January 31, 2005

It's the most wonderful time

of the year.

Well, not really. But I'm short on time and material.

Here is My Creepy Valentine and Chocolate Voodoo Doll (via Fishbucket).

Apropos of the card, above, my women's writing class is planning a performance of Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John's How the Vote Was Won: A Play in One Act, a very funny piece suitable for a group (Literature of the Women's Suffrage Campaign in England). I will post more. Or not.

January 30, 2005

Things you don't want to hear

when you are sitting reading blogs:

"Mummy! Dogs don't like marshmallows."

Print links

Matthew Kirschenbaum posts about the first meeting of a Folger Institute Technologies of Writing seminar taught by Peter Stallybrass and Roger Chartier,

and G Zombie is taking a bookmaking class. I envy them both.

Check out Secular Books, an exhibit of medieval manuscripts at the Getty (via Rashomon). And see their many other exhibits, most on not – so – secular books. Worth a look: Comic Art: The Paris Salon in Caricature, and The Making of a Medieval Book.

Misteraitch posts beautiful figurative alphabets.

January 29, 2005

Public/private

Everyone has seen the photos of stricken Americans at sorryeverybody.com (and there is a book out), as well as the responses at apologiesaccepted.com (my favourite is "It's okay. We're sorry for Arnold. — Austria"). Here is something more therapeutic, more anonymous: people draw or write their secrets on a postcard as part of a group art project originally mounted in a gallery, now online. Some of these are very affecting, in a cryptic, jesus-I-hope-they-don't-mean-what-I-think-they-do sort of way: "I love one of my children." "I liked myself better as a boy" (link from Liliputian Lilith, who links to me in the same post. Just so you know). It seems that the project is ongoing, so get out those 4×6 cards.

This reminds me of an episode of Northern Exposure, possibly the only one I ever saw, in which one of the characters writes down her regrets, past actions she can't let go of, etc. etc., makes them into little boats, and sets them adrift on a river. It has stuck in my memory. Though I always wondered whether or not anyone found the papers while they were out fishing.

If you try this, use soluable ink.

Writing has often been cathartic for me. Which is why I should do it more, I suppose. Though it is also a wee bit cathartic to read other people's secrets, and not just the ones that hit close to home.

January 28, 2005

The performing arts

Garrick as Richard III [inside a gourd??]

Bibi points towards a guided tour of music halls, part of a larger site about performance in the U.K. called PeoplePlay UK: Theatre History Online. Nice pages on Restoration and c18th theatre: lots of graphics and goodies.

Too much of a yawn? Perhaps you'd like to check out buffology: "Every Buffy character, episode, cast member, writer and director and every word of every show, in a searchable database" (via BoingBoing).

WWW Virtual Library: Theatre and Drama.

Theatre History on the Web.

International Theatre Resources from Artslynx.

Kabuki for Everyone.

Ford's Theatre.

Thai Elephant Orchestra (from Mirabilis).

January 27, 2005

Blow 'em up real good!

He's the last man on Earth. And he needs a drink.

I need to be thinking this term, off and on, about the summer course I will be teaching next July. It will be speculative fiction, but it can take any shape. I have always taught it with some sort of overarching theme: "Loving the Alien," "Gender in Space," or "Gender and Sexuality." This time I was thinking of going with single-sex societies. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland; Phillip Wylie's The Disappearance, which is back in print (here's the edition I have); Sheri Tepper's Gate to Women's Country; Suzy McKee Charnas's Holdfast Chronicles. But since it will be a summer course, and hence more concentrated, I can't really assign the same amount of reading as during the regular term and so I was hoping to fit in several films. Trouble is, can't think of any films based on my prospective theme. Maybe going back to some version of "Loving the Alien" would be more fruitful: hey, then I could show Alien (as you see, it's not necessarily really loving the alien, but more an exploration of how different writers try to create non-humans).

