April 2014 – Hoyden About Town

2 Lego minifigs, one a girl from 'friends' one a boy from regular set.

Lego is Refusing to Get the Message

By Anna on 2014-04-30 • ( 11 )

Someone at Lego has decided that they will make more money from parents who like gender segregation and stereotyping than those who loathe it.

Photo of Australian Parliament House (APH) in Canberra

Media Circus: #BringBackOurGirls Edition

By tigtog on 2014-04-30 • ( 7 )

So who else thinks that if 200+ white schoolgirls had been kidnapped from a boarding school anywhere on the planet that the media would be making it not just a top story but the top story for weeks until their whereabouts was discovered? So why aren’t there regular updates about the 200+ kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls every single day?

What news story/commentary/analysis has grabbed your attention lately?

Otterday! And Open Thread

By lauredhel on 2014-04-26 • ( 18 )

Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?

A three-way mutually reinforcing feedback cycle - Affect manifests as Prejudice and Ingroup Favouritism, Behaviour manifests as Discrimination, Cognition manifests as Stereotyping

Ambient/everyday discrimination

By tigtog on 2014-04-25

Some recommended reading from John Scalzi and Soraya Chemaly, and a few thoughts.

Somebody’s Having a Birthday

By Anna on 2014-04-23 • ( 1 )

It’s Shakespeare! Today is Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. Probably. Nominally. Well, we know he was baptised on the 26th, and it was usual for that to happen about three days after the birth. Also he died on April 23rd, 52 years later, so it appeals to our sense of symmetry.

Otterday! And Open Thread

By tigtog on 2014-04-19 • ( 16 )

Open Lymond Chronicles Casting Thread

By tigtog on 2014-04-18 • ( 34 )

Quite a few people I know are fans of Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, centred upon a scapegrace Scots nobleman navigating the intrigues of the Tudor/Stewart/Suleiman era whose talents and flaws (and associated collateral damage body count) exceed those of Sherlock Holmes, Batman and Iron Man put together.

Zooey Deschanel in lab coat and glasses.

Friday Hoyden: Trillian

By Anna on 2014-04-18 • ( 8 )

I’m feeling a bit Life, the Universe and Everything this week, so our Friday Hoyden is the space-hopping astrophysicist heroine of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Trisha McMillan, aka Trillian.