Also known as, did RWA really need to start chipping away at the goodwill generated by the whole Harlequin Horizons business? Via jonquil and lnhammer : Anyone who reads this blog will know that RWA’s actions will not change my conviction that true advocacy requires a conversation among many different — often contrary and conflicting — views. I will never believe that bad books...

Found via jonquil Name five effective uses of songs in movies or tv shows. Cutting this down to five is going to be the hard part. One of my absolute favorites, the wedding/reception sequence in Fandango that uses a medley of Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays' "September 15th/It's For You." You just feel the longing Gardner has for the Girl and his realization that this is it—his last dance with...

Cheering link of the day: Looks like they're getting closer to linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus. Maybe this will finally make people stop with the it's-all-in-your-head nonsense I've seen far too many friends and acquaintances have to deal with. Via chomiji . Utterly rage-inspiring seeing-red link of the day: Having been raped as a pre-existing condition. If you take anti...

For those who've lived in blissful ignorance, Andy Schlafly - yeah, Phyllis' of "The ERA takes away our female privileges" son - has decided that Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. (This was announced on Conservapedia, because facts and reality also, as Stephen Colbert has pointed out, have a well-known liberal bias.) The new Bible will "Exclude Later...

Dear Dr. Fernandes : I would suggest reading this response to your essay. Why are only the "good," "obedient," "compliant," "patient" patients worthy of help? Note the comments about how doctors refuse to listen to patients who advocate for themselves — especially if the patients are female, not white, or not native English speakers. Apparently the fact that it's their own bodies doesn't count...

Forgive me, but this is something of a serious post regarding survey!fail and how I stupidly engaged with Ogas in an email conversation about fanfic. The links to get your learn on: Unfunnybusiness has a post that has tracked the events as they have unfolded since Monday. Linkspam's comprehensive collection, excellent place to find informed, intelligent discussion . Helps with the timeline...

But I'm totally okay with linking to those who are willing and qualified to put in the effort: jonquil has everything that you need to know about SurveyFail, broken down into language that you don't need a M.A. or higher to understand. *shoos in her direction* I mean, don't get me wrong. I am deeply grateful for the informal education in social issues that fandom has given me, and I feel...

First, most importantly, and unrelatedly, Happy Birthday to my dad! It was he who took me, at the tender age of 7, to a B.Dalton Books (who even remembers B.Dalton Books?) and bought me the 3-in-1 edition of the Star Wars novelizations. So, you know, in addition to him being amazingly awesome, I put the responsibility for much of who I am today squarely on his shoulders. Thanks, Dad! ^_~ So it...

Research!Fail has been moving far too fast for me to keep up with. Kudos to jonquil , who's providing one-stop shopping for links and information. My world has been more insular this week, and today took a turn for the surreal-but-good. That thing I almost threw out as junk mail turned out to be a legal form from an old employer... who is going to send me slightly over $1000 if I send the...

Sometimes I get burnt-out and frustrated with my fandom sub-group’s relative invisibility to the ‘outside world’. There are so, so many fans of anime/manga out there, and yet we don’t seem to count because when fannish studies and/or commentary is made everyone seems far too interested in staring at the fans of things like Harry Potter, Supernatural, Twilight, or really anything live-action or originally...