Originally a comment by zibble on First rule: make them insipid.

I think the problem isn’t even that they have to keep the characters pretty.  The problem is that they define female prettiness as an absence of features.

It’s like the bad-anime face.

The total lack of identifiable human features forces you to project idealized features onto their void of a face.  There are enough face-like qualities for the mind to recognize that a face is supposed to go there – but with no specific information, your brain picks all the features it likes the best.  Whereas if they tried to make a female character actually modeled off of a real female face, like Angelina Jolie, they have … Read the rest

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It’s sad being a Disney animator if you have to animate women, we’re told. Fortunately the problem doesn’t arise much because hey – Toy Story? Lion King? But when it does arise, damn, it’s difficult.

Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation on Frozen, claimed that it was “really, really difficult” to animate women because they have to be kept pretty while expressing emotions:

“Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having

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Did you (those of you in the US) see Frontline on football and concussions last night? It was pretty fascinating. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has been reporting a lot on hockey and concussions, too. The Frontline show made some interesting points about how violent, and intentionally violent, football is. It’s marketed as violent, and apparently people like that.

Huh. Why? What a strange thing to like.

It reminded me of a lot of things. Jousting, for instance. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Tenniel’s illustrations of them. Jousting must have caused a lot of concussions and CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). Henry VIII received a bad head injury in a joust, and he was a monster as he aged – maybe the … Read the rest

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Captions: two buttons: one says

KFC Hillary special

2 Fat Thighs

2 Small Breasts

…Left Wing

The other says

I still hate Commies…

even after they

changed their

name to Liberals

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Al-Medinah school wants (or pretends to want) incompatible things. It says so right on its home page.

Our vision

…

One of Al-Madinah Schools’ strong characters is the schools extended services program in which pupils will learn independence, self-control, social skills and community conscientiousness. These skills are vital if our pupils are to become self-regulating teenagers and adults. [para 3]

…

One of Al-Madinah Schools’ distinct features is the offering of an Islamic Studies program, which will include Quran reading with pronunciations (Tajweed), translation of the Quran (Tafseer) and Quran memorisation (Hifz). We will also teach Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), biography (Seerah) of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), History of Islam, the Oneness of God (Tauheed) and Islamic Beliefs (Aqeedah). [para

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Al-Madinah school in Derby is even worse than everyone thought. The Independent reports:

A Muslim free school has been warned it faces closure if it does not take action to eradicate practices which discriminate against girls and women within a week.

The blunt warning was delivered yesterday in a letter from Lord Nash. the Minister with responsibility for free schools and academies in a letter to the chair of its governing body.

Lord Nash warned the Al-Madinah free school in Derby that the trust running it had “manifestly breached the conditions of its funding agreement by failing to ensure the safety of children at the school: delivering an unacceptably poor standard of education, discriminating in its policies towards female

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In case we’re not already sufficiently fed up with the Catholic church today, we learn that

The Catholic Church tried to strike an agreement with New South Wales Police that would have helped shut down investigations into paedophile priests and placed police in breach of the Crimes Act.

Police records, accessed under freedom of information laws by Greens MP David Shoebridge, show two attempts were made to finalise memorandums of understanding (MOUs) between police and the church over how to deal with complaints of sexual and physical abuse by Catholic Church personnel.

 

Disgusting, isn’t it. “Church authorities shall cover up crimes committed by church employees unless prevented by court order.” Because after all it’s just child rape, … Read the rest

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Pteryxx collected more material on this and it’s damning, so I’m just going to add it all. Commentary Pteryxx’s.

The Nebraska Supreme Court refused to hear the girl’s appeal.  Here’s the decision she was appealing.

After advising the girl that “when you have the abortion, it’s going to kill the child inside you,” lower court judge Peter Bataillon denied her request for a waiver. Bataillon, who according to RH Reality Check, had been an attorney for extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, found that the girl was not mature and informed enough to make the decision to have an abortion. He also found that the girl should have sought consent from her foster parents, even though the girl’s foster parents are

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Kamila Shamsie talks to Malala for the Guardian.

Learning from her parents is something Malala knows a great deal about. Her mother was never formally educated and an awareness of the constraints this placed on her life have made her a great supporter of Malala and her father in their campaign against the Taliban’s attempts to stop female education. One of the more moving details in I Am Malala, the memoir Malala has written with the journalist Christina Lamb, is that her mother was due to start learning to read and write on the day Malala was shot – 9 October 2012. When I suggest that Malala’s campaign for female education may have played a role in encouraging

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Amanda Marcotte reminds us what popes and bishops really care about.

Remember Pope Francis said some pretty stuff about how Catholic authorities need to be less obsessed with their attempts to control human sexuality and more interested in helping the poor, and how a bunch of liberals who are grading the pope on a massive curve got excited? Remember how meanie atheists said that it doesn’t matter and we can tell you right now that nothing will change?

It turns out we were wrong?

No.

Think Progress reported yesterday that the United Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter urging House Republicans to shut down the government rather than let women use their earned insurance benefits to buy contraception

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Nice.

Nick Cohen explains,

Martin Bright and I thought that what with one thing and another we should take some flowers to Ralph Miliband’s grave.

People on Facebook were very curious about the uncanny anachronistic boy in the background.

… Read the rest

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