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POPSThis is your life (and how you tell it) I absolutely agree with this. The research that I do is heavily focused on personal narratives and subjective experiences. I want first-hand knowledge of their 'first-hand' knowledge.
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POPSStaying alive: the women who are immune to Aids This is a long piece, and it's difficult in places. But it's worth it. More from the piece. I lay down to test the mattress: it was lumpy and totally unyielding, not the sort of place one would want to spend much time, which seemed a little odd, given the purpose of this room. Agnes Munyiva saw my wince, laughed and patted the bed. 'You need it to be hard, because otherwise you could get hurt when the men are pushing on you,' she explained. The mattress, stuffed with lumpy cotton and resting on a plain metal frame, fills most of her room, just one metre by two. The walls are made of mud, the roof of scraps of tin. The air has a tang from the raw sewage and rotting food scraps in the alley outside, and Agnes tries to keep the clouds of flies at bay with a crisp white muslin curtain in the doorway. Remnants of linoleum, pieced together like a quilt, cover most of the dirt floor. She has a kerosene burner for making tea and a gas lantern.
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POPSWhat is the hidden cost of your £2 latte? More from the piece: Black Gold - which cost £325,000 to make - has made waves at film festivals in Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Rome and all over America. It was shown to MPs at Westminster earlier this year. Next Saturday, the Francis brothers are to speak at a preview screening at the Guardian Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, and the film goes on general release the following week. Nick said: 'We want to make people think about what's at the bottom of the coffee cup, and that has set alarm bells ringing in the big companies. Questions are being asked about how they can talk a lot about corporate responsibility yet not pay coffee farmers a decent price. We've had shareholders and employees of those companies writing to us saying, "We didn't know this." One worker in Starbucks said he was never going to serve latte in the same way again.
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POPSTrashing Teens Interesting read, particularly for those who are interested in studying adolescence.
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POPSForeign correspondents and sexual abuse Some interesting gender differences from the front line. More from the piece: Alone in her hotel room that night, the photographer recalls, she cried, thinking, “What a bloody way to make a living.“ She didn’t inform her editors, however. “I put myself out there equal to the boys. I didn’t want to be seen in any way as weaker.”
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POPSProzac Nation - but do we really need it? I'm inclined to believe that some GPs are too eager to prescribe anti-depressants when they should only be used in cases of serious and actual depression. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that Prozac has saved a great many lives throughout the years. For me, depression is like any other physiological condition and needs to be treated as such.
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POPSToo old for networking? Do social networking sites work for the over 25s? I don't see why not. They work for me and I'm over 25. Perhaps I don't get the ten thousand comments a day I would get if I were a 16 year old on Bebo, but would I want them? And is it ageist to suggest that social networking is not for the over 25s?
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POPSThe hidden brain drain - women who lose out by having children "... allowed childbearing to dilute focus". Sylvia Ann Hewlett first veered off the career highway - or "off-ramped", as she calls it - in her early 30s. She was assistant professor of economics at Barnard College, part of Columbia University, New York, and in the running for a permanent teaching position, when she lost twins in the seventh month of pregnancy. Then she lost her job too: she was told that she hadn't made tenure because she had "allowed childbearing to dilute focus".
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POPSAbortion: some messages can’t be massaged Redefining the 'right' to choose. Introduction to the piece: It's time to ditch the spin and tell the truth about why women have abortions, and what would happen if they were denied them.
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POPSIraqi students brave the bombs I think this is indeed brave. If the same thing happened at my university, I likely wouldn't be seen for months. It also shows as well, I think, how different life as we know it is in Iraq.
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POPSYou silly bitch, calm down. This made me laugh. Read from the top of the piece. It's not that long. My favourite part: Confused, I was. I didn't know it was against the law to stand on a street corner and ignore a crazy lady. I looked at the lady, shrugged my shoulders and puffed away.
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POPSWhat is a gang? I read this yesterday and I could see a lot of truth in it. Think Becker's labelling theory for a start. :)
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POPSHilton to have sentence halved I'm not actually surprised that my first proper clip since my return to The Clip is about this vacuous nightmare. What I can't understand is how her sentence is already going to be halved for good behaviour when she hasn't even started it yet! Such preferential behaviour is surely not allowed!
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POPSMasked crusaders - anonymity online Should anonymity online be denied? This commentary was written for and about the Guardian''s ''comment is free'' website, but it could, arguably, be applied to any interactive website.
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POPSGermany bans Cruise film I'm not for censorship at all, but I AM (frankly) when it comes to Scientology and Cruise, I'm all for it. Shut them both up, say I!
3
POPSThat ain't white Interesting. More from the piece: On the other hand, white trash these days sometimes gets used as a badge of honor. Much like the way African American youth turned the despised word nigga into a word expressing pride and solidarity and the way that GLBT activists have turned queer into a source of dignity and respect, some white youth now use the term to signal rebelliousness and cultural difference—their refusal of a bland, mainstream white society that oppresses and stifles. And there is another popular use of the term as well. It’s sometimes used to name the rich and famous when they act badly or misbehave. So, despite her millions, Paris Hilton can be called white trash for her pornographic lifestyle, and George Clooney can tell us, in a self-mocking kind of way, that he’s really just white trash.
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POPSClipmarks changed again My word! I'm not on Clipmarks for ONE DAY and it all changes! I've never seen a site like it. Good work lads (and lasses - are there any lasses?). It's looking great. :)
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POPSThe Image of Helplessness
More from the piece: Most American women are becoming ever more comfortable with their capabilities as they break into new professional roles, learn how to do electrical wiring or automobile maintenance, tackle life insurance, IRAs and tax planning on behalf of the many configurations of family they are nurturing, or even put their lives on the line as warriors in Iraq. They are surprising themselves and the culture every day by not falling apart as they take on tasks that the prefeminist world was sure would lead them to collapse in a heap, needing smelling salts. Yet at the same time, the culture seems increasingly obsessed with showcasing images of glamorous young women who are falling apart -- sometimes seriously, even fatally. For a long time, hotel heiress Paris Hilton seemed reasonably cool-headed, if amoral, in the limelight. But cool-headed isn't trendy, so she managed to get herself arrested for drunk driving, broke her probation, went off to jail, was released
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POPSNot everybody's a critic Um. I'm not in agreement with this at all. I think if we pay our money for a book, read it and think about it, we're entitled to comment on it if and where we like. Granted, it may not be given the label 'criticism', but our right to do it can't be disputed surely. What a reader wishes to take away from our commentary/ opinion/ 'criticism' is his or her decision. That's what the arts are all about, surely. Perhaps I've misread this piece, but I just found it arrogant, and I disliked its implication that anyone who hasn't been given the seal of approval by some unknown Literary Overseer has no right to comment on literature in his/ her own personal space.
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