- The first four Harry Potter books condensed. Lovely. [via]
- Geeks, Girls, and Media Misogyny: The Saga Continues:
I can accept that questioning a actor or actress about their geek bona fides when part of their job involves selling their project to the public, including the geeky public, and especially when it’s a geeky project may seem like a good idea, except for one thing: it’s only women whose geek cred is called into question, time and again.
If nothing else, arguing that sexy women can’t be geeks seems to be forgetting one simple thing: smart, geeky women are sexy.
- Writers and Kitties. Does exactly what it says on the cat food tin. [via]
- I think what I like most about this article from the New York Times about booksellers who are also authors is this revelation from author Jonathan Lethem:
“I have the habit of accumulation,†he said. “When I first met my wife, my kitchen cabinets were full of books.
- And finally, seriously Marie Claire? Seriously, “nutritionists”? Easily the most ridiculous is the woman who skips lunch and then eats an entire box of macaroons for dessert at night. There’s a lot of calorie counting going on in almost all of these, but very little healthy eating. [via]
gender
Monday various
- Regender.com is an interesting experiment, although obviously imperfect. In its regendering of this site, for instance, it changed Billy Joel’s “Don’t Ask Me Why” into “‘Donna’t Ask Me Why’ by Billie Joyce.” [via]
- This raises the troubling possibility that some of our authors are in fact cats: Cat registered as hypnotherapist [via]
I posted this earlier today to Twitter, and Nyssa23 replied, “Perhaps that explains the number of manuscripts you’ve been receiving concerning mice and cheeseburgers.” Still, as I told her, say what you will, Cheeseburger-Focused Brief Therapy works!
- “A car crash victim who was believed to have been in a coma for the past 23 years has been conscious the whole time.”
- Matt Taibbi on Sarah Palin [via]:
And Sarah Palin sells copies. She is the country’s first WWE politician — a cartoon combatant who inspires stadiums full of frustrated middle American followers who will cheer for her against whichever villain they trot out, be it Newsweek, Barack Obama, Katie Couric, Steve Schmidt, the Mad Russian, Randy Orton or whoever. Her followers will not know that she is the perfect patsy for our system, designed as it is to channel popular anger in any direction but a useful one, and to keep the public tied up endlessly in pointless media melees over meaningless nonsense (melees of the sort that develop organically around Palin everywhere she goes). Like George W. Bush, even Palin herself doesn’t know this, another reason she’s such a perfect political tool.
- And finally, speaking of, god bless parody. [via]