Later: Was thinking about this further and have more or less decided to go with the apocalypse (now there's a catch-phrase: relax, sit back, and go with the apocalypse). One of my favourite themes, as regular readers may know. I could use some of my same-sex societies — both Tepper and Charnas write about post-disaster cultures — and there are gazillion films: so many that I'm sure I can avoid Kevin Costner. Plus there's a cool a graphic novel series. There seems to be a sub-genre of same-sex societies within post-apocalyptic narratives; I wonder why? Is shaking up the heteronormative status quo that apocalyptic a concept? Is losing "the opposite sex" the most dreadful marker of loss and change that we can think of?

Possible cheery texts and films:

The Last Man by Mary Shelley.
John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951), and the film (1962).
On The Beach: Nevil Shute's 1957 novel, and the 1959 film based on it.
A Boy and His Dog — Harlan Ellison's story and the 1975 film .
The Children of Men by P.D. James. Too bad Greybeard by Brian Aldiss seems to be out of print; they would work well together.
The Omega Man. A classic.
Luc Besson, La Dernier Combat (Fr, 1983)
Night of the Comet for some comic relief.

There is a ton of stuff; I think I will try to have pairs: either filmed versions of written texts, or at least texts and films that work closely together.

There are some RPGs too; don't know much about that but depending upon who signs up for the course, that could be worked in...

I'm multitasking as I write this. The remake of The Dawn of the Dead is on PPV. And I'll tell you one thing: I miss those nice, slow Romero zombies. None of whom were under ten.

Okay. That was tense.

January 26, 2005

Bits and pieces

"You know you're living in 2005 when you accidentally enter your password on the microwave." And nineteen more (via Old Schooler).

New York Times Link Generator gives you weblog-safe links, and there is a bookmarklet (via Bibi).

More webby-introspection: Disturbing Auctions. I wish I'd had the Tartan Doll for the Robbie Burns night party I went to on Saturday (also via Bibi).

Akbar and Jeff are real! (from BoingBoing).

Lip balm for the literati. Choose from ShakeSpearmint, Brontë Berry, Alcott Apricot, or PoeMegranate (from the Catalogue Blog). Come on, they're not even trying! Steinbeck Grape. Milton Pippin, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious. You could base a whole line on Jeanette Winterson alone.

Drawings of aliens by children (via Life in the Present).

Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women: group blog which highlights cool (and some not-so-cool: Rhinoplasty glasses?) gadgets.

A collection of recent comments and posts on writing by hand, at Moleskinerie. Which led to a couple of interesting sites: Future of the Book and Visiting the Well.

Ballads & Broadsides and Last Words (also via Life in the Present). Madame de Pompadour's were apparently, "Wait a second." Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562-1635) got a little cranky: "All right, then, I'll say it, Dante makes me sick." My favourite is Civil War General John Sedgwick (1813-1864): "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--."

January 25, 2005

Pulling together

some etexts of gothic stories by women for my writing by women class — and I can't tell you how happy I am to be teaching in a period outside copyright — and came across the following resources:

I already knew about Corvey Women Writers on the Web but not about their "Adopt-an-Author Project": a very cool opportunity for students at the U of Sheffield. I wonder if they could open it up ... ? (The site uses Movable Type, but I'm sorry to say it's a little buggy).

Just discovered British Fiction, 1800–1829: A Database of Production, Circulation, and Reception, and

Chawton House Library's "gateway to early English women's writing," which has, among other things, many obscure novels online.

A wierd thing:

I first tried Firefox some time back, when everyone was falling over themselves about it, and I found it inexplicably slow and crash-prone. So, have been chugging along contentedly with Safari. But decided to try Firefox again—same version, same system—and this time it works like a charm. With the added bonus of rendering some pages properly that Safari was mangling.

Poltergeists live in my computer, and sometimes they like me.

January 24, 2005

Representations

From the Bottom Up: popular reading and writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of early American imprints (via Bostonia). A lot of these items are reprints of, or are very like, texts printed in the U.K.

At the same site, another exhibit: Picturing Women explores how women are figured, fashioned, turned into portraits, and told about in words and pictorial narrative.

Hildegard von Bingen

Slide show of her art on this attractive site (link from Catalogue Blog).

