Girls, castles, etc.

"While watching children's entertainment with her young daughter, Geena Davis was astounded by the dearth of female characters. Fueled to take action, she commissioned the largest research project on gender in film and television ever undertaken, conducted by Dr. Stacy Smith at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. The research confirmed the disparity she observed: in family films, there is only one female character for every three male characters. In group scenes, only 17% of the characters are female. The repetitive viewing patterns of children ensure that these negative stereotypes are ingrained and imprinted over and over."

-- http://www.seejane.org/about/

"There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up."

--http://oddlyclad.tumblr.com/post/51530117283/the-problem-with-boys-will-be-boys

from http://apocketful.com/

~~~~~~

"Collaboration can bring greater rewards than competition."

--http://apocketful.com/2013/05/15/strudelshow/

~~~~~~

"We can’t close ourselves off from other people’s weird methods or we lose the opportunity to learn from something outside our own box."

--http://apocketful.com/2013/04/13/building-castles-in-the-sand/

Pweeeease bring back...

~~~~

Oh, they actually are going to bring it back...

http://laughingsquid.com/first-clip-from-new-whose-line-is-it-anyway/

Face paint

from dodlive.mil

Face Art

"One of her eyelids sagged, giving her a strange lopsided smile. Distress bubbled up inside me. Had she been struck down with Bell's palsy? Had a stroke? Why didn't she tell me?

'What's happened to your face?' I blurted out, feeling the tears rise in my eyes.

'It's no big deal,' she said, brushing me off with a wave of the hand. 'It's just a bit of Botox gone wrong. It's not permanent or anything.'

It took me a while to fully process her answer. My startlingly confident, formidably intelligent, beautiful 31-year-old friend was getting Botox? And Botox had caused her eye to sag as though she'd had a stroke? Of course, I knew film stars and celebrities forked out in order to have this paralysing poison injected into their faces, but it wasn't something I'd anticipated someone I actually know would do."

--Botox silences women's faces and freezes out empathy

(Face)book reviews

1) This is what I didn't hear much about when I fiddled with the radio and caught part of an interview on NPR today. (I have not checked back to see if I might have missed something.)

"Much of the book, though, is about Bryant. How could it not be? Bryant has often been a polarizing figure in his 17-year career.

Jackson even talked about how the sexual-assault charges levied against Bryant in 2003 temporarily changed his outlook on the perennial All-Star.

It 'cracked open an old wound' because Jackson's daughter was the victim of an assault while on a date with an athlete in college.

'Brooke expected me to get angry and make her feel protected. Instead I suppressed my rage — as I'd been conditioned to do during childhood by my parents … it left her feeling alone and unsupported.' (In the end, after filing a report with the police, Brooke chose not to press charges.)

'The Kobe incident triggered all my unprocessed anger and tainted my perception of him. ... It distorted my view of Kobe throughout the 2003-04 season. No matter what I did to extinguish it, the anger kept smoldering in the background.'

Charges were dropped against Bryant in 2004, a few months after the Lakers lost to Detroit in the NBA Finals.

The coach-player relationship eventually improved to the point that Jackson defended Bryant after his infamous trade demand in 2007. Bryant was irritated after three languid seasons and wanted to continue his championship pursuits elsewhere.

'No question, losing Kobe would be a blow to the organization and to me personally,' Jackson wrote of that summer."

 -- http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/16/sports/la-sp-phil-jackson-kobe-20130516

2) Here's a very pretty picture (that was removed from Facebook) from this article: Facebook Still Doesn't Consider Rape Jokes To Be Hate Speech.

Mosey

(© Francisco Mingorance/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/2013-national-geographic-traveler-photo-contest/100516/

~~~~~

Also intriguing



(© Graham McGeorge/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

(© Sundell Larsen/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

(© Daniel Sakal/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

(© Aditya Vardhan Tibrewala/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

art & other art & other art & other art &

Luis Barragan and
Brother and Sister (because of clicking on Vasnetsov's Alyonushka) and
Gabriel Figueroa and
1906 Print Milan Duke Ludovico Sforza Loches France Underground Dungeon Prison - Original Halftone Print (very nice zoom-in-on-the-stars scrolling device) and
Milan: Arboreal City and

from the dabbler

from demasiadocine.com

from recontres-arles.com

furnishings: now & some other time

Last night, this (Ysanne's Mermaid song/video and also a post from April about Alice) put me in mind of some old pictures I saw in a book...

from studyblue

from georgemacdonald.info

Driving home

Debussy, Degas, Dickinson (Reverie, The Dance Lesson, To Make A Prairie) and then the first few minutes of Les Preludes by Lizst (ending on an exciting part while pulling into the garage.)

doodles

Today's by Sabrina Brady and Luis Barragan's 111th Birthday and Viktor Vasnetsov's 165th Birthday and Gabriel Figueroa's 106th Birthday

pretty little flowering stones

from passingwind-coolbreeze.blogspot.com

for next week and now

Almost
Memorial Day

Interview with

Semper Sarah

Anu Bhagwati of SWAN

Troian Bellisario

weekend recreation-going out vs. staying in

Due to a nauseating sensitivity to loud noises and exciting camera work, I had to miss two gigantic portions of The Great Gatsby (thanks, delicate ear organs) but at least I managed to get through Amy Schumer's A Porn Star Is Born quite nicely...

movies at school

Queen of Versailles & Day Without A Mexican

Song & BOOK

How Do I Politely Find Out Whether My Brother's...

from megong

O scrutable inscrutables

Today I was remembering that after visiting Universal Studios when I was 12/13ish (89-90ish!)  I saw a woman writing something at a patio table on a sunny restaurant terrace. And there was a cat that curled around her legs. She was self-possessed, happy, alone, and important-seeming (to me.) I think I sort of told myself I wanted to be like that when I grew up. O room of pale people of the male persuasion in dark suits representing the film business (I'm sure they've had other lives, just as the others have had other lives that were maler, paler, and more dark-suited as well), have a Kipling poem

or

a Grass Roots song


Sha la la la la la...

