August 25th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Binary Land
I have a lot of problems imagining myself as a mother when I’m an adult. While I was certainly a little girl who played with Barbies and enjoyed the color pink, I would probably try exceedingly hard to save my children from societal gender binaries.
The fact that it’s acceptable to publish an article about child development without stating specific studies or which “psychologists at the University of Cambridge in England” believe that boys like to watch mechanical motion demonstrates that a gross majority of people assume that socialized gender roles should be biological… including a female obsession with fashion and shoes. I will admit that of course there are differences between males and females (besides the obvious plumbing) that can be observed from birth, but this frightens me.
Is it really possible to raise a child without gendering it? Can you inculcate your child with the belief that his or her abilities are not limited to those deemed appropriate for their sex? The biggest question is: would society allow it?
Related links: The incriminating CNN article, Binary Land (NES game referenced), Feministing
August 8th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Big brother is watching
I always have to laugh when Washington Mutual or Amazon refers to my website. Wamu, however, appears to have an identity crisis whereas Amazon simply wants to know more.
Happy 8/08/2008 :)
August 6th, 2008 at 5:30 am
The webcam-stop-motion-thing
This masterpiece has enabled me to waste a lot of time that should be spent working on Not Kelsey. But how could a video capturing device be anything but fun?!
Back in the good old days, when I wanted to make animated gifs of my face (obviously a very important task), I would record a Quicktime video in iMovie with my iSight and import the frames in Adobe Photoshop. From there, I would have to remove every other frame to make sure that the file size wasn’t too large to upload to the internet. However, those days are gone with the introduction of Peter Wilson’s* WEBCAM-STOP-MOTION-THING! Now you don’t need any fancy video software or image editing program to make a hilarious 10-frame animation of yourself, just a webcam and some imagination… and a free hand (perhaps a friend’s?) to press the spacebar.
If this still sounds too complicated, you can lurk recent animations that others have made. I suggest contributing to the hilarity though ;)
*The creator appears to use a pseudonym, http://www.piterwilson.com/ reveals that his real name is Juan Carlos Ospina Gonzalez.