Interesting Links for 19-01-2015

[andrewducker]

• Women (and black people) less likely to go into professions perceived to require innate talent
  (tags: women race jobs )
• Steven Soderbergh, copyright hypocrite
  (tags: copyright movies )
• Scottish law on assisted suicide is intolerably unclear
  (tags: suicide Scotland law )
• Does anyone know of a barber in Edinburgh who will give a gent's haircut to a

Comments

What you get when African tribal elders interpret Shakespeare for you

[cartesiandaemon]

I think "that's a great story, but here's how I think it should have gone" is how people enjoy Hamlet :)

[helflaed]

I have to admit a sneaking sympathy for the parents who billed the no-show child. They misdirected the invoice though as it should have gone to the parents- it was after all their fault.

Having hosted rather a lot of children's parties over the last 12 years I've got thoroughly sick of the people who RSVP yes and don't turn up, don't RSVP at all, or don't RSVP and then turn up with a saccharine smile and extra child on the day.

It has got to the point where I have to make extra loot bags (I'm not a fan of those either but they are expected) to accommodate extra children. I'm not prepared to discriminate against children because their parents can't be bothered to let me know they are coming.

[helflaed]

I was about to post the story on Facebook, but then realised some of the culprits are on my Friends list...

[andrewducker]

It's a scarily small world sometimes.

[helflaed]

I only have people on my Friends list who I know IRL and live in a village so...

[lil_shepherd]

Hmmm.

The "these books don't mean what you think they do" thing is plainly not an SF fan. Dune for instance, has a strong SF theme about the nature of prescience and about the effects of living in an extreme desert on a culture. (Indeed, it could be said to be about the way you might build an unstoppable army using the effects of environment on evolution.) Dune Messiah could equally said to be about the dangers of religion and of charismatic leaders or about what would happen if the claims of a messiah happened to be true, as well as the nature of clones (which it actually gets wrong in so many ways) which is, I presume, the use of the Duncan Idaho ghola.

As for 'Starship Troopers' - that has to be put into its context, with the memories of WW2 still strong, and Heinlein's military career, his contacts in the military and his inability to fight in that war, as well as his changing political views taken into account.

Living authors can speak for themselves...

[ext_2864067]

I think the article would be better titled, '10 novels that have some well-documented subtexts that this author thinks she's really smart for having figured out, and which she's now going to declare to be their only -true- subtexts'.

But that's not quite as snappy a title.

[lil_shepherd]

Yup.

[apostle_of_eris]

Title hell, it's a bloody genre.

[elfy]

First link, what got me was this:

""She didn't treat me like a human being, she treated me like a child and that I should do what she says.""

Sooo ... being treated like a child is the same as not being treated like a human being? The person who said that reaaaaally should think twice about that sentence. I know it's probably not meant that way, but still.

[andrewducker]

Well, children aren't treated with full human rights - you can treat them as lesser beings, listened to less, and their actions are more constrained.