational murder victims.
As this article by Seanan McGuire shows, a lot of readers are just as incapable of imaging other roles for female characters. Again, in said readers' defense this is only because said readers are terrible, terrible people with stunted, poisonous imaginations.
An interesting historical note: McGuire got twice as many Hugo nominations last year alone as I have in my entire life to date.
* It's almost always the female characters.
As this article by Seanan McGuire shows, a lot of readers are just as incapable of imaging other roles for female characters. Again, in said readers' defense this is only because said readers are terrible, terrible people with stunted, poisonous imaginations.
An interesting historical note: McGuire got twice as many Hugo nominations last year alone as I have in my entire life to date.
* It's almost always the female characters.
I regret not including authors' names before this but not so much that I am going to go back and add them.
Young Girl At An Open Half Door by Frederick Saberhagen
This is a variation on a kind of salvage archaeology seen in SF, where the archaeologists use a time machine and the disaster, whatever it is, is in our future. I'll excuse the protagonist for acting like a daffy loon since he was drugged but why would a woman of the future fall for him? Serious question as the sound quality on this was such that I could not make out what she was saying.
The Language Of Love by Robert Sheckley
It's pretty obvious that our young academic's quest to master love is going to go horribly wrong from the start, particularly since the race whose language of love he wants to master died out and that certainly cannot help but be relevant to the plot. The question is how will it go wrong?
When you read the bits about him mastering physical love, try not to dwell on the fact that the only other person on the planet is a nearly-toothless old man.
Desertion by Clifford D. Simak
Apparently I've mispronouncing Simak's name for 41 years*. This is from a series of stories that were collected under the title City, whose running theme is "good intentions, horrible outcomes". In fact, this particular story of transformation and exploration is an important step towards the almost complete extinction of humanity and its replacement by robots, intelligent dogs and much later, the Ants. The dogs and the robots are nice enough that it does not seem like such a tragedy.
What I wondered during this was at what point did our perception of Jupiter move away from it having some kind of solid surface?
* "Trouble with Tycho", which was included in the Ace Science Fiction Reader with "Empire Star", the first Samuel R. Delaney I ever read, and "The Last Castle", the first Jack Vance I ever read.
For the record, I don't actually remember the name of the first woman I dated in university, although at one point I did know it. Come to think of it, technically she never actually dumped me [1] so it's kind of rude I cannot for the life of me remember her name. Had an L in it, I think.
1: She used what I call the Opossum Method, which is to just stop responding to any communication and hope I'll take the hint.
Young Girl At An Open Half Door by Frederick Saberhagen
This is a variation on a kind of salvage archaeology seen in SF, where the archaeologists use a time machine and the disaster, whatever it is, is in our future. I'll excuse the protagonist for acting like a daffy loon since he was drugged but why would a woman of the future fall for him? Serious question as the sound quality on this was such that I could not make out what she was saying.
The Language Of Love by Robert Sheckley
It's pretty obvious that our young academic's quest to master love is going to go horribly wrong from the start, particularly since the race whose language of love he wants to master died out and that certainly cannot help but be relevant to the plot. The question is how will it go wrong?
When you read the bits about him mastering physical love, try not to dwell on the fact that the only other person on the planet is a nearly-toothless old man.
Desertion by Clifford D. Simak
Apparently I've mispronouncing Simak's name for 41 years*. This is from a series of stories that were collected under the title City, whose running theme is "good intentions, horrible outcomes". In fact, this particular story of transformation and exploration is an important step towards the almost complete extinction of humanity and its replacement by robots, intelligent dogs and much later, the Ants. The dogs and the robots are nice enough that it does not seem like such a tragedy.
What I wondered during this was at what point did our perception of Jupiter move away from it having some kind of solid surface?
* "Trouble with Tycho", which was included in the Ace Science Fiction Reader with "Empire Star", the first Samuel R. Delaney I ever read, and "The Last Castle", the first Jack Vance I ever read.
For the record, I don't actually remember the name of the first woman I dated in university, although at one point I did know it. Come to think of it, technically she never actually dumped me [1] so it's kind of rude I cannot for the life of me remember her name. Had an L in it, I think.
1: She used what I call the Opossum Method, which is to just stop responding to any communication and hope I'll take the hint.