Succulence that trails and creeps

from Stoneface Creations

iz perplexed b/c

sometimes, having the time to read all this stuff on the internet can get crazy

so, there's a salon piece criticizing a comedian and rape culture
and then he's like, unlike the salon piece, this is well-written
and her piece says the salon piece was "impeccable"
(??)
and then i see this thing out of the corner of my eye
and then i'm thinking that i have been or felt funnier in small groups (like four people)
which reminds me of two recent situations with group projects

situation 1:
me: stating my idea 3-4 times to a woman
the woman: not buying it
one guy in the group: oh that's a good idea
the woman: oh, okay! (she writes it down)

situation 2:
me: stating my idea 3-4 times to a man
the man: not buying it
that same one guy: oh that's a good idea
the man: oh okay! (he writes it down)

HA HA HA HA HA!

PS - here's that same one guy on another topic - are you sure we have to write stuff down? (to his girlfriend who is also in the group: "write this down!") well, i'm going to the Kentucky derby this weekend...  i'm going to Vegas with my uncles this weekend... do we need to type it? i'm not so good at typing... oh okay... well, i can probably get my mom to type it...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Anne Lamott on Mother's Day

T(h)ree

The Three Spinners

from Not Quite 1001 Nights

from Viking-Mythology.com

from What is Fate

by Katie Sweet from elfwood.com

by Sigrulfr from magicalrecipesonline.com

Miracle, 1000 +, 112, 8

 "Rescuers had not found a person alive in this rubble for 13 days."

-- bangladesh-factory-collapse-survivor-pulled-from-rubble-after-17-days-trapped-in-basement/

~~~

"Abdur Razzak, a warrant officer with the military’s engineering department who first spotted her in the wreckage, said she could even walk."
*
"She told her rescuers there were no more survivors in her area. Workers began tearing through the nearby rubble anyway, hoping to find another person alive."
*
"The religious aspects of the rescue — in a Muslim prayer room, on Islam’s day of prayer — was not lost on the ecstatic crowd."
*
"Officials said 1,038 bodies had been recovered as of Friday morning from the rubble of the fallen building, which had housed five garment factories employing thousands of workers. The disaster has raised alarm about the often deadly working conditions in Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry, which provides clothing for major retailers around the globe."
*
"The country’s powerful garment industry was struck by more tragedy late Wednesday night, when a fire in a sweater factory that had closed for the day killed eight people, including a senior police officer, a Bangladeshi politician and a top clothing industry official."
*
"Since workers had gone home, the toll was likely far lower than it could have been. A November fire at the Tazreen garment factory killed 112 people."

-- http://world.time.com/2013/05/08/officials-8-dead-in-bangladesh-garment-fire/

~~~

"Von Drehle says that the international outcry over Bangladesh's recent textile tragedies will not actually change the situation, nor will a proposed boycott of American t-shirts that are made in these factories. In the end, he says, what will make change come is if Bangladeshi workers and local organizations mount a concerted effort to put pressure on local politicians. That and that alone can make the lives of Bangladeshi textile workers better." 

-- Bobby Ghosh: Lessons from the Bangladeshi Factory Tragedies

~~~

"Von Drehle is the author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America"

3 from Ruins of Berlin

Picture of You, Love Letters, Cigarette Party
50s ish

~~~

The world needs more creative brother-sister duos!

Succulence

From ABC das Suculentas

From ABC das Suculentas

From ABC das Suculentas

I just wanted to find this book cover

I had a sudden flashback: attending a baby shower where all these girls sat around talking about how they didn't want to have a girl cause girls are soooo much trouble to raise. UGH. Well, whatever. The past is past, right? However...

In my head, I travel back in time, bringing along this book as a very special gift. Traitors!

This is a thing?

from Betty Crocker

I think the funness of Gender Reveal Parties would really depend on a number of factors...

I dunno...I do kind of want to eat the cake...

~~~~

Eeesh.

"...cakes and babies have a terrible history in literature, as readers of Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing" and Gordon Lish's mastercut "Bath" well know. In both versions, EVEN THE "CUT" ONE, a cake is prepared for a child, who then immediately dies, driving a baker around the bend. Don't even get me started on Little Jack Horner...

...there is way too much food in fetal analogs as it is. You know what your baby looks like at 15 weeks? A navel orange. Not a Spaldeen. A navel orange. Sometimes I like to eat a navel orange. You know what I don't like to eat? Babies. But it doesn't matter, because my baby was made with "baby batter," I "cooked" my baby, and now I'm silencing it with some "baby bubbly." I hope my baby tastes great braised in butter, with a little shallot."

"...a stream of urine into the air if it's a boy; a devastatingly cruel giggle if it's a girl? Why not..."

From Let Them Eat Baby! The Terrifying New Practice...


Portraits

4 sisters every year for 36 years

more impromptu a.m. sns checking

Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig? Have a party

as the world turns

more and more children have reincarnation-y things to say... The 13 Creepiest Things A Child Has Ever Said... courtesy of impromptu a.m. social networking site checking