Reblogging from my Tumblr, because it's much easier to find things in LJ:
I can think of no better summary of how thoroughly Wonder Woman has been co-opted by the aggressive values she was created to challenge than to note how regularly she is depicted with sword in hand. Marston would have identified the subtext immediately: to appeal to a reader ( Read more... )

#CarlSagan is trending today on Twitter.

It would have been his 80th birthday.

I offer this, because there is little more that need be said:

Click to view

We succeeded in taking that picture (from deep space), and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, ( Read more... )

Reading my friends list this morning, I saw one post that immediately made me think of responding with lines from Max Ehrmann's famous poem.

And then I saw another.

And another.

And I realized that I could use a reminder, myself.

Desiderata
Max Ehrmann, 1927Go placidly amid the noise and haste ( Read more... )

Today's alt-text at xkcd is even better than the strip:

I never trust anyone who's more excited about success than about doing the thing they want to be successful at.

Upon awakening this morning, Your Obedient Serpent had one of those epiphanies that keep expanding his mind these days.

For the last couple of days at work, I've been in and out of training. Training at my new job leans toward the casual and conversational. They take it seriously, but they want to know that you're engagedI've found that, when ( Read more... )

There's been a bit of a kerfluffle about a recent study about students who fell for a hoax website about the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

Frankly, the article linked above is a shoddy piece of science journalism. As eggshellhammer pointed out, it doesn't link to the original study. Even worse, in Your Obedient Serpent's eyes: it didn't specify the age level ( Read more... )

Due to recent events, I haven't been as politically vocal in this forum as I once was. So It Goes.

We've got an election coming up in this country next week, though, and The Big Picture matters, especially with Big Media so happily wedded to Big Stupidity these days.

Let's lead off with Senator Al "won by 312 votes" Franken's reminder that every ( Read more... )

In a blog comment just now, I almost referred to SF author Charles Stross as "Unca Charlie".

To remind the linkophobic, "'Unca' is an honorific that refers to an individual whose words or writing have had a marked influence on Your Obedient Serpent's philosophical development."... It also carries obvious connotations of "Older, Wiser Mentor ( Read more... )