Bonus links:

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography. And another.
Patron Saints Index: Blessed Hildegard von Bingen.
Hildegard von Bingen lyrics in latin and english.
Hildegard of Bingen: Symphony of the Harmony of Heaven.
Abtei St. Hildegard.
Hildegard.org.
Hildegard von Bingen's healing chants.
Hildegard of Bingen: "a blazing mind longing to soar above the clouds."

And, a migraine tidbit:

According to this site:

It is now generally agreed that Hildegard suffered from migraine, and that her visions were a result of this condition. The way she describes her visions, the precursors, to visions, to debilitating aftereffects, point to classic symptoms of migraine sufferers. Although a number of visual hallucinations may occur, the more common ones described are the "scotomata" which often follow perceptions of phosphenes in the visual field. Scintillating scotomata are also associated with areas of total blindness in the visual field, something Hildegard might have been describing when she spoke of points of intense light, and also the "extinguished stars." Migraine attacks are usually followed by sickness, paralysis, blindness-all reported by Hildegard, and when they pass, by a period of rebound and feeling better than before, a euphoria also described by her. Also, writes Oliver Sachs

Among the strangest and most intense symptoms of migraine aura, and the most difficult of description and analysis, are the occurrences of feelings of sudden familiarity and certitude... or its opposite. Such states are experienced, momentarily and occasionally, by everyone; their occurrence in migraine auras is marked by their overwhelming intensity and relatively long duration.

It is a tribute to the remarkable spirit and the intellectual powers of this woman that she was able to turn a debilitating illness into the word of god, and create so much with it.

I have started a new blog category, "migraines," in honour of Hildegard.

January 23, 2005

Dump

This is the view from the front of our house. Imagine it with a howling wind in the background and a preschooler with cabin-fever at your knee.

File under

that horse has left the barn: "Academics give lessons on blogs" by Shola Adenekan ends on a cautionary note:

David Supple, web strategy manager at Birmingham University, says while blogs offer significant benefits for academia as a strong tool for rapid knowledge development, their unstructured nature also creates further problem.

"Universities have to be cautious," he warns.

"This type of technology is very open and easy to instigate and that often means in the rush to use it, the bigger questions on the most effective ways to use the technology without creating legal and reputational issues for the institution are forgotten or end up being asked too late."

Perhaps if he had been less alarmed and more clear ...

(via BlogsCanada).

January 22, 2005

So we're driving home

this afternoon, from my parents, and the Jinker Boy falls asleep. In the front Joe and I are chatting about this and that.

Me: (after a pause) So, you heard that SpongeBob is gay, eh?
JB: (from the back seat, at the top of his lungs) What? Whats dat?

I nearly drive off the road and Joe starts laughing so hard he can't talk.

JB: (still yelling) Stop dat! Stop laughing! What dat bout SpongeBob?
(more laughter)
JB. Stop dat! SpongeBob skates?
Me: (finally) That's right. SpongeBob skates.
JB: Me too. I skate. Like SpongeBob.

The writing is on the wall. He likes Tinky Winky, too.

Update (23/1/05): Annie at Maud Newton posts on the yellow fellow, and quotes at length from The New York Times.

January 21, 2005

Fun with words

Hobbit paleontologists from the wonderfully named Improbable Research (via Krista).

This works on so many levels. All it needs are a few ex-wives (from G Zombie).

What's your Scrabble score? (via CatalogueAnnie).

January 20, 2005

I love this guy.

I do. He's the thinking woman's Sean Connery.

SF

Farah Mendlesohn is doing a survey for a book on children and science fiction. She blogs at The Inter-Galactic Playground.

Benjamin Rosenbaum has released his amazing story, "Start the Clock," under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license. What a fascinating idea (via BoingBoing). I hope he, or someone, traces any offshoots.

"I'll be a postfeminist in a postpatriarchy, or, Can We Really Imagine Life after Feminism?" by Lisa Yaszek. Part of this essay discusses sf as it relates to "postfeminism":

[F]for feminist authors, SF’s insistence on historical mutability and utopian possibility provides an ideal narrative vehicle through which to posit and explore the always necessary and political question, “what comes after patriarchy?”

