Salon recently decided to publish an article called “Big Pharma Says Your Mysterious Pain is Real.” It’s about fibromyalgia, and the growing acceptance among doctors that those who have it aren’t making the whole thing up.  Seemingly, according to the writer, that’s a bad thing.  And while the article makes a halfhearted attempt at portraying [...]

For those not following New York politics, Pedro Espada recently defected from the Democratic party, helping to secure a power coup for the Republicans in Albany. But his decision didn’t just hurt the party; it did harm to tenants (and particularly low-income tenants) across New York: In the weeks before Mr. Espada bolted, Senate Democrats [...]

Round One of Feministe’s Next Top Troll is complete, and we’re going to move onto Round Two very soon. So get your votes in now for: the Ungrateful Bitches round the I Know You Are But What Am I? round the MENSA round the Godwin’s round the Where Am I? How Did I Get Here? round the Feminine Virtue round the Brevity [...]

In the next week or two, my room mate and I are going to join the urban farming craze and start a small garden on our roof. We’re definitely planning on creating some sort of herb garden, but I’m not sure what else — maybe tomatoes, maybe some other vegetables. I’ve never gardened [...]

Creepy enough is the illustration of American politics using Megan Fox’s body. Really disgusting is the response over at Red State — first the skeevy post, and then the comments about how Fox is stupid and/or a whore. It’s pretty much a perfect storm of misogyny. Thanks to Raf for the link.

This is the final entry in Round 1 of Feministe’s Next Top Troll. Vote for your favorite below the fold. Mark, from Because Regular Chocolate Bars Are Way Too Masculine meanwhile Pakistan is accelerating it nuke program while the state itelf is teetering. Glad you’ve got your priorities straight, whinging about candy bars. Man you girls [...]

Feministe’s Next Top Troll continues, today with more Smart Dudes telling us what’s what. Comments below the fold. Vote for your favorite. thomas, from Bristol Palin: Teen Pregnancy Warning Sign? I think this discussion is missing the point of what the t- shirt is trying to do. I see it as an attempt to socialize [...]

It’s still Top Troll Season at Feministe. Vote for your favorite below the fold. mike, from Mommy Dearest: The celebration of the degradation of motherhood is one of the many, many reasons for society to turn a deaf ear to “feminists.” Thank God for Darwin who showed us that organisms who behave this way tend to die [...]

I’m sadly not at all surprised to learn that there are a whole host of issues with accessibility at voting locations — but these numbers are pretty staggering. A Government Accountability Office report to be released Wednesday found that in last November’s historic election, nearly one-third of polling places failed to accommodate voters in wheelchairs. Twenty-three [...]

Via Michelle Obama Watch, a Republican activist decided that it would be funny to make a comment on Facebook comparing Michelle Obama to an escaped gorilla. Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, “I’m sure it’s just one of [...]

Notable moments at C&W

1. Jenn Fishman gets elevated to goddess status for pulling a french press and coffee out of her bag on Sunday when there was no coffee to be had at the conference. I was really in need of some caffeine.

2. Beer with Barbara Schneider at Circa Saloon, complete with the horrible sticky tables and surly, but sweet waitresses (much like sweet and sour chicken) that I have been nostalgic for.

3. Ethiopian food and crepes with Michelle, Pat, Will, and Lisa.

4. Monster ass irradiated baked potatoes at the Potato Place on campus.

We've been in Detroit since Thursday and I have seen some good sessions and some not so good sessions. But that's about par for the course, right? What I have been disappointed in is the attendance. There are a lot of folks who just didn't show even though they were accepted and some who never even thought about coming. I'm pretty sure that attendance is so low because it's in Detroit. Folks are afraid of Detroit. I don't know if they are afraid of the rumors or frightened by the thought of a true chocolate city. Afraid of being outnumbered the way us Black academic folk are at all of our professional meetings, in our departments, and many times in our own towns. To those folks I just say get over yourselves, your closed mindedness caused you to miss one of the greatest cities in the United States.

We are already hearing rumors of folks being "concerned" for their safety in New Orleans at Cs next year. To those folks I say again Get. The. Fuck. Over. It. Don't let your ignorance make you miss out on another of the great cities in the U.S. (ironically another chocolate city). NOLA (and Detroit) are no more dangerous that any large city in the U.S. They may be a little darker (and you know what I mean) than you are used to, but they are no more dangerous.

Ok, enough of my ranting. I'm going to bed. I'll put my notes up soon.

Edited to add: I just finished my last session so here are all of the notes that I took.

If you haven't seen this commercial for Super Princess Peach you need to see it!

Edited to add: See previous rants about Peach here.

Oh well, back to my C&W presentation!

Nothing professional like to blog about until I get my C&W paper done, but I have been knitting itty bitty hats from a book with the same name. They are too damned cute!

Purdue University will put alerts on Facebook | IndyStar.com

How stupid is this? Using this as a plan to notify students would assume many absolutely ridiculous things.

1. That students have access to a computer at all times.

2. That students are constantly logged into facebook, even when they are supposed to be paying attention in class.

3. That Facebook won't become obsolete ten minutes after being mainstreamed like every other social networking technology known to man.

What the hell are these people thinking?

