Links- Grab Bag

I've been negligent in my blogging (check out what I've been writing for the Social Robot) mostly because work has been busy, nothing I can talk about yet though. So in the meantime, here's an assortment of interesting things that have passed into my "to write about" list but well, I don't think I'm going to get to any time soon.

Mathematicians find a formula for a hit film sequel:

The research, which will be published in the Journal of Marketing this month, examined data from all 101 movie sequels released in North American theatres between 1998 and 2006 and a matched sub sample of stand-alone films with similar characteristics. According to the formula, upcoming sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon should be expected to return $34m more for the producers in its US run than a comparable vampire/ teen romance movie with the same characteristics that is not a sequel.

Here is an interesting review of a book that talks about "The Trouble with Boys" which points out how while girls are thought of as "sugar, spice and everything nice" little boys face the same blanket stereotyping that girls do. Always good to remember and discuss.


From Jezebel: An interesting (but slightly limited) study was recently posted on the Pixels and Policy blog, about attitudes towards "female avatars and gender expectations." The results? For many women players, it's easier to embrace sexualization than to fight it.

The NY Post Interviewed Sarah Haskins, who if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know I love.

“Advertising is so ridiculous because it’s trying to still use some of the traditional gender roles, while also trying to match the changes . . . in the past 40 to 50 years,” says Haskins, who has a background in improv comedy... Haskins says the comedy of “Target: Women” masks serious intentions: “As the Internet and TV and movies all become one scary machine in your living room, it’s important that we all have some level of media literacy.”

TV discovers that DVR is not the horrifying dragon eager to eat its ad sales that it once assumed.

"DVR ratings now add significantly to live ratings and thus to ad revenue... The DVR was going to kill television,” said Andy Donchin, director of media investment for the ad agency Carat. 'It hasn’t.'”

And finally, here are two articles that deal in classic female archetypes: The Stepmother, classically evil, petty, vein and malignant, and the Fairy Godmother, Fairy Godmother Academy specifically, a children's property with a transmedia rollout attached to it that is being developed through Random House.