(link from Mark Woods).

StarTrek R.I.P.? Not in our hearts (link from The Website at the End of the Universe).

The people have spoken

and the consensus seems to be that any problems with slow loading are coming from the right column, specifically from graphics from other servers. So, I have minimized those; I will not continue the experiment of hiding graphics in the centre column; and in honour of that last, I give you this (saved in a smaller file than usual), as token of my sincere thanks:

Bonus links:

Zardoz: "Beyond 1984, Beyond 2001, Beyond Love, Beyond Death."
Listen to this, and then go here for more.
Zardoz Online.
A review which begins with the understated question, "Is there anyone with as varied a career, film-quality-wise, as Sean Connery?"
Zardoz NotWax with Teflon.

January 19, 2005

Experiment

A reader commented that this blog takes a long time to load, so I'm trying an experiment: I'm moving all the entries with graphics to below the fold, after a couple of days. Please send me some feedback, because this is a pain in the tuchas and I won't bother if it doesn't make much difference to most people. But if people are avoiding visiting because I'm slaphappy with the .gif files, I'd like to know!

January 18, 2005

I got a haircut today.

I knew it was time when one of my students told me last week that my hair looked good. So I toodled over to my stylist clutching a DVD of Breathless so that I could show him the photograph on the cover. Two hours later I bounced out into the bitterly cold weather, an older, heavier, brunette version of Jean Seward.

Back home, I sit at the table reading blogs and in bounces the Jinker Boy.

JB: (gleefully) Mummy!
Me: (looking up) Yes?
JB. (laughing) Your hair!
Me: (with dignity) What about my hair?
JB. You look like a boy!
Me. I look like Jean Seward.
JB. Like a boy!

I liked it better before, I think.

Blogging on blogging

The Committee to Protect Bloggers:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (via BoingBoing).

Torill Mortensen on stretching the meaning of "blog."

Web site usability. Some good advice. (Via Jerz's Literacy Weblog).

11D comes out as a "mommy blog."

Great bloggy tee. About someone else's blog! (via BoingBoing).

January 17, 2005

Minimal posting

Mussolini, eat your heart out! (Click for larger image)

It was a snow day today, which means that I got much less done than if I'd gone in to the office, what with the Jinker Boy and all. He is climbing on my back as we speak.

Here is an interesting site I saw on Plep: The Iconography of Paradise Lost. Doré, Blake, and many others. I particularly liked the illustrations of John Martin (1789-1854), of whom I hadn't heard. I am in the middle of teaching Coleridge's "Rime" and am showing my students Doré's illustrations of the poem — with presentation software, eh? — and it's interesting to compare his work on the two different texts. I had thought, with Coleridge, that he had used too much Christian iconography for what is a pretty pantheistic poem — lots of angels, bright lights, etc. etc. — and here they are again where they more properly belong.

Also showing my class Willy Pogány's (1882-1955) illustrations of "Rime." Very fin de siècle.

January 16, 2005

Midwives

Natalie at Phiobiblon has a couple of posts about midwifery and illegitimacy in 18thc France (in the latter post she mentions the mind-boggling possibility that upwards of 40% of infants born in France in the period were illegitimate ended up in foundling hospitals).

Attaining Legitimacy: Eighteenth-Century Man-midwives and the Rhetoric of their Texts by Candice Dahl in Gateway: an academic journal on the web.

Sites and Margins of the Public Sphere, special number of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32.4 (Summer 1999), has a number of great articles available through Project Muse.

Sex, Gender and the Female Body, special number of Women's Writing 11.2 (2004). Articles not free yet but will be twelve months after publication.

Childbirth, midwifery, and science: The life and work of the French royal midwife Louise Bourgeois (1563 — 1636) by Bridgette Ann Majella Sheridan (Diss., Boston College, 2002).

Sharon's bibliography, Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Books/chapters and articles about midwifery history, a bibliography at Nursing and Midwifery History UK.

The History of Women and Science, Health, and Technology: a bibliographic guide to the professions and the disciplines: Midwifery.

