Graeme McMillian wonders why genre books flourish as e-books:
There are multiple theories for the genre dominance in digital publishing, including the appeal of anonymity offered by e-reader devices, which don’t display the cover of a potentially embarrassing book for all the world to see. As Antonia Senior wrote in The Guardian last year, ”I’m happier reading [historical romance fiction] on an e-reader, and keeping shelf space for books that proclaim my cleverness.”
But the digital delivery system also offers immediacy and ease of access for material that often is serialized and written to make you want to know what happens next, as soon as possible. Liate Stehlik, senior vice president and publisher at HarperCollins, subscribes to that idea, at least partially. Genre fans, she says, became “early adopters” of the digital format because e-books are the optimal format “for people who want to read a lot of books, quickly and frequently. Digital has replaced the paperback, certainly the paperback originals. I think the audience that gravitated to eBooks first really was that voracious reader, reading for entertainment, reading multiple books in a month across multiple genres.”
Jesse Prinz traces the “wide-eyed, slack-jawed feeling” through centuries of science, religion, and art:
[L]ike science, religion has a striking capacity to make us feel simultaneously insignificant and elevated. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that awe, an intense form of wonder, makes people feel physically smaller than they are. It is no accident that places of worship often exaggerate these feelings. Temples have grand, looming columns, dazzling stained glass windows, vaulting ceilings, and intricately decorated surfaces. Rituals use song, dance, smell, and elaborate costumes to engage our senses in ways that are bewildering, overwhelming, and transcendent.
Wonder, then, unites science and religion, two of the greatest human institutions. Let’s bring in a third.
Religion is the first context in which we find art. … Up through the Renaissance, art primarily appeared in churches. When in the Middle Ages Giotto broke free from the constraints of Gothic painting, he did not produce secular art but a deeply spiritual vision, rendering divine personages more accessible by showing them in fleshy verisimilitude. His Scrovegni Chapel in Padua is like a jewel-box, exploding with figures who breathe, battle, weep, writhe, and rise from the dead to meet their God beneath an ethereal cobalt canopy. It is, in short, a wonder.
When art officially parted company from religion in the 18th century, some links remained. Artists began to be described as ‘creative’ individuals, whereas the power of creation had formerly been reserved for God alone. With the rise of the signature, artists could obtain cultlike status. A signature showed that this was no longer the product of an anonymous craftsman, and drew attention to the occult powers of the maker, who converted humble oils and pigments into objects of captivating beauty, and brought imaginary worlds to life. The cult of the signature is a recent phenomenon and yet, by promoting reverence for artists, it preserves an old link between beauty and sanctity.
Go here for a virtual tour of the Scrovegni Chapel. On the image seen above:
14-year-old Zev from Natick, Massachusetts, has taken the photography world by storm with his surreal photo manipulations. Better known by the nickname of ‘fiddle oak’, Zev presents a highly imaginative portfolio of surreal self-portraits, which he created together with his sister Nellie (aged 17). His work seems to mirror the transition from the fairy-tale childhood worlds into those that are way more complicated and still unknown.
Gina Tron was attacked by a serial rapist in 2010. She describes her enraging experience reporting the crime to the NYPD:
I was interviewed by a detective who kept asking me about what I was wearing at the time and who told me that this case would probably never make it anywhere because I was intoxicated. Instead of focusing on what was done to me, most of his questions focused on why I didn’t fight back harder and run away sooner. The answer to both was because I was afraid and operating on a kind of autopilot–I never imagined anyone would accuse me of failing to get away.
I went to see the same detective at the Special Victims Unit (the division that deals with rape) a few days later to look through pictures of convicts on their database.
I spent hours scanning photo after photo of criminals to see if I could spot my guy. The detective was extremely discouraging about it, saying that it was a waste of time. He kept commenting to his buddies about how I looked like so-and-so from some other police unit–I couldn’t tell if it was a compliment or an insult, but my intuition was telling me it was the latter. I was probably being sensitive, but I really wasn’t happy about having my looks talked about, since I was literally searching for my rapist. I could barely take care of basic hygiene needs at the time, let alone look nice for the cops, and I told him to please stop talking about my looks. He replied that he was doing me a favor by humoring my iffy rape case, and that if I continued to give him attitude he would just drop it.
