Well, I was a bit irked (to put it mildly) at Mariella Frostrup invoking '19th-century normality' as against modern confusions and complicated relationships -
Er, yes, do tell us about the strict and particular monogamous and heterosexual relationships pursued by Ye Eminent Victorians while I am over in the corner here giggling, when I'm not ( Read more... )

Making generalisations about why Other Wymmynz consume the media they do, without, as far as I can tell, actually consulting them (or indeed having any very deep or nuanced knowledge of the media in question), for coming up for 50 years (see her assumptions in The Female Eunuch about why gurlyz read romance - which she seems to think pretty much co ( Read more... )

Okay, this is a bit of classic instance of getting a column, for which the person has presumably been paid, out of something that they have observed in themself, &/or in a Very Small And Probably Unrepresentative Sample of people they met during the last week. (One writer mate and his toddler niece, in this instance.)
I have forgotten how to read.
( Read more... )

Why can’t we read anymore?.
When the author complains that he barely reads four books a year, I think we should be told how many he was wont to read before he got addicted to the distracting dopamine rush. (I write here as someone who considers that her number of books read per annum has almost certainly declined: to something in the region of 200- ( Read more... )

Jenni Murray has caught a lot of flak for saying that young people should be shown porn in the educational context in order to open up discussion of what messages it's sending and is it a realistic representation of sexual activity.
And while that is very likely a discussion that should be happening, I think that, really, you need to start a whole ( Read more... )

Letter in today's Guardian Weekend, which I am unable to find in order to link to it, in which someone whom we presume a scientist or an engineer claims that arts graduates find employment in 'politics, journalism and managing, often badly, organisations where science graduates do the actual work', and that after the shitstorm created by arts ( Read more... )

Traditional mysteries are still with us, but tortuous, doomy domestic thrillers are what readers seem to want now, and dozens of women are ready, willing, and able to oblige.
(An article I came across a while ago, lost track of, and have rediscovered.)
Apart from the whole way it starts off as yet another article framing the subject as OMG! laydeez ( Read more... )

"When Did Optimism Become Uncool?
We are inclined to depose that it has always been uncool.
Well, I discover that the line 'Call no man happy until he is dead', is from Aeschylus, and we very much doubt that he was the first to realise that you sound cooler and deeper if you voice existential despair and a general sense that the glass is falling ( Read more... )

Spotted a meme-y thing going around Facebook on the lines of 'only Britain doesn't have an Independence Day because they were what everyone else was seeking independence from'.
Ahem.
Okay, the UK's sins of imperialism were numerous and gross, but they were hardly the only power from which independence was being sought.
I suppose the situation is ( Read more... )

I really liked this piece (I do get some great pointers via FaceBook, like anything it's who you know, right?):
Shouting at doctors: archaeology and food allergy.
It resonates with a lot of things I've said here about history over lo these many years - that one example of something doesn't mean it was universal or even that it totally alters the ( Read more... )