August 2016 archive

Boy Books

Boy books. You’re thinking The Boys’ Book of Trains and The Hardy Boys, right? I’m thinking most of the books I took in high school English. Consider Knowles’ A Separate Peace. Separate indeed. It’s set at a boys’ boarding school. The boys are obsessed with jumping out of a tree. This involves considerable risk of …

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AI Indeed

So I first heard of the movie Ex Machina when I read a review (by Chris DiCarlo) in Humanist Perspectives—and was so disgusted that I wrote a letter to the editor.  Why?  Because the reviewer had revealed his own misogyny by failing to address the elephant in the room: the fact that the body the …

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What if it were convention …

What if it were convention for men at the workplace to wear their shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the top few buttons undone, and to wear make-up that accentuated their jaw and cheek lines? Would they start obsessing about the muscularity of their forearms? Would they get chest hair implants? Would they consider …

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Blood & Oil

[since I’m at it — posting about tv that happened oh, a year ago…see June 1 post] About a year ago, the weather reports became dramatic.  Forecasters started talking about “extreme weather events” with voices and gestures that rivalled sports game commentary, making droughts, wildfires, floods, tornados, and high temperatures all so—exciting.  My god, I …

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