Martha Ballard and a Man-Midwife: a time of transition in midwifery: an interactive exploration of the famouse illustration by Isaac Cruikshank. An an annotation from the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (links from Caricatures of Nurses and Midwives through history).

Ask the Quack: post and get diagnosed. Be sure to check out the literary endorsements.

Update (17/1/05) In the comments, Sharon links to Elain Hobby's "Secrets of the Female Sex: Jane Sharp, the reproductive female body, and early modern midwifery manuals." Women's Writing 8.2 (2001): 201-212.

Today is was the last day to vote

pour MOI, for Best Blog.

Please note: This post is was stuck here at the top in a shameless bit of self-promotion. Scroll down for newer stuff.

Update: The less said, the better. It was an honour to be in such august etc.

Actually, it wasn't quite as humiliating as it could have been. And I didn't even vote for myself, so there! (Mind you, the blog I did vote for did worse than I did, so I don't know how to interpret that. Nor did my picks in other categories do very well.) Thank the goddess for Lauren.

January 15, 2005

Blog about quilts. And robots.

And then off to bed.

Quilts, Counterpanes & Throws. Check out the 18thc quilts (via Plep).

Robot quilts by Kathy Weaver (via BoingBoing).

Robot Gallery: "This exhibit room features photographs of toy robots
and other images of robots from ephemeral sources."

January 14, 2005

I always wanted a treehouse

and look at this! (via Mirabilis).

It's payday

(Click for larger image)

and I just ordered this. For half price, my fellow dix-huitiémistes! I got very excited when I read that it was edited by William Smellie, but it was not the William Smellie I was thinking of.

Though they were both Scottish.

According to Robbie Burns,

SHREWD Willie Smellie to Crochallan came;
The old cock’d hat, the grey surtout the same;
His bristling beard just rising in its might,
’Twas four long nights and days to shaving night:
His uncomb’d grizzly locks, wild staring, thatch’d
A head for thought profound and clear, unmatch’d;
Yet tho’ his caustic wit was biting-rude,
His heart was warm, benevolent, and good.

Bonus links on the first Smellie:

William Smellie, A sett of anatomical tables, with explanations, and an abridgment, of the practice of midwifery (1754)
Of the Management of new-born Children, with the Diseases to which they are subject; A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (1762)
Smellie lived for a time with William Hunter, author of Anatomia uteri humani gravidi tabulis illustrata [The anatomy of the human gravid uterus exhibited in figures] (1774), and of whom I have written.
Collection of obstetrical and gynecological instruments in the Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.
Obstetric Literature and the Changing Character of Childbirth.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Collection.

And the second:

Major Topics of the Encycopedia Britannica, First Edition (1768–1771)
Buffon's Natural History: General and Particular translated by William Smellie (8 volumes, 1781).
A Romantic Natural History Bibliography
Elegy on the death of Smellie's son (facsimile from the wonderful The Word on the Street).
"Romanticism and the Triumph of Life Science: Prospects for Study."
The Scottish Printing Archival Trust. See particularly Links to printing historical resources. Also of interest: First Scottish Books.
The Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers.

Academic writing

Timothy Burke has a sobering post about publishing and perishing:

You can’t blame anyone in particular for this. Everyone is doing the simple thing, the required thing, when they publish the same chapter from an upcoming manuscript in six different journals, when they go out on the conference circuit, when they churn out iterations of the same project in five different manuscripts over ten years. None of that takes conscious effort: it’s just being swept along by an irresistible tide. It’s the result of a rigged market: it’s as if some gigantic institutional machinery has placed an order for scholarship by the truckload regardless of whether it’s wanted or needed. It’s like the world’s worst Five-Year Plan ever: a mountain of gaskets without any machines to place them in.

As a partial antidote, check out the latest issue of Lore: An E-Journal for Teachers of Writing (via Clancy Ratliff). There is a whole section on academic blogging. And hey! Clancy cites me in her piece! Which I honestly didn't realise when I began this post. (Hey, Clancy, thanks, eh?). Mind you, an online citation of a blog post and a toonie will buy you a cup of coffee. Which brings us back to Timothy Burke's post.

