This week in The Slacktiverse, August 25/26 2012

Irregular Business

The atheist roundtable is now scheduled for Thursday August 30. We still haven't heard back from a few people about whether they're happy to sign off on the final versions we've e-mailed them, but it's really past time we got this published, so this is a heads-up: if we haven't heard from you by the time the post is due up, we're going to pull your piece rather than run the risk of publishing something without the author's permission. (We can put it back in later, so this isn't a ban, just a warning that we're only putting approved stuff on the site.) So everyone please check your e-mails.iting for a few final confirmations. Would all contributors please check their e-mails in case we've sent you a question?

Regular Business

The Blogaround

Kit Whitfield continues her analyses of famous first sentences. This week: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: Legitimate Rapes
(Content Note: Rape, Personal Descriptions of Rape)
This week I am not writing about Twilight. Not because I don't want to write about Twilight, but because there is something more important that I need to address in this moment.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: The Many Faces of Appropriation
(Content Note: Liking Problematic Art, Cultural Appropriation, Discussion of Geekdom and Pagan/Wiccan Communities, Religious Discrimination Against Men and Trans People)
One issue I'm running into again and again is that labeling something individually as "cultural appropriation" (or not) is not nearly as simple or easy as we would perhaps like it to be. And I'm starting to wonder if, outside the really egregious examples, some cultural appropriation ends up being "in the eye of the beholder" in the same way that Problematic Art sometimes is.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: Depression Diaries and It's Okay To Be Sad
(Content Note: Depression)
One of the things I've noticed in my fight with medication-induced depression is how Knowing I'm Depressed isn't some kind of magic bullet for treatment. And in fact sometimes it makes it harder.

Storiteller almost wraps up her travelogue of Peru this week. On Days 10/11 she and her husband left the jungle, visited a chocolate museum, and hiked up to the Inca ruins of Sacsayhuaman. On Day 12, they climbed 800 meters up a cliff on a via ferrata, and then flew back down on a mile of zip-line. On Day 13, they trekked six miles on the end of the Inca Trail to end at the stone city in the sky, Machu Picchu.

chris the cynic reports: This week I wrote about advice, usually well intentioned, given to depressed people by non-depressed people and why the type I talk about is bad and sometimes harmful. I like many origin stories, and have nothing against them, but I wrote about how I'd like to see more of certain other types of stories instead of so many origin stories.

My normal computer is currently being repaired, I'm not sure yet if that will have an effect upon my output.

I haven't had a chance to sit down and write a post about it yet, but I did want to point out that I did have a much better than normal day this week thanks to going to Winona's post-ordinary-season all-ages-can-come Family Camp for a day. (If you have the money and male children, I recommend looking into the normal camp, if you have the money and female children there is a sister camp.) I wish we'd been able to spend more than a day at family camp this year. Anyway, I talk so much about the bad days, it seems like I should call out the good as well.

I saw a problem with a hanging house plant as a metaphor for my life.

Coleslaw writes: It's Let Them Eat Cake week at my blog, which has been even more frivolous this week than usual. In addition to Grandma's Italian cheese cake recipe, I have a link to a Chef John Folse Pumpkin Praline Cheese Cake recipe.

It's a Thing for some category names to fit in the category that they name. Reading one of my usual message boards left me thinking Oh, Good, Something New to Worry About. (By the way, you don't really need to follow the link in the post, which goes to a thread on Tiger Droppings about how you store glassware, to understand my post. I point this out because while that thread is safe enough, TD is frequently not, by Slacktiverse standards, or for that matter, by a lot of message board standards.)

Finally, if there is one thing you would not expect to find on a home decorating reality TV show, It's a Plot. So why do they have them?

Michael Mock writes: This week, Mock Ramblings featured Part II of the Caffeine Apocalypse, some thoughts on the system of morality in the video games Infamous and Infamous II, and more thoughts on how that morality plays into in-game relationships. I finished the week with some thoughts on the juxtaposition of privilege and advocacy: The Presumption Of Your Convictions.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight Themes: Unconditional Love
(Content Note: Cheating in Relationships, Imprinting on Children)
As many of you are no doubt aware, the tabloids exploded this week over the news that Robert Pattinson (the actor who plays Edward Cullen in Twilight) left his shared home with Kristen Stewart (the actress who plays Bella in Twilight) after a "cheating scandal".

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: Consent 101
(Content Note: Rape, Love Spells, Non-Consensual Drugging, 'Humorous' Swearing (YMMV) )
Every so often, I forget that what seems perfectly obvious to me is not perfectly obvious to everyone else on the planet. So here are my feelings about consent. These feelings seems like pretty basic Feminism 101 to me, but here they are anyway.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Animation: Tarzan
It's strange to watch something like this -- something that plays the Tarzan story straight -- and then watch George of the Jungle, which is far more comedic and yet manages to be more serious. Same Disney label, two years prior, and with a heroine that talks in a baby-talk cadence most of the movie... and yet it ended up being more friendly to women and people of color than this movie.

In case you missed this

After 15 years of hearing Augusta National chairmen dodge and duck the question, including hearing past chairman Hootie Johnson famously declare Augusta would not change its men-only membership “at the point of a bayonet,’’ it feels here as if the weight of hypocrisy finally outweighed any other considerations. [From Weight of hypocrisy finally forces Augusta National to accept women members, The Toronto Star August 20 2012]

Saudi Arabia plans new city for women workers only [From The Guardian August 12 2012.]

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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Comments

[Froborr]

Apropos of nothing except it's one reason I've been fairly quiet lately: Today I finished the first draft of my first ever academic article for publication.

[Lonespark]

W00T!

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

yay, Froborr!

[chris the cynic (on a borrowed netbook)]

Wahoo!

[Nenya]

Congratulations, Froborr! :D

[Mike Timonin]

Indeed, congrats Froborr. I'm not jealous, no, not even a little bit. (Ok, maybe a little bit.)

[Froborr]

Thanks, all. I find I keep looking over my shoulder for the Academic Police, same as when I do panels like Analyzing Anime 101, but moreso: "You have a BA!" they'll cry as they beat me with their ribboned truncheons (the colors of the ribbon denote their field of study). "Imposter! You have no business doing this kind of thing!"