Women, it turns out, are in a perpetual state of consent unless they bring weapons to bars and are able to wield those weapons against rapists who have made it clear that they are willing to beat you into submission. Because of this, there’s probably a rapist still wandering around Brooklyn, hanging around groups of people in bars, and picking off women to kidnap and rape. And now he knows that the system is built for him to keep right on going.
Reading the piece, I thought of a friend who told me that when he has children, he hopes they won’t be girls. His boys, he says, would benefit from a progressive upbringing that teaches them not to victimize women. But his girls would be impossible to protect from other people’s kids. Apparently, the thought of daughters who might be violated scares him so much that he’d prefer they didn’t exist.
Recent Dish on sexual assault here, here, and here.
Shannon Fischer examines the research of Lisa Barrett:
[A]s Barrett put it to me, emotion isn’t a simple reflex or a bodily state that’s hard-wired into our DNA, and it’s certainly not universally expressed. It’s a contingent act of perception that makes sense of the information coming in from the world around you, how your body is feeling in the moment, and everything you’ve ever been taught to understand as emotion. Culture to culture, person to person even, it’s never quite the same. What’s felt as sadness in one person might as easily be felt as weariness in another, or frustration in someone else.
Readers respond to the story of a mother in New Orleans being tried for murder because her daughter shot herself:
You wrote, “There’s negligence and then there’s murder.” That’s incorrect. There’s negligence, then there’s recklessness, and then there’s intent. Adding each one to a homicide results in a different legal definition. But “recklessness” can be substituted for “intent” in many jurisdictions when it comes to murder. If the authorities determined that Smith was reckless, rather than simply negligent, then second-degree murder is the appropriate charge.
Another reader:
This reminds me of the woman in Georgia who was given a three-year sentence for walking with her daughter across a road with no crosswalks. Her daughter was hit, and she was charged with negligent homicide. (The driver of the car, who had previous hit-and-runs on his record, was charged with a lesser offense.) The charges were recently dropped, but it still, for a period of time, was looking like a gross miscarriage of justice.
Another:
Given the number of kids we hear about daily who are shot because their stupid parents left a gun out or let them play with their kid-sized gun, maybe it’s time we start prosecuting them for negligent homicide if their gun is used.
Maybe if we have a strict, no-tolerance rule in effect, that people will be more responsible for the deadly weapons they keep in the house. Why was this five year old “playing with” his kid-sized gun when he shot and killed his two-year-old sister? From all the rhetoric we hear from the gun lobby, gun owners are the most responsible people ever. So, again, why was this child allowed to “play with” a gun?
“Trooper Billy Gregory told the Lexington-Herald Leader that the gun used in the incident was kept in a corner of the house and the family did not realize that a shell had been left in it.” Did not realize a shell had been left in it. Did. Not. Realize. Fuck these people and their irresponsibility. They deserve jail time. If we’re gonna throw some kid in juvie or prison for having a joint, then we sure as hell better be tossing idiot parents who are too stupid to ensure no loaded weapons are in the house in prison. Let them grieve in jail and then maybe they’ll come around and start advocating for better laws and protections for such a deadly piece of equipment.
Another:
Megan McArdle is full of it. The research on accidental shootings and safe-storage laws for firearms has been done: “Laws that make gun owners responsible for storing firearms in a manner that makes them inaccessible to children were in effect for at least 1 year in 12 states from 1990 through 1994. Among children younger than 15 years, unintentional shooting deaths were reduced by 23% (95% confidence interval, 6%-37%) during the years covered by these laws.”
