Random thoughty things
Even jetlagged as I am, my palaeography skillz totally ROOOL: had reader today who wanted help in deciphering various bits of C19th scientist's correspondence, and in all but one instance (which took a bit longer) I got the words Just Like That, to reader's enormous admiration.
***
What is that phenomenon whereby people think that praising one thing means comparing it to something else, to the detriment of the latter? You don't have to diss the constitutional suffragists as establishment-loving wimps just to talk up the militants, or smear the militants as hysterical attention-seeking drama queens just because Millicent Garrett Fawcett is your heroine. While A and B can both be good writers in their different ways, it's not necessary to sneer at one just because you're focussing on the other. It doesn't make anyone less of a good writer if other writers are good too.
***
Maliciously good behaviour: being very calm and reasonable and I-daresay-there-were-wrongs-on-both-sides when obliged to mention split with former BF to mutual friends, acquaintance and colleagues, when they ask what's with former BF these days. In the hopes that one will come across as reasonable and wronged and former BF as complete psycho bitch.
***
The astonishing tendency of discussions to get derailed, or possibly a better metaphor is the points switched so that they go chugging merrily along the wrong line. Observed not only on email lists, where someone answering the question that wasn't asked leads to long vibrant interchange, while the actual question goes mournfully unanswered, but in seminar groups and conference panels where in spite of the face to face contact and what one would think would be a better chance of bringing the thing back to the point, discussion gets hijacked into obsessing around some quite tangential point.
***
Some links:
Angela McRobbie, Popular culture promises young women fame and financial and sexual freedom, but there are very strict conditions
Giles Fraser (a vicar), US evangelists are twisting the Bible to say that beating the young is a Christian doctrine
Species that are making a comeback after having been written off as extinct
Date rape bad as attack by stranger, judges told
Private Lives: next week's question: this is sad in so many ways.