What puts the mmm in Medieval?

Lots of currenty commentary on overly skinny v curvy figures has created interesting debate and pictorial comparisons like this:

So, I was most amused to see this pic play on the issue!

If gives you food for thought, to ponder how the female form has been idealised, stylised, revised, and denigrated in so many different ways, through art, the media, personal choice, and cultural dictates. The topic has been well researched and such variance carefully mapped, yet modern journalists rarely seem to use such source material in their commentaries on the latest celebrity who lost 5lbs, gained 20, or just got over that "baby weight" in record time.
The above comparison doesn't really take into account that the top row of classic beauties were posing to look attractive, whilst the bottom row were posing for posterity in a way that fitted in with the artistic and social traditions and constraints of their time.

Hold the presses! UPDATE - it just got funnier!

Ireland's SOPA proposal that you can't actually vote on

Just found out today that the motherland has gone the way of American senators, bowing down to pressure from the EU and international corporations in regard to intellectual property rights and all that jazz. Infuriating.

You can sign the petition online here http://stopsopaireland.com/

I've also written a long email to the ministers and am currently firing copies to everyone associated with Limerick (yes, I got a bit carried away with the letter...sigh). Do the same for your own county and let's get this thing under control!

This image sums up one of the associated issues of this entire fiasco:

Bye bye, democracy, it was nice knowing you, even if you were broken.

Teaching insights

Did some teaching last term and some of this certainly rang true (though the video demonstrates less reliance by students on mobile phones to get attention during class *cue disapproving stare from TA*)

Why bother studying the past?

So that stupid things like this are never taken as true. ha!