thusspakezuska | June 11, 2010A friend of mine (maybe YOU are that friend?) will be soon be leaving a job at Wackaloon Scientific Enterprises where said friend is supervised by sadistic micromanaging douchebags from hell with poor reading comprehension skills.
How best to spend the remaining time my friend must clock at WSE?
I suggest devoting large chunks of it to rearranging pipet tips in their boxes while singing some version of this song.
Oh it was sad,
Oh it was sad,
It was sad when the research went down to the journal.
All the postdocs and techs.
Little grad students lost their lives.
It was sad when the…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2010Ladeez! Please remember not to be too fat, because James Watson doesn't want to hire your ugly ass. Everybody knows fat people can't do science. But they don't care if we say so, because they are so jolly, and lack ambition!
Likewise, it is also not good to be beautiful and curvaceous, and wear clothes that fit you. For alas, Citibank will have to fire you. Your tailored clothing is "too distracting". You distracting ladee, with your distracting turtlenecks!!! Begone from our stolid gentlemanly banking establishment!!!!
Too thin, too thick, too sexy, not sexy enough - clearly, there…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2010HuffPo summary and link to NBC Today Show lying liar doing his lying here.
It "may be down to how you define what a plume is here."
Really? Yeah, who can believe those stupid scientists and their stupid librul observations and data.
Well, here's an idea, lying oilbag BP CEO Doug Suttles. Why don't you go down to the Gulf, and take a dive. Swim around a good long time through that area where "no massive underwater oil plumes in 'large concentrations' have been detected". Then come up, and try diving repeatedly through the oil pooled on the surface. After all that, you just climb…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2010oh. my. fucking. god.
I sooooooo wish I had thought of inventing FEMINIST HULK!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am in love with Feminist Hulk. In love. LOVE! Love, I say!
Hat tip Rebecca of Adventures in Applied Math.
UPDATE: Ms. Magazine interview with my new love!
thusspakezuska | June 8, 2010Whiney McWhinerson barfed up something in the NYT. Doc Free-Ride has a good take on it here. I applaud her analytical skills. I read Tierney's whinefest and it was difficult for me to come up with anything substantive in response because all it sounded like to me was this:
wah wah gender police takin' away mah freedomz! Larry Summers a brave hero to all d00ds! Extreme scores at the right tail of the distribution! Physics needs genius men or western civilization will CRUMBLE! 7th grade SAT scores CLEARLY show gender differences! Innate! Biology! (possible social bias against women, but…
thusspakezuska | June 7, 2010I made myself a nice lunch. Diced two small yellow squash, sauteed them in butter till just tender, plated and topped with some minced parsley from my herb garden...mmmm. Sliced up a kohlrabi and ate that too. Iced decaf coffee. Ate outside on the back patio, cats lolling about with Papa Cardinal chirping fiercely at them (because Mama Cardinal and, I think, babies are in the nest in the nearby arborvitae. Don't worry, Papa - I keep an eye on the kitties, too, and never leave them unsupervised.) Took out the spent flower stalks from all the iris in the garden bed by the street. (Really am…
thusspakezuska | June 6, 2010Because sometimes I need to take a breather, here's this post about fun stuff.
(with apologies to Carl Sandburg...)
Delfest jams on little mud feet.
It dances looking
over mountain and meadow
on singing multitudes
and then moves on.
I can't believe I have to wait a whole nother year for Delfest 2011.
What is Delfest, you ask?
The third annual eponymous bluegrass festival founded by bluegrass legend Del McCoury was held this year, as in the previous two years, at the Allegany County Fairgrounds in Cumberland, MD. But it's more than "just" bluegrass, and more than just a music festival…
thusspakezuska | June 6, 2010Just how dumb can scientists be when they skientifikally talk about "consuming" porn?
This dumb.
Pal MD points out that the wrong questions are being asked.
Fortunately, Skeptifem has a clarifying take on the whole stoopid science FAIL.
Uh yeah, I just want to point out that the consent of the women in pornography is questionable. Trafficked women appear in pornography. Women who are high on drugs appear in pornography. Some have notoriously abusive partners who force them into pornography with violence (Linda Lovelace was raped repeatedly this way). You have absolutely no way of knowing…
thusspakezuska | June 4, 2010I have put in (literally) decades of work acting on the assumption that folks are reasonable and well-intentioned, and trying to be effective and get messages across. Part of that time I was even paid to do so.
IRL, for the most part, I try to interact with people like that.
However, I'm sick to puking of seeing so much shit go down for so long and seeing so little change and seeing progress for women in engineering shudder and stall and hearing over and over and over and over again "we just have to wait for the old guard to die off and for spots to open up and for women to work their way up…
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 | June 2, 2010Jeebus, people, you have GOT to get some new whiney whines, you Whiney McWhinersons.
