Watson “Makes a Joke”

    I have been watching Watson playing Jeopardy! It is really interesting. I am impressed by Watson’s performance and ability to analyse questions in natural language (although sometimes it seems like Watson’s performance is at an advantage due to reaction times). But what really amazes me is the “interaction between” Watson and the audience [...]

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In Praise of Penny Arcade on Rape Culture

[Trigger Warning: I am writing about rape again, and I will be snarky, sarcastic and otherwise more emotive in my writing than average] If there is one thing that could be said for Penny Arcade’s handling of the criticisms of “The 6th Slave” comic, it is that they did begin a serious discussion of rape [...]

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Rape Culture 5105: Responsibility and Rape Culture

I began my series of posts on meta-issues associate with discussions of rape culture here. I assume that discussion in what I write here. As a quick summary: in that post I suggested that there are two ways to understand rape: either as an individual crime committed by “rotten apples,” or as a systemic crime [...]

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Rape Culture 5105: Rape as a Systemic Institution

There are many excellent introductory descriptions of rape culture available on the internet. For example: Wikipedia, Shakesville, Yes Means Yes, and Finally, a Feminism 101 blog all have good descriptions (note: the Shakesville post begins with a quote that addresses what I intend to explain in this post, but does not go into detail). They [...]

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Bill C-389 Passes the House

On Monday, I wrote about the Bill C-389 that was voted on in the House of Commons yesterday. I am happy to report that the Bill passed the house (Yeas: 143; Nays 135). The transcript of Monday’s debate can be read in full here. As it was with the last debate, the MPs focused on [...]

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The Chainmail Bikini in Real Life

Many gamers have complained about the ridiculous outfits that game designers make their female characters wear (see here, here, here, here, and here). In this video, the guys at Rooster Teeth Labs decided to see what would happen if real women tried to fight each other while wearing video game inspired clothes. The results are [...]

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Bill C-389 on Gender Identity and Expression

This will be just a quick posts with some links to further reading. Recently, the groups The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) released a survey “Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey” about discrimination based on gender identity and expression [...]

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Why I like Crime Shows

One of my guilty pleasures is watching crime shows on TV. I love crime shows for a number of reasons. First, I really enjoy being frightened, and crime shows offer the types of situations that I find scary. I don’t usually find horror movies scary because they are too fantastic and I cannot really picture [...]

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I Played a Commercial and I Didn’t Like It

Almost nobody likes commercials. Since technologies such as VCRs, DVRs and TiVo are now available, many people prerecord TV shows and skip through the commercials. So marketers and advertisers are trying to come up with commercials that we are willing to watch, or that we cannot get around watching (for example, because they are part [...]

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Law and Order: SVU and the Bechdel Test

[Trigger Warning for discussions of violence against women and rape.] One of my guilty pleasures is watching crime shows on TV. I explain why I like crime shows in this post, but I am also aware that crime shows have a number of problematic elements. Crime shows are often problematic because of the way they [...]

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