Here's an idea for university administrators (here and elsewhere). We have 36K students and God knows how many faculty and staff members. Contact three major cell phone carriers. Tell them that we want to special Purdue package that offers all students 100 minutes a month with free nights and weekends with a basic phone (with the ability to upgrade phones and packages) for $10 a month. Wait for the companies to try to underbid each other. Here we are also making note of the fact that a good number of our students already have cell phones permanently attached to their heads.

At this moment what parent wouldn't work an extra hour or so, in the most extreme situations, to insure that their children were alerted in case of emergency? Maybe you can even agree to have some kind of parental block put on the phone so that the students can't run up ridiculous phone bills. Either way, it seems that the promise of upwards of 40K new customers would get most cell phone carriers excited.

Let's get it done folks!

Tengrrl sent me this link today because she wanted to make sure that I wasted valuable time playing games. Oh wait....I like playing games and it's part of my research, Nevermind. Thanks tengrrl! ‘Speare: The Literacy Arcade Game by the Canadian Apollo Games is basically a space shooter (much like space invaders except you don't get to hide behind barriers) where you destroy enemy ships in order to retrieve orbs that bear key words of a Shakespearian phrase that you are supposed to complete for that round. During each round you also receive a series of "transmissions" that give you Shakespeare themed trivia facts. Once you successfully complete each round you can then answer a series of trivia questions for additional points. Accumulated points can be used for ship and weapons upgrades.

I played the demo through and it kept my attention for a few minutes. The trivia facts were more interesting than the Space Invaders knockoff interface, but they definitely pulled you out of the narrative of the game in the attempt to build a Shakespearian meta-narrative. I'm not sure of what the proposed age range is supposed to be, but the ringing endorsements from a 13 year old student and a 6th grade teacher makes me think that the intended audience is middle school aged children. As a former elementary school teacher I am a bit skeptical of edutainment type games (even if the developers don't want to call it that) because children generally see through the thin level of entertainment very quickly. Oddly enough I think that 'Speare might actually grab the attention of a gamer for a few moments. The question is how do you draw in a non-gamer? One of the things that I noticed about the game really quickly was that there were a lot of transmissions coming through, but no faces to put with the voices. I wonder if adding a more "personal"/human touch to the game might be more friendly.

I also wonder about what happens if you die. Do you have to start all over again? You have a limited number of ships and you can earn more, but to be perfectly honest I am too damned competitive to actually keep dying so that I can see what happens when/if I run out of ships/lives. Someone else want to try out the demo and tell me what happens?

via TheStar.com -'Wherefore art thou (zap) Romeo?' by way of tengrrl

IN case you haven't figured it out yet, I am not your average girl gamer. I have never been a big Nintendo gamer. Lisa was always the Nintendo buff. We have always had the systems (consoles and handhelds) in the house. I would pull these games out at undisclosed times and play. Then I got the DS and all bets were off. There were great sims and classic RPGs. (Have I told you lately how addicted I am to FFIII for the DS?) I was hooked, but the console still not so much. I have just never been able to get into side to side platformers. I bought a Wii because I was fascinated with the interface. There have been some good party games for it. Things to draw non-gamers into the madness. And then there was Zelda a great RPG that allows you to wander around.

Yesterday I bought Super Paper Mario for the heck of it. Ok, I was trying to balance my grown up/child universe after having to purchase a washing machine (the most un-fun grownup appliance one can buy). Last night I popped SPM into the Wii at about 11:30 p.m. or so for a little recreational gaming (something that I haven't had much of a chance to do lately) and 5 hours later I dragged my dead ass to bed only after falling asleep with the Wii-mote in my hands. Can I just say that I love this game? It does still have elements of wakawakawaka side scrolling, but you can "flip" from 2D SPM platforming to 3D SPM RPGing. If you have a Wii you need this game. Be prepared though, the RPG-ness of the game makes it take a while. I spent a LOT of time pushing 2 to get through the dialog sections of the game. While it took me about 3 hours to get through the first full chapter with all of text it only took me a few minutes when I used the escape pipe to make it through beginning to end in just a few minutes when I didn't have to stop and talk to folks are re-trigger traps and doors. Now that the fun is over I am seeing how this game might be useful for my C&W and GLS presentations this year.

On to the controversial post. Not a post here, but a post over on joystick101 by Nathan Mckenzie on the macabre lack of transfer of violence and strategy in video games. Mckenzie wonders why IF video games teach gamers how to be offensively violent wouldn't it also make sense that they also learned defensive moves. So the question was in light of last week's VT tragedy “Why didn’t they just Zerg rush?” Macabre to say the least, but an interesting question for nutbags like Jack Thompson and Newt Gingrich, who blames video games and "liberalism" for the VT shootings. Yes folks this specific nutbag does want to be your president.

I didn't take very many pictures at the 4Cs SnB, but I did finally take them off of the memory stick. Here they are! I never cease to be impressed by the creativity of a bunch of Rhet Comp folks.

Pictures are below the jump. Click the title of the post to get the pictures.

Remember the bread that I was making on Sunday/Monday? Well I forgot to post pictures. It came out well. I am going to tweak the wheat recipe a bit and play around with add-ins for the white. Maybe I'll work with some whole grain white flour so it's at least a little healthy!

Here's the wheat:

Sliced:

Now for the white:

Sliced. The crumb and interior was much better for this one.

Now that I am posting pictures I am really wanting to make some more bread!