January 13, 2005

It's a baby if she says it is

Lauren at feministe posts a slew of links under the title "Thursday Feminist Reading Material." Was particularly moved by Ayelet Waldman's post about her own second-trimester abortion and the necessity of developing more nuance in pro-choice rhetoric. It ends, "Listen to the pregnant woman. Value her. She values the life growing inside her. Listen to the pregnant woman, and you cannot help but defend her right to abortion." I spent a decade as an activist in the pro-choice movement and have never wavered, but having fertility problems and then finally a healthy pregnancy of my own certainly broadened, and deepened, my beliefs. Though I suppose all those years doing posters, media bites and op-eds has paid off because I still seem to have managed to come up with a slogan. Not a very wise slogan, perhaps ...

January 12, 2005

Better Than Sears

Get your own.

Something old

The Scrap Album: Victorian Greeting Cards, Valentines, and Scraps (via Plep).

Check for the History Carnival tomorrow.

There is a thread at C18-L about monstrous births.

Watercolours of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) (featured at Giornale Nuovo).

Misteraitch has started a new weblog at which he is reproducing the essays of Isaac D’Israeli from his Curiosities of Literature, a wide-ranging work full of excellent advice, such as the following:

AMONG the Jesuits it was a standing rule of the order, that after an application to study for two hours, the mind of the student should be unbent by some relaxation, however trifling.

He also warns,

THE literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of men, as well as that of time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the unsparing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance to books.

Though Misteraitch has rescued him from such a fate.

This is quite an inspiring project. I wonder if I have anything that is otherwise unavailable; one or two things, I think. Think how much we could add to the common pool if we all followed Misteraitch's lead.

Me-me

Everyone is linking to¹ the Perception Laboratory's Face Transformer. Pretty nifty, but the ultimate in bloggy solipcism (I know, this from someone who never saw a quiz she didn't like). But when the blogger formerly known as – oh, sorry — anyway, when someone posted about Emily Dickinson remade as a manga heroine, I buckled.

Not to be outdone by the modest souls who confined themselves to posting a meagre single illustration, here I am as a baby, a child, an older woman, a man, a Modigliani painting, a Botticelli painting, a Mucha painting, and a manga character, all based on this original.

¹ P.Z. Myers faces his critics head on.

Say it loud

A surprisingly reasonable quiz. Via The Little Professor.

SF stuff

There is a series of posts — a "mini-seminar," in fact — over at Crooked Timber about China Mieville's Iron Council: essays by John Holbo, Belle Waring, Matthew Cheney of The Mumpsimus, Henry Farrell, Miriam Burstein a.k.a. The Little Professor, John Quiggin, and the man himself. Of course, I can read none of it because I haven't been able to get to the novel yet.

Matthew Cheney also has a thoughtful post on "Genre Transcending" at his own blog. Which I did read.

Giornale Nuovo features UK artist Paul Noble's "monumental eight-year project—the meticulous depiction of a fictional city called Nobson Newtown. Noble is a master draughtsman, whose wall-sized drawings offer aerial perspectives over a fantastical cityscape."

The P.K. Dick Bookshelf, with over 1,200 book covers (from Plep).

History of Robots in the Victorian Era (via Rashoman).

Steampunk: Victorian Adventurers in a Past that Wasn't!.

Comic Book Bondage Covers from the Golden age of comics (also via Rashoman).

January 11, 2005

Unwanted children

Most are probably aware of the ill-considered bill which, had it become law, would have required women to report stillbirths and presumably miscarriages to local authorities within twelve hours. Most are probably also aware that "after a firestorm of controversy spread across the World Wide Web over the weekend," John Cosgrove, the proposer of the bill, has withdrawn it.

