Recently in Culture Category
Michael Fumento reports: "The Negative Side Of Positive Thinking"
A review of Barbara Ehrenreich's book Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America: "Unhinged optimism is pervasive, but the real culprits are those who profit from it: motivational speakers and writers, "life coaches" and various gurus, as well as the 'pastorpreneurs' of the 'prosperity gospel' movement. These chuck aside Christ's teachings to declare that 'God wants us to ... have plenty of money to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.'" (Via Fausta, who has links to related stories on runaway self-esteem.)
Rose and Laura Wilder and the Little House stories : The New Yorker
The fascinating story behind the much-loved stories of life on the frontier: Daughter Rose's role in editing mother Laura's stories, and the link to modern Libertarian politics.
1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell | Books | The Observer
"In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book"
Disney: Hegemonic enemy of queer pedagogy - Crunchy Con
The sad fact is that crazy ideas like these from the academy find their ways into our public schools:
"Queer pedagogy is primarily about disrupting and destabilising the cultural binaries male-female, sex-gender, heterosexual-homosexual explicit or implicit in these normalising discourses that operate to constitute and perpetuate artificial hierarchical relations of power between their constructed polarised opposites."
From the same report: "Interestingly, a close friend gave her six-year-old niece a Barbie to add to her extensive collection. This Barbie was different, many hours were spent 'queering' Barbie up.... Barbie's hair was cut short, she had several tattoos, a nose and nipple ring, black leather clothes, and so on. Despite all the effort put into this performance, this 'Queer Barbie' lasted less than a week--she was found defrocked and mutilated (missing limbs), hidden at the bottom of the cupboard; 'Queer Barbie' was well and truly reprimanded for her gender 'slippage' and was ostracised from her more respectable hetero-feminised cousins."
news from me - Michael Jackson, R.I.P.
Mark Evanier remembers working with Jackson on a cartoon show that never got off the ground.
Umbilical cord blood banking and donations bill passed in Ohio
An ethical source of stem cells for effective therapies: "Stem cells that are obtained from umbilical cords have been successfully used in treatment for leukemia, sickle cell anemia, and lymphoma as well as 100 other diseases...."
Credit Cards Flash At The White House | Newgeography.com
Citibank and the birth, in the late '70s, of the mass nationwide credit card industry.
Wedding Planning Is Killing Me: Probably the best marriage advice I've ever heard
Karol is getting married today. She got some advice from the cabbie who picked her up after she picked up her wedding dress.
screedblog » So this fellow sends a manifesto
James Lileks brilliantly fisks Amitai Etzioni's redistributionist manifesto.
Wir Ain Leid - The Pronunciation of Scots Dialects
We're at that point in the Thomas the Tank Engine: The Complete Collection where Douglas and Donald, the twin Scottish engines, enter the story, and all of their dialog is written in Scots. I shudna fash m'self, but I like to get the pronunciation right. You also need their Scots orthography guide and the page for the specific Scots dialect (links from this map), plus a pronunciation guide to IPA.
This collection of Scots words may come in handy too: "I'm fair forfochen."
