I found these very interesting and think they nail the issue right on the head, and I'm leaving them here for others who might be interested as well. I'm also disabling comments because beyond spreading the word of their existence, I don't particularly want to talk about them.

Hypocricy [sic] and "SJW." - Elf M. Sternberg "SJW" isn't sarcastic; it ( Read more... )

Yesterday and today I read Brian Weiss's book, Many Lives, Many Masters, which is basically a history of how he got involved in the field of past life/reincarnation study. It was interesting, but didn't really give me a lot of insights I hadn't already come to ( Read more... )

Meditation session was quiet and mostly uneventful. Had to open my eyes periodically because I kept feeling like I was going to drift off to sleep, even after having 9+ hours of sleep the night before. After the meditation, spent the entire day being hungry and tired no matter what I ate or how many times I went back for more nap. Not sure what ( Read more... )

Because I have a terrible sense of timing, I spent August writing a novel. (Alas, no NaNoWriMo bragging rights for me this year!) After being consumed by the muse for a month and a week, I wrote the last sentence of the first draft yesterday, and did the mental equivalent of flopping over in exhaustion.

In a day or two, I shall attack the next ( Read more... )

Three Good Things For Today

1. Earned 29 (!) freakin' activity points today, between a 50-minute DailyBurn workout and a bunch of walking around shopping. Also ended the day 5 daily points under. Take that, fitness goals! ;)
2. Found some scented candles to replace older ones that are almost used up, including a lemon-lime one from Yankee Candle that I ( Read more... )

I am a fan of some problematic things. In fact, I'd go as far as to say many problematic things. When I stop to examine it, it's actually kind of daunting. Just for starters...

Robert E. Howard: Huge racism problems. Huge misogyny problems. Usually not hatred so much as ignorance and constant "othering," but occasionally quite nasty.

H.P. ( Read more... )

The New Yorker: The Pay Is Too Damn Low (Hames Surowiecki)
Still, the reason this has become a big political issue is not that the jobs have changed; it’s that the people doing the jobs have. Historically, low-wage work tended to be done either by the young or by women looking for part-time jobs to supplement family income. As the historian Bethany ( Read more... )

So I'm looking for works, ranging from novels to anime series, that have a particular vibe, and to pin a name onto the vibe in order to quickly get across what I have in mind.

Right now the best term I've got is "gaslamp fantasy," coined by Kaja Foglio to differentiate Girl Genius from steampunk. Here's a rough description of what I have in mind ( Read more... )

Huh. I didn't realize how annoyed I was by the Irene Adler ep. of Sherlock until I wrote that FictionletIn the original (as I recall it, anyway, it's been a long time), Irene Adler just flat out BEAT Holmes. No vagueness, no coy games, nothing. She had his number and she called it-- and her reasons for doing so were perfectly understandable. There ( Read more... )

Finally reading The Silmarillion through for the first time. I’ve tried to read it a few times but always gotten bogged down before, but somehow I’m finally ready for it. The Tolkien Professor has helped quite a bit, if nothing else just by helping me keep the threads in my mind.

So far, I have two observations:

1) Fëanor is a prick.

2) Man, ( Read more... )