Posting has been fast and furious: Democracy for Virginia has a series of comprehensive posts. See also

Pharyngula: "Virginia is for hateful loons"
iBeth: "Safe Havens": Terrible Idea
The Well-Timed Period: "Del. Cosgrove: Don't Relax Just Yet"
Bitch Ph.D (and here)
apostropher: "All your baby are belong to us."
Rosemary Hurford is spitting mad.
getupgrrl's vagina is angry. And how.
Dr. B: Pardon My French.... and The Power of the Blogosphere.
A rant from Echidne.
(Not) Mousewords: "First these women blog, and next thing you know, they'll be letting them vote."

Our sisters to the South just dodged a bullet. But while they are jubilant, I don't suppose anyone is forgetting that that particular gun is still cocked and loaded.

Oops, a double entendre. But I don't feel in the least amused, writing this.

Sharon has an excellent post, outlining the history of legislation against infanticide in England (she also links to two excellent bibliographies, btw).

This whole story — apart from the apparent power of blogging — is disheartening. My dissertation was about infanticide in Britain in the 18th- and 19th centuries, so I am familiar with the history Sharon outlines. And with the hysteria over the visions of "dead babies on rubbish heaps" that gripped England in the Victorian era. And the ludicrous, punitive, and ignorant responses of the authorities.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

January 10, 2005

We were there!

Plep links to a cool site: New York 1964 World's Fair.

And lookee here:

This was taken a couple of weeks ago, after a good (and educational!) afternoon at the New York Science Museum, on the same site.

In the same post, Plep also links to a virtual tour of Northern Manhattan.

Other sites:

Hidden New York: "visit twelve little-known locations around the city." A PBS online documentary.

See another modernist landmark at the UN Virtual Tour.

Or change tracks and visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

A Catcher in the Rye Photo Tour.

January 9, 2005

Divided attention

Students in my Women's Writing class are just starting their blogs, and several of them are having an interesting conversation about Dorothy Wordsworth's journals.

January 8, 2005

Pick me!

Lauren has mounted the The Feministe Anti-Awards. I would like to nominate myself for "The “Shameless Meme Spreader” Award for all the stupid quizzes and book lists that I post.

Update (12:48pm): And she did.

"What did Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot have in common?"

Adam Roberts just alerted me to a sobering occurrence in Edinburgh: a person fired after eleven years at a Waterstone’s book store for occasionally writing satiric posts about his work life. (For the full story, and the answer to the question in the title to this post, go to The Woolamaloo Gazette).

Update (9/1/05): Boing Boing blogs the story, and posts a list of organizations known to have fired someone for blogging. I don't know if I'm more surprised about Apple, or Nunavut Tourism.

Update (12/1/05): Interesting thread at Crooked Timber.

Alien Loves Predator

Ttwo thumbs up from Shatnerian:

Preston is a Predator. Abe is an Alien. Together, they're roommates searching weed, love, and a decent apartment in New York City. They also attend Yankees games, for whom Jesus Christ was recently drafted.

It's the funniest web comic I've read in a long time.

I think we have all had an Alien roommate at one time or another. I know I have.

Update (10/1/05): Link fixed. Doh!

January 7, 2005

It's Friday

and this is Mr. Furio:

Helping us optimize our mental health and keep clear of mice (and squirrels, chipmunks and birds) for the last three years.

He is a mutant cat; he has scads of extra toes. He was named after Furio Giunta of The Sopranos.

Look at him. Aren't you quailing?

Clarification: I have no reason to think that either Furio Giunta or Federico Castelluccio, the actor who plays him, has more than ten toes. I apologise for any confusion.

January 6, 2005

New Course Blog

up and ... well, standing still, for the moment. But here, nonetheless.

Haven't added any content yet. And will still be tweaking the design. Not sure I like the colours in the sidebar, and the title is yucky. Any suggestions about how to make smoother fonts using a transparent background in Photoshop, send 'em on.

January 5, 2005

SF linkage

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database: "on online index to over 60,000 historical and critical items about science fiction, fantasy and horror" (via The playful antiquarian).

Matthew Cheney lists various nominations now open, including the Hugo and the Nebula, and offers a rich post on short stories he enjoyed in 2004.

Gwyneth Jones has a blog, which I did not know. And Farah Mendlesohn recently started one.

