Smart Bitches, Trashy Books | Romance Novel Reviews | Come for the Dominican Bitches, Stay for the Man Titty Probe of Antarctica's hidden lakes may yield clues to extraterrestrial life A British team of scientists is leading an effort to drill down to a subglacial lake deep below Antarctica's frozen wilderness. The research will provide vital clues to the origins and limits of life on Earth. The British camp near Lake Ellsworth -- one of about 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica. The lake, which is about 10 km (6.2 miles) long and 2-3 km (1.24-1.86 miles) wide, lies about 3 km beneath the ice. The drilling site above Lake Ellsworth, with the Ellsworth mountain range in the distance. Earlier this year, an advance party of engineers braved temperatures of -35 degrees Celsius to tow nearly 70 tons of equipment more than 250 km (155 miles) through the Ellsworth mountain range to close to the drilling site. The drill, shown here during testing, will blast through the ice using the heat and pressure of water at 90 degrees Celsius. Drilling the frozen continent's icy depths Read: Sci-fi writers to help scientists imagine the future Read: $1B mission to reach the Earth's mantle
Top 10 Summer Romances of 2010 Summer reading and winter reading vary greatly one from the other. During the winter, readers want to cozy up with a good book by their fire places and drink a glass of Sherry or a cup of hot coca. During the summer, readers want something they can read by the pool, something that can draw their minds away from the blazing heat of the sun and into the heat of their novel. Dark romances are best read during the winter when readers can delve into the depths of the novel and dwell on the intricate spirals of details found there, unless it has some comedic tendencies. Funny vampire books are good for summer or winter months, where as Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire is best left for a winter night when the cold chill can add to the book’s intensity. Top 10 Summer Romance Novels of 2010 Classic Summer Romances There are always some of the older romance novels that are good to read during the summer, books like: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger (Harcourt) Lover Unleashed by J.R.
Chasing down the world's vanishing glaciers Birthday Canyon, Greenland Ice Sheet, Greenland, June 2009. Courtesy of James Balog EIS time lapse cameras at Columbia Glacier, Alaska, Aug 2009. "I never really expected to see this magnitude of change. Every time we open the backs of these cameras it's like 'wow, is that what's just happened,'" Balog said. Aerial view of meltwater on Greenland Ice Sheet, June 2010. Aerial view of pancake ice, Ilulissat Isfjord, Greenland, March 2008. "Ice diamond," Jökulsárlón, Iceland, Feb 2008. Greenland Ice Sheet, Greenland, July 2008, Silt and soot blown from afar turn into black "cryoconite," absorb solar heat and melt down into ice. Close up of an iceberg, Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, Sept 2010. "In the past one million years, the peak of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere has been 280-290 parts per million (ppm). James Balog, director of the Extreme Ice Survey, at minus 30 degrees F, Disko Bay, Greenland, March 2008. James Balog's 'Chasing Ice' For U.S.
Romance Reader, Unashamed Any reader of romance novels can tell you the stereotypes of the books and their readers. If you're not a romance reader, there's a good chance you can come up with them anyway: Frumpy housewives engaged in heavy breathing over thoughts of Fabio (as pirate, as viking, in a kilt...) ripping bodices. Rape fantasies for the sexually repressed. Tales of weak women rescued by strong men. A great deal could be said about how fiction by and for women is rated in relation to more masculinist fiction -- whether it be Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens or Henry James -- but in this case, by "romance novel," I mean genre romance. That said: Hi, my name is Laura and I'm a life-long feminist with an Ivy League PhD and nary a pink sweatsuit in the house. Once upon a time I embraced the judgment. I don't want to go too far in my claims, because I think it's ok for novels (or movies, or tv shows) to be fun and escapist rather than serious and uplifting. Myth: Romance heroines are weak.
