Silly, funny, but almost-poignant breakdown of the 90's doll craze.
Positive (yay!) review of the Hunger Games by my go to (feminist) film critic. I haven't read the books, but seeing as she likes the movie a lot, I will go see it.
I'd also like to point out this article: http://gawker.com/5894646/seriously-what-are-the-hunger-games-and-why-should-i-care-if-im-not-14
that explains the hunger games to noobs (like me!)
Yep, Rita Dove and Helen Vendler. I think both these women are really excellent at what they both do, so reading about this dust-up between the two over Vendler's review of the latest Penguin Anthology of American Poetry, edited by Dove, was interesting, and I really liked the author's carefully-balanced tone as he unpacks, as he puts it, "the assumptions that underpin most arguments against inclusiveness in art, including this one." (He comes down more on Dove's side, but with great respect for Vendler even as he criticizes her review and its underlying assumptions.)
An excellent point: "Part of what leads Vendler astray is her belief in a kind of literary value that’s all noun and no verb — that is, one that wants to define value without making room for the fact that many people do in fact value the very writing that, she says, is not, well… valuable. In the process, she, like many other critics (and not just of poetry), creates an oddly unpeopled universe — or, at least, one that’s strangely devoid of living people. Vendler asks us to think of value in terms of a hypothetical and permanent future, one that will have unvarying and therefore conclusive (that is, correct) notions of what was good and bad in our writing. It’s an exasperating argument, since it asks us to defer to the critic’s mystical conjuring of our far off progeny, a population that will, of course, have the same values as the critic herself."
What it says on the tin.
I don't know about you, but this gives me major fontwood.
As Part One of "Breaking Dawn" arrives in theaters this week, we all get to revisit just how very much Bella Swan is not "a strong heroine." Spending a lot of time in bed, on couches, and being carried around by burly boys, Bella is passive to the point of immobility. Her great love Edward is a controlling stalker, and the novels appear to extol the virtues of abstinence, teen marriage, and feminine "purity." Yet the Twilight Saga, I would argue, has the potential to revitalize a number of our larger conversations about feminism, especially those related to sex, pregnancy, desire, and autonomy.
By Scott Korb. I tremendously like the tone of this piece: I don't think Korb wants to rag on vegans and vegetarians, but he does want to push people, particularly his students, to seriously consider how food and eating shapes their relationship to the world and their sense of their place within it. He writes: "Nowadays, where meat is concerned, we’re mainly asked by conscientious food writers simply to look at where our food comes from. It’s somewhat hard to fault anyone who looks at life on a factory farm, sees cows knee-deep in shit or chickens with their beaks snipped off, and then turns his back on meat forever. In my classroom, however, I want to ask something more. I’m not satisfied with simply understanding where our food comes from—especially if where most of it comes from today is so horrifying. It’s just as important that my students understand where they come from—or, that is, where we come from in our thoughts about ourselves and in our relations with the world around us." I also like that it is tagged with "give a damn."
A brief review of the Twitter Application Birdsong for WP7
A British nonprofit has a novel idea for getting kids interested in computer programming--a computer that fits in a pocket and costs less than the latest video game.
(First paragraph of review on the site):
If you don't already know all about the Samsung Galaxy S II, where have you been the past two months? The successor to one of the most popular Android handsets to date carries a burden of expectation almost as sizable as its 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen. It promises to be thinner, lighter, and faster than the Galaxy S that preceded it, while garnishing Android 2.3.3 with a set of TouchWiz customizations that might actually enhance, rather than hinder, the user experience. As such, the Galaxy S II earns Samsung full marks for ambition, but does this slinky new smartphone live up to its interstellar hype? The answer, as always, can be found after the break.
My first demo unit. I had a good time.