"Consensus Building," a short story by Tom Doyle, has been posted at Futurismic. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing describes it as "a mean-spirited story about naked ambition, greed and the fungibility of computer-assisted memory," which just about sums it up. He goes on to say, "It's a great 10 minute read, perfect for the Web." Yes, it is that, but I'm not sure there is much new here: it's sort of Total Recall meets Disclosure.

And to end, something that isn't really fiction except technically, from Bookninja (01/04/05; scroll down):

In the year 2014, the New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happened to the news? And what is EPIC?

Should When this future be is realized, writing and printing on paper will be the radical, avant-garde acts. Back to the days of the underground press, or coterie publishing. Or both.

Tenure saga continued

Second hurdle passed on the road to tenure and promotion. Found out just before Xmas, actually. So happy I didn't even care that it wasn't gift-wrapped. The letters this time made less reference to online activity, and only then in the context of teaching. Though I hope this doesn't dissuade others from highlighting their blogs in their T&P applications, especially anyone who has a higher prose to link ratio than I do. I'm curious as to whether it is something about my blog that makes it safer to position it with teaching/service, or about the format itself.

January 4, 2005

Some quirky things

Spent much of the day wrestling with a new course blog. It worked fine on one blog, but when I transferred the templates and settings to a new blog, just set up, it went haywire.

Sigh.

So, to cheer myself up:

100 covers of The House of the Rising Son. Yeah baby! from Boing Boing.

Gangantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais with illustrations by Gustave Doré (via Bibi's Box).

Wonderful, beautiful doorways from Lilith.

A pizza-box laptop case: "Each PowerPizza laptop disguise is handmade in London using genuine italian-style pizza boxes for maximum authenticity" (link from Mirabilis).

Ed Champion breaks the news: Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch coming to DVD. But wait: with Salman Rushdie. Now there's something to swoon about.

Beautiful new piece by Marja-Leena Rathje.

Cocktail zen.

Infiltration: "the zine about going places you're not supposed to go."

Penguin kisses off a goodly proportion of readers: "What women really want is a man with a Penguin." Uh-huh. (heads up from watermark).

Aliens around your neck.

Supernatural Literature in China (via Plep).

This is really great!: Strindberg and Helium (from fishbucket).

The History of Phrenology on the Web. I think they mean, "The History of Phrenology, on the Web." Ohmigod, I just snarked at the British Library! (via Life in the Present).

Just in case anyone is, you know, feeling nostalgic for Xmas ... (from Long Story, Short Pier) And it that wasn't heartwarming enough, try It's a Wonderful Life with bunnies (from columbina).

This is super (also from Long Story, Short Pier).

Well! I'm feeling much better.

January 3, 2005

What to make of this?

You scored as The Dragon. Ancient, chaotic, and a bit mysterious is the Dragon figure. Awakened from your happy slumber upon a pile of gold, you go about the country slaying its occupants. Beowulf manages to kill you, but not before you ensure his death. Congrats.

If You Were in Beowulf...
created with QuizFarm.com

Thanks to another boring academic has a blog?.

I am apparently 100% dragon but 92% Wiglaf, which if you know the story is a real conflict of interest. And 75% Grendel's mother, for whom I have a real soft spot.

January 2, 2005

Places to go

For you, not me:

The latest Early Modern Carnival is up at Claire's: Part I and Part II.

Beautiful works by Max Ernst at Giornale Nuovo.

Rich and wonderful antique tiles and exhibition: John DePol: Artist and Engraver (links from Life In The Present).

4,000 years of women in science (via Plep).

And oh my god, except for the goatee, this is me (via Boing Boing).

January 1, 2005

New Year's haiku

Sharon asks for "positive haiku" with which to start the year, offers hers, and links to two others'. Here's mine:

Voice flutes from below,
shutting out the wind. I think:
He'll be four this year.

This is so cool!

Free science fiction calendar for 2005 from Captain Xerox at The Website at the End of the Universe. With Ace Doubles covers as illustrations. I hate to post the same illustration as Boing Boing, where I got the link, but this is one of my favourite covers, for obvious reasons.