Linkspam has some filing to avoid.
NPR has footage of the last night launch of the Space Shuttle this morning. I remember, many years ago, being in Orlando for a conference on a date that coincided with a night launch of the shuttle (I forget which one). And I was lucky enough to be on the twelfth floor, in an east-facing room. So I set my alarm for 2 AM, and sat on the bed with the shades open, and watched that bolt of fire climb into the sky. It was remarkable.
The FDA has finally noticed what those of us who watch calories know: serving sizes are often deceptively small, in order to mislead consumers about calories.
Via BoingBoing: I kind of love this laptop case.
Remember that XKCD version of Discovery's "I love the world" commercial? Someone did another live-action version of it, starring Lawrence Lessig and Neil Gaiman. Heh.
I'm going to keep posting links to Jim Hines' LJ until y'all just cave in and subscribe. Today he's talking, most sensibly, about when to walk away from an Internet argument. (He's also on DW as
jimhines.)
The Big Picture today is about dogs and dogsleds. Woot! Or, um, mush!
*
I watched the Super Bowl for the first time in years and years -- we had a ton of people, including teenagers, and lots and lots of food. ::burps genteelly:: The game itself was excellent: exciting and suspenseful, and I was reminded how incredibly talented so many professional football players are.
However the advertising was so MANLY, it became a joke. Just testosterone-blast after testosterone-blast. When even my BIL notices the weird way the ads are targeted at FEAR OF BEING WOMEN OH NOES, it's gone too far. (Not to badmouth my BIL: he's a lovely human being, but not a media critic.) Clearly the advertisers don't think women watch football, or don't care, because only men's dollars are worth anything--and they think men are all idiots who hate women and all things female. (Did you notice there were no women in any of those advertisements who actually did anything? They were merely rewards or threats.) It's a bizarre construction of masculinity: strangled and desperate and, ultimately, very sad.
It's all very strange, looking at how the media--both advertising and substantive content--portrays people, because it's mostly so very inaccurate. So seldom does anyone's life look like what I see on broadcast media. Men, women, POC, the disabled, gays, trans folks, baristas, doctors, soldiers and taxi-drivers -- it's often so false it becomes laughable, when it doesn't hurt too much to talk about.
Also, what was all that about the pants?
*
I'm a little more than halfway through The Hunger Games, and while I'm enjoying it -- it's very suspenseful and thrilling -- I have to say I want more of the story than this. I want the entire construct to be challenged, and I'm beginning to fear it won't be. This isn't Uglies, is it. Hmm.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
The FDA has finally noticed what those of us who watch calories know: serving sizes are often deceptively small, in order to mislead consumers about calories.
Via BoingBoing: I kind of love this laptop case.
Remember that XKCD version of Discovery's "I love the world" commercial? Someone did another live-action version of it, starring Lawrence Lessig and Neil Gaiman. Heh.
I'm going to keep posting links to Jim Hines' LJ until y'all just cave in and subscribe. Today he's talking, most sensibly, about when to walk away from an Internet argument. (He's also on DW as
jimhines.)
The Big Picture today is about dogs and dogsleds. Woot! Or, um, mush!
*
I watched the Super Bowl for the first time in years and years -- we had a ton of people, including teenagers, and lots and lots of food. ::burps genteelly:: The game itself was excellent: exciting and suspenseful, and I was reminded how incredibly talented so many professional football players are.
However the advertising was so MANLY, it became a joke. Just testosterone-blast after testosterone-blast. When even my BIL notices the weird way the ads are targeted at FEAR OF BEING WOMEN OH NOES, it's gone too far. (Not to badmouth my BIL: he's a lovely human being, but not a media critic.) Clearly the advertisers don't think women watch football, or don't care, because only men's dollars are worth anything--and they think men are all idiots who hate women and all things female. (Did you notice there were no women in any of those advertisements who actually did anything? They were merely rewards or threats.) It's a bizarre construction of masculinity: strangled and desperate and, ultimately, very sad.
It's all very strange, looking at how the media--both advertising and substantive content--portrays people, because it's mostly so very inaccurate. So seldom does anyone's life look like what I see on broadcast media. Men, women, POC, the disabled, gays, trans folks, baristas, doctors, soldiers and taxi-drivers -- it's often so false it becomes laughable, when it doesn't hurt too much to talk about.
Also, what was all that about the pants?
*
I'm a little more than halfway through The Hunger Games, and while I'm enjoying it -- it's very suspenseful and thrilling -- I have to say I want more of the story than this. I want the entire construct to be challenged, and I'm beginning to fear it won't be. This isn't Uglies, is it. Hmm.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.