Isn't It Ironic?
thusspakezuska | July 6, 2010By now, perhaps, you are aware of the uproar about the ScienceBlogs corner of the bloggysphere. PepsiCo has bought started a blog here, called Food Frontiers. Many are unhappy, bloggers and commenters alike. Read PalMD's take, and commenters there, for one perspective.
One of the potential disadvantages [of a blog network] is advertising and sponsorship. Here at Sb, we've been very fortunate in that our content is completely independent. We control anything in the center column. The top and right however belong to Sb, and they use this space to keep the place running. There have been…
thusspakezuska | June 27, 2010Female Science Professor has posted a checklist - "Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form." - and asked for additions.
I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought "all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I'll just read this list of new stuff to see what teh wimminz are whining about these days." Because things are getting better all the time.
Alyssa at 6/17/2010 10:03:00 AM said:
Someone asks why you bothered getting a PhD if you're "just going to have children"
and DRo at 6/17/2010 10:36:00 AM said:
You are told that you won't…
thusspakezuska | June 3, 2010Prodigal Academic comments over at Isis's place:
Everyone speaking English is no guarantee of safety.
That is true, but since the lab was in the US, everyone in it is supposed to have a minimal proficiency in English. In practice, the net result was that the standard procedure was to use English first (allowing others to maintain a good awareness of what was going on around them in the lab), then confirm understanding in another language if necessary.
As a purely safety consideration, it makes a lot of sense to have a lab language. My group right now has 2 PhD students and 3 undergrads, all…
thusspakezuska | May 4, 2010A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of yet another of the "death by a thousand paper cuts**" craptastic things I used to hate dealing with in my days in the scientific workforce. You know what I'm talking about. Could be a retreat, a workshop, a seminar, a meeting, a program, maybe even just a discussion, but whatever it is, diversity is the subject, explicit or implicit. On one occasion it was a discussion about whether a tiny little space should be set aside for students of a certain group. On another it was a pizza party for women students. But ever and anon, at such…
thusspakezuska | November 14, 2009Not that it matters much with this dreadful film, but if you're worried about spoilers, don't read this post till you've seen the movie. You've been warned. Proceed past the jump at your own risk. Movie trailer can be found here.
Norma and Arthur have been given a box! With a button! Push the button and get a million bucks! Only, well, someone has to die. Dang. Norma's a nice girl, but she pushes the button anyway. And then watches it rise again in all its slow motion phallic majesty.
So, it turns out, the fancy little button boxes are being doled out only to married couples…
thusspakezuska | October 5, 2009By which I mean, this.
The comix being, as it were, a bit of solace for Him leaving us to wander about this hideous world choked by gender smog.
MAJOR hat tip to Pat at Fairer Science.
UPDATE: And for more turning-the-tables fun and shenannigans, be sure to read Peggy's post on The Sultana's Dream over at Women in Science.
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2009What's a good citizen to do if he or she thinks that cough and sneeze is swine flu? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends:
Stay home if you get sick. CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
This afternoon I've been reading Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich - which is ever so more relevant now, if that were possible, than when it was originally released. Near the end she notes:
It is common, among the nonpoor, to think of poverty as a sustainable condition -…
thusspakezuska | April 29, 2009McDonald's is everywhere, of course. But it's not completely cookie cutter; only about 99.9% so. For example, the McDonald's at the Heidelberg train station I used to frequent when I felt unbearably homesick in Germany had beer on tap - something you don't see in the U.S! Most McDonald's I've ever been in, though, feature incredibly dispiriting physical environments. You aren't really encouraged to linger and enjoy yourself. It's fast food, after all. It's not like it's your quaint neighborhood Starbucks.
But as we knew all along, the very rich are different from you and I, and so is…
thusspakezuska | April 27, 2009Sooooo....it appears some of you take your comics quite seriously. At least, should one be so foolish as to point out painfully obvious, boringly everyday occurrences of sexism.
Danimal asks of Comrade Physioprof: "So you are saying the comic reflects real life?"
What Physioprof said is this: "Every single one of the Foxtrots themselves represents absolute conformity to patriarchal gender norms. And the characters who are not part of the family who appear to violate those norms serve the patriarchal narrative purely as foils."
Inasmuch as patriarchal gender norms represent Real LifeTM,…
thusspakezuska | April 1, 2009I've been thinking a lot lately, and it seems to me that I spend way too much time puking on other peoples' shoes and not nearly enough time prancing about in my own fancy high heels. So this past weekend I did some shopping. Here's one result:
Let me tell you, Mr. Zuska is happy about this turn of events! I also got these:
Of course, after an evening in those, I couldn't walk at all the next day due to my arthritic toes but it was all worth it, because I knew I had finally consumed my way into modern womanhood. I know this because I was reading Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines…
thusspakezuska | March 15, 2009This past Friday morning, as per my usual routine, I sat down to read the Philadelphia Inquirer with my coffee and breakfast. And I came across an article that nearly made me vomit back all that delicious Toy Cow Farms blueberry yoghurt I had just spooned down. I refer, of course, to the piece on the "quaint Victorian home" shared by Darla, Chelsea, and Coco Puff.
