I like to post this once very few years or so on whatever blog I'm currently using, because it's interesting and kind of hilarious.

Two artists conducted a multinational survey of what art people enjoyed and what kind they didn't, and then created paintings to reflect that.

Komar and Melamid: Most Wanted Paintings on the Web

They also did it with music. That's the link to the most unwanted, and there's a link in there to the most wanted.

I wish I had more commentary than that, but I don't.

Why, SFO? Why must you cancel three flights in a row when I have class tomorrow morning? At least I don't have any presentations or anything due.

And one day I will make a post about commuting and how weird it is and the things I've learned from it, but today is not that day because I'm just cranky now.

Long, long ago (like, a year and a half ago), two neuroscientists thought it would be a really good idea to study sex on the internet and write a book about it. They came up with some idea about subcortical modeling and how it could be measured by looking at Google searches, and, since they didn't have any affiliation with an IRB or any research institution, no one said, "hey, that's kind of pure crap."

But then they decided to study fandom. Specifically, livejournal-based, female-centered, fanfic fandom, which is full of feminists and humanities scholars, and thus not the place you want to take your evolutionary psychology research that takes gender essentialism for granted.

Fandom didn't realize that they were dealing with evo psych at first, but once they did, it was all cat macros, and calling universities to see if people had human research approval, and actual neuroscientists calling people phrenologists.

Beyond the amusement factor, this is interesting because they got paid a good deal of money to write this book (check out the tags!), and it's a fabulous example of how to make your research subjects mistrust and hate you.

Some relevant links:
From scientists -
Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail
WEARING THE JUICE: A CASE STUDY IN RESEARCH IMPLOSION

From fandom -
SurveyFail

Whenever I'm sick, I watch the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. I understand how weird that is, but the combination of love of apocalypse movies and sympathy with massive fictional influenza suffering is really comforting.

Also, the continuing appeal of Rob Lowe.

I have a whole rant about my love for Stephen King and popular fiction and it dovetails with my rant about my hatred of a lot of the lauding of literary fiction and my specific thing about Ian McEwan, but I'm sick, so it will come later.

So, a friend of mine recently mentioned that the best of all the episodes of Masters of Horror was Incident On and Off A Mountain Road, which is true. But it is not only the best of that series, it is one of the best horror movies I've seen. It plays with notions of horror vs. terror, the role of the feminine in horror movies, and the audience's expectation of what genre of movie they're watching. I just love it to death.

And it's on YouTube (behind an age filtering wall). Which is surprising to me, because YouTube is so easy to rip content from. It seems like Anchor Bay, the production company, would want to put recent material somewhere less prone to easy manipulation.

The problem with starting a new blog, or a new phase of an old blog, is that sudden feeling of, "what the hell do I talk about?" Especially if one generally has little to say. There's the issue of performance, and presenting oneself accurately (or inaccurately, but appealingly), and in all of the many blogs I have had over the years, rarely have I felt that I struck that balance of vapid/pretentious that truly reflects who I am as a person. I think I'm planning to lean towards vapid in this blog.

Not that it'll be all cat macros, but I make no other promises.

This blog is being slightly repurposed for a new class. The updates will be a lot more frequent and, consequently, probably a little less thoughtful overall. (Not that they were brilliant in the past.)

There will still be a lot about TV, though.

To new readers, welcome! And my preemptive apologies.