The Weekly for 6 February

• 10 things a web designer would never tell you.


• The Guardian talks to Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser. His character, Pete Campbell, stealthily crept into my favorite character position last season.


• Chef Michael Ruhlman has some things to say about natural foods and …

The Weekly for 30 January

• Kevin Kelly suggests that borrowing is better than owning.


• FourthWaveFeminism looks at boy-fronted girl bands.


• Documentary filmmaker Louis Abelman compares Twitter to cinema v

A Cold Pittsburgh Skepchick Interview

A couple of weeks back, I hit Pittsburgh to meet up with fellow Skepchicks Maria and Elyse, along with atheist activist and vlogger Ashley, whom I brought along with me from Columbus, and a whole bunch of great Steel City skeptics, including Laura (who so awesomely …

The Weekly for 16 January

• RIP Ray Dennis Steckler: the beloved (well, by me, at least) B movie director passed away last week. I think the occasion calls for a fresh viewing of MST3K's take on The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies in his honor.


• The …

My Favorite Vampire

I'm not very well versed on the whole Twilight phenomenon, but I'm also pretty sure I don't have to be in order to fully grasp what's it about. This isn't because I think the books/movies are all that one-dimensional (well, okay, it partly is), but really because I …

The Weekly for 9 January

• From Maura at Idolator: why 'women in rock' stories will never be considered for my lists of best music writing.


• The Mid-Century Modernist features a collection of motel room postcards of the 1950's and 60's.


• Neat item of the week: An Apple a Day letterpress poster.

Ada Lovelace Day

I've mainly stayed away from the discussion of gender issues in technology. I didn't think that I had any real expertise to share. But over the last six months, after many conversations, it has become clear that many of my female friends in tech really do feel …

The Weekly for 2 January

• Fimoculous's 30 most notable blogs of 2008.


• Noir City 7, a festival for all things film noir, is set to take place in San Francisco January 23 - February 1 2009.


• From Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon: Anti-vaccine = anti-feminist?


• Cinematical's worst MPAA ratings of 2008.

Top Ten Films I Saw in 2008

This is not exactly the type of list you might think it is. Most people, when writing about their top films of a certain year, reasonably confine themselves to writing about films that actually premiered in that year. But I possess a noisy, squirmy toddler, which …

The Weekly for 26 December 2008

• Pink Raygun's 2008 edition of top 100 fiction femmes of genre film and television.


• From Girl with Pen, stats on women for 2008: "The US ranks 27th in terms of women in power (measured as "top political and decision-making roles, including relative access to executive …

Happy Holidays

Wishing all my readers and their families happy holidays. Thanks for your comments, submitted links and news, and for just generally hanging around. It's super cool of you. Things have been quiet here lately because of several new projects, including a DP redesign, …

The Weekly for 19 December

• Forty million Americans now contribute to social networking sites. Who are they?


• Real people who inspired pop songs: "One day a friend called me and said, 'Turn on the radio!' They were playing Walk On The Wild Side. The funny thing is that, while I knew the Velvet …

Ada Lovelace: Heroine Geek

I was reminded that yesterday, December 10, was the birthday of Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace - otherwise known as one of the pioneers of computer programming. While the exact nature of her contributions to Charles Babbage's analytical engine research is …

The Weekly for 12 December 2008

• RIP Bettie Page. The iconic pinup died yesterday at age 85.


• At Teen Skepchick, Vy takes on Miss Bimbo.


• From Popmatters: best albums of 2008 from women over 45.


• Lost daughters - an ongoing tragedy in Nepal: "Current numbers for girls trafficked out of the country are …

Bettie Mae Page

With the recent passing of Bettie Page, the kitschy 1950's-era pinup model, a lot of folks have felt compelled to explain the exact nature of her appeal. I'm no exception. While I recognize the fact that what appeals to one does not necessarily appeal to another, and …

Punk Rock and Trailer Parks

Akron was once cool for, like, five years. I know it's hard to believe now, but it really was.

(Derf, in the University of Akron's www.buchtelite.com/media/storage/paper1203/news/2008/10/14/ArtsLife/Akrons.Punk.Scene.Lives.On.In.Graphic.Novel-3488917.shtml">Buchtelite.)

I've always been fascinated by the legend of the late seventies Akron, Ohio punk scene that almost became the next big thing. …

Smart Girls at the Party

Meet my new favorite person, Ruby:

Another person I've liked more and more lately, Amy Poehler, is heading up this new online show, Smart Girls at the Party, celebrating young girls doing some cool things. Pass it on if you know one in your own life.

But, of course, …

The Weekly for 5 December

• If you haven't seen the new Criterion website yet, I highly recommend doing so. Lovely design, great films viewable online, and a really neat social networking site for cinephiles, The Auteurs.


• io9 rounds up gifts for geek causes.


• Designers and developers: why can't …

Warning: Possible RSS Craziness Ahead

I'm going start feeding my Tumblr posts into the main blog here, and, frankly, I'm not sure how the RSS is going to react. It may spit out a bunch of old Tumblr posts or it may give them some funky formatting and/or titles. We'll see! Rest assured that I'll make a …

The Weekly for 28 November

• On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel: "Pixels were the stuff of my first computer, which strained to show 137 of them in a square inch; my latest cellphone manages 32,562 in this same space, and has 65,000 colors to choose from, not eight. Its smooth …