fanfic forensics

The relationships that people have with other animals are important in determining how they will behave to animals.

We found that the relationships depend on the familiarity with individuals and species in general, and the perceived functions and roles of the animals. When asked what are the most familiar kinds of animals, overall 41% said dogs, 23% cats, 13% cows, 6% birds, 5% pigs, 4% chickens, 3% fish, 2% tortoise, with 2% other mammals and 1% beetles.

They viewed the question in terms of the species, but pet owners interpreted it more as individuals.

That partnership between content provider and consumer is exactly what's missing in the Western world's debate over intellectual property, where movie studios and record labels talk about their customers as potential criminals. In Asia, media companies have a much closer and more interactive relationship with fans, treating them as partners in evangelizing their products -- even when that means blurring the lines of copyright restrictions. Kai-Ming Cha, manga editor of Publishers Weekly, notes that Japan's media industry has "developed a detente" with fans. She points to the example of doujinshi -- amateur "homage" publications that depict popular anime and manga characters in original, sometimes pornographic storylines. "They realize these unauthorized spinoffs help to build the fandom, and ultimately drive sales of the original," she says.

The extensive theoretical background and literature review he provided is surely invaluable...despite his somewhat morally questionable, cannibalistic poaching of everyone elses' empirical legwork (not to mention self-congratulatory use of his own prior research).

Genres of scholarship will change in terms of their length and their appearance as mobile computers become a primary outlet for intellectual work.

Genres of scholarship will change in terms of their length and their appearance as mobile computers become a primary outlet for intellectual work.

But perhaps even more significantly, scholarship on a cell phone will be more social and more interactive -- and therefore more aligned or coincidental with teaching. We may begin thinking less in terms of scholarly publications as vetted objects, and more in terms of scholarly activities being conducted by trusted authorities. This raises profound questions about peer reviewing practices, as well it should. We are going to find that sophisticated intellectual work is going to be conducted outside of the ivory tower, and those within those elite walls must find ways to articulate their skills and knowledge through these new intellectual mechanisms (hardware, software, social practices) -- or risk getting excluded from the more consequential conversations.

KG: Spiegelman said the same thing about Maus, actually, about three years ago when these sections in bookstores were starting to gear up and gain ground. And he said, they want to shelve Maus in the graphic novel section, but it’s not a novel. It’s nonfiction. But now a lot of the stuff in the graphic novel section is nonfiction. And that’s because they are treating it like a genre when it’s a medium.

"Do you think this might lead to new forms of literature?" I have been using a fantastic hypertext for the last 30 years. It is called Scrabble. Isn't it true that with Scrabble you can compose every possible cross link, every combination of sentences. It's a nice game, it can have educational purposes. Sometimes my wife who is German learned part of her English lexicon by playing Scrabble. Sometimes we play Scrabble in English, or in French. OK, but if you are a poet you have your mental Scrabble. You don't need the board to do it. It is the same I think for all those kinds of games. They can be very nice to play. So, I repeat: they can be used for training people in inventing and composing, but they have nothing to do, according to me, with the future of literature.

Then, when you read a serious book on Cremonini, first you discover that Cremonini was a great mind of this time, even though he was not an innovator like Gallileo, and that it isn't true that he refused to look into the binocular. He just said: "At the present state of technology, those lenses are very rudimentary, so I don't think that they can really help me to see something more." It was an objection to the present primitive state of the art. So what I am making now is probably a statement that we are still at a primitive state of the art. I have not been interested up to now to try virtual reality. Because until it is possible to make love to Marilyn Monroe; until the moment that her clothes start floating away - well, then at that moment I will try! But as long as it is just a sketch of Marilyn Monroe, and I can have the real sensation elsewhere, then the state of the art is so primitive that I prefer to wait, that's all! If you offer me this possibility soon, or better still, if you offer me this possibility when I am 80, I will be enthusiastic about the innovation, and I will become a fanatic supporter!

open source software

spirit of 'open work' is decentralised

Nina Työlahti

Scientists worship at the altar of peer review, and I use that metaphor deliberately because it is rarely if ever questioned.

Somehow the process of peer review is supposed to sprinkle some sort of magical dust over a text which makes it “scientific” or “worthy”, yet while we quibble over details of managing the process, or complain that we don’t get paid for it, rarely is the fundamental basis on which we decide whether science is formally published examined in detail.

There is a good reason for this. THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! [sorry, had to get that off my chest]. The evidence that peer review as traditionally practiced is of any value at all is equivocal at best

やおい論、明日のためにその２。

腐女子同士の絆

ロボと人外をＢＬに！

What attributes the character may have are variable; what causes annoyance is the introduction of a cuckoo into the canon's nest, some bigger, brighter, louder character who steals the limelight from the characters the reader chose to read about, the intrusion that distorts the text.

However, sexism does play a central role in the phenomenon, because the performances towards which fans show loyalty are products of a sexist culture. The typical Mary Sue is female, because of the marginalisation of women in the texts and performances from which most fandom derives. The laws of canon are largely patriarchal, and female fen therefore find their position at odds with their loyalty to the fandom in a way that male fen do not. The backlash against Mary Sues only exacerbates this underlying sexism, because the hatred felt against intruding female characters intersects with and reinforces, to a degree, the misogynist tropes that provoke it.