Dear Mr. President: Why on Earth Are You Letting Shell Drill in the Arctic? The Obama administration has authorized Royal Dutch Shell to begin preparatory drilling in the icy, vulnerable waters of the Chukchi Sea, 70 miles northwest of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean. On Thursday of last week, the Federal Bureau of Ocean Management issued a permit that will allow Shell to drill holes at certain depths in the ocean floor, even though the company’s oil spill containment barge has not yet been completed. On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency made things even easier for Shell, granting a one-year air pollution permit that will enable the generators on Shell’s offshore drill ship to emit nitrous dioxide and ammonia at levels that are currently above federal safety limits. MORE: Polar Bears Beware! Shell Oil Is Coming to Town U.S. While final permits have not yet been issued, last week’s events represent a huge step forward for Shell, which has fought for seven years to begin drilling in the Arctic, and has spent $4.5 billion on the effort.
Romance by the book: Never judge by the cover From the covers of most romance novels, the casual reader would think all romance heroines are magazine-cover beautiful. But what's on the cover and what's in the pages are often worlds apart. "Inside, it's about finding someone who loves you completely just the way you are, even in your puppy-dog jammies," says romance blogger Sarah Wendell, co-author of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels. And the depiction of heroines as impossibly perfect beauties is an outdated image that "was always unbelievable and has changed and changed quickly," Wendell says. "The standard has become much more sophisticated and diverse." As a romance fan and writer, Maya Rodale says much more emphasis is now placed on "feeling beautiful instead of just looking beautiful." SECRETS: Romance writers share their secrets for looking good, feeling beautiful Handout Beyond Heaving Bosoms The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan.
Deep ice cores show past Greenland warm period may be ‘road map’ for continued warming of planet A new study by an international team of scientists analyzing ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet going back in time more than 100,000 years indicates the last interglacial period may be a good analog for where the planet is headed in terms of increasing greenhouse gases and rising temperatures. The new results from the NEEM deep ice core drilling project led by the University of Copenhagen and involving the University of Colorado Boulder show that between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago during the Eemian interglacial period, the climate in north Greenland rose to about 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. Despite the strong warming signal during the Eemian -- a period when the seas were roughly 15 to 25 feet higher than today -- the surface of the north Greenland ice sheet near the NEEM facility was only a few hundred yards lower than it is today, an indication to scientists it contributed less than half of the total sea rise at the time.
Jordan: Classical Chinese Novels A Brief Guide to the Most Influential Why Novels Matter in a Largely Illiterate Society. Chinese popular culture, including popular religion, involves the ideas that ordinary people hold about a wide range of topics, ideas that were always influenced by the media of theatricals and storytelling. Theatrical troupes were traditionally hired to present performances in front of temples on the occasion of almost any kind of theatrical festival, and many temples had more or less permanent stages built opposite their doors, facing the main altar, so that the gods enshrined in the temple could enjoy the performances. Most gods would have had difficulty seeing over the heads of the crowd that assembled to join them in this enjoyment, for people, of course, flocked to participate in this break in routine. But in addition traveling theatrical troupes of puppets or human actors performed with "commercial breaks" to sell medicines, soap, or other commodities, or simply to take a collection.
INTERVIEW: Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels No bloggers in the world of online book reviewing have carved out such a distinct niche in so short a time as Sarah and Candy of Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels. The duo are legendary for acute observations on the world of women’s fiction, and romance in particular, delivered with unbridled snark and a liberal dose of profanity. Recently, the two indulged Kathleen and Therese’s curiousity about reviewing books, what readers are looking for, and why man-titty covers are here to stay. Q: Where did the concept for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books come from? The short answer is that Candy used to comment on my personal site (at LENGTH – you have never met a person in such dire need of her own blog before) and I mis-remembered her as being from Indonesia. She responded kindly instead of pointing out what a geographical moron I am, and we got to emailing back and forth. And Smart Bitches, Trashy Books was born. Candy: Ohmigod, yes. Q: Describe your review process. A satisfying read? 1. (Right.