Another:
Here in Minnesota we have a relatively high-profile case of a four-year-old who found a loaded gun in his father’s bed, and shot his 2-year-old brother while playing with the gun. The father was just sentenced to 30 days for second-degree manslaughter and child endangerment. The County Attorney wanted to send a message in prosecuting this case: ““We need to send messages,” Freeman said. “We’re not looking for profound penalties for these people. We’re looking for messages: Don’t keep loaded handguns accessible to kids.”
I agree that murder is not the appropriate charge in these cases, but severe punishment is warranted nevertheless. And I disagree with McArdle that there is no deterrent effect. Most people have guns in their house because they believe that the potential for protection is greater than the risks. That is the same reason why they keep them loaded and accessible. I remember early in the press coverage, this father was quoted saying that he kept the gun ready to take with him when he went jogging or to the store for self-protection. He wanted it to be easy to get and use the gun if absolutely necessary.
Statistics demonstrate, over and over, that this belief is wrong, and the gun is much more likely to be a danger to you or your household, especially if it is not stored properly – unloaded, in a safe. But people don’t assess that risk properly. And they won’t, unless the media covers these accidental shooting stories as thoroughly and constantly as they cover home invasion stories, or kidnappings, or other things that terrify people. I don’t doubt that this father is heart-broken. But other parents who own guns and believe they are protecting their children by keeping one in the house are more likely to evaluate the risks of gun ownership properly if they hear his story.
There is shooting tonight at Cairo University, where the Health Ministry reports that four people have been killed in clashes between supporters and opponents of the President. In a speech this evening, Morsi was defiant, made no concessions, and included such gems as “my iron will [to remain in office?] is with my people and is unshaken.” To most people, 14 million people in the streets might seem like a difficult thing to ignore. Apparently not to President Morsi, however.
We should know a lot more by the end of tomorrow.
Nancy Youssef thinks that Morsi’s speech is “likely to be read as a call to arms by thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members who’ve been forming their own security force, armed with sticks, helmets and Molotov cocktails.” Josh Marshall notes the Egyptian military’s latest statement:
SCAF, which amounts to the top leadership of the Egyptian army, has issued a statement on its Facebook page saying in so many words it’s ready to fight to the death.
As part of an ongoing Ploughsharesseries on writers and their pets, novelist Bill Roorbach movingly remembers his dog Wally, who was dying of kidney failure and had to be put down:
I held my hand on his heart, felt the last beats. Later, I called my elderly parents. My dad, no dog lover, said Mom was fairly lucid, which hadn’t been true for months. She knew who I was and asked how things were going. I told her about Wally and she said, “These animals with their short lives teach us so much about death.” …
Two weeks later, on April 16, Easter Sunday, my mother died, too. I got there in a cloud of tears (six hour drive down to Connecticut from Maine), got there an hour too late and only sat with her body. As the months of mourning proceeded I found I kept returning to my time with Wally, his heart stopping in my hands, and that was (impossible to explain) deeply comforting.
Dusty is now fifteen and a half and incontinent. She has to wear a diaper now, and has countless warts that disfigure her but cause no actual harm. I’m approaching the moment when these decisions will be forced upon me. The other day, I simply wondered whether I could “put down”, i.e. kill, my beloved beagle. But there will surely come a point when compassion demands it. The last time I held such power in my hands – collectively with family and friends – was helping enforce my friend Patrick’s desire not to be resuscitated if he succumbed to AIDS. Oddly, I got Dusty as a way to remember Pat; he had a beagle from the same breeder, and Dusty always somehow brought my dead friend back to me.
It will be tough. But in these things, I’m sure Dusty will also guide me and Aaron. Dogs know how to live better than we do.
I saw this thread and want to echo what one of your more recent readers wrote, with an added note. Women don’t have to shave, but I probably won’t date one unless she does, at least semi-regularly. But also: if a women I was interested in wouldn’t date me unless I shaved my legs, pits, chest, and pubes, I would have no problem doing so! We want what we want in partners; that’s what I want, what I find attractive, and I’m also willing to bend to what my partner wants from me if that’s what she finds attractive.
