links for 2009-05-16

  • "In the site’s introductory video, one of the editors, Hanna Rosin, says, "If you take something like Slate and you have it edited by three women, instead of the people it’s edited by, well that’s the kind of magazine that we want to turn out." She goes on to say that the articles they publish "don’t have to be ‘women’s issues’" — she bends her fingers to make air-quotes — "in the way that people have always defined women’s issues. There can be a whole range of issues and you just put them through a slightly different lens." Color me baffled. Wouldn’t Slate, edited by these insanely smart and accomplished women, just be … Slate? Couldn’t they apply that "slightly different lens" to articles on the primary site and market them to all readers? "
  • "Many readers felt that this story was sexist because it promotes unfair stereotypes about men and women. So, I said, we’d put it to the test and ask our readers how sexist various situations were. Over 1,600 people responded.

    As some of you suspected, that’s not all that was going on with the survey. I was interested in whether you thought that story was sexist, but I was also interested in how context can affect judgments about sexism. So respondents were divided into four different groups. While everyone rated brief scenarios for how "sexist" one of the characters or the entire story was, different groups saw different scenarios."

  • "Zhang Aiping, a tattooist at Tattoo 108 in Shanghai, said: "Around 30 per cent to 40 per cent of our customers are choosing tattoos in English letters now. This has happened really suddenly, since the beginning of this year.

    "I just did one a few days ago for a footballer at Shanghai Shenhua club. It said: ‘I miss u forever’.""

  • A freaky little illusion from the Vision Sciences Society.