Debbie says: I can’t in good conscience recommend this article by the brilliant Lidia Yuknavitch, whose work I have written about here before. So why am I linking to it if I can’t recommend it? It’s an explicit, detailed account of her own history with abuse and rape, set in the context of what rape [...]

Laurie says: Leland Bobbé‘s Half Drag project is a remarkable commentary on gender. It’s interesting because it’s an idea that could have been simply clever and possibly shocking, but the quality of the portraits makes it something far more profound and challenging. When I take a portrait I want to the work to have a [...]

Debbie says: “The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater” by Erica at Northwest Edible Life is just about perfect. Before Your Healthy Eating Internet Education: “I eat pretty healthy. Check it out: whole grain crackers, veggie patties, prawns, broccoli. I am actually pretty into clean eating.” After Your Healthy Eating Internet Education: Those crackers – [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: This extensive article from Smithsonian Magazine, “How Advertisers Convinced Americans They Smell Bad” is not only informative and detailed, it also reads like a “how-to” set of instructions for American advertising for body products for the last 100 years. .. .. A high-school student named Edna Murphey used her father’s own [...]

Laurie says: It’s been a very artistically successful summer. But the high point was two weeks ago, when I presented the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship to Lisa Bolekaja at the Clarion Writers Workshop in San Diego. I was thrilled when the writer Nisi Shawl asked me to present the award. The [...]

An appreciation by Lynne Murray: Sexual intimacy is the closest thing to actual magic that most of us ever get. It can be transformative and healing, but like any drive so powerful and so close to the core of existence, it can also be used to limit, devalue and manipulate. “Using sex to make a [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: We both love the Olympics, especially the sports you never see on TV except during the Olympics. And neither of us has a TV right now, so neither of us is seeing as much Olympics as we would like. Other folks are watching and commenting, however, and here’s some of what [...]

Debbie says: I never blogged Alice Dreger‘s fascinating TED talk, “Is Anatomy Destiny?” on biology, bioethics and gender when I watched it last year, but her name stuck in my memory. The talk is available at the link, and I recommend it highly. Now she and two co-authors have published a truly horrific situation in [...]

Laurie says: These microscopic images are exquisite. Watch the whole slide show. .. .. Quotes and slide show are from Alan Taylor’s “In Focus” in the Atlantic In its ninth year now, The Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition has once more brought together some of the most extraordinary microscope images of life science subjects from [...]