Here’s an interesting article on the Religious Gender Gap. Not sure what I think about the explanation given here, but it’s not so far-fetched to me that basic differences in cognition, and consideration of the effects of social pressure on men in traditional societies… none of that is so highly objectionable. Though the bit about women accepting religious ideas “because they sound nice” is unfortunately put.
Month: December 2006
Night Class Essays Down
One of the wonderful things about marking essays that I’m required NOT to return to students is that I don’t need to make extensive notes. I do tend to make a list of notes at the end — in almost unreadable hand, except that I can read it — about what’s good and bad in the essay, but I don’t have to be highly consistent in marking errors of those types throughout the essay. Mark a few, and then just note them. The class is on a ranked grading curve anyway, and participation in a writing class is mostly hard …
Santa and Pascal’s Wager
Melissa Lipscomb’s latest domestic disturbance is up. It’s about all the Christmas lies that parents tell, and an interesting one. The following passage made me laugh out loud: A few days ago Adam left the house and used his cell phone to call Alec in the guise of Santa with a timely reminder that calling people “idiot” was liable to provoke the direst consequences. It’s a bit soon to tell, but I can report that Alec hasn’t used the word again since then. I personally don’t remember ever believing in Santa, though I guess a forecast of my philosophical future …
Rejections #4&5
A couple of more rejections to note: #4. “Pahwakhe” from ChiZine, 2 December 2006 — they said it was “a fine story, it’s not quite weird enough” for their tastes. Some nice encouragement. This same story is still pending at HLQ. #5. “Soul Competency” from F&SF, today. Form letter, I think: “We’ll pass. There’s some fine writing here, but it didn’t grab my interest.” I’m trying to decide whether to submit it somewhere else as is, or maybe get it critiqued and rework it before sending it out again. But I think I might just send it out again, as …
Europa (1991)
Last night I tried to watch my DVD of Europa, which is a Korean-released DVD. Weirdly, it has no English subtitles, only Korean, and the “Languages” marking on the back cover lists it as an “English” movie. In fact, a lot of the dialogue is in German. I tried to watch it anyway, guessing at what was discussed in German, but finally, after about forty minutes, I gave up. What an annoyance!
“Eat Out Someone” (Not What You Think.)
Here are a couple of real gems from an essay I graded today, which was a crusade against fast food: “If you eat out someone everyday, you can lose your relationship.”“Everyone must eat their homes.” Obviously, from a essay near the bottom of the grading pile, but still… amusing.
Ogallala Finished
Well, except the basic proofread that it’ll need before I send it out. It’s another novelette, at 9,350 words. I was hoping to make the story a shorter one, but of course, big ideas and big characters demand a big story, I guess. I’ll have to work something else up, though, for Tesseracts. Right now, I’m looking at “Realer” and “The Wager” as the next best possilibities (since I think “Professor Whitney’s Resignation” will take too long to work up, and “The Crystal Methuselah” might be too edgy for this market), but each story is going to take at least …
It’s Snowing, It’s Snowing!
It was the first big dump of snow this winter, today, at least in Bucheon. I didn’t see much snow in Seoul, though. Lime wrote some kind of exam. Apparently every intern in half of Seoul, Incheon, Bucheon, etc. was in the same place, writing the same test. We met for coffee and… Then we had some pho after. It comes with hot Jasmine tea. There’s a good little pho place in Hongik, where we sometimes go. I hope she won’t mind me posting this pic, as it’s blurry. But she might. Then we wandered around, and finally had dinner …
The Ongoing Ogallala Rewrite
For those following the saga of the Ogallala rewrite — which means anyone reading this blog, as 50% of my recent posts are on the subject (here’s the most recent one) — I’ve just hit 6479 words, which, when we count editing for wordiness may be more like 6300 words. That leaves me with anywhere between 700-1200 words to wrap things up, which is encouraging. I’ve rather radically transformed the family drama part of the story, though in a way that makes it more conventional, more related to the world the characters are living in, more poignant and more frustrating …
Oliver Stone’s Alexander
I do wish Oliver Stone would do things like Natural Born Killers, Platoon… things that he can do. I’m saddened by the fact that nobody told him a film like Alexander was beyond his reach. It turns out to have been, unquestionably so. Oh, wait… the grandiosity, the betrayal by silence of those surrounding him… I get it, dude. Alexander is a kind of mirror reflection of Stone himself. This movie is a self-portrait. Trying to conquer the world with his unique vision. Perhaps he believes the kind of rhetoric he puts in Alexander’s mouth about making an empire to …