I'm talking about you, you whiney whiners. Those of you who get all whiney and defensive whenever anyone dares to point out that you have stepped in the dogshit. Stepping in dogshit is an accident and it is something that all of us do upon occasion. Now, when you step in dogshit, do you want to just go blithely prancing about the place, spreading the dogshit hither and yon, stinking up the place to high heaven? Or do you want someone to point out that, jesus h. christ, there's a great big steaming heap…
thusspakezuska | May 25, 2010I've had versions of the same recurring dream/nightmare for decades. While I don't particularly enjoy the dream, it is hilarious to me to reflect on how it has evolved over time to keep up with advances in technology in my waking life.
The dream always involves the urgent need to use a phone at some point. Why I need to use the phone, who I'm trying to contact, how I feel when I'm doing so, what I'm trying to communicate - these circumstances all vary. But commonly, I am unable to complete dialing or entering the number - I cannot put through the call.
When I first began having these…
thusspakezuska | May 24, 2010I recently got the chance to view "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". This is the best film I have ever seen in my life. It is not an easy film to watch. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse and want to see it, you may want to watch it with a trusted friend or two, with planned time afterward to help you process what you have seen. Terrible things do happen to the heroine, Lisbeth Salander, but the vengeance she exacts upon the evil-doers in the film is so perfect and so delicious and so right that you may be okay. Indeed, if men who so casually perpetrate violence against women had to…
thusspakezuska | May 24, 2010Technically speaking, I believe it's my ovaries that are the proper object of envy, but no matter. Prof-Like Substance has spoken.
I'm going to try something a little different this week and actually do something organized, rather than just toss out anything that happens to be on my mind. I often get comments, here or IRL, to the effect of "how do you have time to blog?" or "Do you feel like blogging is a waste of time when you have so many other things going on?" Obviously, my answer is no, I don't think it is a waste of time, but over the next few days I would like to articulate that a…
thusspakezuska | May 16, 2010The last week or so I've been reading that classic of naturalist writing, The Outermost House by Henry Beston, as the last of this year's selections for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Book Club.
The book is a delight to read for those who love language - it is essentially one long prose poem. But at the same time, it is sweetly painful, as one takes the measure of all the glory that must have been lost in the time since Beston wrote.
Nothing quite prepared me, however, for encountering the following passage about halfway through the book, in the chapter titled "Winter Visitors".…
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2010If you read my entry on How to Feed 4 on a Food Stamp Budget and were at all engaged in the comments thread, then I would highly recommend you read Sharon Astyk's post Eating Poor. Her post is fantastic, informative, thought-provoking, challenging.
thusspakezuska | May 14, 2010As you know, it was just over a thousand years ago this past March that I defended my dissertation. As I recall, I picked up a dozen bagels and some cream cheese on the way to the defense, and the department secretaries administrative assistants brought in an urn of coffee. It was me and my committee. My advisor made some exceedingly brief introductory remarks and then the semi-bored, semi-hostile committee allowed me to launch into the show-and-tell of What Did You Do These Last Five Years. A few hours later it was all over but the revisions and shouting. Literally. Revisions completed…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2010I went to the Morris Arboretum plant sale last Friday. As a member, I got a "bonus" plant for free. The "bonus" plant is a lure to bring you to the plant sale. You pick up your bonus plant at a special tent at the very back of the plant sale, so you have to walk past the tables of annuals and perennials, the dozens of herbs and scented geraniums, seedling tomatoes and peppers and swiss chard, the long aisles of potted shrubs and trees, the section showcasing the offerings of the Rhododendron Society, the little clump devoted to clematis and native wisteria...by the time you get to the…
thusspakezuska | May 10, 2010After my last few posts, and the tons of comments from thegoodman and Queef, I've started thinking seriously about my approach to this blog. Maybe I am just a little too angry for no good reasons, too often just calling childish names and not solving discrimination. Perhaps I can do better. Perhaps I should start with a new profile photo, something more friendly and welcoming to all. My proposed new profile photo can be found after the jump. Let me know what you think.
Thanks to www.cornify.com for super-sparkly picture editing!
thusspakezuska | May 10, 2010Thegoodman really, really wants to know.
If you do not consider yourself a failure, that is great. Why then are you so angry about this situation? If it has worked out well for you, what is driving your passionate hatred for our patriarch society?
Like many gender discussions/arguments, your approach has made me feel guilty for being a man. This doesn't accomplish anything positive since I soon get defensive because I cannot help it that I am a man and I shouldn't feel guilty about just as you shouldn't feel guilty for being a woman.
This is hilarious in so many ways. Let's recap. I…