The Blood is The Life 23-02-2012

• The Consolation of Art
  Holly has a fabuolous way of describing things in a very evocative manner. This is her waiting for a bus...
  (tags: awesome )
  
  
• Why internet piracy happens
  (contains one v rude swearword)
  (tags: copyright )
  
  
• The Future Is Gender Distributed - Charlie's Diary
  Interesting article; interesting comments too. Note that "interesting" means interesting, not "I agree with everything said here"
  (tags: )
  
  
• The creators of Doctor Who were a scandal
  Fascinating stuff about very early Doctor Who
  (tags: DoctorWho )
  
  
• Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year's End - NYTimes.com
  Hot damn, I want.
  (tags: technology )
  
  
• No, It’s Not Equal
  (tags: comics )
  
• A Request To All Readers – Review Books You’ve Bought
  I shall try to do this.
  (tags: books )
  
  
• Doctor Who series 7: first picture, guest stars, 14 episodes confirmed - Den of Geek
  (tags: DoctorWho )
  
• Pirate shoes!
  (tags: pirates )
  
• High quality lightweight children’s bikes from Islabikes
  Non-sexist bike manufacturer shock!
  (tags: feminism )
  
  
• SIGNAL BOOST: Can you help HAmmer find “lost” / censored footage?
  If you can, I for one, would be grateful?
  (tags: film )
  
  
• Mikel Janín: My first cover for DC Comics!
  Those who blame the artists for comics being overly focussed on T&A; should take a look at this: artist draws a pretty sexy cover, and is asked to "tweak" it to make Zatanna's tits hang out...
  (tags: comics )
  
  

Fandom Fifty-Fifty & @paulcornell

I have been interested to notice the launch of fifty-fifty festivals in the last few days. The concept is simple: since the readership of SFF is fifty-fifty male-female, and the writer base is fifty-fifty male-female, panels at cons should be fifty-fifty male-female too.

I'm VERY interested in Paul Cornell's response to this, and the responses to his ideas. While I agree that it's dispiriting that nobody pays attention to equalities measures till a man joins in, and Paul's method might be a bit of a blunt instrument, and yes, he has a bit of a reputation as a White Knight... I, for one, am not going to condemn him for this. As several people have said: for years and years mediocre men have been advanced in front of more knowledgable women, and Paul doing his bit to correct this balance should be applauded.

This makes me want to persuade magister to start organising cons again...

Further reading: http://www.badreputation.org.uk/2012/02/23/guest-post-the-5050-sff-movement/ and http://fjm.livejournal.com/1152261.html and http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/or-maybe-sometimes-equality-might-mean-half-the-paul-cornell-parity-project-edition/

ETA: FWIW, yes, I do think Cornell is probably doing this, at least partly, for selfish publicity stunt reasons, and yes, his wording and thinking are not perfectly feminist. But so what? Honestly, if it achieves something, so what? We need to stop condemning the good for not being perfect. Sure, constructive criticism can always help the good be BETTER, but doing something a bit good which is not perfect is better than doing nothing at all, or sitting throwing flames on the internet.

Challenge #1 is up on Weekly Food Challenge

... and you can find it here. Pop over and join in if you fancy it :)