Articles Tagged with “culture”

Intersectionality means I can’t separate my whiteness from my transness, nor can I ignore how the privilege the former identity grants me moderates the marginalization of the latter identity. We white trans people need to do better at acknowledging this.

Chatter about police wearing cameras while on duty has been picking up over the past year. The recent shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson has only amplified such calls. Really, as more and more ordinary citizens undertake lifelogging seriously, police wearing cameras will be inevitable. For an example from some recent and near-future fiction, look no further than Halting State, by Charles Stross. But it’s a mistake to think that police wearing cameras…

A few weeks ago I discussed gender stereotypes in ads with my Grade 8 class. I knew I would have no trouble finding examples to bring in to demonstrate what I meant. Indeed, I found this awesome website, the Gender Ads Project, with thousands of scanned magazine ads categorized by the stereotypes they portray. What I didn’t anticipate was how difficult it would be to find ads that both clearly demonstrate a stereotype and…

Some big news in the Canadian tech industry this week was the advent of the Amazon Kindle in Canada. I've mentioned my mad love for the Kindle previously as well as my discomfort with Amazon's approach to tethered appliances. So, now that the Kindle is finally available here, will I be getting one?

The short answer is no, not right now. Technologically, I think the Kindle is an amazing device that uses some…

I've given it a great deal of thought, for it's a complicated subject. However, I now believe that rebooting Star Trek is not a good idea.

The new Star Trek film, premiering this Friday, is a "prequel" in the sense that it takes place prior to the original series, but not a prequel in the sense that it actually results in an alternate timeline.((Yes, time travel--prepare for headaches.)) This allows J.J. Abrams to effectively shed…

Well here we are, the end of an era. Battlestar Galactica is over, which has made a lot of people very angry for various reasons.

Spoilers ahead.

I'm too young to have seen the original Battlestar Galactica when it was on television, and I never watched the reruns. I'm not into it. The "reimagined" series ignited my interest, however, and I've watched the show since its miniseries became the backdoor pilot for a new television…

As I've said previously, I'm tired of the repetitive fearmongering being done in the name of our "global warming" crusade. It's another example of herd mentality exacerbating a crisis that it is supposed to be solving. Last century it was nuclear weapons, this century it's global warming.

Well wake up people, and stop being so selfish! After all, we are not the only planet in this universe. There are many other planets out there that…

Anyone else noticed this new iGoogle thing that Google has going for it?

What's with the name? You would think that a company as creative as Google would be able to come up with a better name than something that--well, frankly, that sounds like a bad Apple rip-off. And this isn't just Google's problem. iWhatever has become the new "Whatever X" of our generation. I feel sorry for the poor letter--it's not even…

Often you'll read one critic or intellectual or another say something along the lines of how Hollywood is destroying the movie industry, creating cheap flicks at the expense of "art" and "culture". And as much as I am sometimes tempted to agree with this cynical evaluation of our entertainment industry, I can't bring myself to jump on that bandwagon. I just can't.

I have observed that more movies are "packaged" these days. What are "packaged"…

Great Bird of the Galaxy, forgive me.

It was just a matter of time, of course. My willpower is far from legendary or anything, and I knew that I was going to "cave", as Cortney so eloquently puts it, sometime or another--I fully intended to, since once I'm done high school I'd like to preserve my connections with my friends through whatever means available. And, as much as I hate to admit it, social networking…

As I continue to expand my boundaries of knowledge by reading and watching more books and movies, it occurs to me that there are some books/movies that are regarded as "classics" by culture, but that I've never had a chance to actually experience the whole way through. An example of this is It's A Wonderful Life--classic Christmas movie, but I guess because it's been played over and over on TV so much, I never…