Lynne Murray says: The Greeks had a word for it–deus ex machina. Playwrights who got their characters into an unsolvable predicament would trundle out a piece of stage equipment, a crane or mekhane, to lower actors playing gods onto the stage. The god characters would then solve the mortals’ problems. Fat characters in fiction often [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Tomorrow is the Daytona 500, and Danica Patrick stands a pretty good chance of winning it. For those who don’t follow race car driving, the Daytona 500 is a major NASCAR (stock-car driving) race, and Patrick is the first woman NASCAR driver to make the very top rank in the sport. [...]

Laurie says: The Freedom’s Sisters Exhibition is at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.  The website is an exhibition in it’s own right. Much of our national memory of the civil rights movement is embodied by male figureheads whose visibility in boycotts, legal proceedings, and mass demonstrations dominated newspaper and television coverage in the [...]

Lynne Murray says: I heard a lot about the TV series, Huge, before I found out it was based on a book by the same name. I watched the  clip of the scene that opens the series where the incandescently subversive Nikki Blonsky turns a fat camp weigh-in into a rebellious (and hot) striptease act. [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: ONE IN THREE WOMEN ON THE PLANET WILL BE RAPED OR BEATEN IN HER LIFETIME. ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION One billion women are rising tomorrow, all over the world. On V-Day’s 15th Anniversary, 14 February 2013, we are inviting ONE BILLION [...]

Debbie says: Lori Selke is a friend of mine and a regular commenter on this blog, so this is not an “objective” review (of course, there is no such thing as an objective review). I have been reading science fiction for over fifty years (!). I have been hanging out in the science fiction/speculative fiction [...]

Laurie says: These remarkable photographs of nude dancers in motion are by Shinichi Maruyama. They are composed of innumerable shots of the dancers. The technique and the concept are as impressive as the images themselves. I first saw them on dreamboom: .. .. japanese photographer shinichi maruyama is well known for his colliding liquid photography [...]

Laurie says: Cross-posted on Feministe. When Nisi Shawl called me up and asked me to do the cover for her anthology Bloodchildren, I was astonished. Not because she asked me but because I knew I was going to say yes. I’ve never done a cover and my photography is normally unsuited for SF anthology. But [...]