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Trolls
A troll is someone who posts off-topic, extraneous, or inflammatory messages with the intent of provoking an emotional response or disrupting the normal discussion. – Live Science Unmasking Reddit’s...
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Getting Rid Of Stains
My number one stain-related tip, tried and tested, is keeping a bottle of soda water in the pantry for when coffee is spilt onto carpet. As soon as the coffee is knocked over, pour a good amount of...
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The Eerie Silence Of Death
It happened about ten years ago now. I was waiting for a workmate outside a mechanics’ early one morning, just before work. I was waiting to give him a lift to work, since his own car needed work. I...
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An Unintended Lesson In Gender Roles
This morning I took my four-year-old daughter shopping. At the first shop we bought a worm farm. Despite the name, a worm ‘farm’ isn’t the great hulking thing you might imagine — it’s a couple of...
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The Fashion Police
So, this came through my Facebook feed. It makes a change from inspirational quotes, and home-made posters with quotes attributed to Einstein, but something’s not sitting quite right with me. This...
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Women and Talking
It’s ‘common knowledge’ that women talk more than men. Except we don’t. Women Don’t Talk More Than Men, So Why Do People Say We Do? (from Slate). The problem with everyone saying women talk more than...
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On Intelligence
1. Scientific American explains in this article the difference between two major theories on intelligence: Either you believe intelligence is incremental (you can get smarter when put into the...
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Glasses
Sunglasses Inside, from Endless Origami I recently visited the optometrists not because I’d left my glasses on a bus, or sat on them or because they fell apart but because I was overdue for an...
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The Placebo Effect
1. Everyone Gets Their Own Belief, from Seth Godin 2. Ted Kaptchuk talking about The Placebo Effect, in interview with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand. This is a really fascinating interview. I highly...
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Things That Make Me So Happy I Could Pee My Pants
Inspired by this post at Gender Focus, which is in turn inspired by this post at xoJane. Chickens all lined up in a row along the fence, enjoying a dust bath, next to the dog (their stand-in rooster)...
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Sexist Language Which Just Won’t Go Away
1. non-working MOTHERS Chet’s father was employed in the postal service and became a middle-class, senior supervisor. Despite his dad’s relative affluence, with seven offspring to feed and educate and...
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Interesting Links On Smartness and Smart People
1. A simple theory of why so many smart young people go into finance, law, and consulting, from Marginal Revolution 2. The Trouble With Bright Kids from Harvard Business Review 3. Why Do Some People...
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A Thrill I Don’t Understand
Where were you September 11, 2001? I was living briefly in a holiday park during off-season, because that was my teaching practice year, in which student teachers are sent to lucky-dip parts of the...
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When Dreamworlds Infect Real Life
Some years ago I sat on the grass in a park with fellow CELTA students. We each ate our lunch. Despite the shared aim of becoming English language teachers, I doubt it’s possible to meet a more diverse...
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Manic Pixie Dreamgirls
One could make the argument that, with the Zooey Deschanels and Mila Kunises of the world, we have begun to turn our affectionate sights towards a woman who is intellectually nimble, who makes jokes...
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Links On The Short Story
1. Teaching Plot Structure Through The Short Story, a lesson plan and related resources from ReadWriteThink 2. Panning For Gold: The Fate Of Short Fiction In A Novelistic World from Lemon Hound 3. Why...
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Feminist Film Review: Fantastic Mr Fox
I really love this film: great animation, great artistic style, wonderful soundtrack, quirky humour. This film could be SO DAMN GREAT. So tell me, why the fuckity fuck does Wes Anderson have to go...
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On The Gendered Media Coverage Of Perfectionism
This blog post was going to take a different tack. I’ve been interested in perfectionism for a long time, and a number of months back I set up a Google alert to catch the most popular articles....
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The Treatment of Time in Books for Boys, Books for Girls
This is a fascinating concept, and something I’d not noticed until it was pointed out, by Maria Nikolajeva in Children’s Literature Comes Of Age. Earlier in the book she defines books for boys (often...
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Intertextuality in Children’s Books vs Books For Adults
In children’s literature, intertexuality is often apparent in the use of allusions irony parody literary allusions direct quotations indirect references and the fracturing of well-known patterns....
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