I’ve always been curious about that: do women secretly find hair on men gross and wish we’d shave? Or are men just really lucky (as we are in the difference in the cost of haircuts, the price of cosmetics, birth control, and seemingly every societal norm)? By the way, fascinatingreaderthreads lately – with the death of Google Reader, I sense I’ll be spending a lot more time on your site.
He and other Reader refugees, who were getting all of the Dish for free, can subscribe [tinypass_offer text=”here”]. Another reader:
I’m not opposed to women having armpit hair in the abstract, but I would be unlikely to date a woman who does not shave because it is a social signal attached to certain values. I know this not a causation or even a perfect correlation, but the women I’ve known who don’t shave tend to embrace ideologies such as new age spiritualism, ascribe to conspiracy theories about the food system, reject modern medicine, etc. So I don’t actually have a problem with the hair itself; it’s the associated values that turn me off.
Another:
I just had to respond to one reader’s line in this thread: “Men are free to be apes, which happens to suit me (except for the ear and nose hair – pluck that, seriously).” Are we? I’d suggest things are changing and men are now expected to trim up their body hair.
Perhaps not to the extent women are expected to do so, but it’s becoming more the norm for both men and women. For instance, Gillette is running a series of commercials with Kate Upton all about how girls like men to style their body hair [see the above video]. According to that commercial, some girls don’t mind a hairy chest but can’t stand a hairy back. Others want the stomach shaved to show off the six pack (now it’s assumed we have one?!?!) And still others want their man completely shorn.
ESPN ran an infomercial this morning for a “personal grooming product” comparing men from the ’70s to today. The caricature from the ’70s had a a huge afro, chest hair that could have doubled as a merkin, and some of the hairiest arms around. Present day man is much more trim.
Anecdotally, my past girlfriends and fiance all preferred very short pubic hair. I also get teased about the single strand of hair on my back, so I assume if that was worse, it’d have to go too.
I think much of this relates back to one of your posts a while ago about male sexuality and how Marky Mark’s Calvin Klein ads changed perceptions of male sexuality. There was another post about male porn stars and how they have changed from unintimidating and ugly men to the guy next door or even very good looking.
I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to accentuate human attraction and sexuality as long as people do not excessively objectify one another.
Another:
I’m a straight guy who kinda hates body hair on both men and women ever since my own armpit hair grew out heavy in 6th grade. I am definitely a manscaper (I trim my pubes, chest, and armpits in addition to facial trimming) both for my own physical comfort and attractiveness to women. If I could afford laser surgery I would get it.
The only reason I don’t shave my body completely is because women don’t prefer that – most women I’ve dated or slept with enjoy both facial hair and body hair on men. So if there’s a “double standard” for body shaving it’s probably because secondary sex characteristics are somewhat different for men and women (same for body shape, voice pitch, jawline, etc.).
But as some of your other readers suggested, this phenomenon is also based on socio-cultural norms, which are definitely changing; more women seem to prefer hairless dudes these days – have you seen those Gillette commercials? So, I would happily shave my entire body if a girlfriend wanted me to, as I have no love of body hair on anyone let alone myself, but since most women seem to prefer a little manly hair, I’ll keep it around in moderation. And no, I would not consider it oppressive or sexist if women wanted men like me to shave their bodies; we should all be naked.
One more:
Just to throw a seldom-heard perspective on this, I’m a pretty hirsute bear who has to live and work in Texas, more often than not in full business getup – suit and tie, even when it’s 106 outside. And on top of that I’m just naturally more prone to sweating than most men seem to be, even in air conditioning. I found years ago that regularly shaving the natural-grown sweater off my chest and back helps immensely with the heat, and have even come to shave my legs down to the knee.
Why stop there? Because when I do get to wear shorts, it’s considered very weird for a middle-aged non-swimmer male to go completely hairless. If I could, though, I’d shave those damn natural knee-length wool socks that make up the thick hair on my legs from knees to ankles. Someday I’m just going to say “fuck it” and do it anyway.
The Dish 