Posts Tagged ‘the ladies’
Lady LEGO? LEGO XX? LEGA?
Someone tell me how to feel about this: Over the years, Lego has had five strategic initiatives aimed at girls. Some failed because they misapprehended gender differences in how kids play. Others, while modestly profitable, didn’t integrate properly with Lego’s core products. Now, after four years of research, design, and exhaustive testing, Lego believes it has a breakthrough. On Dec. 26 in the U.K. and Jan. 1 in the U.S., Lego will roll out Lego Friends, aimed at girls 5 and up. (French Lego retailers are going rogue and plan to bring out Lego Friends on Dec. 15.) In Lego’s larger markets, like the U.S., Lego determined it was better to introduce the new line after the holidays, when Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), for example, would give the line dedicated shelf space it wouldn’t during the holiday sales rush. The company’s confidence is evident in the launch—a full line of 23 different products backed by a $40 million global marketing push. “This is the most significant strategic launch we’ve done in a decade,” says Lego Group Chief Executive Officer Jørgen Vig Knudstorp. “We want to reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children.” Via Boing Boing and MetaFilter.
‘Whenever We’ve Got Kids under 14 in the House and They Start Rummaging Through My Comics Collection, I Have to Dive In and Make Sure They Don’t Innocently Pick Up Some Superhero Book and Run Into What Amounts to Softcore Porn’
How to fix comics’ “women problem,” from Kieron Gillen, Greg Rucka, Kurt Busiek, G. Willow Wilson, Jeff Parker, Jess Fink, Brandon Graham, Sana Amanat, Jamie McKelvie, Erika Moen and Rachel Edidin.
I’ll Never Accept It
Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to receive tickets, our analysis shows otherwise.
Late Monday Night
* The headline reads, “Cleverest women are the heaviest drinkers.”
* Chris Currey at FrumForum: “How the GOP purged me.”
I do not recognize myself in the Republican Party anymore. As someone said it before, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me. I have the same ideological positions on most of the issues that I had when I voted for Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush in 2000. However, I just cannot trust the reins of our government and nation, of this formidably complicated and complex gigantic machine that is the USA, to the amateurish leadership of the Republican Party.
We are living through tough times. We are being challenged like I have never seen America being challenged before. China is a formidable foe, and it is out there competing against us on every field and beating us on several fronts. While our education budgets are being slashed in every state across the nation, China is doubling and tripling theirs. These are the challenges and challengers that we are facing. And we need our best and brightest to lead us, not a half-term governor or radio/TV talking heads.
Maybe I am too old and too cynical, but I think the Republican party is in the last stages of agony. If nothing happens, we might win an election or even two, but in the long run we will lose America.
* Was Copenhagen not a failure? More from Plumer and Drum.
* Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast “Shadow Network” of online espionage based in China that used seemingly harmless means such as e-mail and Twitter to extract highly sensitive data from computers around the world.
Sunday Afternoon
* New York Times: At UNC, every night is ladies’ night. Via BloggEd, who adds: At my college, the U. of Delaware, the numbers are almost identical: 58 percent female for years, and 60 percent in the largest college, Arts and Sciences. It’s that way most everywhere, other than super-elite colleges and ones that emphasize engineering and the like. Some time back, I posted on how the gender imbalance may play out in admissions offices: affirmative action for boys—the suspicion of which has led to an ongoing investigation of 19 schools by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
* The New York Review of Books has a brief history of Facebook.
* The Onion‘s A.V. Club has a feature on Bill Murray and philosophy.
* The San Francisco Gate reports the “open secret” that the judge in the highly contentious Prop 8 trial is gay, though the response from the right demonstrates that this was actually a somewhat guarded secret.
* And, via @socratic, the Raw Story has today’s first paragraph FAIL:
New Orleans has elected its first white mayor in 32 years, ushering in hopes of a new era in a city still trying to rebuild five years after Hurricane Katrina.
Perhaps you should consider rephrasing that…
Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women
Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women. Proud to be part of the .5% of Americans who get this joke.
Women Playing Hockey
I have a short piece in the Indy this week about Leah’s hockey team, if you’re interested. That alt-energy story Jaimee and I were working on in the summer is still going to run, by the way; it just keeps getting pushed back. It looks likely that it will go the last week in the month…