Their dwelling has a cedar-shake roof, vaulted ceilings, and hardwood floors, heating and air-conditioning, moldings and casement windows, drapery with valences, and fanciful wallpapers.
At Christmas, music from the RCA Victor…
thusspakezuska | March 9, 2009For the second time in a week (see here and here) I've blogged about something from the Philadelphia Inquirer. You may or may not know that the Inquirer recently went into bankruptcy proceedings. I don't know what I would do without the Inquirer to read everyday. Blogging is great but it simply cannot replace, in my opinion, regular newspaper reporting. Somewhat tangentially related to that: I recently renewed my subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Education. I was given the option to receive it, for a somewhat lesser price, as only an electronic edition. It completely replicates…
thusspakezuska | February 26, 2009SCENE:
At the YMCA: they used to have perfectly serviceable water fountains in the room with the treadmills, elliptical trainers, and weight machines. They ripped them out and replaced them with water coolers that require the use of little conical paper cups - which, of course, must be used once and then thrown away. I and a few others left comments on their comment cards to the effect that this was a fucking stupid move, wasteful in the extreme, bad for the environment, blah blah. Response: we hear your concerns; we are so concerned about sanitation, water coolers are better for everyone,…
thusspakezuska | February 24, 2009It's certainly a tragedy when anyone takes their own life. I feel very sorry for the surviving family members and colleagues affected by the suicides of two U. of Iowa professors accused of sexual harassment who took their own lives last year.
And yet. I have little patience with this Chronicle of Higher Education article about them. You can file it under the category of "but he was such a really wonderful person! There's just no way he could have done these things!" Or, alternatively, "Those TERRIBLE women RUINED the lives of these WONDERFUL men!"
In the case of Arthur H. Miller…
thusspakezuska | February 20, 2009I love Ursula K. le Guin's the Earthsea series, and recently finished reading the final novel, The Other Wind. Those who are familiar with the Earthsea books will know that among other topics, le Guin explores traditional gender roles, their change, and men's disparagement of women's power. Towards the end of The Other Wind, one of the characters, Tenar, observes
How men feared women! she thought, walking among the late-flowering roses. Not as individuals, but women when they talked together, worked together, spoke up for one another - then men saw plots, cabals, constraints, traps being…
thusspakezuska | February 10, 2009I love being part of ScienceBlogs. I've gotten to meet a lot of my Sciblings in person by now and have generally found them to be wonderful people. Readers, I like them!
Except. I really don't like the trash one of my Sciblings has been flinging around lately. Sooooo not cool. Details over at Isis's pad. Sing it, sister!
When people go around saying stuff like this
I have been accused of not being on board because I don't like the anger. At the same time I'm a progenitor of anger when I feel like doing it. I admit that the anger works, but I also feel that ally building is sometimes…
thusspakezuska | January 29, 2009A week or so ago I finally gave in and allowed my friends to convince me that I really, really needed to go on Facebook. It has been fun - I've gotten back in touch with some old friends I'd lost track of; I've enjoyed reading tidbits about the daily goings-on of my friends' lives; I've tried to figure out what the heck L'il Green Patch is all about.
Yet it also seems to me, in some ways, like a nightmare. With email, I log on, read messages, respond, delete, I'm done. With blogging, I log on, write a blog post, post it, check comments to see if anything is languishing in moderation, I'm…
thusspakezuska | December 18, 2008Over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, Janet Stemwedel has written a fabulously complex post about ethics and population, which I highly recommend for your reading pleasure and contemplation. It was inspired by a post by Martin on the ethics of overpopulation, in which he offered a grand and simple three-point manifesto:
It is unethical for anyone to produce more than two children. (Adoption of orphans, on the other hand, is highly commendable.)
It is unethical to limit the availability of contraceptives, abortion, surgical sterilisation and adoption.
It is unethical to use public…
thusspakezuska | November 14, 2008Though university administrators seem to be widely reviled among faculty members, one of the best jobs I ever had was in administration. Many wonderful opportunities came my way; possibly the most mind-stretching, exhilarating, and rewarding of these was the chance to spend four weeks attending the Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, held at Bryn Mawr College. Just imagine spending four weeks with several dozen intelligent, interesting women from colleges and universities all over the U.S., from a range of administrative areas (including faculty members looking to…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2008A friend of mine recently accepted a job in academic administration. He is extremely excited about the job and eager to do good things in his position. He is also a dedicated father and truly shares equal parenting responsibilities with his spouse. His spouse is in a career that is less time-flexible than academia is - or could be.
At my friend's prior job, he generally started his workday a little later than the norm, in order to care for the kids until departure for school. He worked from home very early in the morning, was accessible by cell and email, and came into the workplace…